Episode Details

Our call this week, for paid subscribers, will be on Friday at 1 PM Eastern, our new regular time.

Our guest will be The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, author of one of the most famous essays of the first Trump presidency, which he turned into a book: The Cruelty is the Point. We’ll talk about what is similar, and different, as Trump returns, and how Americans should respond to our country’s enormous capacity for cruelty, both at home and abroad.

Paid subscribers will get an email with the Zoom link, and then once it airs, they’ll get the video. They’ll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rashid Khalidi, Rebecca Traister, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.

My New Book

Knopf will publish my new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, on January 28 of next year. I hope the book will contribute, in some small way, to changing the conversation among Jews about what is being done in our name. But I’m keenly aware of two things: First, Jewish voices like mine usually get more attention in the US than do Palestinian ones. Second, while I’m publishing my book, Palestinians in Gaza— and beyond— are suffering in unspeakable ways.

So, while I hope you consider buying my book, I hope you also consider buying a book by a Palestinian author. I’m grateful to readers for offering their favorites. One reader recently recommended Naomi Shihab Nye’s young adult novel, Habibi, about Liyana, a Palestinian-American girl from St. Louis whose family returns to West Bank, a place she struggles to make home.

Readers have also suggested additional charities working in Gaza. One is Donkey Saddle, which “has been providing ongoing support for over 15 extended families” in Gaza.

Sources Cited in This Video

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on Parshat Vayera.

Parshat Vayera and the Pittsburgh shooting.

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane details the Trump administration’s coming crackdown on campus speech.

Progressive New York State Representative Zohran Mamdani interviews Trump voters in Brooklyn and Queens.

Israeli reporter Barak Ravid tells the Jewish Federations of North America that “we are much closer to Israeli settlements being built in Gaza than hostages coming home from Gaza.”

Upcoming Talks

On Tuesday, November 19, I’ll be speaking at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst about “Protest, Zionism and Gaza.”

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. So, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs tells this story about the sixth Lubavitcher