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Passover in the Shadow of War Transcript
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Donniel: October 7th is still enslaving us. Fear is still enslaving us. A culture of war is enslaving us. This Passover, I’m really gonna try to connect to hope.
Yossi: I’m in a different place, Donniel. I feel the hope already. The story is so powerful. It’s so overwhelming. And it’s such a profound source of hope and spiritual energy. And we don’t have the language for it. And so every Seder is an opportunity to try to go just one layer deeper, both in terms of the language and, well, the way we tell the story. I feel that challenge, especially this year.
Donniel: Hi, friends. This is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, in collaboration with Ark Media. Today’s March 31st. And our episode is entitled “Passover in the Shadow of War.”
There’s a cloud. It’s more than just a shadow, Yossi. I feel it. And Israeli society feels it. It’s been a hard week.
Yossi: It’s the least joyful week before Pesach that I ever remember here.
Donniel: Wow. Wow. And you remember? One of the ways that I go through life as an optimist is forgetting things. I had to find memory to be just—it’s like, who wants to remember it?
Yossi: I remember selectively. I remember things that are useful that may come into the writing at some point.
Donniel: But it’s—this has been a hard week. Besides, you know, the running back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Yossi: To the shelter.
Donniel: To the shelters. And my son came to Israel for three weeks for Pesach. And he came with his three kids. And Iran welcomed him. As he was getting out of his taxi, taking the suitcases upstairs to his apartment, the first siren. So leaving your suitcases and just running up. And he’s with his wife and three children.
Yossi: And the airport, we know, is a target.
Donniel: This was not in the airport. This is—he had got to Jerusalem already. They waited. They waited. I don’t want to think that the whole world revolves, but they waited. Then I called him and we’re all making sure that he knows and he’s good. And I said, “So how are the kids?” “They’re okay.” There were seven sirens that day. By the third one, his kids were tasting PTS. It was like, whoa. This was a hard week.
It was the ritual of war, of the Iran war.
Yossi: It’s a good phrase.
Donniel: And there was another dimension to that ritual. And which we spoke about the last time. It’s an anxiety about the end of the war. The war itself has its own anxiety, but there was anxiety about the end of the war. What is going to be achieved?
And I think some of the anxiety is that we know that the most that we could achieve is to delay Iran’s capacity to produce missiles and weapons. We could weaken them. But Israel doesn’t have the capacity for significant or total game change. And our fantasy or our hope and aspiration of regime change, that’s not going to happen with an air campaign. It might happen now, in the, once it’s in the hands of the Iranian population.
Yossi: So it’s interesting, Donniel, because we’re going into Pesach, the holiday of liberation. However one wants to conceive of liberation. And we had these hopes that we were going to liberate Iran.
Donniel: Yeah, or liberate, I don’t know if it was liberate, that was your language, liberate ourselves from Iran.
Yossi: Right, right. Well, for me it was really both. And now we know we’re not really going to do either. At least not immediately.
Donniel: Or we don’t know what Iran…
Yossi: It’s liberation deferred.
Donniel: Liberation deferred. Most liberations are deferred. And we know we’re so much in the hands of the pressure that the United States could bring to bear on whether the 15-point condition of surrender really will be accepted or not. And those are things that are…it’s very heavy. Because to what extent do we get the 460 kilograms of enriched uranium? Do they commit not to enrich again? It’s all out there and we’re just listening to each news item. It’s just like, whoa, and it’s not in your hands. So that’s one part of—
Yossi: There’s a feeling of things not holding together. Yeah.
Donniel: And we’re hoping, still. But people are realizing that, as you said, the redemption is not at hand. And it’s interesting, we started the war during Purim. And it’s Pesach and it’s very, very different. Purim was about the evil Haman who wants to destroy us. And how our current reality is different than the Purim reality. And now the holiday is coming into Pesach, which is supposed to be the holiday of liberation, the holiday of freedom, the holiday where Jewish peoplehood begins in many ways. So there is that.
But the cloud and the shadow goes way beyond Iran. Lebanon is playing an increasingly heavy role. As a shadow and as a cloud over our existence, as we feel it. Today, it was announced, four more soldiers, beautiful young men were killed. Just the day beforehand, three were killed. And it’s Lebanon.
Yossi: We’re back in the loop.
Donniel: We’re back in the loop. You know, back into, it was hutar le-pirsum, as the way the news starts, the term in that it was allowed to be reported because you don’t report deaths until the families are…
Yossi: That’s the most chilling phrase in Hebrew.
Donniel: In Hebrew, hutar le-pirsum, it’s allowed to report.
Yossi: And it’s used only…
Donniel: Only then. For that. It’s a holy term. You know, the term “holy” is distinct. It’s separate. This is its own category. And that should be enough. That would be enough for anybody. But that’s in many ways just half of our shadow, and that’s hard enough to bear.
But in the midst of war, one of the prior unwritten laws of Israeli society is that during war, you don’t do politics. You don’t do petty politics. You don’t do partisan politics. But this is not a six-day or a 12-day war. You’re in a three-week war. This is a multi-year war. And politics are continuing, especially as elections are six months away. And so I can’t blame the government for engaging in politics and there’s things to be done.
But this week, the political discourse and legislative process just really hit new lows in my mind. And I don’t want to activate your anti-Netanyahu sentiments.
Yossi: Oh, it’s not hard.
Donniel: And I feel like, Yossi, you’ve infected me.
Yossi: I’m actually calmer about things now. We’ve done a transfusion.
Donniel: You know we’re a married couple. It’s like, Adina and I, when one is nervous about something, the other one’s calm. I hand it over to you. You hand it over to me. The whole country was reeling from, when the budget was passed. And it was discovered that there was this trick or, I don’t know, trickery to pass through an additional measure. How would one say, histaigut in Hebrew? An amendment. It’s not even an amendment.
Yossi: It’s a correction.
Donniel: It’s a correction. Normally a budget is passed. And while it’s being passed, there are amendments to correct on the part of the opposition against certain parts of the budget. And so the budget is passed as a package with certain amendments. Here the government passed an amendment adding to its pre-planned budget in a way that no one would know in advance. And the amendment in correction was to increase hundreds of millions of shekels to the Haredi parties for their educational system without any claim of where it’s going to be allocated, what’s going to be the budgetary process. Because a budget is not just coming up with numbers. It’s not just saying, okay, you get this money. You get this money. No, we’re going to do this amount for schools for what? What are you going to do it? You’re going to do it for buildings. You’re going to do it for what’s the need that this budget is responding to.
But this amendment had nothing. It was just, okay, we’re going to give you money. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of shekels to further the possibility of Haredi not having to serve in the army in the midst of a war where this week also our chief of staff got up and said, the army is collapsing under the burden. And to have the chief of staff say this and this legislation at the same time?
Yossi: It was so, it was, it took dissonance to a new level. And this money was allocated over the billions of shekel that have already been transferred to Haredi institutions. No government by far has ever given more money to the Haredi institutions than this government. During war, at a time when health is being cut, health services, there aren’t enough shelters in the north.
Donniel: Businesses are collapsing in the north.
Yossi: And this is what the government was preoccupied with. And the opposition rightly called it “acting like thieves in the night.” This was at two in the morning. They did their maneuver.
Donniel: See, and if by not putting it in the budget, it wasn’t open to review, to conversation, to sunlight. What is it that you’re spending money on? At the last moment, they did an amendment to their own budget, not the opposition trying to go against their own. It’s like literally just being punched. And you’re in the midst of a war, a war where all of us know people, called up again. And they’re just being torn away from their families. In the midst of all of this, this, I don’t know, shadow, a cloud, you need another word of what’s going on.
Yossi: Well, this was a violation.
Donniel: This was a violation. And if that wasn’t enough, one of the hardest things was the legislation passed last night. And that’s the legislation mandating the death penalty. And here I want to be, it’s not the death penalty for terrorists. It’s a death penalty for West Bank residents who kill Israeli citizens. And in so doing, act to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Exclusively. It’s not for Jews. And this is in the background of a horrific week.
And also since the beginning of the war. And I want to recommend that people read Jeremy Sharon in the Times of Israel, such a thoughtful piece, about, since the beginning of the war, seven Palestinians have been killed. And under this umbrella of the war, a whole process of attacks against Palestinian residents of the West Bank, and what’s known as the “hilltop youth,” what Netanyahu dismissively speaks of as, oh, 50-60 dysfunctional, ADD, or high school graduates—there’s a plan. And there’s even now emerging a serious debate within the settler movement against it, which is, I think we have to talk about this at greater length in a full podcast.
But in the midst of all of that, Israel passes a mandatory death penalty with almost no judicial discretion, no possibility of pardon. If somebody, if there’s a terrorist, within 90 days, they have to be hanged. We’ll talk about this, but as a Jew and following the Jewish tradition, I’m an anti-death penalty person. In our tradition, we wipe out the death penalty. Our tradition is unequivocally against the death penalty. The biblical tradition is for, but the rabbinic tradition just removed it. But just the hanging, like, how many, who are we? And so we’ll get into this, but it’s been a hard week.
Yossi: What a week.
Donniel: And now we’re a day away from…
Yossi: Supposed to be going into Pesach.
Donniel: Into our joyful holiday of our liberation. So, Yossi, start with what any one of the… Which layer of the cloud and the shadow, and it’s with a heavy heart, my friends, we’re, this is not a podcast of, this is not a joyful time. There are some hopes, maybe we’ll get to at the end. But there’s so many layers. Where do you want to start, Yossi?
Yossi: I’ll start from my study, my apartment. I’ve mentioned this before, we’ve moved to a new apartment. The other end of the city, we used to live in French Hill, northeast Jerusalem. Now we live in southwest Jerusalem, near Mount Herzl, for those who know the geography, near Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum.
But more importantly, for the story that I want to tell you, right across from the National Military Cemetery.
Donniel: Israel’s Arlington.
Yossi: Yeah. In the last few days, I’m sitting in my study and I’m hearing kaddish on loudspeaker coming from the next hill. Very clear. And I’m hearing the hespedim, the eulogies. And it’s very strange, because this is intruding in my daily routine. Sitting at my desk, I’m, you know, what do you do? I try to write, I look at social media, maybe I’ll watch a movie. And there’s a funeral of a young man. There’s a destroyed family on the next hill.
And, you know, I would say that it’s a metaphor for Israeli life, but it wasn’t a metaphor. It was literal. I’m sitting there trying to live my daily life, and this is going on. So finally, I just had to stop whatever it was I was doing. And you just sit quietly and you, you know, I go into meditation and try to connect with the family and offer prayers. It was a very long funeral. And I have, I have work to do. So what do you do? You go back to work while the funeral is happening. And there was nothing more jarringly Israeli than trying to go through my daily routine while literally a young man is being buried. And you’re hearing these heartbreaking eulogies. And then the singing, beautiful, unbearable singing.
Donniel: “El malei rachamim.”
Yossi: But also the old Israeli songs.
Donniel: Ah, because they add them to the system.
Yossi: This is now part of many funerals of fallen soldiers. Families will invite a musician who the young man loved and ask him to sing.
Donniel: And they all show up.
Yossi: Oh, they all show up. They all show up. That’s their reserve duty. They feel, you know, unofficial reserve duty.
And so this is all going on. And then you just pick yourself up from the floor and, okay, what do I have to do now? Oh, right. Right. I said I would, you know, I would help prepare dinner. And that’s what you do. So that’s just, you know, one little corner of daily life.
And this week there were multiple funerals. And it goes through the day into the night. So that’s that’s something of what I’m carrying in an end. And you look at the faces in the paper and you look at these young, beautiful young men, as you put it earlier, and they really are. And you can’t bear it. You can’t look and you can’t not look.
Donniel: You know, this last week I was in my research seminar. It’s called Israeli Values. And the seminar is about trying to think with a phenomenal group of people across a wide spectrum of political positions. What is the central issue that we have to talk about in Israeli society? And how does the Institute respond and what curriculum should we produce and how do we change what it is that we’re teaching?
And very often the seminar is, okay, what are we feeling this week? What are we feeling? Let’s get a pulse of each other and let’s talk to each other. And from there we learn and it’s research scholars and heads of educational departments working together to make sure that we’re talking Jewishly and Jewish values about what it is that our people are feeling.
And I’ll just share with you two observations that were made there. One was by the person who is the most right wing. He lives in a settlement and he’s the most right wing thinker in the group. Very, very supportive of military action in order to defend Israel. Very unequivocal about that. He serves, his children serve, and he was talking, you know, my sons in Lebanon. And his gut instinct is always, and this is an Israeli gut instinct, to stand on the side of, when an Israeli soldier is in danger, you stand on their side. You don’t critique. You’re just, what do you need in order to do what you need to do? Politics will come later.
And he said, you know, my son went up and he went to the Golan Heights and then we just found out he’s not in the Golan Heights. They moved him now and he’s fighting in Lebanon. And he said, I support an attempt to protect the north and we have to make life possible again in the north. And if we have to capture territory, he says, but Lebanon, we’re back. And he says, I don’t know. He says, I’m afraid for my kid.
And I don’t know if we know exactly what we’re doing. And it’s a different conversation than the fear people had on October 7th. In Gaza, the war had multiple stages, which our audience knows about and we’ve talked about them. But there was a sense of clear mission that overcame the fear. There was purpose that overcame. We have to reclaim, we have to erase the impact of October 7th. There’s a little of that in Lebanon, but Lebanon has a heaviness and a doubt.
Our country—listen, we’re talking again about holding Litani and creating buffer zones. And we know how hard that is, how many soldiers have died and what are we going to do? Is this the product? And we spoke about that again. So there was his statement. Like for him, the shadow was in his soul. It was a shadow in his soul.
Yossi: What I hear from people about Lebanon in particular, first statement is, this time we have to finish it once and for all. Second statement is, how do you do it? How is that possible from the same people, this deep ambivalence where we know and I feel the same way. We have to finish this. We can’t keep going back every five years. On the other hand, what does it mean to finish?
Donniel: What is once and for all? You know, they made a joke of it in one of the great Israeli satires where Netanyahu was declaring that this, what we will have done in the 12 Day War is a victory l’dorei dorot, for generations in Iran.
Yossi: 12 Day War in Iran.
Donniel: Do we have another 12 day war? I don’t know. We have Three Week War, Six Day War, 12 Day War, thanks for—it will be a l’dorei dorot, for generations upon generations. And the comedian was saying, and now Netanyahu is getting up, and what we’re doing now is for, because we found out that generation to generation is six months. So now if we want something for three years, it has to be from generation, generation, generation, generation to generation. This notion of once and for all—
Yossi: It reminds me of Menachem Begin, the prime minister during the first Lebanon war in 1982, quoting the Bible, said, “And the land rested for 40 years.” And he said, and this is what this war is going to do. And I don’t know if the land rested for 40 minutes.
Donniel: For 40 minutes, yeah. So that’s part of that. People sense, as you said, we want it to end and we know that Hezbollah is this danger. But the connection between what we’re doing and achieving that end, there’s a heaviness.
And one of the research fellows, a woman whose husband has also done maybe 400 days, said, you know, since for the last two, three years, we’re priding ourselves about how strong we are as a country. She says, but what does it mean that to live here, you have to be so strong? She says, that’s not healthy. So that’s, her shadow is, how much are we demanding? How much are we demanding? Is it too much? Is it?
Yossi: Yeah, look, the answer is it is too much to bear, but we have no alternative and we bear it.
Donniel: But what she was saying is, I don’t know—
Yossi: if we have an alternative.
Donniel: No. First of all, there aren’t alternatives, you know, but she was saying lots. There are alternatives, to leave.
Yossi: She was saying she doesn’t know if she could bear it.
Donniel: She was just observing that, what is this celebration of strength? What about, you know, we’re normal human beings. We’re not Sparta or we’re not supposed to be Olympians. A real country is not supposed to demand of you to always be this mega Olympian with strength. And we know how many people, we know how many people are in the spectrums of PTSs and, but just like, the shadow of the demand of ultimate strength, and even your immediate response to me—and we—it’s like, it’s the Zionist answer, it’s the ideology. And she was saying, do me a favor a second. Could you leave your ideology aside and just recognize the humanity?
Yossi: It’s not ideology. It’s reality. Of course, I recognize it. Everyone’s exhausted. And there are different layers of exhaustion depending on, you know, if you live in Tel Aviv or if you live in Kiryat Shemona in the north, there are different layers of this. But what makes this period more difficult than any that we’ve ever had is simply that it’s gone on longer than we’ve ever experienced. We always fought short wars. It was the long—since 1948. 1948 was a two-year war. Since then, our wars were six days, three weeks. Yom Kippur was three weeks; that was a long war.
This is two and a half years. Israeli society has never been tested in an uninterrupted way like we have been since October 7th. And that’s why questions are being raised about how much more resilient can we be, in a way that have never been raised before.
And I share your frustration when I hear, certainly from the government; I have no patience at all when it comes from government ministers. But, you know, this celebration of Israeli resilience. Yes, yes, okay, I get it. But let’s also be honest with ourselves. Many, many Israelis, more and more Israelis, have moments, and maybe more than moments, of saying, I just can’t, you know, ani lo yachol, I just can’t. But then, I mean, what is amazing about this country is that people do find the strength.
So, what I would suggest, Donniel, is a kind of a combination of what we’re saying. We need to be realistic. We need to acknowledge that there are breaking points. But we also, I think, need to, yes, celebrate, or at least acknowledge the fact that we haven’t broken.
Donniel: I know that, yes, but I’m so far from you at this point. I’d agree with everything you just said.
Yossi: All right.
Donniel: Okay. It’s like, here it is. If I would be writing the poster of Zionism, I would be saying exactly what you said. But there was a humanity that this person, and I remember, in my life, I’m the strong one. My whole life, like, I’m the strong one. Like, you call me, I’m there. Like, so I know the weight.
I remember, this is like one of the hardest moments in my life when my tank was blown up in the first war in Lebanon. And terrific things happened afterwards. And then when they finally brought the three of us who weren’t injured, my driver was seriously injured, they brought the three of us a step behind the front battle. And then we had just got there. And then there was a tank where the loader had PTSD. And so they turned to my loader. And they said, come, we need you to go on that tank. And you had to look at his face. He shrunk. Like, don’t ask this of me. Don’t ask. And I saw him, and as like, as a tank commander. I was like his Abba. I was responsible for him. And I told them, I said, no, you don’t have to go. And I said, I’ll go, but I’m conditioned that I’ll be the commander. And that commander was very happy. Turns out the whole tank was a little dysfunctional.
And I went and I’m like, that’s just what Israeli society does. So, like, you know, and so I’m so proud. And then we go, and I’m telling you that it’s not healthy.
Yossi: And then you had to leave the country for 10 years because you couldn’t continue. And you came back and you continued. So everyone navigated the way they can.
Donniel: But it’s like, but she was, but you know what she was saying? What she was saying is, could we just stop for a few minutes celebrating our strength? She doesn’t say, stop being strong.
Yossi: Absolutely.
Donniel: She says, could we just stop the… Because you know, like, we’re in this war mode and we’re strong and look at us. We’re going in and out of the shelters and we have jokes and we have this and we have concerts and weddings. And she says, what is this story that we’re telling here? This is part of the shadow that Lebanon has brought back. And then after Lebanon, we’re going to go back to Gaza. And then after Gaza, we’re going to go back to the West Bank. So there is that dimension of the shadow. There’s a heaviness to it.
Let’s turn to the death penalty legislation. How did it hit you? What did you hear? I would maybe just add just a moment of introduction and framing, if it’s okay, that this is a legislation that was drafted in such a way to make sure that it would not pass the Supreme Court override. It is clearly a discriminatory law. You can’t have a law which gives the death penalty only for Palestinians. If you want to have a death penalty for terrorists, we can have one type of conversation. If you want to have a death penalty for anybody who’s a terrorist, any Jew, Palestinian who kills for defined terrorism, various political, ideological, terrorizes people, whatever it is, it’s not the same as murder, politically motivated murder of some type. That’s as close a definition as I’ll give right now.
But it’s exclusive for Palestinians of the West Bank, non-citizens killing citizens of Israel, and no review, no appeal, hanging, 90 days. It was set up in such a way that the Supreme Court is going to see it as a discriminatory law so that it will not be implemented. So here it is, Netanyahu and Ben Gvir can all celebrate, but we’re then going to set up the Supreme Court against a majority of Israelis who see this legislation as, what side are you on? Do you love terrorists? So here it is, the Supreme Court is on the side of terrorists.
Yossi: This is it. You already hear what they’re going to say on the right. They’re going to start calling this a terrorist Supreme Court. You know, the, the, “bagat shel haNukhba,” the “Nukhba,” the Hamas terrorists of October 7th. It’s completely political, and as you say, no intention of actually carrying it through.
Meanwhile, it is a, I won’t even call it a public relations disaster because it’s so much more serious than that. It’s a chilul Hashem. A chilul Hashem is the most serious sin in Judaism. It is the desecration of God’s name. And when that is done by the collective Jewish people, by the state of Israel, there is no greater sin than that. Yom Kippur does not atone for chilul Hashem. And what the government did last night was a chilul Hashem. It was desecrating God’s name. It was desecrating the name of Israel and the Jewish people.
And one of the worst things about it is that they didn’t actually mean it. They know it’s not going to happen. But we also know that when the Supreme Court knocks this down, it won’t make headlines around the world. It will be acknowledged, you know, it’ll be some new side of it. Or not. Or even not. And meanwhile, the impression is that the Jewish state now has a blatantly discriminatory law of death. And that you can start imagining hangings from cranes in…
Donniel: In Tehran.
Yossi: Yeah.
Donniel: Who hangs today? Who’s hanging today? You know, and the security establishment, the army and the security establishment all advised against the law stating that this is not going to enhance—
Yossi: Vehemently against it. This is not going to help us. This is not going to help us. The Shin Bet, the Mossad, the army. But you know, Donniel…
Donniel: It’s just that nothing matters anymore, you know?
Yossi: What has happened to the right, we’ve talked about this, but in some ways even worse than legitimizing Ben Gvir and his small far right party is bringing the spirit of Ben Gvir into the Likud. The Likud has been thoroughly corrupted. What we saw last night was an erasure, for all practical purposes, of what was once a bright red boundary between the far right and the mainstream right. Menachem Begin would not recognize this Likud. He would disown it. And that’s where we are.
Donniel: It’s like, you know, the price of October 7th, we keep on coming back to it. Like there’s no checks and balances even in Israeli society. You’re not going to have masses of Israelis demonstrating against this law. You’re going to have some of the centrist and leftist parties and the civil rights movements demonstrating against the discrimination. You’ll have articles, some of them, in Haaretz by, you know, Kremnitzer, a very thoughtful legal scholar.
Yossi: Who nobody reads outside of Haaretz.
Donniel: Haaretz. Speaking about the death culture as the great victory of Hamas. You know, okay, like, and you can move the populace. And yes, what, are you for the terrorists? Like here, okay, all those who for the terrorists, please come to a demonstration, motzei, after Shabbat, so that you can now support the terrorists. Because this is, the people who murder you, these are the ones—this is, the argument against death penalty has so many features.
One, whether it is effective at all, whether it has any deterrent in any way whatsoever. Most of the world at which we want to recognize doesn’t recognize that. The United States does, and it’s an outlier in the Western world. But America can get away with anything. But you just, like, here it is a small little country,
90 days, hanging. It’s like, what do we want to satiate? It’s like, we’re getting into the eye for the eye. And our tradition, you know, the Bible, you read the Bible, you think the Jewish people are going to disappear. Because for every sin, you know, death, death, death, death. And then, you know, like, if you do this, you’re going to—
Yossi: There’ll be none of us left.
Donniel: There’ll be none of us left. What did you do? You know, it’s like, like you do this. And it’s not just for violent crimes. It’s for various, you know, theological, you know, a violation of the Shabbos. All the above, death, death, death, death, death. Anybody who does this, kill them, kill them, kill them, kill them. The Bible, you know, what do you want from the 3,000 year old? That was the language 3,000 years ago. You want to scare people, you say death, death, death. That’s like punching, giving someone a slap. Or eye for an eye.
The rabbis, you know, the Bible also says, if you take out an eye, we’re going to take out an eye. Great. Even if you mistakenly kill somebody, we’re going to have to kill you too. There’s the revenge—listen, we have a tradition, like every tradition, that started 3,000 years ago and profoundly reflects the ethos of its time. And along comes the rabbinic tradition, 12-1500 years later, and says, what are you talking about? An eye for an eye? No. Damages. Pay them damages.
And more significantly, the famous greatest rabbi, just about of the whole Talmud, says, one rabbi says, on my court, someone will only, a death penalty will only be issued maybe once in 70 years. And Rabbi Akiva says, never. In my court, it will never be. Because the testimony, the idea that we as human beings should take a life. It’s one thing when you do it to save a life. But this is just not what we do.
So our tradition has lived this way. And this new ethos, it’s one thing to be warrior, to fight in self-defense. It is this, what are we going to—are we going to have an audience? Like, we’re going to hang them from where? It’s just— It’s just, we’re getting lost, Yossi.
Yossi: Do you know, Donniel, but it’s so interesting to think about Israeli society in the context of the different eras of Judaism and Jewish history. You know, we talk about Israel as the gathering of the exiles, which is coming from 100 diasporas. But Israel has also in-gathered Jewish time. And so what we’re experiencing now is Jewish history arguing with itself. You have the biblical period, and you have the far right, who would fit in 3,000 years ago into the story that the Tanakh, that the Bible tells. You have the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, who are in the rabbinic era.
Donniel: Or in Poland, actually.
Yossi: Well, in Poland– In the 18th century.
Donniel: In the 17th, 18th century.
Yossi: Let’s be generous and say the 19th century. And then you have the secular Israelis who are somewhere in the mid-20th century, still, you know, in the rational modernity period. And you see the different stages of Jewish time arguing with themselves. Which period of Jewish history most authentically represents who we are as a people? And that’s what’s playing out here.
Now, it’s fascinating to observe, but when you’re actually in the middle of it, it’s wrenching. And you just can’t believe it. Where did that atavistic streak come from? But it was always in us. And maybe in the 2,000 years of exile, when we didn’t have power, it was a receding gene.
Donniel: It was dormant.
Yossi: It was dormant, but it was always there. And sovereignty has brought out some of our most extraordinary qualities. The reawakening of Jewish heroism, of military heroism. How extraordinary. A people that for 2,000 years didn’t know what a weapon was. And look what we’re producing. We have one of the great armies in the world, and I, for one, and I think you are, too. I’m enormously proud of our kids.
But there are other tendencies that we’ve carried in ourselves, archetypes that are very destructive. And we say, where did this come from? Suddenly we have the zealots again from the Second Temple period. Suddenly we have the corrupt priests of the temple. You know, now in the rabbinic establishment. Suddenly we have King Herod, the corrupt monarchy is back. And so we have the most extraordinary archetypes being reborn under sovereignty and some of the most destructive.
Donniel: So with this shadow, Yossi, with this story, and I love the notion, that all the historical periods are all condensed. And it’s part of what’s so alienating, because like, you’re not, you don’t even know who, like, who, where this even come from? It’s just, it feels like it’s from—truly. And that’s the sense when you feel like your Israel is being taken from you. It’s because it’s being taken to another period in which you don’t live.
Yossi: Which was, but it was always there in us.
Donniel: That’s the thing. But it’s just being moved. So how in this environment, Yossi, how do we celebrate Pesach this year? How are you celebrating it? Can you?
Yossi: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, how do Israelis celebrate? We bring our families, our in-laws, we’ll be celebrating with in-laws this year for the first time. And there’s something beautiful. We’re going to be seeing the expansion of our Seder table.
Look, you know, this Seder is going to be celebrated, not only under the shadow of everything we’ve talked about until now, but we’ve been warned by the Home Front command to have certain restrictions. And we know the odds are there will be missiles during the Seder.
Donniel: They know everything about us.
Yossi: They know it’s Pesach. They know we’re going to be gathering. And, you know, if you want to ruin a Jews’ day, hit them at the Seder. That’s a time-honored anti-Semitic tradition. And so how will we celebrate?
First of all, I think that the Seder has its own momentum. We’ve done this under all kinds of circumstances. And I certainly mean in the historical perspective for thousands of years. But even in the Israeli context, you know, we, you and I remember during the Second Intifada when a suicide bomber blew up a Seder in the Park Hotel in Netanya, which then sent the Israeli army back into the territories. And you had a mass mobilization on Seder night. So we have these layers of memory of celebration in trauma. That helps. And I think that even if we don’t make it explicit, we carry that into the Seder night.
And the Seder, you know, it’s a very complicated story. It’s a joyful story. It’s a story of liberation. But it’s a lot of stuff that the Haggadah is unpacking. And I think that this Seder, for me, the joy that I’m going to be feeling is beyond the gathering, is that we’re still doing it. Joy is too strong a word here, but I will be feeling a certain gratification that the war with Iran, the showdown with Iran has finally happened.
Now, again, it’s not going to be the definitive victory, but this is an essential stage in the story of the Jewish people in how we deal with those who seek to do us harm, which is part of the Pesach Seder too. It’s not the side of the Seder that I have wanted to emphasize all these years. That, you know, we had years in our Seder where we didn’t even say the part, “vehi she-amda lavoteinu ve-lanu,” you know, there’s a part in the Haggadah that talks about how in every generation there rises those who seek to destroy us. And my daughter, Moriah, when she was a teenager, she said, we’re just bringing this on ourselves. We just, you know, we keep wallowing. And said, okay, we’re not going to say this part. And we stopped for a while.
And then during the Second Intifada, the period of the suicide bombings, it quietly came back. And it’s back. It’s firmly back in our Seder. This year, I think it’s going to be strongly there. It’s not a dominant theme, but it’s a part of who we are as a people. We periodically confront evil, and we go through it, and we overcome. And that will be part of the story. How about you, Donniel?
Donniel: I don’t know.
Yossi: I know that you’re on a different wavelength.
Donniel: I know. On that, but I don’t know. You know, it’s… Israel was supposed to change the way we celebrate Passover. Passover was the story of a redemption and a liberation that happened in the past. And then Israel was the Passover story happening in our lifetime. And so much of that is true. I give thanks for this country, and I give thanks for our ability to protect ourselves. And I give thanks for the successes of this country.
The reality of Israel is far more of a happy ending than any liberation aspirations we could have ever had. Where did we go after we left Egypt? Into the desert. What was the liberation? It was like, what was it? Eating manna. You know, it was not a… It took like many years, and the Jewish story, even after Exodus, was always checkered. And Israel was the culmination, in many ways, of the Egypt story. Israel is Pesach, and its connection to Independence Day. It’s the liberation of the Jewish people, and here it is, the liberation of the Jewish people in our homeland. And all of that is true.
Yossi: And, but you mean it, liberation on different levels. There’s also a psychological liberation, if I understand what you’re talking about. That Israel was supposed to…
Donniel: No, physically, no, absolutely. Not even saying… It was real. It was the physical freedom of the Jewish people bringing us back to our homeland. The exodus from Egypt was an exodus from Egypt into sovereignty.
Yossi: But also the liberation from existential fears.
Donniel: I didn’t, no, I’m talking—
Yossi: That’s what I heard when you were speaking.
Donniel: No, that wasn’t that at all. It was, in fact, the ending. This was Pesach. Israel, Independence Day is the new Pesach. And that’s why it’s just such a clear holiday here, and everybody… It’s the most dominant holiday of the year here.
This year, I’m feeling the shadow a lot. I really am. I’m connecting to Passover not as this holiday of freedom. It’s called, you know, zman cherutenu, the holiday of our freedom. I think for most of Jewish history, Passover was not the holiday of freedom, but the holiday of an aspiration for freedom. Most Jews throughout our history celebrated Passover with the hope that a better day will come.
And, you know, one of the highlights of the Seder is towards the end of when we sing “next year in Jerusalem.” And in Israel, we think they, the rebuilt Jerusalem, and then what are you really hoping to rebuild? Was it the unified capital? Do you want the Messianic era?
Yossi: That’s what it meant, really.
Donniel: That’s what it meant. Passover is what gave us the strength to be a people who hopes. It’s not a people who celebrate our success. It could be. And I’m not begrudging anybody who celebrates our success. But it was a holiday which says liberation is possible. Not that liberation is a fact, but liberation is possible and has to be an integral part of human culture, that aspiration. And I think our people aspired for it.
This year, I need hope. I’m holding on. I’m holding on to the hope. And this shadow, there are so many shadows. There’s so much lack of clarity. When will Iran end? What’s going to happen in Lebanon? I so much don’t trust this government. And every time I hear our chef of staff, excuse me, I’m sorry, not our chief of staff, whom I respect profoundly— our minister of defense, just proclaiming we’re going to capture, we’re going to rule, we’re going to this, and our minister of finance, we’re now, the Litani, the new border of Israel, and I’m watching and I’m seeing my fellow workers, you’re calling me up again. I don’t even know if I’m going to be home, they’re telling me, for the Seder.
And all of that, we have to be liberated from the pharaohs within. Our pharaohs, part of you know, you spoke about Israel brings out the best, but it could also surface some of the worst periods. There are ideologies which are enslaving us. There are people who are attacking us, and some of them are inside. We got the outside ones, not covered, but we know what to do, or we’re going to try to do whatever we can do. October 7th is still enslaving us. Fear is still enslaving us. A culture of war is enslaving us.
And this Passover, I’m really going to try to connect to hope. You know, and our Seder, maybe with this, I’ll conclude it, and if you have any final remarks. The Passover story, when you tell it, you don’t start with liberation. You start with, “avadim hayinu l’Pharoh b’Mitzrayim,” we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. You tell the story, it’s a story of slavery to freedom. And I’m going to try to have our people talk about what’s enslaving us.
And I want to look at the shadow. I don’t want to whitewash it. And there’s so many shadows you’ll see that I’m feeling in my soul right now. This is not the Israel that I want, and this is not the life that I want. And our work is to use the strength of Passover to give us the energy to fight for the Israel that we have to be. And it’s going to be interesting because, you know, my story’s not the same. I’m going to have to see whether I can get everybody to tell that story this Pesach. Yossi, last words.
Yossi: I’m in a different place, Daniel. I’m in a place where I feel the hope already. You know, part of the problem of being a Jew and trying to explain that Jewish hope is that we’re inundated with cliches. So much of Jewish hope, the language desperately needs renewal. So to say, again, we’ve survived so many adversaries, and 4,000 years—it’s—
Donniel: Right. The Haggadah is one big cliche.
Yossi: And so it’s like we need a new language. And you know, the problem—it’s a cliche to say this about a cliche, but cliches are cliches because they contain something very powerful. And the cliche of Jewish survival is that it’s true. We need to renew the language. I feel this acutely as a writer. I feel the limitations of the language with which we speak about one of the most extraordinary stories in human history.
And Pesach is the time, it’s the beginning of that story. And it’s a time when we feel the contiguity of 4,000 years. It’s all laid out. And I feel the limitations of the language of the Haggadah. You know, we do our best as a people. You know, we’ve been mining this, the Haggadah is what, is 1,500 years old? We’ve done our best, you know, and we’re going to give it another try. But I just, we—the story is so powerful. It’s so overwhelming. And it’s such a profound source of hope and spiritual energy. And we don’t have the language for it. That’s what I’m feeling.
When I sit with the Haggadah, I say, “We have to do justice to this.” The story is so extraordinary and the language is increasingly thin. That’s what I’m feeling. And so every Pesach, you know, every Seder is an opportunity to try to go just one little layer deeper, both in terms of the language and, well, the way we tell the story. So that’s what I’m feeling, the challenge—I feel that challenge especially this year.
Donniel: Yes, I’d like to wish you personally, your family, and all our people a happy Pesach. I don’t know if joyful, what does joyful mean this year?
Yossi: But we always say Chag Sameach.
Donniel: I know, yeah. And that’s like a ritual. But I don’t know. Yeah, we’ll say Chag Sameach. And to us and to our world, let’s, you know, we need some hope. We need some liberation from our enemies outside, our enemies inside, from the stuff within ourselves.
Yossi: And that’s what you mean by the enemies inside—inside ourselves.
Donniel: We have to, it’s the holiday, we’ve got to strive for better. And hopefully, may, I like to wish all of us, you know, in our tradition, this is the new year, the first new year of the Jewish people was now, was on the 15th of Nissan. It wasn’t what’s known as the new year. So a good year, everyone. A good year, a healthy year, and a better year. We should be well. And Yossi, thank you so much for everything.
Yossi: Thank you. Shana Tova.
Donniel: Shana Tova.
