Noam: Hey everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam.
Mijal: I’m Mijal.
Noam: And I’m Noam and this podcast is our way of trying to figure out the Jewish world. We don’t have it all figured out, but we’re going to try to figure out some big items together.
Mijal: As we love to say, we really do love to hear from you. So please email us at wonderingjews@jewishunpacked.com and call us at 833-WON-Jews.
Noam: You know, Mijal, I was meeting with someone recently. Actually, I wasn’t meeting with them, but someone noticed me somewhere. It doesn’t happen often, but this happened. And they stopped me and they said, you know, Noam, I was gonna email you. You’re always asking people to email you. So I was like, you know what? But I decided, you know, one day I’ll bump into you. And so that actually happened.
Mijal: I feel like that was the wrong story for the message you’re trying to say now.
Noam: Why?
Mijal: Because they were like, we don’t want to email.
Noam: Well, no, I know, but like they were making fun and I’m jumping on the bandwagon of making fun. So feel free to make fun of us. WonderingJews@jewishunpacked.com. But do it nicely or lightly. Mijal, is that right?
Mijal: I think we can take it. Go for it.
Noam: We can take it. But today, today, let’s focus on today. So today, Friday, November 1st, we are speaking to Lauren Markoe. Lauren is news editor of The Forward. She’s a Bronx native and she reported for the Patriot Ledger, several McClatchy newspapers in the South, and Religion News Service, where she was also managing editor. She also produced live radio shows at WAMU in Washington DC, where she currently lives.
Mijal: I just think it’s good to just name that we are recording this on November 1st, but if you’re listening, this is the day after the election. And I’m sure there’s a lot of feelings that all of us are having, you ourselves included.
Let’s start with the question. We always get questions from listeners. So Susan wrote in and said the following, probably related to the fact that a lot of people were announcing they would end their subscription to newspapers. I think your old employer, The Washington Post. So Lauren, which news service could you absolutely not live without? And you cannot say your own.
Lauren: Well first of all, thanks for having me. What new service could I not live without? I start the day with our competitor, Jewish Insider. They’re great. They do a great job of summing up a lot of what’s happening, particularly in Jewish politics. So I look to them to see if we’ve got any gaps in our coverage.
Noam: First of all, what an amazing way to start this specific show that you look to your competitor in order to gain wisdom.
Lauren: You know, you only let me pick one. If I could have more, I’d say all our competitors and and you know everything from the New York Times to the Jewish Insider to JTA is a competitor, but they’re also not competitors. They’re also allies because we all draw on each other. We all quote each other. We all link to each other’s coverage and if you’re going to be a consumer of Jewish news, please read the Forward. I think it’s your best option. Yeah. But read the others too, because we need to support our Jewish journalistic ecosystem.
Mijal: That’s awesome. Yeah, Noam, what would you answer?
Noam: I was gonna ask you first.
Mijal: No, I am asking the question.
Noam: My answer, my answer is TikTok.
Mijal: Noam, what?
Noam: Yeah, TikTok. I just scroll on TikTok and the algorithm knows me well enough that it’s gonna show me quick takes from all different sides of the aisle. And I learned a tremendous amount. I might be a millennial, but I act like a Gen Z-er.
Mijal: Noam, I’m trying to figure out how, how true this is versus you trying to like tell everybody, look at me. I’m so cool. I’m Noam. I got my news from TikTok. You know what? Could you actually screenshot it one day and like prove it to me?
Noam: Deal. Deal. Sold. Sold. What about you, Mijal? What’s your answer?
Mijal: Like you have to, okay. Okay. I, well, I think right now I’m just like a little bit obsessed with Israeli papers. So like the first thing I read in the morning is Ynet and Times of Israel, just open those up. And then I have a curated Twitter feed that are like people that break out news that I like. And that kind of tells me, I think, what I need to know.
Noam: I like it. Okay, so there’s so much to talk about here, by the way, because I could go on forever about, think, what this says about each and every one of us, but let’s not do that right now. That’s for another time. For now, we’re so lucky to have Lauren on this show, and we’ve hedged 34 times already about what’s going to be happening at the time that you’re listening to this. But we really want to be having a conversation, all three of us right now, in the days leading up to the election, with a conversation that’s going to transcend whoever wins.
And so we want to hear a little bit more about your work in general first.
Lauren: Well, as the news editor of the Forward for most of my time there, I haven’t been writing. But my background is mostly I’ve been a political reporter and this race, you know, everybody says it’s the most important race we’ve ever had, presidential race we have ever had. Whether it’s the most important or not, it’s exceedingly important. The choices are very stark.
So I became a reporter again. I went into the field, I’ve been interviewing Jewish voters around the country. Jacob Kornbluh is our senior political reporter. He’s been doing the same. And we’ve pulled in the rest of the staff to focus on the election because it’s what’s on people’s minds and because it has a lot to do with the Jewish future. So we, this is, we’ve had so many big stories, obviously October 7th took up most of our attention for months, and then the election comes into play. But the two are inseparable. We’re covering them together because that’s how Jews are thinking about politics. They’re thinking of it in terms of all sorts of domestic issues which they prioritize, but also in terms of October 7th and the conflict that’s followed.
Mijal: Lauren, let me ask you, when you speak about Jewish voters and the Jewish vote, what are the sources that you and other journalists and analysts are using to be able to describe the Jewish vote?
Lauren: So we have polls. The Jewish vote is so small, but it’s so important because Jews vote and they’re a significant part of the electorate in swing states. Those polls, there have been many of them. The Forward did one with CHIPS 50, which is an academic consortium. We have a GBAO polls. We have other national polls which pull out Jewish voters. So we can see what they’re feeling.
We’re also talking to them and anecdotally, we’re hearing what their concerns are and how they’re thinking of voting. One thing I would note this year, is, I’d say we’ve seen it in past years, but more so this election than ever, we have voters who don’t want to tell us who they’re voting for or to talk about the election. Actually, I’d like to talk to you about it because it feels really good to vent. But you can’t write this because my daughter, my mother, my brother would not speak to me if they knew. It will create more tension in the family. We’re already divided about this. Or, I don’t want my coworkers to know. I’ve heard that too. I’m afraid I’m not going to get work if I reveal my preferences. So it’s been a little tougher this year. At the same time, we do have some good indicators about how Jewish voters are feeling.
Mijal: You said the words, Jews vote, which I think is important to kind of emphasize that compared to, we often compare different groups in America. So we can talk about Jews as actually going out to vote in, in significant percentages. And you also spoke about Jews in swing states. So could you just tie those things and flesh out a little bit more. Why, I guess what I’m asking is why it’s not just like navel gazing that we just care about how Jews vote, but that they can actually make a difference in an election, the way the Jews vote.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. So Jews are, you know, 2% about of the population. But in the swing states, in particular Pennsylvania, we have about six, seven swing states. There are about half a million Jews.
Noam: There are half a million Jews in the state of Pennsylvania.
Lauren: Yes, yes, it’s between 300,000 and 500,000.
Noam: Okay, got it.
Lauren: So I know that’s a big range, but they’re a significant portion of the electorate, and in Pennsylvania. So in Pennsylvania in particular, we’ve got Jews who could make a big difference because the margin between Trump and Biden and Trump and Clinton four years before that was much smaller than the number of Jewish voters in the state.
If one or the other candidate wins and one or the other will, can we say Jews made the difference if they break a certain way? No, the same way you can’t say that about any particular group. In Pennsylvania, the Harris campaign is very worried about losing Jewish voters, but it’s also very worried about losing Black men and Latino voters. So you can never blame a win or a loss on one particular group. But you can say that a particular group is important.
And you can tell that Pennsylvania Jews in particular are important to both campaigns because they are both sending surrogates to Pennsylvania. They are going themselves. And they are paying for ads to sway Jewish voters. So in all those ways, you can tell that Jewish voters in Pennsylvania are very important and both campaigns think that they can, are hoping to grab those votes.
Jews, we should say at the outset, traditionally vote Democratically, by and large. We’re talking a range here, Obama got around 80%, so that was huge. It’s been falling since then, we’re seeing Kamala Harris is polling somewhere in the 60s, high 60s, mid 60s, depending on what poll. But in that way, the Jewish vote matters to the rest of the country as well. Where else is the Jewish vote important in states which have significant Jewish populations like Arizona, Nevada, those swing states as well?
Mijal: Lauren, would we say that the Jewish vote is also important nationally in terms of just general involvement in election in terms of donations and organizing? Do we see significant activism from the Jewish community that matters at that level?
Lauren: Jews are generally very civically minded. They rank the preservation of democracy as their number one issue. That’s different from most Americans who put economic issues first. I mean, Jews care about the economy too, but that’s their number one issue. So they’re involved.
Noam: What does preservation of democracy mean? What does that phrase mean?
Lauren: They’re worried about a peaceful transition of power. They’re worried that the actual winner of the election will not be sworn in in January. They worry about election integrity.
Mijal: When Noam asked what does preservation of democracy mean and you gave these three examples, is it because you’ve tested the question or is it a hypothesis of what you think people mean?
Lauren: No, the question has been tested and the GBA poll in September, really good poll that Jim Gerstein’s shop did, showed it as the number one issue.
Noam: Mijal, I’m gonna ask you a question now.
Mijal: Me. Whoops.
Noam: Yeah, why do you think preservation, let’s take that as a given, that preservation of democracy is sacrosanct to many Jewish people. Why do you think that is? Why is that a Jewish value or why is that a value of the Jewish people?
Mijal: Okay, I want to reply, but first I just want to make a comment and I’m saying this as somebody who lives in a very politically diverse world. I often say like a third of my social circle is very red, a third is very blue and a third is purple slash, you know, confused or, you know, whatever you want to call it. I’ve had very intense conversations with people across the aisle and right now when we speak about election integrity, for example, if you speak to a Trump voter versus a Harris voter, they’re gonna both care about it, but they’re gonna bring different examples and think about it in a different way. So I was just, I’m just naming that as something that I think is a mark of the times we are living in.
But sorry, going back to your question, Noam. Let me ask it differently. I think that a lot of people identify democracy with a certain classical liberalism, a liberal American tradition. And there has been actually really interesting research and books that have been written trying to understand why is it that American Jews have been so tied to the liberal tradition. There’s a book I read recently, maybe a couple of years ago. I think the author’s name is Kenneth Wald. It’s called The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism, in which he basically asked this very question. And part of what he’s argued, and he’s not the only one, is basically saying the history of Jews in America has kind of convinced them that the American experiment, which includes certain liberal values like the separation of church and state, and like individual rights, that that has been like the best way to protect minorities such as the Jewish minority, you know, in general. So there’s been almost like an allegiance to certain liberal values in America that are understood by many Jews as a safeguarding, not only of Jewish safety, but in general safety of minorities.
Noam: That’s helpful. And Lauren, help me understand this better, I like to think I’m a man of the people.
Mijal: Well, yeah, you listen to TikTok every morning. You’ve proved it.
Noam: I travel all over the country, meet with lots and lots of different people, hear from lots and lots of different perspectives. So I like to think that I know what matters to the Jewish people, but what do you learn from your research? What are the issues that matter the most?
Lauren: I think it’s important to point out, as Mijal did, that there are differing Jewish opinions and even on the preservation of democracy, there are going to be different views on exactly what that means. We are seeing some divides in what Jews care about. It often splits along denominational lines. So we’re seeing that in some ways, American Jews are very much like the rest of the electorate in that the economy ranks very, very high, that concerns about democracy, though they rank higher for Jews in general, rank very, very high. That immigration is a concern, as it is for most Americans, somewhat lower.
Where we see the real distinctions between American voters as a whole and Jewish voters is on Israel and antisemitism. There are wider gaps there. Your average American doesn’t rank it very highly. Your average Jew does. That’s what the numbers show us.
Mijal: Let me ask maybe like a basic question that I should have asked earlier, but could you tell us right now based on both polling and anecdotal evidence, what are the biggest changes or trends that we are seeing regarding the Jewish vote in this particular election? You already began to mention some. So you mentioned, for example, that you’re seeing a lot more hesitancy about sharing political opinions in public, which I’m guessing it’s not just a Jewish thing, but might just be a general indicator of polarization. So what indications do we have of what has changed in terms of the Jewish vote?
Lauren: So I think there are a lot of people who will say, when this is all over, we’re going to see that Jews pretty much voted as they usually voted. So I think the concerns of Jews about coarsening of the culture have intensified. But that’s, that doesn’t seem to be just a Jewish thing either.
Noam: Okay. So then I want to ask about, let’s drill down on the Jewish vote more. You have most American Jews are Democrats, is that right? Yes. So how, like what is it, 80%, 75%?
Lauren: Well, not necessarily. I wasn’t speaking about registration. This is presidential votes going back a couple of decades. You will see that most American Jews have chosen the Democrats.
Noam: Right. 75% over the last 30 years?
Lauren: So we were talking close to 80s with Obama and then you know high low 70s since around there. Yeah. Yeah.
Noam: So anywhere between 70 to 80% of the Jewish vote.
Lauren: I’d say if you want to do a good range 65 to 80, which is a pretty big range but in the last let’s say 25 years.
Noam: And Orthodox Jews often vote Republican in Pew 2021 is said that 75% I think Identified as Republicans or maybe voted Republican. Why do you think that’s the case? Why do most Orthodox Jews vote Republican?
Lauren: Well, that Pew study from 2020, its conclusion in general was that the divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox American Jews is widening. That you can see this even in migration to Florida. Everybody knows of some New York Jew who is think, doesn’t want to live in a blue state anymore and feels more comfortable.
Noam: Or an L.A. Jew who moved to South Florida a few years ago.
Mijal: That’s why Noam moved from my life to Florida. Yeah. You’re talking about.
Noam: But not for political reasons. Everyone relax, everyone relax. Everyone gets excited when they find out I moved to Florida or they jeer me. It’s one or the other, but no one’s like, okay, move on. But it’s either cheer or jeer.
Lauren: I was wondering. Yes, so you can you can see sort of this, Jews moving in apart from one another and I can’t speak for every Orthodox Jew, but you can you can see a growing discomfort with the with part of the Democratic Party. The part they see is the squad taking over, the squad is very influential in their minds. They are very worried about it growing and Israel, by extension, being very more vulnerable because Iron Dome funding may not be renewed. Those are concerns, overwhelming support for it in Congress, but what if that changes?
There are different responses to rising antisemitism. Orthodox Jews may be more visibly Jewish, feel that they are more likely to be targets of it, and what’s happening on campus feels much more threatening. So I’d say there are different reactions where you have maybe more non-Orthodox Jews thinking, we have to balance on campus free speech with and protecting Jewish students from from antisemitism, whereas Orthodox Jews may be more likely to say these are, I’m never sending my my child to one of these universities because they’re exposed and nobody has their back there. So these are just some sentiments we’re hearing.
Mijal: Yeah, I do want to add, Lauren, though, I don’t think for Orthodox Jews it’s only about Israel and antisemitism. There definitely is like a sort of like alignment across culture war issues, I would say, between Orthodox Jews and, you know, politically right-wing Americans.
Lauren: Certainly.
Mijal: Whether we talk about issues of, you know, and like what you would put under the heading of like, DEI, anti-racism, gender ideology, things like that. There’s a whole host of issues, school choice, in which Orthodox Jews feel much, much more aligned with the right in America than with the left. right, so for me, even before October 7th and before this kind of rise in antisemitism, there was growing alignment between these different groups.
Lauren: Absolutely. Yeah, no, for sure. Many Orthodox Jews, when they hear about DEI, it seems like something that excludes Jews works against them. And that was in the works years ago. Years ago, there was a discomfort there. And it’s not just that the squad seems anti-Israel, it’s that they stand for a whole bunch of values that don’t seem to align with some Orthodox voters.
Noam: Yeah, I would just add though, I really do think that that discomfort is experienced not by Orthodox Jewish people exclusively in the Jewish world. I do a lot, a lot of work in this area, in this space, typically it’s been working with secular Jewish people who feel like they’re not seen and they’re not heard and they’re not included. So I just want to throw that in there.
And what I’m thinking about is a different topic, which is, there’s always this conversation about the Jewish community, the Jewish community, the Jewish community, but the reality is there’s no such thing as the Jewish community. It’s the Jewish communities, always Jewish communities that don’t have something that is guiding them. Like I would think it’s like there’s gotta be something that’s guiding all of the Jewish people. There is one issue though that will unite the Jewish people. There’s one. It’s not Israel. Lauren, you know what it is. It’s food. It’s food. Food.
Mijal: Noam, you lost this one too there, but okay, keep going.
Okay, but Lauren, you do a lot of work with food, don’t you?
Lauren: Well, they don’t like me to write about food because nobody really wants to eat my cooking. But we do love to write about food.
But you bring up something interesting. I went to Pittsburgh last week, week before. Pittsburgh, swing state, Jewish community that suffered the worst antisemitic attack in US history. A close Jewish community to begin with, but after the Tree of Life massacre, a community tighter than ever, tighter than ever. They all pulled together. But I saw some real angst there this fall over their fragmentation over the election, that they are really trying to keep it together as a community. They are being civil to each other. They are still meeting. They’re still going to get together over the election to talk and to eat, because food is important, as you said. they’re still not as comfortable with each other as they were. And I think that goes for Jews everywhere.
You know, you may be a little more reticent to say whether you support a ceasefire or not for fear that you’re going to offend the other person. You know, it may be what you wear around your neck, you know, is a symbol, is a signal to one Jew or another. So what I think what holds Jews together is what has always held Jews together. And you can say that that’s a commitment to each other as a people. And you’ve got to get very vague because Jews are such a diverse group, and everybody can fill in their own blank as to what it is that holds Jews together. That’s still there. But whatever it is, the tension is so palpable within Jewish communities. But I see them trying. I see them, everybody’s still trying to talk to one another.
And maybe that’s one of the things that hold them together is this willingness to keep trying and maybe this fear of falling apart, which cannot happen. That just can’t happen. If the country is dividing, that’s bad enough, but the Jewish people cannot divide. I hear that in various ways from Jews I talk to.
Noam: I think Jewish people are actually very connected also. I was kidding about the food thing before, listeners. But I think Jews are very connected and united about Israel. And now I don’t mean that they agree on all the policies about Israel, but I think that there’s a deep, strong identity that Jewish people, after the 7th of October specifically, but care deeply about Israel.
You see that in the numbers. I’m going to go to the numbers for a second where I found this interesting that with regard to the Israel-Hamas war, there’s a 25% higher ranking from the Forward poll that showed the priorities for Jewish voters. So 25% of Jewish people care more about the Israel-Hamas war than others do nationally.
And I was thinking when I saw that, again, that the reason that’s confusing is because, when I read that, I know how much the Jewish people care about Israel and care about the Israel Hamas war. But I wonder what that indicates because maybe they care deeply about it, but they view how to deal with it differently. Is that right?
Lauren: There is that. You know, American Jews do care about Israel. They have different opinions as to how the war should be conducted, what our relationship with Netanyahu should be, whether there should be a ceasefire or not. Vast majority actually do.
Noam: Well, they do now. Right? Okay.
Lauren: But they do now. They do now. But it looks like I think 87% in our last poll. Don’t quote me on that.
Noam: Okay, listener, don’t quote Lauren on that.
Lauren: But, you know, we’re still contending with some real angst and you saw this in one Rabbi’s sermon a few Shabbats back about how he fears we are losing the younger generation of Jews who don’t have the connection to Israel, and that there are Jews among the pro-Palestinian protesters.
Mijal: This was Rabbi Ammi Hirsch.
Lauren: There are young Jews joining Jewish Voice for Peace. A lot of times, young Jews are at the barriers, and they’re not on the side their grandparents or even their parents want them to be. So that’s there too.
Noam: Is that the JVP, INN, articulation, is that true? I just met with a 135, I don’t know how they would define themselves exactly. Anyway, I met with them, and a high, high, high percentage of them were in like defend Jewish, defend Israel mode. They’re bacon and cheese eaters, but they were like, no, we have to defend Israel. Like we have to. I’m saying an anecdote from 130 teenagers granted, but I don’t know, like how many are joining JVP and INN?
Lauren: So I’m not speaking so much about the ones who are leading those groups, though there are a number. We did send reporters to more than 20 campuses over the course of the year. And we encountered many, many, many young Jews who were brought up to care about Israel and are disgusted with Israel.
So they may not be on the front lines, some of them are, but there is for sure a loosening of that connection among the younger generation. There are plenty, plenty who are still very eager to go on Birthright, who are very eager to defend Israel, but there are also others who are very… who don’t feel the same way that their parents do. They care about being Jewish, but they’re so angry at Israel. And they didn’t live through Yitzhak Rabin getting murdered. They didn’t live through the 67 war. This is not the Israel they know. So yes, plenty of young Jews still care very much, feel very connected, but more and more aren’t feeling that way.
And that is something I think that at least the rabbi who gave his whole sermon on it the other day is recognizing that if you want that connection to be there, you better do something about it. And the question is, know, what, if anything, is there to be done? People have answers to that.
Mijal: So I wanna maybe just add a couple of points. One is I think it’s very, very hard to have good data on this. Matt Boxer, for example, has given a presentation papers on how hard it is to know what people mean in polls when they answer questions about Israel and Zionism.
Because you can have someone who says, I’m not a Zionist. But if you ask them a qualitative question, like a follow up, they’ll say, you know, I want Israel to exist, great. I just don’t like Netanyahu or something like that. So it’s kind of like really hard with some of these questions to be able to point out exactly where people are.
I would say anecdotally, Lauren, I think there’s definitely a growing number of young Jews who are alienated from Israel. And I will add to that, though, you said there’s still young Jews who support Israel. I would say differently, I would say there is also a huge group of Jews who are newly awakened and newly engaged and newly supporting Israel. So it’s not just that they’re continuing the trends that we had before, but there’s like a new group that has been revitalized.
And the question I think for us as, you know, I would say like Noam and I, like as educators, is not so much to look at the reality, but to ask ourselves, what do we want the world to look like? And then to figure out, how do we kind of like double down on things? Not just in terms of Israel and Zionism, but in terms of what we want America to look like. You know, speaking on the eve of an election, what values do we want there to be in this country?
Lauren: And that’s where our jobs differ. As a journalist, my job ends where I look at numbers, we interview people, we try to reflect the situation as it is, where you both are working to shape the future. And the opinion writers and the educators, they can take what they want from the reporting and do what they want with it.Noam: I have a brilliant insight.
Mijal: Okay, I’m ready to be wowed. Go for it.
Noam: Brilliant, just thoroughly brilliant. I’ll tell you what the problem is. The problem is, and it comes from Lauren, so thank you. The problem is when educators act like journalists and when journalists act like educators.
Meaning the job of the journalist is to, to describe things as they are. The educator is there to be informed by things as they are, to make sure that they are aware of the mirror, and then to work with the people around them to help shape a future that they deeply believe in. And to help the young people figure out what that looks like for themselves as well without telling them what to do.
And when journalists start writing op-eds before reporting, that gets dangerous. When educators simply regurgitate exactly what is in front of them, they’re not doing their job. That’s my brilliant insight. It’s not brilliant, but would you agree with that, Lauren, or no? Not that it’s brilliant or not, that’s stupid of me, but.
Lauren: So I’m the daughter of two educators, and I know how my job differs from my parents’ job. But I can speak for the Forward that we take very, very seriously the line between our opinion digital pages and our news pages, and that we scour our stories to make sure we are not injecting opinion there. We do try to explain, though, in a way that brings context to every factoid, every number we put out there. We want to make sure that readers know that these numbers don’t exist in a vacuum. This is what some other people think that could be going on here to explain this. So our motto for this past year has been bring clarity to the chaos. And then we invite opinion writers and a wide variety of them, from all points on the spectrum. And maybe that’s a way to keep the Jewish people together under the big tent of the Forward. That’s what we’re hoping.
Noam: One more thing though, very quickly. Another thing that unites us, people don’t see it right now, the books. Love books. Look, there’s so many books behind all of us. So many books. Lots of books. Mijal.
Mijal: Well, you mean we actually read them? I thought they were just pretty background.
Noam: No, no, they’re there for the background. That’s what I’m saying.
Lauren: Yeah. Yes, they’re real books.
Mijal: Yeah, so we all have similar aesthetics. No, I guess if we can, putting aside what we do, educators, journalists, whatever hat we’re wearing at what point, I’m curious if we have some some concluding words to our listeners. And I’m gonna guess that our listeners are going to be split and there’s going to be some who are going to feel optimistic and triumphant and there’s going to be some who are going to feel defeated and terrified. And yeah, I’m curious what we can offer.
Lauren: Words of inspiration. This definitely falls outside my portfolio. But I will say this. I do get asked a lot. I see in all these articles how to deal with election stress that turn off the news. Turn it off or give yourself 10 minutes a day and, my job is the opposite. It’s to absorb as much of the news out there as I can.
Some friends have said, isn’t that really hard? And you know what? When I’m in it and I see how many people care about this and how many people are trying whatever their side they’re on to make this a better country. Young people, old people, that’s pretty inspiring. So I am more I am comfortable, more happier, less anxious doing the work than not doing the work.
Mijal: Beautiful. Noam, go for it.
Noam: No, I did, I offered my thought. That was a brilliant, I inserted the brilliant insight, with the brilliant insight.
Mijal: That was like a brilliant insight. You don’t have any… But no words for all the brokenhearted and all… I don’t mean that in a silly way.
Noam: There are 50% of people In your, Mijal, in your language a third a third a third.
Mijal: That’s in my life, not most of–
Noam: I actually I think it’s not a bad description of where the US is in many ways, like, meaning, like, I think that that’s within a few percentage points. There’s a lot of people who are confused. A lot of people who are supportive of one candidate and a lot of people are supportive of the other.
If that’s the case, realize that in your triumphalism at this moment, there are people that you love that will be brokenhearted and be very conscious of how you choose to celebrate today. Be very conscious of that and think deeply about Jewish wisdom, about how we celebrate, and how we don’t celebrate. So, you know, for me, it’s like, are you going to make other people feel really crappy about themselves, or are you gonna be a sore winner? And sorry, be a sore winner or be a sore loser? Or are you just going to say, like, this is the reality that we have in front of us, and shake hands like my son does after every chess match? That’s it. Can you shake the hand after the chess match?
Mijal: That’s a big challenge, Noam, day after the election. Maybe I’ll just say something. I’ll quote the great Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. One of the things that he argued for in different lectures and books, I’m not going to quote him exactly, I’ll just say it in my own words.
He basically argued that there is often an illusion that the only way in which we can change the world is through the big political system. And he basically said, well, politics matter and they do. We can also change the world in smaller units through communities, through areas that are not just in the political system. So it’s a little bit going back to what Lauren was saying before, like how important it is to be active and how important it is that we recognize that we can continue to double down on fighting for the America we we dream of and wish for, no matter what our political system looks like, even though sometimes it makes the work that much harder.
Noam: Love it. Amen. Amen. So now, yeah, thanks.
Lauren: Thank you both. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Mijal: Lauren, thank you so much for joining us.