And what came before THAT?!

Lio: Just have this under network, that sounds great. The lamb was eaten by the cat. The cat was beaten by the dog. The dog was beaten by a stick. The stick was burned by the fire. The fire was consumed by the water. The water drunk by the bull. The bull was, it goes all the way up to the angel of death. Is that too much? Is that complicated? Is your head spinning? Yeah.

Seth: It's complicated. It's intriguing. I want to know what they were doing that was against unity. The Jews saw them all, beat them all. And he is now what he always was. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Lio: Okay, listen, listen, enough of that sh. 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 really 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. You know, we're gonna really grab you in the kish and we’re gonna squeeze until we get something, right? And either a bowel movement or a freaking solution. We wanna know what happened, what happened 3,500 years ago in Babylon that started this whole sug, and we want to finish it here in 2020.

Speaker 5: Seth. How are you? It's been so long. I feel like we haven't done this in like forever. Phil I've been isolated in Israel too long. I'm starting to smell of falafel. It's been months. You know how long it's been? And my computer doesn't—you know, I don't have my drives with me, so they don't do the auto backup. So it tells me, "You haven't backed up." That counts the days. "Yeah, you haven't backed up in 103 days." I'm like, really? 103 days? That's a long time, yeah.

Seth: I haven't backed up in like 236, but anyway, that means you haven't been back in the States.

Lio: It means I haven't been back in the States.

Seth: It's the—you know, the world is definitely changing. There's been so many phases through the virus. You know, first it was like an adventure, and then it was like, okay, we're doing this thing, and now it's like this total just confusion, you know. Everybody's telling we're open. Everybody's; we're opening, we're not opening. The kids are going to school, we're not going to work. Who's going to work? Is anyone, you know, what's happening? It's like a whole confusion state now. And I heard about a new show actually that just came out. Kind of like The Man in the High Tower or the—

Lio: Is this The Man in the High—don't you mean The Man in the High Castle?

Seth: Castle, yeah, I think so. So there's another show that just came out, takes place with a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey. It's called The Plot Against America. And it's what if Roosevelt didn't win. I think Lindbergh was the guy who won. And, you know, and our friend Henry Ford, we spoke about him. He becomes, I think, the Secretary of the Interior. Maybe he's going to become Secretary of the Interior. All of a sudden, it's very different, right? Isn't against Germany, doesn't fight a war. Like, that's how he wins against Roosevelt. Now, this is just from what I got from Wikipedia. I just heard about the show, but it's like, we won't go to war. You know, vote for Lindbergh, we won't go to war.

Lio: And then what happens?

Seth: There's no war against the Nazis. I don't know. I didn't watch the show.

Lio: But

Seth: this is all coming now. Why am I bringing it up? Because we were talking about this confusing time, and then I just heard about this show today, actually. And we're about to get back into our book here. It just feels like everything somehow there's a thread through all these different pieces, and I feel like we're gonna somehow it's gonna all start getting—

Lio: Cinched up. Is the thread it's not going to happen to us? Is that the thread?

Seth: Well, I mean, it only happened every other time throughout history. Why it's not going to happen here, though? People are spending more time at home, so it will be— it'll be tougher to rally the brown sh.

Lio: No, no, no.

Seth: There was a terrible situation over the weekend where a police officer killed a guy in the streets in Minneapolis or something like that. He put his knee on the guy's neck, white cop, black guy. I saw today that there was—it looked like hundreds of people in the streets throwing rocks, smashing cops' windows.

Lio: So you're saying hundreds of people. So you're saying it's easy, it's easy to organize against. In a second.

Seth: This was also Memorial Day weekend last weekend, and there were thousands of people on the beach, thousands of people at pool parties. You know, you could see pictures of it in every news outlet here. So, in a day. It's over, and you can get everyone to back out in the street just like that. Not everyone, of course. You know, they're not going to pour out of the nursing homes, but—

Lio: So young people for sure shouldn't get too comfortable with what you're saying. Oh, I'm not making any conclusions. You're not packing up. You're not making any conclusions. I'm just saying.

Seth: No, no, no, I'm just, you know, do you know the theory, the old frog in the pot? The temperature just slowly gets warmer and warmer, and the frog doesn't realize—

Lio: It Yeah, it's a classic.

Seth: We'll be fine, Sp.

Lio: We'll be fine. Yes. So if you're listening. You're doing fine. You don't have to do anything. Don't pack. Don't panic. Just continue doing what you're doing. It's all gonna work out by itself as it has every

Seth: every, you know, every generation

Lio: since the fall of the last temple.

Seth: Let's say, because I'm sure the people who are listening to this are intelligent. Let's just remember that every single day white people and black people kill each other and black people kill black people and white people kill white people in America and probably every other country. There's lots of terrible murders every day. Also, when we start to see that the news is showing a certain image to us, you know, actually in my news feed today on Google, I had three white-black stories literally said, you know, "Woman calls cop on black man," yeah.

Speaker 5: You know, what

Seth: "cop kills black man," you know, and there were three of them actually today on my newsfeed. So when you see that, somebody somewhere decided that that's what—you know, it's time to sow seeds of strife. No, that doesn't happen just by chance. Like, that's the story they decided to tell today just for no reason.

Lio: Well, again, it's also in the air. I think. If we've learned anything from this exploratory, it's that things happen throughout history in patterns. We live in a network and stuff just flows through it. And you can have love flow through it, you can have hate flow through it, you can have indifference flow through it, you can have anger, you can have all sorts of emotions flow through the network, but when they do, they get it everywhere. I think that's—that's kind of our whole premise: that small groups can bring, catalyze change in the network, kind of like hormones in the body. It just flows through the network. I think actually this virus is doing a little bit of that as well. It's interesting, I just find it interesting how people around the world were getting sick, not necessarily from direct contact with other sick people. A lot of people who got sick were not from direct contact. I think it's something that flows in the system. It's a certain toxicity that brings out this sense of, I'm done with this toxic environment. The body just goes in—

Seth: It reminds me of how the mushrooms all connect underground and the trees all connect underground. There's these networks.

Lio: So the shoes

Seth: also have this

Lio: underground network. That sounds great. Oh, God. Sp is supposed to bring out the best in Lio. It only took 15 episodes for you to say that there's a secret Jewish cabal spreading hate or love around the world. If someone decided that we're just talking some nonsense, they left a long time ago. But if someone said that, well, there's definitely some recurring pattern here at work, then this person would be very wise to continue listening because I think what we'll start to see is that it doesn't just repeat itself with the same intensity. It grows, it grows because there's always a growing imbalance and eventually the system does a rebalancing act. And usually, it's very violent. And that's the thing that I'm worried about. I think you're worried about everybody's worried about it. That it's not going to end up with one isolated incident here, a shooting there, that sort of thing. It's about a trend, right? And how far is it going. I just saw that today they said that more than 2,000 antisemitic crimes in Germany right now, the highest rate since 2001. So this is climbing. This is on an upward trajectory. This is not like, oh, there's always been antisemitism. We always have a little bit of that. No, it's like when it swells up to a certain level that it cannot be contained and then something terrible happens. And I don't know what that terrible thing is, and I don't want to imagine it. But I sure want to stop it.

Seth: That's what I was thinking about when you were saying it. It sounds like a death sentence, but it's not. That's the whole premise. When my kids were in the Waldorf school, both of my—actually, my stepkids too all went to the Waldorf School. So I had four kids pass through the Waldorf School. And they go, starting with like first grade or whatever it is, as they go through the grades, they learn all the civilizations from ancient Babylon and Greece and Rome and each civilization all the way up. And each of those civilizations are really mile markers on humanity's development until today. And you would say that today this is the next empire. This is the next big civilization. And as you go. Now, the kids didn't learn this, but this is what we're reading in this book. This book is basically following those same milestones, like the Jews have this parallel story alongside those same milestones, and we're coming now. What you're saying now reminds me of just like what we read. All these guys that we read about for all these last weeks. You know, today it would be Trump, Kushner, Pelosi, this one, that, Putin, you know, all the different powers at play and this is the cycle that we're in. We need to see where we are, see that it is something that is recognizable, purposeful. There's something that's happening here that's not chaotic. It's not coming out of nowhere. It's not like we don't know what's going to happen. There's something. What is it we're doing then? Okay, we recognize what happened already all these times. Okay, it's happening now. The same cycle is happening again. But now we're aware of it. Now we can communicate with each other. Now we have everything we need in place to do the thing we need to do. So, what is this thing that, you know, where are we at?

Lio: Okay, you know, we're not trying to look at every single event in history. What we're trying to say is there are patterns, and if you don't listen to what the pattern is showing, it's gonna come bite you in the ass, is what we're. We don't wanna reach the tipping point because once it does, guess what? You can't stop it then. Then you just have to ride it out. Those things, once a process is already started, a snowball, right? An avalanche, once it starts. Much more difficult to stop this there is no stopping. Speaking of war, we're also in a place in time where the president of China says that we're starting to prepare for war. Israel and Hezbollah are getting ready to, you know, to lock arms again. There's a general, I don't know, what is it, a radicalization of the planet. And we're in it. We're in it. And somehow—

Seth: So where is our control switch? Where is our huge?

Lio: Our attitude, I think we can change. That's what we can grab.

Seth: Yeah, I think that's what we can grab, and that's what we can. That's the controller that we can grab.

Lio: That's the only thing. I don't know man, reading the news, looking at the fake news, looking at all this stuff, you can't make sense of anything. So much conflicting information, so much. I had a great conversation yesterday with another guest, potential guest for the show. He's a Muslim guy in Vienna, and he's doing a lot of Jewish-Muslim conferences, trying to bring people together, create dialogue. He works in prisons, he works on de-radicalization of prisons. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that kind of job? How was your day today? Well, you know, it was an average day. People running the der—

Speaker 5: The radicals.

Lio: Yeah, there are a few people. He's very much interested in history. Had a very nice talk. He's interested in patterns and trying to understand why stuff happens. I think it's leading us back into the book. We're in chapter five: Birthplace of Zionism. I think this is a good segue because we tend to be blind to why things happen the way they do. Right? Like you walk down the street, see the sidewalk is wet, and say, well, maybe it was raining before. But you don't ask beyond that, right? Average people don't ask that. They don't go to the pressure and humidity. We just say it was raining. We're very myopic here as well in terms of history. If you talk to any person today, they'll say Israel's policies are the issue, stop mistreating Palestinians, and this will solve everything. What we're trying to do here in this program is go beyond that. It's like that song at Passover, Chad Gadya, which I hope you'll sing for us. Every verse goes back, showing a chain of events that lead to a conclusion. To me, when we talk about Zionism, everyone blames Zionism as if everything was fine before it. But from the book, we see it wasn't fine. There was always some Jewish movement that provoked a reaction. To understand Zionism, we have to look back a little. Zionism plays a role in the Holocaust and the Jews in Germany and Israel. In school, I learned Zionism started when Herzl, with his big beard, said, "If you will it, it's not a fairy tale." But it wasn't just that. There were many small events that led to that snowball. Those events involved Jewish behavior and ruling class attitudes. This episode and probably the next will be precursors to the Holocaust. To understand Zionism, we must trace back to events like the expulsion from Spain and what happened before.

Seth: When we get to Germany, it was the height of civilization, right? You have Einstein and Nobel Prize winners, incredible composers. So, of course, that's where the story repeats.

Lio: Exactly. The role of Zionism in the Holocaust cannot be understated. People attribute the birth of the current state of Israel to that. It's important to understand what started it. Pogroms and riots in 1881 were reactions to Jewish activities. Relationships between Jews and czars like Nicholas I, Alexander I, and Alexander II provoked actions. These pogroms led Jews to think, "Maybe we should move to Israel and take control of our fate." Zionism was not just an old dream; it was a reaction to Jewish activities and changes in czar policies. Is that too complicated? Is your head spinning?

Seth: Yeah, it's complicated. It's intriguing. I want to know what they were doing that was against unity.

Lio: I want to discover all these things. We're talking about a time of the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon was going through Europe until he failed in Russia. Jews were living in poor conditions. This part of Eastern Europe was a few hundred years after Spain. Jews were experiencing an awakening, like the Renaissance sweeping through Europe. Jews played a role in these cultural and scientific breakthroughs. The Baal Shem Tov in the 1700s awakened Jewish unity, teaching people beyond the traditional mitzvot. His Hasidic tradition spread through Europe, leading to a spiritual awakening.

Seth: That's the 1800s.

Lio: Well, it's the end of the 1700s going into the 1800s.

Seth: The awakening comes after the Baal Shem Tov, which would have been the 1800s.

Lio: He died in 1779, so his legacy was mid-1700s. We won't get into Hasidic Judaism's history, but the book says the Nazi drama involved Zionists in Palestine and German Jewry. It began in Russia in 1881 with pogroms that spread through southern Russia. These pogroms were the catalyst for Zionism, leading to the state of Israel, which played a big role in the Holocaust. The question is: what provoked these pogroms? Pogroms don't happen randomly. There's always a dynamic. Let's read something said.

Seth: The pogrom lasted over a year and was known as the Storms in the South, triggered by the murder of Tsar Alexander II, who had a positive attitude towards Jews. An antisemitic rumor claimed Jews killed the Tsar, leading to violent anger. The pogroms resulted in Jewish emancipation's disillusionment and Zionism's genesis.

Lio: So, emancipation efforts. Someone decided to emancipate the Jews. You'd think that's good, right?

Seth: If the Tsar was friendly to Jews, they were comfortable in Russia. Once he died, and they weren't comfortable, they needed emancipation.

Lio: That's a common mistake. We think things are simpler than they are. Unfortunately, we don't have time to get into it.

Seth: So, the government tried converting Jews to integrate them. Nicholas I attempted economic reform, military conscription, and educational changes.

Lio: Great.

Seth: The Tsar believed Jewish scholarship was hostile, so it became a major target.

Lio: We love you Jews, but get rid of the xenophobic stuff threatening Christianity. South Korea studies Talmud, trying to be smart as Jews. So, we'll help you be less Jewish to join society. But what if we continue what Sol Lur observed?

Seth: Wait, are we going to...

Seth: No, I know, but it's always the same. We read this in every century. That's apparent when the Jews turn their back on their co-religionists and attempt to assimilate, they arouse antisemitism, which paradoxically blames them for being separatists and reluctant to assimilate. The same thing happened in Spain, right?

Lio: Yeah, the same thing happened in Spain and everywhere.

Seth: But the opposite paradox works just as well. When Jews unite among themselves and increase their cohesion, antisemitism decreases. Wherever they are attacked, they restore their ancient bond, which was shattered along with the walls of Jerusalem back in the first century CE. And even though their restored unity is currently self-serving and transient, contrary to their vocation to spread the light of unity to the nations, it is nonetheless powerful enough to maintain their survival.

Lio: Certainly not unscathed.

Seth: It's interesting, right? The same thing that's happened over and over, and it continues. Read the next one. I mean, this is just good.

Seth: Very few leaders noticed that recurrence in history and therefore fell. But you, dear reader, here, you see it very clearly.

Lio: What's gonna happen?

Seth: You can tell everyone. Okay, few leaders noticed the recurrence in history and therefore fell for the trap of attempting to force their will on the Jews. And Nicholas I was no exception. Paradoxically, writes Bart, the Tsar achieved the very opposite of what he had intended, which was to disperse Jewish society. Frameworks of social organization and cohesion continued to operate, preserving the distinctive identity of the Jewish ethnos. What the Russian government sought to eradicate through formal integration grew in strength and found other channels of continuity.

Lio: Meaning despite the efforts of the government, the majority of Jewish society maintained their traditional lifestyle. It was almost like an anti-reaction, right? When outside forces tried to make them less Jewish by force, they instinctively unite and actually grow stronger. I'll tell you what it is. If you have a four-year-old son and you've been quarantined, you know what an oob is. Oob is a non-Newtonian fluid. It's very simple. It just means that it doesn't obey the same laws of fluid dynamics. I tell you, it all relates. When you make an oob, you have a bowl with this substance, right? It looks like a puddle. You move the bowl, it kind of quivers. If you hit it, you can't get through. It becomes solid, like you hit a wall. But if you take your fingers and let them run through it, it just behaves like a liquid. It's a beautiful thing. Again, if you have a four-year-old child at home, you know what I'm talking about. If not, go ahead and make it from corn flour and water. Very easy. Read about it online. What I'm saying is I think Jews behave in a non-Newtonian way. If you try to force your way into them, there's going to be a huge reaction, they're going to unite, and you can't break through. But if you say, hey, let's be friends, why don't you come over and here's some land…

Seth: In southern Russia.

Lio: Which is exactly what happened, if we probably won't have time to get to it, but yeah, it's immediate. All that stuff Nicholas I tried to do didn't give rise to a decisive change in the relationship between the Russian government and the Jews. On the contrary, it created suspicion and hostility that became the basis for future radicalism to appear among the Jews because they didn't like what the government was doing. Then Alexander II comes, and he's very friendly. He wasn't the military guy. He basically tried to reverse all the stuff his father did, all those policies in education, society, and economic affairs, including the attitude towards the Jews. That opened up the doors to the shtetls, and Jews started to move out and create all these movements in Russia, which we'll learn about, I hope, next week.

Seth: What kind of movements?

Lio: Well, you know how they say Jews are capitalists and communists, that they killed Christ and created Christianity.

Seth: Yeah, Marxism and all these different things.

Lio: Separatists keeping to themselves, but they were also leaders of social movements.

Seth: Once the new czar comes along and is good to them, they loosen up, they start integrating and creating all these different forms.

Lio: They move away from the ideal. They move away from exposing their vulnerability, and they inevitably get mixed up with…

Speaker 5: All sorts of bad elements, and they end up planting a…

Lio: Bomb that kills someone special and important, which we're going to hear about next week.

Seth: Okay, in summary, if the host country is good to the Jews, they end up integrating.

Lio: When…

Seth: We are left alone, we just go out and create all kinds of stuff but don’t fulfill our destiny. Or we get beaten on…

Speaker 5: And then…

Lio: We unite. So those are the two things that we've known up until...

Lio: Because I think this is just a preserving mechanism from nature.

Seth: So, fine. The two things we're aiming for now is that we can unite without being beaten. Yes. Right? That's the new thing. So the book is going back and forth between these two states, and we're talking about a third thing which is…

Lio: It's no secret. Again, if you listen, we said it. This is the radical approach where we take our destiny into our own hands, we learn from history, and we actually try to apply that quality of unity not just on ourselves, not just as a reaction to pressure but among everyone, maybe as a reaction to nature's pressure on us.

Seth: We determine our own future. We determine our own future. We’re not waiting for anything…

Lio: To determine our…

Seth: Future.

Lio: Yes. Well, that's all we have to say. This is The Jew Function. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook at The Jew Function, on YouTube, or wherever podcasts are sold. You can find us there for discussions about the root and solution to antisemitism based on the laws of nature and on YouTube, all those honest and interesting conversations. So stay tuned for that. Think about unity. Definitely. Alright. From Israel?

Seth: From Jersey.

Both: Good night.