Well, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jacobi Edgar. I'm the new Stanley Professor.
Stanley Lewis. Professor with what I studied. It's a pleasure to see you all here.
I'm delighted to actually open this year's Israel Studies seminar.
Maybe I would say a little just a few words about the context of this seminar, and then we'll move on to Dr. Barone's Bare Bones presentation.
So during this academic year, the Israel Studies Seminar will explore what it means to widen the horizons of conventional discourse about Israel.
And we will do so by focusing on various perspectives on Israel.
The seminars objective is to situate Israel within within broader contexts,
including thematic, theoretical, methodological, epistemological and geostrategic.
Speakers throughout the year are invited to offer views of Israel from the socio political or historical vantage points of various traditions,
groups, cultures and states or from certain epistemological perspective.
We hope that by doing so, we will be able to illuminate topics that may be otherwise neglected,
neglected in the field of Israeli studies, but are nevertheless crucial for understanding Israeli and Middle-Eastern politics at large.
And our speaker today is Dr. Ilan Baron,
who teaches international political theory in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University.
He is also a member of Durham's Centre for the History of Political Thought,
and he co-directs the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics at the University.
His academic work deals with, well, among many other issues international political sociology,
Jewish politics and Zionism, food politics and the Jewish diaspora.
He recently published Obligation in Exile the Jewish Diaspora, Israel in particular,
in which he explores the complex relationship between Israel and the diaspora Jewish identity.
The title of his talk Today's Jews, Israel and Debate Understanding Israel in the Diaspora.
And I'm pleased to pass the mic to. Yes.
Just. Okay. Well, thank you so much for the invitation to be here.
It's a real honour, and it's also rather serendipitous.
I'm the first speaker because it means you have nobody to compare this to.
Just takes a load off my shoulders, at least through this academic year.
You set the standard? Yeah. All right. What I.
What I want to do and in my talk today is make a case for studying or making make a methodological
case for the importance of a hermeneutic analysis or a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis.
And in order to do that, I want to I'm going to make reference to a bunch of empirical work that I've done, some stuff which I've just completed.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to talk very much about food or cookbooks, but we certainly can have that conversation if anybody here wants to.
So I want to I'm going to start by just explain a little bit about a research project that I've recently been working on with a colleague,
Ari Kelman from Stanford University, doing a we were doing a congregation study in California,
and the congregation study was exploring the role of Israel in the life of a single Jewish community.
And this was the first time that this kind of study, at least to my knowledge, has ever been done.
There's certainly a lot of survey type of data that exists about Israel and Jewish identity in Israel,
in Jewish communities, and in the United States, at least in some in the UK as well.
But I don't think anyone had ever gone into a congregation to do this kind of work,
partially or perhaps largely because there are two topics that one does not debate or discuss in a congregation.
One of them is the Holocaust and the other is Israel.
We spoke about one of them, and this was a fairly small congregation that we did the analysis in.
It was a we were invited into the congregation to do this to do this study.
So it's not as if we you know, we're looking at a map and, you know, pinpointing it was a result of my book and being invited to to do the study.
And we spoke to a little over 50 people,
which is a pretty good sample size of the congregation and also a range of demographic within the congregation.
Although, as is typically the case, there's a certain demographic that is more active than other demographics.
So there's, you know, a skew in age.
And what was interesting about the the interviews that we did was that Israel just didn't come up in the life of this.
Wasn't a big it wasn't a big deal. Right. It did not take up a lot of time in a like this condition.
Now, if you pay attention to what the leaders of major Jewish organisations are telling us we should be discussing, think about Israel all the time.
Right. Israel is right up here a lot, you know, and if your conversation should be Israel and I guess God.
But there'll be another conversation. Right. Well, no, you can't discuss the Holocaust, remember?
So but these are the these are the these this is what we should be thinking about it.
We should be thinking about Israel all the time. It should be up front and centre in.
In our lives. As. As Jews. I should add here that this project, as I mentioned, is done in California.
The fieldwork that I've done, the interviews I've done with Diaspora in the Diaspora have been in the UK, some in Canada and some the United States.
So those are the countries that have the most knowledge of for the French case is very different and very small Jewish communities in,
say, Eastern Europe. What else will be different? I'm not I'm not really talking about about any of those groups.
I also did interviews in Israel when I was doing the book.
So I'm talking about really speaks to the the North American and to some extent British, British Jewry as well.
So Israel just Israel, it didn't come up. It wasn't something that was regular, that was regularly in discussion.
You know, you wouldn't hear about it, you know, after service. It just wasn't a big part.
The the rabbi the congregation didn't regularly speak about Israel, but there is an Israeli flag right near near the bima, along with certain.
There was also in the congregation where I grew up in Canada, on the West Coast, and they do say a prayer for the state of Israel.
So there is some Israel presence, but other than that, nothing.
And this was a bit of a surprise. It's not we're expecting what we expected was that there would be debate.
Right, that there'd be some sent some kind of vehicle, there'll be some argument about Israel in this community and that Israel will be a friction
point because that is pretty much the case in most communities that Israel is not is no longer,
if ever was a unifying force. It's now become a divisive force.
And what we expected to find was something similar to that. So why wasn't why wasn't Israel there?
Well, partially because the congregants felt that Israel was divisive.
They didn't want to get into any debates.
Now, they assumed that there was a diversity of views within the congregation, but they didn't really have much evidence of this.
And they felt that alongside they felt that because of that diversity,
if they weren't just being with friends who they whose ideas or beliefs or political perspectives they already under,
they already knew they weren't quite prepared for, you know, the what what could what could arise.
They weren't and couple that was the idea that we should know more than we do about Israel.
So there's.
So if you take yourself outside of the congregation and you're out in the Bay Area or somewhere in California or, you know, for that matter, you know,
Midwest, wherever, and you're speaking to somebody, it could be out here in the street and Oxford and Israel comes up and as it always does.
Right. And they, you know, it comes out that you're Jewish. And then if you're Jewish, you must know something about Israel.
Right.
That may the conference had internalised that sense that because you're Jewish, you must have some kind of higher level of understanding about Israel.
And if you're not Jewish but a lot of them didn't feel they had that higher level of understanding, whatever that might be,
but they still assumed it, which meant that they would assume that the person they're speaking to because they're Jewish in the congregation,
they would have know more about Israel, the neighbourhood,
and if they know more about Israel than they do and they have a different opinion about Israel and you're one and you don't know enough,
how would you justify your own opinion?
So it's sort of this hotbed of hypotheticals that would just create the potential for debate, which they wanted to avoid.
The other thing so those were, I think intellectually for me at least,
the most interesting findings and we're still doing we we have to transcribe finishing the transcriptions have a lot of analysis
this is sort of the my notes from after all the interviews the other thing which I think is interesting sociologically,
although not necessarily as interesting for the case I want to make today,
is the opportunity, cost and bandwidth that people felt that there's only so much time.
This is not a priority for me, and especially in this particular conversation,
there was a lot of anxiety over Trump and the policies that going along with with the Trump administration,
that they're very, very politically active and just felt that's where our direct that's where our energies are right now.
We're not going to we don't have enough time to hold everything.
Ironically, because there was so much activism politically and because of Trump and Charlottesville and and and issues on immigration,
that then created the impetus with a smaller group within the congregation to say, Wait a minute, we're Jews.
Why are we doing this other stuff? What would Israel. And so we'll see. Well, we'll see how that happens.
So that so I think what's the point I want to take from this was this sense of expecting conflict.
The sense also that because of who we are, we should know something about Israel.
And more than that, I more than I think I know myself.
And related to that, or the corollary that other members of Congress will know more about Israel than I do.
And as a consequence of that, a sense of insecurity over how strong are my actual beliefs or political persuasions on this?
How would I justify them? Okay, so there's this.
Let's just keep that that set of evidence that that story in the background for a minute.
I grew up in West Coast of Canada. This was as I think one route was.
I think the current rabbi said it's hard hit, more diaspora. And where I grew up, Vancouver Island.
Right. It's pretty far west, you know, in the San Andreas Fault eventually splits and there's a big earthquake in San Francisco.
I think Vancouver Island will disappear. That's the fear I grew up with. That's still there.
Fortunately and oddly enough, there's not not that far in between.
Ish Victoria and Vancouver on one of the islands is the summer camp called Marconi.
Miriam. It's a member of happening draw, right.
The Zionist Labour Zionist organisation.
And for every summer, for quite a few summers as a kid, I go to this camp and live life as it was on a kibbutz in the 1960s and I mean in the 1960s,
like we learned sixties folk songs, you know, Israeli and American.
And we, you know, from each according to their ability to each according to their needs.
It was, you know, this idealist kind of labour, Zionist socialist utopia in the west coast of Canada.
And part of what we learned there was just Zionism and labour.
Zionist is also social justice. So the idea of what Zionism meant for us was embedded with a very strong sense of social justice.
My personal view is that aspect of Zionism just doesn't exist anywhere and certainly isn't represented in Israel.
But that was the idea that we grew up with. It's the idea that many Jews grew up with that in the diaspora, Jews grow up with that.
Israel occupies this ideational feature in who we are that is represented by these values.
And these values are shaped by social justice, by Jewish history, also by some kind of national self-determination.
But we don't really talk about the consequences of national self-determination that much because as is becoming more relevant,
it places in uncomfortable company, particularly the ultra right and in the United States the moment.
So this is the idea so we grew I grew up with this you know this we know the the Israeli flag was and was in this congregation.
There's this Labour Zionist camp that I went to families Israeli and Israel's always close by.
Even though we were weren't there when the Gulf War was going on, it was a big deal.
Right. We were talking about it all the time. You know, when Israel's attack centres was under threat, we felt it vicariously.
So even though we're very far removed, don't really understand very much what was going on there.
It's a very important part of who we are, and that was very much the case in this conversation.
In California, most of the Congress felt Israel should matter to us.
Yeah, Israel should play a greater role in the life of the community.
I don't know if I'd attend everything because you know time, but yeah, it should.
Israel matters. Why? Why does Israel matter?
What is the benefit? Or if you want to put it in kind of in those terms?
I don't. But some do. Why should Israel matter to us in this way?
And and why is it becoming so divisive? It's not as if debate about Israel is new, right?
There's always been debate about Israel and Zionism.
What what's changed or if if something hasn't changed, what's going on now that explains the complexity of of our relationship with Israel.
So I, you know, growing up with these family connections of the Zionist icon, this Labour Zionist mythology, I eventually wanted to know more.
And so I studied this. I actually studied as a history student, not as a political science student.
And the more I read, the more I learnt, the more time I spent in Israel,
the more uncomfortable I became that the stories I grew up with just were so clearly myths.
And it's not that they were true or false. They're all true in the sense that we believe them.
Is that the role they serve is very much a mythologising role and as a consequence of that it became very, very difficult to then align right.
Those narratives, these mythological narratives, what Israel is supposed to mean to us with the political discourse that you would hear and with the
various multiplicity of events that you could be witness to and none of them would ever really meet.
In a way that was comfortable or agreeable, that the more I study this, the more time I spent in Israel, the more I talk about this.
The heart of the relationship became for me and made it so.
I think that says more about myself than it does about anything else.
But I know I'm not alone in this, that there is a very large portion of diaspora.
Again, remember the group and talking about Diaspora Jews for whom this is exactly the case for them, that the more they see Israel on the news,
the more they read about Israel,
the more uncomfortable they become about what Israel means to them and what kind of connection they should have with Israel.
Now, major Jewish establishment has tried to confront this through various ways, right.
The whole birthright type program is a big one. But there is something interesting about how these trips to Israel have an effect.
So, again, these interviews in California, these trips would really the few people, one of them, it would totally, totally change their perception.
And there is huge debates also about what should you do on these trips, right?
Can we organise enough? We are organising. Where are you going to go? Who are you going to see?
Can you you know, is women of the Wall appropriate? Are you going to go to settlement?
If you can go to settlement, you know, who do you talk to? Rabbis, human rights. Can we talk for hours?
Human rights. Does that mean other rabbis are against human rights? And it you know, it just gets more and more and more complicated.
But often the people go there, they'll come back. And the phrase, which I've heard a few times, not so much in these interviews,
but ever is, was you go to Israel and you would recharge your Jewish batteries.
Some are going there. It's like plugging in your iPhone.
And I use the iPhone example intentionally, which I'll come back in a minute.
And you become you're fully charged again.
You back you can go back home and, you know, you're you're ready to go for that, you know, and until I guess you need another another recharge.
Oh, that's very bizarre, right?
I mean, it's like it creates a country as if it's an amusement park, right.
Where you can go and you can separate yourself in a way that enables you to kind of suck up that which you need to make yourself feel whole.
Right. That there's a structural relation here where the meaning that you are taking from being there is crucial to who you think you are.
There's nothing. I'm not speaking at all about the facts on the ground or political orientation.
I don't really care about that for this immediate purpose.
What's interesting is this idea that you can go to this place and somehow by being there when you return home,
you are recharged, that your self becomes whole again in a way that it wasn't before you left to go to Israel.
And so that that's a very interesting dynamic, right?
I don't I'm not. And we all have these and, you know, these different ways going vacation can do it for some of us, right?
I can't marketing my essays. That's it. I need a break. And, you know, so term is over.
I'm going to turn off my iPhone. I'm not reading anything, any academic stuff.
And you come back and, you know, okay, maybe you've got energy and but this is different.
This isn't about taking time off. So you've got energy again so you can do your work.
This is about going there so you can feel better in yourself because something is missing.
And that's not maybe it's not just ideological.
If it's ideological at all, that's clearly ontological and more so,
it's phenomenological because it's about who you are in the structures of the world that you
find yourself in and how you understand yourself to interacting within those structures.
It's your construction of your identity in the world,
or it is what it means to be Jewish in the world today when that world involves and that we call and that we recognise as Israel,
that Israel carries a meaning in that relationship. That's without getting into too much jargon.
That's very clearly a kind of structural relationship that fits within a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis almost to the letter.
Right. That there is a structural aspect here that you are linking in and you're taking something
out of it that's giving you meaning that enables you to function in that same structure.
So I mentioned the iPhone. Why the iPhone? Well, these interviews, again, we should take pride in Israel.
Israel, why is everybody always giving Israel a bad time? And if you if you want to boycott Israel, fine.
Throw away your iPhone. I can't. I think I've heard that. I don't know.
It seems like I heard every interview, right, that what Israel provides, Israel gives it's great.
What medicine? iPhone irrigation.
Right. All the stuff that Israel, given the world is fantastic. Why doesn't anybody hear about this?
It's our job to kind of give this spiels. Everybody realises the wonderful products that make the world what it is.
And somehow we you know, and people missed that and the missing that they're getting a bad story.
Well, who cares, right?
Why does it why why does it matter that and I'm not saying this because I think it should or shouldn't care.
I'm just asking the question if if there's someone's debating about what Israel is doing, whether it is a good country or a bad country.
Okay. How are you going to do how you have. Argument. So.
Well, one fairly common example of how the argument functions is in regard to human rights violations.
Okay. So Israel's got one of the worst civil rights records, you know, out there.
And we can look at the U.N. for telling us this. And, you know, so and. Well, wait a minute.
Who are the countries that are making these accusations? You know, are they are they innocent parties?
Right. Let's let's do a let's do a comparison. The question I have is, well, who cares who's saying them?
It's easy enough to do an analysis and to figure out whether or not any of these claims have any merit.
And if they do, then you deal the claims on their own. You don't need to compare with what someone else is doing right.
I don't care if somebody else is doing something really bad. What I care about is this means what you know, as if I'm doing it right.
If I'm doing it, if I'm acting badly, it's my responsibility. If someone else is acting badly.
Okay, let's find someone. I'm not going to compare my behaviour to someone else.
You know, it's like you. Would you expect Harvey Weinstein to say, look, you know, I'm better than.
And then think of who would be worse than your, you know, your rogues list of, you know, your rogue's gallery, who's going to be worse.
And just because. President Trump. Right. There you go, Trump.
Okay, so the list we can start thinking of a list, right? That doesn't make one of them less worse in any meaningful sense.
Right. The comparison isn't very helpful, but somehow we feel the need to do this.
Why do we feel the need to do this? Well, I think it's emotional. I think it has to do with, again, that connection,
that recharging that somehow Israel features in the construction of Jewish identity today, at least for those who want it.
Right. And here I'm going to add a very important caveat.
Israel doesn't matter for many Jews, and I don't necessarily think it's my place or else's place to say it should matter.
Right. But for those who think or those who feel that Israel is important to them,
it's those constituencies that what I'm speaking about, I think makes makes the most sense for those who decide not to.
It doesn't disprove what I'm arguing. And what's interesting then is why why do they feel that Israel isn't important for their sense of Jewishness?
But for the moment, that's a constituency which I'm not I'm not talking about that much.
Okay. So what I'm trying to get at here is that meaning the meaning of Israel is central.
It's not what Israel does so much, although clearly that that plays a part in it.
It's the meaning that Israel provides. So what kind of meaning does Israel provide?
Well, in the end, in my book, Obligation and Exile, when the price is now considerably cheaper than was initially published.
So I think it's now maybe £20. If you get it direct in publisher, where can we find it?
You can will Amazon and the publisher best thing is probably buy directly from Edinburgh University Press.
I've heard that some of the yeah I think they're probably the best best place to get it.
The in the book I make the case that obligation is a way to think this through.
So why do I use the why obligation? Largely because I was trying to find a language with which to get to this meaning issue in a political way.
Right. That what interests me is the political relationship and the role of debate.
And that's not a language necessarily a phenomenology,
but obligation to me seem to more appropriate than the one word which otherwise exists in the literature, which is loyalty.
When I wrote this, there was very little, and that was doing the kind of work that I was doing on a subject that was a bit more but still not
a huge amount and obligation seemed appropriate because if you're going to have an obligation,
there also has to be there has to be the option or the choice to resist.
Right. Which is why when Michael Walzer writes by obligation in the sixties,
he's linking obligation with questions of civil disobedience and resistance, because to go close, go very close together.
You can't have one really thought. The other obligation requires that there is that option there.
And that's part of what gives obligation. Its normative or moral element to it is that there's always this element of resistance in the background,
if you will, whereas with loyalty, you don't have that. If you're not loyal, you're disloyal.
And that was not a claim I was prepared to make, you know, and that's why I think it's really a question of choice and as opposed to one of loyalty.
But the thing with obligation was, okay, first thing about an obligation, sort of loyalty.
What does that open up? What does that tell us?
Well, what I argue in the book is that it highlights the key areas of friction right when Israel arises and it tells us why those areas arises.
Friction, right. So one of them is security. One of them is and one of them is debate.
And the reason that obligation helps us to understand these as being pivotal moments is because there
there are central areas where there could be some kind of resistance that would really matter.
Right. It's not like whether or not you're going to have tea or coffee and, you know,
you're resisting the, I don't know, a path by being in the company of whatever.
It's that there's something about your connection to this place that becomes manifest through these choices.
And what I felt at the time was that obligation was a way in which we could have a conversation about those choices.
Are you obligated or not? And why? And what I was looking for wasn't some.
Much to say, there is an obligation.
It was rather to find a language with through which we could have a conversation with Israel that wasn't ideological or necessarily theological,
which I'm not skilled or capable really to have a conversation on.
But that would give you the room to actually discuss the politics of Israel and Jewish communities today.
And the idea of obligation seemed to do that because it could help us work through the significance of security and of meaning.
Now. With with with security.
The story here is a very complicated one, not because of the occupation or the wars,
but because of the story that Israel exists, provide security for the Jewish people.
What if it doesn't? I'm not saying it does or doesn't, but you have to allow for the possibility that it doesn't.
When there are threats that or when there are attacks that go on either in Israel and
you feel increasing in risk or if there are attacks in Jewish communities elsewhere,
and then that somehow that someone becomes connected to events in Israel.
Right. So if there.
So when I was doing the interviews for this book, one of the interviews was shortly after an anti-Semitic attack and not in Israel.
And I was the person I was interviewing.
It was initially very, very reluctant to speak with me. So why?
And the reason he was reluctant speak of name was because there's this this news story, right, that there is, you know, Jews being attacked.
And some of those linked to events in Israel was in Israel. That didn't matter.
And that event in another country. Right.
Different community, created this sense of insecurity in this individual.
Like I don't know if want to talk about Israel here right now because there's other events going on and maybe,
you know, there's only two maybe there's some sort of connection. I know who you are.
You know, there is some weird ish insecurity, security dynamic at play here because of what was going on that was related to events in Israel.
This person was feeling insecure because of an attack in another country against different people.
But it was the that attack was related to Israel in some way. If that's the case, then you have to be able to have the conversation.
What kind of security is Israel provide for us?
What is the narrative of security that Israel's providing for us?
Because it can't just be the narrative the political bias want us to believe in.
If it is, we all want to move there. Okay?
And then we have to deal with the security that accompanies nation state politics and international relations,
which is another conversation I think we that needs to we need to have.
So the security dynamic becomes very, very complicated once you look at the meaning of the story.
Right. That the Zionist security narrative is supposed to tell us the meaning of that
story becomes very important because there's going to be questions to it. If Israel it does Israel does.
The narrative of Israel mean that Israel provides increased security for the Jewish people?
And if there are and if it creates new risks, does that then that doesn't.
If it creates new risks, that does not then mean that Israel's responsible for them.
But it does change the dynamic of the narrative. Right. It it adds a layer of complexity.
So how do you have that conversation without getting into the hysterics?
As David Swirsky mentioned in the interviews for the book, when it comes to Israel,
we tend to get hysterical in Jewish community, trying to find a language that could get us away from hysterics.
So that's one of the complications, right? If you're going to is the security and the insecurity and the sick and how the narratives of
Zionism and of what Israel means for us play into that into that that that that security story.
The second the second element, which I want to just mean the second I want to focus on meaning itself and what kind of meaning do we do?
Does Israel offer? Is a question I take up in a forthcoming article that will be out in the Journal of International Political Theory,
I believe in February, something in a few months anyways and maybe earlier.
And what I argue in that piece is that the meaning that Israel provides is one of authority.
And this gets back to the recharging, the batteries that the meaning that Israel provides is a kind of authority that
is difficult to find elsewhere in Israel is a really easy place to find it.
Right? The historical narratives, its biblical history, it's, you know, you've got everything kind of bundled up in one place.
You can just walk around and Jewish history just seeps in and you know, and you know that's or recharging of batteries and it's really easy.
It's really, really easy for Israel to do that because there's so much history there that's that is very important for the Jewish people.
Right. They're saying about the place itself that gives it a lend that that gives it this aura of historical authority for who we are.
It's a grounding of some kind. And I think that in a world where it's otherwise very hard to find a kind of certainty,
that kind of grounding, this is a kind of modern, post-modern conundrum, if you will.
Israel builds in the book, fills in that void. Now, what?
What does that mean? It means that whatever we want Israel to be, it's never going to live up to it.
And that doesn't matter what your J Street or AIPAC, right?
It will never live up to what you want it to be because it's trying to provide some kind of
authoritative meaning for who you are in a world where you're not quite sure where you sit.
Which gets us again to hermeneutic phenomenology.
Right? This being in the world, right? This worldliness this and what what and the meaning that we find in this world, how are we able to function?
That's what we're looking for in this world.
And how is this in constant interactions between ourselves and the various structures in the world that we're encountering?
Right. And Israel provides such an easy place to find that kind of grounding.
You don't have to go there. All right. It helps, but you don't have to go there.
Right. You know, you we talk about all the time, whether it's in whether it's religiously.
Right. The all times it comes up into law or whether it's the food, which is becoming a really big deal.
I was in documentary now in search of Israeli cuisine, which kind of just emphasises a lot of this, right,
where you can just all the Jewish people, all the vibrancy and the wealth and the creativity becomes, you know, concentrate in one place.
You can create this fantastic mélange that you otherwise would not be able experience anywhere else.
And yeah, it's a vibrant, it's creative and it's wonderful.
It's and it's something which you wouldn't necessarily find anywhere else except now it's being exported as a, as a kind of a culinary good.
And that that place provides this, this meaning.
It provides that kind of certainty, which I think is otherwise in high demand and short supply.
Just to wrap this up, what does this what am I trying to get at here?
Why is this important? Well, what I think matters is that we we need to be taking a much more theoretical or
philosophical approach to the role that Israel functions for dance for Jewry.
This is not just sociological and it's not just empirical. Right.
And it and it's not. And even though I think yeah, it's not just sociological and it's not just empirical and of course it's historical,
but there's another dimension to the contemporary dynamic of it, which we're missing.
Right. When I was doing this research, when I know, sorry, when I do my PhD, I was looking at Zionism, was looking then at doing postdocs.
There was nobody, nobody would fund contemporary research that dealt with Israel, Zionism.
They just wouldn't touch it because it's too controversial.
And this is around the time of campus watch on that thing when that was starting and you had professors being vilified,
whether they're too critical of Israel to support of Israel. Nobody wanted to go near anything contemporary.
There was a funding for his for historical studies at the time. I don't know what the case is now.
I'm not a historian, but I suspect it's still tough. But at the time, contemporary, forget it.
And I think that part of the issue here is we become very hung up on trying to make the case for who did what to whom,
as opposed to what meanings are being produced here, and how are those meanings then deployed in particular types of debates or discussions?
Because for most of us, Dyson or Jews, I'm speaking as one who don't live in Israel.
It's those debates and those discussions that we connect with Israel the most, right?
This congregation where I interviewed a little over 50 people, a handful of them had actually been to Israel, maybe ten.
I don't I think it was actually less many of them wanted to go there.
Some of them had relatives or friends had gone there, but very few had actually gone majority.
But but they felt that Israel really mattered to them. Right. Most of us don't go right.
For all sorts of reasons. Time, money, know you name it.
Right. Maybe you're worried about safety. All sorts of reasons.
People don't go. Still mean. But Israel still matters. Well, how do you engage with that dynamic of Israel?
That's not about who did what to whom. That's a sideshow, right?
The debates about who did what to whom. Well, you're trying to make out who is the greater victim.
Which is a very unhealthy conversation to have. That's the sideshow.
The real story is about the type of meaning that Israel is providing in contemporary debate and contemporary discourse in Jewish communities.
That's a conversation we're not having. I think we're not having it because it raises uncomfortable questions about who we are, what we want.
Right. Idealisation narratives, so and so forth.
And also because ironically, for a tradition that basically gave hermeneutics to the world.
Right. We don't seem to be doing this kind of analysis ourselves in a reflexive manner where
we're looking at the hermeneutic role that Israel plays for us as it has produced today.
Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Laura.