I'm Rabbi Ammi Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and you're listening to In These Times. The world would be a better place with more laughter. And indeed, there's something very Jewish about comedy. For me, the world is comic. I think it's a very Jewish thing to find in not just the sadness of the world, but in the seriousness of the world.
The son of a Holocaust survivor, David Baddiel, grew up in London, and graduated from King's College, Cambridge, before abandoning his doctoral studies to become a stand up comic. Now, a successful comedian, David is also the author of four novels, And the 2021 best selling nonfiction book, Jews Don't Count, about the double standards employed by the progressive left when it comes to Jews and anti Semitism. David Baddiel, it's an honor to have you on the podcast. Welcome to In These Times.
Oh, thank you very much, Ammi. It's an absolute joy and an honor for myself to be here. You're a comedian. I wanted to ask you about, uh, comedy. You're, you're a special kind of comedian. I, I observe comedians all the time. I think they have so much to add to our understanding of, uh, society, but you have the additional element. You're kind of like a philosopher and an intellectual. You write books.
All your books are, they have comedy in them, but you use comedy to present very serious thoughts. Uh, what's it like to be a comedian nowadays? Uh, well, it's different for that very reason that it was, because when I started doing comedy, when I, you know, did open spots at the comedy store in London, when it was, it was very rough, it was like the late 80s, and to get a gig, you had to go on at three o'clock in the morning, after all the other comics had done their stuff.
And like basically fight your way through the drunkest people in the world in the hope of getting maybe two laughs. Uh, and you just had to like duck the ashtrays that were being thrown at you and that kind of stuff. Uh, and so the room for the deep philosophical sort of observing and musings and nuance was not so available then. Uh, and I just used to do a kind of rat a tat, you know, kind of high energy joke, joke, joke thing. And then luckily, You know, thank Hashem.
Although, as you know, I'm not, I'm not a deep observer of that, but thank Hashem. Uh, I was successful enough to get to a position whereby people weren't throwing stuff at me. Uh, I mean, if they were, it would be for other reasons, but anyway, uh, something you have a bit of space, you know, once you're well known enough as a comedian, you have a bit of space where people are like, okay, he doesn't have to prove he's funny.
Cause when people go to a club and they've never seen a comedian before, they don't care. They just say like, make me laugh. Right. It's especially in Britain, in America, when I've done stand up in America, actually they're a bit more generous, but in Britain, it's like, you're not funny. You have to tell me you are funny before I'm going to get any of my money's coming your way. Right. So, whereas.
Once they've decided you are, because they've seen you and you're on TV, and whatever, then you can sort of, like, expand a bit what you're talking about, and it's, as long as there are laughs, and I've always been keen that there should always be laughs, you can do different stuff. So, for example, the last three shows I've done, are just stand up shows, where the first one was about fame, the second one was about my family, and the third one was about social media.
And I kind of, again, this is like the Mojus religiously decided that those would be thematic shows. If I had an idea for a bit of banter that wasn't about that, I would chuck it out. Because I wanted to explore those subjects, and actually the one about my family Which was about my very unusual and weird childhood and which Jews in London liked a lot. It had two runs in the West End. It took in, you know, a very transgressive and weird childhood.
It took in the Holocaust, because my mum was a Holocaust survivor. It took in my father's dementia. These are all not obviously funny subjects, right? But, for me, the world is comic. And so, therefore, whatever you look at, you're gonna find ways of finding it comic. And that in itself is a positive endeavor, I think. It's a very Jewish endeavor. I think it's a very Jewish thing to find in not just the sadness of the world, but in the seriousness of the world. The funny.
So you've been a comic for, I suppose, around 30 years or so, at least. Longer. Longer than 30? I'm old. I'm 60. And my first gig was actually at school. Uh, so at my school, there was like a show that the sixth formers, that would be the sort of people about to leave the school. I don't know what grade that is in America, but the sort of like 18 year olds, the ones about to go to college, uh, they would do a show at lunchtime for the kids and it was always terrible.
And I got to write it my year. It was very, it used to be blued off. And I got to write it my year, and I did a thing which I think is very important in terms of my understanding of comedy. Which is to say, not like, let's just sort of do something, whatever, just let's think about this for a minute. What do the kids coming to this show want to see? What do they think is funny? How can we speak to them about their world? And I said, what we do is, we do sketches.
That take the piss, to use a British expression, of teachers who we all hate. That's how we do it. Because what are we really doing at this school in our spare time? We're saying how much we hate the librarian, who's a puritanical Christian, and who, it would be really funny to have a sketch where he's having sex with the blow up doll on the photocopier, right? And so we did that and it stormed it. I mean, still my first gig, like utterly stormed it.
And then I, I got into real trouble at that school and was nearly expelled. And, you know, from then on, that was basically the rollercoaster of my life in comedy. So what is that a little over 40 years? How has comedy changed in that? Four plus decades that you've been a stand up comic and a comedian.
Well, that's a very big question Are people more some people seem to be much more sensitive now About their feelings and much less tolerant in terms of giving space to comedians Is that just an impression we have or is it if you found that to be true? Well, I, that's, that's what people think and some of what they think is correct, but you can hear different versions of that.
So, for example, someone I've worked with a lot, who's a comedian called Frank Skinner, who was well known for doing very, very kind of blue material. Very sort of a lot of jokes about sex, a lot of jokes that he wouldn't be able to do now. He has this idea, and he's a 67 year old guy, and he's actually more on the road than I am. He's always doing gigs. Uh, that.
Part of your job as a comedian is to see where the line is, and if the line changes, then you change to dance differently around the line. Uh, and I think that has some validity. I think it's no point in just complaining that you can't do exactly the same material that you did 30 years ago. Because people change, and times change, and that's part and parcel of where we are.
At the same time, I would say that, um, part of what comedy needs to be able to do is, uh, play about with what people consider to be offensive or not offensive. And I think one of those things, and this is, I'm very big on this, is that we have to be able to make jokes where you look at the joke rather than the subject matter. By which I mean, People will say, you can't make jokes about X. In our case, let's say you can't make jokes about the holocaust.
Obviously you can make jokes about the holocaust. The question is not Not the subject matter, but the joke. So you could obviously do a very unpleasant neo-Nazi extreme and anti-Semitic joke about the Holocaust. You could also do this joke. Um, a Holocaust survivor dies after the war. Obviously, he's a survivor. He goes to heaven. When he gets to heaven. God asks the survivor to tell him a Holocaust joke. So the survivor does. He tells God a Holocaust joke and God says, that's not funny.
And the survivor says, well, I guess you had to be there. And I love that joke. I love that joke. It's so deeply profound. You as a rabbi might question it because it's basically an atheist joke. It's basically a joke about where was God in the Holocaust? Where was God in the Holocaust? Exactly. But it's, it's clearly not. An inhumane joke about the holocaust. It's a thoughtful joke about the holocaust. And you only find that out when you tell the joke.
So I'm very much of the belief that the modern thing, which is a bad reflex, which is, well obviously you can't do jokes about X, you can't do jokes about, is not true. You have to look at the individual joke. Have you done jokes about rabbis? I keep on asking our rabbis, our common friend. I, I, I asked Dan Patterson who created mock the week and in the UK and he keeps telling me blue jokes and I keep on telling him I can't tell these jokes from the pulpit. He's not, it's kind of blue.
Not very blue. One of the first ever bits I did. And actually, in Britain, this was unusual. Like, in New York, obviously, in America in general, comedy, stand up comedy, certainly after the war, for a long time was Jewish, right? Like, it was like, so many Jews were doing comedy, and the big wave of new comedy in the 50s and 60s was powered by Sid Caesar and Mort Sahl and Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce, and they were all Jewish, right?
So when I first started doing comedy in London, I was forefronting that I was Jewish. That was much more unusual than it would be in America. Uh, and I did a very specific thing, which now I think is amazing that it got laughs, but it did. Uh, which was to talk about how, if you go to a bar mitzvah, Someone will stand up and tell a joke. And something I noticed is that sometimes the punchline would be in Yiddish, right? And so I used to make up this joke, and this is the joke.
It would be something like this, like, uh, Oh, a rabbi is speaking to a foolish person. And the foolish person says, Rabbi, rabbi, my foreskin has grown back. What shall I do? And the rabbi says to the foolish person, Let's call him Chaim, I don't know. Chaim. Moses said, when the light of the world is shining, you must turn your faces to the ground. And Joshua said, when the light of the world is dim, you must turn thy faces to the sky.
But I say, Wenn der Putsch steht in der Jentl, dann hast du Soros für den Knädelacken geschlagen. And then I did this whole bit about just thinking, What? What the fuck? What have they just said? And everyone is killing themselves laughing. So I did that bit for mainly non Jews, and they would love it for some reason. They would love it. And actually, I wrote a film called The Infidel, which is about a Muslim who discovers he was born a Jew, and that bit is acted out.
It's acted out at a bar mitzvah, so I know it's funny. Uh, so yes, I've done jokes about rabbis, so that answers question one. And your next question was, is there something specifically Jewish? Well, what's specifically Jewish about Jewish humor?
I would say there's a very broad reason why Jews get into comedy, which is that Jews are storytellers, and Jews are storytellers because I think they stand, tend to stand outside the main culture, not completely outside it, but sort of like 5 percent outside the main culture, that they're Immigrating into and assimilating within. And so that gives them a good perspective on it. And perspective often means comedy, right? You often means irony.
If you're standing slightly outside something, you can sort of see what's funny about it. But the other thing is of course, Judaism, I've always felt, and I wrote a book called the God desire, which is slightly about this is. Not something which believes really in a massively higher spiritual plane. I think Judaism is a religion about the here and now. Christianity came along and it said, Oh, everything's about the hereafter. Everything's about the wonderful, wonderful paradise to come.
Not about this life. But Judaism is always about like, No, now, now you should behave like this. And now you should also wrap this around your wrist and not eat this food and that food or whatever. Because I think it comes out of a community that was often under threat. And often, therefore, I had to come up with all these ideas for like, how can I feel safe? Now here and now and I think the comedy is like that the comedy is like about now I try to get this joke, right?
It's a joke about how the Dalai Lama is not quite who you think he is because once his mother said to him Hey Sheldon enough is enough What I love about that joke is it brings everything down to earth you see what I'm saying Is that Jewish comedy brings everything down to earth and I think? That's one of the things is that we always want to subvert we always want to undercut and that's funny, right? That's a funny instinct.
Do you think our centuries of persecution angst and anxiety has something to do with Jewish humor, too? Yeah, because I think it's about like Well, A, how else are you going to deal with that stuff, right? How else do you deal with, you know, I don't know if I get this joke exactly right, but there's a, uh, a joke about during the Nazi era or the buildup to the Nazi era. There are two Jews on a bench saying, one of them says, look, it's awful. Look at them.
The Nazis are in power or they're coming to power. It's terrible. And the other one says, yeah, no, but they say we're in control of the world. Right. And we're always trying to find ways of dealing with stuff through comedy, I think. Um, I mean, I could, I could carry on and make this entirely about analyzing jokes and I am thinking about doing a show in which that's part of what I do, is analyze Jewish jokes.
But I think that one of the things is, I started to realize that some of my early jokes fitted in, I thought, with ideas about Jews that I wouldn't necessarily want to perpetuate. So, for example, I did this joke, it's a good joke, right, it's about how a friend of mine, which is true, close friend of mine was Jewish, and then they became a Buddhist. So they were like a Jewish Buddhist, which is someone who believes you should renounce all your material possessions, but still keep the receipts.
And I did that joke, and then I thought, yeah, I shouldn't be doing that joke anymore. That joke's about Jews and money, right, and I shouldn't do that joke, yeah? Because I kind of think I don't want to reiterate that stereotype. But it's complicated because there's a very famous old joke which is about Jews and money, but I think this joke is completely acceptable because it's not an anti semitic joke, it's a joke about anti semitism. I don't know if you may know this joke.
Two Jews, Moses and Abraham, let's call them, are walking through, I think it's a Russian joke, they're walking through Moscow, and they're both poor and they're both peasants, and it's been a hard winter, and they see a sign Outside a church and the sign says, convert to Christianity, come to Jesus, we'll give you 30 rubles. And Moses says, I'm going to do it. And Abraham says, okay, I understand it's been a hard winter, but I can't, I can't do that. Moses.
Okay. So Moses goes inside, comes outside about an hour later and Abraham says to him, so did you get your 30 rubles? And Moses says, money, it's everything to you people. And it's such a great joke. It's such a great joke. And it's so moving at some level, because it basically says, Jews are frightened. And if Jews were to magically not be Jews anymore, the first thing they would do is pick on Jews, because that's their experience, right? It's a joke about mob psychology.
And what I think is, that comes back to what I was saying about the individual joke, which is, you have to look into what's it actually saying. And in terms of your question, what is Jewish comedy, I think it's also saying this is what life is like, you know. So you wrote this, um, very serious book recently called, uh, Jews Don't Count. It's very well known. It's well known here in the United States too, I assume even more in, uh, the UK. Can I just say something, Rabbi?
Sorry, I'm going to call you Rabbi, I like calling you Rabbi, uh, which is, um, I am proud of that book, obviously, in general, because I think it helped to change a bit the discourse around how people think about Jews and anti Semitism. One thing I'm really proud of is Harper Collins, who published it, never, they didn't manage to get a proper publisher in America. Uh, American publishers read that book and they were a bit like, uh, it's a bit British.
This guy, we don't know who he is, et cetera, et cetera. And so they just kind of let it trickle. into bookshops in America, you know, in the way that they do with British books or whatever. And it's now sold, like, 75, 000 copies in America. And so I'm proud of that, because I think it's saying something that Jews respond to wherever they are.
Since you mention that, before we even get to the content of the book, Jewish authors nowadays, in particular after October 7th, are complaining that they're feeling, if not expressed, at least subtle discrimination and some kind of bias on promoting their books. Did you experience that at all here in the United States or in the UK?
Maybe. I mean, if I did, I maybe didn't know about it, because, like, when you experience a sense of being excluded, some of the time, It's the gigs you're not being invited to, right? And you just don't know about it. I mean, certainly, once I started talking about that subject, so just for anyone who doesn't know, Jews Don't Count is not just another book about antisemitism.
It's a short polemic, and it's specifically about the fact that progressives, of which I would consider myself to be one, kind of, Progressives, and I thought this back in, you know, when I wrote it, 2020, and had been thinking it for about 10 years before that, have a brand, which is that they care about, you know, offence and racism and discrimination of all sorts. And yet some or other, they don't care so much about antisemitism. Why is that? Is that what you mean by don't count?
Jews don't count? Yeah, that's what I mean by Jews don't count. Specifically, I mean that within a progressive worldview, where what counts most of all is your identity. And certain identities have to be raised up and protected and included and, uh, recognized and all the rest of it, that Jews are not in that move. They're not in that conversation at some level.
That the people for whom, and I agree with this, by the way, the people that for whom their life is about seeking out the vulnerable and the excluded and the discriminated and the marginalized, Jews are just assumed to be not in that Venn diagram. Which is odd, because if you look at the history of Jews. It's a huge history of disempowerment, right, despite the notion that Jews are somehow powerful. We live, as Jews, in a cyclical history of disempowerment. And so the book is about that.
I mean, when I first wrote it, so there was a lot of fuss in Britain at the time. And it was just after this that, uh, Jeremy Corbyn was head of the Labour Party and there was a lot of noise around whether or not his Labour Party had anti Semitic elements. So I was invited at that point on to sort of everything to talk about that. And to be honest with you, I sort of sometimes didn't want to just talk about that because the book felt to me to be about larger things than British politics.
After October the 7th, I got asked a lot to talk about it, but it was complicated for me. Rabbi, because one of the things I say in the book, which I know some Jews who like the book have issues with this, is for me, I was keen to say, and another way in which Jews don't count, is that they are held responsible for everything that Israel does. And this does not apply to other minorities. British or American, Chinese people.
are not held responsible for the behavior of the Chinese government towards the Uyghurs. No progressive person would ever, ever go up to an American Chinese person and say, before you say anything else, I need to know what you think about the behavior of the Chinese government and their human rights abuses. They'd never do that, it would be racist.
But I, and no doubt you, and every Jewish person, certainly every prominent Jewish person, is always being asked essentially to clear the air about what they feel about the Middle East before they can speak about anti semitism or whatever. And the reason for that is The reason for that is, is that Jews are considered a special case, that they, that they don't count. Uh, that they don't count as a vulnerable minority. Why?
Because of a sort of right wing assumption, even though that has bled into the left, which is that Jews are, uh, powerful, privileged, white, and in control of the world, muddied, rich, all the things. That would exclude them from the category of the vulnerable because these ideas that you you you don't impose, for example, a collective identity on all. people from a certain heritage.
That doesn't apply to Jews, because if Jews are powerful and privileged, they're probably networking together, aren't they, in order to lobby on behalf of Israel or whatever else it might be. In general, you just don't have to worry so much about offending Jews as you do other minorities, because it's assumed That they're operating from a position of power. And all, the entire way that progressives think is about locating where the power is.
But for me, and this is probably the key thing, is that implies a binary in the world between the powerful and the powerless. But Jews are a glitch in that binary. Because some Jews are powerful. I'm not denying, you know, some Jews clearly are powerful. Israel is the most powerful force in the Middle East. AIPAC is powerful in America, but that doesn't mean all Jews are powerful. And certainly the history would suggest that the notion of the powerful Jew. Leads to the disempowered Jew.
Mm hmm, this glitch in the formula, it also pervades a concept of, and a perspective on race, doesn't it? Because, you know, the anti Semites of the right, they kind of look at Jews as some kind of alien force. They're not white, and they're a threat to white Western civilization. The anti Semites of the left, They actually think they're the epitome of whiteness, right? They're white and powerful. Yeah, so I say this in Jews Don't Count. I think I came up with it.
I might have seen it on the internet, but I certainly popularized it, which is Schrodinger's Whites. Jews are Schrodinger's Whites. By which I mean, like Schrodinger's cat can be two things at once. Jews are simultaneously non white. Depends on the politics of the observer. We are non white as far as the far right goes. We are aliens. We have been for centuries. We've been an alien culture.
And in the face of, if you're left, then Jews are extremely white because they are powerful and rich and privileged and can't possibly suffer from the same vulnerabilities as other minorities. And in fact, you see it all the time. Jews being described as white. And that depends on what your idea of whiteness is. I think that whiteness is primarily not about skin color. It's primarily about security.
It's about whether or not you were secure in a culture dominated by that idea, and Jews have not been. We know this and we know that they've been categorized as non white. So two things that are very, very important. Number one is you mentioned race. Antisemitism is racism. This is apparently a harder idea to express in America. A few Americans were worried about me saying it, but it's very, very important. Antisemitism is racism because I am an atheist.
Sorry to imply that again, Rabbi, I'm an atheist that would make no difference to whether or not I was sent to Auschwitz, it would make no difference indeed, to Neo Nazis who want to burn down my house because the racists don't care about religion. So the one thing anti Semitism is not is religious intolerance. But that's often a mistake that people make, or a deliberate mistake they make, where they want to downgrade. Antisemitism.
And you say that knowing that there have been, there were centuries in Europe of, uh, Christian religious based persecution of Jews. Well, that's a complicated thing, isn't it? And let me tell you a story, not a very nice story, but, uh, in a place in Britain called York, you may know this, there was a massacre of Jews in 1190, following on something that was very typical, uh, in the history of Jews, which is that.
Local aristocrats owed Jews money and didn't want to pay it back, so they started rumours that Jews were killing Christian babies. And that led to Jews being rounded up, and there were about 150 of them in a tower, it's called Clifford's Tower. And the people outside were chanting that the Jews should convert. And you might think, okay, well that's a religious thing. And most of the Jews committed suicide, rather than convert. About five Jews went outside.
And said, okay, I pledged my life to Jesus. I would have been one of those Jews, by the way. At which point, those five Jews were killed anyway. And do you see what that means? That means that hatred of Jews is an in built racist thing, even in 1190. Because they didn't really care whether or not the Jews believed in Jesus. What they cared about was that this was an alien force, that they were psychopathically trying to destroy. And that's always been the case.
And when you say racist, this is maybe one of the reasons why Americans, uh, kind of have, uh, some questions about it. I mean, half of the Jewish, uh, world is from origins that are not European. They are Jews, what we would call today, I guess, Jews of color. Yeah. So when you say racist, you don't mean. Well, this is, this is, this is the thing that's confusing for Americans because racism and racist is a word in America. That's been.
Ring fence just for people of color, but, but racism is, I mean, obviously incredibly affects people of color, but racism is something that can be applied as we know to people who are not people of color as we understand them. Because let's look at Jews, right? It doesn't matter whether or not we are biologically or anthropologically or DNA terms of race. Some, I think we probably are. It's not important. What's important is that throughout history we have been racialized.
It has been imposed upon Jews that we are an inferior race, and that's what matters if you're combating racism. If you can be categorized as an inferior race because you're Jewish, you clearly suffer racism. The Nuremberg Laws were racial purity laws. And so that's racism. And there's a fear in America that you're intruding on something you're not meant to intrude on, which is a preserve of people of color, by saying that you suffer from race.
I mean, it's happened in this country as well, because for a long time, and still now, people will talk about anti Semitism and racism, as if those are two different things. They have slightly different qualities, not all types of racism are the same, but unquestionably anti semitism is racism.
You know, I find that to be a very, very profound observation and your contention is This is a very ancient strain that takes upon itself modern forms depending on the circumstances and the eras of the time. Is that correct? That's completely correct, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's very profound, I think. You call yourself a, uh, fundamentalist atheist, I think? Did you use that term about yourself?
My friend, Frank Skinner, who I mentioned already, who, I did a show about soccer with him, I've done lots of shows with him, he is a devout Catholic. And he hates me using the phrase Fundamentalist Atheist. Uh, he once rang me up and said, Please don't use that phrase, I hate, I hate it. Uh, I think it's because he associates Fundamentalism, obviously, with some very bad things. What I mean is, that I, you know, I've written a book, which you may not have read, called The God Desire.
And in The God Desire, I put forward this idea, which is that I deeply, it's a very Jewish idea, I think, I deeply, deeply, deeply would like God to exist.
I, I love life, and from when I was six years old and first became aware of death, and I think was praying to Hashem because I went to a very Orthodox Jewish school, so that was my immediate response was to do that, was to hope that somehow or other there would be a place where I could see my loved ones again and carry on living and blah blah blah. And now what I realize is that those things don't exist and that's why we've invented God.
Because we all profoundly need that hope and I believe that so fervently that I think I am yes a Fundamentalist in that belief. So can I ask you? I hope you don't feel patronized by what I'm about to say I consider you a great Jew. Well, it's very kind of you. I don't feel patronized at all. I love that and You know, I you apropos joke.
Okay, so I don't know if you've heard this joke, you know, the Orthodox Jew says Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad The agnostic Jew says, Sh'ma Yisrael, I don't know Eloheinu, I don't know Echad. The atheist Jew says, Sh'ma Yisrael, I deny Eloheinu, I deny Echad. Who do I care? As long as, you know, from my perspective at least, as long as they feel connected to Jewish heritage, Jewish tradition, Jewish civilization, and are invested in the Jewish future.
From my perspective, they're the best Jews, especially in modern times. Well, that's kind of it. I mean, let me tell you something that happened, which I think It's a funny story, but it's quite profound in its own way, which is that because I'm quite well known in this country, I get asked to do stuff for the local community, and a few Chanukahs ago, I got asked by my local rabbi, a man I don't know, because I don't go to synagogue, except for weddings or whatever.
Phoned me up, I don't know how he got my number, obviously because we do control the world, but anyway, he gets my number, he phones me up, and he says, will you come and light the menorah outside the synagogue this year? We always have some local, well known person who does it. And I didn't really want to do that, I was busy, and it felt like a little bit of a naff thing that I didn't really want to do, so I played what I thought was my trump card.
I said, I'm so sorry to tell you this, Rabbi, but actually, I'm an atheist.
And he went, so am I. And I thought, fucking hell, I mean, really, there's a, there's a lot more Jewish atheists out there than I realized, uh, and I told that story to another rabbi once, I do know quite a lot of rabbis, and he said, well, in a way, it's true, because in a way, you know, Judaism is much more about that connection that you just talked about, connections between Jews, connections between the culture and the traditions, and all the rest of it, And I feel that
very deeply myself, without any notion that there actually exists a supernatural being who is involved in that. That isn't, I totally do not believe that that thing exists. But I do believe in, yeah, I mean, there's a bit in the, um, in the God Desire, where I talk about being at a funeral of a young boy, actually, and the father does Kaddish. And as he's singing Kaddish, I cannot but be moved.
Not just because it's a sad moment, but because there are centuries of suffering and tradition and defiance. in that. And to be honest with you, I don't know if we were not a persecuted minority, whether I'd be able to feel that. I think if I was an atheist and Christian, I don't know, I don't think I'd feel connected in that same way. It's almost a contradiction in terms, right? Because Christianity is defined by belief. Judaism is defined by birth by, or by membership in. But also by culture.
and tradition and family and to be honest by anti semitism a lot of people say oh you shouldn't define it by anti semitism that's negative i think that's not true that's like saying oh black people shouldn't sing the blues you know i've told you jokes about anti semitism part of being jewish is how you deal with centuries of suffering and centuries of murder and genocide and whatever and you know my family my mother was born in nazi germany My grandparents survived, but most of them didn't.
My grandfather was in Dachau. How do you deal with that, right? You deal with it through comedy, but you also, it builds in you an absolute knowledge of the fact of your Jewishness. Whether or not you believe in God. That's my point. I don't know if you gave too much thought before October 7th, before you sat down and started to write this book about Israel. I don't think you ever considered yourself a Zionist, or a passionate Zionist.
You're very happy, uh, in the UK and you derive your Jewish identity from what you just described to us. Yeah. Um, you know, Zionism, the state of Israel was, apropos your discussion about Jewish power, it was created to solve the problem of Jewish powerlessness.
Do you think that that confuses Anti Semites, both from the right and from the left, because all of a sudden, from 2, 000 years of looking at this people as a powerless people, people upon whom we place actions, who are all of a sudden independent actors of history. Do you think it confuses them, disorients them? Do you think it's a factor? Do you think, do you think they look at Israel and And there's inevitably a connection to anti Semitism. Personally, of course, I'm all in favor of critique.
I think Judaism is based on that. Democracy is based on that. I never oppose people criticizing Israeli policies. Even if I think they come from a bad place, it's still, it's a legitimate exercise. But help us understand the connection between, uh, anti Zionism and anti Semitism.
So firstly, I should say, As regards my position, which, obviously, has undergone some shifting recently, but it's still my basic position, is that I think Jews Part of my thing about, is like, Jews should be like other minorities, and other minorities do not feel an instant connection, unless they do, some might feel they want to, but an instant connection with, as it were, their heritage country, and lots of other minorities feel entirely happy, and in fact, part of their thing is, I want to
be seen as you know, a British Chinese person or a British person of color. And I don't, it's kind of, you know, racist to say all the time, Oh, but what about this other country? 4, 000 miles away. That clearly means more to you than your present country, right? That's weirdly racist, but Jews have been sort of put in that position. And some Jews are.
Okay with it because some Jews want to say how connected they are to Israel and what it creates in some other Jews, which again is not me, is an incredible anti Israel. That's an incredible thing of like desperately keen to say not in my name and Jews who are deeply ashamed about Israel or whatever. And what I am is a third thing, which is More prevalent than you might think, and gets almost no coverage from the people wanting to write about it, which is, it's a foreign country.
It's a foreign country, I'm a British Jew, I spend very little time until recently thinking about Israel, and, you know, I just don't feel this deep connection that wants me to either feel, yes, Israel at all costs, or, I'm betrayed by these people with whom I feel this deep connection, I'm so ashamed. Neither of those things. Recently, it's been harder to do that because I'm not interested in reiterating that at a time when it might feel craven to do so.
By which I mean, that is what I think, but I'm not going to come out and say that over and over again when it might start to look like I must disassociate myself from this country because of what it's doing, because I kind of think that's craven. What I think in the larger sense, to answer your question, is that People have said to me, Jews have said to me, but surely you recognize that Israel is a sanctuary. Israel is the place we all have in our hearts for when the Nazis come back, basically.
And what I think about that is, I don't think that the way to challenge racism, anti Semitism, is by thinking, well, we can't do it really, so let's have the bunker. Let's make sure we've got the bunker, because I think my job, when I'm talking about this stuff, my interest is in challenging anti semitism.
And I don't believe you can really challenge anti semitism if all the time you're thinking it's going to be too difficult to challenge, so I need to have this thing where I can go, where I can hide and fight. antisemitism. So that's not my process. My process is not to think of Israel as this sanctuary in the face of terrible antisemitism. Interestingly enough, I think that is why Israel was started.
I think Theodore Herzl, who did think after the Dreyfus affair, there is no hope for the Jews in Europe. Obviously, he had a point there, um, and therefore we need a place to go and, you know, call our own to be safe and all the rest of it. But, this is the real answer to your question. I think one of my big shticks is Jews are imagined as powerful. Jews are the only minority that are imagined in what I call a dual status way. By which I mean, low status.
Vile, stinking, thieving, dirty, alien, the way that all minorities are imagined by racists. But Jews have this other thing where we are also high status, i. e., powerful, privileged, moneyed, secretly in control of the world. And that's the thing that really causes all sorts of issues for us, especially with progressives, because some progressives kind of believe that, and next thing you know, attacking Jews is punching up.
And the thing that makes that particularly acute Is Israel at the moment because Israel, it is a powerful country. It does have a powerful military. It is, you know, the force in the region that is in control in some ways. At the same time, I agree that.
A nuanced view would be that this country is a place built by refugees, built by people who had nowhere else to go, built as well by people of color who were fleeing from Arab countries around there, who wouldn't let them stay once Israel started. So what does that tell you, Rabbi? It tells you that, once again, Jews are a glitch in the binary. Once again, Jews are both powerful and very disempowered, and that's the nuance that gets lost in the shouting.
Let me ask you, um, you talk a lot about Jews carrying this internal sense of shame. Mm. Do you think there's a difference? I haven't really seen that. that much in the United States. I do understand that. As I mentioned to you, I spent three years in London and we go back all the time. I have a daughter in London and we have friends. Uh, I do feel a, a greater sense of insecurity on the part of British Jewry than on the part of American Jewry, but I don't really sense that in America.
And I certainly don't sense that in Israel where I've also lived quite extensively. Yeah. So, help us understand this sense of shame, and do you think it's, uh, it's kind of universal? It covers all Jews? Or are you specifically focused on, uh, European Jews? Yeah, that's a really good question. I, I, I mean, I, I I have talked about how, particularly when Jews Don't Count came out, quite a lot of Jews wrote to me.
And, you know, Jews wrote to me to say they liked the book, Jews wrote to me to say that they had issues with the bit about Israel, or whatever, some non Jews wrote to me, and this was my favourite part of it, to say, oh, I'd never really thought about the way I think about Jews in this way, and I'll try and change, so that was great.
And then the last thing, which was perhaps the most surprising, was Jews who said, I've spent my whole life pretending not to be Jewish, nor just not telling people that I'm Jewish, and I've read your book, and now I'm going to come out the closet. And that would be both older Jews, who were probably inculcated with a Holocaust survivor mentality, so their parents were Holocaust survivors, and they said, don't tell anyone you're Jewish, they'll kill you.
And more pertinently, young Jews. Who would write to me and say, Oh, I'm at university. I'm in rooms with people of my own age and I'm fighting the good fight on behalf of LGBTQ people and people of color, whatever, and then occasionally I want to bring up antisemitism and I'm too frightened because I think they'll just laugh at me or say it's not important or they'll bring up Israel. And your book has helped. It's helped.
Because to some extent it speaks the language of, you know, modern progressive thought. So there's this different ways in which Jews feel ashamed. I think at the moment, certainly in Britain and Europe, there is a shame connected with Israel as well. I think it builds on the original shame, which is this notion that Oh, I, as a Jew, I don't have a right to talk about my own vulnerability.
It's a weird type of shame because there's a notion that if I am vulnerable as a Jew, I can't own vulnerability because I'm, people will think I'm rich and powerful and then it's compounded by people will think I'm very pro Zionist. And so how can I talk about being vulnerable when this terrible thing is happening? I mean, a good example of this.
Which is, by the way, a connection that shouldn't really exist, but does all the time, is, if I publicly talk about antisemitism at the moment, so, immediately after October the 7th, I went on Sky TV, and I was asked the question, how are things with the Jewish community at the moment, and I said, well, everyone's very anxious and fearful, because there were huge rises in hate crime, and all the rest of it, and on social media, which obviously
is a bad metric anyway, but on social media, Immediately you just get how dare you talk about Jews feeling anxious or whatever when children are being killed in Gaza as if that's the connection I was making which obviously it was not, right? Um, so Jews I think feel ashamed because they assume they will be categorized as somehow oppressors. And so wanting to talk about feeling vulnerable or feeling frightened is very difficult. I think that still exists definitely in this country.
I think in America in general. Jews have always been a bit more, you know, unembarrassed about being Jews. The Jewish Chronicle, which actually has become a bit more strident in recent years, but in my, when I was growing up, the Jewish Chronicle, which was the Jewish newspaper, was very British, very genteel. And someone once said to me that the headline every week in the Jewish Chronicle was basically, oh, they hate us, meaning the non Jews, they hate us.
And I said, no, no, no, the headline is They hate us and let's not make a fuss about it. And I always thought that was true. Is that British Jews were like, please, please, let's just not worry, you know, about anything because we're just trying to fit in. And so I think that is a thing that Jews don't count was also fighting. I have two very brief questions, but they might be quite complicated. One, are comedians fundamentally optimistic people? And are you optimistic about that?
The state of the world and our future. Uh, I would say what I am, this is a weird thing to say, but it's definitely true, is completely not an optimistic person. I think I'm a fundamentally depressive person who uses comedy to be functional. I think without comedy, I'd have thrown myself off that balcony many, many years ago. I wrote a book called My Family, which is at the moment not out in America. I'm furious it's not, but hey, it's a memoir. I can send it to you, Rabbi.
And if you read that, you'll think, how is he? Not insane because my early life was insane. Uh, principally because my mother had an affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. We can't really get into it now, but then she turned our lives over to golf. Our whole house was like a shrine to golfing memorabilia. I mean, just mad.
But what I learned very early on was that the stuff that happens to you, if you look at it in the right way, is it becomes something to celebrate the damage, become something to celebrate rather than something to constantly be angry and upset about. You know, I'm very different in that way from, say, Prince Harry. Um, and, and so that's what, so I, but I know I, I don't look at the world at the moment optimistically. I look at it pessimistically, and I use comedy to help me get through that.
Sorry, I'd like to be more, more optimistic, but that is the truth. So, here's my last question. Uh, mindful of that. Uh, how do you see Americans nowadays, mindful of the new administration? Uh, you're, the UK is in Europe. How do you think Europeans view Americans nowadays? Well, as a comedian, it's quite hard because I think that, I mean, I won't be the first person to say this, but you know, Trump and Musk and all the others are so cartoonish. That's what I think is they're like cartoons.
They're like children, really. It's like, I think for years and years, especially in Britain, And Europe in general, we'd got used to politicians being these very, very adult figures, right? Very grown up, very, they, they were in suits, everything they said was scripted, there was a lot of decorum involved with them. And suddenly, I mean, we had a bit of it with Boris Johnson and blah, blah, blah.
You've got these people who are essentially Five year olds, I mean, you know, in the bodies of very old men, in the case of Donald Trump, but five year olds just shouting, you're, I hate you, you're stupid, in response to questions, aren't they? That's what they do. It's like, literally, you put a five year old and he would say the same thing. He would throw, you know, something at reporters. You ask them a different question. They'll say, your dad stinks, which is essentially what he does.
The other day, he did that. Did you see that? The Washington Post. Do you see that? On a plane, said to him, do you feel disrespected? It's a good question. By the fact that Putin, you're supposed to be trying to create peace, but Putin just bombed Ukraine. Do you feel disrespected? And what he did was say, where are you from? And then he said, the Washington Post. Yeah, you're failing. You're failing. I think you should think about that. That's what a five year old does, right?
And, and Musk is just like, just, I mean, you know. Again, a five year old, this is a slightly weird thing to say, but I've just thought of it, a five year old in a, whatever he is, 48 year old man's body. Might choose to have like 700 children, right? That's another thing that you might do if you've got no sort of, like, ability to understand what being adult is. Uh, so it's weird, and it's destabilizing, and it's frightening, and it's generally not very liberating.
You know, sometimes I think when disruptive things happen in the world, Oh, this is interesting. Where's this gonna go? But I think most of the time with this, you just think Jesus, this feels unsafe. You know, it feels like these guys with incredible power. It feels unsafe. And there's something I haven't mentioned, or not much, in this whole conversation. But of course, it's because of the technology that we live in now.
You know, what has essentially happened and this is what I think about America, but not just America, is that trolls People online who, who got interest and audience via shouting abuse at people. About 10 years ago, they were like a silly fringe part of the internet, and now they control the world, right? Because that's what Donald Trump and Elon Musk and other men who have become very, very powerful.
They are internet trolls made flesh and the whole attitude, the whole capital letters, shouty, angry. Attitude is that they are, yeah, they're basically internet trolls. They do a thing by the way, which is also very, very trolly, which is they are people of incredible power, but their approach and attitude is always. We're the victims. We're the ones who have suffered.
We're fighting on behalf of the people who have been put upon anything like, well, no, you're not because you are incredibly privileged and incredibly wealthy and always have been. Right? Like, virtually none of these men actually came from nothing, they just came from money. But still, they act as if, like, yeah, we're the ones who have suffered our whole lives. I must say, fuck off, is all I want to say.
Sorry, I've sworn quite a lot on this, I know, I know you're We're, we're, I'm not gonna edit it out, I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. Even though I can't say that, I'm certainly not No, you can't say that. But we're not in Senegal, we're not in Shul, so it should be okay. That's for sure. Yeah. Do you want to give us one final Joke before we say goodbye to you. Um, okay. I tend to finish. My, uh, Jewish gigs now with this story. It's just a true story. And it is about Jewish shame, actually.
It's about Jewish shame. So, I was interviewed in 1999, outside the FA Cup Final, that's a big footballing event, outside Wembley Stadium, by a man called Jim Rosenthal, who was a football presenter. And, you'll know this, right? Occasionally, you see, I mean, it's more prevalent in Britain, where there aren't that many Jews, but you see someone on the TV who's Jewish, And you're quite excited, right? Oh, that's one of us.
Well, I was on the TV and Britain, that was, nobody really was Jewish, apart from me and a couple of others. So when I met Jim Rosenthal, I thought I'll do a joke about that, that only he will get, right? No one else will get it, that doesn't bother me. So he's interviewing me, it's a Saturday, all big football matches are on Saturday. And this other guy, Frank Skinner, and then I suddenly say, Jim, should you be working on Shabbos? And I thought, well, he'll laugh at that and then carry on.
But he didn't. He stopped the interview and said, Right, I'm not having that. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Jewish. I get out of that, he said. I get out of that because of my mum. So clearly, I didn't realise this, Jim Rosenthal's mum wasn't Jewish, his dad was presumably Jewish, Rosenthal, but he thinks of himself as not Jewish because of the stupid matrilineal thing that I don't hold with anyway, because otherwise my children aren't Jewish, and they totally are.
Right, so, it's really awkward and embarrassing and awful. Then, in 2002, I happen to be in Japan, where the World Cup was on, and in Japan, there's always a big sauna and a big sort of spa area in your hotel. So as soon as I get there, I go down to the spa area, to the sauna. I go into this sauna. And sitting in the sauna at this hotel, on his own, naked, is Jim Rosenthal. And you know what? He fucking is Jewish. There you are. With that, David Baddiel, it's been an honor and a pleasure.
Keep up the great, great work. Thank you. Thank you, Ammi. It's really been a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. David Baddiel is a very brilliant man, just to sit back and listen to brilliant people talk is a special treat. Especially in these challenging times, I need to speak more with comedians. People who make you laugh. I'm convinced that part of our problem as individuals and as a global community. is that we don't laugh enough.
If we were not so humorless, our personal lives and our world would look a lot better. We would be happier and more fulfilled. There would be less anger in our lives, fewer wars, and less cruelty. Have you ever noticed that tyrants seem to be uniquely devoid of a sense of humor? A little mouse of levity creeps into their totalitarian fortresses and sends them scurrying like frightened schoolchildren.
As David so beautifully and poignantly embodies, laughter is a central component of Jewish tradition, from the beginning. The very name of the patriarch Isaac, Yitzchak, means laughter. When Abraham was 99 years old, God appeared to him and said, Your wife, Sarah, shall bear a son. Abraham could have responded in dozens of ways to this news. He could have sunk to his knees in gratitude that God would grant his childless, soon to be 90 year old wife a child.
He could have taken a moment of personal reflection. He could have written a song. He could have cleared a room in the tent. But what did Abraham do upon hearing the news? The Bible tells us, And Abraham fell on his face and laughed. You can envision him rolling on the floor in breathless delight as he gasps. Can a child be born to a man who is 100 years old? And can Sarah bear a child at 90? The very thought is enough to send Abraham into an uproarious tizzy.
Soon thereafter, three messengers visit Abraham and Sarah in their tent. They tell Abraham, Your wife Sarah will soon bear a son. Sarah was listening by the entrance to the tent. When she heard the prophecy, she could have responded in dozens of ways. She could have sunk to her knees in gratitude. She could have taken a moment of personal reflection. She could have written a song, cleared a room in the tent. But what did Sarah do upon hearing the news?
The Bible tells us VA and Sarah laughed to herself. How can two withered people have a baby? She chuckled. You can envision her giggling under her breath, amused by the very absurdity, muttering to herself. Something like having a baby at the age of 90. After everything I've been through, you've gotta be kidding. Sure enough, when the baby arrives, nine months later, he's named , which means something like. You've gotta be kidding. Laughter is courage. It takes courage to laugh at yourself.
Laughter is our way of reminding ourselves and others that we are not as high and mighty as we think we are. We are like every other living creature, frail and mortal, trying to eke out a living in harsh conditions. Life often seems to us unreasonable, incomprehensible, unfair, chaotic, and without rhyme or reason. One of the classic 20th century treatises written by Albert Camus entitled The Myth of Sisyphus was devoted to this central thesis.
If the world is so absurd, why not kill ourselves now? Why prolong the agony? That's so French. Our lives are Sisyphean, wrote Camus. We seem to accomplish nothing, condemned to pushing a boulder up the hill only to watch it roll down again, and to repeat this over and over until we are, as Shakespeare wrote, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste. Sounds everything. The Jews also recognized this existential challenge. It wasn't invented by Camus in the 20th century.
Our response, as David Baddiel so eloquently described, was to devote our lives to repair, the here and now, to action. Social progress is meaningful in its own right. Jews continue to laugh at the existential challenges of life. You've got to be kidding, we muttered, and confronted life with as much joy as we could muster. We are commanded in our tradition to rejoice. To find that place of joy. For to miss joy is to miss all. We celebrated Purim recently.
Every year, we read how the Jews were on the verge of annihilation and the wicked Haman came within an inch of genocide. And our response every year is the same. To shriek with delight, joy, and laughter. And cry out loud. You've gotta be kidding, and then we get drunk. To laugh is to affirm life. Melancholy is a retreat from life. Laughter is the embrace of life, with all its cruelties and absurdities. Laughter heralds hope. Laughter allows for perspective. It leads to wisdom.
It is medicine for loneliness and vulnerability. Laughter reminds us of our own smallness. That should lead us to value all of the things we take for granted. Simply to be is a joy. Laughter is a sign of resilience. It means we're fighting back. Laughter We Jews laugh even in the face of death. When Moshe was dying in the hospital, he had only one last request, his favorite meal, the chopped liver of his wife Sadie.
When Sadie heard her husband's dying wish, she responded, You can't have that, it'll kill you. Moshe retorted, I'm gonna die anyway. It's not gonna make a difference, give me some of that chopped liver. Sadie responded, You can't have any, the chopped liver is for the Shiva. There's a time for everything under the heavens. There's a time for weeping, a time for mourning, a time for frustration and somberness.
But our lives should be lived with joy, and sometimes a good response is just to fall on the floor and laugh or to mutter to ourselves, You gotta be kidding me. The Talmud tells of a great sage who met Elijah the prophet one day in the village market. The rabbi asked Elijah whether there's anyone in the market who would merit olam abba, eternal favor in the world to come. Elijah pointed to two men. Those two will be rewarded with eternal life, said Elijah.
The rabbi approached these men to ask what was their vocation. They told him that they were jesters, jokesters, clowns, who entertained people. When we see people sad or depressed, we cheer them up. When we see two people quarreling, we strive to make peace between them. And of all the people in the market, even more than the scholars, the thinkers, the politicians, the teachers, the vendors, more than anyone else. It was the comedians whose future was rewarded with everlasting life.
They cheered people up, and in so doing, made peace between them. To laugh, and to make others laugh, is the gladness of the world, and will be rewarded in days to come. And I hope David will forgive me, but I say that even about Jewish Fundamentalist Atheists. Until next time, this is In These Times.