Conspiring to love the world

Lio: We could give the explanation in one line, right? But somehow saying it and feeling it are not the same thing.

Seth: If you're feeling that love, you wouldn't want anything else.

Lio: They found this bunch of Jews, sitting in a hotel somewhere, conspiring to bring unity to the world. Ooh. That would be a terrible story. How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. The word together indicates the presence of divinity with them. And you, the friends who are here as you were in fondness and love before, you will not part henceforth until the Creator rejoices with you and summons peace upon you. And by your merit, there will be peace in the world. This is the meaning of the words: for the sake of my brothers and my friends, let me say, let peace be in you.

Seth: That must feel so good. It must feel so otherworldly. 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 sht. This is a podcast, and we're gonna find the solution to antisemitism. Okay, we're gonna 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 wanna know what happened, what happened 3,500 years ago in Babylon that started this whole saga, and we want to finish it here in 2020. That’s it.

Seth: The most vitriolic and antisemitic of all was undoubtedly the Grand Inquisitor, Thomas de Torquemada. Although matters grew worse for both Jews and Conversos as the Inquisition raged throughout Spain, the Jews remained relatively unharmed as long as they stayed within the confines of their living area and did not attempt to mingle with the Christians or the Conversos. But in the eyes of Torquemada, the only option to guarantee that the Conversos would not become crypto-Jews, who pretend to be avid Christians but are secretly practicing Judaism, was complete expulsion of all Jews from Spain and killing the ones who refused to leave. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were not wholly convinced that there was no alternative, but Torquemada, being the Queen's confessor for many years, had critical influence on the royal couple. Early in 1492, he managed to persuade them to issue an edict of expulsion for all Jews. The edict, which was to become known as the Alhambra Decree, was prepared very carefully and made sure all details were included and clarified. When the Jews heard that an edict of expulsion was in the making, they did their best to ward off calamity. When they could not persuade the king and queen to cancel it, they attempted to buy their freedom. There are many versions of the story of how the decision to publish the decree was finally made, but all of them depict the critical influence of Torquemada in the completion of the decree. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Don Isaac Abrabanel offered Ferdinand and Isabella 600,000 crowns for the revocation of the Edict of Expulsion. As the story goes, Ferdinand hesitated, but was prevented from accepting the offer by Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, who dashed into the royal presence, threw a crucifix down before the king and queen, and asked whether, like Judas, they would betray the Lord for money. Professor of history, Jacob Rader Marcus, came across a more dramatic depiction of the events leading to the announcement of the decree. Though the general outline and the result are the same, in his book, "The Jew in the Medieval World," Professor Marcus details the events. He writes that the agreement permitting the Jews to remain in Spain on the payment of a large sum of money was almost completed when it was frustrated by Torquemada. Legend relates that Torquemada thundered with a crucifix aloft to the king and queen, Judas sold his master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highness would sell him anew for thirty thousand? Here he is, pointing to the cross. Take him and barter him away. King Ferdinand was indeed dumbfounded by the zealous speech, which foiled any hesitation he might have had about the implementation of the decree. However, what happened next was even more amazing. Marcus writes that Queen Isabella, who was present in the room when Torquemada stormed in, gave an answer to the representations of Jews similar to the sayings of King Solomon. She said further: Do you believe that this comes upon you from us? The Lord has put this thing into the heart of the king. Subsequently, Marcus concludes: The Jews saw that there was evil determined against them by the king, and they gave up the hope of remaining.

Lio: Thank you for reading. So what we're starting with really is this idea that for the Jews, to Spanish Jewry in general, the Alhambra Decree was the final solution. That was their final solution. And although there are differences between the Alhambra Decree and the Nazi final solution, there are many critical similarities that we will see. But let's go we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to Torquemada. Let's unpack the story a little bit. Such a fun moment in history. Hi, Lio. We're in episode 14.

Seth: We're in episode 14. We're in 1492.

Lio: Pivotal year for everyone. Pivot

Seth: The Jews are very comfortable, but many of them have converted.

Lio: Yeah, it was it stopped being a little kind of comfortable for some of the Jews but

Seth: They were living, I mean Spain was the height of civilization at the time. This is where it was going down.

Lio: It was really the center of Jewish life for many years, right? So many great sages, doctors,

Speaker 4: Just to name a few,

Seth: Big time

Lio: Poets,

Seth: And

Lio: Thought leaders.

Seth: Columbus set sail for America at the same time, right? A very pivotal time for humanity.

Lio: Yeah, funny note, Columbus's navigator was a Jewish guy. Jacob Schwartz. Cohen. And when they reached the shores of America, the first person to actually set foot was his guy. So the first word the Indians heard was Shalom. Is that a true story that is true? I mean everything except for the Shalom, but it's amazing how these things just sneak into history. But we're digressing. This is on the one hand, a great time for Jews. It's a great time to be a Jew, to be alive in Spain.

Seth: Not in pain, in Spain, right? In Spain, exactly.

Lio: Business is booming, everything is great on the one hand. On the other hand, these mass conversions are happening for the first time, in all earnest. Jews are choosing that route. They think that's the problem, right? That they could get so much further ahead, they could avoid future calamities by simply becoming like everyone else. But for some reason, that's the paradox we talked about last episode, it only increases the ire of the surrounding Christians because now they think, oh, we're dealing with crypto Jews, these hidden Jews that we can't tell who they are and they're going to secretly pull Christians to their Jewish world and they're going to pull the Jews who already converted back into Judaism. So you have all these

Seth: Lio, until this time that we're living in now, and after the Temple, so to speak, it was really a tough go for these Jews because they didn't have, like if they were Jews, they were persecuted. If they tried to intermingle, they were persecuted. They really didn't have an out. When did Jews ever have an out? There's a hypothesis here that if the Jews unite, right, if they stay ahead, what this kind of this thing that we've been seeing happening, this pattern that we've been seeing happening is every time a civilization is peaking, right? We went through this. I said this like 20 times already: from Babylon to Egypt to Rome to Greece, right? Every time, there's the Jews alongside the growing civilization. And if they're not ahead of it, it's uncomfortable, right? They deal with some kind of calamity. So

Speaker 4: But

Seth: They really don't have a way yet of really doing it even.

Lio: That's a question. I mean, look, I can't speak for Jews who lived back in Spain. You can't really judge someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. But the hypothesis is that by sticking to the ideal of unity, to the ideal of love, that is the glue, that is that faith, that is the ideology that keeps the Jews safe, secure, beloved, appreciated by their neighbors, all of that. It's when they're trying to sort of move away from that unwittingly, just trying to be more like everyone else, maybe. That's when we get this reaction, this extreme reaction from the surrounding environment. We get that reaction from sometimes our very own people. Like we see with those conversions. We read about them in the last episode. And Torquemada is simply like the cherry on top because he comes from a family of Conversos, and he himself is the one who basically sealed the deal on the expulsion of the Jews.

Seth: It seems to me though, as we're it's like occurring to me as we're going through the story and we have read the book and talked about it many times, but we always keep saying, like, you know, when they unite, so they no enemy can harm them. But as we're going through it, and now that we get to Spain, and it's so clear, and it's actually coming closer to us. I mean, not in our lifetime, but it's almost, you can almost touch it. I mean, it's getting close, right? It's not some ancient history anymore. And you kind of can almost start to relate to what's going on. I can relate to growing up in a town with no Jewish people and you're trying to, you know, what am I, and you're trying to fit in and you don't want to stand out and it almost seems like they can't Jews as a mass are still in mid-process. Like they almost couldn't do it yet. Like we're told, we can't, I feel like we went through the book so far saying, you know, and look, they didn't do it again. Look, there they go again. They didn't do it again. But it's

Lio: Yeah, we love to deliberate, you know? That's what we like to do. We like to stew in it a little bit. Let's, you know, let's talk about it a bit, you know, some more. Maybe we can get a second opinion. Maybe a third opinion. I think it's part of our nature. But I feel that today is the time of action. Today is really a time of action. Maybe it got a little more foggy because of the coronavirus, which by the way, I'm still in Israel. You're still in Princeton, we're still trying to figure this out from afar. Looking at what's going on in the world, this is not great. I mean, the fact that you have people who oppose the shelter in place ban and they do it using swastikas and pictures of the governor of California with a Hitler mustache. I mean, there's so many great dictators. Why this guy? Like, why particularly that streak of totalitarianism? Why that made it into the public space? Why people are still angry about Jews? Somehow the Jews are in the midst of it. All the time, never leaving.

Seth: What is occurring to me as we're reading the story now about this and thinking about it? I, it's the same again. You know, I don't want to make parallels and say that Jared Kushner is Joseph or is some kind of Torquemada.

Lio: You said Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders. You Bernie Sanders Okay,

Seth: Not at some degree that you can understand who all these incarnations of each one is throughout the story, but it seems like today. It's like we have the opportunity now to do it. And in the past, they didn't. It was like setting the blueprint, you know, really. I don't know how to say it in another way. The plot, but now from where we are, we can see the whole plan, we see the process, and now it's in our hands.

Lio: That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make people see that all these points add up to a pattern that you can observe in history and maybe observe it today as well, which is why we want to go into the story of Torquemada and see the last act in that story because I think it's very relevant. I think, I don't know who's going to be the Torquemada of today, but I think it's relevant. That's why I want to circle back to it, just reminding everyone that this is The Jew Function. You can follow us at The Jew Function on Facebook and YouTube. At The Jew Function on Twitter. Actually, it's at The Jew Function everywhere. We're trying to figure out the Jewish function. We're figuring it out. Function of the Jew according to the laws of nature. I think we are. I don't know. I mean, if you're only listening in the middle of this episode, you're probably thinking, what the hell is going on? But if you take the time and listen to episodes 1 through 13, a lot of stuff will become clear. The funny thing is that we could give the explanation in one line, right? You can say it. But somehow saying it and feeling it are not the same thing.

Seth: Speaking of The Jew Function everywhere, I saw on your Twitter page today at The Jew Function that this couple was arrested over the weekend for targeting Jewish men and blaming them for the spread of COVID.

Lio: Yes.

Seth: What? The Orthodox Jews came up with this in their spare time?

Lio: Yeah, I think we made a little intro for three episodes ago about that. It's a natural, irrational reaction to the situation. There's nothing surprising about it. Again, I would be surprised if it didn't happen, to be honest. Which, again, I'm not even talking about the heightened sensitivity everyone is in. Like everyone is on edge, everyone is it's the exposed nerves. You know, you just start a word you, start a sentence with the word Jews and people already are on their hind legs there, they're ready to jump. But maybe this half hour is going to be a good opportunity to really just look at it from a historic perspective and see if there's something that we can learn. Torquemada was a great story because it's almost like it's going full circle. You have Jews who are trying to be like everyone else. Then gradually this is the beginning of a movement of conversions. And you have more and more Jews trying to be more like everyone else around them. Yes, it has external manifestations, but it's mostly the departure from the ideal of love and unity that we've been talking about. And it translates to basically being like everyone else. But

Seth: Here's the thing about it, Lio. If you're feeling that love, you wouldn't want anything else. That's why I feel like they didn't have a real opportunity. If I'm feeling this sublime love, why would I want to be accepted just to open a butcher shop down on Cord Street or something like that?

Lio: I'll tell you why, because it's something that you have to constantly build. Love doesn't just fall on your head from a tree.

Seth: Is it too much work to sustain the love? Is that what you're saying?

Lio: More or less, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Seth: But here's the thing.

Lio: We don't have to...

Seth: Hold on. If someone, maybe not the Queen of England, but someone admired came to you, and you had the opportunity to carry their suitcase, you'd want to. I don't know who it might be for you—maybe Kim Kardashian, maybe not. But you get the point.

Lio: It's not considered work.

Seth: We're talking about something serious here, like the temple, Jerusalem, Moses, and Abraham. If you feel like it's unnatural, it goes against every fiber in our being. We love ourselves, and as long as our interests don't conflict, we'll get along. But when they start to conflict, we start to fight.

Lio: Maybe I have to kill you if our interests don't meet. Look at what's happening in the world. It's like that scene from "Reservoir Dogs," right? Everybody's got their guns pointing at each other. It's like that feeling everyone carries around. Of course, this love thing doesn't exist; you have to work at it. That's what Abraham taught us.

Seth: You're making it sound like my boss when I was 18. You just have to work. But the sublime love we're talking about is different. There's something else preventing us from doing this, some unique opportunity we need to find today.

Lio: Love your boss as yourself, all the things from Moses and Abraham. It must feel otherworldly, like when they came to Jerusalem for the festivals—everyone had a place to stay, something to eat.

Seth: We need to find the episode so people can keep listening.

Lio: We can wax poetic here, but that's not the point.

Seth: I'm saying that love is so great, and if people keep mixing instead of choosing it, what's going on?

Lio: You have to make it. At the end of the day, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella let the Jews go, the reaction was to try to give them money, not love.

Seth: What does it mean to give them love? How would they know what to do?

Lio: Love is something you have to build over the opposite of love. You need tension. Plus and minus together gives power. This is a law of nature.

Seth: So every time these big situations happen, it would be the perfect time to create real energy.

Lio: I think so. Now it's time.

Seth: When reading this chapter about Turk, the king and the queen were ready to sign the decree. The Jewish community tried to send them money, but it was already done.

Voice: Tell me about this system.

Lio: We'll get there. When the system reaches a breaking point, it's like when a couple reaches the point of divorce or worse. The tension becomes irreconcilable.

Seth: It's a process. We always pay attention at the end.

Lio: I love the fact that they tried to stop the expulsion despite Torquemada's intervention. Queen Isabella told the Jews that the Lord put this thing into the king's heart.

Voice: Put this.

Lio: Nature tries to speak to you. It's like the joke about the Jew stranded on the roof praying for help while refusing helicopters.

Seth: People think it will never happen here. We're too economically strong, Jews are too close to the president, we have Israel. I hear it even today.

Lio: Think about the Alhambra Decree, which was so formal and meticulous. It was like a legal notice.

Seth: It sounds rather pragmatic, almost like a wedding invitation. Don Ferdinand and Donna Isabella's decree addressed every class of people.

Lio: Right, it's addressed to everyone and then the Jews.

Seth: The king and queen explain the crimes of the Jews, thinking they tried to draw Christians away from the faith.

Lio: Initially, they didn't even plan to expel the Jews.

Seth: They tried to remedy the situation by separating Jews and Christians, but when it didn’t work, they decided on expulsion.

Lio: Torquemada was one of the advisors consulted during this process.

Seth: They resolved to expel all Jews and Jewesses, forbidding them to return.

Lio: Boom. The end. And it continues, and they forbid them from returning under penalty of death. But what I find interesting is that when you speak to a religious person who has antisemitic sentiments, like the conversation I've had with E. Michael Jones, for example, they really do feel that the Jews are somehow robbing them of their values, detracting from them, distracting them, and taking away from their moral foundation. You know, I love a Hollywood movie like the next person, but there's no question that something has happened in this country and this culture. As a result of the introduction of this extreme Hollywood culture, you cannot say that it made the country better, right? Just to put it mildly, you can't say that Hollywood made America...

Seth: Better. Okay, but here's the thing that's been on my mind this whole episode. I don't think those Jews who run Hollywood, for example, know any better. Like, maybe somehow there's something. It's not like they...

Lio: ...know. That's a different story. But how can...

Seth: ...you hold them responsible if they don't even know?

Lio: I'm not holding them personally responsible. I'm saying that I feel it myself, like I'm at the end of a chain of people who've been, you know, how your kid is about to break something, and you warn them once, you warn them twice, you warn them a third time. By the time it happens, you have no choice. You have to take them, put them in their room, apply some punishment. Right? It's like you could say, "Well, how did he know any better? What are you talking about? He was forewarned like 60 times." My son just destroyed the vase in this house where we live. I've seen that vase in my mind breaking, shattering.

Seth: And so it was just a matter of... Right. I guess in that sense, if these Hollywood Jews understood, which they didn't clearly enough, and they didn't have any recollection of the love and the connection. But if they knew about what happened in Spain and what happened in Greece and what happened in Persia and what happened in Rome, then presumably they would have some responsibility and create content to unite people instead of things that divide people.

Lio: You could say that they didn't have a podcast warning them about the danger of disunity in the old days. Hopefully, they...

Seth: ...hear this and start to be... They probably sent...

Lio: ...letters, but nobody read them. Right. Did you read that letter about un... Yes. I don't know, Seth. We're trying. We said that we want to uproot this phenomenon, and we're trying, but someone has to listen. Someone has to say, "You know what? Yeah, dang it, we're gonna try. We're gonna try to let's try." Remember, we said, I think a few episodes ago, "Let's try, let's have a year of unity." Not International Day of Kindness like we have once a year. Let's do it—a year of kind. Let's see how that works.

Seth: Here's an excerpt from page 50 of my book. Never in history have Jews been in a better position to fulfill our role. We are embedded in every corner of American life. We're entrenched in film, music, politics, banking, healthcare, technology, social media, law, and medicine. And all of the mediums that determine public discourse and public opinion, Jews can spread a message of love and unity throughout the entire world.

Lio: Thank you. You see, that's a message I hope some people in power hear. You know, they wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a hundred and something years ago and spread that, and everybody was like, "No, that's insane. Why would Jews sit in secrecy and conspire to take over the world?" And I say, "Well, you already have the means to change the world, so why don't you sit and conspire to do it for the good? You can actually do it. Right. You can actually do it. I mean, for once."

Seth: It's like what...

Voice: ...you said.

Seth: It's what you said earlier about the makeup sex thing. It's like the plus and the minus. It's like everybody thinks you're conspiring. It's like this big, big giant minus. So bring the big plus, like, conspire.

Lio: Yeah. Can you imagine if an article broke that they found this bunch of Jews sitting in a hotel somewhere conspiring to bring unity to the world? That would be a terrible story. Sadly, we know that history did not end with the Spanish expulsion. It was like the first of a one-two. Why did you have to bring me back, man?

Seth: I was like, I thought that was it. The end of the podcast, we finished, we completed our job. No, back. We didn't learn again. So, where do we go from here? Where will we go next after Torquemada and the Alhambra decree?

Lio: Dictionary. I want you to read.

Seth: As in antiquity, the Spanish Jews suffered because of their lack of unity. Their attempts to convert inflicted on them the Inquisition, which ended with all Jews and untrustworthy conversos being expelled from Spain. As in antiquity, by the time calamity struck, the level of animosity between Jews and conversos and the mistrust of the Spaniards towards Jews and conversos alike were too intense to overcome. It is hard to place a finger on the point of no return, but beyond a certain level of internal alienation among the Jews, the wheel cannot be turned back. As Gerber woefully notes, unfortunately, the persistent and growing anti-Jewish sentiment across the land could not similarly succeed in melding the Jews into one strong communal organization. Some 450 years later, we will see the same scenario unfolding in Nazi Germany, but with far more tragic consequences than the outcome of the disunity of the Spanish Jewry, and in fact far worse than anyone could have imagined until it actually happened.

Lio: That's the problem. When we wake up, it's always a little too late. But to leave the avid listener on a high note, I'd like to read a quote from the Book of Zohar. It's a nice one; it kind of says what we were trying to say this whole episode, I think. It's from the portion Acharei Mot - 'After the Death.' "How good and how pleasant These are the friends as they sit together inseparably. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill each other. Then they revert back to a state of brotherly love. The Creator, I'm adding here the force of love and the best in nature, what does he say about them? How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. The word together indicates the presence of divinity with them. And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, you will not part henceforth until the Creator rejoices with you and summons peace upon you. And by your merit, there will be peace in the world." This is the meaning of the words: "For the sake of my brothers and my friends, let me say, Let peace be in you." So beautiful. I think we're wrapping up here, Seth. I yearn to see you again in the Holy Land of America. Or maybe you will see me here in the Holy Land of Israel. Until then, please follow us, like, share, comment, subscribe to everything, buy our t-shirts, send us money. You can't send us money, but send us good wishes, 'cause I feel like this is an uphill battle and the stakes are getting higher. So do that, and I hope to see you in the next episode. So next week on The Jew Function podcast, we are propelled a couple hundred years into the future. We're going to visit the birthplace of Zionism. I think it's going to get very interesting, Seth, because arguably, this is one of the sticking points with respect to antisemitism today, like modern-day antisemitism, is mostly rooted in people's minds in Zionism, right? That's the big discussion, the BDS.

Seth: Which, by the way, has plenty of Jews supporting it.

Lio: Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. There's no shortage of Jews to spike up the campaign against Jews. But I think it's going to be interesting because when you zoom in, you can ask yourself why didn't people change their ways, right? Why didn't Jews leave Spain on their own? Why didn't they just go back to Israel? Why didn't Jews leave Germany when the Holocaust was approaching? All those questions. So we're gonna have some nice... Yeah, that's a question. Why don't they leave all? You what I found out, by the way? Today, there's as many Jews in the world as there were in 1925.

Lio: Close to 15 million.

Seth: Anyways...

Lio: We'll get there.

Seth: Yeah, so I hope people pay attention here because if they just get a sound bite of you, man...

Lio: We're really not self-hating Jews, we're not trying to stir up antisemitism, we're actually trying to solve it, believe it or not.

Seth: It's a big problem, okay, and we need time to think and talk about it. This is not a sound bite solution here. This is open. Right. We need to be able to discuss honestly what's going on safely together. And this is not a—let's say it again—it's not a sound bite fix here. It's not a one-line thing, and then it's over. We really need to understand the exact same patterns repeating over and over again. And how do we break that cycle and rise? Yeah.