A Babylon state of mind

Lio: Who are the Jews? Am I a Jew? Are you a Jew? Is everyone a Jew? There's always something under the surface. If a person fell and died, they would not mind him, but if a brick fell, they would sit and weep and say, when will another come up in its stead? We're gonna go back to Babylon. You can argue with the mitzvah of gravity as much as you want, but you gotta keep it every day. Why is it so hard to talk about this topic? If something is out of balance, what do I do?

Seth: The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was. All things are mortal, but the Jew remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Lio: Okay, listen, enough of that. This is a podcast, and we're not going to try to find; we’re going to find the solution to antisemitism. Okay, we're going to stop that right here, right now. From this stinking basement, when we get to the bottom of this, we're gonna read from this mystery book, which you're not gonna find out about until the end of the series. And we're gonna entertain every perspective. We're not gonna say, oh, you can't say this, you can't say that. No, we're gonna say everything because if we're not gonna be able to talk about it, we're not gonna be able to solve it. We're gonna really grab you and we're gonna squeeze until we get something, right? Either a bowel movement or a solution. We want to know what happened 3,500 years ago in Babylon that started this whole shug, and we want to finish it here in 2020. That’s it. Why is it so hard to talk about this topic? Ask a Brazilian to talk about Brazilians—you can have a great conversation. Ask a Jew to talk about the Jews and why the world hates the Jews, and it's like, oh my god, we—

Seth: Have to sit down and kind of get to the whole archetype of what the Jew is, like why he's always so—he needs to tell you the pre to the introduction—

Lio: To the thing.

Seth: Before he can even tell you.

Lio: No, because I feel like with Jewish people, and again, I'm not trying to make generalizations, I'm just saying it feels like—

Seth: I'm not trying to make a generalization, but for the Jews in—

Lio: General, for Jews, there's a sense that there's always a second voice, a second layer. Things are not what they seem. And I say it in the best possible way. There's always something under the surface. There's always—you're having a meal and you're waiting for that knock on the door, right? There's always something lurking, as if it doesn't let you keep quiet. Like I remember Cohen Brothers’ “A Serious Man,” remember?

Seth: Yeah.

Lio: It's like there's always a storm brewing somewhere.

Seth: I love how the film—

Lio: Ends. The film ends, not in the resolution, but in the worst possible way.

Seth: How does it end? I don't remember.

Lio: He thought he solved all his problems, but then he's standing outside, and this storm has come in, and he's debating what to do. It's always like a debate. And I think that's one of the things that makes this Jewish life so great, so rich. There's always more than one side. And yet, with this issue, I find that we're not so ready to admit or to even—

Seth: Ask, is there another side?

Lio: So—

Seth: Hold on, there's one thing that we keep in our off-the-air conversations. We have this part of our story that is like a fairy tale. And we have to take that seriously and figure out a way to be intelligent modern people and wrap around—

Lio: The fact, let’s say you and I, we’re concerned citizens, right? We're not scientists. I'm not a computer scientist. You're not a historian. We're not biologists. I didn't study biology. But we have our eyes in our heads and we want to look at what's going on. We want to look at all the facts, all the details we have around us to try to make out some pattern, right? That's how we learn about nature. We look for patterns, we're programmed for that, our brains are looking for it constantly. So we're going to look everywhere. I'm not going to stop and say the pattern ends here. It's like when scientists were looking at DNA in the beginning, they identified like 10% of it, and the rest they called garbage DNA. Can you imagine the audacity to call it garbage?

Seth: So, what we have today among Jews is like, these ones say that part is garbage, these ones say that part is garbage. Until, if you took all the garbage parts, the whole thing would be garbage, or if you took the parts that weren't garbage, you'd have the whole thing. But we have to take equally all the things we, as modern people, see, and at the same time, these people who created all the amazing things Jews created also come from these stories. Like there were two people in a garden with a talking snake. It's like, yeah. Wait, what?

Lio: Yeah. Right? Which is why today, especially today, well, just to let everyone, welcome to The Jew Function—

Seth: Episode—

Lio: Three, the only place where we're having this conversation. We're trying to look in the picture behind the picture. What is the root of antisemitism? What is the function of the Jewish people in the world? Who are the Jews? Am I a Jew? Are you a Jew? Is everyone a Jew? And also, what is the solution for this mounting hate and animosity towards Jews? In episode one, we introduced the whole thing. We're reading from a mystery book, which we'll reveal only at the end of the series. And in episode two, we read interesting things that antisemites, like renowned—

Seth: Antisemitic. World famous, antisemitic—

Lio: World famous, like if there was a Hall of Fame, we got the top players there, and we read some interesting things they left for us. Suddenly, this antisemite writes what he does like about the Jews. So it was very interesting, compliments I never heard from anyone. Check out episode two for that. But the point is, there's something we're not seeing, or we don't want to hear, we don't want to see. I feel it myself. I came to America, I wanted to just be like everyone from Israel, right? Seth came to New York from New Jersey. I came from Israel. We just wanted to be like regular people, making our way through the world, succeeding, doing what everyone does. But more and more, life pushed me and you too into questioning this whole thing. It's like it doesn’t let us just be like everyone else. And I think that's something we're trying to explore. What is that thing that doesn't let us be? And to do that, we're looking today. We promised actually in episode two, but today we're going back to Babylon. If you look at the Jewish texts, it goes back 5,000 years, but we're not talking about the beginning of that.

Seth: Wasn't it weird when you discovered that the Jewish people came from, well, modern-day Iraq?

Lio: I thought that was so—

Seth: Strange. For some reason, I had a thing for Iraqi food, so I actually find it interesting.

Lio: But I never thought—I mean, to me—

Seth: Jew was—

Seth: Jews. Yeah, it was like New York City or Jerusalem. But to think the whole thing originated in modern-day Iraq, that was pretty—

Lio: No, it's phenomenal. And not only that, all the stories that were written—like when as a child in school, you read the Bible, right? That's what you have. And the teachers are always uncomfortable—is this a history lesson? No, no, it's the Bible. Is this a fairy tale? No, no, it's the Bible. Is there going to be a test? You just have to know the general story. Why are we studying? Because it's the Bible. And I think there's something phenomenal about this book, which the whole world reads religiously, I might say. I think we don't really understand what's going on there.

Seth: That—

Lio: Right, I think it's not such a great historic document, a lot of inaccuracies, with the air quotations. And also, as far as fairy tales go, we have Harry Potter, Lion King, we have much better stories. So if it's not one or the other, what is it then? What is it again trying to tell us? Maybe there's another layer there as well, like everything Jewish. So, today we're going to read about Babylon. We're going to read about this character—

Seth: Abraham. From our mystery book.

Lio: From our mystery book, which relies on citations from Jewish sages, wise people who are widely recognized today, like Maimonides. We're going to read from the book and try to see if we can extract that. Don't find yourself be like, oh my God, they read Sunday school over again. No. It's none of that. We're trying to find a principle. A principle. Not the word of God or history, a principle. Let's start. Let's go to Babylon.

Seth: Babylon, a kingdom at the heart of the dynamic Mesopotamian civilization, was a melting pot, an ideal substrate on which the myriad belief systems and teachings grew and flourished. The Babylonians did not have a uniform belief system; they were pluralistic in that sense. Abraham, the son of a statue builder and spiritual leader, was born in Haran, one of the major cities in the Babylonian Empire. Sef Hay describes the life of the Babylonians at the time, how they worshipped, and the high position of Abraham's family within the spiritual landscape. Quote: All the people of the land made each his own god, gods of wood and stone. They worshipped them, and they became gods to them. That's Abraham, right? In those days, the king and all his servants, and Terach, Abraham's father, and his entire household were the first among the worshippers of wood and stone. Terach would worship them and bow to them, and so did the whole of that generation. But Terach's son Abraham, who then still went by the name Abram, possessed a unique trait that differentiated him from the rest. He was unusually perceptive, with a zeal for truth. Abraham was also a caring person who noticed that his country folk were becoming increasingly unhappy. When he reflected on his observation, he found that the cause of their unhappiness was their growing egoism. They were becoming increasingly alienated from each other. Within a relatively short period of time, the Babylonians had gone from a prevailing sense of kinship, which the book of Genesis describes as being "of one language and of one speech," into vanity and alienation. From being simple folk, happy with their lot, the Babylonians became greedy and self-centered, saying, "Come, let us build a city with a tower up to the heaven, and let us make a name." In addition to acknowledging his people's egoism, Abraham realized that life is governed not by egoism, but by union and harmony. He discovered that there's a single force that manifests in two opposite ways: egoism and altruism, giving and receiving. The interaction between the two forces is what creates all of reality.

Lio: That makes sense, right? Everybody knows, yin and yang, hot and cold, up and down, pressure, vacuum. Sounds about right, right?

Seth: Yeah, I'm an intelligent person. I'm living in the fertile crescent, and I start to figure out life a little.

Lio: Right. Positive and negative. It's everywhere, from the atom all the way up to societies, men and women. We see it in nature everywhere. It's clear. Also, when you were reading, it sounded like you were talking about life today in New York. We're living here, everything is cool, we're worshipping our gods of wood and stone. Come, let us build a tower.

Seth: Let's build a—

Lio: Tower. You know, then they bomb it, we build another tower. People are becoming increasingly unhappy. That's very much today. I look around and see people are unhappy because of growing egoism. It's actually interesting, like a parallel to today. I don't know if people remember that sense of kinship. I'll just say a word on that because I was here in 9/11, as were you. For a moment in time after 9/11, there was a little sense of kinship, even in a city like New York. Right, there was a moment in—

Seth: Babylon.

Lio: Yeah, three weeks. But nevertheless, in Babylon with three million people, and in New York with eight million people—you know, holding the door for one another, taking interest in the other person. It was traumatic, but—

Seth: I literally thought that was the turning point. Like, I literally thought, everyone's gonna get it, and then I turned on the TV, and Rudy Giuliani was like, "Everybody's gotta go shopping."

Seth: I was like, oh, I really thought everyone was gonna get it now.

Lio: Alright, so let's continue exactly about that.

Seth: Human self-centeredness is a manifestation of the negative force, the force of reception, egoism. In Abraham's time, that force intensified in Babylon to the point where it dominated the positive force, the force of giving, altruism. As a result, Babylonian society began to disintegrate as the alienation among its people increased and they grew further apart. That was the reason for the vanity that had them build the tower, but more importantly, that was the reason for their unhappiness. Self-centeredness had driven them apart.

Lio: Okay, so basically saying the sense of self, that I'm in the center of everything. To a degree, it's good, but it feels like it's gotten out of hand back then and even today. I think almost everyone feels that there's a little bit, you know, we kind of went a little overboard with that. Maybe out of our control, but it feels like this is the thing that kind of pushes us apart, because if my interests and your interests collide, then something's got to give. Right? And against that, he says, well, there's also another force, a force like a giving force, altruism. Maybe a positive force, maybe love. I don't know. We'll see. So that's, I think, that's already the setup. It feels like, and I think he's talking about it later, that going after that self-centered force eventually leads to cancer, right? If it's all for myself, like this piece inside a body that just wants and wants and wants at the expense of everything else, you know, we see the result of that in the human body.

Seth: Human society.

Lio: Well, I imagine it's the same in human society. I'm just making a little leap of faith here.

Seth: Abraham called his newly discovered uniform root force of nature by the name God. Oh gosh, here we go.

Lio: Here we go.

Seth: Or Bohre. It's a Hebrew word. Bohre means creator. From the word bo. Come. And re. See. So this word bo means come and see.

Lio: Okay. Come and see. Interesting. Since we...

Seth: ...come and see for ourselves how this force works. In Hebrew, identicalness of meaning is reflected in the fact that the words God and nature have the same numerical value. In other words, they are synonyms and interchangeable. The great twentieth-century Kabbalist and thinker Rav Leib Halevi Ashlag, who predicted the approaching calamity of the Holocaust, placed a strong emphasis on this point in his essay The Peace. According to Ashlag, it is best for us to accept that Hate, the Hebrew word for...

Lio: ...nature,

Seth: ...has the same numerical value as Elohim, God. 86. Then he continues, then I'll be able to call the laws of God's nature's commandments or vice versa, for they are one and the same.

Lio: I'd buy into that. So God, nature, the same force.

Seth: At some point, it's called God, but he's saying you can call it the same thing as the...

Lio: Same. You can argue with the mitzvah of gravity as much as you want, but you gotta keep it every day. Or you've got to break something. So, okay, that's a good... I, you know, I'll buy that for now. Let's go.

Seth: Okay. Renowned twelfth-century scholar Maimonides describes in his momentous composition Mishneh Torah, of Abraham's desperate search for answers. Ever since this firm one was weaned, he began to wonder. He began to ponder day and night. Sounds like me. And he began to wonder how it was possible for this wheel to always turn without a driver, who is turning it, for it cannot turn itself, and he had neither a teacher nor a tutor. Instead, he was wedged in Ur of the Chaldeans. That's the name of the city in Babylon. He was in Ur. Among illiterate idol worshippers. With his mother and his father, and all the people worshipping stars, and he was worshipping with them.

Lio: So, in other words, here we are among all the people going about their business, you know, shopping, whatever, taking care of business. And now doing it at the expense of everyone else. It's like you live in a family and suddenly one day you're like, Hey, mom, can I get some dinner? Yeah, that'll be ten bucks. Like, what do you mean? I have nine bucks. All right, you're gonna get a little less steak today. Go work. Go work, right? That's the kind of shift that happened. I mean, resources are the same. Just suddenly, the attitude changed.

Seth: And then just for example, today, there's plenty of food to feed the entire...

Lio: ...planet. There...

Seth: ...is plenty of energy to power everything, but it's an issue of this attitude that prevents all of the race, everything.

Lio: And then Maimonides says that Abraham attained the path of truth with his own correct wisdom and knew that there is one God or nature who leads. And that He has created everything, and that in all that there is, there is no other God, no other nature but Him. So, again, just to move away from the religious side of things, because if you could see us, you could tell that we're not really into the whole, you know...

Seth: ...religion.

Lio: Yeah, as you know. No, if you close your eyes and you think about a religious person or religious Jew, there's a picture. And we're trying here to, again, to extract a principle. So the principle that I get is there's a force, there's one force, and that force is where these two other forces get united, get balanced, get equalized, get harmonized. All right, so that's a problem. We're lacking this balance, right? We have too much of this one side, we're lacking the balance. Okay. What does this, what does Rabbi Eliezer say in the book, Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer?

Seth: Tell me, what does it say?

Lio: I read it. Okay, sure. So, Nimrod. Nimrod, king of Babylon, which is, by the way, interesting. Nimrod is not a real character. Again, it's an example of it. There's no person like that. It's kind of a conflated character made of different qualities. But he speaks about something, right? He said to his people, Let us build a great city and dwell in it, lest we are scattered across the earth, and let us build a great tower within it, rising toward the heaven, and let us make us a great name in the land. So that's basically the thing. Everybody wants to be the best. I want to be better than, right? And then more importantly, more important than their vanity, the commentary offers a glimpse into the Babylonians' alienation from each other by saying they built it high and I love this part. It's so terrible, but it's so true. If a person fell and died, they would not mind him. But if a brick fell, they would sit and weep and say, When will another come up in its stead? This is such a great... I sometimes feel like that, you know, walking around in New York. It's like if a person on the street falls down I'm not saying everybody's a terrible person. There's people...

Seth: ...you see, it's the even the attitude towards the homeless now changes like they're invisible almost. Like people just walk by.

Lio: Right. So if a person falls down on the street, uh whatever. But if someone drops an iPhone, oh my god, there's like sixty people jumping on it.

Seth: Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer continues to describe Abraham's observations of people's animosity towards each other. Abraham, son of Terach, went by and saw them building the city and the tower. He tried to speak to them and tell them about the need to connect in order to balance their self-centeredness, but they loathed his words, says the book. Yet when they wished to speak each other's language, as before, when there was still one language, they did not know each other's language. What did they do? asks the book. They each took his sword and fought one another to death. Indeed, concludes the book, and describes the inevitable bloody outcome. Half the world died there by the sword. You know, looking at the impeachment thing that's going on today. It's like they're not even the same language. It's like one side. Like if you watched the left's news, you would think the whole scene in the world is one way. And if you watch the right's news, you would think it's totally the other way. It's like you can see if you...

Lio: ...do it as an experiment,

Seth: it's as if...

Lio: ...and not just there, but and by the way, the same thing, you know, you ask. To do something, and you get, you know, three answers. We joke about it, but it's kind of like that's the kind of feeling that you get. We're so...

Seth: ...blocked from feeling the other person. Seeing this, Abraham could not stay aloof. He tried as hard as he could to tell the Babylonians what was setting them up against each other. The 18th-century book Kol describes Abraham's efforts and the hostility he suffered for it in return. Quote, We must not think that Abraham was as today's rabbis, Orthodox rabbis, sitting at home and the followers would come to them. Instead, he would go outside and he would call out loud that there's one Creator in the world. To the people, he seemed as though he were insane, and children and grown-ups would hurl stones at him. Yet Abraham did not mind any of it and kept on calling.

Lio: This is a book from the 18th century. This is not some weirdo living. And we know it wasn't easy to publish books. It's still not that easy. People really weighed their words and here are you have people commenting on this story not necessarily as a historically accurate document and not necessarily as the Word of God document, but really as a commentary on the relationship between people. I found it very interesting. And then there's a quote here by a writer Thomas Cahill, who talks about Abraham's tenacity in speaking his truth from the book The Gifts of the Jews. Okay, so he talks about exactly what Abraham was trying to do. Let's read it.

Seth: If we had lived in the second millennium B.C., the millennium of Abraham, and could have canvassed all the nations of the earth, what would they have said of Abraham's journey? In most of Africa and Europe, they would have laughed at Abraham's madness and pointed to the heavens where the life of earth had been plotted from all eternity. Man cannot escape his fate. Makes sense. The Egyptians would have shaken their heads in disbelief. The early Greeks might have told Abraham the story of Prometheus. Do not overreach, they would advise. Come to resignation. Come to resignation. In India, he would be told that time is black, irrational, and merciless. Do not set yourself the task of accomplishing something in time, which is only the dominion of suffering. On every continent, in every society, Abraham would have been given the same advice that wise men as diverse as Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Siddhartha would one day give their followers: Do not journey, but sit, compose yourself by the river of life, meditate on its ceaseless and meaningless flow.

Lio: And I'm adding, maybe go shopping. Right?

Seth: No, they would not have said go shopping.

Lio: They would not have said go shopping. But that's a...

Seth: ...really, really a difference in the methods. You know, did you read also an Israeli guy, Sapiens, the book Sapiens?

Lio: Yeah, you're the second guy asking me about Yuval Harari, yeah. So talk about him in the other podcast.

Seth: What was so interesting, which other podcast? You have another podcast? No, no, no you didn't tell me.

Lio: I was interviewed on Ho Soul. Yeah, I would have told you. Hut Soul, it's another podcast.

Seth: Johnny Gold,

Lio: out of Boston. Shout out.

Seth: What I found so fascinating, you know, you think, okay, so humans, we came from something that came before us, and that came from something before them. But you keep seeing in the development of nature that there comes a split. And then it keeps going and going, and then like a split, like at any branch or in your lungs or in anything, there’s like this big stem and then a split. And here something splits, like there's one group that's saying, sit, calm yourself down, calm the thoughts...

Lio: ...just give in to...

Seth: ...the flow. This is how things are. And Abraham has this other approach. You would almost call it like a, I don't know, engineering that well, but is it a resistor? What is it called? A capacitor? It's like...

Lio: ...going up against...

Seth: ...this.

Lio: Yeah, yeah. A friend of mine from Israel, he recalls the story that when he was growing up, his mother would tell him, Listen, life is full of compromises, so you just have to learn how to compromise. And he's like, If that, I'm going to be a lawyer. No compromise. But yes, it's definitely a difference in thought. And it but it also again, I'm looking for clues. To me, it's a clue about being active. About really kind of looking for what's really underneath everything, not just accepting, okay, there's egoism. Okay, it's egoism. I just have to be egoistic until we eat ourselves and the whole thing is over. No, maybe there's something else. You know, we're so proud about being human, about having some sense of free choice, but are we really making free choices? So here's this guy, Abraham, who just everybody's going left, he's going right, everybody’s building a tower. I’m not going to build a tower. Someone sent me the other day the clip from Alan Watts, the nonconformist. You remember that clip? You know, all of you are playing a game, and there's a few of us who are the non-joiners. I’m going to sit on the little hut on the mountain, and I’m going to look at you again. I not going to judge your game, but I’m going to, you know, remind you it’s a game. So, kind of like, I think, in a way, that's a quality that's in each one of us to say, whoa, I'm not playing that game. So, Abraham is the one who's finally trying to not play the game. and bring a new idea into the mix. And this balances harmony. And I'm intrigued. I'm actually I'm wondering out loud with you here if today with all the million Jewish opinions, there's even there's a way for us, there's a chance to rediscover that idea, that original idea. Which idea are you talking about? Well, we'll find out next week.

Seth: Which idea are you hoping that we're the...

Lio: ...idea at the heart of our nation? What is Israel? What is a Jew? What is that? That thing that Abraham founded?

Seth: Who were these people from all these different tribes and all these different clans? He...

Seth: ...brought them together, right,

Seth: with some idea. And it somehow diverges from all of these other...

Seth: ...cultures...

Seth: ...and other...

Seth: ...ideas. There's...

Seth: ...something, there's one thing that different people come together and I guess agree to or something...

Lio: ...enough to create a nation. When is that happening? Rarely. So if we can find it, and maybe there's a chance to unite around it. Maybe we can find this what that thing is and maybe maybe all the Jews can kind of get together around that instead of all the other million opinions we have. Maybe.

Seth: Okay, so just to recap what I felt what I felt happen here, okay, so first, you know, two pages ago or one page ago, we were introduced to two forces. Same as the Eastern, all the Eastern methods, same as there's two forces, right? You got the day and the night, you got the yin and the yang, and then somehow, then something diverts, though.

Lio: Yeah, which was the fact that for us, there's only one force in our existence. The fact that there are two forces in reality, yes, but in us, people, in society, between us, inside of us, only the one force is working—the egoism. And Abraham was the guy who said, wait, if egoism goes up, you have to increase the other one as well to balance it out. Let's see what Maimonides tells us about Abraham continuing to do this, because I think this is where it gets interesting.

Seth: "He began to call out to the whole world. He called out, wandering from town to town and from kingdom to kingdom, until he arrived at the land of Canaan. When the people in the places where he had wandered gathered around him and asked him about his words, he taught everyone until he brought them to the path of truth. Finally, thousands and tens of thousands assembled around him, and they are the people of the house of Abraham. There's more to read, but this is already something to digest: that he wandered around and brought people together from different tribes and different clans who became the house of Abraham. He planted this tenet in their hearts, composed books about it, and taught his son Isaac. And Isaac sat and taught and warned and informed Jacob and appointed him a teacher to sit and teach. Jacob taught all his sons, separated Levi, and appointed him to lead to guarantee the teachings would continue through the ages. Jacob commanded his sons not to stop appointing leaders from among the sons of Levi, so the knowledge would not be forgotten. The lineage continued and expanded in the children of Jacob and those accompanying them. The astounding result of Abraham's effort was the birth of a nation that knew the deepest laws of life, or in the words of Maimonides, a nation that knows the Lord was made in the world."

Lio: Okay, again, Lord equals nature. Okay, I think this next paragraph is the one. This is the whole thing here. Indeed,

Seth: Israel is not really a name of a people. In Hebrew, the word Israel. It's a combination of two words: Yashar, straight, and El, God. In other words, Israel designates a mindset of wanting to discover the root, the force of life. It is a desire to attain or perceive the Creator. Rabbi Meir Ben Gab said about it, "In the meaning of the name Israel, there is also Yashar El." Likewise, the great Ram wrote succinctly, "Israel, it's Yashar El." Put differently, more than a name, Israel designates a state of being, the direction of the desire that drove Abraham to his discoveries.

Lio: How could we have missed that? I mean, Israel, I was born in Israel. Israel has been around for 70 years. How come, you know, all I was told is this story in the Bible: Jacob fought the angel, Sa'el, like he fought with the creator, which, you know, is also interesting. I'm sure there's some good meaning to that. That simple straight to the Creator, straight to that one force in nature. Again, we're not interested in some religious imagery, so if you have those, please stop it.

Seth: Going disclaimer like beginning, middle, and end of this podcast. Okay, exactly.

Lio: Listen, this is chapter one through three. But really, the fact that there is such a succinct explanation to that name that we've all been like, oh, Israel, Israel, the State of Israel. When you say the state of Israel, nobody thinks about these wars. They think about this little Mediterranean country that kind of disturbs the status quo. That today, if you ask some people, it practices apartheid, whatever. But nobody says, oh, it's a place founded on, you know, by a people that came to be because they had a different core.

Seth: When you think of Jews, you don't think that this is a nation found from different clans and different tribes that were united. I think I don't remember what he says, on some tenet of the nation of an idea based on this connection above their differences. When you think of Jew today, it's like, you know, Bernie Madoff, Mark Zuckerberg, Albert Einstein. You don't think at all of a united group of different people who, yeah, I mean, nothing at all of that.

Lio: I want to keep going, but I think we're running out of time in this one. I wanted to get to the actual hypothesis at the heart of this book, and we're still in chapter one, but it's a loaded chapter, so actually, I feel okay letting it hang for another episode. You know, I want to hear what people think about it. I want to hear, you know, if you felt at one point like Abraham in your life, worshipping the idols like everyone, then at one point waking up, like, what is going on here, right? What's happening here? Why am I doing what I'm doing? There's got to be something else, got to be something more. And then suddenly this eruption of egoism around you, you see all of that and be like something is out of balance, what do I do? If you felt like that, we want to hear about it; if you feel like maybe there's something that we completely missed about who we are as Jews, Israelis, Israelites, all that. And again, we're not interested in the classical narrative of the Passover Haggadah. We want to, just based on this, these basic principles. I don't know, I'm still reeling from that. So we have to close this one. This is, you know, The Jew Function. Follow us at The Jew Fun on Twitter and Facebook. Check out YouTube for some hard-hitting conversations and interesting playlists. Check out for an explanation to antisemitism and the solution to antisemitism, perhaps based on network science and big data.

Seth: And for a succinct and short walk through our whole history and into how we make a real positive connection through this thing and make a better life, check out "Antidote to Antisemitism."

Lio: Yeah, Seth's book. We're gonna, yeah, if you stick around long enough, Seth will open up some gems from the book. Come back next week or just wait for the whole thing to be happening. Then you can just binge listen to the whole thing. We don't care. As long as you listen and you participate in the conversation.

Seth: Thank you. Next time, everyone. See you next time. Shalom.