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My name is Sean Watkins, and I serve as Associate Dean of Lifelong Learning here at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And on behalf of this campus, we want to welcome you this evening. Let me say from up front, we are genuinely glad that each and every one of you are here and with us tonight. Tonight's conversation is one that this moment demands, because anti-Semitism, in its fullest definition, is a hatred that is targeted towards Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities alike.

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It is rooted in the same fear of the other, the same impulse to dehumanize what we do not understand, which means the fight against it belongs not just to these three traditions, but to all of us. We come from different texts, different contexts, and different practices, different names for the holy. But we are here together, and that matters. Our hope tonight is simple, that this space models what's possible, an interfaith dialogue that builds trust and not barriers.

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Welcome to our campus. We're delighted to have you here. I want to invite a good friend of yours and mine. She is a professor of missions and evangelism and our director of Latinx studies, the Reverend Dr.

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Crystal Silver McCormick. Welcome Crystal as she comes. Good evening, friends. Thank you so much for being here, taking the time.

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I hope that you all feel welcome to our campus. And I'm not going to introduce our incredible speakers, but we are so grateful that Ben Lorber and Shane Burley have shared their work through their book and that are willing to spend time with our community, helping us learn and facilitate some really important and always timely conversations. So we want to express that gratitude. I want to just give you a little

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layout for the evening. So I am going to introduce a co-facilitator with me this evening, Abby Malik, and a student, Ronnie Gelman, to you. And then we will start, Abby and I will start out with some questions that we have for the authors, and then we will open it up to questions as well from you all and from those online, because we also have people online this evening. So I also want to welcome you all for joining us online.

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I'm sorry you couldn't be here in person but we are so welcome and part of this community as well. And so those questions will come in and you will be able to scan a QR code. So we're using Slido.

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So we're not, you don't need to raise your hand, you don't need a microphone. Those will come through and you can ask the question anonymously. You can attach your name to it if you would like. So those options are available to you.

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So that will be sort of the structure for the evening. You're welcome to continue to get drinks and food as they're available. And again, thank you so much for coming to Austin Seminary, where part of our mission is to be, from the Christian perspective, salt and lighten the world. And that's part of what we're doing here tonight, is to facilitate important conversations that bring what we learn in the classroom outside of the classroom.

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not just to be held in churches, in synagogues, in mosques, or even just in our homes, right? But to build justice and peace in concrete ways. And so I want to introduce Abby, who is a therapist, a parent, and an educator who gives talks about the history of anti-Zionist Jewish movements. is also a friend of mine and someone that I love and respect very much, who I've learned a lot from.

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And I am grateful to Abby for being with us. And I also want to introduce to you Ronnie, who will come up here. after I leave. Ronnie is also a friend and someone that I learn a lot from and respect.

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And I met before they were a student here. Ronnie is now a student here, and also a grief worker, community organizer, and an MDiv student here. An anti-Zionist Jew and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Co-founder of the student group Seminarians for a Free Palestine, Ronnie is focused on building beloved community that is radically inclusive, that centers mutual aid and actively dismantles

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most dominant power structures. And so Ronnie may be a student, but as I share with Ronnie, Ronnie's a teacher and has been already in their own right long before they were a student here. So I'm so glad to welcome Ronnie to introduce our authors to you this evening. Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for being here with us this evening.

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In the spirit of solidarity, I'd like to take a moment to name that we are gathered on stolen land in the context of the ongoing domination, killing, kidnapping, theft, displacement, and cultural and literal genocide of indigenous peoples and people of color by the empire known as the United States. Various indigenous peoples have lived and moved on this land that we call Central Texas, including the Tonkwa, the Apache, the Isleta, the Sul Pueblo, the Lipan Apache Tribe, the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians, the Cowatecan, the Alabama Coushatta Tribe of Texas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Texas, Carrizo and Comicrudo, Tigua Pueblo, Caddo, Comanche, Kiowa, Wichita, Chickasaw, and Waco peoples. This land where we stand holds centuries of violence and atrocities committed against indigenous peoples, black people, and Latinx people.

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May we recognize and seek to repair these wounds in all the ways that are available to us. My name is Ronnie, and I use they/them pronouns. I am a white, medium-height Ashkenazi Jew with dark brown curly hair, wearing a red dress, white tzitzit, and a white and black kufia. I was raised here in Austin in Congregation Kol Halev, a small, progressive, non-denominational congregation.

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I've been anti-Zionist for 12 years, since I was a student at Brandeis University, and I learned about the atrocities perpetrated by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people. We are here today to learn and struggle together about the topic of anti-Semitism in the context of both rising white Christian nationalism as well as the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, supposedly in the name of the Jewish people and religion. I am pro-Palestine because I love humanity. I am pro-Palestine because I love my community and Palestinians are part of my community.

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I am pro-Palestine because I love my great-grandparents who escaped state-sanctioned violence in the form of pogroms in Russia in the early 1900s. I am pro-Palestine because I am Jewish. The Judaism I was raised with instilled in me the ethical imperative to want tzedek, justice, for all beings. I was taught that we are all made B'Tselem Elohim in the image of the divine.

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I have a Jewish obligation to engage in teshuvah and tikkun olam, the acts of returning to myself and repairing brokenness in my life and in the world. I am deeply committed to the principle of pikuach nefesh, the preservation of not just Jewish life, but human life above all else. The Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people violates our ethical imperative. It violates Teshuva, Tikkun Olam, and Pikuach Nefesh.

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Zionists align themselves with nationalism, fascism, bigotry, racism, and Islamophobia. They cling to a false sense of safety created by walls armed with sniper rifles, mass surveillance, and barbed wire at the expense of the lives of real human beings, babies, children, parents, parents, aunties, and uncles. People who are our siblings, our relatives, an integral part of the web of life on earth.

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It is only in coalition with one another, built on a foundation of love and solidarity, that any of us can actually be safe. The same people who express anti-Jewish beliefs, more often than not, also hate immigrants, Muslims, people of color, queer and trans people, anyone who's different. Jewish safety is deeply intertwined with the safety of all oppressed peoples.

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Here at Austin Seminary, my friends are Christian, Muslim, Unitarian Universalist, Black, Latine, queer and trans. I love them and I feel loved by them. I feel safer with them because they affirm my belonging as a queer, non-binary, anti-Zionist Jew.

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I feel safer when I hear them preach about justice and collective liberation. I feel safer when I stand with them because I know we want the same things. I'm so grateful that Shane Burley and Ben Warber are here with us today to talk about their book, Safety Through Solidarity, A Radical Guide to Fighting Anti-Semitism. Ben Lorber works as a senior research analyst at the social justice think tank Political Research Associates, researching anti-Semitism and white Christian nationalism.

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His writing has appeared in The Nation, The Hill, Jewish Currents, and more. He is currently working on a book on Christian Zionism. Shane Burley is a journalist based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author, editor, and co-author of four books, and his next book, How to Start a Revolution, will be released by Haymarket Books and In These Times Media in 2027.

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His work is featured in places such as NBC News, The Daily Beast, Al Jazeera, Jewish Currents, and more. Ben and Shane's incisive and grounded research into the realities of anti-Semitism and the urgent need for intersectional solidarity is incredibly timely, and I'm excited to learn from them with all of you. Please join me in welcoming Shane and Ben. Okay.

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Okay, so as I mentioned before, Abby and I are going to start with just two questions, and then the conversation will ensue from there. What I wanted to start with is asking, which is sort of what you all have been writing about most recently, but the rise of anti-Semitism, particularly in the right, in right-wing Christianity, but in the rise of Christian nationalism that we're seeing in the country. But particularly as Christians and a Christian minister, I want for all of the Christians to be mindful of the fact that we live in a country that not just now has always been Christian supremacist, right? So Christianity is the dominant religion, and then it's

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it's not always, it's a civil religion as well, right? There are Christians who seek to have dominance in the laws, and we see that in Texas, enforcing the Ten Commandments in classrooms, things like that. So people outside of Christianity are faced with that all the time, unfortunately, sorry. non-Christian friends.

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But so I wanted to ask you about that because we're seeing anti-Semitism that is not new on the right. It has always been there, but it's fracturing and taking on different iterations. And so I was wondering if you both could speak to that, rise of those different iterations of anti-Semitism so that we learn more about it and countering it. Thank you.

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Sure, I guess. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for having us here. It's really an honor to be in your space today.

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It's great to be in Austin also as a Chicagoan. It's nice to have some warm weather for a day. So yeah, thank you so much for having me. I guess I'll start by just kind of just giving like an overview of kind of how we understand anti-Semitism, and then I'll kind of like let you take the how it's showing up now, I guess.

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So, I mean, so I mean, in our book, we really root anti-Semitism, first in a long history of specifically, I mean, European Christianity. Christianity emerged out of Second Temple Judaism, and for many centuries, it had to answer the question of like the continued existence of the Jewish people, right, in a world where, according to Christian teachings, Christianity was the fulfillment of the Jewish religion. So the continued existence of Jewish people, it posed a theological problem for early Christians, right?

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And beginning in the 4th century, when Christianity became the dominant state religion of the Roman Empire. Christian teachings against Judaism became the foundation of laws and policies that disenfranchised Jewish people. Jews were demonized, literally made into demons, you know, as the enemies of the Christian community, associated with the devil.

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and this went on until the modern era. Anti-Semitism became, what we see today, we still see those Christian teachings taking new forms. And we also see anti-Semitism as a conspiracy theory in the modern world. A conspiracy theory that says that there is a Jewish cabal at the height of the economy, at the height of

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of financial power or government or the media. these tropes of a secretive, sort of all-powerful Jewish plot to undermine civilization could have been at the root of so much right-wing nationalism for over a century. You know, not only was this the kind of central belief system that animated Nazi Germany, it also animated nationalist movements long before fascism. and places like Russia and in the USA, where as Hitler was coming to power in the 30s, we had the homegrown America First movement that was in many ways led by Catholic figures like Father Charles Coughlin.

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So, you know, these tales of Jews as the enemies of the Christian community and as other conspiratorial cabal They've been in our culture for quite some time. And they've also been deeply connected to other forms of bigotry. At the same time as Christian Europe was demonizing Jews as kind of an absolute internal other, Christian Europe was also demonizing Islam as kind of an external other, right?

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And during the Crusades, for example, they were crusading A Catholic bishops and soldiers who would massacre Jews on the way to the Holy Land where they massacred Muslims. You know, so anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have a long history. You know, the same kind of modern tropes about anti-Semitism or about Jews as kind of a conspiratorial cabal, those were racial tropes that evolved at the same time as anti-blackness and race science was evolving in Europe.

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And in America, the kind of systemic white supremacy that we've lived with, and the white Christian supremacy, as Crystal names, has obviously had deeply embedded anti-blackness and indigenous genocide. It's also had anti-Semitism there from the beginning. You know, patterns of Jewish exclusion, conspiracy theories, So these have animated fascist movements for a long time.

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And I think these conspiracy theories are particularly powerful in times of crisis, like our own. When people are hungry and fed up and feel disempowered and oppressed and alienated and are looking for someone to blame, that's when it's really easy for authoritarians and nationalists to point the finger at this image of a Jewish cabal and say, here's who the real power is. So that's kind of our framework, and I'll take it to Shane now to kind of talk about how this shows up today.

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I want to echo Ben. Thanks so much, everyone, for coming out, inviting me into the warmth. When I left Oregon, it was 40 degrees, so I'm not happy to return. I appreciate what Ben had kind of talked about, because part of what he sort of unpacked

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was that we're not just dealing with the legacy of Christianity and the theologies of it, but a specific imperial kind of Christianity that enacted a type of politics and saw Jews as a useful scapegoat, something separate, but something that could be projected onto to help maintain their power. And so when we think about modern anti-Semitism, we're thinking of a secularized theological conception that's been used to basically divert the anger of working people. We see throughout the decades and centuries that any time those in power were seeing an uprising, whether it was peasantry, of farmers, of working class people, of factory workers, that a conspiracy theory was a great way to demobilize them. It was to say, no, it wasn't actually the people running the banks.

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It was the tax collectors. It was your neighbors. It was this group of other working people. They're better off than you.

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And while we see many versions of this across Europe and across the world, The anti-Semitic story was kind of a foundational one for Christian Europe. It's how they thought themselves, and that's one of the reasons why it's embedded in our thinking even now. When we have modern conspiracy theories, it's a useful trope because it's one everyone remembers.

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It's deep in our literature, it's deep in the imagery, it's very familiar, and so it gets repeated. That's how we use the term structural anti-Semitism. Why does anti-Semitism return? Because it's built into kind of the structures and narratives of Western society.

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And while this is something that I think is true to say, it appears, on both the right and the left, we really break with a lot of quote-unquote anti-Semitism work in that we think it is foundationally found on the right. The reason is that the right does not have an interest in mobilizing to fix inequality, which is the energy that sometimes bring these movements up. but instead they want to demobilize them to help maintain those hierarchies, whether they're economic or political. And the way to do that, the way to feed populist anger without actually doing anything about it, is with conspiracy theories.

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And that's why we see it as really the foundation of not just the MAGA movement, but increasingly the entire Republican Party. After World War II, there was a period of time in which anti-Semitism, which is very, very common on the right, even on the left, but it was a really common feature of American society, became a bit of a taboo. And part of that was the formation of the state of Israel and the US rights sort of alliance with it. Part of it was that they wanted a certain American alliance during the Cold War against Soviet Russia.

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but also it was the realities of the Holocaust made that taboo. And so you saw it mostly in the vein of neo-Nazis, open white nationalists, basically the radicals of the right. And those are certainly threatening, incredibly violent, and a threat to all people. But over the last 15 years, we've really seen that the coded anti-Semitism that you saw often in Republican politicians, particularly on the right side of it, they go from being coded to being rather explicit.

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to an era now where you have someone like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens could be the most popular YouTube personalities out there, people that are leading large coalitions of the Republican Party, 10s of millions of people, and they're able to say that it's Jews openly. They're able to talk about Judaism, be used really traditional anti-Semitic tropes, even going back to the earliest forms of Christian anti-Semitism we all thought we had moved past. And so we're not talking about something that's just deep in our past. We're talking about something that's an ever-present part of politics today.

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And so when we talk about rising anti-Semitism, which results into actual attacks on Jewish people and also sort of discriminatory practices, get a little bit more how that looks, this isn't something we're just remembering from the distant past. It's something that's actually a lived reality for a lot of people. And as Ben sort of intimated, these things do not, they're not isolated. If we're talking about a right-wing Christian supremacist culture, we're also talking about one that wants to restrict other forms of non-Christianity, that wants to demonize Islam in particular, particularly since 2001, one that wants to demonize any kind of like a non, very narrow version of sort of cisgender straightness, that wants to really create

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a divide between working people based on these identitarian models. And they've done that really effectively by interweaving these. And we talk about this a bit in the book, but when we look at these different right-wing, sometimes called cultural war issues, it doesn't take very long to see anti-Semitism weave throughout them. So if you hear anti-abortion rhetoric, particularly through the Bible Bill, you'll often see them highlighting Jewish last names of doctors or using anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

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In the recent attack on trans health care, particularly for young folks, the idea that it was actually being controlled by the Rothschilds or George Sose was a really, really common trope. So common, in fact, that it was in mainstream Republican publications. And so we actually see these things as being connected. And so we really want to acknowledge the reality that if we're going to fight anti-Semitism, we're going to do it alongside fighting for reproductive rights, fighting for trans health care, fighting against the right at large, and foundationally fighting against the economic and social inequalities that actually lean people towards conspiracy theories in the 1st place.

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Thank you. So as a Jewish mother myself, this topic of Jewish safety is incredibly important to me. But I wanted to ask you to talk more about how do we fight anti-Semitism, work towards Jewish safety in a way that is also working towards the safety of all marginalized groups? How do we create a rising tide that lifts all boats while we're doing this work?

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Yeah, I think that's a good question. A lot of what we've been offered in terms of fighting anti-Semitism is maybe education on the one hand, how to effectively partner with the police, because of course they make us all safer, and how to kind of mobilize a sort of politic that's really built around kind of a militarized version of Jewish safety. And what we really come from, both Ben and I come from a background of social movements, fighting against fascism, and finding ways of mobilizing as many people as possible into a fight. So if we see anti-Semitism as fundamentally structural, it's built into the inequalities of a Christian supremacist society, the only option is to go at those roots right from the start.

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And so that means building bridges with other people because we have power in numbers, right? This is the old trip. The rich have money, we have people. And so that has to be the foundation of how we go after this.

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And we also don't see anti-Semitism that just shows up on mistake, right? There are actual people that do this, right? There are right-wing politicians that are stoking this. There are far-right leaders, white nationalist leaders.

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Those people, they have names and addresses. They're actually people that we can confront and do something about. And so instead of just trying to create sort of this internal inward-facing structure that we think will keep us safe, instead we want to bridge out into the community and find partners in that also have a vested interest in this. So for example, I think about two years ago, the synagogue I attend was vandalized a couple of times.

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Had some windows broken out. Then the Reform temple down the street, they had someone spray paint some anti-Semitic slogans on it. And then two weeks later, a mosque on the street, someone tried to set fire to it. Is anyone surprised that it was the same person?

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see, the reality is that we actually should have had relationships there, right? But from the one hand, could keep us safe for our immediate needs. But then we could look at, okay, where's this coming from? What can we do about it?

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Who's organizing these people? And that is ultimately the questions we have to answer. Because even at best, just having a defensive wall, you know, police security guards, well-armed people, it's only going to stop so much. That doesn't actually get at the root of the problem.

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And I'm interested in getting at the root of the problem. Just to add to that, I think one thing that often makes it hard to build the kind of community coalitions between Jewish communities and other marginalized groups that Shane was describing so well is the phenomenon that often takes up so much oxygen in our political discourse that we often call the weaponization of anti-Semitism. There are powerful interests out there. You know, some are organizations that claim to speak for the American Jewish community, like the Anti-Defamation League.

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or leaders of the state of Israel, often Jewish community leaders in different cities who don't really represent the views of the average Jews on the street, who will kind of, and also many Christian voices and larger ruling class voices, like Trump himself, who all are kind of aligned behind this campaign to equate a wide range of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. You know, saying that Palestinian students on campuses are anti-Semitic for wanting their campus to stop funding the bombs that are being dropped on their families in Gaza, or saying that black leaders are anti-Semitic for drawing connections, you know, between the structural racism that black folks in America face under police violence and the structural racism that Palestinians face.

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You know, these attacks on social justice movements are wrongheaded and are often, you know, are almost pretty much always directly racist and Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian. And they drive wedges between Jewish communities and groups who could or should be allies. And so I think, to answer your question of, how do we fight anti-Semitism and, fight for Jewish safety, I think it's really important to kind of get beyond this and to build a stronger Jewish voice and a stronger Christian voice that is very confident and unapologetic in saying that it's not anti-Semitic to to condemn Israel's genocide, it's not anti-Semitic, to demand Palestinian freedom and liberation.

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And that, actually, Jewish liberation and Palestinian liberation are deeply, inseparably intertwined. I think until we get there, there's always going to be these wedges that are drawn sometimes by Jewish leaders and often by folks like President Trump, who tweets things like Shalom Mahmoud as he's directing ICE to kidnap a Palestinian student, Mahmoud Khalil. I think there's a lot of vested interests in these wedge campaigns to divide American Jews from other communities in service of

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a Zionist agenda and a ruling class agenda here in the US and in Israel. And so I think we have to combat that really strongly to be able to build the kind of safety that we need right now. Thank you so much. We're going to move now to the questions that we're getting on Slido.

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And we've already gotten quite a few questions. So just One sec. Just, I'm going to let you know in the interest of time that we won't be able to answer all of the questions we get on Slido.

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If you're hoping to get your question answered, just try to make sure it's succinct and ends in a question mark. That's always helpful for us. So the first question we got is, what is the definition of a Zionist? Yeah, that's a good question.

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And I think there's a lot of different answers. I would talk more about Zionism than, Zionists. I think it's often helpful as much as we can, not to personalize. I think there's a, you know, in the same way that I would say that it's more useful to talk about structural racism as a system, right?

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And sometimes I think the word Zionism, it does more harm than good. I mean, there is one version of Zionism that wants to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Palestine and promote kind of a greater Israel messianic ideology. And then there's a Zionism of someone like my grandparents, who are American Jews, who've never been to Israel, actually, but they support it out of a vague notion that it's necessary to keep Jews safe.

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And after the Holocaust, we need a country of our own as a source of pride. So there's a lot of variations. I often think that there's no one way to kind of define it all. There's also Christian Zionism.

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But if I had to define it, I would say that Zionism is a political project to create a Jewish majority a demographic majority nation state in Palestine where Jews are structurally privileged over Palestinians and things like land use, immigration, and a lot of different policies. That really goes back to the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 when over 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and what Palestinians call the Nakba. It's a project to create essentially a Jewish ethnostate.

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that was supported by some Jewish people and also many Christians and Western Europeans. And so I think that's a very narrow, sort of very concrete political definition that I think is useful. But I also think that word, as I said, sometimes does more harm than good. We're at one book talk and someone said, I identify as a Zionist and I think Palestinians

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and you should have completely equal rights everywhere in Israel-Palestine. And I said, great, I identify as an anti-Zionist. And I want the same thing. So maybe we should stop arguing over that word and just talk about the solutions that we want.

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So yeah, but that's how I would cut it. Yeah, I do agree. I do think it gets in the way. And yet, that person's understanding of Zionism is incorrect.

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The reality is that the Zionist project is about embedding inequality in Israel-Palestine. And I think sometimes it's useful to talk about anti-Zionism because what we're talking about is just the breaking down of those structures, the barrier wall, the legal barriers between Palestinians and Jews about land ownership and employment and things like that, having a land for all the people there, right, and equal rights. That is fundamentally not what Zionism is. And so I think when we're thinking about like what we're doing, presenting kind of an alternative, I think

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The sometimes that... I think that Zionism takes on this outsized perspective in people's minds. So really we're talking about applying the kind of political programs we see in most kind of like countries we see as allies applied there. And I think also a lot of times where people don't really can see the minutiae of what is actually embedded in maintaining a demographic majority in a state, which requires incredible amounts of discrimination at structural levels.

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and a really large military apparatus, which ultimately lands here in the forms of developing, surveillance technology that's used for our immigration system, right? And building alliances with far-right politicians who don't have a problem with the politics you're having there. There's a, ends up being kind of like long-term consequences of it. And so I think a lot of times when I'm talking to folks who are Zionists and maybe that if as progressive Zionists,

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I actually think that what their vision of it is just not necessarily where Israel has been or is ever going. It's more kind of an imagine Israel of what they were promised or what could be. And I've had that image and I wish those things were true. And they weren't.

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And so I think the reality is that as a person who is Jewish and has sort of like a Jewish religious connection to the land or whatever. I think the reality is that I want that to be a land that's easy to be celebrated for all the people that live there. And that's not what I can have now.

00:34:18.480 - 00:34:47.600

And so it sort of, in a way, doesn't actually belong in my vision of Jewishness, and I wish it could be. Thank you all so much. I hope that you all feel like you're learning a lot. as you will have shared a lot of knowledge and a lot of things for us to think about in bringing together Jewish safety with the safety of all people and equal rights everywhere for all people, which sounds like

00:34:47.840 - 00:35:18.560

something that is a vision for the best of all religious traditions and the best vision for people who are not religious, right? So I appreciate that, centered on human flourishing. The next question that I'm seeing here is if you all have any advice to offer for Jews receiving pushback, trying to get your book shared widely or read in reading groups in institutional Jewish spaces, and a follow-up of how the reception has been in synagogues and other spaces to your book.

00:35:19.360 - 00:35:28.280

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, we've actually done a lot of events with synagogues. We're doing an event synagogue in two weeks, I think. And some of them are just very mainline synagogues.

00:35:28.320 - 00:35:43.760

We're invited at Brandeis. I usually couldn't get more sort of institutional Jewish life than some of those spaces. And at the same time, some Jewish federations, other organizations have tried to get the events canceled or successfully got them canceled. And so there's been pushback in those places.

00:35:43.760 - 00:36:04.720

But what I will say is that Overwhelmingly, when they come, it is generative and positive, and there are no problems. And when you're oftentimes with rabbis or leadership in Jewish, particularly religious organizations, they're actually pretty comfortable having these conversations. They think they're afraid of the imagined other person that's going to be really freaked out by it.

00:36:05.840 - 00:36:27.680

And so, because they actually do have conflicted feelings about these. Most people actually do, even more conservative folks in these, they've experienced something that has made them think twice. and they're used to having tough conversations as religious leaders or whatever it is. So I think when people have asked for advice, and it's like, get people into the conversation, have that conversation, because it's not nearly as frightening as I think people often assume it's going to be.

00:36:29.280 - 00:36:49.240

And also, I would say It's just good organizing advice in general. Find the middle person in the room, not the person at the top, that is involved in organizing committee or organizing the book group or something, because there's going to be a person in there that is able to move an organization on something that you might not have located yet. And that's also the person that really wants to pioneer some great change.

00:36:49.240 - 00:36:53.760

They're really passionate about something. They want to have this conversation. They want to lead it. Let them lead it.

00:36:53.840 - 00:37:13.200

I think finding that. Yeah, I mean, I I also want to just kind of address the kind of deeper issue that was raised by that question of these conversations have been really hard in American Jewish communities since October 7th. They've also been hard long before that.

00:37:13.840 - 00:37:49.600

I had a really nice, you know, it was really nice that my childhood rabbi came to our book talk in Maryland last year. There's a lot that he didn't agree with, and I'm not sure that he would have been able to have a book talk like that in his synagogue, but he still came and was respectful. I've heard stories of more mainline Jewish congregations who've been able to have really good listening sessions and really good kind of dialogue groups within their community where all voices are truly heard, including anti-Zionist Jewish voices.

00:37:49.760 - 00:38:08.640

And I've also heard many stories where that's just not possible. Where I live in Chicago, The Jewish communities that I go to pray are independent and smaller Jewish communities that often meet in people's living rooms or backyards. And it's a lot of exiles.

00:38:08.640 - 00:38:51.840

It's people who had to leave their congregations after October 7th because they weren't welcome, in some cases because they were even asked to take a break from coming just because of the shirts that they wore. So these are really live and raw conversations that, those of you who are Christian, you might be familiar with from your own Thanksgiving tables, right? I mean, these are divisions that are really running through the heart of a lot of issues of Jewish identity right now. And so I want to be real that sometimes it can work well, or rather using our book or using some other prompts

00:38:52.440 - 00:39:09.280

to kind of, to have these dialogues and listening sessions in congregations. And sometimes it just can't. And often I think when anti-Zionist Jewish voices just consistently aren't respected or are silenced, sometimes people do have to lead and build new communities. I think we're seeing that.

00:39:10.160 - 00:39:31.520

Shane's written really good pieces about this crisis in American Jewish life and how how there are new communities that are being built, also new communities of Christian dissenters and new organizations that are bearing witness to Christian values of liberation in this time right now. So it's also like a time of flux. I want to be real about that, too.

00:39:35.920 - 00:39:57.440

We've also done interfaith events that are put on by shared congregations and stuff, like I did one with the Reconstructionist Synagogue. and the Unitarian Universalists in town, where they would do their stuff together. Then I did one with a Catholic Muslim kind of interfaith dialogue group. They were actually very cool, and I actually find that a useful way, because it does two things.

00:39:57.440 - 00:40:15.760

It enters the conversation there, and it builds a bridge, and maybe that bridge can become a permanent bridge. The one other thing I will say is that, like, where I feel like we have cut through. It was from a place of authenticity where I don't think people, assume Ben and I are disingenuous about fighting anti-Semitism.

00:40:15.760 - 00:40:36.920

Like we did, like we're not in there as a way of like, really we wanted to talk to you about Israel-Palestine. We don't actually care about this thing. I think coming in and like basically making that a really important priority and communicating those places, like actually I'm invested in you, I'm invested in this place and the project you're doing, I think that it goes a long way to basically overcome that.

00:40:49.380 - 00:41:12.400

Could you talk about the definition of anti-Semitism and specifically the IHRA definition? And how can we be clear about understanding what constitutes anti-Semitism so we can be effective in being allies and showing up in true solidarity slash equity? Yeah, thanks. I mean, it's a real messy conversation right now.

00:41:13.760 - 00:41:57.360

Basically, there is this definition of anti-Semitism called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA definition, that was drafted a couple decades ago by some experts and was never meant to be used in any kind of policy way. And it basically It lists a number of examples of things that could be anti-Semitic, and it has some vague language that could be used to conflate a lot of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism in ways that probably wasn't helpful. But again, the original drafters only meant it to be a guidance.

00:41:57.840 - 00:42:27.520

But for the last several years, Israel advocates have worked to try to enshrine it into law in universities, in city and state governments and even at a federal level, to basically be able to police speech and to say that a slogan like from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is anti-Semitic. To most of us, that slogan means a vision of justice and equality in the land. Or to say that

00:42:30.640 - 00:42:56.000

condemning Zionism as anti-Semitic, or singling out Israel. I mean, these are very loose and over-broad things that are weaponized, as I was saying. And so, you know, I'm pretty positive that Texas has these laws on the book, and it's something that I think we have to push back against. There are other definitions out there that have been drafted that I think do a lot better job.

00:42:56.800 - 00:43:25.440

the Jerusalem Declaration is 1. I'm also kind of suspicious of this whole project to even find one boilerplate definition, as if fighting anti-Semitism is almost like a kind of like a legal thing, where you can just see an incident and check a piece of paper and say, Does it check off this box? Okay, it's anti-Semitism. We don't do that with other forms of bigotry.

00:43:25.760 - 00:43:52.800

So I think, rather than just having one standard definition, I think it's important to pay attention to context. I think there's one, there's never one sole law, you know, or I can't tell you one formula that can work in every instance for is something anti-Semitic. I think, you know, either scrawling a free Palestine on the side of a bridge, is clearly not anti-Semitic.

00:43:53.200 - 00:44:15.600

It's a statement of liberation for the Palestinian people. It's crawling free Palestine on the side of a Jewish senior home. just because you see some Hebrew letters up there, is anti-Semitic, because then you are directly conflating Zionism and Judaism. And so I think you pay attention to context and just learning.

00:44:15.600 - 00:45:00.560

I mean, learning about the history of anti-Semitism, reading a lot of different perspectives, learning about the history of Israel-Palestine, if that's where things are getting confusing, and just To the leading with curiosity and an open mind, I think, and trying to bear witness to your, to your principles, I think is the best way, the best way forward. Yeah, I mean, I think I just to echo that, this isn't going to be an easy answer because it is so context-dependent. I mean, I think when we're talking about Israel-Palestine, there is, when you look at the way that the definition that Ben sort of outlined is used to identify what is and is not anti-Semitism, it's a big, broad tenth of criticism of Israel.

00:45:00.560 - 00:45:10.800

Anything sort of, you know, anti-Zionist enough, it becomes anti-Semitism. But when we're actually looking at this discourse, it becomes a lot more confusing. Is it conspiratorial? Is it filled with lies?

00:45:10.800 - 00:45:23.040

Is it mischaracter? Why is Judaism? Does it embed some idea about Jewish malevolence, right? Like those are the things that we're actually looking for, not did Israel do X&Y thing and are you opposed to it?

00:45:23.520 - 00:45:46.240

And so I think like taking it back to like how do we actually understand Jews and their experiences? I think that needs to drive that a little bit more than it does right now. And Again, I think, like Ben said, this project we're creating the definition actually takes us away from those structural questions and that organizing question, because now we're looking at these specific instances, not what causes them, what can we do about them, but trying to parse that out.

00:45:49.520 - 00:46:00.560

Thank you. So I'm trying to group some of these questions because they're similar. And I'm trying to find a way to do that because we're all so short on time.

00:46:00.560 - 00:46:25.040

So I'm looking at time and looking at these questions and trying to represent the traditions in these questions. So I'm going to group these two. Progressive Christians are often wary of participating in conversations around anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism due to fear of ignorance or overstepping. What roles can Christians play in promoting peace?

00:46:25.760 - 00:46:54.520

which is similar to a question about how Christians can show up to be in solidarity and to define and fight anti-Semitism. So those are, I'm kind of grouping those together if you all could speak to that. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say, don't be afraid of messing up and also don't

00:46:55.120 - 00:47:43.520

be afraid of speaking up for justice for Palestinians because we're worried that it might attract charges of anti-Semitism that are frankly, you know, false. I think, you know, I see this a lot with, you know, white folks and unlearning racism that we're often so terrified of of messing up that often we're silent or we hold back or we make it too much about our own feelings of being terrified that we might do something wrong and so we don't really show up as effectively to actually fight racism. I think it's, yeah, I mean, bigoted ideologies, whether misogyny, patriarchy, anti-Semitism,

00:47:44.480 - 00:48:14.320

They're out there, they're in us, and we're going to make mistakes sometimes, and it's not the end of the world. And I think having a commitment to learning and to showing up and to being brave and to asking questions and being able to make mistakes and own it and move on is, I think, the way to go for anyone who wants to be a good ally. And really also remembering that I don't want people to just fight anti-Semitism, because I want them to show up for us.

00:48:14.320 - 00:48:33.200

Like, I think that allyship model has real limitations. I see it more as kind of accomplices or co-conspirators. Like, I want people to fight anti-Semitism because it's essential for everyone's liberation, like all forms of repression. We have to fight them so we'll all get free.

00:48:33.200 - 00:49:06.960

So, you know, so there's that. And then also just, I mean, yeah, There are some loud and powerful voices in the Jewish community who, unfortunately, do try to silence progressive Christians and other people of faith for speaking out about Palestine because of the charge of anti-Semitism carries a lot of moral weight in our society, as it should. Any bigotry is horrendous, but we can't let that fear of being accused of that

00:49:07.520 - 00:49:32.000

stop us from speaking out. It's absolutely not anti-Semitic to stand against Zionism, against the genocide of Palestinians, against the horrific US-Israeli war in Iran right now. And more and more people are seeing that a lot of these charges are bogus and obviously cynical and weaponized and in bad faith. And I think these conversations are changing.

00:49:32.000 - 00:49:59.280

So I think I would encourage you to be brave and to be bold. And to stay, if you can, stay in relationship with your Jewish friends who might be disturbed about you calling Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide. If you can, try to listen to them. Show them that you care about them as people, that you value the relationship, but don't let it silence you, because we have to stand up right now.

00:50:01.440 - 00:50:38.240

I think there's also a difference between maybe some kind of oppositional organization saying like, oh, that's anti-Semitic categorically, and your friend or comrade in the room with you saying, hey, I think that was anti-Semitic, or maybe feel XYZ kind of way. I think that's the kind, I think the strongest thing people can do to that is listen, understand, and talk about it and grow. Because there has been one of the reasons that accusations of anti-Semitism have a lot of weight is that the assumption has been for a long time that anti-Semitism is a tip of the iceberg situation. So if someone expresses anti-Semitism, then there's kind of deep, almost Nazi-like ideas floating on the surface.

00:50:38.480 - 00:50:49.440

And that's not actually necessarily true. There's a lot of kind of more casual anti-Semitic ideas that kind of float around all communities. I mean, Let me tell you, I've heard people say some wild shit about Jews.

00:50:49.480 - 00:51:12.080

And people actually just, there's not actually a lot of literacy about Jewish life and Jewish history and things like that. And so, and bad ideas, you float around. And so it is totally likely that someone's going to say and do something anti-Semitic in that place. And when it's not talking about a big oppositional force, we're not talking about a neo-Nazi group that's literally threatening people, we're talking about your friend who has set something problem, I think that's the place in which we want to actually grow.

00:51:12.080 - 00:51:29.160

So I think people's willingness to hear that and learn and try those things out, and we talked with a number of folks that made this sort of difference. They'd encounter something anti-Semitic in a left-wing organizing space, and they would say, okay, am I going to cut this relationship off? Is this person not my adversary, or am I going to find a way to intervene in addressing it?

00:51:29.680 - 00:51:50.720

And usually if they said, okay, I'm going to intervene and address it, the relationship was so strong that the people were like, you know what, I'm really sorry, I want to learn, and they did that together. And that stuff I think is actually a great outcome for that. And so I think that's usually how That's how I want everyone to kind of engage with it in that kind of way.

00:51:50.720 - 00:52:01.280

I just want to make a quick announcement. So we started a little after 7 because we were snacking and things. So we're going to take a couple more questions. So we're past 8.

00:52:02.240 - 00:52:33.160

If you need to go, that's okay. But we're going to take a couple more questions, probably three more questions, and then we'll close. And I want to, I forgot to say earlier that we do have what's available up here, not right now, but was earlier a QR code to purchase the book. Okay, so we don't have books available, but you can scan the QR code that's back on some of those stands and purchase the, go directly to the publisher to purchase the books.

00:52:33.160 - 00:52:49.040

So I'm going to hand this to Abby for the next question. Like I said, after that, we'll take one or two more questions before we close. Thank you so much. So would you say that the actions of Israel contribute to anti-Semitism globally?

00:52:49.040 - 00:53:14.480

And if so, how can we address that issue? I think it doesn't help anything. So what I would say to that question typically is that I think anti-Semitism exists and we are exposed to it and it's not just a reaction to what Israel says and does. But what Israel says and does does not help the tensions any, and it certainly doesn't dispel like myths about Jewish power or the influence of like, a particular political formation, right?

00:53:14.480 - 00:53:32.360

So I don't think that's actually doing anything. And I think that's kind of important because we are kind of offered the notion of the Israeli state and the model in which it exists as primarily there to make Jews safer. and particularly from anti-Semitism. And if it is not doing that, then I think it's kind of lost that argument.

00:53:32.400 - 00:53:52.560

Right now, Israel is the least safer place for Jews to live in the world. I am much more safe there, statistically, right, than I am here. And if what they're doing doesn't materially actually benefit and attack anti-Semitism forces, I think the question is what it's actually helping with. And I think that's sort of an important thing to actually look at and ask quickly.

00:53:54.240 - 00:54:09.920

Yeah, totally. I mean, like Shane said, if Israel stopped oppressing Palestinians tomorrow, anti-Semitism would not end because anti-Semitism existed long before Israel was created. So I want to be absolutely clear about that. Israel is not the root cause of anti-Semitism.

00:54:10.640 - 00:54:30.800

It's also indisputable statistically. It's been shown that after Israeli attacks on Gaza in the last two decades, anti-Semitic attacks against Jews in the diaspora have risen during and after Israeli attacks. I think it's undeniable right now.

00:54:32.120 - 00:54:49.600

In many ways, I think it's unfortunate to say, but I think it's part of the model. I think Zionism and Jewish attachment to Israel works in this mentality that the anti-Semitism is always rising. It's the world's oldest hatred.

00:54:49.640 - 00:55:09.520

It's always going to be here. It thrives off of, you know, fear. And I think there's a way in which, yeah, the the engine of Zionist attachment needs a kind of ever-present reality of anti-Semitism.

00:55:09.760 - 00:55:40.160

I think it's undeniable that the actions of the state of Israel, the horrific genocide in Gaza, the war in Iran, which also the U.S. is obviously also deeply complicit in both of those, it's corroding goodwill toward Jewish communities all around the world. And when a lot of American Jewish communal leaders conflate Judaism and Zionism and say, as Jews, we all support this, and this is intrinsic to our Judaism, that sends a really bad message.

00:55:41.120 - 00:56:04.080

And so I think it's, you know, it's not surprising in a way. I mean, Israel is led by right-wing nationalists, and anti-Semitism is endemic to right-wing nationalism. So when I see people like Benjamin Netanyahu and people like Donald Trump as both of their actions are fueling anti-Semitism in our world.

00:56:04.640 - 00:56:32.640

So I think it's a part of fighting anti-Semitism right now to me is dismantling these structures of repression in Israel-Palestine that I think are making Jews a lot less safe. Both in Israel, obviously, and all around the world, in addition to obviously it being disastrous for Palestinians and Iranians and many other groups right now. Thank you so much.

00:56:32.880 - 00:57:00.480

I hope those of you that have put in questions have seen that even if we haven't named your question, that it got answered, because there were several here, including asking you all to define from the river to the sea, which you already touched on. So there are several questions. that I hope that you heard answered, even if we didn't name your question, because you have spoken to so much very well that has been raised here as well. So I'm going to combine for our last question too.

00:57:01.600 - 00:57:16.000

which is, the AIPAC lobby a good thing? And I want to pair it with another question which we haven't touched on, which someone said, I'm guilty of platforming, was it Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens? I can't remember. Also, they're like the same in my brain.

00:57:16.360 - 00:57:31.600

It was Tucker Carlson. So, and I'm guilty of platforming Tucker Carlson. Can you speak about his brand of anti-Semitism? And I think they were saying they platformed, here it is.

00:57:31.760 - 00:57:52.640

Please talk about his anti-Semitism and why allies should not platform his pro-Palestinian views if we are actual proponents of equity. So I wanted to pair those two just, I'm sure that you all know why, but speaking because AIPAC is one thing, right? And I have a guess about what you have to say about AIPAC.

00:57:52.880 - 00:58:11.680

And then this brand of anti-Semitism is a fracture within the right and may do harm to the pro-Palestinian movement as well. So if you all could speak to that, I would really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, I mean, yeah, so we tend to not think AIPAC is a good thing.

00:58:11.920 - 00:58:34.640

We, yeah, I mean, we, yeah, I mean, we see AIPAC as, much like groups like Christians United for Israel or the weapons industry or the foreign policy establishment, I mean, these are all forces in the U.S. that have locked in unquestioned U.S. support for Israel for many years.

00:58:34.720 - 00:58:54.960

I mean, AIPAC has helped to fundraise for pro-Israel candidates to attack candidates who step out of line. It's one of many lobbies, like the gun lobby or other lobbies, that exercise real influence in Washington. And it claims to speak in the name of American Jews.

00:58:55.480 - 00:59:15.840

It's not the only force, right? There's also, as I said, the Christian Zionist lobby and other groups. But yeah, so we don't love that. You know, we, and it's been, I mean, it's been, yeah, really, really, how do I say, really dizzying for all of us, I think.

00:59:16.400 - 00:59:46.960

to see people like Tucker Carlson on the right who selectively take some aspects of very real and powerful criticism of Israel and warp it to nationalist ends. I mean, there have been moments where I have enjoyed seeing Tucker Carlson take down a Christian Zionist. You know, like his interview with Ted Cruz last year where he He's a good interviewer, and he challenges Christian Zionists on the ludicrousness of their ideology.

00:59:47.360 - 01:00:28.200

And he scores some points, and he lands some blows, and he does say some true things. And he pairs it with America first nationalism, with an agenda of rounding up immigrants. and crushing Black Lives Matter and trans folks and every other marginalized group. And he particularly also pairs it with anti-Semitism, with these kind of conspiracy theories that Israel got us into every war in the Middle East, that Israel is the only reason why American foreign policy is so bad.

01:00:29.600 - 01:00:49.200

As if American empire hasn't, on its own, had a horrific effect around the world for so many decades. So, I mean, it's a way that so many nationalists use these conspiracy theories, to deflect from the real sources of oppression. And so he's doing a really concerning thing.

01:00:49.200 - 01:01:10.800

He's saying some truths about why Israel's actions are wrong, and he's pairing it with a conspiracy version. You can't go after Shane finishes because we have one more question I think is really beautiful and important before we leave. Okay, thank you. I'll be watching if you try and leave.

01:01:12.320 - 01:01:39.960

I said to APAC, I think one, I personally don't love the focus on APAC so much because I think it's a name people know. It is by no means like the most important lobbying efforts. In fact, I would look at, if you're going to look at something like Americans' weapons manufacturers who are basically paid through the actual financial contributions that are given to Israel, usually through weapons contributions, Those are the ones that are lobbying in a lot of ways through these right-wing policies, a huge number is larger than AIPAC, right?

01:01:39.960 - 01:01:55.600

And AIPAC's actually numerically kind of small in comparison. And I think when we focus on that, we actually don't see the Western sort of imperial connection to Israel, that there really is a financial military connection there. And it's coming from Western corporations too. And we kind of like abdicate our

01:01:55.760 - 01:02:14.320

country's actual role in this. And we can actually kind of accede to a Tucker Carlson idea that the problem is that Israel has captured our foreign policy, which really is sort of a conspiratorial way of understanding it. Rather that Israel is a part of a larger kind of Western empire. Tucker Carlson in general.

01:02:14.720 - 01:02:36.400

I think it's interesting to watch some of the interviews, and I have watched them all because I I abuse myself like that. And the reality is that he actually says very little that would be familiar to any anti-Zionist person that's involved in organizing or anything. So for example, when he's interviewing Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee there recently, he spent 25 minutes on Epstein conspiracy theories.

01:02:36.800 - 01:02:54.240

He went on for 10 minutes about how Israel funds abortions. He called it the global center of drag queen story hour. This has nothing to do with anything that we're talking about. And he intersperses occasionally very, very sympathetic stories, usually that he's able to kind of pull out for like small clips.

01:02:54.600 - 01:03:22.800

And so what he's actually offering is sort of a American first, like Ben said, model of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to rally up the troops and to create an isolation in its foreign policy. It has nothing even in close concert with the kind of politics we're offering. I think why people like it and find it cathartic is that Western journalists don't press pro-Israel politicians, and they don't press Israeli officials. And so when you see someone who's doing it, no matter how deranged it actually is, it does feel like it's actually accomplished something.

01:03:23.200 - 01:03:53.600

if you were to go, for example, to the website of someone like David Duke today, the former Klan leader, what it says, usually on the top of it, is that he is a critic of the Israel lobby and an anti-Zionist. That doesn't make him have anything that even is remotely sort of commiserate with our politics, right? He comes at it because he believes there's a global Jewish conspiracy that's oppressing white people and the, you know, the flagship of that just happens to be in Israel. And so I think it's important for us to actually construct that sort of criticism of Israel that comes from a universal politic.

01:03:53.760 - 01:04:08.800

What are we there for? Because we want to actually freedom from oppression. We don't want to kind of switch them around and create kind of this American first nationalist politic that they believe or offer is going to somehow keep us safer. All right, final questions of the night.

01:04:08.840 - 01:04:23.440

I'm grouping 2 again, but these should be hopefully not too complicated. What is your favorite thing about being Jewish? And what is your favorite thing about this book? Shabbat.

01:04:26.320 - 01:04:36.440

I became a lot more reservant as we were writing the book. And Jewish tradition is something I take very, very seriously. I have chevruta.

01:04:36.560 - 01:04:55.440

We read Hasidic philosophy every week. I spend a deep amount of time with it. And it's sort of a journey into an ancient tradition that has thousands of years of learning around it and offers an entire different way of living and seeing the world. And so having access to something is something that sort of like splits your soul and allows you to evolve and change.

01:04:55.480 - 01:05:09.760

And that's something I hold very, very close. My favorite thing about the book is that it's very Jewish. That's my favorite thing about the book. Which is why I feel really grateful to have written it with Ben, because we were able to really inject it into there in a way I don't think I could have done on my own.

01:05:10.680 - 01:05:24.080

And so I feel we're lucky. Yeah. I think the first thing that came to mind when you asked that question was dialogue with ancestors. I just, I mean, there's

01:05:26.000 - 01:06:07.880

I haven't studied that much Talmud, but the Talmud, a book of Jewish teachings from the early centuries of the Common Era, is basically like a dialogue over the centuries with rabbis who are commenting on the opinions of rabbis who lived 300 years before then. And then there's another layer of the page of rabbis who are commenting on that commentary, and so on and so on. And there's a way in which, when you learn Jewish teachings, just as you would for any other faith, you're kind of... engage in this dialogue with those who came before you, and you're kind of building on this wisdom.

01:06:09.040 - 01:06:44.960

And so many of Jewish rituals, like when you light Hanukkah candles, part of the prayer that you say is kind of like the light from those days also shines in this time. So it's being part of the lineage and part of a story. either you were born Jewish or become Jewish later in life, that connects you with generations of people who were doing the same thing on that night, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, and so on. So I think that connection is really powerful.

01:06:46.240 - 01:07:31.840

And I guess the book, like, I kind of, I don't always, like reading things I've worked on, after they come into the world, it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like a, I don't know, it's like a thing, but it's really nice to just, it's kind of like, you know, a child, like it grows up and it goes into the world and then you see what it does and it transcends you, it has a life of its own. And so to see the way that people have dialogued with it and used it and criticized it and just the way that it has a life, beyond the time that we were working on it is really powerful to see it out there in the world, even though I'm sometimes afraid to look at it.

01:07:32.480 - 01:07:51.160

It's cool to see it out there doing its thing. Thank you. I want to, okay, I want to thank you all. Sean is going to close us, but I want to thank you all very deeply because you taught all of us tonight and you gave us tools and resources and

01:07:52.040 - 01:08:08.480

And we're able to do this in conversation together. And I hope that when we leave here, that we can keep doing that, right? And so just a lot of gratitude, if we can offer them gratitude for your book and for your time and knowledge. Thank you so much.

01:08:14.370 - 01:08:30.800

Yes, one more time, if you could give me a kindness, if we can thank both Ben and Shane, as well as Crystal and Abby, for a wonderful panel and discussion this evening. Thank you all so very much. I will be brief. A couple of housekeeping rules.

01:08:30.800 - 01:08:41.440

One, when you get ready to part this place, please make sure you take all of your belongings. The doors downstairs have locked. They lock at 8 P.m. So you're more than welcome to come back in, but just know you can't get in.

01:08:41.440 - 01:09:00.720

The doors are locked. So, all right. That being said, let me say two things, and by two, I mean really five, but I'll be quick. Our hope from tonight is that when you've learned something new, that's a true hope of ours, but I would add to that, not just in learning something new, we also would invite you to meet someone new before you go.

01:09:01.040 - 01:09:13.680

If this is your first time stepping into a space like this or taking the risk and the courage to be in a space to have this type of an interreligious dialogue. We invite you to meet someone new before you go, and then finally to do something new. What will you do with the information that you gather?

01:09:13.680 - 01:09:22.160

Don't just take it and learn something from it. Make sure that you apply it, that it changes how you live. And if you're curious about that, this is a seminary. This is an academic institution.

01:09:22.160 - 01:09:30.040

I will give you two pieces of advice, and this panel modeled it for us perfectly. You can begin with terms. Start with the definition of terms. That's huge.

01:09:30.040 - 01:09:41.440

Miscommunication happens because we use the same words where we have different definitions. Begin with the terms, just as this panel modeled for us. That's going to be similar and most, important. Second, check your sources.

01:09:41.520 - 01:09:53.600

It's the exact same thing this panel did for us. If you're curious and you don't know where to start, anywhere. Pick a book, look at the author, look at their lived experience and their perspective that they're coming from. That can help shape you tremendously.

01:09:53.840 - 01:10:02.240

Don't let this conversation end here tonight. Make sure that it carries forward. And a great way also is to make sure you purchase this book as well. So thank you all for coming and joining us this evening.

01:10:02.240 - 01:10:08.240

We hope you have a wonderful evening. Take care, and we'll see you hopefully at the next event here at Austin Seminary. Have a wonderful evening, everyone. Thank you.