Will there be hand sanitizers and masks at the third temple love fest?

Lio: Jews are a nation formed around an ideology of love. That's the state of humanity. The virus is one milestone on the way to hitting the ground really hard. Jews play a role, not in spreading the virus—that's a stupid notion—but in being agents of change, agents of connection. Why it's gonna erupt every time there's some sort of world crisis, that's what we're asking.

Seth: We keep living our life, and we go ahead and we do this, then we get punched in the head for no reason.

Lio: There's a system that's communicating with us. Pretty soon it could change to the human function, not just The Jew Function. Because if we don't wake up pretty soon, even humans will become redundant in the world.

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 going to be able to talk about it, we're not going to be able to solve it, you know? We're gonna really grab you in the kishkas 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 saga, and we want to finish it here in 2020. That's it. I want to start with the story.

Seth: We're in the infant stage of corona.

Lio: Early stages. It's just been announced as a pandemic. And the day before, this post came up on Facebook. Friends, something happened today to me that must be shared. Three questions, three exclamation marks. I'm not posting this to promote myself as one person told me, a quote-unquote hero in any way, but to bring up one of the most dangerous aspects of this coronavirus outbreak, as far as I'm concerned, and that is this. The story starts: I walked into a small store today to buy a protein shake, as I frequently do. A woman walked in and asked, "Is anyone Jewish here? Any Jews here?" She continued to say, "Because I have asthma." And yes, I did open my mouth. It was instinctive and reflexive. I said, "As a matter of fact, I am Jewish. And this is not a disease of the Jews. People all over the world are being infected with this heinous virus." And then I was punched in my stomach. I'm okay. Report to the police. Not much will be done at this point. My stomach is fine, but I'm emotionally shaken. And guess what? I will do it again, and it's almost so appropriate that this happened on Pur. We need to protect ourselves on every level now. These are very scary times. I know I'm scared.

Seth: Why are you reading this to us? What am I reading?

Lio: An alarmist? You know, I'm not an alarmist, but I was kind of like watching the corona thing unfold and waiting patiently to see at what point the Jews will be blamed for—

Seth: Ah, yeah.

Lio: I understand what you're saying. Didn't take that long for the whole thing to—

Seth: That's you. They don't hate us because we're Muslim or we're Black, whatever the problem is. They hate us because of Corona. They hate us because of taxes. They hate us because of the orders that are—

Lio: When something shakes.

Seth: This—

Lio: Is not a... And I think that's really the difference. I think usually when you see those kinds of actions, it's usually a system of hate. Meaning it's not like, oh, you're pulled over, you're speeding. No, no. You are messing up my tax returns. It's always like this something big, you bringing, infecting humanity with Corona. You're drinking the blood of babies. It's always like the big thing. It's not like, you know, your dog peed in my backyard, you stinking Jew. No, it's usually something big, systemic, ominous, something out of my control. And I find it interesting. Yes, I'm sure there's also petty antisemitism, kind of like I just saw another tweet about some coach in the Netherlands. He was yelling, like coaching a bunch of school kids, and was picking on one kid, like, "You cancer-ridden Jew," something like that. I was like, yeah, that's just mean, right? But when you're being blamed for the world's problems, it's kinda like, you know, it's like respect, you know? It comes with a responsibility. No, I really feel this is different. I know a lot of people are trying to make Jewish hate just like any other hate. There was another there's a movie that came out actually. Oh, you know what? We can actually play that trailer perhaps. Viral. It's called Viral Inc. Did you see that?

Seth: No.

Lio: Oh, interesting. It's called Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations.

Voice: I think it was inevitable that something like this was going to happen in a synagogue.

Seth: 3, hold a per. We're on your fire. We had 11 dead, shot and killed. We know people are out there self-radicalizing that want to hurt us. These Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-God. The Jew was created to destroy the white Christian nations.

Voice: Pressure has been increasing on the Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, after claims of antisemitism within the party.

Voice: Focuses specifically on the state of Israel. Expecting a political antisemitic firestorm like we have now.

Voice: They called me Jewish—

Voice: Bitch. You are evil, satanic. Leave this—

Voice: Rogue state. The intensity of the Soros campaign was just superhuman.

Seth: Viktor Or got himself a devil, and Soros was his devil.

Lio: It's the picture of the laughing Jew. He is there plotting to destroy Hungary.

Voice: France is probably where it all started, but it's clearly spread across Europe.

Voice: Breaking news here for—

Voice: Accused white—

Seth: Supremacists planned to bomb a syna—

Voice: 6.

Seth: Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. It begins with the idea that the Jews are evil. Christ told the Jews their father was Satan, that they are motivated by a desire to destroy what is good in society.

Voice: If we don't draw a red line, a line in the sand, when it comes to antisemitism, Muslims will be next, gays will be next, and everyone else who's deemed a minority will be next.

Seth: I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Lio: This is a conspiracy theory. Oh, it's hate in general—you know, Jews, Muslims, gays. People hate the Jews. People hate the Jews. People talk about Jew hatred. But the attitude from among Jews, even world leaders, talk with us. I mean, you had Clinton there, Tony Blair. The attitude is one of there's like an agenda, right? Like, oh, it's hate, it spreads like a virus. Antisemitism corrupts people as if this is some sort of a disease that infects people and then they get infected, and you have to put them in prison, put them away. And we're saying, wait a second, where is this thing coming from? Why haven't we solved it? Why is it going to erupt every time there's some sort of a world crisis? That's what we're asking, and that's the question we want everyone to ask. This is what The Jew Function podcast is all about, asking these questions. And pretty soon it could change to the human function, not just the Jew function. Because if we don't wake up pretty soon, even humans will become redundant in the world. I don't know, that's my feeling.

Seth: There's a heavy, there's a heavy silence hanging in the air right now.

Lio: Yeah. It's a time of uncertainty. We started this podcast, you know, just thinking we're going to read this book and get into the role of the Jews kind of in an abstract way, more theoretically, figure out the theory behind it.

Seth: But now it's like one of those movies where like you start reading the book and then you're in the—

Lio: Book. Yeah.

Seth: Yeah, it's—

Lio: Yeah, it's exactly that. I mean, I don't even know if we're gonna get, you know, how far we're gonna get in the book before—

Seth: The attack may come before we get to the end of the—

Lio: Book. We have to get to the end of the book. We have to get it.

Seth: But I, the hypothesis was made.

Lio: We might have to fast forward through some parts of the book, but—

Seth: What do we want to— we're going to read a little bit, if we even get to the book today, but what is the, you know, coming out of episode six last week? Where are we now? And how does this all line up with what's happening in the world? Plus—

Lio: The hypothesis to remind everyone is saying something very simple. Jews are a nation formed around an ideology of love. Love your friend, love your neighbor as yourself. And it's much deeper than just ethics and morals, right? It's an attempt—

Lio: Exactly. It's an—

Lio: Attempt to resemble a law of nature, to be an equivalence of form in resonance with the law of nature, and thus letting this law of love work through you. This is much deeper than simply, oh, let's have a nice little, you know, everybody say hi in the morning when you see your neighbor. No, this is much deeper.

Seth: We look at the things that are happening in life and in nature and all these things as if it's a system communicating with us, not as if we're sitting here and all of a sudden we just get punched in the head for no reason. And then we keep living our life. Okay, now it's calm, now we build stuff and then we get punched in the head for no reason. Then we keep living our life and we go ahead and we do this, and then we get punched in the head for no reason. But there's a system that's communicating with us, and we have to understand. We have to feel the system, we have to see what's happening, see what it's doing. All of a sudden, the whole world stopped and is self-quarantining.

Lio: That's the thing, exactly. Just like Jews were getting hit on the head, now the world is getting hit on the side of the head. Suddenly, the whole world is smacked. Not like one country, one group, you can blame it on somebody. No, this is like a... Suddenly, everybody feels that they are under one law of nature. It's interesting. The virus shows that we are mutually infecting one another. But we do it in a negative way. Suddenly, the virus is forcing us to be concerned with the other.

Voice: I—

Seth: Heard you say that.

Lio: How are you doing? Are you sick? Should I move away? I'm forced to think about you because by thinking about you, I'm somehow caring for me—

Seth: As well. That's okay, that's still a little abstract. I think the first thing that we see from the virus is that everybody has to isolate themselves, first of all. And the connection between us used to be like, I'm going to buy stuff, I'm going to get stuff, I'm going to fly somewhere, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, all of this doing and buying and stuff, and now it's like stop. Everybody stop, go back home, and then... Okay, so now how are we connected to each other? Now I think we get to what you were saying.

Lio: Well, now at least we're thinking about it. That's the first thing, that by stopping all this unnecessary distraction, we're forced to think about the meaning of it all and how we are all equally fragile in the eyes of nature, and we're equal in the eyes of this general law of nature. And we can't see the purpose yet behind it. We just see some unexplainable calamity we have to maybe band against. But what we're saying here is nothing is coincidental, nothing just happens, everything is moving within, evolving within this system of laws. And when you break a law, you feel it, right? If you fall from too high, you're going to break something. But while you're falling, it seems great, right? It's like that joke. Someone is falling from the tenth floor and someone's asking him. You know, how's it— what’s happening? It's like, well, so far, so good. You know, it feels good. But when you meet the ground, then you realize, oh my God, it's gravity. I wasn't paying attention to that law. That's the state of humanity. The virus is one milestone on the way to hitting the ground really hard. And it's forcing us to look at it. And what we're saying here is that Jews play a role, not in spreading the virus—that's a stupid notion—but in being agents of change, agents of connection.

Seth: The virus is actually coming from what you would call, quote, God. Quote, nature. The virus is just coming at us from some system. We don't know what this system is. We don't know where it's coming, how it's coming, whether it's a hoax or whether it's this. It's affecting everyone. One way or another, it's reaching everyone. It's coming at us somehow. It's coming at all of humanity somehow. Now, how are we going to respond back? And the way that we all live, so separated from each other, so caring about ourselves.

Lio: As long as nothing really terrible happens, both to Jews and to non-Jews, everybody kind of goes on, goes about doing what they're doing. Some pay attention, some don't. Some hate you, some don't. Some have some feelings in the back of their mind or whatever. Jews have some feelings about it. So everybody kind of goes around doing their thing. As soon as something like that happens, it forces you to think, right? It forces you to consider, to evaluate your values, your life, what you've been doing, the systems we have built as humans. And this thought process is the beginning of change. And you see it in Jewish history, by the way, in the little excerpt we're about to read today. That as soon as—remember, last week we came out of Babylon, Cyrus said, Go to Israel, right? You're free. The people, they united, story of Pur, right? There was a, you know, Haman cast a lot to destroy the Jews. So they finally, they finally—

Lio: United.

Seth: Right. They were freed. Somehow the forces arranged themselves and the leader decided now before we wanted to imprison you, enslave you, whatever, and now we set you free. Right. Look at that. Page forty-two. In accord with our nature, as soon as Cyrus sent us to Israel as a free people, we began to argue over the building of the temple and the nature of our restored sovereignty. But one way or another, the temple was eventually built. But more importantly, for a brief period of time, unity was restored, and that period was a beautiful one in the pain-stricken history of our people.

Lio: Right. Keep going. Read the one right after. Well, basically, they go back. Hold on, before you read it. So they go back, they build the second temple. And we know we talked about the second temple. It's an expression. Forget about the temple. Nobody needs to build a temple. But it's an expression of unity. Just the fact that a group of people manages to unite to carry out such an undertaking.

Seth: I used to always go see this band called The Grateful Dead.

Lio: I know if you have them in—

Seth: I don't know if I should be embarrassed to say that, whatever. Anyway, so I used to go see them all the time. But most of the experience for me was I loved going to the shows because, you know, growing up like in a regular suburb, it was such a shock to see this. Like, people from all over the country would arrive at these shows. You'd have an extra 10,000 people who came to the event who didn't even have a ticket to go inside, and they were cooking outside. This is before cell phones and everything. They were cooking outside, you know, playing hacky sack outside, exchanging music like it was this Babylonian marketplace kind of thing. When I learned about the kind of culture around the temple, this blew my mind. I got so excited. It was like a couple of times a year. Everyone from everywhere would come and there would be music in the streets, and nobody, like, you know, the stories say, like, nobody had to sleep in the street. Everybody was brought inside, everyone was fed, everyone gathered together, they brought, you know, everybody ate, everybody played an unbelievable kind of unity experience at this place.

Lio: That's exactly it. I think Seth, we're at this point in time, although we have to cross a certain gap here, and we will circle back to it. But I think now, maybe today, it's great. Let's read those few excerpts that talk about how it could be like, right? What can that unity feel like? What can that feeling of togetherness be like? Because people are right now feeling the opposite. They're freaking out. They're going into isolation. The connection between us is a negative connection. The virus is exposing that we are interconnected, but in a negative way. You can kill me, I can kill you, you can kill my grandma, all that. That's how we're feeling it right now. And it's in a sense an invitation to consider that connection and to reverse it. And what we can get from that, and especially if Jews will lead the way, let's read from this—

Seth: Antiquity.

Lio: Of the Jews in this book here.

Seth: Okay. So Josephus writes that the pilgrims would make acquaintance, maintained by conversing together and by seeing and talking with one another, and so renewing the recollections of this union. Once they entered Jerusalem, the pilgrims were greeted with open arms. The townsfolk let them into their homes and treated them, yeah, I love this, and treated them as family. And there was always room for everything. The Mishnah relishes this rare camaraderie. All the craftsmen in Jerusalem would stand before them and ask about their well-being. Our brothers, men of such and such a place, have you come in peace? And the flute would play before them until they arrived at the Temple Mount. Additionally, all the material needs of every person who came to Jerusalem were met in full. One did not say to one's friend, I could not find an oven on which to roast an offering in Jerusalem, or I could not find a bed to sleep in in Jerusalem. Even better, the unity and warmth among the Hebrews projected outward and became a role model for the neighboring nations. It's incredible.

Lio: Yeah, and this one, let's just read this one. That's really nice.

Seth: The philosopher Philo of Alexandria portrayed the pilgrimage as a festival. Thousands of people from thousands of cities would come each festival to the temple as if to a common shelter, a safe haven protected from the storms of life. With hearts filled with good hopes, they would take this vital vacation with sanctity and with glory to God. They made friendships with people they had not met before. In the merging of hearts, they found the ultimate proof of unity.

Lio: So good. Keep going, keep going, there's more.

Seth: Philo was not the only one who admired what he saw. Those festivals of bonding served as a way for Israel to be for the first time since they were given the vocation of a "light to the nations." The book Sifrei Devarim tells how Gentiles would go up to Jerusalem and see Israel and say, "It is becoming to cling only to this nation." This era in the history of our nation is probably the only time where we could see a living proof that the antidote to Jew hatred was not assimilation, but rather enhanced internal union. Historian Paul It—

Lio: It's important not to try to be like everyone, but to really lead the way on how to connect, how to be together. This is phenomenal. And the last bit, yeah, Paul Johnson.

Seth: Paul Johnson writes: In the years 400 to 200 BC, those are the lost centuries of Jewish history. The lost centuries. There were no great events or calamities they chose to record. You know, if you look at the context, it's like everything that's been written has been about some—

Seth: Terrible thing that—

Lio: Happened. So, what is this? What does it conclude?

Seth: The only time our history is not recorded is when everything's going well.

Lio: Perhaps they were happy, he concludes.

Seth: Perhaps they were happy. And then the book of Zohar, the Book of Zohar. Hine Ma Tov. Right. The Book of Zohar describes succinctly and clearly the process that Israel went through. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to also sit together." These are the friends as they sit together and are not separated from each other. At first, they seem like people at war wishing to kill one another. Then they return to being in brotherly love. And you friends, who are here as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part from one another. And by your merit, there will be peace in the world. Indeed, being a light unto the nations could not have been more evident than at that time. You know, and hopefully at this time.

Lio: I hope this will be in our hands. It's in our hands. I really hope that we can love each other. Yeah, we can remind people that we have the power to do it. Jewish people have, we just have to jog our memory. We have that capacity to really go all out. Really, you know, now that the virus has removed the need to be concerned with material possessions and retail shopping and travel and sports and Hollywood and this and that and the other. Not that they were evil in and of themselves or anything wrong about it, but they were just a veil onto this thing that can awaken between us. And now I really do feel that this is an opportunity for exactly people like the Jews to step up to that void. This is actually the good parts in the mystery book. Then later it—

Seth: Gets a little more—it a little—

Lio: Hairy later on.

Seth: What I want to say here is that all of these things that have happened, these historic things. You know, you can go through our history and each one is another, you know, Greece, Babylon, Rome, Persia, like each one is a, is like this, you know, another wheel turning around, like click, click, like it's like we're out. If people are blaming the Jews again. So you know, it's another one. This is another one that's happening. And this time we have the ability, like in Purim, they had the ability, the Maccabees, you could say, had the ability. There were times when, you know, with Cyrus, like we just read, they had the ability. There's these abilities for the people to come together and it changes the fate. Well, what we're trying to broadcast here is to really spread it in a way that it wasn't able to be spread before and change the fate, change our fate, and change it in a big way, in a big, very big qualitative way. It's like in our hands now.

Lio: But in simple terms, it's the inner inclination towards the well-being of the other, care for the other almost as if they are more important than me.

Seth: We're not asking anyone to put their lives—You keep going so sublime on me. I mean, I see a virus. I see people staying home from school and I see people trying to figure out their mortgage and stuff like that. You're talking—

Lio: You're talking—

Seth: Five levels—

Lio: Beyond what I can understand.

Seth: We switched roles. I thought we started out. I was the dreamy guy and you were the more grounded guy. And then we switched roles.

Lio: I'm just looking into nature, you know? I'm actually not looking that far ahead. I think the big leap here of the imagination that people need to make, and I think nowadays it's becoming easier to make it, is as follows. Everybody agrees we exist in a system. No question there. We exist in a system of nature, a system of laws. Various laws are operating on us. Some we know, some we don't. We try as best as we can to fit, to be in some sort of accordance, right, with the system, not to get hurt. That's kind of human nature, right? How do I make the most out of my situation, kind of? What this virus is exposing is some sort of imbalance between us and nature. I don't even know what exactly it is, but I see that we are out of balance. I see that we are put under pressure. The leap here is as follows. Some people would say, well, it just happened. Right? It's accidental. It's in... Stuff just happens. But that's just like my son saying stuff happens.

Seth: They just hate us. They're bad, that's why they hate us. They just hate us.

Lio: It just is. We're just walking down the street—

Seth: And you just punch me in the head.

Lio: The tree just fell on my car. Stuff happens. Why? I don't know. I don't know. But that's kind of a naive statement.

Seth: And as long as it's not happening, then I just go back to living my normal life and thinking I'm in control, whatever.

Lio: And then when stuff happens, I don't know what happened.

Seth: This is naive.

Lio: This is naive. I mean, even, you know, talk to any scientist. They'll tell you that nothing just happens. They'll tell you that there's an explanation for every phenomenon. They even had to go in and come up with a theory of a dark energy, a dark matter that's somehow holding bits and pieces of the universe in place, even though there's no proof for it, except something had to be there. Something doesn't just happen. There's always something pushing, pulling, right? So the leap is to say that all those laws are part of an even higher law, sort of a higher direction that nature is moving in. Okay, let's put it this way.

Seth: What does it mean to be a light unto the nations then?

Lio: To be a light unto the nations is to first tell people that stuff doesn't just happen, that there are laws, that the one law we've been consistently missing out on is the law of unity, this love, this care for one another. It's like we've, like, reached up, we like grabbed a light, we like tasted some light, and then we like turn around and hand it to everyone else. It sounds conceited, but I mean, it sounds like being a pipeline, basically.

Lio: Yeah. Well, that's where we're going to get a lot of negative comments in the comment section. Because people say—

Seth: What am I supposed to do, not say that, though?

Lio: No, no, no. I agree. No, take my words.

Lio: This is where we say it. There is no other way but to say it. And I think people are developing an ear for it. At the end of the day, people feel stuff. And I think the fact that I just heard a friend today talk about it, how everybody moved from living in their own personal script, or I was the hero of my movie, and I was fighting the bad guys on the way to get my home or my love of my life or my company on Wall Street or whatever my hero's goal was, it kept clashing with other heroes' scripts, and when our interests met, then we would be great friends, and if they somehow conflicted, then we had to maybe fight, or maybe I had to kill you, whatever it is. That was the way the world was moving. And now suddenly, all the scripts are like united. There's one common enemy and there's one common humanity, and we have to communicate, and we have to trust each other, we have to do all those things. And I know it sounds hard right now when all I care about is how do I not get sick and I keep all the infected people away from my—

Seth: Door. There's also people who think it's just hype, by the way. But okay. I understand that I see what you're seeing. I just want to acknowledge those listeners out there who think it's still hype, fine. But regardless of hype or not hype, there's something happening—

Lio: On every news—you know, airlines are closing, hotels are closing.

Seth: Right. The government is going to postpone—

Seth: This politician's an idiot or not, or whatever, whatever something is happening.

Lio: Yeah, and I think that in itself is an interesting commentary, right? The fact that a virus whose mortality rates are less than an average war is a world phenomenon in motion. That's it. It's moving. It's moving. People are being laid off. Pensions, rent, as you said, IRS. Mind, trade, everything is grinding to a halt. Hotels, cruises, sports games, Hollywood blockbusters. They didn't release James Bond. Oh my God. You know? It's like—

Seth: Suddenly everything becomes insignificant. The basketball game is going to be played with an empty stadium.

Lio: Yeah, exactly. Soon with, you know, it's going to play—will be played virtually on a computer. We're trying to look at the forces at work, not trying to find exactly who played a role in instigating what, but rather the forces at work, and where is our place of choice. What can I do about it? What can I do about it? I can change my attitude. I can change the way I think of the world and of everyone living in it. And I shouldn't wait for a virus to make me feel that I depend on everyone else. I should try to do it before the virus gets here. You know, if the book is telling us anything.

Seth: So, from what I understand, remember, so Ptolemy II had an advisor, or whatever, who said, "Oh, remember, didn't your dad give you like 100,000 Jewish slaves?" I think the story goes something like that. He's like, "Why don't you give back the 100,000 slaves? And then maybe the high priest would be into, you know, coming in and telling you about this." It's like all of a sudden, something happens. And the Jews are free again. Yeah, I want to know about this. Something changed again.

Lio: There are bigger forces at work here. I think it's okay to admit that. You don't have to be called a religious person, because every scientist will tell you the same.

Seth: You hear from the book, he goes, and every single Jewish slave was freed, whether they were brought to Egypt by Alexander the Great or at any other time. The king's treasury would recompense every slave owner. So if you let your Jewish slave go, the Egyptian government would give you money for your loss. Within a week, every Jew in Egypt was a free person.

Lio: Exactly. And by the way, just since you kind of delved into history, that started a process whereby these 70 sages were sent down to Egypt and they taught.

Seth: Right, so he wrote the letter to Judah, the high priest, and said, I've set free all of these slaves with you and now I want to translate the Hebrew scriptures.

Lio: Exactly.

Seth: Yeah. And so Judah replied quickly and said, let me help you out with that.

Lio: And he sent those people down.

Seth: He sat them down.

Lio: And for a week, he interrogated them about every aspect of political rule, every political question he had, every philosophical question. He basically made them give.

Seth: The head of Egypt had 70 of these sages.

Lio: Sages.

Seth: That Judah sent down there from the temple. And he asked them everything about how to watch.

Lio: About everything. He questioned them about every aspect of life. He found such a force of beauty in these men's words. His philosopher writes Menod, he was in awe of such beauty, right? Then they explained all the problems, and he asked them to translate the scriptures for him. Again, the philosopher says these wise men were a feast of words full of wit and weight. It sounds a little aloof, but the point is that this started a process of translation that brought the Bible to the world.

Seth: Right, exactly. So this is how the wisdom of Moses, the wisdom of Abraham, these people from Babylon, gets into the world. It's through this Jewish slave-owning guy who wants to grab it, spread it out, and tell me everything. I want to know everything.

Lio: Just to end with a little bit of fairy dust, when he sent them back and finally brought them again, he placed these 72 sages in 72 separate rooms and asked them, without telling them in advance, to write for him, meaning to translate the Law of Moses. Each one of them did it.

Seth: You know how I feel about these fairy tales.

Lio: I know. It's okay. I mean, they sound nice. Listen, it's written. He placed them in separate rooms, told them to translate, and when they brought back, when it was time to put the pencils down, he collected the papers. They had translated exactly the same thing. If they made any changes to the scriptures to fit the translation, it was the same change across all of them. It's just another small example of those stories circulating since antiquity about these people. When we play this particular role, sages of the law of nature, we are admired and supported.

Seth: And it fits naturally with each kind of people. There's no problem between Jewish people and people of other nations, including a powerful Pharaoh. It doesn't matter because it fits every nation. It shines a light on everyone.

Lio: Yeah, and this chapter ends by quoting Paul Johnson, saying that the sages were brought back to Jerusalem with a letter saying they should be given leave if they want to return to Egypt and talk to him. He says this is perhaps the beginning of political lobbying.

Seth: He brings them back and starts giving them women and alcohol.

Lio: Almost.

Seth: You have Washington D.C. lobbyists. This is where Jewish lawyers came from. From the guys that went back to Ptolemy.

Lio: Perhaps.

Seth: But maybe.

Lio: This is what he meant when he said this is the Jews being made a pilot for humanity to emulate. I think this is where we end. In the next chapter, in our next episode, we will go into the more hairy fallout from Hellenism and the stuff that was going on there.

Seth: When the priests, the sages, mixed with the cultures, that mingling light onto the cultures, that's the mingling, the assimilation.

Lio: Exactly, when we're not adhering to that law. It's going to be a heritage story. Hairy, hairy. Yeah, so brace yourself. It's not going to be kid-friendly if this podcast has ever been. But it will be.

Seth: Yeah, I mean, there's millions killed and things like that. Don't spoil it.

Lio: We'll get to it. I think it's nice because we started with a sweet picture of what it could be. Then, as the world turns around the virus panic, we can also talk about what could go wrong.

Seth: That's what the book shows us: how it goes wrong if we are not connected.

Lio: Exactly. That will be the lesson we will try to learn together.

Seth: My friend from New Jersey.

Lio: Yes, The Jew Function, of course. Listen, subscribe, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, The Jew Function. It's all the Jew fun. I'm still in Israel, you're still in New Jersey. We hope we're all gonna make the right choice. Good night, everyone.