I bet it's a tune that is enjoyed by my final guests today, Last but not least, my good friend from a Havas Tarah congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts, Rabbi Jonathan house Me Houseman joins me this afternoon.
Welcome back to kay sir.
Thank you. You're becoming a real pro at the sitting guy's name.
Let me tell you, thank you after years of interview with you.
And is that kind of yeah? I have to draw it in or at least that's how I view it.
How about BB King, Oh.
God, I'll tell you know, love him all right, listen. I like the three Kings of the Blues, BB, Freddie and Albert. Yeah, but I gotta tell you I got a special place in my heart for Albert Collins. And nobody played guitar like that. He played guitar like the guitar was either a trumpet or a piano. Just absolute magnificent.
Master of the telecaster.
I have to tell tell you, yeah that I almost plugged in an Albert Collins song, but I decided this one because I was enjoying it.
Well, well, well good enough, I will tell you that there you can find it on YouTube. That's a I think it's from Greeley, Colorado. A great, great show by the magnificent Ronnie Baker Brooks, whom I saw, Yeahlee back at the beginning of May.
Is this the one this week? Was he there this weekend at the Greeley Blues Jam?
He might have been, but you can find this one. I think it was twenty nineteen. And I following Ronnie Baker Brooks for a long time in another great great guitarist, great blues guitars.
He has a new album out and on that album is a great song Robbing Peter, Robbing from Peter to pay Paul.
And I played that last week as a bumper filling in. It's awesome, It's fantastic he played.
He played it at death as as a matter of fact. And the great thing is, you're gonna die when I tell you who followed him, Kenny Wayne Shepherd being.
There you go, there you go.
And we talked about that one because I saw them last month when they were here through Denver Paramount.
Yeah. Yeah, great, so great act, great shows. See of course, Well let's face it. I mean the world is a flame, and yes, you know you talk about the situation of Jews Blues. I've said this on the show previously, previously over the years with you. You know, if you talk about the quintessent the Jewish musical art form, of the quintessential musical art form form that should speak to the Jews and the Jewish condition and whatnot, it has to
be the blues. Just has to be the blues. And you know, it's nice that if you're Jewish, if you're Jewish, it's nice to have friends out there like Gabe Evans. You've got a good congressman there.
There you go, and we'll get to Gabe at a moment. I do want you to explain that, I mean maybe intuitive for folks, but explain why is blues the music the Jews?
Well, well, look what if what what does the blues do? It takes your life's situation, explains it in music and tries to lighten your lighten your load, and lighten your mood. And you know, there is light at the end of the tunnel, whether you're talking about uh, love that has
been das something that's unrequited, whatever the situation is. And you know, it speaks to people who were on the move and see, you know this has been the quintessential Jewish experience over the past at least twenty three hundred years. And I'll be honest with yeah, I probably can argue four thousand years, so you know, and not without not without fault. It should be mentioned that you know, a lot of these blues artists and it was called race
music back then. You know, you know, it was Jews who helped to record and promote a lot of these absolutely magnificent artists. And it's we're not just talking about people like the King quote, Boys of the Close quote, or or Albert Collins or any of these other people. But you know, you're talking about go back to to uh, you know, Chess Records, and he was who he was recording with Muddy Waters and and and.
Yeah, the list goes on Wolf, that's right.
And he's the one who you know, Leonard Chess with with Chuck Berry and whatnot. You want to go back even further, talk about Jimmy Reid and who recorded Jimmy Reid and things of that sort. So this is what you end up finding.
That's amazing.
Rabbi Jonathan Houseman our guest, the man who has hosted blues festivals at his Synagogue in Stoughton, Massachusetts. I want to jump into a couple of things with you this afternoon, Rabbi. One of them you mentioned, Congressman Gabe Evans, and he joined by the four other Republican congressmen and women. The three others from Colorado, Jeff Crank, Lauren Bobert, and Jeff Hurd, all put forward a resolution that had such resounding support overall from.
Enough of a majority to get it passed.
They were able to go through suspension of the rules to fast track this resolution condemning anti Semitism in particularly the terrible tragic attack two Sundays ago June first, a terrorist attack by Mohammed Sabri Solomon, an Egyptian national here illegally in the United States, where he burned Jews in public on Pearl Street Mall. Absolutely horrifying. And yet despite this powerful resolution, one hundred and thirteen Democrats voted against it,
whereas zero Republicans voted against it. Your twofold reactions, Rabbi, to both the attack in Boulder and sort of what message that sends or what that teaches us about what's happening in this moment, and also this resolution put forward by Congressman Evans had passed by the House.
Well, look, I have to be honest with you. I think really for me taking a look at this, you know, I can't separate the two. They are conflated. And I really and I listen. Kudos again, kudos to Gabe Evans was a sponsor this. How he got seventy five Democrats to vote on that bill, I think is nothing sort of remarkable, But I think what it really speaks to us if anybody has any lingering DOWNCID vote whether jew hatred and I preferred that term rather than anti semitism,
the jew hatred in America has exploded. I mean, take a look at that vote. Take a look at that vote. It's the pure numbers of the vote. Twenty five twenty six percent, roughly a quarter of the House of Representatives Monday night voted against condemning anti Semitic terrorism. Think about that.
Think about that. You know, when the House took its role call vote and I was watching this, you know, resolution for eighty something or other, you know, you know, it's a resolution denouncing this particular antisemit anti Semitic therist attack in Boulder. Yeah, had one hundred and thirteen Democrats were refused. Members of the House of Representment refused to
condemn the violence. It's just an absolutely disturbing development. And I really think underneath it all, it's something that Melanie Phillips has written and spoken about over the past couple of months since The Relationships, her latest book. You know, it really demonstrates how completely progressive ideology has warped morality and ethical views and a moral worldview, you know. And it's and it and the Halls of Congress now it's
not enough. And she wrote listen and Melody Phillips writes about it from the point of view was being a British citizen. I mean, she's Jewish, but a British citizen, and what it's done to the House of Commons and the Labor Party over in Britain. And unfortunately, it's not just it's not just consigned to the Labor Party, you know, it is really infiltrated to a lot of members in the Conservative Party, the Tory Party over there. So this warping of morality is such that you can't condemn violent,
racialized attacks against some segment of the population. And it's not just Boulder, it's the kids who were those two kids who were hunted down in Washington, DC and had twenty one bullets pumped into their bodies? Okay, or the rabbi was attacked in Brooklyn. I mean, this is this is just yeah, at an unbelievable moment where we're living, and I just want to just said one thing. The absolute violence that you see today is not something that
I grew up with. But I grew up with a lot of this anti Jewish family and anti Jewish sentiment. I mean I remember as a kid where I grew up clubs with signs that said no Jews allowed. This is my lifetime, my life. Now.
There was another resolution, also passed unanimously by the House with Democrats on board, that also had done a condemnation of anti Semitism, but it seemed both to be much
less powerful and impactful. But also the Democrats would claim that they voted and I think all Colorado Democrats voted against the resolution, and we've been talking about four eighty five, and they would say, oh, well, there was a there was a gratitude express to Ice, and we can't express gratitude to Ice, And at least that was their excuse for not supporting this resolution from gave Evans.
Unbelievable, just unbelievable, this nexus at which we find ourselves. And by the way, when you talk about ICE, you're talking about law enforcement agents of the federal government who were doing their jobs.
I think I'm being told that Joan de Goose actually did vote for the Evans resolution, but I'm I think so, But the other Democrats have believed didn't.
Right, And it's and listen with regard to Ice and what's happening in their and their excuses and everything that those kinds of statements and behaviors ends up giving fuel to the fire for what we see now in Los Angeles and in Chicago, New York. Just I mean, just today it was announced that the governor, I think it was the governor of Texas, maybe it was the Attorney General, Ken Paxton of Texas already preventatively, I've called up units
of the National Guards to cities like San Antonio. It's planning. I mean, there's this big plan for massive rallies this coming weekend. And you know, they want to make sure that everybody understands. You want to you want to express yourself, you express yourself. Yeah, you know, in a civilized manner. You don't go hunting for the other side to harm me.
That should be just not any questions. There are no question whatsoever. And yet we have excuse making here.
In Colorado Rabbi Jonathan Houseman from people saying, oh, this is Zionism, and so that was really what this is about, is this guy was anti Zionism. But quite frankly, Zionism is code for juke. That's what it is, plain and simple, and just a political cover for them to provide that kind of justification for violence, right.
And not just the code for justification for violence. But you take it a step further ward. Israel has become the Jew of the world, as it were. So all of this is all, all of this is all in this crock pot, you know. And if you read Dave Evans's resolution, and by the way, I sent them a note of thanks to be to be honest with you, you know what did he do? You know, his resolution, if I recall correctly affirm that free and open communication is a bedrock of our society. But it's also a
bedrock of public safety. And you know, it's it's one thing to express yourself, it's another thing when you talk about potential terrorist attacks, and yeah, yeah, listen with regard to Boulder was a terrorist attack.
It was without question, which is why I was glad to see the FBI not a dance around the issue. But immediately Bongino in particular put out a statement saying, we're investigating this as an active terror and we have our agents on the ground already looking into it.
I want to shift gears.
We just got a couple more minutes with you, Rabbi Jonathan Houseman, our guests from Stowton, Massachusetts. There is a piece in the New York Times yesterday by columnist Thomas Friedman. This Israeli government is a danger to Jews everywhere, And
of course he condemns the attack. He says, you know all all those things, but he says that if Israel goes ahead with net and Yahoo's value to perpetuate this war indefinitely, to try to achieve total victory over every last Hamasnik, along with the far rights fantasy of ridding Gaza of Palestinians and resettling it with Israelis, Jews worldwide better prepare themselves, their children, and their grandchildren for a
reality they've never known. To be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state, a source of shame, not of pride.
And then he goes on.
To site letters from former Israeli military leaders that are saying.
We condemn Hamas and what happened. The war was fully.
Justified, but this is a moment of recording it's not too late, and saying it became clear that this was that this was losing its strategic and security purposes and instead served primarily the political and personal interests of the government. That from a couple of military leaders. Friedman quotes, what is your reaction to all I just threw at your rabbi?
I discount Thomas Friedman almost one hundred percent. To be honest with you, this is a guy who believes that individual countries and individual people must sacrifice some degree of if you're talking about countries, economic sovereignty and things of that sort to global institutions, and if you're an individual, you have to sacrifice some of your individuality and personal freedoms for the greater goods. This is what this guy promotes.
He is He is a classic leftist who has always since his first book, from Beirut to Jerusalem in nineteen eighty two. All right, has just been an absolute critic of Israel, unless you're talking about the very leftist people you can find running the government itself. This is just
classical Freeman, you know. And it's interesting his position because probably the prime organization today in Israel that deals with Israel's national security issues and policy development as an organization in the Hebrews called how b horn Eastim, which means the Security Experts and English, it's the Israel Defense and Security Form. And you know, maybe Jimmy, we should talk offline because I know a number of the people from the IDSF. See if I can get one of them
next time you're on the air. Okay, A lot of this organization outweighs former military people out of the IVF regarding support for the prosecution of the sword by approximately twenty three to one. Look, I mean, you can find people here in the United States that support just about any position you want as well. Of course, overwhelmingly Arry veterans are supportive of the government and what the government sees as what needs to be done in terms of
prosecuting the war that was forced on Israel. All Right, on October seventh, twenty twenty three, which mister, honestly, I will tell you what I said to my congregation the following week, which was, if you never had grandparents who experienced the pagrum in Europe, now you're seeing what a pagrum looks like, because that's what that was. Wow.
And on that powerful note, we need to leave it there, my friend, Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, Havath Torah Congregation in Stoton, Massachusetts. Always good to talk with you, even in these most distressing times. And you know we are all here very supportive of the Jewish people of the State of Israel and can't be more important at this time.
Jimmy, you've been true glue and are there any for you? But I will have one request next time we're on Cleverdones. No King Christ Christ, kingfish Ingram.
Okay, he is coming to the Blues from the Top festival last weekend of the month.
So I've seen him live.
I've seen it. I've seen him. You gotta go see him.
Yeah, absolutely, he is phenomenal. Rabbi Jonathan Houseman, once again, thank you, my friend.
And God bless you too. Should be fine.
That is it for me today.
But from Friday through Wednesday, I will be back in the saddle for the traveling Mandy Connell calavanting around the world.
It is so good to be with you today.
Be sure to check out my website Jimmy Sangenburger dot com, from my latest columns to podcasts and more. All ease, all the time, and singing burger. Once you know that.
Sang and Burger is easy, have a great day.
See you on Friday, And as I always say, may God bless the United States of America.