My Jewish podcast is dedicated to Emet – Truth. According to family legend, I am descended from Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, who in the 16th century sculpted a statue of a man, a golem, from clay. When the rabbi carved the word, “emet,” (“truth”) on the forehead of his golem, it would come alive and protect the Jewish Quarter from anti-Semites.
Today, there has never been more of a need for “emet,” for “truth,” in an era of renewed peril for Jews around the world. I hope my Jewish podcast can help. The power of lies—about our history, our influence and power, our beliefs, our relationship with Israel, the legacy of the Holocaust—sometimes seems to overwhelm the truth. There is no magical golem, no superhero to protect us, but old great-great-granddad in Prague did get one thing right:
Emet – Truth, will always be our most powerful protector. Please enjoy my commentary, interviews, and analyses in this podcast.
In my recent podcast interview with Eyal Bitton on “Proudly Jewish: Conversations on Israel and Jewish Identity,” we explored rising antisemitism and strategies to combat it, a theme central to my upcoming book, From Outrage to Action: A Practical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. This book was successfully funded by Kickstarter backers. If you’re not already a paid subscriber to my Substack newsletter, now might be the time. I’m going to run exclusive book excerpts there. I really need to work on the way I do interviews. I’ll be doing more of them in the next few months as I have two books to promote. Note to self: Get a haircut, stop tilting your head, and stop squinting. Anyway, here are the key points we covered in the interview:
October 7th Massacre: We discussed the significance of this day, which marked a tragic massacre of Jews, the worst since the Holocaust, and my personal reflections on it.
Global Reaction to Antisemitism: The shocking worldwide response to the massacre, revealing a disturbing trend of support for the perpetrators.
Personal Connection to the Holocaust: My family history with the Holocaust and how it has influenced my perspective and work.
Rise of Antisemitism: Examination of the increase in antisemitic sentiments over the past decade, particularly around 2016, and its presence across the political spectrum.
Antisemitism as a “Disease of Opportunity:” Discussion on how antisemitism thrives on conspiracy theories and is not confined to any single political ideology.
Antisemitism and Israel: The complex relationship between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, including the misuse of criticisms as a veil for antisemitism.
Antisemitism in Education: The concerning rise of antisemitic rhetoric and actions in educational institutions, from high schools to universities.
Combating Antisemitism: Insights into effective strategies to fight antisemitism, which is the focus of my upcoming book, From Outrage to Action: A Practical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism.
In a recent article and accompanying podcast, I had the chance to explore the perplexing and deeply troubling “Jewish Space Laser” conspiracy theory. We laugh about it, but should we? I interviewed Mike Rothschild, author of Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. Our conversation aimed to shed light on how such theories often find their origin in antisemitism, particularly focusing on the Rothschild family as a recurring target.
“Almost all of these theories eventually connect back to the Jews, and the Rothschilds are seen as the ultimate Jews—the kings of the Jews. So it all coalesced for me into writing a book to figure out who this family is, and who they are not.” – Mike Rothschild
My guest on the Emet-Truth podcast is Hen Mazzig, a public speaker and advocate against antisemitism and for the Mizrahi community. His new book is called The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto, published by Wicked Son Books.
You might recognize Hen as somebody who is very active on social media or who has made the news more than a few times as the object of protest by anti-Zionists on college campuses. But Hen fights battles that go beyond the struggle against antisemitism. He has always been an advocate for visibility inside and outside the Jewish community. As a Mizrahi Jew, an Israeli, and a member of the LGBTQ community, Hen has pushed back against his status as what he calls “the wrong kind of Jew.”
In our interview, we talk about his family background, struggle for acceptance, and how he takes on all our preconceived notions about who he is. He hopes his book helps to educate Jews and non-Jews alike about the diversity within world Jewry and in Israel.
My podcast guest is Ben M. Freeman. He’s a Holocaust educator, activist, and author of two books: Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People and the soon-to-be released Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride.
Ben was born in Scotland and is an internationally known author, educator and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion specialist focusing on Jewish identity. He’s about to embark on a tour of North America to promote his latest book, so I am very happy I was able to speak to him for about a half-hour before he leaves. We discuss what he means by internalized Jew-hatred, his own experience as both a Jew and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and how to bring back a sense of Jewish Pride.
Ben-Dror Yemini is a journalist on a mission to report the facts. You’d think that would be a basic job description for any journalist, but when it comes to reporting on Israel, the search for the truth can often be a rare exception. Media bias against Israel, including the false claims of “apartheid” and other crimes against Palestinians, is deeply woven into the narrative consumed by most Americans—most glaringly in the New York Times, Yemini says.
Yemini is the first to admit that he has no magic formula to undo the damage caused by media bias—except to print the truth. No, he says, that does not necessarily mean printing only positive things about Israel. It means helping people formulate their opinions about what kind of society Israel is, faults and all, based on facts. If the facts were as well-known as the falsehoods, he says, then that would go a long way toward dispelling some misunderstandings that Israeli and diaspora Jews may have toward one another.
I recently spoke with Yemeni in advance of something called the Z3 Project on Israel-Diaspora relations. The California-based group asked me to interview him about the media landscape and how it impacts Israel-Diaspora relations. The first question I asked was whether he believes that information gap is so wide, right now that American Jews are starting to internalize some of the false claims about Israel.
A screenshot from my Zoom call with Natan Sharansky.
I interviewed former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky over on my Emet-Truth newsletter. To say that Sharansky has experience with antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism would be an extreme understatement. As a former Soviet “Prisoner of Zion,” he spent years under torturous conditions in the gulag. He knew that when Soviet leaders began to talk about Zionism, all Jews, Zionist or not, were in trouble. When he was finally released and immigrated to Israel, he was surprised to notice the same phenomenon. That’s when he came up with what he called his “3D test” of antisemitism. They are:
Delegitimization of Israel
Demonization of Israel
Double standards in judging Israel
Put them together, you can bet that what is billed as criticism of Israel is actually antisemitism. The 3Ds became the basis for widely accepted definitions of antisemitism. But the battle is still being fought, he says, not with other nations, but with Jews in America who are reluctant to be seen as equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
In this interview, Natan Sharansky and I discussed this dilemma and other areas where Israel and the Diaspora meet.
Me, in 1985, age 19, with more hair than I needed and wearing the keffiyeh given to me by my Palestinian friend.
In this scene of my memoir-in-progress, I learn an important lesson in college about perception and reality when it comes to Muslim-Jewish relations. And I’m introduced to the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. More on that in a bit. The year is 1985, and, as I say in this excerpt, I think I know everything, when in fact I know very little. This is typical for a person who is only nineteen years old and being exposed to many things for the first time in life.
This is the story of the beginning of many things in my life: An understanding of Arab perceptions, an intense friendship I had with a Palestinian woman, my own journey through the way others perceive Judaism, and the accidental beginning of my career in Jewish journalism. The passage at the end will make sense in context, I hope. A recurring theme in my book is also my struggles with OCD and how the comfort of Jewish ritual gave it a home.
From time to time on this blog, I’ll post various excerpts as I get closer to completing my book about my grandfather’s life in pre-Holocaust Hungary, and my own personal journey through Judaism.
I decided to narrate this short chapter to see if I had the stamina to, eventually, record my own audiobook. Turns out, I’m not sure. I decided to take this seven-minute snippet and add some music to the background to make my voice perhaps sound more appealing. But, then, everybody is critical of their own voices.
You can read more excerpts from my work-in-progress on my Memoir page.
My Private Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
For those who’d rather not hear my voice, here is the raw, unedited version of this chapter.
“You don’t know everything, Howard,” Lamya told me, her eyes rolling slightly, revealing just a hint of humor, letting me know that she was both kidding and not kidding. It was 1985 and we were both working at my college newspaper at Wayne State University in Detroit. I did not know much about her, except I heard that she was Palestinian and had escaped from an abusive marriage.
“You think you know a lot, but you don’t know everything,” she said. Well, a more accurate statement might have been that I didn’t know anything. She was thirty years old and I was only nineteen. There were a great many things I did not know, but Lamya was specifically referring to my lack of knowledge about Arab culture and the way they think about historical and current grievances. I saw this in the angry letters to the editor I was receiving over my coverage of controversy over a book, a kind of silly-looking book. Turned out, the book was not a book at all, but really a fun-house mirror through which one could view many layers of distortions.
A few days earlier, Rabbi Oppenheimer of the campus Hillel approached me at the Student Center. I don’t know how the rabbi found me, or even how he knew who I was. I had never dropped by Hillel’s area of the Student Center. Somebody must have pointed me out to him as the guy who was writing pro-Israel commentaries in the student newspaper. He didn’t look like much of a rabbi to me. He wore a Greek fisherman’s cap. Tall, scruffy-bearded, he walked with a slouch that made it appear as if he was folded in half at the waist, but the crease stayed.
We had never spoken before, yet Oppenheimer approached me as if we had known each other for years and were continuing an earlier conversation. He tossed a book near my lunch tray, shaking the gravy well in my mashed potatoes, and then hovered above me and asked, “Guess what I found the Muslim Students Association selling at Manoogian Hall?”
It wasn’t really a book. It was more like a pamphlet. On the cover were a strange combination of words that actually struck me as funny.The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I didn’t know what to make of it. There was an undertone of what I took to be Jewish sarcasm right there in the title. It seemed like it could be the script for a new Mel Brooks movie. You know, like Jews in Space. I looked up at the rabbi with a half-grin on my face, waiting for the punch line. Instead, there was silence. It took a couple of beats for me to realize that Oppenheimer was waiting for a reaction from me. I had nothing. He let out a tiny sigh and sat down next to me.
“Surely you’ve heard of the Protocols,” Oppenheimer said.
My blank stare was his answer.
This is what Lamya was trying to tell me when she said that I did not know anything. “It doesn’t matter if the Protocols are true,” she said. “Most Arab Muslims believe they are true, so that is the reality you deal with.”
Up until then, my knowledge of anti-Semitism was narrow, despite some experience with it during my early life in Georgia, and later in a suburb of Chicago (“Hey, Howard, aren’t you going to pick up that penny?”). But the serious, deadly kind of anti-Semitism was confined primarily to the Holocaust, fed mostly by my grandfather’s stories of Hungary. What happened before the life of my grandfather, or how it fit in with the larger narrative of my people, I was clueless. That’s what it is to be truly obsessive in the clinical sense. The information you obtain, obsessively, is narrow, focused, and often incomplete because it ignores the periphery and all that comes before and after. It was akin to extreme contemplation of the chalk outline of a corpse with no knowledge of the events that led to the murder. My obsession with the Holocaust was devoid of context except my own family’s.
“The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” I grinned slightly. The name still sounded funny to me.
“I’ll leave this here with you,” said the rabbi, who was not smiling at all. “Read it, and then come see me at Hillel and I’ll give you a statement for your story.”
My story? I had never agreed to write a story on this. But, nevertheless, I flipped the book open and the more I read, the more curious I became. Mel Brooks indeed, It was filled with what I found to be laughable lines about One World Government under the control of International Jewry. It was obviously written by anti-Semites, but if you are a Jew who denies it was written by Jews, well, then that just proves that you are part of the plot. That’s the beauty of a conspiracy theory. The more you deny, the guiltier you seem. And, now, Arab students are using it as some kind of proof of Jewish intent in the Middle East.
This is what Lamya was trying to tell me when she said that I did not know anything. “It doesn’t matter if the Protocols are true,” she said. “Most Arab Muslims believe they are true, so that is the reality you deal with.”
Semite and Anti-Semite
“We are Semites ourselves,” said Mohammed, the association’s president, speaking to me in a cramped office at the Student Center. “How can we be anti-Semitic?” Mohammed seemed a bit old to be a student. He came to Detroit from Egypt, which led to the rumor that he was also with the Muslim Brotherhood. I had no idea if that was true, but he was to become my nemesis for the next three years.
“It doesn’t matter if the Protocols are fiction. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t,” said Mohammed, arms waving, gesturing, hovering over me as I remained seated. “But you cannot deny that many of the prophecies in this book have come true. Jews run the financial systems.”
“Prophecies,” I thought. “Prophecies.” It’s the language of religion used to describe an anti-Jewish invention from the czarist era. I cocked my head a bit like a dog. Mohammad picked up on it immediately. “Yes, prophecies.”
Strangely, my story would be plagiarized by an intern at The Detroit Jewish News, leading to the firing of the intern who was replaced by me. This unexpectedly led to my career as a “Jewish journalist,” and eventually, years later, managing editor at JTA, a Jewish news service. I hadn’t meant these things to happen.
But I was only in college, was learning as I went along, and had not yet had my full immersion into Arab culture with Lamya and her friends. That would come later, and through it an appreciation of how very alike Jews and Arabs were in many respects. At that moment, though, at the age of 19, I thought I knew what an anti-Semite was.
Accidental Jewish Journalism Career
I wrote the Protocols story, which led to my friendship with Lamya, who would change my life in many ways, aside from telling me that I did not know everything. Strangely, my story would be plagiarized by an intern at The Detroit Jewish News, leading to the firing of the intern who was replaced by me. This unexpectedly led to my career as a “Jewish journalist,” and eventually, years later, managing editor at JTA, a Jewish news service.
I hadn’t meant these things to happen. But I felt I was being dragged there by this state of Jewishness that I could not escape. It was a voice that was always there since as long as I had conscious thought. It was sometimes my grandfather’s voice, other times I interpreted it as God’s. It could not have been my own, since there were obviously forces outside myself at play. I was convinced of it.
This voice led to the illusion of conviction and confidence and how very convinced I was that I was right. It’s how I stoically endured, expressionless, when the entire Arab student body showed up to a public forum to denounce my application to be editor-in-chief of my college newspaper. It’s how I handled the humiliation when Abbie Hoffman, himself, denounced me at a campus rally as representative of all that was wrong with the youth of the 1980s.
The tics of my early childhood had morphed into rigid thought in college. Yet, the feelings of being out of sync with my peers, of having another being travel with me, forcing my muscles and my brain synapses into rigid rituals, were still there in more disturbing forms. The tics, the habits, even the waking sleep paralysis and night terrors I had mistaken for God much of my life. What else could they be? But by 1985 I knew that it was a flaw in me. The voice was more than an impulse. It was much more dark, persistent, life-swallowing than the narcissism of youth.
I learned a great deal from my Publishers Weekly interview with Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt. When I talked to her, it was just before the 2019 Women’s March, and Jews were trying to decide whether to ignore the antisemitism of the movement’s leaders and attend, or skip the march entirely. Deborah was strongly on the side of not attending.
She was promoting her latest book, Antisemitism: Here and Now. We talked about why this ancient hatred is rearing its ugly head again, and how antisemitism is like herpes. “I think of antisemitism as the herpes in society; it keeps asserting itself at times of tension, at times of dislocation, and that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing it.”
‘Left Wing’ and ‘Right Wing’ Antisemitism?
Most of all, though, Deborah connected the dots in many ways for me on how anti-Semitism is the world’s oldest conspiracy theory. The Holocaust scholar helped me realize that there is fundamentally, no difference between “left wing” and “right wing” antisemitism, since they all draw upon the same mythology of secret Jewish power, money, control, and dual loyalties. This is why if Israel went away or if Zionism never existed, so-called “left-wing anti-Semitism” would still be around. Anti-Zionism is the excuse, the drawing-room and academic-conference respectability the antisemitism virus feeds upon. But it could always find something else
Deborah also allowed me to use the entire interview in my Emet – Truth podcast. I begin with my own first antisemitic experience from my early childhood in Georgia. Then Deborah and I discuss a range of topics, from the Women’s March to Alice Walker to the roots of antisemitism and what we can do about it.
A long time ago, there was a Greek philosopher named Socrates. He said a lot of very smart things, but we only know about them because his students wrote them down. Socrates, himself, was anti-writing. He was very much opposed to this new technology called “books” and thought students should just shut up and listen to him orate. The written word, Socrates warned us, would give the young a false conceit of wisdom. So, since the great philosopher thought wisdom was better consumed through the ears than through the eyes, I will take it a step further and say he would be a podcast producer.
Socrates Warned Us: Audiobooks and Podcasts Are Better
And current events have, in fact, proven him right. Podcasts are growing and audiobooks represent a consistent bright spot in book sales. I enjoy listening to podcasts as I go for a run, drop the kids off at school and extracurricular events, even as I drift off to sleep. No, they’ll never replace reading (sorry Socrates), but they are a wonderful supplement in these distracted times.
Managing the ALLi podcast entails juggling multiple presenters and assistants to distribute the podcast to a wide number of outlets, in audio and video. Howard is utterly reliable and endlessly understanding. This, combined with his determination to have the highest audio production values, makes him the perfect podcast manager.
— Orna Ross, director of the Alliance of Independent Authors
The Birth of IndieVoices
Back in 2017, when I was executive editor of Foreword Reviews, which reviewed books and covered news from indie publishers, I felt strongly that part of my mission was to amplify marginalized voices. So, I began a series of podcasts I called IndieVoices. I interviewed authors and publishers who cared deeply about issues like LGBTQ rights, immigration, criminal justice reform, autism, among others. I’m proud of IndieVoices and the work I did there. Here’s my special podcast on criminal justice reform.
Here’s one on science and religion, two areas in which I’ve specialized in my journalism career, despite the built-in conflicts between the two worlds. I’ve managed to be able to go in and out of both worlds with relative ease.
IndieVoices 2.0 with ALLi
After leaving Foreword Reviews, IndieVoices was picked up by the Alliance of Independent Authors, where I now produce their weekly AskALLi podcasts. I tell them how to set up their microphones, best recording techniques, and they send me their raw sounds files. I edit them into their weekly Self-Publishing podcasts. In addition, my IndieVoices shows continued under the AskALLi name, including this one, where I interview indie author Rachel Thompson about how she wrote about her childhood sexual abuse and turned it into an opportunity to help others.
Inspirational Indie Authors
My podcast is now called Inspirational Indie Authors for SEO reasons. Maybe someday I’ll sneak IndieVoices back in, since that’s more my brand, but I bow to the SEO gods for now. Here’s my interview with indie publishing rock star Jane Davis.
Emet – Truth Podcast
Last year, I began a series of Jewish-themed podcasts that I’m developing further now. It’s based on many important faced by Jewish communities around the world right now. For more on that, you can read the Jewish-themed portion of my website. Here’s the pilot to Emet.
Podcast Adviser and Producer
Individual authors and organizations are now approaching me to help bring my successful podcast formula to their work. I would love to be your guide to podcasting and audiobook production. I can advise you on how you can do it yourself or I can produce your podcast for you.
Today you’re going to meet two people, two Jewish activists who thought they were fighting alongside people who believed as they did, who believed in social justice. But found, instead, that their status as Jews placed them apart from their peers. It surprised them at first, this anti-Semitism on the left.
Jews are used to Nazis. But when Jewish activists face hatred from the left, it stings harder because these are people who are supposed to have their back. And this seems to be happening more and more. Under the guise of anti-Zionism, it’s spilling over into blatant anti-Semitism on the left.
There are those who say that we shouldn’t confuse the two. But it’s getting more and more difficult. Somehow, through layers and layers of mythology about Jews and about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jews are being made to feel uncomfortable, and in some cases, actually purged, from causes they believe in.
Nisi Jacobs
Gretchen Rachel Hammond lost her job after her coverage of the Chicago Dyke March in 2017. That was when three Jewish women were kicked out of the demonstration for waving a Star of David pride flag. But there’s so much more to Gretchen’s story. Listen in her own words.
Nisi Jacobs has been marching for social justice for a long time. So, of course she was with the original Women’s March to protest President Trump. Then, suddenly, the Women’s March stopped being about women as the leadership pivoted to embrace anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and attack Israel. Nisi talks to me about what she and other Jewish women did next. They launched the Women’s March for All. But, of course, there’s much more to Nisi’s story.
My Jewish podcast is dedicated to Emet – Truth. According to family legend, I am descended from Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, who in the 16th century sculpted a statue of a man, a golem, from clay. When the rabbi carved the word, “emet,” (“truth”) on the forehead of his golem, it would come alive and protect the Jewish Quarter from anti-Semites.
