Yuval Noah Harari warns of ‘spiritual catastrophe’ for Judaism

Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has told a London audience that he believes Judaism is facing its biggest “spiritual catastrophe” since the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70CE.

In a guest appearance on-stage at the first ever live show of the hugely popular podcast, Unholy: Two Jews on the News, the historian, philosopher and best-selling author said that after the 7 October Hamas attacks the Jewish world is facing “one of the biggest turning points maybe since the fall of the Temple in the Roman conquest.”

Harari added: “Judaism has survived, it has become the world champion in surviving catastrophes.

“But it has never faced a catastrophe like we are dealing with right now, which is a spiritual catastrophe for Judaism itself.”

Responding to questions put to him by podcast hosts Jonathan Freedland and Yonit Levi, the 49-year-old professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem warned of a doomsday scenario for Israel which  could “destroy 2,000 years of Jewish thinking and culture and existence”.

“The worst-case scenario that we are facing right now – we can still prevent it,” continued Harari, “is the potential of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank resulting in the expulsion of two million, maybe more, Palestinians.

“From there, the establishment of Greater Israel, the disintegration of Israeli democracy and the creation of a new Israel based on an ideology of Jewish supremacy. The worship of what were completely anti-Jewish values for the last two millennia.”

Harari offered some hope that this profound shift could be resisted, noting that “the extreme part of Israeli society is actually a minority.”

But he also told the sell-out audience at the event, held at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre on Sunday evening,  that “history is done by minorities – most people sit at home while history is being done by five to ten percent of the population.”

Harari’s 20 minute appearance on stage was a real coup for journalist Freedland and Israeli TV’s Channel 12 presenter Levi as they attempted to emulate the success enjoyed by other political/current affairs podcast duos by bringing Unholy out of the recording studio and on to the stage at the  imposing 900 capacity venue.

The Israeli historian had the audience captivated as he argued there was in fact nothing “uniquely bad” about what was taking place in Gaza, which instead should be viewed as being part of the wider collapse of the global world order.

This collapse, said Harari, “which dominated most of the world in recent decades” was “now being rapidly dismantled first and foremost by the country that created it in the first place – the United States.”

He noted the US President Donald Trump’s response to the invasion of Ukraine by Putin, saying he allowed such aggression to become the “new normal” with his failure to punish the Russian leader.

Harari described Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the greatest Jewish leader of our time” as he recalled the “terrible meeting” with Trump at the White House in which the US leader accused him of “playing cards, and you don’t have cards.”

The fact that every seat was sold, at a top price of £40, for Sunday’s show was a sign of just how engrossing many of the community have found the Unholy podcast, especially in a time of extreme anxiety and division in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks.

Launched in January 2021, Unholy has now become essential listening for those sections of the community put off by more populist responses to turbulent times.

There was indeed spontaneous applause from the audience as Freedland touched upon the yearning within the community here for conversation around the conflict in the Middle East that did not merely shout at the other-side, but which recognised the need to listen, and feel each other’s pain.

At one point in the evening Levi asked the audience if they enjoyed or disliked the fact that she and Freedland sometimes had sharp disagreements on issues during their broadcasts.

The raised hands showed the audience overwhelmingly took some comfort from hearing disputes played out on the podcast, perhaps as a form of therapy in such divisive times.

There were also further highlights in the near two-hour long stage show, for which Jewish News was media partner.

Cheers erupted as Freedland pronounced Dawn French was the recipient of the Chutzpah award regularly handed out by the weekly podcast for her sneering social media post on Israeli responses to the October 7th.

The Guardian writer and Radio 4 presenter noted the comedian had sought to suggest that support for the Palestinian cause meant dismissing impact of the Hamas terror attack on Jews in her much criticised post, which she has now apologised for.

The Palestinian-Israeli singer and activist Mira Awad performed a beautiful song in Arabic and English, with a message of the need to understand the suffering of the other-side at its core.

She successfully invited the audience to sing one line of the Mahmoud Darwish penned song Think of Others first in Arabic, then in Hebrew, and then in English.

Interviewed by Freedland and Levi, Awad, who currently lives in the UK, gave a stark insight into the impact of 7 October on her and her friends and family’s lives.

She admitted the Nova Festival was somewhere she would have attended with her friends, and that her immediate thoughts after the Hamas attack was to check that friends were not impacted by the terrorist atrocity.

But then came the messages she had sent to friends of hers in Gaza, knowing that Israel’s response to 7 October would be the deadly bombardment that followed.

In one uncomfortable moment while she was being interviewed, Awad mistakenly thought a sneeze from someone seated in the front row of the hall was an attempt to spit at her.

Unholy’s Levi, who is the lead anchor of Israel’s top prime time news programme on Channel 12 , was quick to reassure her that this was not the sort of audience where such ugly behaviour was likely to be found.

Things ended on a rather more upbeat note with an appearance by the UK band Oi Va Voi, who have won plaudits for their infectious mix of klezmer with dance grooves.