Jonathan Neumann on the Left, the Right, and the Jews

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2019

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

President Donald Trump has moved the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; he has recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; members of his own family are Jewish and he has forcefully spoken out against anti-Semitic comments by some elected Democrats. So of course, the American Jewish community has embraced him...

Not quite.

Regardless of whether or not this administration has worked on behalf of traditional Jewish interests, many Jews feel strongly that its actions are antithetical to Jewish values. And what are the values of many American Jews? Any answer to that question will inevitably put tikkun olam—the Hebrew term for “repairing the world”—close to the top of the list. Last year, Jonathan Neumann wrote To Heal the World?, which attempted to deconstruct what tikkun olam means in practice, and debunk the lazy but all-too-common perception that Jewish values and progressive politics are one and the same. (You can listen to Neumann discuss his book here.)

In this podcast, Neumann joins Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver for a discussion about conservatism, liberalism, and Jewish politics. He looks at the dangerous rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, explains the causes of Israel’s shift to the Right, and systematically exposes the why American Jews’ traditional progressivism is bad for Jewish religion, Jewish peoplehood, and the Jewish state.

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.

This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the Tikvah Center in New York City.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Last summer, Jonathan Neumann wrote a book about the effect that the social justice movement was having on Judaism in America and throughout the West.
0:16.0	To heal the world, how the Jewish left corrupts Judaism and endangers Israel, provoked strong reaction, and
0:22.2	launched a conversation about the place of politics in our religious life. Welcome to the Tikva
0:27.5	podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver, the author of To Heal the World, Jonathan Noemann was in
0:33.2	New York this past February, and we invited him to Tikva to talk politics before an audience of alumni
0:38.7	and members of the Tikva Society. And that discussion about the left, the right, and the Jews,
0:43.8	was such an interesting conversation that we wanted to share it with you, our podcast listeners.
0:49.2	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on iTunes, Stitcher,
0:54.0	Google Play, and Spotify,
0:55.5	and I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas.
0:59.8	I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at tickfafund.org.
1:06.4	And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,
1:10.5	tikfafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now is my conversation with
1:16.0	Jonathan Neumann. Jonathan, I want to begin with an analysis of your own home country with
1:21.8	Britain. Why don't you tell us about Jeremy Corbyn, who he is, tell us about his rise,
1:29.5	and what you think it reveals about British politics that he's got the support that he has.
1:33.0	Certainly. And thank you for having me on the show.
1:37.5	Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition.
1:51.3	He was a backbench MP of very little note for close to 40 years,
1:58.6	and then was elevated to the leadership of the party almost by a fluke. His predecessor, Ed Miliband,
2:03.7	changed the rules governing the party's primaries, which allowed people to enter into the party almost for free, and they did so en masse in their hundreds of
2:10.6	thousands from the hard left, even left of the Labour Party, and were able to vote for him
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.