I'm and welcome back to the Carol Midwood Show on iHeartRadio. I heard from a lot of you about my last monologue on the pressure to have to be a type of person, maybe a girl boss or a trad wife. When I said that most people really are somewhere in between. Most agreed with me that living your life in this box it's impossible, and really, no one's life is like that. No one's life looks like it does on Instagram. But I'll read you the one listener email who's somewhat disagreed
with me, Carol. I enjoyed the segment, but I don't think you're exactly right. Men get put into a so called box all the time. We know we have to be providers, caretakers, upstanding members of society. We don't get to try on a lot of different personalities before choosing one. What would your advice be to a man who felt pigeonholed by this, Well, that's interesting because I've long agreed with that. I always said that women are so lucky. No one asks a man, hey, what do you plan
to do after the baby comes? Women get options. It's true, but this note didn't make me think, what's the standard that we expect from women, There really isn't one. Not every woman wants to be a stay at home mom, but we just assume that men don't. Write can a man be happy staying home and raising his children? Of course, and more men make that choice today than ever before. But do we really think that would be a tipping point where more men will be pulled to that than
women are unlikely? Right, I've written before, but it's long been a cliche that women get offended when they are asked how they managed to do it all. It's a question that men aren't asked because there's no expectation for men to be heavy hitters at work while also making cupcakes for their kids' school bake sale. It's only women who are presented with the idea that they must be, you know, at the top of their game at work
and at home to have it quote unquote all. I don't know which way is easier, and it might be that women are looking for this rigid confines of a brand, maybe a path, because it's easier that way. If you choose to be a girl boss, then you're devoting your attention to work and I hate the term girl boss by the way. I think it's condescending, but it's descriptive,
and I get what it means. It means you're a go getter at work, or if you choose to be a tried wife, then you're you know, you have a sour dough starter and maybe some chickens in the backyard, and there's a path, and you know when you're on it, and it's easier because you're not trying to do both things. The last listener who wrote in she implied that she found it easier to pick that future path and then just move towards it without ever imagining that she could
switch it up. And what I said to her was life is long, and you don't know where you'll end up. But I get that choices can be hard sometimes. But yes, this listener's right that men just get fewer of them. Thanks for listening. Coming up next and interview with Deron Spielman. Join us after the break. Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Doron Spielman. Deron is the author of the newly released book When the Stones Speak.
Hi.
Dorone's so nice to have you on.
Thank you for having me, Carol, it's a real pleasure to see you.
So I'm loving this book. I think it's so interesting saying it's a historical record of the City of David. How would you describe to somebody who doesn't know what the City of David is. What it is.
It's really something that is Indiana Jones. I mean, it's the actual Indiana Jones that we grew up with and we loved. I mean, this is a story where Queen Victoria wants to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to England. She sends this navy captain to going to the Old City of Jerusalem. He wanders down at hillside outside the old city walls, and he sees the spring of water, and he goes into this spring of water that goes into the belly of a mountain, and there
he uncovers an actual underground city. And the City of David is the actual site of Jerusalem from the Bible, sitting beneath the ground, pristinely protected because it's not inside the old city walls. And in one word, it really is Disney World, but it's true. It's the glacier dreams come true. It's actually the city of the Bible.
So who did you write this book for? Because it has the historical component, of course, but it's such a perfect moment for this kind of book. Did you have that in mind at all? I know you did hundreds of interviews for the book. Did you think at all that you were going to be releasing it at this kind of moment in our history.
I'll tell you, Carol, I wrote the book twice. I don't know how many books have been written twice. The first time I wrote the book was in early twenty twenty three about the amazing archaeological discoveries and how unfortunately terror groups and people have been pushing a false narrative that the Jews are cloning lists tried to cover up the excavations. So that was the initial motive to bring
the truth to light. However, I have to tell you on October eighth, I was standing in southern Israel in my military uniform in the morning, at nine in the morning on the eighth, in a highway of abandoned cars by myself with two other soldiers. The cars were smoking and it looked like a tidal wave had washed in and washed out and taken the bodies with it. And at that moment, I looked around me and I said, my god, my book that was talking about historical denihalism, right,
this is where that leads. And after one hundred days of the war, I got a bit of a respite, and we'll talk about a healthy life and how one recovers from that. I'm still figuring it out. Yeah. I looked back at my book and I said, wait, you know this is different now. I'm different now. And I
wrote it again a second time. Wow, to be appropriate for now, for those kids who are on campus, for the parents, for Jews everywhere and Israel supporters everywhere that feel like the very essence of what we stand for is under attack.
So what changed in when the Stone speak? What changed in the book?
You know, originally it was I don't want to say it was more academic and intellectual, but there was to some degree. Okay, they're saying, we haven't been here. Here's the proof that we're not colonialists, that this is actually our land. What changed in October seventh is that this is actually a battlefront. This is not an academic argument. This is an argument that we should have known based on the Hall cost that if someone comes to erase
your history. The next step, Carol is going to be and whoever it is, but especially the Jews, they're coming to erase you. And as I stood there, I realized, Okay, this is actually a front in the ward. It's the front that we've ignored. You know we often talk about in this military, you know that we missed the intelligence. It's not only the intelligence that we missed. We ignored decades of the erasure of the Jewish connection to the
land of Israel. And that's what those kids in Gaza grew up believing, and that's why they became terrorists and invaded Israel's borders.
Do people who deny that Jews are indigenous to the country of Israel? Are they even reachable?
It?
Can mind still be changed?
You know, I've seen both. I've had people come to me, students with like a glossy kind of look in their eyes that you know, they it looks like they took either a drug or they've truly been brainwashed. And you can wave your right your hand in front of their face and there's no reaction. But I'll give you an example. I had the Duke Law Association come to me, and
this was a few years ago. And I told them the story of how we have Arab workers that worked for us, and how it was Camas who threatened those workers to stop working on the excavations and the workers were working together with Jews and Christians on the excavations. And I said to them, I said, you know, you just met with one of these supposed human rights groups. Where were they? Because I've raised charity charity to give
to these families now that don't have a job. And you know, at the end, a person came up to me and he said, you know, I was expecting something different. You're not the monster I thought you were. And you know, if one person says that, I'm hoping maybe there were two or three in the group of around fifteen. I think that there is a group of people who are out there that can be reached, But the most important
group are that in between group. There are so many people that are under attack, whether they're on campus, or they turn on TV and they hear what the United Nations says, or you know, they see the marches and
they they how can this be happening? If we really have a connection to the land, maybe we are colonialists, right, And that is the group that I hope will read this book and their grandparents will give it to them and their parents and they'll read it as well to realize, no, you know what, you're indigenous to the land of Israel, maybe more indigenous here than any other people, and you should be proud of this and be willing to defend it.
Were there any surprises in writing when the Stones speak?
You know what was surprising is the rapid firing against us of Israel's enemies. When I took a step back, girl and I looked at it out of the context of the city of David, I said, my God, like how it's not going into the to the ring against one fighter. You go against one fighter, which is the Muslim Brotherhood, and as soon as you're victorious, all of a sudden NGOs come and take you to court on
fallacious legal charges. And just as you're about to win, they recruit the State Department, who doesn't even know what they're talking about, and they recruit a white house. And what really became clear to me as I wrote the book was, my God, this is a concerted campaign. And I, who had been living in it, was in survival mode for so long, just the fight to keep the excavations going with my close compadres who were doing this with me. That really, when I wrote the book, I saw that.
And the other thing I saw as it took a step back were the heroes, the incredible heroes that stood up for us, whether they were members of the Israeli government. David Friedman from the.
United States, wonderful guy.
Wonderful person who changed the dial and declared the city of David a United States historical so we're the only one in Israel. Eleana roz Leitner also from Florida, And all of these heroes are donors. And ultimately speaking, I left writing the book feeling very good, because good ultimately, even when it was dark, like being underneath the ground and you come out of the ground and they were fighting, good ultimately wins.
Are you optimistic? That sounds like a lot of optimism right now when things seem pretty dark for the Jews around the world.
You know, I'll tell you something. I just sat around the dinner table with my daughter, my eldest daughter, Nashama, and she said, look, Abba, you know.
Sama mean soul. For those who don't.
Know, she does, and she's a big soul. And she said we were all sitting around with the kids, and there's always a fiery conversation. She said, abba listen the recruitment levels. More than one hundred percent of all people called up, you know, showed up for duty. And you ask yourself. In Israel, first of all, you know, it's
been a nineteen months of war. Our friends have died, literally you've died, and unfortunately their sons have done and we have children in the army, and we have ballistic missiles, and we make life as good as we can. And yet why are one hundred people one hundred percent showing up? Because there's a power, a strength that has been released, not only in Israel, but the battleground is not Israel. It's Israel, and overseas, it's the diaspora, whether you're in
France or whether in New York. And therefore, I actually feel, Carol, that this kind of woke us up. And what you see is there's a choice now either I'm going to do I'm just going to simply disappear, or I'm going to decide to be a Jew or support Israel for nanjuws. And drawing that line in the sand was critical because people were slowly fading out. Now there's a line. Which
side are you going to stand on? I'm very optimistic that most people, Jews, Christians and other people will take a stand with Israel and ultimately that will be vindicated.
What do you want people to take away from one still.
And to speak, there's a challenge against us. That is an entire narrative that has been constructed, goes back more than one hundred years, goes to the founding of the Palestinian nationalist movement by Hajajaminal Husseini, who is aligned with Hitler himself in the very very famous picture It's taken root in the media. I faced the media, I was on sixty minutes. I've done all of these things. It's on university campuses, and one could have the sense of
maybe giving up. However, we have to understand that if what they're saying is true, we have to leave. If actually what their claim is about us is true, we have no right to the land of Israel. It means Biblical values aren't true, Christian values aren't true, and the foundation of the United States isn't true. Meaning Israel is not just about Israel, it is about the foundation of the Western values. Unfortunately for them, ours history is actually true.
And what I want this book to do is to tell people's this is the time where you need to take a stand and realize that this is what's at stake. It's not Israel. Just like with Iran, it's not just about Israel. It's about the West. What happens here has massive shock waves. It's your story wherever you are, and if you listen to the stones. This is why the book is called When the Stones Speak, because the archaeologist in the city of David, when there was arguing about
the history of a site, was it King David? Was it one hundred years after King David? She would step back at Lot of Mazarre and she would say, you know what, let the stones speak, and same thing with what's happening now in the world. Let the stone speak. Let them tell you our story. We are indigenous, stand strong, and we have Western values and Judaism, and there's a positive future ahead of us. That's what I want people to get is really a sense of strong.
What do people generally misunderstand about Israel?
I think the most common thing that people misunderstand about Israel is they think that we're a bunch of depressed. You know, there is some depression, but that you know, we have mental health issues every single person, and there's plenty of them, but not for the reasons they're saying. Mostly because of the way is Radley's drive. And at the end of the day, I.
Was going to make a Jewish mom's joke, but I won't do that exactly.
You know, there's a little neuroticism, aongongst the Jewish people that's kind of built in. I think it goes back to the passover cleaning issue, which just exacerbates it. However, I think at the end of the day, people you know, they write to me like, how is life there? And the irony is you know, I tried going to Aroma today. Roma's the coffee shop and he's a best coffee right and I'm standing in line and there is such a long line.
You just cut in front of each other and hope for the best.
Well, you know, I was born in America, so I'm still trying to bring a bit of that gentrification. But you know, you drive around the coffee shops, you drive around the restaurants, you can't even get in and life even with all the tragy and again this week, I already went to a memorial ceremony for a friend's son
who was killed. And at the end, you know what we did, he said, everyone come over to his house, and there was like a party at his house for his son, because his son, he said, died for the Jewish people. I'm sorry to be tragic, but there's life. And all these young people were there just drinking and telling stories and having fun in and Israel is so full of life. The vibrancy of being here is so great that I think that's what's most misunderstood.
What do you worry about?
I worry about us not learning the lesson, Carol, That's really what I worry about. I worry about us slipping back again from October seventh. You know, we almost were plumbled in the in the in the Young Kipper War, and we had all these takeaways how you can never underestimate your enemy. You have to be super strong. And then we built a beautiful high tech country, and you know, and we forgot about our enemies, and we forgot about how strong we have to be in that there's a
price that paid a lift here. It might be more taxes, it might be serving the army, it might be. You have to be on a stronger defense. And my biggest fear is that we're going to allow ourselves to slip back in to the realm of complacency. Because being Jewish and being in the land of Israel, if you read through the Bible, you go all the way back, there has never ever been a time of complacency ever, And
that's my biggest fear. We have to stay alert, and I believe the way to do it is to constantly see our lives here as a continuation of a thousands and thousands of years journey, the people who died in the Holocaust, the people who died in the pug grums, going back to the Second Temple, the First Temple, the children who ran around this land right in their bare feet, and there's the sense that it's alive. And if it's alive, you can never go to sleep. Your job here is
to be alive. It's a twenty four hour day experience. It's exhausting and exciting, as you know, and that's the cure. That's the solution, I think, is just this vibrancy to.
Do israelis see what a remarkable thing the city of david Is Or are they just surrounded by history all the time anyway, and so you know what you write about in when the stones speak, that's their lives anyway. Or do they see that this is something really special and unique.
It's a great question and your framing is absolutely brilliant. Israelis had become accustomed to knowing they were living in an older country. However, when they came to the city of David, it was like a miracle happened. It began with Israelis. You know, Israelis have spread all over the political spectrum, right, it's kind of a Jewish trait. There's
like a perfect formula. When they come to the city of David, whether they're from a high tech company or they're in charge of missile defense or their family living on the periphery, they leave different, absolutely different, having felt like, and I hear this time and time again, that they went back in time and connected to something and when they re entered this world they realized, wait a second, I'm part of a story. And that is the power
of the City of David. And it has kind of broken this old adage of Israelis that yeah, we live in an old country. No it's not enough to say you live in an old country. It's critical that you realize you are indigenous to this land. And that is an important word that we don't like to say. We kind of take it for granted. Everyone knows where it no no right when you go to the city of David. Are you going? Is it like going to the met or is it like going to a place that is
your ancestral home? And that is the Fittish. The insight with Israelis today that you know if you pull I take this from many of our enemies. I'm sorry to say you pull any Palestinian off the street. I don't mean to be overly political, but they're all part of this narrative that they have constructed and been told is true. You have pull in Israeli off the street. They are
a great guy or girl, but they're arguing. And therefore the power of the City of David for them, and my recommendations for them in the Hebrew at least, is you've got to really own that indigenous nature. We have to teach our children that they are indigenous and Israelis. It says on the l all planes be an ambassador.
When they walk off that plane. You need to every single person this is my ancestral indigenous land, because that's what this spoils down to, and that's why this place is so important for Israelis.
Did you always want to write about archaeology or history or is this kind of new for you?
No, I wanted to write fiction. Actually, I really love fantasy and science fiction. Lord of the Rings and you know, I can reread the series every single year. When I came to Israel, I kind of felt like it was our own Lord of the Rings and maybe working underground, but I'll tell you the time that I really decided fictions going in the back burner after a number of
failed attempts, and I'm going for this is. I had a sixteen minutes interview and during the interview I realized the manipulation that was taking place with Leslie Stall and she came. She was crying and everything else until the cameras turned on, of course, and then everything she'd been crying about didn't make it into the Beast. And I said, you know what, if I don't write the story, then it will never be told because this is the story
they don't want you to know. And so now I've written the story that they don't want you to know. And the intrigue of writing this story is sounds like fiction, but it's real and it's an adventure. People ask me summarize it, I say, this is Indiana Jones meets Homeland. You know, it's it's such an exciting adventure and it involves you know, intimidation as well, and many of the things that have taken place. But at the end of the day, it's real. And that's the miracle of this
entire story. And so that it was clear after I owe it to Leslie Stall that once she finished, I said, Okay, Leslie, I'm going to write my own book.
And I hope she hears this. I want her to know that she's responsible.
I hope. So I should set her free copy.
You really should sign it exactly. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What advice would you give your sixteen year old self doing this all over again?
Well, at sixteen, I had been bit by the Israel bug and was not sure what to do with my life, and most pressure told me not to do it. And this is the advice I give. My brother called me my older brother who's no longer live, but he's called me and he said, you know what, stop living mom and Dad's dreams and go live your dream. And it was that final push that he gave me that set me on a course with an enormous amount of unknown,
but it led me to where I am today. And my biggest piece of advice is you only live once. Follow your dreams. You'll figure it out along the way, and you really only have one life to do it. You don't want to wake up when you're ninety five years old. And I am a testament. I believe my life is proof, having come from nowhere in Michigan, the disconnected you, you didn't know much, followed my dream and God provides It was like you know one teacher, and you
look around yourself people who have followed their dreams. They will all attest that once you leap, right, Carol, Like once you leap, someone catches you. And I think that's the most important thing to do.
I love it God led you to Aroma and making them try to form a line in Israel. I mean you're really are doing God's work over there.
He didn't split the line from me like the red seat, but he led me to the line right.
Well, I've loved this conversation. Your book is so great when the Stones speak, I think that it's a real marvel. I want everybody to read it. I highly recommend it. Check out Doron's book leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
One of my kids said to me the other day, I was nervous about the book. To be honest with you, about the book release and what is all this mean. I'm going to be interviewed by Carol and all these other people, even though I've stood up in front of the army and been pretty much verbally shot at by every major news network. I was nervous. And my daughter Ariela,
this one's Ariela. She said to me, don't forget what you're doing this for, you know, just just she literally caught me and said, ah, but like you know, your health is more important than this. Yeah, And I think that that's the key, like to step back and remember what are you doing this for? So I keep asking myself this question after Ariel said that to me, and ultimately I know for me, I'm doing this for the Jewish people, for God, for my family and for myself.
And once you do that, kind of the pressure goes away because you know I'm surrendering, like I'm just doing what I can. And I think that's that for me. Is the tip is just continually trying to ask yourself what am I doing this for? Not just to do it, What am I doing it for?
I love that he is Jeron Spielman get When the Stones Speak anywhere you buy your books. Thank you so much for coming on, Darwn.
Carol is an honor.
Thank you, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Mark which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.