Last week on the Jewish Broadcasting Service, Shalom Hartman Institute presidents Yehuda Kurtzer and Donniel Hartman joined journalist Abigail Pogrebin for a live conversation reflecting on this pivotal moment: the immense Israeli public effort to bring the hostages home, the roles of Trump and Netanyahu in current and future politics, and the dueling priorities of Israeli and American Jews.

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A transcript of this episode is available below.

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Live with Abigail Pogrebin: Holding Hope During a Fragile Peace Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Maital: Hello, my name is Maital Friedman, Vice President of Communications and Creative at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Today we’re bringing you a special episode on Thursday, October 16th. Presidents of the Shalom Hartman Institute, Yehuda Kurtzer and Donniel Hartman joined Abigail Pogrebin on her show Jewish Insights for a live conversation. Together, they reflected on the events of the past week as all of the living hostages and some of the fallen returned to Israel. And as the ceasefire came into effect with cautious optimism, they celebrated the moment, considered how we got here, and envisioned where we go next. Enjoy the episode. Abigail: Welcome to In the Spotlight. I’m Abigail Pogrebin and I’m so glad to be live with you right now with two of the Jewish leaders that I admire most, Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer. They are the co-presidents of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a leading research and educational center developing innovative responses to the challenges of our time. They cultivate a new generation of leaders and change agents, and they build transformational educational projects that help inspire a better Judaism and a better Israel for the 21st century. They host two of my favorite podcasts, and I mean, I don’t miss an episode of either of them, For Heaven’s Sake, with Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi and Identity/Crisis with Yehuda Kurtzer. Yehuda’s in New York. Donniel is at the Red Sea. They’re both with us today. Welcome, gentlemen. Yehuda: Thanks for having us. Donniel: Really nice to be with you. Abigail: I, I understand you’re in a hotel room in the Dead Sea, but we see the clouds behind you and I think it’s a metaphor, Donniel, for what we’re all feeling this week. I know it’s complicated. I know it’s not all blue skies, but I’d love to take us first, let’s start with you, and then to go to Yehuda, to October 13th, a historic Monday of this week. It already feels like weeks ago when we watch those incredible videos of live hostages coming home. Can you just say where you were, how you watched, and what you felt? Donniel: From eight in the morning till five o’clock in the afternoon, I, together with everybody in Israel was watching the same thing. And you were, it was erev chag, the day before Simchas Torah. So we were cooking, we were shopping, but everybody, it was just, it was with you. It was with you in the kitchen, it was with you in the supermarket, it was with you while you’re walking in the streets. Imagine what it feels like for a whole country to be watching the same thing. And you know, there so much has been spoken about what the hostage return will mean to Israel, will mean for the war. Well, October 13th had no meaning. It was just a day of feeling. I, it just, it was just, it was just, you were smiling and you were laughing and you were crying and it was just, you know— Abigail: And let me interrupt you, Donniel, when obviously that feeling though must have some meaning just in terms of how far it feels like we’ve come in these two years. What do you mean that— Donniel: But on October 13th, I didn’t think about it. Abigail: Really? Donniel: Now, now, a few days later, I’m ready to analyze that day. It just, we just had a Simcha with our family. Abigail: That’s so nice. Donniel: Our family had a joyful time together. Our children came home and it didn’t need anything else, Abby. It just, it just filled you, you didn’t think about its implications and its consequences and whether this is the real victory. It just… It was our, it was our family, welcoming our children home. And we didn’t know if they were gonna come home. And we didn’t, we, we just, and I, like each one of us were watching, how does he look? How’s he walking? Is he skinny? How skinny? Like, like we’re a bunch of grandparents. Like how skinny is he? What color does he look like? Abigail: They’re your kids. Donniel: It was a day, it was filled with emotions and there was no room for meaning, and I wanna tell you, and that was enough. Abigail: Yeah. Yehuda, you’re watching from here. Are you on Instagram? I don’t even know because I, I watch every reunion 15 times over. And then there were montages of reunions and music and I watched those. I, I never left my phone. Yehuda: Yeah. Look, I, like so many of us, have been so down for two years. And so everything has felt so heavy, very scared about the future at any given moment. I think this, my spirit started lifting on Shabbat actually October 11th. I led services in synagogue and recited Hallel, the thanksgiving prayers. And for the first time in two years I felt like I meant it, like there was something of a feeling of a joy that was possible. I did not stay up to watch the videos, I think, ’cause I was nervous about it. I also have been nervous to watch… I, I know there’s good reasons why they record them live. I kind of wish they each had a moment with their families before it was on Instagram for everybody. But like Donniel, you described that Monday knowing it had already happened, that, you know, it’s always a possibility, something that’s gonna go wrong. Knowing it already happened, felt like a totally different preparation for a holiday. And I just really leaned into these last two days of holiday celebrations here. Finally, as a holiday, it felt like a reclaiming of what all of the holidays that were lost of the last two years. And then last night after the two days of holidays were over, I finally went and watched the videos and wept. I think I needed to know that it had happened before I could watch it. Abigail: It was a sort of a keinehora of almost— Yehuda: That’s right. And now it’s done. And, and I, and for me, you know, being able to say, let me just celebrate with joy with the Jewish people and with my community and with my kids, and with my family, and to feel. I feel different as a person today because of that heaviness that, that felt like it lifted, that that feels transformative. Abigail: And you mentioned the holidays. I think a lot of non-Jews and even some Jews don’t realize that Simchat Torah had become something dark that is actually we’re commanded to have joy. And can you just talk about that idea that you just mentioned about reclaiming that? Because I think that’s been part of the heaviness. Yehuda: Yeah. You know, the Bible says that this is the one festival of the year where you’re obligated to make yourself happy. And it’s interesting, it says both make yourself happy and you should be happy. So you don’t just programatize happiness, you’re supposed to actually feel something, which is very hard for when religion tells you to feel something, it’s complicated. I think for the last two years at least, I felt a lot of going through the motions. Okay. Well, we’ll, we’ll get together. We’ll dance around the Torah, but really our hearts are very heavy. You can’t have a full sense of celebration when your loved ones are hostage. You can feel this full sense of celebration when Israel is in this precarious place, when there’s so much ill feeling in the Jewish community about Israel. It’s just too much. And so it felt to me like a shift from a ritual sensibility—we’re doing something because we kind of have to, we have to go through the motions—to actually being able to feel like I’m— Abigail: It’s the holiday again. Yehuda: I’m rejoicing because I’m joyful. Abigail: You’re actually feeling it. Yehuda: I felt it very acutely in our synagogue over the last couple days. Abigail: Donniel, I wanna talk about Hostage Square for a minute before we talk about the deal and going forward. I realized in, in looking, and I’ve taken the deep dive as so many have. We almost took for granted that there was this place that people returned to week after week for two years. You could think that there’s not only fatigue, but there’s kind of like futility. And it’s just amazing to me reading and seeing interviews with people where that was their pilgrimage every week. It was a Saturday night, but they went and I would love you to just talk about what, what that is, what that’s about. That sort of relentless optimism or at least relentless togetherness that somehow people take for granted over there, but not necessarily in other parts of the world. Donniel: It’s you, you’re right to point to Hostage Square and tens of other examples. You know, I love being an Israeli and I appreciate being an Israeli because I get to live in the midst of Israelis and with all the stuff, you know, the pushing and the aggravation and the, you know, whatever it is, everybody has a list. This is a remarkable people. And the spirit of this people, you know, we saw the spirit of this people come on October 7th, eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th, two years ago as everybody joined and they joined to fight. And here for two years, not all of the country, but a huge percentage of the country joined to fight for our family. Just, they refused to allow a notion of some national, larger agenda that didn’t take into account the particular hostages. Like we’re not… No, you, because if you think about it, it would’ve been perfectly legitimate for the country to say, we got most back. We did great. We’re not, we can’t, we can’t put everything on hold for 20 people. You think like any operation you go on, people die. They die all the time. That’s the nature of war. But the country, or let’s say 60% of the country, and it was really carried by the families and Hostage Square protestors said there is no larger picture or larger agenda that doesn’t take into account the individual members of our family. And that’s a part of what our tradition is about. It’s, you know, like we have, we have, if I could just take one more second, we, this notion of pidyon shevuim, of redeeming the hostages, and Maimonides says it’s the most important commandment. Now, why should it be the most important commandment? Okay, it’s a big commandment, but why should it be the most important? Because there is no Judaism, and there is no Jewish people, if you love Jews in general and you don’t love Jews in particular. And this country just stood up and said, we’re, we’re sacrificing. We’re willing to die. We’re willing to, we’re willing to go through the most horrific things as families and as individuals, but I want to tell you, these people count and I, it’s like I am so proud to be an Israeli, to be, to be able to say that the, I’m part of a people who didn’t forget for two years and at the end, 20 people. 20 people. Abigail: Yeah. Yehuda. I wanna talk about Trump, because it comes out of Hostage Square. He was celebrated there. He was celebrated on the beach of Tel Aviv as he landed. He was celebrated at the Knesset. This really was a kind of a, a, a Trump… Yehuda: Moment. Abigail: Moment. And for some people in this country, I think it was complicated. I think for many Jews, they were just thanking him. And I would love you to just address the complexity of that. And what you’ve seen in terms of some people almost like not knowing what to do with their appreciation of this president right now. Yehuda: Sure. Yeah. When you live in a polarized society, politically, as we do here in America, as many countries now do around the world, it becomes very difficult to say, I appreciate something that the president does, even as I oppose other things that the president does. That we have fallen into camps where either you’re supportive or you’re opposed. And there’s actually a lot of risk involved in saying you like something that the president does because that means that has, I don’t know, a greater chance of continuing to succeed politically. It feels like you’ve given something up. I’ve heard that in my community. I’ve heard from people who are kind of stalwart opponents of the president’s policy. They don’t want to yield. There are legitimate grievances. I think that folks, the Democratic Party have who say, well, Biden had the same plan and was not able to get it to happen, and maybe the Israelis wanted it to happen under Trump. I mean, there’s all sorts of analyses we could provide to this particular moment. I do think it is possible for us as Jews who are, were committed to this outcome that emerged, and I mean the outcome, both of the release of the hostages as well as even a temporary, but hopefully permanent ceasing of these hostilities, the pathway towards the reconstruction of Gaza, all these things that I think as a Zionist, I feel we’ve been waiting to see happen. I am okay saying, as much as I oppose a lot of aspects of not only the president’s agenda, but how he does it to appreciate his capacity to make it happen in this situation. What’s interesting is it’s not clear to me that there’s anything different about how the president handled this than how he handles a lot of issues domestically. This is a president who cares much more about ends than means. And I find that very worrying. I believe in democratic processes and procedures, and this president doesn’t. He cares about particular ends he wanted to have happen in this case. I like those ends. And so though in many cases I don’t like the means in this case, I could tolerate those ends. I could tolerate those ends. I think it’s a, I think it’s confusing for many Americans. Abigail: Let me just pause– you can tolerate those ends? Yehuda: I can appreciate them. Abigail: You’re not thrilled about those ends? Yehuda: No, no. In this case, I say I appreciate these, kind of unequivocally, I appreciate these ends. Yes, I’m thrilled that it happened. Abigail: But also, as you said, his approach ultimately was effective where others weren’t. So even if someone had the same plan, they didn’t get that plan done. And he did. Yehuda: He did. And I appreciate it. I’m thrilled. I, it doesn’t bother me that much to see Israelis celebrating President Trump. I, I think like, you wanted this to happen. It happened. And 20 hostages are home. Again, I, I don’t think, I don’t think that changes long term, the relationship between the president and the sectors of the Jewish community that opposes domestic policy in some aspects of his foreign policy. But yeah, we have an obligation to say I appreciate the good when it happens. I particularly liked how one of my rabbi friends handled this also in the context of a synagogue, where he started off by thanking God. And once he thanked God, then it’s easier to thank political leaders, President Trump and other ones, because it was like, I have a overall sense of gratitude for all of the forces in the world that made this possible. And that includes politicians who even, even if I don’t like what they do in column A, I have tremendous appreciation for what they could do in column B. Abigail: Donniel, I’d love to talk about Trump from the Israeli perspective, because it really is, it’s almost like a different leader. It’s like a different persona there, or am I wrong? Donniel: No, very much so. Now you have to understand, and, and you know, so often we, we, we, we tell North American Jews who criticize or have an opinion about Israel that you’re so far away you don’t understand our reality. Israelis don’t understand, nor can they understand the complexity. And the meaning of Trump’s presidency for many North American Jews, they don’t understand it and you can’t expect them to. And there was just… there… President Trump does for Israelis, a few things. And the first thing he does is he gives a sense of unequivocal support. He stands with you. You trust him. You trust that he’s gonna be there. Now again, whether it’s true or not true is a separate question, whether he’ll have a temper tantrum and he’ll turn around. But when you listen to his speech at the Knesset, that was a speech that no Israeli heard from any north, from any American president. We just didn’t. Never did. Abigail: In what way? Donniel: Just, he, he, he just, he loved us. He appreciated us. He respected us. He understood us. He was gracious towards us. That was one part. And so there is, that’s the dimension that most Israelis relate to. There’s another dimension to Trump’s speech and what Trump has done in this peace plan that is, that I feel is critical for the future of Israel. He’s the first one talking with any vision about a future for Israel. Our Prime Minister isn’t. Our opposition leaders aren’t. President Trump gets up and says to all of Israelis, you can’t fight the, you can’t fight the world. They’re a big place. You won’t win. You fought and he says… he didn’t say “you fought and failed,” if you noticed, ’cause he could have. And many Israeli commentators are now saying, did we win this war? What does it mean? And we’ll leave that aside. He said, “You are great. Your army’s fantastic. You won, take the victory.” And then he says, “you’re not gonna achieve anything else through military means. It’s time to go on.” And so President Trump, just like by the way, Witkoff at, at, at, in his speech at Hostage Square, were were filled with empathy, speaking to people and gave a vision for a future of Israel, which we’ve been lacking for years. We’ve been lacking it for a, for a generation, almost since Oslo, but certainly since the beginning of the war. We always—October—We’re in the past or in the present and there is no future. Abigail: So can we talk, can we talk about that a little bit, Donniel? Yehuda, do you wanna jump in? Yehuda: I, I just wanna say something that I find unusual right now, even just today, about Trump’s leadership here, which is, and it was even reported today where Ron Dermer through channels, has said, Israel feels like it’s been, you know, it has the right to pull out of this deal because the bodies weren’t returned and feels like Hamas is dragging its feet. And the president’s response earlier today was “this is complicated and it’s gonna take a long time,” and that’s… That I find unusual. The president— Abigail: It’s very un-Trumpian. Yehuda: It is. The president is, is famously impetuous. If you don’t do exactly what he wants. he doesn’t like it. The most interesting part of Trump’s presidency here, and again, it goes to the ends that he wants and the means that he’s willing to tolerate has been that he is now the voice of—this is actually gonna be hard. It’s gonna be hard to rebuild Gaza correctly. It’s gonna be hard to deal with the Hamas attacks against the rival clans, and to reestablish law and order. It’s gonna be hard to find the bodies of the hostages. And you now see how passionate he is about holding this place in a ceasefire, that he’s the voice of reason in this conflict, which seems like the most unlikely set of circumstances to come up. Abigail: Can I just actually ask— Donniel: And you know, Yehuda, if I could, like Yehuda, I really appreciate what you said because in Israel we have nobody for two years, we have nobody talking that way. For two years I feel, and I’ve been fetching and complaining for two years. We’ve been lied to for two years. The news has been censored. There’s been propaganda. Honest conversation has been absent and President Trump brought it. And today already, if you look in the newspapers all over, not from our politicians, they’re still frightened, but there’s real conversation going on now. Abigail: And when you say the politicians are still frightened, can you clarify what you mean? Donniel: Here, it’s analysis and I, I’m very disappointed. Netanyahu… For Netanyahu, this is not a peace plan. This is not a peace plan with Palestinians ’cause he has no language for peace with Palestinians. He only wants peace with the larger Sunni world, in which he could leapfrog over the Palestinians. He has no language. He wants to control for him. This treaty is—I wrote an article about this—is like Clausewitz says “War is diplomacy by other means.” For Netanyahu, this peace plan is war by other means. It’s the same thing. It’s just about defeating Hamas. It’s not about a new future between Israel and the Palestinians, and it’s not about a future for the Palestinians. It’s like they’re, they’re completely transparent from Netanyahu and his coalition’s perspective. You can’t say anything compassionate. You can’t speak about their rights. It’s only about defeating Hamas and disarming them. That’s the only thing. And then you have a whole bunch of other politicians, with the exception of the Democratic Party, who have a fantasy that the only way we’re gonna win the election is if we could get two or three seats away from the Likud. So we wanna pretend as if we are to the right of Netanyahu so that maybe they’ll vote for us, because to the left that the Democrats have. And so there is this space for a, for this is, this is potentially a game changing moment in the Middle East. Trump is putting it in front of Israelis. Abigail: But isn’t that— Donniel: I’m sorry. Yes, Abby. Abigail: Isn’t that somewhat contagious? I mean, isn’t Bibi a little bit out outnumbered? Donniel: That I hope. Aibigail: Now, in terms of people seeing, as you said, Trump articulated a path forward. He, the Prime Minister, has not articulated any kind of future vision. Now there is one and people want it to be over. People really want this to actually be possible, to have an international force there to demilitarize all things that are hard but isn’t— Donniel: They have to let it, it’s gonna take a little time, Abby, because what they’re filled with now is. what happens if it doesn’t work? Like already Hamas is not delivering on the bodies.See, there we are, we’re, we’re traumatized, not just by October 7th. We’re traumatized by living in a, with an, with, with another people who we believe have never accepted our existence. And we, we’re frightened to even hope because, you know, while it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, hope—it’s better not to have hoped, ’cause the disappointment to go over that disappointment again, and to have to go through another generation of Israeli kids having to be having to go to war. And you know, it’s, we don’t want it, so we’re shutting it down. You almost have to fight against a core Israeli instinct to see that. Abigail: Would you say it’s not gonna work? Donniel: No. Trump, that part of Trump Israelis aren’t speaking about as much. And even the right wing who embraces him doesn’t realize that what Trump is basically doing is he, more than anybody else in the last generation, is bringing us close to the possibility of a Palestinian state. All of that is just sort of, is pushed aside. Yehuda: What’s interesting about that actually is in this respect, though Trump succeeded in ways that the Biden administration didn’t to get to this place, and maybe it’s about time and maybe it’s about different strategies, part of what we’re seeing also is that Trump is actually consistent with 30 years of American policy vis-a-vis the Israelis and Palestinians, which is the best you can offer, is a framework for the process going forward, which actually requires the continued investment by both the Israelis and Palestinians to do incremental steps that lead you to the next part of the process. Nobody, nobody has ever been able to say, here’s the exact final status agreement. We all are gonna sign off our, you go back to Madrid, you go back to Oslo, Camp David. It was all frameworks. And then every single time between the presentation of a framework and the next time you tried to present a framework, there was finger pointing, well, you didn’t do this part of the process, you didn’t do that part of the process, the erosion of trust, and then you need to re-articulate another framework. President Trump— Abigail Or it blows up and is called a failure. Yehuda: Correct. Now, president Trump has offered a framework, right? He, like other presidents before, is saying there is a possible finish line here, but he’s acknowledging by saying it will take a while to find the bodies. It will take a while to do this. He’s acknowledging that you actually need to engage in real trust building and risk taking by both the Israelis and Palestinians at this point to build— Avigail: And you don’t walk away when there’s a— Yehuda: And you don’t walk away from that. And, and what’s been frustrating for many of us who have cared about American policy in this region is that American presidents put forward these frameworks, their negotiators work very hard to try to get them there, Israelis and Palestinians resist the frameworks exactly because they get anxious about the other side failing, and they get anxious about their own risk taking, and then they throw their hands up. And that to me is the biggest threat, is that President Trump will at some point throw his hands up and say, okay, you guys don’t want, you don’t want this. I tried. I, I came here. I showed my love to you. I tried to even get the Prime Minister pardoned. You didn’t do the things that I wanted you to do. And now not only am I gonna walk away, but I’m actually turn against you. Abigail: Donniel, you mentioned the dead bodies and it’s obviously the very difficult topic, but it’s also kind of unimaginable that things would halt because of it, because just simply there’s a reality of finding them and obviously many of them were, could have been in bomb’s way and they’re not findable. So for Israelis, how much would you say of a deal breaker? Maybe that’s too spot on a use of words. Donniel: It won’t be a full deal. It’s… people make a very clear distinction between the live hostages and the dead, and the dead bodies and the dead. There is a clear distinction. People are taking off their yellow ribbons. They’re taking, you know, I live in a building where the whole building is filled with, you know, with hostage sukkahs and hostage posters, and people understand that it’s… that as tragic as it is, and I understand from insights that the Golden family and other families have been suffering terribly. Terribly, terribly. But people understand that there’s a difference. The question is whether Hamas is playing us, if already now, so part of the reports are, Israel is telling them, here’s where the bodies are. How could you say, you don’t know where the bodies are? Here the bodies are. So it’s, it’s like, I think we’re just testing each other. And I think part of what might happen is you might have a little flare up here or there. You have now Hamas, literally massacring and murdering Palestinians, Gazans in the streets, in the hundreds. You know, there was a clause missing in the 20 clauses. There should have been a clause that just as we retreated, Hamas had to cease and desist until a new force came in and they’re allowing this chaos to go on. Abigail: And it’s on video, horrifically. Donniel: And it’s on video, and the head of Setcom is telling them, beware, but that doesn’t mean anything. So we’re seeing things. That there, it’s just like, so is this just for telling what’s coming? And you know, as Youa said, like we’re, we’re all nervous. We’re nervous. Because big picture, I believe that history has changed when somebody presents a big picture. But the details matter. So you have to keep you, you don’t live in the big picture. You have to work those details out. So I think there’s just a lot of nervousness. This alone won’t stop it, but it’s a sign of like, listen, how much more do we, how much more do we have to remind ourselves who we’re dealing with? Do you know the Israeli army X-rays the coffins as they come back, out of fear that they’re booby trapped? So, you know, like what, like what, what are we talking about here? Abigail: Wow. It’s not like suddenly we’re trusting the enemy. Donniel: No, no. Abigail: Yehuda, I wanna talk about, Donniel talked about taking down the posters, the yellow ribbons, and we’re watching it here, among many Jewish Americans who wore the dog tags, wore the pin. Can you just address that maybe personally and what you’re seeing in your own community? Yehuda: Yeah, I thought I, I was, as I was thinking about the last couple days, I was reminded of a teacher of mine in high school who had a shtick that he used at the beginning of every year that he taught European history, where he said, on first sentence, he said in, in 11th grade, “On January 1st, 1492, the Renaissance began,” and it was his way of teasing the history doesn’t work that way. Larger historical events take place over time. It’s only in retrospect that you’re able to look back and say something changed. He was right overall, but he’s wrong in the sense that you do need to punctuate moments in time and say, this period of time has changed. Something has to happen. And I think Jewish tradition has particular wisdom about this. Like the reason you mark particular dates in history is not because like the destruction of the temple in the year 70 took place in a one 24 hour period. Because you have to be able to say, here’s the moment in time where I begin the commemoration, and here’s the moment in time where I end the commemoration. I think we’re seeing that this week. I think when people say, I’m taking off the dog tags, I’m taking off the hostage pin, I’m taking the tape off. There are still people out there, and I totally get it, people I see who say, I’m not taking off the tags until every body comes back because I, how would I feel if it was my child? And I understand that. I think it also reflects that these decisions have psychological import to say I’m over, I finished with this period of time, also has deep emotional resonance for people. It’s like getting up, in some ways, it’s like getting up from Shiva or getting up from HIN to say, I really am leaving this period of time behind and moving to something else. But I think it will happen the same way that it became really ritually important for so many American Jews in ways that maybe have surprised them, that they feel such a deep sense of solidarity with the Jewish people, that they were willing to do something like that consistently every day for two years. Now there’s the, there’s the richness and a little bit of the pathos of saying I’m moving on to a different period in our family. Abigail: Yes, I’m at Central Synagogue and they’ve had a flag draped over an empty chair for two years on the bimah, and this Friday they will be removing it for the first time. After a lot of thinking about exactly what you’re saying, sort of needing to turn that page and, and actually having Jewish tradition give you permission. Yehuda: Our colleagues at the Institute in Israel composed a different prayer to replace the one for the hostages as a temporary stand-in which our synagogue did ,to say we’re no longer gonna say the same prayer that we say for the health of the hostages. It doesn’t make sense anymore. And instead it was a kind of a temporary prayer that says, we pray for the health of these hostages who have returned on their road to recovery. We pray for the restoration of the body so that they can get a proper burial. And I thought that was a useful way of saying, I’m not gonna just rip off the bandaid and stop saying this, as though I can stop praying for the same kinds of things I was praying for before. I may need something of a transitional time to get to a place where we then can look back and say, do you remember that period of time in Jewish history when that’s where we were focused on? You don’t move from one phase to another all that quickly. Abigail: So I wanna go to maybe the transition for Israel in the world. We have seen, and I know it’s simplistic to say that Israel’s become a pariah state, but we saw something really gaining momentum in the world and even having allies like France and the UK, really taking a very different perspective and abandoning Israel in many ways. What would you say, about the feeling there when it comes to Israelis traveling, which many have stopped doing, whether it’s, you know, to Greece or to Scotland. Like this sense of I’m just being an Israeli has some kind of stain, right? Donniel: It’s, you know, there’s… not all anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but we’re gonna now see which part is anti-Semitic and which part is it. Because those people who critique this peace plan, because somehow it robs Hamas of its inalienable right to armed resistance, I say a plague on all your houses. And so there is a distinction and you, we will see a distinction between governments and mobs in the street. Germany already was waiting. You’ll see the same thing probably in France, Britain. Spain is a different story. But where there is an ultra-progressive narrative that’s dominant that really isn’t about critiquing the excessive civilian casualties of the… but where the critique really goes to the essence of Israel’s right to be, Israel’s right to defend ourselves and a criticism of terrorism, recognizing that Israel has a right, when you say Israel’s a right to defend itself, what you’re saying is the other side doesn’t have a right to kill us. Now that seems simple, but now that is there that there’s a lot of places like that and we’re gonna have to see, so there is a whole group of people who, you know, Yehuda, you beautifully spoke about the ritual. I don’t know if they have a ritual, Yehuda, to stop their protests. So like they’re still stuck. They’re, they’re still, especially the antisemitic ones, you know? And there’s a rhetoric that sort of has become predominant and how do you get off of that? Now it’s true. The fact that there is a ceasefire doesn’t mean that for those who believe that Israel did not conduct this war justly, that criticism is still there and they want to have an accounting of it. But some of the demonstrations, like in Barcelona yesterday, and the violence, this, the anger, Israelis feel it as an anti-Semitic anger. And so we’ll, we’re gonna watch and, and it will take some time and we, Israelis like to accuse everybody of being anti-Semitic, even when they’re not. It’s like, it’s, it’s really, it’s, it’s like the gift that never stops giving. But the world is shrinking and so we’re like, we’re trying to figure out where we could go or until which time. The governments themselves, which are now gonna realign with Israel or, or not realign in the sense that they’re gonna say, we’re, great, but there’s, okay, we realize we’re moving into another place for their police forces to establish rule and order in, in, in their streets. So that, so this, this is part of that dynamic, but the world feels much smaller and Israelis would like it to be bigger, but the mobs in the streets, for whom the criticism of Israel goes way beyond the criticism of certain things that happened in the war, that has taken root. And I think it’s, yeah. I don’t have a clear path forward for that, necessarily. Yehuda: There was two powerful examples of that this week here, actually to what Donniel’s describing, one of which was an advertisement for an event by Students for Justice in Palestine at NYU this week as a memorial event for Yahwa Sinwar. So that gives you a pretty clear sense of it’s not, that’s not a pro peace movement. And national SJP, following all of the news about all of this attacks by Hamas on the rival clans in Gaza had an Instagram post which said “Death to collaborators.” So I think Donniel is right. Abigail: Shocking. Yehuda: Right. Donniel is right, that it’s actually quite useful in some ways to see what was the resistance against Israel’s actions in Gaza and what was a, just a deeper hatred of the Jewish people, hatred of Zionism, hatred of Israel. That is not gonna be reconcilable afterwards. Abigail: Let’s talk about just the silence after the ceasefire, from those who had been advocating for ceasefire relentlessly because again, and you particularly have encouraged us not to make our Judaism kind of centered on the fact that people hate us, but we’ve seen a lot of hatred. And something has been laid bare since October 7th, which is the people who purport to care about humanity didn’t care about Jewish humans very much after, right after October 7th, in terms of whether it’s celebrities, whether it’s, you know, prominent progressives literally saying nothing since any of this deal was announced, how would you say that we should make sense of that? And I’m, I’m asking a real way. Yehuda: Yeah. I try not to make a lot out of people’s silence. And, and, and it’s partly because sometimes I don’t know what to say and I don’t, and I’m not comparing myself, but sometimes you don’t know what to say. Abigail: You’re not quiet very often. Yehuda, Yehuda: I know, but that’s actually part of the thing. Like, so if I don’t comment on something on social media, people read into it. And so I, I don’t think we should be in the business of I, I’d let, or I put it like this: I’d rather be in the business of “this person said this outrageous thing, I want to comment on it,” rather than, “why didn’t this person say something?” Abigail: Okay. Fair. Yehuda: I think it’s a little bit of a trap. That said, I think there are two pieces of data that we have in front of us. One is this story which suggests that the, the, we have seen a dramatic change in the standing of Jews who support Israel and the state of Israel in the world over the past two years. And I don’t think that’s going back in the box. I actually think, Yossi, our colleague Yossi, said for years— Abigail: Yossi Klein Halevi. Yehuda: Yossi Klein Halevi, thank you has said for years that the boycott divestment sanctions movement won’t have material consequences for Israel, but w will have material consequences for North American Jews and especially young people on college campuses who are gonna see their identity negotiated and challenged on the basis of their commitments to Israel. Now, I’m not sure long term he’s completely right about its consequences for Israel, but I think he was right to say that this story of how Israel is understood in the West has deeper implications for those of us who don’t live in Israel in a lot of ways. And I think that it’s hard, it’s gonna be hard to put that back in. There is gonna be a cooling down period where the fact that if Israel and, and Hamas cease their hostilities indefinitely, people do calm down, they focus on other things. There’s plenty happening domestically that’s gonna take the attention of progressives. But we, we have seen a shift over time, and I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to put that stuff back in the bottle again, when people who have been outspoken critics of Israel are gonna be able to walk any of that back. And I, I think that for us here in North America, it’s a very, very significant uphill climb to help put reposition, you know, even the stances of liberal Zionism back into an atmosphere of credibility in parts of the progressive left that have shown that they’re completely inhospitable to it. Abigail: Donniel, you’ve spent so much time here, since the war, and you’ve heard from a lot of angst ridden Jews who first have real misgivings about the way the war was prosecuted, but also you hear from Jews who say, you know, I’m kind of doubling down on my tribe because I feel like people didn’t show up for us. So in those push and pulls, just from your perspective, what are you seeing as kind of the American Jewish rift right now? And I know it’s, there’s not just one. Donniel: I, I think the American Jewish community is in a very precarious position because there is nobody in Israel who’s speaking to it and for it. Abigail: You mean for us. Donniel: And as a result, yes, yo you. And as a result, you have those splits. You know, you wanna be supportive of Israel, you want to, most Jews, you know every, every poll, whatever you wanna have, you wanna be in relationship to Israel. You know, Yehuda, I, I love your line when you’ve said over the years is Israel is the most, is one of the most exciting things happening in Jewish life. Sometimes it’s too exciting. That’s part of the problem. But you wanna have a relationship with Israel. It, it provides meaning and vitality and, and vigor and, and, and joy and excitement. You wanna have it, but it’s hard now. The war in Gaza made it hard. Now, the war in Gaza’s over. The rebuilding will start. But what North American Jews need in order to overcome the rift that you’re speaking about is they need Israeli politicians to start speaking about, not the day after in Gaza, not stage two of the peace plant, but stage three and four of our relationship with Palestinians, not even, not even the Abraham Accords, the Abraham Accords is not gonna do it. Are we going to deal? And how do you talk about occupation? Abigail: Well, why is the, why are the Abraham Accords not gonna make a huge difference? Donniel: Because it’s, Abraham Accords is like, it gives you naches. Oh, you see, they need us, they love us. We’re startup nation. It’s gonna be wonderful. But at the end of the day, the split that you’re speaking about grows out of a sense of moral discomfort where Israel is. And an expanded Abraham Accords is not gonna solve that moral discomfort. And so you have one group of people who are, who are uncomfortable, and another group who are saying, I have to, what do you say? Double down. That’s the term you use, double down in support. Because the more you criticize, I have to show, you know, it’s like, so we’re almost feeding off of each other, all of us. Both of us need an Israel, which envisions a, a, a a, a new future in which the, in which human rights aren’t trampled on. By the state of Israel now, okay, we could say it’s complicated and we could say you need two sides to have peace and all of the above. I agree with it. I want peace. I want a two state solution. I don’t know how to bring it about, but I at least want Israeli politicians to talk about it. But when you go and you just say, okay, I want have, I want Indonesia, I want, I want Qatar, I want, I want Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Gaza and the Palestinian Judean Samaria just is not part of your story, you’re gonna keep that same tension in the American Jewish community, it’s going to remain. And we’re gonna feed off each other because there’s one group critiques, the other group’s gonna show you, oh, you can’t criticize. Abigail: But I, I thought, and maybe I’m just buying the line, but that. It lifts all boats, including Palestinians. If you have this Arab co co cooperation with Israel, if there’s more economic opportunity, if there’s more trade, if there’s more tourism, if it’s that you’re essentially, instead of saying, we have this thing we have to solve, Palestinians and Israelis, Israeli Jews, you’re saying the whole world is now actually saying we’re, we’re gonna have normalization, we’re gonna have a real relationship, and we’re not just gonna be in a war, Donniel: But that’s, you see, there’s two ways. Again, I appreciate that it’s Abigail: It’s naive. You’re saying I’m naive. Donniel: No, I’m not saying you’re naive at all. It’s not naive. You know, here we’re talking about opinions and, and the future and none of us really know. But why was Netanyahu told that he can’t go to Sharm El-Sheikh? It wasn’t because of Simchat Torah. Netanyahu was told because we now know, Erdoğan said that if he comes… Abigail: You go; I don’t go. Donniel: I’m not coming. And basically what they’re saying is, you don’t get to shift from being in their mind, not in my, you don’t get to be from shifting, from being a war criminal to now being our partner. You have, if you wanna play and join this Sunni coalition, there’s gonna be a price. Now, the Abraham Accords didn’t extract any price. The only price was not an Xing parts of area C as long as you didn’t do that, the, the, the Gulf, the Emirates, and they said, okay, we’ll sit down. It’ll be piece for piece. Abigail: Define area C for anyone who doesn’t know A, B, C area. Donniel: C is the area under Israeli political and military control, as distinct from area A and B, which is, A is under Palestinian military and political control, and area B is under Palestinian political and Israeli military control. Area C is where the settlers live. It’s 55% of the West Bank. So we were about to annex it and then, and they said, Emirate said, you wanna play, you wanna play with us? Don’t do that. Other than that, we have no demands. But now what they’re saying is, if you wanna play in Saudi Arabia saying it, and certainly Turkey, which is one of the more complicated parts of this whole puzzle, because they hate us on a level quite similar to, to Hamas. And the question is whether their interest in F35s and being in relationship with Trump will override their inherent hatred towards Israel? But at the very least, we’re gonna have to play. Okay? You’re not gonna have some phenomenal European Union and right in the middle, Palestinians, still, their rights being ignored. They’re not gonna allow for it. They’re not gonna, it’s not gonna be— Abigail: Who’s the “they?” The Palestinians. Donniel: But he’s not that. But even—no, states won’t. But even more, just one last sentence if I can. You, you asked, this whole thing started when you spoke about the American Jewish community, but it’s not just the American Jewish community. It’s me too. It’s Donniel Hartman. I don’t wanna be an occupying people. I’m concerned about Palestinian rights. And having trade with Saudi Arabia and advancing Israel as the center of AI in the whole area doesn’t solve my moral problem, nor is it gonna solve the moral problem of many North American Jews. Abigail: You’re also the person, Donniel, who says, I don’t want someone being able to dig a hole and come up in my backyard and kill my children. Donniel: Who wants that? Yehuda: In the long term those two things are, are, are entirely related, right? The long-term ability for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security next to one another is going to always be connected with the capacity for the Palestinians to have self-determination, the right to live in freedom and dignity in their ancestral homelands. Also, these things are inextricably linked. I mean, the real risk, the moral risk of the Abraham Accords, which are an objective good, right. Israel coming to normalize relationships with Arab countries is a, is an objective good. But the moral risk that’s been in inherent in the Abraham Accords all along was that it was gonna happen at the cost to the Palestinian people of their own self-determination and their freedom and dignity, that the Arab states would sell them out because they got what they need economically and militarily and otherwise, through the Abrahamic Accords. I think long term that continues to be a risk if the whole story becomes the normalization of Israel with Arab countries, but don’t, but we’re never gonna deal with the central moral, civil rights challenge that lives within the boundaries between the river and the sea. You’ll have solved, in theory one problem, but covered up another and one doesn’t replace the other. And I, I just think long term, the security questions and moral questions are, we like to think, think about them as being separate, you know, only the pure hearted think about the moral questions, then they’re naive, they don’t think about security questions, and it’s the serious people who talk about security. I think that’s just a, a, like a, a foolish way to think about the human condition. It doesn’t help us. It certainly doesn’t seem to be making things any safer for Israelis and Palestinians. Abigail: But I wanna talk in the real world of a coarsening, to both of you, that has gone on in terms of for many in the Jewish community, feeling like after October 7th something was laid bare and they’re painting a very broad brush about Palestinians not caring about Jews living at all. Not caring if Jews, if Israel lives at all and not caring about our lives. Is that, I guess it’s not whether that’s true or not. It’s how do you address the fact that that is essentially a narrative that many have warmed to. I’m kind of done with compassion. I’m, I’m done with humanizing the other because they don’t humanize us back. Yehuda: I, you know, compassion is not a zero sum game, right? I only owe it to those who are compassionate towards me. I feel, I felt this very deeply. Actually, for me, it’s less about Palestinians. It’s been about the tensions in the Jewish community with folks who I think have done just outrageous things. Said outrageous things. And I felt my, I felt my heart hardening over these last couple of years. And by the way, this emerges out of fear. It always comes out of fear. When you’re, when you feel pushed against the wall, ot’s not just that you don’t have compassion for people who you think are bystanders in that process. You have very little room in your, in your neshama, in your soul, in your moral imagination to care about the needs of others, and you only focus on yourself. We just know that that’s bad. We know that empathy is a limitless reservoir. We know that we should be able to think beyond that. And we ultimately also know that it doesn’t protect us. It doesn’t make us safer by backing ourselves in the corner and saying only those who are standing with me will protect me. I just, we have to know that you, what you’re describing is a description of a problem, even if it actually also characterizes the reality. Abigail: Donniel, jump in. Donniel: Here on this, I think we have to really pay careful attention to the details of this peace plan because this peace plan is an attempt to address this psychological block within Israeli society that I think frankly is justified. You can’t, it’s… forget, even forgetting October 7th, the thing that upsets Israelis most is that 80 plus percent of Gazans and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria think that October 7th was a great day. So what? I’m gonna have something with you? So it’s true. I’m just like Yehuda. I worry about who I am, but I, I—But how do I, how do I create a future here? But the details of this plan, and this is both… it’s a struggle, it could be a serious problem, but it is also, its opportunity. This plan in its next stages has nothing to do with the, with the, with the commitment, either moral or political of the Palestinians. What this plan did, and this was Trump’s innovation, is he brought the Sunni universe together and said, do you agree that Hamas can no longer be a player? Which is in essence saying terror has to stop, the educational system, which glorifies the killing of Jews, has to be changed. All of that has been spoken about. We are now starting a 10, 15 year process of rebuilding Gaza, but through that process, you’re talking about a 10, 15 year process in which Palestinian society has to basically say, are you gonna show up or not? Do you wanna join the Emirates? Do you wanna join enlightened Sunni countries? Or do you wanna remain in the terror camp? And I want to tell you, it’s gonna be up to the Palestinians. And at the end of the day, if they choose to remain in the terror Camp, then occupation will continue. Okay, so we’ll rebuild. But we’re, we’re not, we’re not going anywhere. And I’m not worried about someone digging a hole. I have an army. October 7th was an aberration. October 7th was a failure of Israel to use even the most, 2% of its military capacity would’ve stopped it. Abigail: Would have stopped, in order to protect.. Would’ve stopped it. Okay. We’ll have to, well go to your last answers. So two minutes each. Really compact. A big question. Tal Becker, who is Vice President of Hartman Institute, defended Israel in the Hague, and has been at the table in many of these peace discussions in the past. He did an interview with Dan Senor and he said, optimism is a practice. Let’s start with you, Yehuda. How is your optimism. And how would you advise? We maybe hone it. Have more of it. Yehuda: Yeah. Tal saying that, working at the Hartman Institute is not a coincidence. It’s part of the reason we love Tal. I think it’s part of the reason he’s at Hartman is because our institution thinks in optimistic terms. And what that means is not that you think things are going to get better, but that you see yourself as responsible for bringing out a better world in which things are better, and to recognize that the alternative is way worse. Being convinced that things will get worse is a pretty good predictor that it will, they will be, that it will, I think it’ll be, that it’ll facilitate that. I, you know, coming out of background in studying Jewish history and especially the last few hundred years, it has been very, it would be, it’s like almost impossible to pause the clock at any point in Jewish history and predict what the next 50 years would’ve looked like. I will say on a personal level, the last two years, as I mentioned, have been very hard, and part of the reason it’s been hard for me is because I really like spending my time, as you said, not talking about antisemitism and the things that we can control, but talking about how we build a continued vitality for North American Jewry. How do we say, not the golden age of American Jewry is over, but what were the things that made it possible, and how do we continue to invest in them? And that feels like it was taken away from us in the last two years, that the story of the Jewish people was being written by others. I would like to think that history has given us a little bit of a window here to say we can get back into the business of constructing a viable, vibrant North American Jewish future, and one for the state of Israel as well. Abigail: Great, Donniel, now you have a minute and a half. Donniel: I’ll do it really, really quick. You know, in Maslow’s pyramid of hierarchy, self-preservation is the core, and very often pessimism feels safer. It feels that’s what I have to be because I have to, because optimism could be dangerous. That’s why it’s the job of leadership. It’s the job of political leadership. It’s the job of rabbis. It’s the rob of intellectuals, teachers. Our job is to speak to people about a vision and to realize that hope is actually also in their self-interest, and that’s our job. So in the sense that’s, it’s, it’s the practice of leaders to change our conversation, and it’s not our job to pander to people’s fears. It’s not our job to get standing ovations by telling people, don’t worry, things are worse. It’s our job to remind people what is the best of us and who do we want to be? And if we put that vision there, then there’s a chance that maybe we’ll progress in that direction. Abigail: Donniel Hartman, Yehuda Kurtzer. I’m glad the Hartman Institute is there to do exactly what you just described, and it’s been a pleasure to talk to you in a very historic, emotional week. I’m Abigail Pogrebin for In the Spotlight. It’s been good to be with you. Thank you all for joining us live and for those who are watching on tape, we’re glad you’re here too. Stay safe and I’ll see you next time.