Can You Marry Across the Religious Divide? w/ Josh Hammer

25:38Josh Hammer:like clever rereading of certain passages no so fantastic question um look so uh you know i i i hesitate coleman's kind of go you know full-scale biblical apologia mode it's not that's not necessarily my my claim to fame or anything like that there but i guess i'll attempt to do the best i can here so look the the the best reading and look i i can't really speak frankly to the to the new testament that's just that's not my holy book that's kind of beyond the kind of finds in my area of expertise. But the Hebrew Bible is, and especially the five books of Moses, what we call the Torah, was given at a very specific time for a very specific nation.

26:17Josh Hammer:This is a key point there, that it was given at a certain time in a given context, the same way that the U.S. Constitution was codified at a specific time for a specific context there. But even accepting that premise there, and again, this is actually really explicated in the Talmud, in the oral Torah, much more so than the actual written Torah. There are all sorts of rules about manumission, about freeing slaves there. And the rabbis of the Talmud, slaves in the biblical era were given the opportunity to free themselves every seven years, I believe was a number, from their slaveholders. They actually had the opportunity, if they were happy, to stay.

27:00Josh Hammer:And the rabbis of the Talmud look extremely harshly on slaves who choose to stay because they recognize that the ideal, obviously, is human freedom and that you should not be there in bondage and servitude for any longer. So as you accurately note, you know, the Bible, the Talmud, and so forth, there was actually very, shall we say, progressive, a word that I don't typically use every day, but very progressive even for its era when it comes to this particular issue there. But even kind of fast-forwarding a little bit there and taking it closer to modern times, the whole 19th century antebellum slavery debate there.

27:34Josh Hammer:Look, you look at some of the most famous abolitionists, and just for context, Coleman, I'm born on Abraham Lincoln's birthday. He's my hero of all heroes in American history. I quote him on a seemingly daily basis, it seems there. You look at a lot of the great abolitionists there in the lead up to the Civil War. I'm not gonna say that every single person, obviously, was motivated by their intense faith, especially their intense Christian faith. That would be a remarkably over-inclusive statement, and I wouldn't be justified in saying it. But a very, very strong percentage of the leading abolitionists in the decade and a half, two decades leading the Civil War were motivated not in spite of but due to their Christian faith.

28:16Josh Hammer:Abraham Lincoln himself actually was probably the most biblically literate statesman in American history. I mean, his second inaugural address, this pithy inaugural address, which he gives just about a month, month and a half before he's tragically assassinated, it's literally 700 words. I mean, it's an op-ed, but it's considered to be perhaps the greatest political speech in American history. Almost every line has a biblical reference in there. He's referencing the Old Testament, the New Testament there. He was really, really, really clinging to his faith above all. and you know the most obvious place that you could point to to say that okay this is actually the logical starting point to say that slavery is is irreconcilable with the biblical vision of human flourishing the most obvious starting point would would be where we started our conversation maybe 15 20 minutes ago or so which was genesis 127 this notion that that we are all made in the divine image male and female god created them there so you know that certainly is what i think what many of the antebellum christians were were leading up to but again I also don't want to be seen by your viewers as being wholly dismissive of reason.

29:20Josh Hammer:I absolutely think that reason has a role here. This is a little bit in the early chapters of the book as well. So for instance, Maimonides, one of the great medieval Jewish sages, actually writes about this a lot. Maimonides himself was a scholar of Aristotle, of various other non-Jewish, non-Christian pagan sources. And Maimonides essentially argues that using reason as an analytical tool is wholly appropriate when it comes to secondary or tertiary reasoning. The whole point, Coleman, and this is kind of my point of talking about the horrors of Treblinka or Moloch and Child Sacrifice, to me, you have to have a starting place.

30:00Josh Hammer:And then from there, once you have an exogenous worldview, a worldview that has been formed by exogenous forces, then reason can be absolutely wholly appropriate there when it comes to logical deducements about secondary tertiary conclusions there. But I guess where I struggle still is then it just having kind of as your principled starting place.

30:21Coleman Hughes:Right. So a few things. One, you know, I think I do view the Christianity's force in the slavery debate as differently than you in the following sense. You know, in the 19th century, in the lead up to the Civil War, I think it's fair to say over 95 % of Americans were Christian, if not 99%, something close to it. So obviously, Christians were on both sides of that issue. The difference was that if you go back and look at the minutes of Congress, when they would debate the morality of slavery pretty frequently in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the Southerners that were pro-slavery would simply devastate the northerners with quote after quote after quote from the Old Testament and the New Testament with an example of the Apostle Paul telling a runaway slave to go back to his master with the fairly devastating argument from a Christian point of view that Jesus would have encountered many, many slaves in his area of the Roman Empire during his lifetime.

31:32Coleman Hughes:And there's no record in the Bible of him just saying the simple sentence, slavery is wrong, right? When he was, he had no compunction being extremely controversial in his moral views at the time, which is, you know, ultimately what got him killed. And so the truth is that the Southerners had the better argument from a point of view of biblical scripture. And certainly Northerners that became abolitionists, you know, Christianity was the only moral language in town. So there was, there really wasn't almost no such thing as making a moral argument that didn't come from a Christian perspective. And if you had a thought, you had to frame it in a Christian perspective for it to even make sense to yourself, much less to make sense to other people.

32:23Coleman Hughes:Because I don't think there was a language of secular morality that anybody really knew how to speak in a Christian nation. So to me, I view this partly through the lens of the following thought experiment. If there were just one sentence, either in the Old Testament or the New Testament, like instead of all the stuff about how to treat your slaves, just one unambiguous sentence akin to thou shall not kill, perhaps even handed in the Ten Commandments, I think the entire history of slavery is different. Would you agree with that? I think it gets abolished much earlier. I think it probably never exists in America if it's just totally unambiguous.

33:12Josh Hammer:No, I would certainly agree with that. I guess my view of the Bible's grappling with slavery, you know, including kind of the Talmudic rabbis viewing it disfavorably along the lines of what I said there, was not necessarily wholly dissimilar from the American founders' view of slavery. The American founders, some of them, look, some of them obviously were overtly pro-slavery. I mean, you did have your John C. Calhoun types. He was not a founder, but you have people like that who genuinely viewed it as a positive good. That's the infamous line associated with John C. Calhoun's social thought. But the more predominant way of viewing slavery at the time of the American founding was that this was something that was wrong.

33:58Josh Hammer:And we are going to kind of put the starting places to eventually kind of lay the seeds for this eventually being eradicated and phased out. That's kind of the entire conception of Abraham Lincoln as leading a second founding, a new founding there, which Leo Strauss and many others have talked about there. And, you know, just to get – there's a lot of examples there in the U.S. Constitution, but for instance, the fact that the word slavery never appears, the fact that they actually phase out the importation of new slaves after the year 1808, there's a clause to that effect there. So I think similarly, again, kind of getting back to what I was saying about how the Bible is given in a specific time for a specific nation in a specific milieu there, they were not ready at that time to eradicate what was then a ubiquitous institution there.

34:44Josh Hammer:But again, the fact that slaves being freed, manumission of slavery there is well established. There are rules and regulations for it there. There was really no context of a slave being held for life. And then even those who just chose to stay of their own volition were actually looked deeply, deeply negatively upon there. You might suggest a similar argument such that, yes, it is there, but there are any number of other factors indicating that it was not viewed particularly favorably. favorably in that one day it ultimately might be phased out or eradicated but i'm not going to object to your question i think i think you're i think that your conclusion is sound which is that if there had been a very simple thou shalt not own a fellow human being as a slave provision there at some point in the bible then the course of western civilization history definitely would have taken different course i totally agree with you on that so the idea that um the way i see your book is that you're, you hope to sort of convince people that care about the West

35:45Coleman Hughes:that Israel is an important cause to them too. Is that part of, would that be an accurate way to describe part of the purpose of the book? Yeah. And again, the word Israel here, Coleman,

35:57Josh Hammer:is something of a double entendre, right? I mean, it is referring to the state of Israel. It absolutely is referring to the post-October 7th hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, everything that we've seen for the past year and a half. But along the lines of the past 35 minutes of our conversation, it's also referring not just to the capitalist state of Israel, but also the nation of Israel, the children of Israel, and this entire notion of a biblical inheritance. And it's arguing that just as the state of Israel is the geopolitical canary in the coal mine for the broader West, so too are the children of Israel, the Jewish people, the canary in the coal mine as well here.

36:35Josh Hammer:And the same way that the broader West would be deeply, deeply mistaken to forsake the state of Israel as being an indispensable cog in the broader apparatus, so too would Christians and everyone else who cares about what state we refer to as Western civilization, so too would they be greatly mistaken to try to forsake or abandon the Jewish people as well. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal.

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37:29Coleman Hughes:In your book, you talk a lot about how the fruits of secular America, secular liberalism, have led to a situation where, by default, young liberals, young Democrats, progressives hate Israel. if they weren't developing some, if they weren't already anti-Semitic, I think many of them have developed anti-Semitic tendencies and resonances in the past two years at minimum. And one solution to this, you say, is a kind of like a Christian revival, which you hope will retie the bond between a Christian society and its Judeo-Christian roots. Is that accurate?

38:26Josh Hammer:Yeah, I think that's broadly accurate. I have long believed that one of the greatest things that could happen to America would be some sort of Great Awakening, similar to an 18th or 19th century mass Christian revival. You know, look, I mean, it obviously depends on what type of theology we're talking about here. You know, we actually are tragically increasing seeing the rise, albeit still on the fringes, but the rise of at least some strand of Christian anti-Semitism, which has always been pretty foreign, actually, to the American story. This is a, I mean, look, there have been exceptions, obviously.

39:00Josh Hammer:I mean, Father Coughlin, the infamous anti-Semitic radio hosts on the airwaves there during the FDR presidency in the 1930s. So there have been exceptions. But for the most part, theologically, Christian anti-Semitism has been a fringe phenomenon. But yeah, generally speaking, I mean, just looking at a lot of the great social maladies that afflicts current contemporary America, I mean, teenagers who are suffering from tragically high percentages of loneliness, despondency, spending too much time on TikTok, Instagram, looking at people who are too skinny, having eating disorders. I mean, you know, all the things that, and there's a lot that's currently affecting America.

39:40Josh Hammer:I mean, the drug crisis. I mean, my cousin tragically seven, I guess, eight years ago now overdosed and died from fentanyl. I mean, I know this personally. I mean, there are a lot of social malities here in America there. It seems to me that one of the best bang for your buck propositions, if it were to happen, to not be a literal panacea, but about as close to a panacea as we could realistically aim to get for there. And this includes trying to shore up the pro-Jewish, philo-Semitic foundations of this country, upon which our founders like George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, they spoke so beautifully on this topic.

40:14Josh Hammer:Yeah, I think one of the best bang for your buck propositions would be some sort of Christian revival for sure.

40:19Coleman Hughes:Yeah, so I agree about the problem. I definitely agree that intersectionality and wokeness has led to a type of anti-Semitism that whether or not the intention is anti-Semitic, the result clearly is. The result is a totally out of proportion focus on Israel, increasingly a focus on just Jewish presence and Jewish over-representation in various fields, a kind of paranoid, borderline, schizophrenic obsession with pointing out every time you see a Jew, you know, anywhere in society or in a leadership position. Like this is, I see it on Twitter, I see it on YouTube and so forth. Yet, you know, At the same time, it's not obvious to me that Christianity would be the solution, partly for reasons you point out.

41:23Coleman Hughes:This gets at something that's a bit of a puzzle and I don't think I've ever thought about, which is why did American Christianity never go all in on anti-Semitism where European Christianity for a thousand years could not get enough of anti-Semitic beliefs between the Jews are drinking the blood of Christian children, which Candace Owens believes and propagates now, to just the programs all over Eastern Europe, Christian societies, to the Inquisition, to the general allegation that the Jews killed our prophet, the Jews killed Christ. why did all that stuff live so deeply in European Christianity but not American Christianity?

42:16Josh Hammer:Excellent question. I actually was just asked this on a recent show as well. That was the first time I was asked this, so this is not only the second time I've been asked it. I don't pretend to know the exact answer, Colin, but I can talk you through at least some of my hypotheses as to why that is the case. And the basic reason is that when you look at the founding of America, not just in the late 18th century, but literally going back to the sailing of the Mayflower, something that I talk about as well in one of my earlier chapters of the book there. And you look at the way that the men in that case who sailed across the ocean on the Mayflower, that they actually conceived of themselves.

42:52Josh Hammer:They literally did think of themselves, and this is a matter of public record. It can be easily Googled. They thought of themselves as new Israelites crossing their version of the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, Sir William Bradford, the captain of the Mayflower, who ends up becoming the second governor of Plymouth Colony, he himself was a student of a well-known Christian Hebraist from back in England. Hebraist is one of these antiquated terms, kind of like pagan, I guess. Hebraist is someone, as a name would apply, who studies biblical, Hebrew, the Bible, and so forth there. And as a student of this man, Ainsworth, Sir William Bradford, the captain of the Mayflower, actually himself spoke about a thousand words, give or take, of Hebrew.

43:34Josh Hammer:There actually was even some chapter on the Mayflower about potentially just issuing a clean break with the English language upon landing at Plymouth Colony and then just starting to speak Hebrew. It never happened, obviously, but they did discuss it, actually. And it was this imagery, this notion of America being this new birth of freedom akin to Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. As we mentioned earlier, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin won the national seal of the United States to be Moses parting the Red Sea there. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia with Leviticus. George Washington, this beautiful letter to the Hebrew congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790.

44:14Josh Hammer:Again, I think that the type of Christians that lived in America, quite literally going back to as far back as the Mayflower, had this positive view of the Hebrew Bible of the Old Testament. That's not to say that they were here, there, and everywhere themselves Jew lovers. They were not necessarily the kind of people to just kind of gush about how every Jew they met was the greatest person. I mean, to be clear, there is some of that. I mean, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton at times say something pretty similar to that. They are very philo-Semitic. I'm not claiming that all the pilgrims were themselves philo-Semitic, but they had such an attachment to the Old Testament story there that I think it ultimately kind of permeated into kind of fighting for religious liberty, certainly, in a way that would benefit the original people of the book, the Jewish people there.

45:02Josh Hammer:Now, look, there's probably something to be said as well for the fact that even though there was a large Catholic population, certainly at the time of the American founding, especially in Maryland, which was the largest percentage Catholic of the original colonies there, it really was Protestantism and kind of this very kind of Old Testament heavy conception of Protestantism that really was pervasive, if not outright ubiquitous there. So the specific kind of type of prosentism that really proliferated there in the colonial era probably had a lot to do with it as well. But I don't think anyone has a singular definitive answer.

45:38Josh Hammer:I will tell you this, Coleman. I am deeply, deeply worried about what I see in certain pockets of the discourse called these days about a distinctly anti-Semitic strand of Christian thinking kind of increasingly being let out of the bag there. You know, when I see some people talking about, you know, how God abandoned the Jews for, you know, forsake the Jews, you know, you mentioned Candace Owens there. Certainly some of Tucker Carlson's guests seem to have very problematic thoughts on these matters, shall we say. You know, increasingly this cat is being let out of the bag and it's trying to prevent as much hemorrhaging on that front as possible.

46:18Josh Hammer:That is definitely one of the reasons why I wrote this book, that's for sure.

46:21Coleman Hughes:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in another passage of the book, you talk about intermarriage for Jews and you worry that this is to say a Jew marrying a non-Jew can produce religiously confused or outright non-Jewish children. and this is something you mourn. So to my ear, that to me sounds like someone that has chosen to value membership of the tribe and norms of a tribe greater than an individual's freedom to fall in love and not freedom rather, but an individual's choice to marry someone across religion. So I want to get at what's going on there for you. Is it the marriage or is it Jews having Jewish children and intermarriage being harmful to that goal?

47:31Josh Hammer:Well, it's both. I think the two are essentially the same thing. I mean, look, let me just kind of say off the get-go here, I think one of the greatest lies of kind of modern post-World War II liberalism in both its left and right-leaning strands is this notion that e pluribus unum of equality, of egalitarianism. I think one of the greatest lies is that modern equality and egalitarianism necessarily negates the tribal nature of humanity. But I fundamentally reject that. I mean I can believe two things at the same time. I can believe that human beings are in many ways inherently tribal, that tribalism is simply inherent to the human condition and has been since time immemorial.

48:19Josh Hammer:And on the other hand, I can absolutely also believe in the genuine equal morality and dignity of all mankind, with, again, my lean citation to that being Genesis 1, chapter 27 there. So Jews, like I think a lot of other people, are tribal, and this has a very long strand in Jewish thinking. Literally, the opening of one of the most famous Talmudic tractates called Perkei Avot, it's about the ethics of the fathers. It's one of the most off-sighted Talmudic tractates because it's not necessarily about kind of the minutia of property rights. You know, your ox gores someone, what do you do? No, this tract is really more about ethics and values and like how you ought to live a good life more broadly there.

49:01Josh Hammer:And literally the opening mission of the opening lines of Perkei Vot chapter one, verse one talks about the intergenerational transmission, how Moses received the word from God. Moses gave it to Joshua, to the elders, and on and on there. So this notion of an intergenerational transmission of ideas, customs, worldview, way of life is bedrock to how the Jewish people think of themselves. But I think it's also bedrock to how any tribe or nation ought to think of itself as well. So I'm a big fan of Edmund Burke, for instance, the late 18th century British statesman. And Burke famously describes the entire idea of a nation as being this intergenerational compact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

49:44Josh Hammer:You know, to me, that seems to be saying the exact same thing, for instance, as Perkei evokes chapter one, verse one there. So, you know, thinking about Jews and the question of intermarriage, it seems to me to be very simple, that if you actually think that Judaism, that the Hebrew Bible and all that flows from that has very important things to teach the world, then you want to strengthen and fortify the Jewish people. And the easiest way to do that is yes to marry fellow Jews and to raise Jewish children there. And look, I mean, I've seen this in my own life. I've seen so many examples of people who have a mother or father of different religions there.

50:21Josh Hammer:It sometimes works out. I have friends for whom it has worked out. Definitely, I can absolutely vouch for that on a personal level and some of my friendships. But certainly the best bang for your buck proposition If you're trying to better secure the Jewish future, the future of the original people, the book is this launching off point to the broader biblical inheritance there. It seems to me that that that marrying your fellow Jews and having Jewish children is is the easiest and best way to do that.

50:48Coleman Hughes:So if you if you're Jewish and you marry a non Jew, but you raise your kids as Jews and you do all the traditions, what's wrong with that in your book?

51:00Josh Hammer:well look i mean we could we could we could talk about literal halakha like jewish law here so i mean under jewish law you are jewish uh for one of two reasons one is your mother is jewish or two is that you have a legitimate conversion under under jewish law uh these uh yeah so if you convert the kids well look if or it's a jewish mother and a non-jewish father yeah so look so so so the latter is an easier example, right? So I mean, I have personal friends, I have numerous personal friends who grew up with a Jewish mother, and a and a non Jewish, typically Christian father, and they actually have grown up to to to be very, very strong Jews, strong supporters of Israel, strong Jewish identity, and so forth there.

51:42So look, I mean, every situation like this is going to be

51:46Josh Hammer:necessarily a little bit over inclusive, as a potential remedy. Coleman, I'm just saying that the best bang for your buck proposition there if you're trying to maximize the chances of having these exceeding generation of jews be one halakhic like actual jews under jewish law and then two be proud jews who have a jewish education who have a steeped in jewish culture who value the traditions the weekly sabbath and so forth there the best proposition is to have an authentically jewish home and for jews to marry fellow jews so the assumption there is that your choice of

52:22Coleman Hughes:a marriage partner should above all prioritize Jewish values as opposed to, say, who you fall in love with as an individual and want to raise a family with,

52:36Josh Hammer:right? I think that's a fine. I'm not going to object to that. Yeah, look, I think that the notion of choosing your spouse because this is the one person absent any kind of constraints, any sorts of unchosen obligation of choosing a spouse solely and exclusively because this is the person that you just -

52:56Coleman Hughes:That you want to spend the rest of your life with,

52:58Josh Hammer:your one life. That is not the Jewish way of dating at all, actually. In fact, if you look at many very religious Jews, black cat Jews, Haredi Jews, they will oftentimes get engaged to one another within weeks, literal weeks. So within two, three, four dates there, at that point, the contract is sealed there. That's not how my wife and I did it. to be, I'm not going to pretend like that's how, that, that's how we did it. That is essentially how my very religious brother-in-law over in Israel did it there. But the idea here is that you want to lock in the values and what you care about over the mid to long-term.

53:33Josh Hammer:And then, you know, things such as love and kind of a hallmark card sort of the sense there, kind of this kind of, you know, burning kind of physical desire, that sort of stuff is secondary or tertiary, and then we'll come after that.

53:46Coleman Hughes:So I just went to a while ago, Passover Seder with a family that is a Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, Jewish kids, and converted Jewish kids.

54:02And I have to say,

54:04Coleman Hughes:I don't see anything in principle wrong with it, even if you have a goal of maintaining your Jewish identity and making sure, as this particular person does, that his kids are Jewish, his kids learn Jewish values, and that their Jewish identity is important to them. Conversely, I mean, I'm sure you and I both know tons of Jewish couples that have kids whose Jewish identity lapses, despite the fact that both parents are Jewish under Jewish law and they're Jewish under Jewish law. And so my feeling is that whatever your value set is, whether it's religious or more about choosing the individual you want to spend the rest of your life with from the perspective of your happiness as a couple, excluding people on the basis of religion before getting to know them, I think, is the wrong approach.

55:06Josh Hammer:Look, I think there's any number of reasons why someone would want to marry or not marry another individual. So if you are a very smart person, then you might not want to marry someone who is not – has like half your intelligence. I mean there's any number of other reasons outside of religion why you simply would not necessarily want to mate and just spend the rest of your life with that particular person. But to use your example of the Passover Seder, I mean I don't know this family obviously. If the children had a legitimate halakha conversion under authentic Jewish law, they converted. They typically had that would work would be at the time of their bar mitzvah, I suppose they would have a formal conversion.

55:56Josh Hammer:If that's how it all worked and they're great, I mean, you know, that sounds fantastic. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it would have been.

56:04Coleman Hughes:Yeah.

56:04Josh Hammer:That sounds fantastic. I mean, I mean, you know, far be it for me to criticize that. I mean, and to your point as well, of course, I know families for, you know, you know, very strong Jewish upbringing and the children, you know, go astray. And to be clear, you know, this happens in Christian families as well. is obviously not just a Jewish phenomenon, but rather here, I mean, we're talking here necessarily in over-inclusive statements where there's always going to be exceptions on both sides there. I'm just saying for a bang for your buck proposition, if you truly earnestly think that Judaism has an important message to teach the world and the Jewish people are called, as the book of Isaiah calls us to be, to be a light unto the nations there, and that is grounded in this notion of being the original chosen people, the people of the book and so forth there, then the easiest and best way to do that is to try to put social and cultural incentives such that Jews marry fellow Jews and then raise Jewish children.

56:58Josh Hammer:There are obviously going to be exceptions there, but we're just talking here generally about the rule rather than the exceptions.

57:04Coleman Hughes:I remember having an argument with a Jewish friend of mine many, many years ago about this exact topic. And when it came down to it, what he said to me is, you know what, my grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. And the notion that the line of Jewish identity would end with me and my kids is too much of an insult to my ancestors. And that's what it was about for him, especially considering how many people have tried to get rid of us. The notion that we might dwindle ourselves as a result of intermarriage is too much to bear. and I thought I understood that. It's also, it's not, I don't think it's how I would make my choices irregardless, but do you think anything like that is partly motivating your psychology here or is it really the reason you just gave?

58:02Josh Hammer:So your friends would probably be the more typical reason that most American Jews would give as to why they choose to, at least non-Orthodox American, I don't know if your friend is Orthodox, but like that, to be clear, I was raised super reformed secular, so I am not resmirching unnecessarily all, but that is, that is the typical answer that I think most non-Orthodox American Jews who marry fellow Jews is probably something along those lines there. That's not the way that I would answer the question, but I frankly don't much care necessarily how you answer the question as long as you get to not, let's not call it the right answer, but the answer that I think is best of the available options there.

58:42Josh Hammer:Now, I do say in the book, Coleman, I'm critical of kind of this overemphasis on the Holocaust. Now, the Holocaust is one of the unique tragedies in human history. I mean, here, I'll show your viewers. I have here, This is literally on my desk at all times. This is a rock from the crematorium at Auschwitz. So it's right here on my desk. I keep it next to me every single day. I say it in the book just to kind of remind me about who I am. So I think about the Holocaust at some point probably every single day in my life. And I think that most Jews in America today probably do. But you can overdo it, frankly, with the Holocaust.

59:19Josh Hammer:And when your strongest claim to your fellow Jews, your friends, your congregants, your children, and so forth, When your strongest claim is that we are compelled to do this, that we have to go to synagogue, we have to have a Shabbat dinner or a Passover Seder or whatever simply because our ancestors would be livid us, I'm not entirely sure that that's the best or the most compelling reason to do so there. If you are an impressionable child and you're kind of inclined to be inquisitive and maybe challenge assumptions and ask questions there, as I was, as you probably were too if I had to guess when you were a kid, you know, a parent saying to you that you have to do this because Hitler killed six million Jews, maybe not the most compelling answer.

1:00:02Josh Hammer:I think a better answer in terms of trying to kind of motivate your children to be the inheritors of this tradition, to take kind of the torch of generations past, to me the better answer, or at least the more compelling answer, is to say that, no, we're doing this because we actually have something important to teach the world there. And this, again, gets back to the entire thing that we started on when it comes to the Bible, monotheism, the imperative of being a light unto the nations as the original people of the book and so forth.

1:00:32Coleman Hughes:But wouldn't an inquisitive child also question that rationale on many bases? I think you said earlier, you think a lot of faith traditions have something important to contribute to the world. So might not an inquisitive child also wonder, okay, so then is religious intermarriage in general wrong? Are you arguing every religious person should stick within their faith with who they marry, or is it specific to Judaism?

1:01:09Josh Hammer:Most of my pious Christian friends, Protestant or Catholic, I think would probably say that an evangelical Protestant should probably marry an evangelical Protestant, that a traditionalist Catholic should probably marry a traditionalist Catholic there. But there is a big – there is a noted distinction here between Judaism and Christianity here. They're not quite exactly the same thing in any number of respects. But even holding theology aside, there's a key difference here, which is that Christianity is a universalist faith. That is the creed of Christianity. That is John 3.16. I mean this notion that if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you are a Christian.

1:01:50Josh Hammer:That's not how Judaism works. Judaism is not a universalist creed. It is certainly not an evangelizing faith. In fact, you know, Judaism is probably better not described as a faith at all. I happen not to like that term, actually. Judaism is probably best described, you know, religion is fine, but it's really a nation. It is really a nation that comes from a specific plot of land, Judea, hence the name Jew. As all nations do, they are tied to a certain part of, you know, a certain parcel of the globe. And there are unique kind of, you know, tribal affinities that happen to come about because of that there.

1:02:30Josh Hammer:So I do think that the case, and I've really never thought of this, to be honest with you, but I think that the case for the overarching imperative of Jewish intra-marriage is probably stronger than the case for the overarching imperative of Christian intra-marriage. But, you know certainly just based on my own observations many of my best friends uh to this day are are very very devout christians i think most of my devout christian friends would say that you ought to marry someone who has your same religious worldview but i think that the case for jews is probably even stronger for the reasons that i just said yeah well i think i would disagree with your christian friends as well i mean i just um about a year ago i went to a wedding

1:03:15Coleman Hughes:where the bride was Catholic, the groom was Protestant. And I mean, this was an amazing guy. He's in the army. He's up for being a Green Beret. He's just a total stand-up guy and excellent choice. And her grandparents would not come to the wedding because he wasn't Catholic. you know and so this kind of family breaking difficult um really tragedy it happens you know thousands of times a day all over the country which this this thing of you know i'm not even going to meet him because he's not the right religion doesn't matter how how amazing the person is, this seems to me to totally get priorities backward.

1:04:10Coleman Hughes:Because if the idea is you want your child or you want your grandchild or yourself to marry a fantastic person with amazing values, really deeply held and amazing values, then you should not prejudge them based on what you assume their values to be based on their faith that they have on paper, right? You should actually try to meet the person and you may then learn that their values are actually quite similar to yours. And if they're not, then they're not. And then you know that and then you can disapprove of them for all the right reasons. but um you know to me the the amount of suffering between families that that has been caused by the just prejudiced disapproval of of of a mate based on you know essentially the concerns you're the exact concerns you're you're voicing um is really troublesome to me and and is is why I find it difficult to put myself in your mindset.

1:05:25Josh Hammer:Well, you're saying, you're talking here about meeting people for whom you share values and for whom they might be good values. To me, that's kind of circular reasoning, actually, because if you know what values you stand for, and if you are a Jew who believes in the claims that I leaves to be true that Judaism brings to the world, then you ought to look for someone who shares your values, which in this particular case means someone who believes in Judaism.

1:05:54Coleman Hughes:So let me give you an example from your book. In your book, you talk about how Judaism

1:06:05Coleman Hughes:really invented, if not dispersed, if not invented the golden rule. Don't do unto others what you would not have others do unto you, do to your neighbor what you would want your neighbor to do to you, and so forth, right? So you talk about this as a distinctly Jewish value. But the truth is this was also, this is in Hindu Sanskrit epic poems. It's also in Confucius said verbatim, right? Don't do unto others what you wouldn't have them do unto you. And so if that's an example, just one example of a value that you really want in your spouse or your kid's spouse or your grandkid's spouse, wouldn't it make more sense instead of to say the person has to be Jewish or the person has to be this faith to actually try to learn what their values are first and then see whether it matches the values that you put into the container of Jewish values.

1:07:08If you're going to limit Judaism to things like Leviticus 19, chapter 19, verse 18,

1:07:17Josh Hammer:to treat a stranger as a fellow, then yes, maybe we can draw kind of cross-civilizational ties and say, oh, you know, kind of independently, the Hindus, Confucius, so forth, thought of the same thing. This kind of reminds me of learning in high school about how two or three different civilizations simultaneously claimed to kind of create the concept of the number zero, which I think was like the Indus River Valley people, some Muslim civilization. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. But yes, there are obviously going to be examples of this. But to me, again, And the question of values here is one, yes, I agree with you, and this is where I think you and I do agree, is that we can, to an extent, and I'll qualify with to an extent, we can identify absent recourse or anything else that something like the golden rule is a good thing, to an extent.

1:08:20Josh Hammer:I'm not willing to kind of go the whole way and say that we can kind of wholly determine this is a good thing, but I think to an extent we can have a moral intuition that this is a good thing. I would argue, by the way, that that moral intuition comes from the spark of divine within us because of Genesis 127. But we can have some moral intuition that this is a good thing. But more generally speaking, Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 is only one verse in this entire revelation. You know, so for instance, you know, we just had our first daughter who was born in December. You know, she's only five months old now, but when she gets, you know, when it gets time for her to date, you know, in theory, I would like for my wife and I to kind of raise her in a manner such that she believes in the truth of revelation at Mount Sinai.

1:09:13Josh Hammer:I claim, by the way, that Jewish tradition teaches there were, I forgot the exact number, but around 600 ,000 to just slightly over a million people standing there to witness this. This is not kind of just one or two people there, but the entire nation of Israel was congregated there at the base of Mount Sinai. I want her to believe in the truth of that revelation and all that that entails. That does not necessarily mean the truth simply of these more kind of universalist moral ideals like Leviticus 19, chapter 18, or even the notion that, as we're commanded to do that, that if you were a farmer or a gardener that you have to leave the corners of your field unfarmed essentially for the poor there.

1:09:57Josh Hammer:All these moral rules are very nice, but there are also all sorts of particular rules that are kind of lumped together there with the universalist ideals there. So for instance, there's the laws of kosher, the laws of kashrut there. And all of these, I think, have to be accepted if you accept the legitimacy of the divine revelation itself there. So it's not – I'm not solely interested in trying to find cross-civilizational pollination between the various abstract moral ideals that the Bible says there. To me, there are all sorts of particulars claims from a specifically Jewish perspective as well here.

1:10:32Josh Hammer:This is – I'm obviously not talking here about Christian dating, but from a very specific Jewish dating, upbringing, and marrying perspective there. There are all sorts of things that are not necessarily universalist because, again, Judaism itself is not a universal religion. It is a particularist form of nationalism, frankly, because Judaism really is a nation at the end of the day. Got it.

1:10:51Coleman Hughes:So I think that I've been misunderstanding the way we're using the word values because there's two different sets of values. There's particularist Jewish values, which include, for instance, believing in the literal truth of the Mount Sinai story. That's a value you hold that I don't. And then there's these other values which are more abstract, more universalizable, but which I think you would also agree Judaism has played a part in disseminating, including to non-Jews, including to Christians, including to atheists, and so forth. so that's the set of values i was thinking about really like when you talk about how how you feel the jews have have something to tell the world essentially have something to teach the world you're not talking about the mount sinai values because that would be proselytizing a particular faith which is not what judaism is about you're talking about the the values that are by definition universalizable like the golden rule and like the dozen other things like that.

1:12:00Josh Hammer:Not necessarily. No, I think so to get back to the Mount Sinai story. So when God says in Exodus 19 that you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, this is kind of the origins of the book of Isaiah's famous line about being a light unto the nations there. The idea here is that the nation of Israel, again, this is what Judaism holds. It was chosen to be essentially a moral exemplar of what it means to embody collective holiness and to be a holy nation, to be a nation that is living as God's toehold here in this realm, to essentially be an example for the rest of the world. Not to evangelize, not to subjugate, certainly not to spread by force, by the sword or anything like that.

1:12:46Josh Hammer:Definitely not that. But to basically just live in totality by observing all the commandments there and by embodying this notion of being a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So yeah, that's going to include some universalist exhortations such as the golden rule. It's also going to include a lot of particularist rules as well, such as the laws, for instance, of kosher keeping kashrut.

1:13:11Coleman Hughes:One last question. We've seen this crop up a lot recently in the American debate. not only over Israel, but also Ukraine, the role of aid, military aid and economic aid. Do you think that America should still be giving economic slash military aid, you can distinguish between those two, to Israel? Or do you think the critics of our spending on Israel at this point are right?

1:13:48Josh Hammer:Okay, so a couple things there. So one is the specifically economic aid portion was phased out in the 1990s, but military aid has persisted. And military aid is, you know, Israel is one of, if not the largest receiver of U.S. military aid. So Coleman, for a very, very long time, this is becoming an increasingly popular argument. For over a decade now, I've been making the argument, and it was very, very unpopular when I was making it over 10 years ago, that the U.S.-Israel Aid Alliance should unwind, that it ultimately should end. Now, I'm not saying cut off the spigot tomorrow. I think that's a bad idea in the middle of a war, for instance, not just for Israel.

1:14:27Josh Hammer:But what message does that send from the United States to all of our other allies there? But over the mid to long term, I would absolutely like to see a plan to unwind this foreign aid arrangement. The foreign aid ends up being to me something of a mutual bear hug where both sides don't really know how to extricate themselves. But I'm not sure, frankly, that either side ends up benefiting this. To be clear, Americans benefit a lot from joint U.S.-Israeli investments and collaboration when it comes to trying to procure the most advanced forms of missile defense. Everything from Iron Dome to Arrow 3 and the Jewish space lasers to try to make Marjorie Taylor Greene happy, right?

1:15:07Josh Hammer:I mean, all this stuff is awesome. It's totally awesome. But I'm not sure that you need to go all in in this multibillion-dollar aid decennial boondoggle in order to do it there. So let me just kind of elaborate briefly. From a specifically American perspective, Coleman, this aid, which under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding that Barack Obama signed, ends up being about$3.8 billion annually. That aid to Israel, it doesn't stay there. I mean, Israel essentially has to spend a massive percentage, I mean, well over 90 % of that aid back in the United States. And that ends up essentially becoming something of a corporate slush fund, a cross-subsidization of Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

1:15:44Josh Hammer:So it's really the defense contractors who end up being the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. aid to Israel, which makes sense because when you look at when this aid bill gets renegotiated every 10 years, It's usually the defense industry lobbyists that are the largest proponents of it there. So from a kind of just kind of Tea Party era crony capitalism perspective, as well as just a good old-fashioned kind of fiscal conservative perspective as an American, I don't particularly love it. Perhaps even most pernicious, though, I think that this aid ends up really undermining Zionism itself. Because, you know, people like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, not particularly pro-Israel presidents, they actually love the USA to Israel because it emboldens people like Joe Biden to act as he acted after October 7th and to basically threaten to withhold aid to Israel, to stop weapons shipments unless, you know, like don't go into Rafa, don't go into this city, you know, don't go into this precinct.

1:16:36Josh Hammer:If you can't do this, you can't do that there. It basically allows you to dictate all sorts of XYZ military minutia that, frankly, the United States would never do for any other country there. And all this has the effect of undermining Zionism, which is the claim that the Jews control their own destiny in their own ancestral and biblical homeland there. So I think from both an American and an Israeli perspective, I think that this ultimately does more harm than good. But actually, it was just this past week that I saw Prime Minister Netanyahu for the first time talking about possibly extricating America or excuse me, extricating Israel from American military.

1:17:10Josh Hammer:It was the first time I've ever heard Netanyahu say that. We'll see what happens. But I think that I think that this is starting to become increasingly a common opinion. And in my opinion, it's something that really ought to happen at some point.

1:17:22Coleman Hughes:Yeah, I mean, my worry is that if that does happen, Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah are all going to be throwing parties celebrating the fact that from their perspective, the strategy of terror has worked. Their whole thesis is that if we make it uncomfortable enough, if we kill enough Jews, eventually they'll go back somewhere. right it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't take into account that Israeli Jews have nowhere to go which I think is is perhaps the biggest miscalculation on the part of Israel's enemies in the region but I would hate the idea that as a result of October 7th as a result of slaughtering civilians a knock-on consequence of that is Hamas gets what it wants which is the severing of America and Israel financially, militarily, as the first step to yada, yada, yada.

1:18:24Josh Hammer:Well, I think that what America wants, Coleman, are strong allies, are strong, self-sufficient, independent allies. I mean, this is kind of the raison d 'etre of President Trump's foreign policy realism, of his nationalist MAGA, shall we call it, approach to foreign policy. I mean, he wants allies who are genuine allies, who can be trusted to patrol and secure their part of the world in a way that redounds to not just that country's national interest, but also to the American national interest there. I think the failed model of alliance, and Trump has also gone at this when he criticizes Europe for not meeting their NATO-required 2 % of GDP on military spending monetary threshold.

1:19:05Josh Hammer:I think the failed model of alliance is not really an independent alliance at all, but essentially that of a far-flung province or a satrapy. This notion that America kind of has this vassal state and we're controlling it there. That's certainly not how President Trump thinks of foreign policy. And personally, as a foreign policy realist myself, as someone who values strong, independent nation states, that's certainly not how I think of foreign policy. I think it's probably not how Israel should think of it either.

1:19:32Coleman Hughes:Yeah. All right, Josh Hammer, the book, give me the name of the book one time for my audience.

1:19:40Josh Hammer:So the book is Israel and Civilization, the Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever books are sold. And they can follow you on Twitter, I presume, or a website? Yep, I'm on xjosh__hammer, Instagram joshbhammer. My own show is The Josh Hammer Show. I write a weekly syndicated column as well at Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Real Clear Politics, a bunch of other places as well.

1:20:01Coleman Hughes:All right. Thank you so much, Josh.

1:20:02Josh Hammer:My pleasure. Thank you.

1:20:04Coleman Hughes:On Tuesday, September 8th, I will be at the 92nd Street Y in conversation with Dara Horn. Dara's last book was called People Love Dead Jews, and it was an award-winning examination of the ways in which contemporary culture sentimentalizes Jewish suffering while ignoring Jewish life. In her new book, which is provocatively titled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, Dara takes the next step, not only tracing the myths that have spread anti-Semitism in the past, but asking what can actually be done about them. So get your tickets now. I assume they will sell fast. Once again, that's Tuesday, September 8th at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

1:20:43Coleman Hughes:See you there.