Well, in that you were in good company.

Yes, yes.

I mean, I was kind of commissioned into the Jewish people in that sense.

It's a further rite of passage after Brit, the introduction to the Al-Qaeda.

So that's the first element, if you like, made up the typology of the book itself.

The second was an encounter 10, 15 years later with what we could just call briefly the Enlightenment critique.

of Abraham.

But she features prominently in your book, so tell us about how you see her.

[chuckles]

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, kind of commissioned into, um, the, the, the, the Jewish people in that sense.

It's a, it's a, it's a further rite of passage after Brit, the introduction to the Arkada.

Um, uh, so, so that's the first element, i- if you like, that made up the, the, the kind of the typology of the book itself.

The, the second was a, was an encounter 10, 15 years later with the, um, uh, what we could just call briefly the Enlightenment critique of Abraham.

So tell us about how you see her.

[chuckles]

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, kind of commissioned into, um, the, the, the, the Jewish people in that sense.

It's a, it's a, it's a further rite of passage after Brit, the introduction to the Arkada.

Um, uh, so, so that's the first element, i- if you like, that made up the, the, the kind of the typology of the book itself.

The, the second was, was an encounter ten, fifteen years later with the, um, i-- what we could just call briefly the Enlightenment critique of Abraham.

So tell us about how you see her.

Mm-hmm.

... was the slogan of the, the centrists in revolutionary times, in revolutionary France.

That's to say, a resistance to what was regarded as, uh, collective claims by Jews.

Um, J- Jews, Jews are a provocation to the imagination of the political ideologist, left, right, and center, because of their, the way that they elude, in their self-understanding, the ordinary categories of political thinking.

And that's a, that's a foundational problem in the engagements of the, the, the Jews and Judaism with politics in the understanding (laughs) of, uh, people on the political side of the engagement.

So, antisemitism is, is going to be with us.

It has returned.

That we don't allow antisemitism to corrode proper debate?

How do you two lawyers reflect on that case? Do you think there was no case like it or it showed the best of the English legal system or what? What was the experience like? Did you think you were engaged in history?

No, because I thought it was impossible to say in the long view whether it would be an important case or an unimportant case.

In a sense, that's the nature of living in these events.

They feel like blizzards, but whether they actually matter in the kind of general meteorology of the world is a question that you're not in a position to make a judgment on.

However...

There was one very distinctive quality to this, which was certainly I had the sense that this was a case that we would not lose, because it seemed to me the clearest possible case of justification.

And in that sense, although there are a lot of Americans saying, isn't it terrible that you have to prove yourself the truth of it? Why is the burden on you? Why isn't it the burden on the and so on, I felt that we were more than equal to meeting the challenge, and we could wear the fact that we met the challenge as a badge of pride.

The in-depth study of things is becoming less of a commonplace, that people are happy to receive things in short form.

Let's talk about her a little bit.

I'm very glad that you raise this because it's, it's the part of the book that I, I spent really most time thinking about, that there... it's, it's extraordinary to me that just as the Akedah is given a pat resolution in received, um, Jewish thinking, S- Sarah herself is, is, is written out of received Jewish thinking other than as a kind of helpmeet and a supporter of the patriarch.

If you actually look at the trajectory of Sarah's life, even as related in the Torah itself without going to any Midrashic supplemental or elaborative material, what you see is a, a radical decline, a kind of collapse, both in her own morale and in the nature of her marriage to Abraham.

She begins in Haran, fully the equal of Abraham, engaged in the same kind of conversionist activity as her husband.

She's then mistreated by Avraham in episodes, both with the...

Egypt's pharaoh and with the local king, Abimelech, where he, uh, uh, she has to pass as Abraham's sister so he can be safe and, and then enrich himself.

And yet, when she presses on Avraham her wishes in relation to Hagar and, uh, Avraham, uh, uh, resists it, he has a vision of God telling him that he should pay attention to Sarah and follow her wishes because she is the superior prophet.

... because I want to sort of just hear how you come at these current questions.