The biggest surprise was the quality of the speeches, which were of an extremely high intellectual caliber
Conservative superstars Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro were in Jerusalem just before Succos, and they sold out the main hall of Binyanei HaUmah (3,000 seats), in just a couple of weeks, at $100 per seat. I was curious enough to wheedle a press pass from the Tikvah Fund, which sponsored the event.
Despite being an admirer of Jordan Peterson, and having a couple of sons who are major fans of Ben Shapiro, I confess that I went without any great expectations. I have been at enough Jerusalem events where a largely Anglo crowd, old enough to make me a boychick, enthusiastically applauded some speaker whom I respect saying perfectly reasonable things. But the effect always struck me as akin to throwing red meat to the lions — a sin of which I have been guilty myself.
But if I expected more of the same, I was pleasantly surprised. The crowd was young, approximately half religious (mostly kippah serugah) and half less obviously so. And though most of the evening was in English, my impression was that the audience was not overwhelmingly Anglo.
The biggest surprise was the quality of the speeches, which were of an extremely high intellectual caliber and bore no resemblance to stock stump speeches, with frequent applause lines. Shapiro speaks so fast that it is hard to figure out how he breathes at the same time. But he did not stumble over a word even once in his rapid-fire address, even while quoting frequently from the Chumash in English.
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