Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. MUSIC: Louis Newman: Our sense of allegiance to Israel has become an article of faith. It has become so deeply embedded in our religious identity that to attack Israel is to attack our Jewishness. MUSIC: [foreign language 00:00:29] Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman. Today I'm going to be speaking with Dr. Louis Newman, a scholar of religious studies and ethics. We'll be discussing his essay, Living in a Time of Shattered Faith. This powerful piece was published on the Evolve website on May 6th, and we spoke about it July 3rd. Though Louis Newman is primarily a scholar of Jewish ethics, this essay is a work of sociology, history, political commentary, and maybe more. He argues that for a certain generation of diaspora Jews, mainly those probably in the baby boomer generation and American Jews in particular, the concept of survival became like a quasi-religious tenet with the Holocaust and Israel representing opposite sides of survival as keystones of civic religion. And that this faith, which had seen many cracks over decades was completely shattered on October 7th. And that might not make a lot of sense, but he'll explain what it all means in the interview and how things have changed and been shaken up by real earth-shattering events. Dr. Newman is also a career academic who has just published a book about how to succeed in college. So we'll spend some time talking about the state of affairs on campus for Jews, for free speech, for the debate over the Israel-Hamas war. Okay. With me in our booth is Sam Wachs, who's actually always with me even when you can't hear him. He's our video editor and makes sure this whole show happens. Sam, in our planning meetings when we talk about what essays might make for good podcasts, for interesting podcasts, you were pretty gung-ho about this one. And I was just wondering what got you really connected to this essay, and what about it spoke to you? Sam Wachs: Sure. Well, it's a really good essay. I would encourage anyone who's listening now who hasn't read it to go read it. For me, I think the framing of the essay sort of articulating something that I've always felt about my own Jewish upbringing, that really the pillars of it were Holocaust education and also efforts to connect with Israel. I'm younger than Louis Newman, not to age anyone, but I'm- Bryan Schwartzman: You're also younger than me. Sam Wachs: Yeah, so I'm about 10 years younger than you. I'm an old millennial. So, I know that not everything on these issues is along generational lines, but I think there is a lot along generational lines. So my perspective might be a little different overall, but the framing really resonated with me, and I just thought it was a really interesting way to think about what being Jewish has meant, right? In my life it was always this story of survival. So I really connected with that and given current events, it makes me think about this framing and is it the best framing and is it the best framing for 2024 and going forward. Bryan Schwartzman: Well, well said, Sam, and I really appreciate you pushing for this particular show because I think the results bore out and our listeners, will get a thought-provoking conversation. Sam Wachs: Sure, no problem. Hope y'all enjoy it. Bryan Schwartzman: Okay, couple of announcements. So we've said it before, Sam and I work for an organization called Reconstructing Judaism. It's what runs the Evolve Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations Project and so much more. Reconstructing Judaism serves nearly a hundred communities through North America and beyond. It runs a rabbinical seminary, the only Reconstructionist rabbinical seminary. It produces Ritualwell.org and other core activities. So if you're curious, since this topic and really all of 2024, we've really been focusing on Israel and the War of Gaza on our show. So for any curious listeners about the Reconstructionist perspective on Israel-Zionism, the two-state solution, the war in Gaza, the Judicial Overhaul, it has just updated and enhanced a whole bunch of resources on ReconstructingJudaism.org. It's right on the top of the page of the homepage under the banner, the Reconstructionist movement, Israel and Zionism. And if you click on it, you'll find explainers, Q&As, historical documents, and a lot more. So peruse and I think it adds a bunch of context and perspective. Also of note, from July 3rd to eighth, members of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College faculty traveled to Israel on a study tour, a lot of it built around meeting with staff and faculty at BNA B-I-N-A, the Jewish Movement for Social Change, which is part secular Yeshiva based in Tel Aviv and part social justice organization. And it's where RRC students study during their time in Israel. You can learn more about this by going to the new section of Reconstructingjudaism.org or following on the orgs Facebook and Instagram pages. Sam Wachs: And we'll also link to it in our show notes for everyone. Bryan Schwartzman: Yes, yes, show notes. Thank you. In a related note on July 23rd Evolve is hosting a web conversation on some of these topics. Rabbi Jacob Staub will interview Rabbi Jonathan Kligler about his thought-provoking essay, The Right-Wing Extremists Are In Charge in Israel, which it's really a defense of liberal Zionism and thoughtful critique of the war effort sort of rolled into one. I recommend the essay, and I'm sure this is going to be a thoughtful conversation. We'll leave registration links in our show notes, and you can find it on the Evolve homepage as well. Okay, let's get to our guests, Louis Newman PhD. Dr. Newman is a professor Emeritus of religious studies at Carleton College and a former dean of academic advising at Stanford University. He's the author of several books on Jewish ethics, including Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah, and An Introduction to Jewish Ethics. His most recent book is Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success. We have a link to purchase that book in our show notes. Dr. Louis Newman, welcome to the podcast. It's wonderful to have you here. Louis Newman: Thank you for having me, Bryan. It's a pleasure to be here. Bryan Schwartzman: Great. So you had this really powerful, interesting essay on Evolve. It's gotten some comments, and before we get too far into expanding upon it, I guess for the benefit of listeners who maybe haven't read it yet, try to give a thumbnail version. You talk about the Holocaust and Israel being twin pillars of sort of post 1967 American Jewish civil religion. I'm wondering if I could just start out asking, how do you understand civil religion? What is that? How is it different from just religion religion? Louis Newman: For sure. Well, civil religion is a concept that goes back quite a ways. It was popularized by a religion scholar named Robert Bellah in a book of his about civil religion in America. And the concept is fundamentally that these are the beliefs and rituals that may not have anything at all to do with organized institutional religion. It isn't what happens in synagogues or churches, it has nothing to do with clergy or sacred scripture or any of that. It is simply the things that kind of bind together a society and civil religion. It is the kind of religious view, belief, practice that is sort of infused in a society. His examples included things like presidential inaugural addresses in the United States. What are the sort of religious images and values that are appealed to in those political contexts and in the sense that every community has values and practices that bind it together and that people put their trust in and faith in and resonate with. That's really in a sense what the civil religion is. And so Jonathan Wucher, as I point out in my piece in Evolve, is somebody who applied that concept that Bellah developed and related it to the American Jewish community. And argued that the notion of survival was one of the sacred tenets of American Jewish civil religion. So that if you looked at, for example, what American Jewish organizations published and you looked at speeches at UJC or what was then called UJA conferences, you would find that there were certain values and beliefs that were appealed to and that were held to be the sort of just the glue that holds our communities together and that we believe in. And so his claim, and I refer to this in my piece, is that the Holocaust and the rise of the state of Israel happening especially so close together in the 1930s and '40s became the sort of foundations of a certain view of the world. And a certain view of Jewish identity that is so, has been at least so widespread and so prevalent that it has just become sort of internalized as this is what American Jews believe. So for example, you may not believe in God, you may not believe that the Torah was written by God and delivered on Mount Sinai. You might not believe in the Messiah. You might not believe in a lot of traditional things that Jews have believed, but you believe that Jews are threatened. The Jews live in a threatening world. The Holocaust is a prime example of that. And you believe that commitment to the state of Israel and its survival is the most important act you can do as a contemporary American Jew. So those things are bound together, and that's in a way what we're talking about when we talk about the American Jewish civil religion. Bryan Schwartzman: So if survival is this quasi-sacred value, those are different, the opposite sides of the survival coin in a sense, right? The Holocaust and Israel. Louis Newman: Exactly, yes. Bryan Schwartzman: So I mean, I guess especially in 2024, I'm thinking where might American democracy fit into that? Could it be argued, is seen as a pillar of necessary for survival? Louis Newman: Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that Wucher talks about, he actually has seven pillars, although he does- Bryan Schwartzman: Seven pillars, okay. Louis Newman: Although he actually thinks that the Holocaust and the state of Israel are the linchpins in a way. But he also argues that Americanness, as Americanness and American democracy is also a key element of what feeds into this American Jewish civil religion. We are all committed to Israel, but we're also all deeply committed to American democracy and to Americanness as a virtue. So that's in his mind also woven in there. Bryan Schwartzman: And I guess just before I move off this maybe to date myself, but was there ever a point where maybe the Soviet Jewry movement was as important or... I mean, it's sort of the last thing almost every American Jew agreed on, right? There was no let the Soviet Union oppress Jews argument. Louis Newman: Absolutely. No. And in fact, again, Wucher, and again, I'd have to go back and look specifically at how he phrases this, but he talks about all Jews being responsible for one another as one of those pillars. So the Soviet Jewry movement, Jews in Ethiopia and helping those Jews get to Israel, all of that is woven in in his mind to the ethos and the of American Jews. And so that too is a big part of what he argues is just sort of central to our religious identity. It's helpful to think about the civil religion as a way of talking about American Jewish religious identity in ways that are not bound to traditional forms and institutions Bryan Schwartzman: Now in lots of different ways. This model has been critiqued for a long time. I mean, I've sort of been actively paying attention to Jewish life since probably the late '90s. There's been folks saying that we need more positive manifestations of Jewish identity. It needs to be meaningful, it needs to be relevant. And at the same time, the distancing from Israel certainly isn't new. We've got an essay coming out from the scholar, Marc Dollinger, talking about the post '67 left-wing progressive move away from Israel. I haven't read, certainly haven't read every academic book that's been put out, but I remember I was assigned in grad school, Irreconcilable Differences, published in about 2001, about the waning, I think it was the subtitle, was The Waning Love Affair between American Jews in Israel. So I guess this is my long-winded way of asking what ruptured or changed for you on October 7th, given that this notion of Jewish identity had been, I guess, critiqued, maybe even threatened for quite some time. Louis Newman: Absolutely. Yeah. I think the best way to approach that is to do a thought experiment for a moment. So let's imagine that October 7th never happened. I mean, it's hard because in some ways so shaken and it's [inaudible 00:17:01] Bryan Schwartzman: It is hard. Louis Newman: It's very hard. Bryan Schwartzman: It was hard to imagine that it could have happened, and now hard to imagine it didn't. Louis Newman: Exactly. Bryan Schwartzman: It's, I mean, in that sense, very similar to 9/11, I guess, especially for those who lived through it. Louis Newman: Absolutely. But if we could just turn the clock back for a moment in our minds to October 6th, it was already the case as you rightly pointed out, Bryan and many people have pointed this out, that allegiance to Israel has been declining by many surveys and by many measures. It could be measured in contributions to Jewish federations that support Israel. It can be measured in surveys, especially of younger American Jews, those in their thirties, forties, and maybe even fifties. But certainly in the younger generation of American Jews, their sense of allegiance to Israel is far lower than Jews in their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, let's say, who grew up with a different Israel at a different time. We could even call it a sort of a pre-Netanyahu Israel maybe, or an Israel, at least at a time when it seemed as though siding with Israel over against the Arab world was a simpler proposition to adhere to. And for many of us who grew up in that time, there was a sense that this was true. The American Jewish civil religion really was true, that we lived in a world where Jews were imperiled, where Jews were not fundamentally safe. Israel was our safety, our security, our anchor. It was the expression of Jewish values in the world. It was something we were deeply proud of and deeply committed to. And I think it's true that for a whole range of reasons that allegiance has already been deteriorating, if you will, or lessening over time. So you might argue, and at a critique of my essay would legitimately be, "Well, wait a minute, this Jewish American, American Jewish civil religion that you're talking about having been shattered in a way by the events of October 7th and the war that followed it. It was already shattered, or it was already mostly shattered." And in certain ways it was. But I'd also think it's true that for a lot of us, especially my generation, I'm in my late sixties, that the remnants of that belief in Israel are still quite strong. And American Jewish mainstream organizations continue to just look at their websites or their publications and the statements they've made in the aftermath of these events, you'll see that they are still very much, we are all in on Israel. Israel is absolutely right. All these people who are critiquing Israel are fundamentally either misinformed or covertly or maybe more than covertly anti-Semitic, and so on. And so there's a sense in which, yes, we are still in peril. And yes, Israel is still the fundamental pillar of our allegiance to our identity, to our future. It's the representation of our heritage and so on. And I think that view continues to be prevalent. And I think the events of October 7th and following have shaken that significantly. And that's really what the point of my essay was, that it is harder to hold that view now than ever before. You have to work really hard to resist the realities of what's happened to believe that Israel is the anchor of our security. Well, Jews and Israel, were not terribly secure on October 7th and Jews around the world have been made less secure by the events after October 7th. So that's just one example, right? Bryan Schwartzman: Right. On October 6th, you could have disagreed with Israeli policy, you could have been out protesting the judicial realignment, but you could have still held a fundamental belief that Israel as a government, as an army was capable of keeping Jews safe. Yes, there've been wars. There was the second Intifada, which was extremely traumatizing for Israelis, although the military really, and government gained a lot of trust in the eyes of Israel, maybe not in the rest of the world by restoring a balance of safety in 2004. So I guess there's certainly no point in my lifetime where Israel failed so spectacularly to protect Jews, and now we feel vulnerable everywhere. And I guess in the fundamental safety, something seemed to switch. And I wonder how that relates to the idea that survival is sort of the primary mover of American Jewry or diaspora Jewry. Louis Newman: Right. Bryan Schwartzman: Maybe there was a question there. Louis Newman: I think you're right. I'm not sure what to say about that exactly, except to say that I think you're right that there are many Jews who can still say, "Look, we're still in peril. October 7th proves nothing." It is, as many people have pointed out, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. And that's a very stark thing to say, and it's true. And part is, the truth of that is precisely what's shattering, because it seemed as though we wanted to believe that it wouldn't happen, that such a thing couldn't happen again, and that Israel was the guarantor of that, and then it turned out that it wasn't. So that's the way in which I think for Israelis too, who feel as though their sense of security has been shattered, and even their faith in the military to some degree and in Israeli intelligence services has been shattered. Their faith in the government for many people has also been shaken deeply and so forth. So it's an internal issue of course for Israelis, but it's also an issue for all of us in the diaspora who have believed that Israel was, even if we chose not to live there, believed that Israel was a safe place for Jews. That was its primary purpose in the world, was to be a safe place for Jews. Bryan Schwartzman: All my years of print journalism, I was taught to ask simple direct questions, and then you hand me a microphone and I go on and on. I mean, some of this is where folks are in their minds. I'm not the first to say Israel is very much still just in October 7th or a day or two after emotionally, mentally, the rest of the world. It's really moved on. That's ancient history that everything that's happened in Gaza since is what's urgent. Maybe Jewish communities outside of Israel are somewhere in between. But I'm wondering if that impacts your thinking on these issues at all, where we are temporally in our minds and memories. Louis Newman: Yeah. I don't know that I want to opine too much about the state of the sort of psychology of Israeli Jews. My wife, Amy and I were there recently, and I think it is true to some degree that Israeli Jews are very much traumatized and very much still grieving. In fact, some people argue that they haven't even been able to grieve because they've been so traumatized that they haven't even been able yet to process all of what transpired. There are signs that life continues, of course, people go on, weddings happen, birthdays happen and so forth. But fundamentally, there is this sense that the society has been shaken. They're not going to go back to the pre-October 7th reality ever. Something fundamental has shifted in Israeli psyche. And I'm not prepared to say more about it than that because I simply am not inside of that society enough to say. But I do think it's true that that's one of the ruptures that has happened is that for a lot of American Jews, certainly there's a lot more to this and the war in Gaza, not only because it's been covered so extensively in the media, but also just because it represents such a significant loss of life. And for some of us, a real questionably worthwhile war that is to say, are the stated objectives of the war even achievable? And if they're not, then what actually is Israel doing? And of course, all the questions about whether Netanyahu has some personal interest in pursuing, in keeping the war going for his own political interests. That's a whole separate question. But fundamentally, I think for a lot of American Jews, we're not in the same place that Israeli Jews are around what's been going on. And that's partly again, a sense of a gap or a rift has opened up between the two communities. Bryan Schwartzman: So I think I'm going to try to ask the question that popped, kind of jumped out at me as I read your absorbing essay. I know there certainly have been other periods in even recent history where there was sort of a general crisis of confidence. I'm a little too young for Watergate, but I know polling and institutions was very low right now. But it seems to me that no matter where you are on the political spectrum, that we're living in a period where there's a lot of crisis of faith. And certainly Israel is one of them, especially if you're an American Jew that's strongly invested in Israel, American democracy might be another. We certainly just lived through COVID where there was a lot of mistrust on both sides in authorities, the Supreme Court. I guess my first question is, do you perceive any broader lack of faith in 2024? Am I potentially reading too much into it or is that a question that's just not possible to answer? Louis Newman: Well, I don't know how that is possible to answer it very clearly, but I'll say this, I do think that various kinds of crises of the sorts you're mentioning, Bryan, do prompt shifts in the culture and in social norms that sometimes don't show up for some period of time afterwards. Watergate, to take that one, and I'm old enough to remember Watergate pretty well. In the aftermath of Watergate, there was a lot of conversation about what we needed to do to preserve American democracy in light of a president who appeared to be lawless or at least willing to break the law for his own selfish reasons. And so I think that kind of evoked a whole reevaluation of American institutions and government and trust in government and so forth. So I think that we're still living in some ways with the aftermath of that. We're certainly still living with the aftermath of COVID. I think we don't know yet entirely all the ways in which that will change how we think about medical information. What the CDC does and tells us is healthy, given that some of the information they gave out early in the pandemic turned out not to be quite accurate and flubbing the testing protocols and a variety of things. I mean, I think that the sheer numbers of people who died and how are we going to remember this period of isolation from one another and all the ways that affected us. All of those things, I think will have downstream effects. And similarly, I think here, the events of October 7th and the war that's still ongoing are going to continue to have downstream effects in terms of where American Jews put their... what they support with both their time and their money. Whether they continue to feel as strongly about Israel or if their views about Israel shift. That's partly because of the war specifically. It's partly because of the current Israeli government, which is, as we all know the most right-wing government by far in Israel's history and much out of step with the values of most American Jews. So all of those things are going to have long-term impacts. It's hard to say at this stage just what they will be, but I think it would be naive to imagine that they're not going to have significant effects down the road. Bryan Schwartzman: What does a person do when the things they believed in appear on shaky grounds or they lose faith of it? Is there anything positive or what's a positive response to that? Productive, life-affirming? Louis Newman: Right. Well, this of course is really a question for a psychologist, and I'm not a psychologist. Bryan Schwartzman: Right. Right. Louis Newman: But I'll say this much, which is I do think, in a way just based on my own experience, that when our faith in someone or something is shaken, it forces a kind of realignment. Either we kind of just put our heads in the sand and pretend it didn't happen. And try to go on as before or more often and probably a healthier response is that we will take a step back and begin to rethink exactly how we move through the world, how we think about ourselves in relationship to that institution or that person in whom we have lost faith. Think about a shattered marriage. It's often the case that somebody then picks their life up and thinks differently about how to choose a partner and whether they even want a partner or whatever they might choose. I think it just forces people to go back to their own fundamentals. What really matters to them? What do they really believe in? What feels really solid? And if the things that they thought were solid turned out not to be, they're going to want to go find something else that is. Because most of us don't want to live in a world of chaos and lack of structure or foundation. We want to believe in something. We want to put our trust in things that we feel will give us a sense of meaning and purpose and security. And so we will look for them somewhere else if the places that we looked in the past didn't work out as we hoped they would. Bryan Schwartzman: We're not quite into the ninth of Av time yet. But I guess I'm wondering, are there epics or episodes from the Jewish story that could prove instructive on how communities might change or respond to this cataclysm and I don't know what else to call it? Louis Newman: Yeah, I think it is a good question. Certainly rabbinic Judaism, as we know it is a post-destruction of the second temple phenomenon. That is to say rabbis had begun to emerge before the destruction of the temple, but it was really only after the temple was destroyed. And the Roman exile occurred that rabbinic Judaism, as we know it really began to flourish. So that is maybe instructive in the sense that if the... well, let's take the really most extreme example. Okay, let's imagine that somehow politically or otherwise, the Jewish state of Israel, as we know, it gives way to a binational state or something else, which confederation some people have advocated for and so on. Maybe some other form of political entity takes its place. And so there's a possibility then that the way Jews would think about their connection to that place, would Jews still go to Israel on pilgrimages, could go there for their kids bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations, and would they still feel the same emotional response to Hatikva? Would they still celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut in community celebrations and so forth? The whole range of things we might ask, would all of that shift and would something new emerge, would a different kind of Jewish identity that's less focused on the Holocaust and Israel begin to take its place? I think you could argue that it already has in some ways. Again, as I said earlier, certainly among American Jews in their twenties, thirties and forties, I talked to my children about this. They're in their thirties and they feel very differently about Israel than I do or than I did certainly growing up and when I was their age. And that's in part because they've known a different Israel. Israel has shifted, but it's also, I think because they have found that, call it Holocaust Israel structure less compelling, less fulfilling, less meaningful than other forms of Jewish expression. And so they turn to other ways of being Jewish and celebrating their Jewishness. And maybe it's a Jewish film festival. Maybe it's synagogue life pure and simple. Maybe it's some other kind of Jewish affiliation that enables them to feel connected to their heritage and express their identity without it being all about, "We stand with Israel," to put it in the slogan that so often appears on signs outside of Jewish institutions these days. That may not be where their Jewish identity is anchored. Bryan Schwartzman: Can you say anything about where how your own personal faith, civic religion, just overall attitudes have been altered since October 7th? Louis Newman: Yeah, I'll answer that question maybe more broadly first, which is to say that even before October 7th, my attitudes toward Israel had been shifting. So to just provide a bit of background. I grew up in the '60s and '70s. My parents were both very, very involved in the Jewish community, very involved in Jewish Federation, my mother had Hadassah and Uthalia. And then later in the joint distribution committee, my father actually traveled around the country speaking on behalf of UJA. That wasn't his job. He was a CPA professionally, but he was very deeply committed. Both of my parents were passed Federation presidents in St. Paul, Minnesota. So I grew up in a household in which commitment to Israel was taken for granted. It was just in the air. We took a trip to Israel. My first trip to Israel was when I was around bar Mitzvah age. I didn't have a bar Mitzvah ceremony there, but we did go there. It was 1968, '68 or '69, really shortly after the six-day war. And so we actually were in the West Bank at that time. And at that time, a lot of things still seemed like possibilities. This was before all the settlements had been built and so on. But in any event, I grew up feeling very, very powerfully about my connection to Israel. And I think that was part of why the year after I graduated from high school, I spent a summer working on the kibbutz- Bryan Schwartzman: Which kibbutz by the way, which kibbutz? Louis Newman: It was kibbutz Be'erot Yitzhak, not far from Petah Tikva. And yeah, I had friends there. And so I spent a summer there. Bryan Schwartzman: What job did you get? Louis Newman: I did a few jobs. I worked in the Lule with the turkeys. I worked once in corn. They harvested corn on the kibbutz. Boy, it's a lot of years ago, Bryan, it's hard to remember with a lot of detail. But those two, I remember particularly. Bryan Schwartzman: I lasted one day as a plumber's assistant because I didn't understand Hebrew and I messed up drawing a pipe, and I lasted a little longer, but I got booted from the dishwashing line. I was too slow, apparently, different kibbutz. Louis Newman: Yeah. All that to say, so I grew up with a very, very strong sense of Zionism. So what I would say is that over the period of years, probably the last couple of decades, I have become more aware of the issue of Palestinian rights than I had been. It was part of my upbringing that Israel was fundamentally right, and the Palestinians or the Arab countries that wanted to destroy Israel were fundamentally wrong. And it was a pretty simple black and white kind of proposition. And I came to realize that there's a great deal more gray, that Israel hadn't always behaved in the most upright way, that the Palestinians had grievances that were in fact legitimate. That was reinforced after October 7th when I picked up for the very first time, Benny Morris's history of the conflict called Righteous victims. Benny Morris, of course, is only one Israeli historian, but a widely respected historian. And it's a book that I think a lot of people have found quite well researched and quite accurate. And he traces a lot of the messiness of the conflict and the ways in which it isn't a clear cut case of right versus wrong at all. And then Ben-Gurion, in fact, to use just one example, was really quite committed to doing his very best to pushing as many Palestinians out of the territory that became Israel as he could, because he was very committed to having a Jewish majority in this state. And so you began to look back and realize, this is not so simple as I was taught to believe it was when I was growing up. And then I also had occasion recently to read Sandy Tolan's book, The Lemon Tree, again, another well-known book that traces the history of the conflict through a one particular relationship between a Palestinian and an Israeli family. And in reading that I came to appreciate even more deeply the ways in which Palestinians who left or were pushed out, either way, from their homes in the War of Independence, as we call it, whom Israel then refused to permit to return to their homes after the war ended, which Israeli governments then declared their property to be ownerless and state property. And then proceeded to give that property to new Jewish immigrants, to Israel without any compensation whatsoever to the original Palestinian owners of those homes, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes that way. When you begin to think about that- Bryan Schwartzman: Tom Segev's 1949 talk goes into that, right? Louis Newman: And I have not read Tom Segev's book, but I think it's in the same category. And so those kinds of realities began to weigh on me much more heavily. Over the years, and this is even long before October 7th, I became very involved in supporting the work of the New Israel Fund, which many of your listeners will probably know about, an organization that supports hundreds of grassroots civil society organizations in Israel. Progressive civil society organizations that are working to support democracy and Jewish coexistence and women's rights and civil rights and so forth. And as I've learned more about their work and some of the problems that they are working to address in Israel, the Israel of my childhood has given way to a different view of what Israel really is and what it's like. I still support it. I still believe in it. I still believe that there's a lot of wonderful things happening there. I don't think it should go away. I'm certainly not an anti-Zionist, but on the other hand, I'm much more cognizant of the ways in which Zionism and its successes were purchased at a very, very steep price that was paid by Palestinians who really didn't want that to be the outcome. And that's something I think most American Jews, I think it's fair to say most American Jews, I don't have statistics, but I think a broad swath of American Jews still haven't come to terms with. And I think that the current war, because it has shaken things up so much, may just be an opening for a lot of American Jews and maybe Israelis as well, to begin to reassess our history, our relationship to the Palestinians. And what we can do to maybe finally come to some kind of political resolution because it's pretty clear that a military resolution is unachievable. Bryan Schwartzman: And I don't know how widespread some of those authors are read in American Jewry right now. I just finished Oren Kessler's Palestine 1936, which has gotten some attention going back even before the War for Independence, looking at the thirties and I guess my standing on one foot, I'd say nobody comes out looking particularly good or righteous in that time, at least as I read it. I mean, you're trained in Jewish ethics. Are there specific ethical questions that you think are raised now, should be raised? I mean particularly among diaspora communities, maybe not directly in the face of war because war raises a whole different set of ethical questions, but those of us having to live this from some distance. Louis Newman: I think there are, absolutely, and I think maybe the primary ethical issue that I would suggest American Jews should be thinking about is the question of complicity. And this is a question by the way that I think motivates a lot of Jewish young people, especially Jewish college students. And it's why a lot of those Jewish college students, again, a certain segment of them have a lot of sympathy for the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been widespread across campuses, not only the United States, but across the world. And I think that's because a lot of them feel that all of us who continue to support Israel, whether that's monetarily or just emotionally and rhetorically, are in effect giving Israel permission to proceed to defend itself at any cost that they think is worth paying. And when we do that, and when Israel feels that it can count on our allegiance, it feels less constrained. So to take one example, when Chuck Schumer stood up in the Senate and said, "Look, I think Netanyahu is not serving Israel's best interest. I think it would be best if he went, if he left." He spoke both as a prominent US senator, but he also spoke as Jew. Very few major American Jewish leaders of organizations have been willing to stand up and say the same thing because it is in our DNA. This goes back to where we started the conversation a while ago. It's in our DNA to sort of support Israel. We live here, they live there. Who are we to tell Israel how to behave, what to do, what's right, what's not right? And of course, there is some validity to that point of view. At the same time, to the extent that we don't stand up and say, "Look, we believe that what Israel is doing is contrary to our Jewish values, to our sense of the kind of place that we want Israel to be. We will not be able to continue supporting Israel or for that matter, supporting candidates for public office in the United States if they continue to give unquestioning support and allegiance to Israel." If American Jews stood up masse and said that, and if American Jewish leaders stood up masse and said that, it would have a huge impact, it would be a moral statement. And to the extent that we're not willing to do that, we have some complicity, I think in what Israel then does. It's a little bit like saying, it's maybe an imperfect analogy. It's a little bit like if you're at a party and someone is clearly drunk, can you take the keys away from them or admonish them that they should not be driving? If we don't do that, do we bear some responsibility if that person then goes off and has a full accident? There's a sense in which we are all responsible for one another as Jews. That's a standard principle called Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh, we are all responsible for one another. And in a certain sense, I think American Jews, if they take that responsibility seriously, need to speak out when they feel that Israel is heading down the wrong track or worse. Bryan Schwartzman: So would someone, for example, I don't know, write a letter to their Federation president or first post on their Facebook page, or just an individual person is not necessarily on the board of directors of such and such organizations. So what? Louis Newman: Right. It seemed to me that people who support American Jewish organizations that have taken very strong pro-Israel stands in the midst of all of this could be writing to, speaking to the heads of those organizations, the members of their boards, and saying, "I'm no longer in. I can't any longer in good conscience support an organization which is basically just, we defend Israel pretty much no matter what. And that is not a stance that we are willing to align ourselves with." And if they did that, if enough people did that individually and shared that decision with their friends and members of their communities and family members and so forth, it could produce a groundswell of resistance, let's call it, to the stances that organizations, I could name them. But HIC, ADL, a lot of other organizations which have continued, if you look at their websites, if you look at their statements, they have continued to be... all this activity on college campuses is motivated by antisemitism. It's not really about antisemitism. There's no real clear distinction between those things and so forth. I think that a lot of American Jews feel differently, and I think that they can be more vocal in their dissent. Sam Wachs: We are going to take a quick time out from Bryan's conversation with Louis Newman and ask you a question, have you been moved by this conversation? Have you found a new perspective on the Evolve website? Have you deepened your Jewish practice with a resource from Ritualwell.org? Has your life been impacted by a reconstructionist, rabbi or community? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, you should consider making a gift to Reconstructing Judaism. Reconstructing Judaism brings you this podcast and so much more. We partner with people and communities who envision the kind of Jewish communities that we all want to be a part of, and then we actually set about to build them together. There is a donate link in our show notes, or you could go to Evolve's homepage, evolve.reconstructingJudaism.org and click support us. All right, now back to Bryan's conversation with Louis Newman. Bryan Schwartzman: You've spent a lot of your career on college campuses as a faculty member, as an administrator. I guess I'm just wondering if you can unpack or how to take to explain what we saw, especially in the spring with this proliferation of encampments protesting Israeli policy and in some cases protesting Israel's existence. Were Jewish students uncomfortable? Were they unsafe? What's the root of all this? Louis Newman: Right. Well, there's several factors here and it's difficult to tease them all apart, but let me just say this by way of background. First of all, it hasn't been the same everywhere. So the nature of those protests, the extent to which outside, call them agitators or influencers who are not part of the college communities, the extent to which those people were involved varied widely from one campus to another. Obviously, the approach of the administrations at those places varied significantly from one place to another. So it's hard to paint all of this with one brush, right? Bryan Schwartzman: Absolutely. Absolutely. Louis Newman: So that's for starters. I think at the core of a lot of what's being reported in these protests is a question about the relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. And it's a very messy issue because on one level, these two things are really quite separate. So to say the obvious, historically speaking, there have been a lot of Jews over the last century since really even more than a century, since the founding of the Zionist movement, since Theodor Herzl and so forth. There were a lot of Jews who were not Zionists, who were very, very devout Jews religiously, who didn't believe that creating a Jewish state was a goal. And they even thought that in some cases it was antithetical to their understanding of what Judaism taught. So we could go back to that history to just make the point that it is not necessarily the case that being anti-Israel, anti-its existence or anti-its policies either is necessarily anti-Semitic. Because you would then have to regard all these Jews over the centuries, both very religious Jews on the left and on the right, that held different views about Zionism. At the same time, precisely because of the very thing that I was talking about earlier, this American Jewish civil religion, our sense of allegiance to Israel has become an article of faith. It has become so deeply embedded in our religious identity that to attack Israel is to attack our Jewishness. And that's a reality, that's true, and that can't be just dismissed. And so when Jewish students or faculty or staff or whomever walk by an encampment or a protest with or without the encampment that is essentially attacking Israel as a racist genocidal state, let's say, it strikes at the core of their sense of Jewish identity. Anybody who believes such a thing, one might feel is denying me something so fundamental to my religious identity and my religious faith that it is a prima facie anti-Semitic because it's no longer just about taking a political view and having feelings about some government somewhere in the world that you take exception to. It's now striking at something that feels like you are denying me my right of religious self-expression, because you have told me that a piece of it, a very big piece of it, a core piece of it is fundamentally evil and needs to be eradicated. So it's understandable that a lot of Jews have felt unsafe and threatened and so forth. And it's very difficult to tease these things apart because to many of the pro-Palestinian protesters, they're not really protesting, don't have any negative feelings about Judaism per se. They have negative feelings about Israel either because they believe that Israel is fundamentally a settler colonial enterprise, or even just because they believe that the war in Gaza is unjustified and should be stopped and whatever their position is, it's not necessarily a position that is analogous to people who want to destroy Jewish life in all its forms. But it's hard not to take it that way for some Jews, depending on where you stand. Bryan Schwartzman: I mean, in a very less than a handful of cases, some of these encampments were demanding that Hillel be removed from campus and in ostensibly because of Hillel's connection with Israel. And that gets even harder to tease out because Hillel is the Jewish presence on campus. But Hillel does have a connection with Israel. Louis Newman: Absolutely, and I would add to that incidents that we read about of students having mezuzah torn off their dorm room doors or hateful symbols like swastikas painted in Jewish spaces and so forth. I mean, that's beyond the pale, right? That's no longer a matter of political protest, that's now a matter of really threatening behavior and really anti-religious, anti-Semitic behavior. So I think it's a real complicated mix, and that's part of what makes it so hard for people to tease apart. And it also makes it hard, by the way, for administrators at these institutions who are deeply committed to preserving the right of students and faculty to express their political views however, abhorrent many of us may find them. They do have a right to express political views that are, let's say they believe that terrorism is a legitimate political strategy for oppressed people. And so they are in favor of Palestinian terrorists, and that is a view that we may find abhorrent and morally really misguided. But it is nonetheless a political view. And though I'm no First Amendment scholar, my understanding is that the First Amendment protects the right of people to say such things. So now, if you are a Jew and you pass somebody saying those things, you're going to feel very, very uncomfortable. That doesn't mean they don't have a right to say them or that the institution shouldn't protect their right to say them. And so there are a lot of very messy gray areas here where it becomes very hard to discern at what point... there's no bright line, I think. But at what point some expressions of political dissent or political views cross the line into being something which creates an unsafe or threatening environment for certain members of the community based on their own religious beliefs and identity. I will tell you, I have great sympathy for, as we would say, Rachmanis, for all of the administrators who are trying to thread that needle and figure out how to do this in a way that has integrity. Bryan Schwartzman: And is that what they're doing this summer? Even as we don't know where the state of the war will be when students return, are they trying to figure something out that avoids a repeat of the [inaudible 01:00:48] Louis Newman: I certainly hope so. It's funny you should mention this, Bryan. I've written though not yet published and an op-ed precisely around this issue of what I think colleges ought to be doing to promote a deeper understanding of the complexity of free speech issues on campus. Bryan Schwartzman: Can you give us any sneak preview? Louis Newman: Well, yeah, basically, I do think that universities owe it to students and faculty to be as clear as they can possibly be in print and in advance about what is out of bounds, putting drawing swastikas on people's doors, to take one obvious example, which is not protected behavior. And things that are clearly within bounds, having a peaceful demonstration, which basically says things that people feel strongly about that are just political views, which is protected. And a lot of the fuzzy areas in between with some examples of what some of those fuzzy kinds of areas are and some understanding of how those sorts of cases will be adjudicated. Who's responsible for doing that? If you're sanctioned by the university for crossing that line in one of those cases, what rights of appeal do you have and who do you appeal to and how does that work? And by extension for faculty, what sorts of materials can you present in class? What sorts of things can you say and what sorts of things can't you say? Where will the university defend your right of academic freedom and where will it come down on you? And again, in those gray areas, who's going to make those calls and what kind of rights of appeal does the faculty member have? These are all things that I think we could do. We could be doing a lot more educational work with people on campuses to help them navigate these very complicated issues that are only more complicated because we live in a time of such intense political polarization. Bryan Schwartzman: Thank you. It might not be directly related, but since we're on campus thematically, you just finished a book tour for a newly published book, Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success. Can you say anything about what motivated you to write that book? Louis Newman: Sure. Happy to talk about it. It's a book that grew out of my years of teaching at Carleton. In fact, it grew out of one very particular encounter with a student, which I recount in the introduction to the book. But fundamentally, it became clear to me kind of late in my teaching career there that in fact, even very bright, highly motivated students. And Carleton does get a lot of such students. And of course Stanford does as well, that a lot of those students come to college without really understanding the kind of reasoning and thinking that college courses are going to demand of them. So I realized that not only do they come not really knowing that college isn't really just an extension of high school and that the kind of things that got them A's in a high school won't necessarily continue to get them A's in college, but faculty actually from their side, don't do a great job of explaining it either. And so with the two of those things together, and it seemed to me that there was a place for a book that you could give effectively to every incoming college student that says, "This is how you think like a college student. These are the kinds of intellectual moves that you need to learn how to make in order to do college level work effectively." And I began to think more about that and then research it and look into books on critical thinking and examine actual college assignments and try to tag them for the kinds of critical thinking that they ask students to do, assignments across the whole spectrum of different disciplines. And the result was this book, which is written to students, it's written in second person in a conversational tone to the student with examples of actual assignments, with tips about how to read something critically, how to use your writing as a tool for honing your thinking and being more precise in your thinking and so forth. And all of that led to this book, which I think is a book that both students and faculty who are teaching them can benefit from. So that's the origin of the book, and that's how I came to write it. Bryan Schwartzman: Sounds like something I could have used a couple decades ago. I'm glad today's, in future students will have it. Louis Newman: It's funny you should say that, right? I'll just add parenthetically, that the most common reaction I've gotten when I've talked about this book or shared it with people, including people who graduated from college years or decades ago, is, "Boy, I wish I'd had a book like this when I was in college. It would've been really helpful to me if somebody had sort of explained to me instead of just leaving this for me to figure out by stumbling around a lot during those years." Bryan Schwartzman: I guess maybe to try to tie this back into our topic, a critique we've heard of campus life has been that, and I think it's a broad brush critique, I'm sure. And like you said, every place is different, that students aren't thinking critically, they're not able to debate one another or hear different points of view. They're just retreating into silos. Maybe the broader society is, I mean, would it be your hope that a more critical thinking approach would help students even across big difference be able to talk to each other more or more constructively? Louis Newman: I would certainly hope so. It's a hard uphill climb for a whole range of reasons. One, because we do live in a very highly polarized, politically polarized society. Two, because these particular issues around Israel, Palestine and this particular war, because the feelings are run so high, it's very difficult to have a rational evidence-based conversation when people feel like their identity and their safety is at stake. It's extremely hard. There are examples. I will say this. There have been some examples that I've read about of courses and programs in particular institutions around the country where people have really worked hard at this. Either creating a course in which both an Israeli and a Palestinian present views of the conflict in an academic setting with a lot of background material that students are required to read. And then really engage with one another about these issues in a setting where you can't just scream at one another. You have to really engage one another's point of view. And some of those are, I think, remarkable efforts. And sometimes just one-off programs where you get a panel of people to help contextualize this current conflict so that students who don't really have a sense of the history of the conflict at all. And I do believe that a lot of students who are protesting really don't have much of a sense of the history of the conflict. They have at best a superficial understanding. But that said, to have a deeper sense of where is this coming from and why would people on both sides of the conflict carry the woundedness and the grievance and the fear and the defensiveness that they do, to really be able to contextualize that is incredibly helpful, and I think does serve the institution well. And I think it's actually part of the mission of higher education to help people think clearly and in a reasoned way about complex and often contested issues. So yes, my hope is that that could be happening more frequently than it is, and I also need to acknowledge that it is a very challenging time in which to do that. Bryan Schwartzman: Absolutely. Professor Louis Newman, thank you so much for being on the podcast, writing in this essay, being willing to get into it and go beyond the essay in the way we've done for the last hour or so. I really appreciate it. I think the listeners will appreciate it as well. Louis Newman: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, Bryan. Sam Wachs: Thanks so much for listening to Bryan's conversation with Louis Newman. If you enjoyed the conversation, please take a moment to give us a five star rating or leave a review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our schedule has been a little thrown off this summer. We apologize for the delay on this episode. We are going to try to get you one more episode this July. It could be early August. We're still finalizing the scheduling, and then we will be back to a normal schedule, which is our Thursday end of month release. That'll be the end of August. So apologies for this little interruption in podcasting, but we will be back to normal by the end of August. Bryan Schwartzman: Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub, and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song Ilu Finu is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and I'll see you next time.