Antonio Garcia Martinez on Choosing Judaism as an Antidote to Secular Modernity
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.6 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2021
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“We have arrived at a unique point in history,” a recent essay argues, “where many Americans love nothing more than themselves, and the only functioning organization that touches their lives is a corporation.” The author continues, “that’s all good and well as a single striver sprinting along our treadmill of an economic system; the above realization takes on a more somber tone when confronted with the only form of immortality available to most of us: our children.”
That secular modernity functions perfectly fine until the biggest questions of life arise is just one notable observation among many made by the tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez in his two-part essay “Why Judaism.” In it, Martinez looks at how Judaism presented itself to him as the antidote to the problems he felt mainstream secular American life couldn’t solve. Now, in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he fleshes out his essay, explaining how he came to his conclusions and what made Judaism such a compelling alternative.
Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let me read a passage from an essay that was published a few weeks ago online. |
| 0:12.6 | We have arrived at a unique point in history, the writer announces, where many Americans |
| 0:17.2 | love nothing more than themselves, and the only functioning organization |
| 0:21.0 | that touches their lives is a corporation." |
| 0:23.4 | The essay continues, |
| 0:24.6 | That's all good and well as a single striver sprinting along our treadmill of an economic |
| 0:29.1 | system. |
| 0:30.1 | The above realization takes on a more somber tone, when confronted with the only form of |
| 0:34.9 | immortality available to most of us, our children. Daddy, |
| 0:38.3 | why is that man living in the bus stop? Daddy, why are you gone working so much? Daddy, can I read |
| 0:42.9 | this book or watch this show? Daddy, what's this flag I'm holding? Suddenly, questions like the ones |
| 0:48.2 | above go from the heated but ultimately vain stuff of Twitter threads to daunting conversations with the one thing |
| 0:55.5 | left in the world you'd sacrifice yourself to save. |
| 0:58.8 | Those big brown eyes staring at you demand and answer to those questions. |
| 1:03.1 | Her absolute receptiveness to your answers yokes you with a responsibility to posterity |
| 1:08.8 | that hedonistic modernity has distracted you from your entire life. |
| 1:13.3 | What do you put in that mind that will outlast yours? |
| 1:16.4 | The author is thinking out loud for us, with us, and here poses a fundamental question. |
| 1:21.9 | Well, the essay contains other questions, too, quite a few of them, |
| 1:25.4 | and when it was published, it was much discussed in social media. |
| 1:28.8 | Now the reason for that has to do some with the identity of the essay's author. |
| 1:33.1 | He's a person with advanced training in physics. |
... |
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