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Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets.  He was killed by his rival Henry VII in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth Field.  He has come down in history as a monster, thanks to Shakespeare and a Tudor propaganda campaign.   This is the story of his life and what happened after his death and how he has received some modest rehabilitation. 

It is also the story of his body, how it was lost, and recovered. 

I once was asked to deliver a sermon reflecting on the life of Richard.  The sermon is included.  It is the only sermon I have ever delivered, and the only one I will ever deliver. 

This is an unusual podcast, but perhaps an entertaining one. 

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In 1964 the Palestinian leaders met in Jerusalem under the tutelage of President Nasser of Egypt.  Nasser was a great hero to the Arab people, someone who believed that all Arabs shared a common destiny and that they alone should control that destiny free of foreign influence.  He had become a hero in 1956 for standing up to the British and French and Israelis.  He had sponsored the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO.  Now he was sponsoring this conference at which the Palestinians would define their identity and their goals. 

It would be helpful if you would go online and print out an actual copy of this document.  It is only a couple of pages long.  Note that the charter was revised at different times so be sure you get the original version of 1964. 

As I have read this many times, and discussed it many times with my students, it has seemed to me that there are definite parallels between Palestinian thinking and Jewish thinking as exhibited in Herzl's Der Judenstaat.  You can decide if you agree with that or not. 

Again, that awesome theme music is by G. Kevin Dewey. 

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Theodor Herzl, the brilliant journalist, novelist, and political thinker wrote his famous treatise, Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in 1896.  He wrote this in a fever, in just a few days.  It was as if suddenly an insight had come to him and he had to get it down on paper.  That insight was that "We are a people.  One people."  Herzl was not the first person to make this point, but his brilliance was that he followed up the next year with a conference in Basel, Switzerland in which he set up an organizational structure.  We will discuss that in a future podcast.  But what was brilliant about this essay was that he said it was not just a fantasy.  It was a reality that could be achieved.  Herzl had a scientific mind.  He said that what he was describing was a scientific process to create a reality.  It was not a dream.  

This essay created a sensation within the Jewish community.  It created enormous enthusiasm and enormous resistance.  The argument that the Jews were a national people was very offensive, especially in Germany.  Herzl knew this and addressed it. 

Before we start, let me give you a term and a definition.  The term is Zionism.  It commonly means Jewish nationalism.  If you ask American Jews today if they consider themselves Zionists, a minority will say that they do.  Of those who say yes what they mean by the term, they are all over the place.   Israel should be safe; there should be a place where Jews can go if they cannot go anywhere else;  Jews should move to Israel; and so on. 

Let me give you a definition  that Herzl would probably consider consistent with his thinking.  This is what we might call political Zionism.  "The Jews are not merely an ethnic or a religious group but are a national people, living in temporary exile and awaiting a return to their homeland." 

I hope you will try to find this short essay and read it.  (I think it is 96 pages long).   This is my discussion of the essay and of the points that jump out as key elements of Herzl's thinking. 

Question:  I think Herzl was a scientific thinker, not an ideologue.  Do you agree? 

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Bernie Klein was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. His specialty was urban politics.  He was probably the single most popular classroom instructor on campus.  Students would sign up just to hear the stories he told about Detroit and Michigan politics.  (He would also manage to slip in a few dirty jokes from time to time).  

Three times Bernie was called into service to be Acting Chancellor when the regular chancellor took a job in another place. 

Bernie retired in the early 1990s but for generations of students he was unforgettable.  He died in April of 2020, an early victim of Coronavirus.  I wrote this tribute to him within a few days and shared it with my colleagues on campus.  I am happy to share it now with any of you who would like to listen. 

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This is an article I wrote for the University of Michigan newspaper  back in 2002.  The essay discusses the fact that in polemical arguments certain discrediting words (focusing here on terrorism and anti-Semitism) have two characteristics.  First, they tend to have different meanings to different people and, second, those with a position will often try to define them in such a way as to strengthen their own position and weaken those of their critics. 

These are mostly reflections upon my sabbatical trip to South Africa during the time of apartheid, and how my support for a change in the South African political situation made me a terrorist, by definition. 

Theme music StockSpeaks by G. Kevin Dewey.  

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I knew how the various players saw Zionism:  the Zionists, the anti-Zionist Jews, the British, the Christian Zionists, the Palestinians.  But I had never thought of how the Ottomans saw Zionism.  And how they thought of Jews, both the Ottoman Jews and the immigrant mostly Russian Jews.  That was very odd, given that Palestine was an Ottoman Province.  

This podcast will discuss Ottoman perspectives on these issues.  

Awesome theme music, StockSpeaks, by Kevin Dewey.  

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Orville Hubbard was the mayor of Dearborn for 38 years.  He was brilliant, creative, passionate, dedicated, popular.  He was also a mean demagogue, a racist, a bully.  

This reports the time I went with a group of students to interview the mayor.  All of his qualities were there on display.   Especially his racism. 

This interview was just before he had a debilitating stroke.  

Even if you are not from Dearborn, this will be of interest to you. 

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In a religious text, a number is not a number.  It is a point, a teaching. 

Those who think the Bible or other religious texts are science books are missing the point.   Those who think a religious text is offering you facts miss the point.  

This podcast outlines several different ways that numbers are used and appear in a mix and match pattern in religious texts.  When I say that Jeff Bezos is a jillionaire, that is not a number.  I am making a point, that no number is really adequate.  Will someone in a thousand years find my statement and try to figure out the value of jillion?  People today would understand my meaning just as people at the time understood what those numbers meant when they appeared in those historic texts. 

This is a fun lecture, but one that students always found eye-opening. 

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The events of 1948 were a joyous celebration for Israelis who got their independence, but it was a time of despair for Palestinians who lost their homeland.  They call it the Nakhba or Catastrophe.  Perhaps 80 or 85% of all the Palestinians inside of what was Green Line Israel on January 1st of 1948  (i.e., internationally recognized boundaries) were in exile on December 31 of 1948.   The Palestinians had lost their lands, their businesses, their bank accounts and even the right to call themselves a people.   Their natural leaders had been pushed aside -- the doctors, the professors, the authors, the businessmen, the heads of the big families, the heads of the political organizations.   This is the story of how they struggled to adapt to that reality.

Those following this podcast series can see parallel analysis for looking at the Jews and the Palestinians.  Look at the objective conditions, i.e., what we can measure, and see how those conditions produced certain political outcomes that would not have been predictable before those objective conditions changed. 

You might want to google the UN  partition plan 181 of 1947, and especially look at a map of that plan.   You might also want to read the UN resolution 194 of 1949 which defines the rights of the Palestinian refugees.  We will discuss both of these but it helps to read in advance. 

You might also want to look at my briefing document on The Palestinian Refugees of 1948.  That is a very thorough discussion of the data and how different parties to the struggle describe what happened.   You will see in this that the idea of "transferring" the Palestinians to make room for a Jewish state was cooked into the thinking of the great powers, as well as into the thinking of many Zionist Jews.   That document is available free on Deep Blue .  If you missed it, there is a three minute podcast on how to get my Deep Blue documents free. 

Next we will have a podcast on the PLO Charter and the Hamas Charter. 

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This is my summary of Barack Obama's presidential memoir.  It is a stunningly elegant book, intimate, informative, insightful, candid.  Obama's style is as a story teller, someone sitting in the living room discussing with you what really happened.  It reminds me of Jimmy Carter's family story, An Hour Before Daylight.  Anyone taking a drive across country would be happy if they took that with them.  This is probably true of the Obama memoir as well.  

Not only do I discuss the memoir, and the points that I think are more important, but I also read some passages that I think are particularly revealing.  

I give special attention to the issue of race and the racist lies about Obama,  dealing with a Republican party that believes negotiations will cost them votes in the next election, heroism in politics, dealing with Israel,  Middle East issues,  how to govern.  

If you don't want to listen to a 70 minute podcast, you can read the 700 page book.   Or go on to the next Reacher novel. 

ps.  I have a second possible Obama podcast.  That would be my reflections on the Wednesday after he won in 2008.  It's a bit more personal than analytical but it combines the two approaches.  Let's see if Obama 1.0 is a hit before we decide on Obama 2.0.