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As Trump rips up the rule books, Musk breaks apart the government, and Vance offends allies, it's official. We're living through the era of the global enduring disorder. My name is Jason Pack. I'm a podcast fellow for the New Books Network and host of the Disorder Podcast. I've seen a fair amount of disorder in my day. I lived in Libya in the late Gaddafi period.
I worked in Syria and in Iraq. I've been kidnapped twice. But this is the worst I've seen. The rules-based international order that has reigned for 80 years no longer applies. So I want to bring a nerdy new books network kind of approach to understanding. How did we get here? And what can we do to restore a semblance of order to our mad, mad, mad, mad world? We will fight those powerful and nefarious forces of neoliberalism and oligarchy. We will overthrow them and restore harmony to the land.
We need you, the mega orderer, to listen and help us order the disorder. So search disorder in your podcast app to listen right now. Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello, everybody, and welcome to a new episode on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Geraldine Gutform. Today I'm thrilled to host Simon Rabinovich, who is the Stotsky Associate Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
Rabinovich teaches and writes on a range of topics in European, Jewish, Russian, and legal history. In today's episode, we will talk about his latest book, Sovereignty and Religious Freedom, A Jewish History, which was published by Yale University Press last November.
Simon, congratulations on your recent publication and welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Geraldine. I'm really happy to be here. So I want to first talk about how you came to this project, both I would say personally and academically. So you wrote your first book on Jewish rights, nationalism and autonomy in late imperial and Russian jury.
And you've also edited two collections, one on diaspora nationalism in Europe and the United States, and most recently, one on Israel's nation state law, which was passed in 2018. And the reason I mentioned this is I can see how you came to the book because all those topics very much appear in the book. But I want to hear from you exactly how.
you came to those broad topics and how they eventually resulted in the book. And perhaps also because you've been working on those issues for a long time, I can see very specific set of issues that you've concerned about in your work. But I wonder how those concerns are.
your understanding of those, you know, the question of autonomy, nationalism, et cetera, have also evolved over the course of your research. Sure. Yeah. And they definitely have evolved. And, you know, even if you mentioned, as you mentioned, the nation state law. You know, one of the arguments in the current book had something to do with how... how Israel as a state frames its identity as a Jewish state vis-a-vis the minority. And I would say that my understanding...
of that self-reception has actually changed since 2018 when I published that book. And I was really in the midst of writing this current book when... that nation-state law was passed, and it did, I would say, alter my thesis a bit, and we can talk a bit about that. But in terms of the genealogy of these ideas, As you said, I wrote my first book about the development of Jewish nationalism in late imperial and revolutionary Russia. And the basic idea behind that book.
was that one particular idea, autonomism, the idea that Jews should have recognized as a national group within the Russian Empire or within whatever that empire was going to transform into. that did not need to be dependent on territory, but could be realized. through having all the same things that the other national groups were demanding. So recognized rights to use the language, communal forms of communal self-government.
um an education system the ability to tax uh one's population and then use it for communal or national services, even loftier ideas like a national university or a museum, cultural, various cultural. aspects, but also political representation, right? Political representation on a local level and a national, some kind of national parliament, etc. So I wrote my dissertation about that, and the dissertation also focused on this.
particular individual, Shimon Dubnov, who was a historian. He was a political theorist. He was also involved in the politics of... of that era and led an autonomous party. He was the one who sort of developed this idea of autonomism. And the argument that I make in the book is that his relevance was not as a political figure. Right. And his relevance was not his political party.
which did not really, which was overrepresented in the intelligentsia, but did not necessarily have a lot of popular traction. His relevance was in the idea. being adopted across the political spectrum. So, you know, from Jewish socialism... to right-wing Zionism, everybody adopted these demands for... for some sort of form of national recognition within the Russian Empire, within whatever states would come out of that, and within the new states of Eastern Europe, et cetera.
So that was the dissertation. And then I got a fellowship at University of Helsinki to. to revise this into a book. Much of the dissertation research had been done in St. Petersburg, and I lived in St. Petersburg for a while to do that. And I by then I had kids and it wasn't for the return visit was less practical and and Helsinki made a lot of sense. And I had two young kids and and.
We arrived in August, and right in the center of the city, there is a synagogue, and it also has a school that goes from preschool. the high school and a community center, like a number of European cities that have sort of small, old Jewish populations. They have the communal infrastructure in one place. And so I said, let me go in and ask about how we come for high holidays. So they were coming up.
My daughter actually did not get in. They have a Jewish preschool, which my daughter did not get into. Not out of discrimination, but because it was full. And she went to the French school instead, which was wonderful. So I said, well, let's go in and I'll just ask about, is it okay that we show up for High Holidays? And, you know, I met with the manager or director of the...
Soongag, who said, yeah, yeah, it's no problem. You know, you just come. And I asked about giving a donation. That's also very normal in the United States. Like if you're going to show up for holidays. give a donation. He said, you don't need to give a donation. Just do me a favor. When you get your tax form, be sure to opt out of the Lutheran tithe.
And to indicate that you're a member of the Jewish community because our funding is primarily comes from from essentially what's a Jewish tithe in the taxes. And I like I had this epiphany where I'm in this outpost of the Russian Empire, you know, with this. relatively small Jewish population that had somehow fulfilled Dubnov's autonomous dream, you know, of they were actually, they had legal recognition as a religious community, not as a national community, but still they had religious.
They had legal recognition and they had the right to tax their own membership. Right. and uh and to use those funds to support they support they have a mikvah they have a nursing home their schools etc like oh my god this is like our our whole concept i had this idea that our whole concept of the failure of autonomism or the failure collective rights was sort of off. And then it was one of those matters where
You know, once you notice something, you start noticing it everywhere. And so that's exactly what happened. You go around, you read one thing, you read another thing, and you notice all these ways that despite our idea that... uh are
our societies have fully transformed towards individual rights and that sovereignty of the collective comes through the nation state itself. But there's actually all of these ways that collective rights... are persisting in our universe, and the Jews are a really good example of the persistence of collective rights. And then I just had to find some good examples. That's how I got to the book. Yeah. So that's.
First, an amazing story. But so that brings me to a question I want to ask you about the historiography, because that's what I hear this in the background of what you're describing, which is there's a standard narrative through which we understand modern Jewish history. that doesn't fully account for the complexities of the post-emancipation era. So for, I would say, multiple decades, the standard narrative of modern Jewish history was that...
one for us was the first country in the world to emancipate Jews, and two, that Jews gained the rights of citizens in exchange for relinquishing their communal autonomy and collective rights. I have to mention here that... Somewhat this narrative, I think, has been, if not debunked, but nuanced in the past decades. First by French historians working on France, Jewish historians. We've shown the different ways in which Jews in France maintain, you know, strong group identity.
You know, after the late 18th century, I'm also thinking about Maurice Samuel's book about the right to difference, about the ways in which Jewish difference was also constructed as something that was positive. Yeah, and a wonderful book. But then the second, I think, alteration to the standard narrative is that when we think of Jewish emancipation.
we have to look at it comparatively across different times and places. And here I'm thinking about David Sorkin's book, Jewish Emancipation, a history across five centuries, so pretty long time frame. So that brings me to your book, which is... How do you situate your work with this historiography and the nuances of the recent decades? How much are you building on the more recent literature? How much are you adding an angle that you think has been missing in that literature?
In other words, what is it that you want to tell about the modern Jewish experience that you think has not been fully accounted for in those more recent words? Yeah, that's a great question. And I completely agree that there are others who have been. developing this, developing this nuance in, I would say, geographically specific places. Right. You know, David Sorkin, whose book is absolutely wonderful, I think is the.
the closest to what I'm doing, right? In the sense that his innovation, which is, I think, Maybe this similar innovation to mine is to just widen the scope. Right. And to to. You know, these are both synthetic works. We also, I think, both incorporate our own original research, but they are also largely synthetic works that are taking all of these insights made in all these. various geographically specific places, zooming out and trying to tell a much bigger picture.
So, yeah, I think that, you know, I'm very happy to be compared in any way to Sorkin's book because I think it's something very similar to what I'm trying to do. And like you said, there was a disestablished narrative, right, in which... the perception that the trade that Jews made for civil equality in European states was one of rights as individuals for giving up.
giving up their rights as a collective, this decorporation. And absolutely, it has been challenged by lots of historians and lots of geographical places. To say again, never to say this didn't happen because it did happen, but to actually point to the ways the process was incomplete and that the ways that Jews. continued to use the sort of structures that existed, right?
to continue to assert forms of autonomy or collectivity. It was actually Stella Barone was really the first one to sort of make this nuance, right? Where he talks about... especially with the revolutions of 1848, governments really shifting towards this. conception of sort of, I would say, accelerating their decorporation and shifting towards this conception of this necessity of this trade.
Among all groups in their societies. And it's no coincidence that, you know, David Sorkin also wrote about he wrote about the. Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, right, during the 19th century, making similar points. But Barone says basically that they shift towards voluntaristic institutions, right? They create their own voluntaristic institutions, right?
that do tend to start to do essentially the same thing, right? Like, you know, hospitals and professional organizations and communal organizations that start to fill similar functions. For sure, these are nuances that have that have been made. The way I see my contribution. The sort of specific contribution historiographically is on two points. One is on state development more generally, and the other is on Jewish.
Jewish history and in a sort of macro sense on state development. Generally, my feeling is that. post-World War II historiography has exaggerated this process of transformation away from the collective and towards the individual. because minority rights fell so out of favor. Right. Are, you know, especially since the 70s, the study of human rights and the history of human rights has become a major field within, you know, within universities, in both law schools and.
History departments, political science departments, international affairs, etc. And the human rights movements of the post-World War II period. were singularly focused on individual rights. And the reason for that was that the defense of minority rights by Germans in the Second World War had been the casus belli. Right. That had been the reason for the war. And so the post World War Two human rights.
law that develops, unlike the post-World War I human rights law that developed that did make room for all sorts of religious and national minority rights, post-World War II... the perception was that the idea of international law is to prevent war. And that was the idea before, but they had just had different, they come to different conclusions about what was necessary to prevent war. And to do so, one needs to defend the rights of the individuals and the group.
The groups to which they belong are protected in that process if the individuals are protected. And there's real resistance within international law to acknowledging. forms of collective rights. So as a result, you have this de-emphasis and within the historiography, I think there's an acceptance of the idea that this... transformation of modern states is sort of complete, right? That the rise of the individual.
you know, wins, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, even more so, right? The individual wins. And so on the state development front, I'm saying not so fast. Right. Look at all of the ways. Look at all of the ways that. that actually states still do continue to acknowledge collective rights in various forms. And, you know, there are other people who have made similar.
arguments but again sort of in a in narrow geographic space right especially in the united states um so there are two relatively recent books One that came out just in August after my book was written by Lawrence Rosen called The Rights of Groups, but looking specifically in the United States. And another by Winifred Sullivan from I think it's two years ago, but it's called Church State Corporation. Both of them are arguing essentially that American law, American law.
makes room for collective rights and group rights. Despite the separation of religion and state, right, they are essentially treating religions, continuing to treat religions as corporations. Which is which is really fundamentally my argument. And then there are also recent books about Curious Joel and Cassidic forms of sovereignty.
David Myers and Nomi Stolzenberg make this argument about how contract, essentially the Hasidic use of contract law has been an effective way of carving out a sort of form of autonomy, let's say, in Hasidic municipalities. So there have been geographically specific cases that have been looked at. But I felt, again, like there was some value in zooming out, right? In looking at this overall wide geographic and... temporal range in making comparisons.
And also to look at sort of the longer development of some of these ideas. So in each of my chapters, I go back and whatever they're thematically focused and whatever the issue is at home at hand, whether it's marriage law. or laws over space, et cetera, I go way back to sort of give a longer picture of this evolution. So that's the state development side. On the Jewish historiographical side, again, it isn't completely original, but I think that the way I'm making the argument is that...
The belief is, or the understanding is, that Jews have actually followed this model of state development. relatively closely right in the sense that you have a bifurcation that goes on in the 20th century right between jewish rights jews having individual rights outside of israel right, as individuals, right? And the collective sovereignty, right, being exercised through a Jewish national state in Israel, right?
And that's sort of a completion of this, you know, this Zionist dream. This is this is something I think that, you know, Zionism more or less got right, that there was a normalization that occurs right within the within the context of modern. state development, of a collective sovereignty through a political state and individual rights around the world. I'm not saying that that didn't...
But I am definitely challenging the extent of it. You know, I'm trying to show that things really are not so simple as that. And that. Many of the distinctions that we believe exist between how Israel understands the rights of its majority and minority populations and how the rest of the world understand the rights of its majority populations and Jews.
are really not so different or sometimes they're different sometimes they're the same um but we can't make this sort of simple bifurcation And so those are the sort of two contributions I'm trying to make, you know, one in terms of state development and one in terms of modern Jewish history.
Thank you. That was very comprehensive. That's great. So let's define our terms a little bit because they're really central terms that you use throughout the book that I think are crucial for understanding what you just described. And those are individual rights, collective rights. And one of the main arguments of the book is that, you know, we Jews today are still experiencing this tension between.
their individual rights and collective rights. And the courts were hearing cases involving Jews are also... having to respond to this tension and come down to, you know, specific court decisions that will eventually, that does inform the ways in which we understand the rights of groups within those societies. But so individual rights, collective rights. And then the third term that you use throughout the book is the term sovereignty. And I have to say here that my immediate...
response when I saw the book, especially in the first chapter, I think, when you talk about curious Joel, and you talk about the persistence of Jewish sovereignty outside the nation-state framework. I have to say, at the personal level, my response was... Wait, wait, wait. What is it? Time is going a step too far. And I kind of want to unpack that reaction with you. First, is it a pushback that you've received before?
Is it that perhaps you and I understand it differently? Or is it that we have this inherent discomfort with the term because of... longstanding anti-Semitic accusation of Jews being a state within a state. And I think, to me at least, that kind of framework kind of resonates with those accusations. So all of this to say, how do you define those terms? And what... What does it eliminate to frame those legal tensions with this particular word of sovereignty?
Geraldine, you should feel comforted that that is absolutely consistently the critique that is raised and the thing that I'm challenged on. every single venue that I presented the book. You know, every every talk, every book launch, every this is this is the the issue that people raise my use of the term sovereignty. So I actually feel comforted by that, too, in the sense that like.
uh that that it means that people are well people are reading the book and and that that they're i'm pushing a button consistently right there's there's something there's something there that that um Yes, that raises people's, some kind of alarm bell goes off from that word. And so at least it's consistent. And this has forced me to think about how I've used it myself.
And to decide whether it's worth defending. And I think ultimately it is. But to start with the individual and collective rights. Question in terms of definition. So those are easier to define. And one of the things that I really like about court cases as sources is that. you can find cases where what is at issue, right, what is being disputed is the matter of whether the individual, the right of the individual, right, takes precedent over the right of the group.
Right. And individual rights is all of the sort of. Rights that we understand that apply to a person's freedom of conscience or freedom of speech or freedom to marry whomever one wants. Right. But these often do. in a religious context conflict with rights that are held by the broader community, like determining one's membership, right? Or whether religious laws. right, that maybe do not account for the individual rights, especially of women, right, whether those take precedent over
over the laws of the state that do privilege the rights of women in particular contexts. So there are all sorts of really interesting cases that those are the ones I've tried to pick out. where those religious, those, excuse me, those individual and collective rights are in conflict, right? Case I look at in South Africa where this is maybe the clearest. Right. It's a dispute about excommunication. Somebody who was thrown out of the.
out of the community for not paying alimony and not just not paying alimony, but not recognizing the decision of a Jewish religious court when he had said that he would. So he's tossed from the community and he takes this to the constitutional court and he is claiming that it's a violation of his individual freedom of religion and dignity. Right.
The community is saying, we have this right. We have this right to choose our membership. This is a collective right. And so that's maybe the clearest example that I have of where it was quite literally. the judge having to decide whether the individual right or the collective right takes priority. On sovereignty, as I mentioned, it is absolutely, my use of this term has been challenged.
And my answer is to what I think that the discomfort that people have with this term sovereignty is that they are making an association between that term. And a complete political independence. Right. That there has to be some sort of legally recognized. authority or power that is acknowledging this sort of independence. Right. And I'm using the term sovereignty in a much more ecumenical.
way right um to that in a way that i think that reflects the sort of complicated ways that groups continue to exert their own independence, their own authority, their own way forward, their own way of negotiating their rights. with the states that they are living in, right? It doesn't mean that it's... It doesn't mean that it's not Hobbesian, right? It doesn't mean the sort of untrammeled power of some state or supreme body, right?
but rather some power, some ability to exert one's own self-definitions, one's own independence, one's own... control that does not necessarily bend.
to the state right and that sovereignty is a spectrum right i sort of i think of this similar to david beale's argument about um jews and power right uh and you know when he talked about sovereignty um his point of the this book which i think was called jews in power well i'm blanking exactly on on the uh look on my on my bookshop but i'm Blanking on the name of this book, but he wrote this book that was a zoomed out sort of macro history of Jewish sovereignty and power.
Right. From the ancient world to today. And what he was challenging was the idea that Jews had political sovereignty in two periods. But they had a kingdom. right, in ancient Judea, and when they established a state in Israel. And he's saying that there's a spectrum of sovereignty here. There's a spectrum of power. Even when they were in...
In ancient Judea, they didn't have complete independence, right? They were vessels of all sorts of different greater empires, right? And they preserved their identity. in all of these different places around the world, right, through various forms of autonomy and various forms of power and various forms of sovereignty, right? And even when they reestablished this state, right,
Sovereignty isn't complete, right? It also has a patron that has some say over what it does and doesn't say, do, and exists in this sort of global competition of states. So that's a similar way that I am using this word ecumenically to look at essentially ways that Jews have used, especially... the idea of religious freedom and liberal democratic states to exert forms of sovereignty.
which I see as essentially defending the right of the group to define itself how it wants and run its life. And yes, this is always a negotiation. There's no... There's no complete sovereignty. But part of that is, you know, it's an intentional challenging of the idea. And I say we would follow David Beal's sort of footsteps to this, but it's potentially challenging the idea.
that there is sovereignty in Israel and no sovereignty anywhere else, right? Absolutely. And when it comes to Kiryas, Joel, yes, people often... push back on on this um and say well look it's it's it's just a uh um you know, it's just a town, right? Like it exists as a New York municipality, right? Not any different from any other New York municipality, even though, you know, it's... They have Yiddish on their garbage trucks. I would say go to Curious Joel.
and report that. You did, because you actually have pictures. I did go. I met with, I went more than once. I met with people. I also, I brought my students actually for a class I was teaching last spring. And we met with a number of people. Look, is this a state? I mean, no. But are they exercising their own forms of self-definition?
that we could absolutely see as sovereign? I mean, I find it difficult to even dispute, even if the state itself is not endowing it with that authority. I'll give you another example. In the chapter about Jewish space, that focuses on a dispute over an Eruv in Outreman on the island of Montreal in Quebec. Simon, can you just explain very briefly what an Eruv is? Yeah. People might not. Yeah, of course. So an Eruv is a way of enclosing a neighborhood, right? Usually today...
You'll use existing infrastructure, right? Like, let's say, telephone poles or... Or walls to enclose a neighborhood and then symbolically and physically using usually fishing wire to sort of complete the circle. And what doing that. does is allows people who observe the prohibition of carrying things on Shabbat Right. To be able to carry things on Shabbat, because what it does is there was always an ability to carry things on Shabbat essentially within your own home. Right. Within your own.
domain, right? You could obviously serve dinner by bringing a plate from the sink to the table, right? That in ancient Judea got extended to the courtyard. Right. You could certainly, you know, bring food to across the courtyard to this through this process of enclosing space and making public space, private space. And one of the adaptations of modern Judaism.
in places where Jews have lived in concentrated populations and are observing this prohibition is to enclose this public space using fishing wires symbolically and physically. which allows Jews to push a stroller, to carry their keys, and to carry other things within this enclosed space, which magically becomes private at the relevant times.
In this particular neighborhood, this becomes a major fight. And this was not the only neighborhood where this becomes a fight. This has occurred in New York, in New Jersey, in London. There was a very... big legal battle. But what I found particularly fascinating about this dispute over the Eruv in this particular neighborhood is it becomes tied to a competing a competing national and religious struggle. That is Quebecois nationalism. And, you know, so in that case...
The municipality tried to take down the Eruv. They were challenged in court. And the Hasidic community there, in particular, they have... One family that's extremely wealthy and that they are real estate developers and fund their legal causes and they hired. Canada's most prominent constitutional lawyer. His name is Julius Gray. He himself is, I don't know whether he'd call himself socialist or communist, but certainly on the left.
He was born in Poland. Yeah, born in Poland, but raised in Montreal. I'm not sure how old he was when he came. Jewish. But he... You know, when I spoke to him and what he argued in court, of course, you know, strategically, this was a case about individual religious freedom. Right. That there was. that the municipality was taking away the rights of these individual Jews to their own...
religious practice without demonstrating undue harm. And you have to demonstrate undue harm. And this was a successful strategy, right? And he told me, I don't believe in collective rights. He believes in assimilation, right? Similarly... He doesn't believe in, he doesn't think Muslim women should wear the hijab, but has successfully fought for their rights to do so on religious freedom grounds.
You know, when I spoke to the Hasidic leadership who had hired him and who were involved in this, they framed it very differently. They absolutely framed it. Yeah. that you know essentially they're you know the the quebecois are allowed to do this and that, right? It's not framed as a religious freedom issue when they put Christmas lights up or whatever it is. They're allowed to do this. That's their right.
We're here. We've been here. This is our right as a group to be able to do this. So it wasn't really framed in the context of... as a religious freedom question i mean yes they understand the strategy of it um But, you know, this strategically you have to work within the system that you have. And I mean, I would make an argument that even if the Canadian judicial system framed.
the the legal right they won the chassidim and they framed the legal right for them to have an eruv as um you know as as uh that the the the excuse me, the requirement to limit that individual right was demonstrating undue harm, which wasn't met, you know, from the perspective of... The Hasidic Jews who lived there, you know, they perceive this as their collective right, the way that they believe they should be able to build sukkahs when they want and have a Purim parade.
uh burn um chametz or burn bread before passover all of these rights that they believe are should be theirs because they live there uh and they have their community there And this should be their right, which, yeah, I see as this this is a contestation of sovereignty over this territory. Right. I have to say, I thought this was.
one of the most gripping sections of the book, the whole discussion about the Hebrew, because what was so striking to me is the level of vitriol against the Hasidic community in Outremont, especially because I understand cases about gender segregation, things that really affect people.
You know, if you're not, if you can't go into a neighborhood or sit in a particular part of the bus because you're a woman, I could see how people were outside of the Hasidic community or inside for that matter. I might really take issues with it. For full disclosure, when I lived in the Somerville area, I agreed to be on the roof patrol with one of my friends from the community and I would go.
you know, every Friday before Shabbat on an hour-long drive in Somerville to check the EOF. That's really interesting. And I had never really seen what an EOF was like until I was in the EOF patrol. like you don't see it if you don't know it's there You just don't know it's a thing, you know? So it's very difficult to understand how it would affect anyone's life. So clearly, what's striking here is the symbolic potency of the oeuvre.
One argument that was made against the was that this woman claimed that she could not fly her kite. And when she was asked, did you actually try this? She apparently did not, you know. So it just shows like that clearly it's. about something else. Exactly. It is control over public space. And it is... It is absolutely about something else. And you're completely right to the vitriol of it. And the amount of resources people are willing to commit to fighting it reflects.
Yes, reflects that it is about something else. The one thing I would maybe push back on is the question of whether it's entirely symbolic. It is a boundary that has real... on the ground effects and that the constituents in that place understand. And when I say real on the ground effects, I'm not saying that they necessarily care. whether their neighbors can push a stroller to synagogue or not, or whether women are included in synagogue practices. And this is.
was part of the argument that Julius Gray also made that this was a women's rights issue because, you know, women were not able to participate in the religious practice to the degree that they can with Nehru because they have to stay home with their children and they can't carry things. Of course, the response for the opponents was that, well, change your religious law.
But they don't actually care about whether their neighbor can push a stroller or not. However, it does have real effects on the ground because once you have a boundary, once you have a border, right, of course. There is incentives to live within those borders. Right. You are creating a physical. It's like. You know, in Boston, right, what side of the street you live in, what side of the street you live on can determine what taxes you pay or...
or what schools your kid goes to. And so there's incentive to live on one side of the street or the other, right? It's not that that's, you know, that town has blue signs and this town has. has light signs right it's that there it impacts your life which side of the street you live on um so they are aware that for the for the Jews that this is a real border. Right. And it does. It's going to have real effects on in terms of what sides people live on.
But you're entirely right that something else is going on here. And I also think, you know, it is funny that the opponents of the Eruv actually... You know, they go and read some Talmud. They go and read some religious texts. And I don't think that they I think that they misunderstand Canadian constitutional law more than they misunderstand Jewish law.
Right. Because I don't think that they are really mischaracterizing what goes on. They they say many of the now it's ridiculous when she's saying, well, what is the because that's the part they don't understand that for the from the judge's perspective. This is about undue harm, right? Well, if you can't demonstrate undue harm, they have this particular right. There isn't strict separation of religion and state in Canada. The idea that it's problematic for.
you know, some governing authority to in some way recognize a religious privilege. It's not constitutionally problematic. Right. And the lawyers. point to many ways that the quebec government does of course endorse religion and recognize religion the issue was undue harm But what they do understand sort of well is the idea that the Aruv turns normal space, right?
into religious space, right? That it is, it does create a Jewish space. I don't think that's wrong. There are all sorts of ways that Jewish law has sought to symbolically accommodate for non-Jews living within that space, right? Like, for example, renting it, right? You know, symbolically. paying a sort of rent to possess that space. But all of those really signify that what happens on...
Shabbat, right, is that the Eruv turns that public space, right, into a domestic Jewish space, right? And, you know... I think you can say, well, who cares? Right. If you don't believe in that particular, you know, magic or law or religion, then walking around somebody else's Jewish space doesn't seem to matter. Right. And I completely agree. I mean, I, you know, the judge absolutely made the right decision in the case. But like I said, I think that they misunderstood Canadian law.
constitutional law, more than they misunderstood Jewish law, which they do perceive this to be turning this public space into a domestic Jewish space. That's the whole logic of it. That's fascinating. So I kind of want to bring together a few sections of the book by really bringing attention here to the ways in which Haredim. are kind of debunking this narrative that we started with of privatization of religion and individual rights.
Above everything else, because a lot of the so as you said, the book is really constructed on a series of legal cases. And as a matter of fact, a lot of the court cases deal with Khadim. So we've talked about Quebec, we've talked about the U.S., but there's also the case of Haredim in Israel. So first, I would love to hear about how in legal studies, we can really use Haredim as a window for illuminating.
the persistence of communal autonomy that you talk about in the book? And second, what does it do to our understanding of Haredim and the law to look at them across the diaspora in Israel? Because, again, also one of the strengths of the book that you alluded to is this focus on both Israel and the diaspora as units that are not necessarily opposed to or fully contrasting.
that in some ways also have a lot of commonalities. That's a fantastic question. And I would start by saying, I think that within modern Jewish studies, the Haredim haven't gotten enough attention. I think that we tend to, well, we tend to, you know, all history is autobiography and we tend to look at for people who reflect our own worldview. or are attracted to studying them. And yeah, and the continued existence of communities.
that live very strictly according to their own interpretations of Jewish law. Well, I wouldn't say that they have gotten no attention, but maybe haven't gotten the attention that they deserve. And yeah, in a legal context, they're very interesting. Because this is a legalistic religion, because they believe themselves to be living according to a parallel set of of laws. Right. which they are constantly adapting and navigating, right, to work within the given legal system that exists.
So, yes, and I really think that that there has not from a legal perspective, not been enough comparison between the. religious communities and the rights of the religious communities in Israel and in the rest of the world. And one of the contrasts that I see there is that This idea that the Haredim would have more rights within Israel or more rights, especially in terms of claims over public space in Israel than the rest of the world.
It definitely is not true. I mean, again, I would suggest you go to Curious Joel, which has a lot a lot that would never fly in Israel itself. You know, one of the best examples I really think is on public transportation in which the. The existence of gender segregated public transportation in Israel, which emerged as a sort of accommodation to make transportation easier between. predominantly religious cities in Israel, becomes deeply contested within Israel.
ultimately illegal. The extent to which enforcement continues is a whole other question. But gender segregation within public space is something within Israel that is, yeah, it is deeply contested. It's not. I focus on the United States, but in religious communities or Haredi communities. in other parts of the world, right? There is a publicly subsidized bus line that goes from Brooklyn to Muncie, you know, to...
Clariti communities within New York that is functionally gender segregated. And anytime there's been opposition, there's been a quick settlement. And this continues. I asked, sometimes there's a mechitza, sometimes it's just reality. I asked a friend who is no longer a part of this community, but he once was and his parents still live there.
takes it from new york to where they live in muncie like you know um you know could you could you sit with your girlfriend together on this bus like how voluntary is it um And he said, no, I mean, it's totally it depends. Obviously, it depends on what she was wearing. It depends on who else is on the bus. You'd have to assess it. But but the. The presumption is of gender segregation on that bus and that people who are taking it who are not Haredi are abiding by those cultural norms.
So there is that that that interesting distinction that I wanted to bring up, but also to bring sovereignty back in. I bring up I sort of raise in at the beginning of the book what I see as a distinction between inward and outward forms of sovereignty. So to start with an outward form of sovereignty, you know, the best example is Israel's law of return. Right. Which says that.
essentially gives a latent right of sovereignty or a latent right of citizenship and to participate in the sovereignty of the state to anybody who fits into a particular category, right? It's extending sovereignty outwards. which I also see happening with Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic nationality laws. These are extensions of sovereignty, right? Grady attempts to create educational autonomy, municipal autonomy, courts, right, courts that are either exist parallel to the existing system.
or are recognized by this existing system. These are all inward forms of sovereignty, right? They're not looking to extend their sovereignty over other populations, right? They're trying to control as much of their own lives internally as possible. possible. And that's why I think they're an interesting example. That's fascinating. Okay, so now we actually, I fear that our conversation is coming to an end, though there is much more to cover.
I want to talk a little bit about the comparative approach that you take in the book. We've spoken a little bit about the U.S., Israel, South Africa, Canada, but you also have a case on Algeria. at least one, if not multiple English cases. So I wondered how you went about picking the cases that you found most relevant, given the breadth of the temporal and geographical. geographical scope of the work and um what so i very much see the strength of this approach um but
From the perspective of writing the book, what would you say were the main stumbling blocks that you encountered? And what would you say are also the limits to this comparison, if you see any? Sure. Yeah, it was very ad hoc, though it wasn't that I started with a case and it gave me an idea. I started with a case and I went looking, excuse me, I started with an idea and I went looking for cases.
That wasn't easy. And I'm when I try and recreate that in my mind, I don't even not even sure it took place. Like I said, I was searching and I do remember at at one point. asking myself, am I really going to get enough examples to make this work? This is absolutely crazy. Having a sort of, you know, one of these moments of self-doubt.
So, yeah, it really was. We do, at least we do within universities, have the luxury of time. And there is some ability to go to conferences and read and hear from others. um and um you know and and and try and sort of uh develop a uh um some some a corpus um but it was very it was very ad hoc And I don't have a good answer even to how I came up with the cases I did. Well, actually, I do. I did it thematically. So I started with...
What are the important topics? What are the key themes? And then I went looking for relevant cases on those themes. And, you know, there was one major sort of thematic area that ended up getting dropped and I had good cases for it. That was essentially on on I was putting together. Kosher slaughtering and circumcision, right? Essentially ideas about regulating, regulating cutting things, regulating Jewish control over our bodies and those of animals.
Because there were cases that fit into that category, but I ultimately decided to save that for another project. I don't I don't have a good answer on the methodology. I started with themes and it was very ad hoc. And I went looking, you know, so the fam some in some areas like family law, you know, it. There's a lot, right? And in that chapter, I can use many shorter examinations of many cases because that's really the richest sort of field from a legal perspective.
In other areas, it's harder and you're more limited, right? Like on the question of communal membership. Right. I really found that there were really three sort of exemplary cases that I could use as a comparison. Does that answer your question? I'm trying to remember what the second part was. One was on methodology. About the limits, yes. Maybe things that get flattened when you have such a broad comparison. In other words...
I personally find with my work that I always remain unsatisfied to some degree. So I and, you know, my dissertation was comparative and it left me in many ways. dissatisfied because i find actually the comparison is very it's very hard exercise right no because you have to pick and choose you it's hard to
I think the narrative sometimes is not as clear as what one might want because you're dealing with so many temporalities and geographical frameworks. So in other words, like, yeah, what are the things that... yeah that leave you frustrated i mean and i i think it's i i i'm all for the comparison and i i think you're yeah the strength of the book is obviously the comparison but uh yeah what are things that leave you dissatisfied if i might ask
The real limit is representation, right? That any comparative study, you know, from a legal perspective looking at cases... It can't be representative, right? Or it can't be full. You can attempt to be representative, but it can't be fully representative. It's selective. Not only is it selective, but the selection bias is towards the most interesting cases, right? The ones that are most contentious or most highlight your particular point, not the boring ones where everything gets.
settled easily, right? So there is absolutely a selection bias in choosing cases, and they're ultimately not going to be fully representative. You know, in terms of my, you know, I guess the frustration of my own limits has to do with language and access to other parts of the world. I mean. I think Iran is fabulously interesting. And I have to imagine that the Jewish community there, which numbers, I'm not sure, but, you know, in the thousands, 20,000, something like that.
I have to imagine that they are dealing with many of these issues. But I don't have access to the sources. I don't speak the language. And so, yeah, that's that's a limit. Right. Or it's the same with Latin America. You know, I can sort of model my way through some Spanish texts, but. You know, I don't have the comfort level to really dive into disputes that there have been in Argentina, for instance. So, yeah, there's a question of how representative a sort of comparative study.
with selection bias towards things that are interesting, languages that you speak, is going to be, I would just say, I think, enough to make the point. Absolutely. I think that's good advice. One final question before we close is about your use of oral interviews, because I'm always jealous that people use oral interviews because so far in my research.
been dealt with people who are very much dead and cannot speak for themselves. But I think it added many really interesting observations in the book. So I wondered if you have... Any tips for people who kind of want to incorporate that methodology into their work and what you think this has added to the book? I'm thinking especially of the archives of the Sharit family, if you want to say a few words about their case and how you...
got the archives from them. But I thought that was a really positive addition to the book. Absolutely. So... You know, this was totally new to me because I also was previously dealing only with people who were long dead. But for this particular book, I came to the realization that many of the players. Both the lawyers and the litigants were still alive in certain cases. So my my best advice to people is to.
reach out to people. I was surprised by how receptive people were to talk about these things and also to provide documentation, right? So the Shalit family, it's a great example because My contact with them really changed my perspective and it totally changed my source base as well. So I really just sort of read that they were. living, that Anne Shalit, Benjamin Shalit's widow, was living in Sweden. And so the story about the Shalits is that Benjamin Shalit, who passed away,
was a naval psychologist in the IDF. He went to Scotland to do... I can't remember which degree, but to do education, met his wife and they returned to Israel. They married and returned to Israel and had children and she did not convert. Benjamin Shalit felt he was secular, he was Israeli, he was Jewish, and his kids would be too, but he did not believe in God, and he did not believe that his wife should have to convert.
But she becomes an Israeli citizen and they have kids. And essentially, Benjamin Chalit wants on the in the population registry. for his children to be listed as being, there's a space for nationality and there's a space for religion, and he wants them to be listed as being a Jewish nationality and of no registered religion. And this is a case that goes to the Supreme Court. It is the first time in Israel's history that a full...
A full panel, a full bench sits in Israel, the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court president selects the number of... judges to sit on different cases, right, depending on its importance, right? So it's very, the sort of standard number would be three. Very important cases would be five. Shimona Granat chooses a... full bench to sit on this particular case because he considered it to be one of great national importance about the identity of
Well, the identity of the state itself and the rights of its individuals. You know, long story short, Shalit wins. And there are. The argument I make is that it's the unexpected consequences that are really the important part of the story. Because as a result, the... laws on who qualifies for the law of return are changed. But in any event, I. I knew that Benjamin Shilid passed away and that his his wife and at least two of his children were living in Sweden. And I reached out to them and.
you know, just through the internet, you know, finding, are you the orange? Yeah. Um, they were very nice. They arranged, we arranged a zoom meeting and, um, You know, Anne brings out all of her husband's papers because he had a lawyer, but he did most of the actual legal work himself. Right. Like, I mean, you know, he was entirely self-motivated and.
You know, as I think it made sense for him to have representation. But, you know, he was I mean, I'm sure the money wasn't limitless. And, you know, he did it himself and he had his papers. And she shows this to me and she said, well, you know. I have all these papers and my eyes are wide open. I said, you know, I'd be happy to pay for them to be scanned or photocopied or whatever. And she said, well, I don't think I'd be comfortable with that. But if you want to come look at them, you can.
come look at them. So that's what I did. I went to Uppsala. It's a nice place, by the way. That's a nice place to go for. And I earned their trust. And then... you know at the end of this um this visit um and said to me you know if you want to take these because there was so much i couldn't go through everything in the time i was there and she said if you want to take these with you
You can if you find a proper home in Israel for them. She wanted it to be part of sort of the, you know, the article record in Israel. I said, no problem. We drew up a contract. And then I took them home with me and then COVID hit. And so I was supposed to go that summer to Israel. But of course, it ended up taking a year and a half or whatever it was. But we made an arrangement to donate.
for her to donate the papers to the Israeli Legal History Archive at Tel Aviv University, which is where they are now. They eventually got there. But that whole encounter, it changed my perspective on their perception of of this battle in a lot of different ways. I mean, certainly within the press, you know, I think that they were.
They were heroized or villainized, right? But when they went to Sweden, because he received an academic position, there was a... a perception that they are sort of running away and that was not and few at all um she said like look he was an academic you know he wanted to be an academic he he they he did feel that
He had had, should have gotten a position at Ben-Gurion that he didn't end up getting. And one always thinks, you know, when you didn't, that he did feel strongly that he had been blocked from getting that position. But he didn't go to Sweden because he was running away, but because he got a job. And of course, like many Israelis thought it would be temporary. And it wasn't. But, you know.
Her perspective was still that her husband had been essentially a patriotic Israeli and that this was about the principle of separation of religion and state. And their daughter, Galia, is living in Jerusalem. She moved to Jerusalem or back to Jerusalem and has been living there for many years. And I just saw her in December. She's wonderful. The family. Yeah, they're great. Thanks for sharing. That's great. So are there any.
you know, additional thoughts or conclusions you want to add on the book. That would be my first question. And then if you don't mind sharing about, you know, what project or projects you're currently working on, know that you've. publish this great book oh thanks well i can actually sort of combine those two to uh those two questions um because the project that I'm working on or that I most desperately want to finish and launch into the world is directly an outcome of the book. And it is.
essentially an encyclopedic, interactive digital map of Jewish collective rights around the world. It's also a product of COVID. I was supposed to be spending the summer in Israel during one of these COVID years. I guess it was the summer after I'd been in Sweden and I'd gone to Russia as well. And, you know, I ended up doing all these.
I had all these research trips planned and couldn't go. And of course, but I had money to spend. And I had an idea that, well, look, I'm making this argument about the persistence of... collective rights, right? You know, a political, if I put on, I'm not a political scientist, but if I put on a political scientist hat here, they would say, okay, this is a proposition that can be tested, right? We could actually look at this. And I had this idea, what if...
If I researched the, or had others research for me, the legal relationship that Jews had in all of the states that they live in today, right, and then categorized them. and mapped them out. And so that's what I did. I hired a couple of graduate students who worked for a long time researching. the legal relationships. Essentially, what kind of privileges do Jews have within the context of the legal system?
they live in, right? Do they have legal recognition? How is that legal recognition framed? Is their education system subsidized by the state? You know, there's sort of various questions. And then create categories that... They could be mapped in and that the net result would be an interactive map in which would both create a visualization and an ability to sort of look at the world and see how states are organizing these.
to write and also would be interactive that one could as a resource could click on. Austria, and you could see that they are an officially recognized religious minority within a tiered system of religious recognition, etc., and an explanation. And so I didn't get that completely launched into the world before finishing the book, but enough so that I could have somebody make a map that would be included.
that would sort of demonstrate this continued persistence of collective rights. And the point that I make is that most Jews live in the United States or Israel, places where Jews don't have officially recognized... you know, rights, and a place that is a Jewish national state. But most states that Jews live in are something in between those two and have some sort of recognized rights, subsidies, privileges, etc. So what I really want is to to hit.
launch on this um but uh for a project this size involves a lot of editing and um and there's still things left to do but that's that's what i'd like to launch into the world in the near future well good luck with that i look forward to the final product. Thanks. Simon, it was such a pleasure to host you today. Yeah, this is a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. And I thank all our listeners for also joining us on the podcast. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks a lot.