Can Diaspora Jews Move On From October 7? - with Rabbi David Wolpe and Rabbi David Ingber

Dan Senor (0:00)

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David Wolpe (0:17)

Beneers of safety can be very thin, and we know this in Jewish history.

So I think that the key is a kind of flexible alarm. That is, we can't be rigid and interpret every slight as a catastrophe, and we have to be nimble on our feet, but we're too old a people to be hysterical, but we are too wise to be naive.

David Ingber (0:41)

We have a role to play, and that we can't forget our role in the larger story, and that when we do forget our role, that it's not a good thing for us or for the larger Jewish family. So I feel that each and every Jew outside of Israel has to recognize that they are participating in this bigger story, and we can't forget that.

Dan Senor (1:11)

It's 4 p.m. on Tuesday, October 6th, here in Tel Aviv, where I'm visiting right now. It is 9 a.m. on Tuesday, October 6th, in New York City. Three years ago, October 7th changed Israel, but it also changed Jewish life far beyond Israel's borders.

For Israelis, the years since October 7th have been defined first and foremost by war, by soldiers, hostages, funerals, displacement, and the extraordinary physical demands of defending a country at war.

For Jews in the diaspora, the experience has been different. Israel's war was kinetic, and while much of that war may now be behind us, for many Jews outside Israel, conflict has migrated somewhere else entirely into our politics, universities, workplaces, friendships, film and television and musical concerts, cultural institutions, and sometimes even families. In that sense, diaspora Jews are still very much in the fight, and three years in, a deeper set of questions is emerging. For generations, many Jews in America at least, and across the West, believed that Jewish flourishing and liberal society were deeply intertwined. That pluralism, tolerance, minority rights, created the safest and most natural home Jews had ever known outside Israel.

October 7th has undermined that confidence because some self-described liberals that portray Israel as fundamentally at odds with liberal values have themselves found common cause with forces that are anything but liberal. This means groups like Hamas. This means the Iranian Islamic Republic. This means movements that reject religious freedom, minority rights, women's rights, gay rights, and many of the principles Western liberalism was in part built to defend. So is it really about competing values or has something deeper changed in the way Jews understand their place in Western society? And perhaps most importantly, what wisdom does Judaism itself offer for this moment? On the third anniversary of October 7th, I wanted to have that conversation with two rabbis who have spent much of their lives and their careers thinking seriously about Jewish identity in America. Rabbi David Ingber is the founder and senior rabbi of Ramamu, a congregation on the Upper West Side of New York City, and rabbi of the 92NY and senior director of the Brompman Center. Rabbi David Wolpe is rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, and scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund and host of the Sapir podcast. He's also a prolific author. He's about to publish his ninth book, and he formally taught at Harvard's Divinity School and served for a brief moment after October 7th on Harvard's anti-Semitism task force.

Both are among the most prominent Jewish thinkers in America today.

So in this conversation, rather than asking how Jews remember October 7th, I wanted to ask a harder question. How do diaspora Jews move forward from October 7th? Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi David Ingber, welcome both of you back to the podcast.

David Ingber (4:22)

Thank you. Thank you.

Dan Senor (4:23)

So Rabbi Ingber, I'm going to start with you. Three years after October 7th, Israelis can at least imagine a moment where and when the physical war ends, or at least comes way down in tempo. I'm in Israel right now and you can really sense that in the various conversations. But for diaspora Jews, the battle often feels much less finite. It is happening, as I said in the introduction, in our politics and universities and cultural places and workplaces, at our kids' schools and social circles. And I remember early on after October 7th, Rabbi Ingber, you and I had a conversation and you said something that I still remember. And I quote all the time. You said, on October 7th, Israel was at war. But on October 8th, we in the diaspora learned that we were under attack.

Now, do you think diaspora Jews are still living in their October 8th, if you will, the one that you described as that moment where Jews felt like they were under attack in a way that's similar or different to how Israelis are less and less living in their October 7th, at least day to day?