Are Jews aliens?

Seth: Well, imagine it's not a viral kind of virus. It's maybe like a thought virus. What if we are poisoning each other all day long? Internal hatred had inflicted a catastrophe on Israel, and the people were exiled.

Lio: To Babylon. Listen to the podcast and think about the meaning of your life. It's the perfect thing to do in quarantine. When all of Israel are in complete unity, no harm will come upon them.

Seth: Each year on Purim, we celebrate the miracle of our survival because, in the very last minute, Mordecai the Jew united all of the Jews.

Lio: This is the power of Israel. When they are all one bundle, when they are united together, they are rewarded and delivered.

Seth: The Jews saw them all. Beat them all, and 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: 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 kishkes, and we're gonna squeeze until we get something right either a bowel movement or a freaking solution. We want to know what happened, what happened 3,500 years ago in Babylon that started this whole meshugas, and we want to finish it here in...

Seth: 2020. That's it. The rise and the ruin of the first temple. It's hardly a secret that the Jewish ego is well-developed. Lio, hardly a secret.

Seth: Some will say it is too developed, but there are benefits to having a big ego, provided it is used correctly. Be that as it may, vowing to unite as one man with one heart is one thing. Living out that vow is a very different story. It is the ultimate test to human nature, and although the ancient Hebrews were bold enough to take on the challenge, they failed left and right. Every. That reminds.

Lio: This is what we're up against, I think, isn't it? This question. I think if you bring it up to any Jewish person, look, you're chosen to do this thing. To unite above the growing ego.

Seth: That's what a mistake God made, right? Choosing such these people who constantly didn't even know, couldn't he have picked somebody better? Wasn't there anyone better to do the job?

Lio: Well, that's the question really. I mean, can someone do this job and can this someone be a Jew? Actually, at any point in history, able to do it. That's what I hope we'll see today on the...

Seth: Where this thing of like, okay, he picked you, and so just do it. Like, why do you? What is the thing of even the mistakes, right? Like, if he picked you, so I mean, that's kind of the way I think that the world sees the Jews: like, okay, you keep screwing up, you're a failure. You're bad because he told you to do it, and you're just not doing it. What's wrong with you?

Lio: Well, if it was so simple, that would actually make things very easy if that's what the world...

Seth: Kind of complaint against this though? Like, just do it, why don't you do it?

Lio: I don't know. I'm looking on Twitter, the complaint is that the Jews are spreading the coronavirus. Of Zionists who are behind the coronavirus. That's...

Seth: The kind of complaint. Well, it took them three weeks to accuse us.

Lio: Yeah. No, it's been a couple of months, I think. Since the beginning of the year, it took some time. But, you know, so that's usually the kind of finger-pointing that you get. It's not the Creator or some higher law in nature compelled you to act a certain way towards the rest of humanity and you're not, and that's not usually how people talk about it, right?

Seth: I think that there is that actually. I think that that happens in some religious communities. They look at the Jews like, okay, look, you had your chance. And you failed. Now it's our turn. Now we get a run at this.

Lio: Well, by all means, if anyone knows how to put things in order here. I, for one, would love to see it. I think now the world is thrust into a new era really with this virus. We're not going to make this podcast today about the virus, but it is there. Literally in the air, metaphorically in the air, and yet I don't see anyone rising to the occasion. I see more of the same bickering. In fact, they ran a simulation a year ago in some political institute outside of D.C. They ran a simulation on potential things that could happen in the world in the next year. One of the simulations, believe it or not, was the outbreak of a strain of coronavirus from the east that will basically spread around the world and what will happen, how countries will react to it. And they said that the main conclusion of the study was that countries need to communicate. But they will fail to do so because they don't trust one another. So that's exactly the place where a hub of some sorts, right? A communications hub, someone who can act as a mediator, as a connector. Between the pieces can play a very good role. For example, I don't see anyone doing it. I certainly don't see Jews doing it. I know some people, uh, some Jews who are trying to do it, but it's like one of those places I think time will tell that we need to do a better job.

Seth: It's as if humanity has been running towards each other in this like just with commerce and travel and, you know, we're vacationing here and we're going there and we're getting goods from there and everything is crisscrossing the world so quickly, so fast. Everything's going everywhere, everywhere, and then stop.

Seth: Everyone back to your places. Everyone, you go back to your nest, you go back to your cave, you go back to your home, but you go back to your treehouse. Everyone. Settle down now. All these pieces are back intact, and now we have to, like you're saying, connect them. Now we have to have a coordinated effort between them. Now we all know each other. We all know what's going on everywhere, and now we're back at home and...

Lio: Yeah, I yeah, I think once the dust settles a little bit and people realize that this is not a two-week forced vacation, but it's actually a change in attitudes and behaviors and habits. I think then there will be some sort of a maybe an unconscious or again an irrational kind of yearning for someone to fix it. You know, fix it, put the pieces back together somehow. And I know right now it sounds like a big leap of the imagination. Maybe in our next episode we'll devote a bit more time to this virus. You know, what does it say about how we are interconnected, negatively interconnected, how we are negatively impacting one another, but how it's also forcing us to start considering one another in new ways. Again, all the hallmarks of a network that is either working well or is failing miserably.

Seth: Yeah, when we've been reading this book, I was getting the feeling that if you can kind of almost strip the personalities, strip the characters off, you can redress them in different generations. It's like patterns. Let's read a little bit here because I want to ride on this story with what we're talking about because I see all kinds of places where we can slide in and out between current events and these kinds of...

Lio: Things Yeah, I think this chapter is going to touch on the temple. Right, and what it symbolizes.

Seth: The temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem, which we now recognize as the first temple, symbolizes the highest level of unity within the people of Israel. But the decay set in rapidly after the conquest of Joshua, writes the above-mentioned historian Paul Johnson. It again appeared under Solomon and was repeated in both northern and southern kingdoms. Especially under rich and powerful kings when times were good.

Lio: Those were Israel and Judea, by the way, just the north and south.

Seth: A northern and southern kingdom, right of Israel. Okay. In other words, even at times of peace and abundance, there was constant strife and division, which eventually led to the ruin of the temple. First, the nation divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judea. Israel abandoned their vow of unity and mingled heavily, especially the leaders, with the neighboring nations. The Talmud describes the leaders' malevolence toward each other very poignantly. Rabbi E said, Those people who eat and drink with one another stab each other with swords in their tongues. Thus, even though they were close to one another, they were filled with hatred for each other. However, the Talmud emphasizes that the hatred was only among the leaders of the nation. Well, the majority of Israel did not hate one another.

Lio: Before you continue, just you know, they talk about how Israel abandoned their vow of unity and mingled heavily. I think it's worth mentioning that maybe if you're a Jewish person listening to this, and you live in America, and maybe your wife is not Jewish, or maybe your son married someone who's not Jewish, or your daughter married someone who's not Jewish, you're thinking, well, is he talking about this, this kind of mingling? Is this what it's implying? I just want to make clear that I don't think you don't think nobody thinks that any of those acts in and of themselves have anything to do with the attitudes of people toward Jews, rather, that these things are simply a symptom of our move away from this ideal of unity. And it's just being expressed in this way, when it becomes less important to maintain this inner ideal, then also externally there's no real reason to remain connected because, as we said, this is a group that was established around an ideology. So what's the big idea? What's so important about marrying someone within the community? If we don't have this ideal that's tying us together, then screw that. Why do we need to marry within the community? Actually, even let's have a chance for some weird genetic mutation. Let me just open up the pool, the gene pool a little bit. So I just wanted to make that distinction.

Seth: You could even go further than that. I mean, Moses married a Midianite. But she joined. You're absolutely right. So, okay, but just from what you're saying, it doesn't matter really where someone's from. We're talking about Israel here as an inclination. Right. So when you say the community, you're talking about the community of maybe like-hearted, like-minded people, not a community of gene pool.

Lio: Exactly. I think that's exactly what I'm saying. So although there's there has been a lot of...

Seth: People need to get to know you, Lio, you know? They have to understand. Well...

Lio: I'm stuck in Israel right now, by the way. This is important to say that The Jew Function today is an international thing. Seth is all the way out in New Jersey, and I'm all the way out in Israel somewhere. So that's interesting. What I'm trying to say is that all that talk about who should marry whom is not about that. It's simply an expression of a departure from an idea, an ideal. That's what we're talking about right now. We're talking about a specific hypothesis.

Seth: Said it. The absolute hatred was to come in the second temple, and its horrific consequences would become a symbol of the cost of internal hatred, but even the level of separation and hatred of the ancient Israelites toward their brethren in Judea that appeared during the First temple was enough to lead to their complete disappearance. Indeed, all ten tribes that were part of the kingdom of Israel are lost today, as is the kingdom they had built. The Jews of today are the descendants of the Hebrews who occupied the kingdom of. Of Judea, which was but a fraction of the original people of Israel.

Lio: By the way, they just did a genetic study. Apparently, 2% of all Latino people...

Seth: Latin American...

Lio: Have Jewish genes, yeah. So...

Seth: Yeah, those gonna say this, but I'm wondering if maybe if like all the Taliban are gonna turn out to be Jewish or something.

Lio: It's possible, you know. You know what they say, that the people you have the strongest feelings towards, even if they're feelings of animosity, you're probably the closest to. So um...

Seth: If all the Jews we know today are from two of the twelve tribes, where are the other ten? Pre-World War II numbers, you know, there's times that by if that was twenty percent. No, that's less than 20% of the total Jewish population, so there's got to be a couple of hundred million.

Lio: Yeah, picture this. Picture this. We figure out what makes this, you know. What is the function of the Jewish person in this world? And suddenly, in a heartbeat, suddenly hundreds of millions of people wake up to that saying, Oh, hey, I feel that too. And then later some professor is going to do the genetic study, and it's going to find out that they're somehow related to these tribes. Yeah, we have we're so clueless about how these things work, Seth. So clueless. Just again, this virus is in the air. So just like the virus, everybody's like, where did it come from? Whoa, you know, some bat soup. Yeah, no. Not where did it make its first appearance, but where did it come? How did it appear suddenly? How did it...

Seth: You know, materialize...

Lio: In nature? Why? What is it pushing us to realize? These are the questions we don't normally ask. Because we don't think there are answers, because we think we're delusional. I think reality started yesterday. Yeah, we're like kids. Oh, stuff just happened. I think the funny thing is that we're willing to acknowledge that there are laws in nature, that we live in a closed system, interconnected, and there are laws. but we're not willing to maybe ask the next question where those laws come from. Not a person, an entity, but like, are they leading to a sort of a general law or a general plan?

Seth: You know Joe, Joe D. talking to him about this virus. Very, very interesting insight. Just like this virus, you know, it's quarantining people, right? And then you...

Seth: Imagine how you can infect other people, not with a physical virus, but with a thought virus. What if we're poisoning each other all day with negative thoughts or attitudes, and it infects them? We feel sick all the time, like life is meaningless, always in a rat race because we're constantly being infected from all sides by this negative thing, right?

Seth: No question. You can see from this viral concept that if you just stop, nature puts you back in your place. Relax, chill out, stay put, and stop infecting each other. It was so clear how it spread. I heard someone say you can hold the cart at the supermarket, and it won't infect you, but if you touch your eye, it does. We come into each other's space and bring their viruses into ourselves. I'm losing focus here, but...

Lio: Yeah, I did. It's tempting to dive into it, but that would take a whole show. We'll get deeper into the virus next episode. Do you know where the word virus comes from? It's a Latin word meaning a liquid, slimy thing, like snake venom. As we discussed before, the same venom can yield the remedy. So, somewhere in how it affects our relationships lies the solution. It's a bit of a metaphysical leap, but we'll leave it as a thought exercise. Now, back to Titus Flavius Josephus...

Seth: Josephus, the Jewish turned Roman historian, detailed the misconduct of our forefathers. He wasn't an antisemite, just a historian mentioning how brutally the Hebrews treated each other. When Josephus writes about the anointing of a certain king 70 years after Solomon, who taught 'hate stirs strife but love covers all,' Josephus notes that king began with the slaughter of his brethren, demonstrating wickedness. This king's fate was no better than his victims. Matters only went downhill from there, with atrocities by King Manasseh against Hebrews, barbarously slaying the righteous.

Lio: Sure, you might say everyone was killing at that time. But this commentary is about a group founded on brotherly love.

Seth: Seventy years before, they achieved unity and built the temple in Jerusalem, a symbol of unity and love. Not the temple itself, but as an expression of that.

Lio: Let’s read on. The ego was growing, as we also read at the beginning. This demeanor wasn't sustainable. It took more centuries of depravity before the system collapsed. Realizing doom was near, King Josiah sent the high priest to Prophetess Deborah to see if anything could avert the calamity. But, as Josephus reports, God had already decided to destroy the people.

Seth: I grew up thinking the Babylonians destroyed our temple. Didn't realize we destroyed ourselves.

Lio: Right. Every time God is mentioned, it's a law of nature—a force, not a vengeful or merciful deity. A law like gravity that creates certain restrictions. Here, a law of love. Break it, and society falls apart. It feels like we have a choice, unlike rocks, plants, and animals, a choice to exercise or not. That separates us from being mere animals.

Seth: And what a process. If you take the best monkey and say, "You can do anything," it's going to take time for it to cultivate itself, learn to use tools, think, engage with others. Mistakes will happen. I look at these historical figures now with some sympathy.

Lio: Exactly, we're like kids. We have keys to everything, but we must learn. Nature wouldn't create conditions just for destruction. There must be containment for behaviors. We don't know enough about life and death.

Seth: Even if we look at life beyond our 80-100 years, as part of a whole process. We're part of this big process. What’s the purpose?

Lio: What's the purpose indeed? I think this virus is making us question that. Sitting isolated makes you think, unless you're binge-watching everything.

Seth: Perfect quarantine activity: listen to The Jew Function podcast and think about life's meaning.

Lio: The Jewish strength was in unity, not numbers. The story of Esther tells how exile was overcome. The Jews were scattered and separated. Haman pointed their separation to King Ach. Yet, on Purim, we celebrate survival because Mordecai united them, "Go gather all the Jews" — meaning unity.

Seth: A 17th-century commentary says scattered meant separation of hearts. It made it easy for Haman to persuade the king to exterminate them. But Esther and Mordecai asked them to unite quickly.

Lio: Use flattery, sweet talk them. Not just "unite or die," though it might be a subtext. We're saying it's nicer to be together. Isolation might remind you of that. I was at the beach, my son hit an Arab fisherman with a frisbee, and he said, "As long as it's not Corona," and we nearly hugged. We bond quickly under pressure. We wait for calamity but should act before calamity hits.

Seth: Before the virus, who could slow everyone down? It's like the kings who killed each other. If you don't even know there's an issue, how do you acknowledge it?

Lio: There's no easy answer. Ignorance of the law doesn't absolve you. We must educate ourselves.

Seth: Well, that's it. Ignorance, but we must learn. Okay, let’s stop there.

Lio: Stop for a second. Don't do anything. Don't go anywhere, don't buy stuff. Oh wait, this is what's happening now. Great. So let's use that to sit back, relax, and think for a second about what the hell is happening. If we're not going to think for ourselves, then nature is going to force us to think. That's how kind and benevolent nature is. This is a great opportunity, I think, to do just that. We have a few more minutes, I think. I'm thinking of a couple of quotes here. He makes the comparison to Egypt, how they were delivered under Moses' leadership, and then they were given the Torah, the instructions for uniting. When they agreed to be as one man in one heart, they were given this sovereignty over the land of Israel. Under Mordechai's leadership, they regained their sovereignty and were sent back to Israel to build a temple. People often forget about that. It wasn't just about being saved from Haman; it was a big step. If you turn this historic tale into an internal or a social commentary on what's happening between us, forget about the historic thing. Look at it as these separate desires, separate forces, pulling in different directions as opposed to uniting. Think of the peace it brings inside a person, inside a society. This story could be about a person coming to terms with all his conflicting desires. "I'll go there, I'll buy that, I'll do this"—if I just follow each desire and fulfill it, I'll be happy and complete forever. But it never happens.

Seth: It ends in a bloody mess every time.

Lio: It ends with a bloody mess.

Seth: Civil war.

Lio: Or Black Friday on the floors of Walmart. Someone gets hurt. Let's read the Declaration of King Cyrus; it's in the middle of page 41, second paragraph. King Cyrus's Declaration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth: Let's see. Every Jewish survivor, at whatever place he may live, let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem. Wow. Nice. It's like a gang.

Lio: Or something. Like, hey, give everyone free college.

Seth: And after that, after his order was carried out, King Cyrus brought out the utensils of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had plundered from Jerusalem, and he put them in the house of his gods.

Lio: He took the things from the temple in Jerusalem and brought them out. His temple? Yeah, he brought them back out to the Jews to take home. Just like when they left Egypt, they borrowed all those vessels from the Egyptians. And here again, they receive all those utensils. There's something about those utensils. We're not going to get into it. This is such a reminder of what it's like going down into a well and coming back up.

Seth: Yeah. Going down into a well and coming back up.

Lio: We're going to say this: in the next chapter, we're going to get into more blood. There's going to be some blood, yeah, some blood—the Romans and all of that. There's also going to be an interesting chapter here about the 70 translators who almost saved the world. Maybe this is kind of fitting for our time. Maybe we need a group of people to save the world. So maybe that will give us some insight.

Seth: I want to binge-listen to this podcast. I want to eat everything. I want to understand everything. I want to keep the conversation going. I want to understand life through the story.

Lio: Whoever you are, if you're a Jew or not, you listen to Seth. Binge-listen to this podcast during quarantine, then read Seth’s book, "Jew: An Antidote to Antisemitism," and then binge-listen to the podcast again because there's probably stuff you missed out on. We're going to be back next week and get into the story of the 70 translators who almost saved the world. And you'll be with us. This is The Jew Function, the only podcast brave enough—or stupid enough—to find out the root of antisemitism and the solution to it, and I dare say maybe the solution to all the world's problems. It seems everything is kind of interconnected.

Seth: I'm saying it, the solution to the world's problems. So, try to do it here. Shalom from New Jersey, y'all.

Lio: Good from Israel.