Cast out the Slave Woman!

Episode 5 of BAD COUSINS is a little harrowing. We’ve seen all along how toxic this Abraham thing can be, but this time we get into quite a lot of the nastiness. We start off by looking at how the Crusades took up an identification of Sarah when slaughtering Jewish and Muslim infidels, and then we talk about how nineteenth-century British Christians became enamored with the idea of bringing the Jews back to Zion. Next we find ourselves face to face with a sort of Muslim Zionist, King Faisal, who offered to upgrade the Jews from cousins to brothers. This pissed a lot of other Arabs off, which brings us to discuss ways in which people in the modern region try to deny the kinship relation and/or the obligations it entails.In the final section, we bring in literary and political theorist Liron Mor to talk about how the impossible Jewish/Arab dichotomy plays out in Israeli politics, paying particular attention to one song in a rock opera, Mami, in which a Middle Eastern Jewish heroine tries to convince Palestinian attackers to let her alone because “Isaac and Ishmael were brothers.” We also talk about the reading of Sarah as some sort of badass nationalist, and how little justice that does to the deeply patriarchal setting in which she acts.It does get quite dark. But as we’ve been trying to say all along, the stakes are real. Come along and think it through together with us.Follow us on instagram @KolloMedia and @the_diasporistSubscribe to the Kollo Media newsletter to get exclusive interviews, episodes, and info about BAD COUSINS - plus the rest of the Kollo Media podcast and audiobook catalogue, which you can see at kollomedia.com.