Rabbi Meir Soloveichik On Exceptional Jewish Leadership

>> Andrew Roberts: My guest today is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, the rabbi of the Congregation Shearith in New York, and author of Providence and Power, Ten Portraits of Jewish Statesmanship. Solly, you come from a great and ancient dynasty of rabbis, and you were educated at Yeshiva College in New York, who taught you history?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Well, of course, some of the figures about which I write, the biblical figures, are ones that are part of the essential aspect of Jewish life. For us, these figures are living. You were kind enough to mention my family. There's a famous story told about my great uncle, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, one of the most prominent rabbis in America.

And they came over to him and asked him his thoughts on the 800th anniversary of the passing of Maimonides. And his immediate response was, this is the first time I'm hearing that Maimonides is not alive,

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Because for us, these figures truly do live. As I note in the book, the traditional Jewish saying about King David is, in Hebrew, David Melech Yisra'el Chayv ekayam, King David lives and endures.

And so for the more ancient figures, the scriptural figures about whom I write, these are figures that, with whose stories we grow up, we read these stories in the Bible. We study them, we discuss them, we debate them. And, of course, I've been doing that for decades. It's just part of what it means to be a traditional jew when it comes to the question of modern statesmanship, however, there, I think this began as a teenager.

And the seminal influence, now that you ask, it was really my grandmother, my grandmother, who was actually a high school teacher of Tanakh, of hebrew scripture, but was also a very dedicated zionist and spoke often about it. And in her home, the home of my grandmother and my grandfather, I found several different books about the history of modern Israel, and I began to read them.

And especially the memoir of Menachem, begin the revolt, the figure with whom I conclude the book, which is a book that really changed my life and inspired me to think about the nature of leadership. And that took me, I think, into an obsession with reading more even than history, biography of great leaders, which is, of course, why I so enjoyed reading your masterful biographies.

And I think that's how we first met. And my doctoral work is not in history, it's in theology, it's in religion. I did my doctorate in Princeton on Jewish theology, on modern Jewish and Christian thought, really, or philosophy of religion. And it was working for the Tikva Fund that I began to think about what would it mean to combine these disciplines to study as a theologian, the craft of statesmanship.

In Yeshiva University, I taught courses bridging political thought and religious thoughts, courses like biblical ideas and American democracy, where we read American texts about government side by side with traditional Jewish texts about government. But I began to think about what would it mean to actually describe and diagram from a theological perspective, from a biblical perspective, the task of statesmanship.

And that was the birth of this book.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, Providence and Power, Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship. You ask about the nature of statecraft in this book. And, of course, one question that you yourself pose, and which is a key one, is, how is jewish statesmanship different from any other kind of statesmanship?

And you have five threads, you call them, but essentially five answers to this question, and I wonder if we could go through them one by one. You mentioned King David earlier, and the first of the threads is the balance between majesty and humility. You also obviously talk about Esther and another great Jewish queen whose name I'm going to destroy.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Shlomtzion.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you, Shlomtzion. Thank you. Tell us about this interesting sense of the way in which she partnered with rabbinic leadership. But David was quite assertive and even aggressive, and Esther had her own ways of following statesmanship. Talk to us a bit about that first thread.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So when we speak about what I call the balance of humility and Majesty, this is actually inspired, Andrew, by something you once said to me. This is when I had the privilege of hosting you in my synagogue in a conversation about your Churchill biography. And Churchill is, of course, the greatest statesman of the 20th century and a hero of mine.

But I don't think anyone would call him humble. I don't think you call him humble,

>> Andrew Roberts: Absolutely, not me.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I don't think that ever comes up. And I think I asked you in this conversation whether one could name a single great European statesman that manifested humility. And I don't know that we came up with one in that discussion.

And the question, of course, is, what does it mean for a great statesman to make humility manifest? And the answer that I give is that a truly great statesman from a biblical perspective must embody the initiative and the brilliance. Or, to use the phrase from Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, the political judgment that reflects statesmanship as more of an art than a science, the singular brilliance with which the statesman is blessed.

And yet, at the same time, the biblical statesman, or the statesman operating from biblical perspective, is supposed to feel that he or she is operating within a larger providential plan that is beyond his or her full understanding. That at the same time, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in one's philosophy.

And with David, of course, what we find is, and this is true about Esther as well, what we find are examples of political figures that act with cunning and exemplify statesmanship as an art, but also feel that at the same time they are operating within a larger plan that they cannot fully comprehend.

If you read the Psalms, it's not clear when David is describing actions that he himself chose and when he's describing himself as almost a pawn in God's providential plan. When I was asked originally, when we were conceiving of the book, I was asked by the publishers by encounter, if I would suggest a photograph for the cover.

In the end, we didn't go with the photograph, but there's a photograph taken of Menachem Begin at Camp David playing chess with Zbigniew Brzezinski, just to take a break.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I think, hilariously, it was assumed that Begin and Brzezinski would have a lot in common because they were both from Poland, which is.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And I think it was Menachem Begin's chief of staff that quipped the In the end, they were poles apart but,

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Of course, the photograph stands out because chess we often use metaphors from chess to describe diplomacy, to describe statesmanship. And as I argue in the book, a true statesman must from the biblical perspective, simultaneously plays three dimensional chess while feeling himself or herself pawn in God's heavenly hand.

And this is singular to biblical statesmanship, though I think the one statesman outside Jewish history that truly embodied this. A combination of both brilliant, bold, independent action and the humility that I described, was Lincoln. Which is why my one disagreement with you, Andrew, would be to cite Lincoln rather than Napoleon as the greatest statesman of the 19th century.

Because, again, I don't think even you would say, I don't think Napoleon embodied humility either of his.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, certainly not. No, do you think Esther considered herself to be a pawn of God's?

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, because at the turning point in the book, the turning point in the book comes in the book of Esther, is where Mordechai, when the decree against the Jews is.

The decree of genocide, is declared, Mordecai comes to her and says, what you need to do is to go into the king's throne room and weep and wail and ask for mercy. And Esther does two things in that moment. First, she rejects Mordecai's plan and comes up with her own and that plan because she senses that just as if she had been Stalin's wife and came into Stalin and said.

I've been hiding my identity from you the whole time I'm actually a jew, and I've been fooling you to this moment. It would have just ended with her certain death. And instead she needed to play on his paranoia within the reality of the court in order to allow for her people to triumph.

And yet at the same time, what she says to Mordechai is, gather all the Jews in the capital. Let them fast for me and pray for me, because I really feel that even as I act ill, only act after a three day fast and after three days of prayer, because I feel myself in God's hand at this very moment.

And so what you don't see is sort of the what Churchill writes the night he becomes prime minister, that he slept soundly because he was just happy to be in control. That's singular to Churchill's greatness and I don't take away from it, but it's not something that you find with true models of biblical statesmanship in the same way.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: I'm glad you mentioned that you were the rabbi of the congregation, sheriff in New York City, because it's the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. And that just the sheer history of that, your wonderful synagogue, it exudes history in every brick. How do you feel that that might affect your job, working in a place that is just so historic?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes. Constantly Andrew, I'll remind you that when I gave you a tour of the synagogue. And so I was telling you how the story was bound up with the story of the arrival of Jews in New Amsterdam in 1654 and then, of course, the American revolution. I mentioned to you that while most of the synagogue were supporters of the revolution, there were a couple, very few members that were Tories.

And that their families were still in the synagogue, but they had hidden it. And then I told you that I had exposed their shame, and you quickly responded and said, it's not shame, they were great patriots.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I tell that story to this day. But of course, Andrew, the truth is, while there may be communities and synagogues in Europe that stretch back further than 1654, nothing in the United States comes close.

And our members of our congregation interacted with Washington. Members of our congregation had to decide what to do when they were celebrating on Passover and they suddenly heard that Lincoln was assassinated. I walked into my office one of my first days on the job. And I found on the shelf that had been left was an elegy that the congregation had composed following the death of William Henry Harrison a month after being sworn as president.

Today, no one thinks of William Henry Harrison, but at the time, when you look at it through their eyes, this was terrible, because it was the first time a president had ever died in office. No one knew exactly what the status of the vice president was. No one knew what a transition, what sort of transition would take place.

And so the entire history of American Judaism, as seen through my synagogue, is the story of American history itself. And of course, for me, who's so fascinated with history and such a loyal devotee of the story of the American idea, it's quite marvelous. And it figures in so much of what I do and say in the synagogue and outside of it.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Onto the second of the threads that emerge about how Jewish statesmanship differs. There's a central paradox, isn't there, that for 2000 years there's been no state to enact this statesmanship? Talk to us about the nature of Jewish nationhood and its protection and what, what some of these ten statesmen did to ensure that.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So the reason why I think that there's been so little study of Jewish statesmanship, the reason why and this is part of my motivation in writing this book. That there is no a jewish version or judaic version of Plutarch's lives, for example. Is in part because, It's often assumed that there can be no Jewish statesmanship for 2000 years of Jewish history because the jewish people did not have a state.

But of course, a genuine statesmanship can involve, on the one hand, utilizing the levers of power or military might. But statesmanship can also be can also involve representing one's people, even if one does not have the force of military threat. By engaging courts of other nations and acting with a deep knowledge of those other nations self interest while seeking the well being of one's own people.

So, for example, if it's not too sensitive to bring up Andrew, when Benjamin Franklin went to Paris after the revolution and sought an alliance with France militarily. Of course, Franklin was not representing the United States as a military power, as a threat to France at that time. He was representing a nation that, of course, Britain didn't at the time recognize as an independent nation at all.

And yet, what he was seeking to do was to act with a deep knowledge of France's understanding of its self interest, to bring it into the war. And thereby to benefit the nascent nation that was the United States. And no one would say that because Franklin was not acting from a position of power toward France, that what Franklin was engaging in was not statesmanship.

It was statesmanship at the highest level. Without it that's for you to say, but I don't know if there would have been a Yorktown without the Franklin statesmanship in Paris. Those break my heart.

>> Andrew Roberts: Don't break my heart.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, but, but in a similar sense, we can find statesmanship such as this.

When, to give one example from one of my chapters, Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi from the Portuguese community in Amsterdam who had been writing Judaic books in Latin or Spanish. And had been corresponding in these languages with figures throughout the world and had already become well-known as a public figure outside his Jewish community.

Suddenly seizes the moment when Cromwell is leading England with a deep understanding of the theology at the heart of Cromwell's worldview and travels to England and petitions Cromwell to allow the Jews back to England in 1656, after they'd been expelled since 1290. This is statesmanship at the highest level, of course, just because he doesn't represent the state, doesn't take away from the fact that he's representing a people that still considered itself a people.

Indeed, it was his community that excommunicated Spinoza, for, in part, among other things, having the audacity to assert that Jewish peoplehood had ended after the expulsion from Jerusalem. And so in the faith that the Jewish people were still a nation, he came to Cromwell and, operating from a deep understanding of Cromwell's own motivations, sought for the Jewish people to be allowed back into England.

And I think that you can draw a line from the origins of that community to the Balfour declaration hundreds of years later.

>> Andrew Roberts: Sorry, can we go 150 years before that, also with-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Sure, of course.

>> Andrew Roberts: Isaac Abravanel?

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Isaac Abravanel, yes.

>> Andrew Roberts: And tell us about how he did try to do much the same thing with Ferdinand and Isabella.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, of course. Abravanel is, I think, an inspiration to Menasseh ben Israel. It's no coincidence that some of the great examples of these forms of statesmanship have come from within the Sephardic community, from Spanish Jewry. And of course, by the time Menasseh ben Israel was acting, Abarbanel, or Abravanel, as he's also known, was a legend.

The tragedy of Abravanel's story is that whereas Menasseh ben Israel succeeded, though he didn't fully understand that he had succeeded, Abravanel failed. Abravanel is almost the mirror image of many of these other stories, because if you read his memoirs which he gives us within his commentary on scripture.

This was a man who had worked within two very different courts, both Portugal and Spain, who had served the Duke of Braganza in Spain and then had to flee from the new king that had opposed the nobility for whom he worked. Then ended up in Spain, only to enter the court of Ferdinand and Isabella.

And when the declaration of expulsion came down, he believed that if he had been expelled from Portugal, to end up in Spain, it must surely be because God had set him up to be a second Esther. That providence had placed him in this position of power and influence to save his people.

And so, of course, in the end, the tragedy is that he did not succeed. And yet, when given the choice of remaining in Spain and converting or go into exile with his people, he chose to leave. And that, in turn, inspired his people to remain a people, so that successors such as Menasseh could ultimately emerge with success.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: If we go back even further to Roman times, tell us about how JYohanan ben Zakkai.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, Yohanan ben Zakkai.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, thank you, prepared Israel for a national future.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So Yohanan ben Zakkai is the mirror image of Josephus. Josephus, of course, is known as one of the very few survivors of Yotvat, which he defended originally against the Romans.

And he essentially surrendered to the Romans and then reported on the rest of the war from the Roman side. Yohanan ben Zakkai, in contrast, also fled a doomed Jerusalem right before it fell, but received permission from the Romans for both the political leadership of rabbinic Judaism to remain intact.

At that point, the Jews were led by a rabbi that was descending from the house of David. So rather than seize leadership himself, he retained the Davidic dynasty, but he also established an academy in Yavneh, in the Holy Land, so that rabbinic Judaism could endure. And he set up a number of ordinances that both remembered Jerusalem in ritual and allowed Jews to retain the hope and the faith that one day Jews would return to Jerusalem.

Perhaps the once most famous British historian, but not nearly one that I like as much as you, Andrew, Toynbee famously described Yohanan ben Zakkai as creating a fossilized form of Judaism. And as I argue in the book, drawing on the arguments of those who have come before, including the late, great Irish Israeli diplomat Yaakov Herzog, who famously debated Toynbee in Canada.

What Yohanan Zakkai created was anything other than a fossilized form of Judaism. He helped a nation to live and to endure so that even as many secular Zionists gave no credit to Yohanan ben Zakkai in describing the statesmen that brought modern Zionism about. In the end, as I put it in a title of an essay in mine and commentary, we have to recognize what Zionist o Yavnez.

Ultimately, there is a line to be drawn between Yohanan ben Zakkai and the birth of the modern Jewish state.

>> Andrew Roberts: And that brings us on to the third nicely, brings us on directly to the third of the threads, which is this concept of keeping alive the dream of sovereignty.

So you mentioned earlier the Balfour Declaration, which of course Louis Brandeis was key in promoting after November 1917. Tell us about him and also Theodore Herzl and the importance of these two in keeping the dream alive.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, so Herzl and Brandeis are in the book and in a certain sense to play a very different role because these are two leaders that came from a background of very, very little Judaism.

Brandeis never observed Yom Kippur, and I think he and his brother would send to each other Christmas hams around Christmas time, which is maybe the least Jewish presence you could say.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Theodore Herzl, after he was already planning all of his activism regarding the Jewish state, was visited by the chief rabbi of Vienna.

And the chief rabbi, originally excited about Herzl's project, found to his shock that Herzl had a Christmas tree in his home in Vienna. So they came from very, very little Jewish background at all, in a certain sense, and we can talk about this separately, if you like, Andrew.

But they are very different than another figure that I discuss, who also, it would seem, comes with very little Jewish background, and that is Benjamin Disraeli.

>> Andrew Roberts: We'll be coming on to him in a minute.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Because, of course, Disraeli always retains a certain memory of his Jewish background.

These two come from nothing. And yet their stories, the case I make is that they operated both with a deep understanding of the potential of politics to achieve their goals, especially Herzl, who was not the first Zionist, but was the first to truly understand that if Zionism. Truly wished to achieve its goals, it needed to create statesmen, it needed to create biblical, it needed to create political bodies like the Zionist Congress.

So that he or Chaim Weizmann could go in the court of kings and popes and the offices of prime ministers and foreign ministers and act as if they represented a political entity. And yet their story is so unlikely, Andrew, so unlikely that it is, I think, one of the greatest arguments for Providence in our time.

The story of Theodor Herzl makes no sense, he comes out of nowhere. He writes a pamphlet that changes the Jewish world at the end of the 19th century. He gives them the political body that is necessary to achieve their aim. And then he dies in 1904, right, after appearing on the scene, sitting in Basel, right after the Congress, he writes in his hotel room.

And Basel created the Jewish state. No one will see it now, but perhaps in five years, perhaps in 50 years, everyone will see it. And the state of Israel came into being essentially exactly 50 years after he wrote those words. Louis Brandeis was actually in favor of total Jewish assimilation as a prominent Jewish attorney in America.

And it was only through an offhand conversation with a former secretary of Herzl that he was drawn into the Zionist movement, which placed him in a position as a supreme court justice to work with Balfour to lobby Wilson to support what ultimately became the Balfour declaration. This is not a usual, this is not a usual story.

I'd love your thoughts about this, Andrew. When Neil Ferguson came out with his biography of Churchill, of Kissinger, I'm sorry. I asked him, I said, is there some way of looking at this that had Kissinger not gone to serve in World War II and not met this mysterious man who mentored him about foreign affairs?

Is it possibility that he'd just be a modernization orthodox Jewish accountant living in Washington Heights, in New York, where he grew up? And what Ferguson said to me is that when you write sweeping history, you tend to write history as if one event leads to the other. When you write biography of an individual, you realize the seeming contingency in almost every event that had this not happened, this not happened, their whole lives were different than the world might have been different.

I wonder what you think about that.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, and also, of course, it's not just those two. It's also the connection between Chaim Weizmann and Balfour and the way in which the first World War was going at that time, and things that were happening in five different countries, essentially all coming together to this extraordinary point of history, which.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So much contingency.

>> Andrew Roberts: As Shakespeare says in Troilus and Cressida, untune one string and hark what discord follows. And with the Balfour Declaration, any one string, if it was untuned, could have let the whole thing.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Exactly, and Herbert Samuel's wife was friends with the wife of the spiritual leader of the Sephardic community in London, one of the Zionist leaders, Moses Gaster.

And it was they that met Mark Sykes. I mean, there's so much going on here. And if it all comes down to then this man in Washington who meets Balfour, who as late as 1905 was essentially arguing that American Jews should lose all of their public Jewishness and suddenly by 1915 is lobbying on behalf of a future Jewish state.

The events are so seemingly unlikely that, at least for me as a rabbi, they make the greatest case for the union of providence and power. And that's why I seek to both learn the lessons of power from their lives, but also writing as a rabbi and theologian to make the case for providence as well.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Which brings us on to the neatly, to the fourth of the threads, which is the ability of Jewish leaders to cultivate pride in Jewish faith in the face of anti Semitism, which I think now means that we can start talking about Disraeli and Benjamin Disraeli. First of all, how Jewish was he?

He was Jewish up to the age of 12, but then he was baptized into the Anglican faith. And yet even in 1847, when he writes Tancred about Jewish return, he never feels any need, even in a world dominated by aristocratic Victorian anti Semitism, to apologize for his Jewishness.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And of course, I know you're working on Disraeli right now, Andrew. That's okay to say.

>> Andrew Roberts: I'm hoping to.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, and I can't say how excited that possibility makes me. I mean, this to me would be obviously to me would be the most exciting and as sensitive as it might have been to host you in my revolutionary synagogue to speak about George III,

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I think to speak about Benjamin Disraeli we'll make that happen immediately.

>> Andrew Roberts: But tell us about how Dera she was, what do you think?

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So I think what can be said about Disraeli is the following. The most striking aspect of Disraeli's life, I think the most striking aspect of his life, and yet not focused on to a great extent in the histories of Disraeli or the biographies that have been written to this point, is the way in which Disraeli put his Jewishness and his Jewish descent at the heart of his public Persona.

So you cite, Andrew, in your Churchill biography fascinating line that, Churchill puts in that strange and entrancing letter that he writes about the dream he has about a conversation with his father. And Churchill describes his father saying to him, as Churchill describes what has transpired. And in the dream that Churchill describes, Churchill's father says, Disraeli predicted all this.

And then in the dream he says to Churchill, Disy saw all this, that old Jew, he saw the future. And the fact that Churchill himself has his father in his dream describing Disraeli as that old Jew.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, it was a phrase of Bismarcks, wasn't it, from the Congress of Berlin?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, absolutely. Well, that's what the Bismarcks was to alter Judah Eris Dermain, that old Jew, he is the man, right, which I cite at the beginning. And of course, what that means is by taking that famous. And I actually cite that line from Bismarck in my in my first chapter.

But the fact that Churchill is citing this in describing his prescience, not just his statesmanship, but his prescience, his awareness of what was to come. That, I think, is what captures what Disraeli did with his jewishness, because my argument is, and this is at the heart of Tancred as well, what Disraeli is doing as a public jew, is two things.

The first is more strategic. I cite Andrew Kirsch's wonderful little book about Disraeli. And what he says is that Disraeli takes what could be his greatest political liability, his Jewishness, and makes it the heart of his political mystique. Adam calls this an act of jiu jitsu, using your seemingly weakest aspect as your strength.

So that's strategic. But of course, I would not think that it would be strategic when you're still a politician on the make, to write a novel like Tancred about how important the jews are to the world. It's such a strange novel to write in general, and especially if you want to succeed in politics.

And what Disraeli essentially argues in this novel, much as he famously argued during the debate about allowing Jews into parliament, is that the Christian west owes its moral tradition to the Torah, to Sinai. That's the argument he makes in Tancred. And for all the seeming progress in the world during the period of the industrial revolution, if the west forgets what it learned from the jews, then technology and progress will actually not involve progress at all, but it will actually produce the most terrible destruction.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: And that's very much-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And the loss of-

>> Andrew Roberts: What Churchill felt, of course, wasn't it?

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And the loss-

>> Andrew Roberts: He says that.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Very much so. You have in your book, Andrew, an amazing, you remind me of it, but it was published in the 30s, right after he wrote that essay about Moses' leadership.

Churchill wrote this prediction about 50 years hence or something like that. And he describes Zoom. Right, he describes how-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: We'll be able to participate in meetings.

>> Andrew Roberts: And the nuclear bomb.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Nuclear bomb.

>> Andrew Roberts: Exactly.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And then he says something like, and with all this technology, the modern man, I think this is his phrase, the modern man can do the most terrible things and the modern woman will support him.

That's Churchill's. And if you contrast Disraeli to the optimistic speeches being given at that time about progress. So for example, the speech given by Prince Albert at the Crystal Palace about the brotherhood of man, that now there are trains and we're achieving the connection of brotherhood. And you see how Albert foresees a brotherhood of man in countries all effectively ruled by his descendants.

And then yo-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Compare that to the great warnings of Churchill, one where he says in parliament, totally against self interest. Where is your Christianity, if not for their Judaism? And then the depiction in tancred of the son of a duke standing on Mount Sinai, hearing a vision that he has to go back and tell the west that only with Sinai can the west truly progress.

That's pretty Jewish.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, no, it certainly is.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And so-

>> Andrew Roberts: He's much more than an honoree, isn't he?

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And so there's so much that we can still wonder at. Did Disraeli deliberately, as some suggest, deliberately marry an older woman who was not jewish, but also beyond childbearing age, so he would not have to face the possibility of raising non jewish children with the Disraeli name?

Did he really mean it when he supposedly described himself as the blank page between Jewish and Christian scripture in the Bible? All these will remain a bit of a mystery.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, they won't cuz it's all going to be explained in my book.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Excellent.

>> Andrew Roberts: So you're not to worry about any of that.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Well, you heard it here first, and I can't wait-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: For it to be explained in congregation share with Israel. But about the jewishness of Disraeli and the way he used his jewishness in his public political Persona. About that, with the exception in the 19th century of Moses Montefiore, it's hard to think of someone in the english speaking world.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: George Eliot writes Romola, doesn't she? Which is one book that's a bit like Tancred, in a way.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Which book, I didn't hear, I'm sorry.

>> Andrew Roberts: George Eliot.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: George Eliot, yes. George Eliot, of course. But was not writing from a perspective of statesmanship? Absolutely.

>> Andrew Roberts: No.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And without Tancred, I don't know, would there have been a Daniel Deronda without a Tancred? That's an interesting question in its own right.

>> Andrew Roberts: Can we move on now to the fifth and last of the threads, which is about connecting the jewish past to its present and future?

The work done by David Ben Gurion, obviously, in his politics, but also in his lectures and with his correspondence. And by Menachem Begin with his concept of David's city and the Israeli people in the 20th century being like the Maccabees. So how important is this concept of connection to the past, which is really the central feature?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So this is central. And this goes back to what I mentioned to you about for us, for Jews, biblical figures are not dead. My great uncle Yosef Soloveitchik described the Jewish approach to time as embodying what he called a unitive time consciousness. Tonight, Andrew, as we're recording this, tonight I am going to go to synagogue, and we're going to turn out the lights and mourn.

Tonight is the ninth of Av, Tisha B'Av, and I'm going to mourn the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem that occurred at the hands of Rome in 70 CE and many hundreds of years before that at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar.

>> Andrew Roberts: Wow.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: What other people mourns events that occurred 2000 years ago and more than 2000 years ago?

And yet, Andrew, and you can go online and find this. When Menachem begin, elected as prime minister, came to meet with President Carter, he went in the evening of that very same. He came in the summer, he met at the White House with Carter. And then he came to New York.

And the night of the 9th of Av, just like tonight, he went to synagogue. And that synagogue, they sat on the floor. So you have the prime minister of Israel sitting on the floor and mourning for the Jerusalem. Here you have a man who leads a united Jerusalem, and he's mourning for the destroyer of Jerusalem.

And then the next morning, he goes on Meet the Press. And the reporter begins by reminding him, and this is extraordinary, that the last time he had been on Meet the Press was in 1948 and that one of the people on the panel had been there in 1948.

The journalist, when they interviewed him then, he was this figure that led a very small fragment of the israeli populace and someone that Ben Gurion hated fiercely. And now he was being interviewed as the prime minister of Israel. So if ever there was a moment to celebrate his achievement, it was this.

And so they asked him about his conversation with Carter, and instead of focusing on himself, he said something like, well, first let me explain what today is. And he says, today is in the Jewish calendar, the 9th of Av, when in the year 70 CE, the Roman legions.

And then he gives the number the fifth and the 12th. The Roman legions the fifth and the 12th destroyed Jerusalem. And he says, and since then we were in exile until we returned. And then he effectively says, and my job for my duty is to prevent the destruction from happening again.

And I bear that in mind. It's hard to think of any statesman from any other country speaking like that. I assume you're familiar with the movie Patton.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, of course. Which I love.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Which I love. And it was actually Nixon's favorite movie, I've since learned. But there's a wonderful scene at the beginning where Patton is traveling with Bradley in Morocco, and they pass one of the sites of the battle from, I think, the Punic Wars or something like that.

And Patton says, George C Scott says, pull over, pull over. And they pull over. And he says something like, it was here, Brad. It was here. The Carthaginians fought valiantly, but the Romans were too strong. And Bradley is looking at him like he's meshuggah. Who talks this way?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: But for Jews, it's quite natural. And yet very few statesmen speak of David or the Maccabees or the destruction of Jerusalem as if it happened quite recently. How far back, Andrew, did even Churchill, who was the ultimate historian statesman, how far back did his frequent historical references reach?

I think is an interesting question.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, we're talking Agincourt, really. He did write about Alfred and the cakes and about William the Conqueror, but his regular references were-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: As far back as Agincourt. And that's really the furthest.

>> Andrew Roberts: The Middle Ages onwards, yes. Certainly not thousands of years.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: For Judaism, that's very recent.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: The battle of Agincourt. And, of course, one of the striking things about Disraeli is that Disraeli understood this unique aspect. One of the most incredible scenes in Tancred is he depicts a celebration of Sukkot, what was originally the biblical harvest festival, and that Jews throughout the centuries, built harvest huts that they would sit in.

And he describes Jews creating these huts in the slums of the city of London, which, of course, to the passersby seems ridiculous. Sukkot in October in London is not a beautiful harvest festival, it's rainy and it's wet. Who would sit outside?

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And he describes the anti-semitic cracks of people in London walking by, making fun of this harvest festival, that they're remembering the vintage of the ancient land of Israel.

And then Disraeli, he writes something like a people that refuses to forget its vintage will one day reclaim its vintage. Thats what he writes when was Tancred published,1850s?

>> Andrew Roberts: 1847.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: 1847 he writes this before Daniel Deronda, before the Jewish state. And he understood that a people that saw its ancient past as if it were yesterday had a bond with its land that was unlike any other.

If this is at the essence of Jewish life itself, how can it not be at the essence of decisions that Jewish statesmen make? And I'm working now on, and I hope to run this in the future on the Begin, Sadat friendship, and relationship.

>> Andrew Roberts: That's amazing.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And there are moments in the negotiations that my sense is that when Begin would make references about Jerusalem to Carter about thousands of years ago, I think Carter thought he was crazy.

And I think this is something that Sadat perhaps understood more about Begin than Carter. Because when Begin would speak about what Jerusalem meant to the Jewish people, he was operating on a timeline that I think Jimmy Carter just couldnt understand. But its so central to what truly excellent Jewish statesmanship is all about.

And, of course, you're asking, not only do I remember as a Jewish statesman what happened thousands of years ago, but if I represent an eternal people, you're asking, how will my decision be remembered thousands of years from now?

>> Andrew Roberts: Tell me, what book are you reading at the moment, Solly?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So, I've been re-reading two different books. One is Frisis by Henry Kissinger because this Yom Kippur marks the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. And so, I have two motivations. Obviously, as a Rabbi, I need sermon material. That's most important. Obviously, I need to have-

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Something to talk about.

But also, I would like, even as Israel will no doubt remember the Yom Kippur War and learn its lessons. I would like there to be an event in America by American Jewry, remembering Operation Nickelgrass, which was the airlift, where after some delay, Nixon famously just said, get those planes in the air.

And I think was probably the most important moment in the American Israel relationship. And I think it deserves to be remembered, and so I hope to remember it there.

>> Andrew Roberts: It's very interesting you should mention Yom Kippur because it's a very key moment in the book that I'm publishing with David Petraeus in October called Conflict.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Wow.

>> Andrew Roberts: It's called Conflict, and it's about the evolution of warfare, 1945 to Ukraine. And Yom Kippur is an absolutely central war to how war evolves from the Second World War era through to the kind of fighting we're seeing today.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Wonderful.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah. And what's the second book?

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: The second book I'm re-reading now is, and he came up, is Abigail Greene's amazing biography of Sir Moses Montefiore, which is, I think, is

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: An absolutely incredible book and-

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, we've had his descendant Simon C Bagmond's fury, the historian on this descendant

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Of his family, Montefiore himself didn't have of his family.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Exaactly.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And I assume a cousin of Abigail Green, who wrote the book, I'm assuming.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And he would be the most important political Jew of the 19th century were it not for the fact that Herzl sees the title in the 1890s. But I'm coming to think that he may have been the most impressive public Jew of the 19th century, though Herzl, in the end, wound up being more influential.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: But for a man who combined and was himself a true proto-Zionist or a father of the Zionist movement that Herzl then went down to bring into true existence, and a man, I hope it's okay for me to mention. Andrew, since I know, I assume you've gone through this procedure now, but a man who petitioned the Duke of Norfolk to put Jerusalem into his coat of arms,

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Which would be. And so I don't know, and so I will take this opportunity to wish you a congratulations on your ennoblement.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you very much.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I don't know the procedure for coats of arms is right now, but I just mentioned that this was something that he did.

And when he was knighted and when Queen Victoria said the words, arise, sir Moses, he was very proud to have both the British symbol of his coat of arms flying, but with the Hebrew words Jerusalem flying.

>> Andrew Roberts: That's magnificent.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Within the coat of arms as well.

>> Andrew Roberts: My coat of arms has got a quote from Churchill in Latin as the motto.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Wonderful.

>> Andrew Roberts: Now, what about your counterfactual, your favorite, what if. What's the one that amuses.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I'm very excited about this. When you told me in advance that we would have a counterfactual.

>> Andrew Roberts: I warned you about this one.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Because, yes, and I wanted to really do justice to my friendship with you, Andrew.

And so I wanted it to be a truly complex, historical counterfactual. I didn't want it to be just like, what if Churchill hadn't survived being hit on Fifth Avenue or what if the archbishop had survived, and of the-

>> Andrew Roberts: Archduke.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: The archduke, I'm sorry.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Sorry, my apologies.

So I've come up with one that I think is unite Jewish and British history and is sufficiently complex, and I'd love your thoughts on it. So here we go. So, during World War I, the British prime minister originally was Herbert Asquith, and his protégé in the cabinet was Edwin Montague, who was from a very prominent and actually a Zionist supporting family.

But he was a staunch anti Zionist and hated Zionism in all of its forms. Whereas in the cabinet, originally, the chief proponent of Zionism was his first cousin, Herbert Samuel, who was also originally in the cabinet. Now, both Herbert Asquith and Montague were obsessed with a woman by the name of Venetia Stanley.

And then but of course, Herbert Asquith was married, so couldn't.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, and I think 35 years older.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: The whole story is very creepy, but that's not part of the counterfactual right now.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Edwin Montague, after much persistence and pressuring, finally got Venetia Stanley to agree to marry him.

And this, by all accounts, led in part to the emotional breakdown of Asquith, which has been cited by historians as a part of his political downfall and the rise of Lord George and Balfour, who were, of course, tremendous proponents of the Jewish future in the holy land. And, of course, the chief anti Zionist had not only lost that his great mentor politically was no longer prime minister, but, of course, there's a great rift between the two of them because of what he had done in marrying Venetia Stanley.

This is what has been described, rightly, in some articles, as the love triangle that was linked to the Balfour declaration. And so my counterfactual is, if Venetia Stanley had not accepted the proposal of Edwin Montague, would there be a Jewish state today?

>> Andrew Roberts: Actually, it gets a bit weirder and darker.

Not darker, necessarily, but weirder. Except one obviously has to factor in the fact that these Edwardians had very different social mores, which was that when. Understatement. You can say that again. When he heard about Venetia Stanley getting married to Edwina Montague, the person who consoled Herbert Asquith was his wife, Margot, who hugged him as he cried on the sofa, and she consoled her husband about the loss of her husband's mistress.

So in England, as we say, it's not like the home life of our own dear queen.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Indeed, indeed,

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And as Edwin Montague then was given, I think, I don't know, something linked to India, I think was his.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, he became secretary for India and was packed off there.

 

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: And he wrote in his diary, as he heard of the Balfour declaration, he basically felt personally wounded by the Balfour declaration.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, and it certainly would never have happened on his watch.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Yes, and he writes that the British government has brought. This gets back to one of our part of discussion.

And he wrote in his diary, the British government has brought into being a people that does not exist.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: That was his life.

>> Andrew Roberts: What a monstrous thing for a Jew to write.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: So I gave it a lot of thought, I hope you approve of my.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, I do, very much.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I'm quite proud of it.

>> Andrew Roberts: I must admit, I've edited a book of counterfactuals years ago, and that's certainly one that I've never heard of before. There we go.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: That's a great tribute. Thank you, you've made my day.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Thank you.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Solly, thank you so much for coming on secrets of statecraft, I've really enjoyed it.

>> Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Thank you, it's such an honor to engage in this discussion with you. Thank you so much, Andrew.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you, Solly. Please tune in to the next episode of Secrets of Statecraft, when my guest will be Robert O'Brien, former national security adviser under Donald Trump.

 

>> Speaker 1: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.