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[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] The Virus in the Age of Madness, March 7, 2021, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Nahum Twersky, Alan Kadish and Bernard-Henri Lévy's videos display in a grid-like Zoom format. Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera. A Touro University logo is on the bottom right of the screen.

[ALAN KADISH] Welcome to Touro Talks. Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French public intellectual and philosopher. He was born in Algeria but grew up and was educated in France. He attended University at one of the great French academies, where his professors included some of the giants of 20th century philosophy.

While a university lecturer, he was a founder of the New Philosophers movement that included criticism of Marxism as inherently corrupt. He has written 33 books, including a book about touring America in the footsteps of de Tocqueville, a book about the murder of Daniel Pearl, and a 2016 book called The Genius of Judaism, in which he discusses what's unique about Judaism and how antisemitism has evolved and developed. Perhaps even more importantly, he's been a fierce advocate for human rights throughout the world, including in Bangladesh, in Bosnia, and for the Kurds.

Today, we will focus on his most recent work, The Virus in the Age of Madness, a timely book about the world's response to the COVID 19 pandemic, written to a significant extent from a philosopher and social critic's point of view. Normally, I would ask the audience to join me in welcoming our guest. But in this age of madness, I'll have to do it alone. Welcome, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and thanks for joining us.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Thank you. Happy to join, too.

[ALAN KADISH] So I want to start by talking a little bit about the role of the philosopher, because as Americans, we're kind of used to hearing lawyers and political pundits, and now doctors and celebrities, talk about things. We're not that used to philosophers. So before we talk about this specific work, perhaps you can tell me, in terms of the body of your work, how you view your expertise as a philosopher in the way you approach problems in the world and the way some of your past work has evolved because of your background as a philosopher.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] My dear Alan, I think that it's hard to reply. All my works and all my books are shaped even from remote by philosophy. None of them can be separated from my philosophical knowledge, habits, or expertise. Even when I do some war reports, some [FRENCH], as I did all previous year, in 2020, I was touring the world for a French magazine for the Wall Street Journal in the USA-- I went in Afghanistan, I went in Mogadishu, I went in so many places, '08 or '09, actually, in Syria-- I was a philosopher.

Even then, even by looking at things with humility, with modesty, I did as a philosopher. It is hard to explain, but my glasses, my bias, my perspective on the world, whatever is the question I try to raise is full of, impregnated by, philosophy. And in this case, this little book, it's clear.

I know that we have some doctors, and I admire them. We have some scientists, and I revere, I revere them. I more than respect. But I thought that the point of view of a philosopher was useful, too. For example, meaning to be a philosopher in that case of the virus, of the pandemic, it means-- to remember of Michel Foucault and the way in which he describes the new systems of power and of authority. It means a little knowledge or an experience of how the sciences work.

I belong to one of-- traditional philosophy, which is epistemology, so the knowledge of knowledge, how the knowledge, how the scientific knowledge works. I studied a lot on that. And a philosophical point of view means that science is one of the brightest and highest things in the world, but it is not God. Scientists sometimes make mistake. They have a relationship to the truth, which is more complicated than what is sometimes implied in the articles and so on.

I know how I know. I studied how the science works. It works through corrected mistakes. It works with the horizon, the lines-- at the bottom of there, there is the truth. But it is never completely reached and so on. This is to be a philosopher.

To be a philosopher in the case of this pandemic is to try to give a point of view on what is the relationship between health and illness, between a sane body and a virus. For example, when I listen to TV news, I have sometimes the impression that people believe that a virus is like a foreign host provisionally embedded in a body, a guest, a bad guest, a bad guest, an evil guest in a body. To be a philosopher and to have reflected on the sane and the pathologic means that illness, intrusion of a virus, might mean a sort of disorder in the system of the organs in the body, not a host, but host that you can eradicate, that you can take out of a body, like as if it were a witch, as if you were [INAUDIBLE]. These sorts of reflection for me means to be a philosopher and to have a philosophical point of view.

[ALAN KADISH] So if I could ask you, let's talk a little bit about science and physicians. As you know, I'm a cardiologist and a research scientist. So I feel this a little bit innately.

Physicians and scientists have been put in a complicated place in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic for the following reasons. We've all been asked questions and required to make recommendations without enough information. And others have frequently talked about the fact that the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the scientists and physicians who work there would prefer to have had years of experience with the coronavirus before having to tell people about it.

So if I could probe your philosophical idea about the limits of knowledge, I would suggest that perhaps you might be saying that we haven't shown sufficient humility in making our recommendations and in talking about what we know. Because to be fair, we've been put in the impossible position of making pronouncements with a disease that's new, that's changing, and that we have never really anticipated, which perhaps collectively as a society is part of our fault. So would you say that-- you brought up Foucault, who I've learned has written about the limits of knowledge. Would you say that from your point of view, we need to put science and scientists in perspective, that we need to both understand that they're dealing with incomplete information and that perhaps we've overreached a little bit in saying that science is God in this case?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] The problem is not you. The problem is us. We, the non-scientists, demanded too much. We required too much from you. And you, the scientists, you try to reply in a decent, genuine, and very brave way. You try to reply to fulfill our requirements. But the requirements, you know it well, and the best of yours know, it was too much.

We live in-- we, the profane, the non-scientists, we live in a sort of scientism, an iconization of science, which is very different from what you experience-- you, the scientists-- in your studies, in your laboratories, in your exchanges with all of you. For example, we from our side, we believe that there is a scientific community, that there is a sort of collective body who could express himself by one voice. You know that the health of the research implies that there is many voices, that there is disagreements, that there is good quarrels among you, as there is among philosophers or whatever.

This is a misunderstanding. We compelled, we demanded to you to reply by one voice. And when there was a different voice, we said, come on, so are you a scientist or are you not a scientist? [LAUGHS]

And another example-- of course, what you said, you did not have the whole information because this virus was new, because you were yourself in the fog, in the smoke, which is the natural state of the scientist advancing in the fog, but also because in front of any research, there is a mix of ignorance and knowledge. Knowledge progresses naturally, methodically, in a sort of a wood forest of ignorance. This is how the science works. And we ask you, please tell us immediately. No, no, no. No, no-- wait. We are in March 2020. We are in-- you should know.

And the most honest of the scientists said, I'm sorry, but we cannot reply like this. And sometimes some of the most brave tried to fulfill the requirement, but it was impossible. It is impossible. So this is what I tried to say as soon as last July when Yale University Press made me the great honor to publish this book. This is one of the things which I tried to say.

[ALAN KADISH] So one of the other questions I have, which is philosophical and political perhaps, at least in the United States there's been a lot of politics surrounding the science, and I think in Europe as well. How much do you think, particularly when, as you point out, we're still in the fog, do you think politics, preconceived notions, and social ideas influences the way scientists think and act? Do you think that's an important component, or do you think it's just a lack of knowledge that's responsible for some of these disagreements?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] There was both. There was the lack of knowledge. There was the will to know, the braveness, the bravery of the scientists. They were really-- I have all my life been impressed by the scientists but never as much as today. Their bravery to confront the fog, the smoke, the blindness, and so on was just terrific.

And of course, one of the things which made the smoke and the smog and the fog was the preconceived ideas of the society about, what I said before, what is sanity. The idea, for example, this is one of the preconceived ideas of that-- the idea that a virus is a messenger, has a message to deliver to the society. We were all repeating that on and on. What does the virus says? What is the message of the virus? What is the new society that the virus is demanding? And so on.

Some of us did not believe that. A lot of you knew that the virus is not a messenger, that the virus is just a piece of nothingness which does [INAUDIBLE] which kills, which makes some disease, but with no intelligence. And the epistemology, the philosophers dealing with epistemology, know that one of the difference between the bacteria and the virus is that a bacteria is like-- a microbe is a little life. It is a piece of life, an [INAUDIBLE] life.

A virus is just pure death and no message and no speech. And this idea, we were all like sorcerers listening to the whispering of the virus. We lost time. We lost time-- us, the intellectuals; you, the scientists; and all of us, the society.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me-- that's a very interesting perspective that you just provided about the difference between a bacteria and virus. Because as a scientist, as a physician, I could characterize the biology-- and you did it absolutely beautifully-- that bacteria are live, whereas viruses are genetic material, which depend on a host. But from an infectious disease standpoint, big picture-- obviously, there are differences in the way we treat them-- but from an infectious disease standpoint, physicians don't usually view viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms that are somewhere in the middle as fundamentally different in terms of their implication. They're both foreign substances, or life, that invade the body that we have to try to help the body deal with. But from a philosophical point of view, would you say that if this had been caused by a bacterium, you would view it some way differently, you would say that maybe there's some message here, or do you think that that's overreaching?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] No. Overreach. And moreover, I insist-- I don't like the idea-- it's too simple-- of a foreign host. Again, as a foreign substance, the idea that we are-- it would be great if it was that, invaded by a foreign substance. I would love it, but it does not work. It is not like this. And we all know now because we got some knowledge that you have some asymptomatic-- there is some degrees of the infection by a virus. You have a very light infection, a very strong one, one who leads to death, others which are depending also on the way we have to trace them through tests. And so it is not just the introduction in a body of a foreign substance.

This is an idea, again, which made us lose time in the public discussion and probably the scientists in the discovery of the medicines and of the vaccines, though, though, we have to say also-- without being a philosopher, just reflecting-- that it is the first time in the history of humanity of course, but even of modernity, that we went so quickly to find the vaccine. And this is a big success of the science and a big success, by the way, of globalization. To be honest, normally, as you know, as was said at the beginning of the pandemic, it takes five to seven, even to 10 years, to have a working vaccine. This is how it works.

Today, because of the bravery of knowledge of the scientists, but because also of the interconnection of the brotherhood in work of the scientists all over the world, which means because of globalization, speed of the circulation of the message, it took one year. This is unprecedented and unpredictable. I remember one year ago, no one, except maybe some of you-- I don't know. But no one would have bet a cent on the fact that after one year, we would have a working vaccine, and which is a great vaccine.

The Moderna, the Pfizer, even the AstraZeneca, the European one, are great vaccines with a huge efficiency with absolutely no secondary effects. This is unprecedented, and we owe that to science and this thing which is generally considered so badly, which is globalization. Globalization means a lot of disease in the economy of the world but also this possibility for scientists from Australia to America to Europe to connect, to speak in a brotherly way, and to fight.

[ALAN KADISH] Well, it was and has been absolutely amazing. You're absolutely right. And the community of scientists, while not speaking with a single voice, came together to collaborate in a way we've never seen before. There was some serendipity involved. But you're absolutely right.

Touro did a conference on the coronavirus on January 31, 2020, before there were even in any cases in the United States. And the predictions were very much exactly what you described, which is that it would take a long time to develop a vaccine. What no one recognized was, I think, first, the progress that has been made, second, the enormous resources that were poured into developing the vaccine all over the world, and as you say, the collaboration that ensued. And it continues to ensue, by the way, when different drug companies which previously were competitors are collaborating, at least in the United States, to make new doses of the vaccine.

So let me divert from your book for a moment since you brought up this issue of the miracle of the vaccine. At least what we read in the papers is that in Europe, the rollout of the vaccine has not been smooth. That is, the development was great, including, as you say, AstraZeneca, which despite some missteps-- I agree with you-- is a very effective vaccine, more effective than we could have imagined. But at least, as I said, in the US papers, it seems that particularly in the last month, getting the vaccine to people has not proceeded as efficiently. Even as in the United States, where we perhaps stumbled badly initially but now are really progressing rapidly, where 75% of the doses that have been shipped have been administered, and we're working on administering them faster and better.

So what's going on with the European experiment? Is the challenge really as bad as it seems in the papers? And what's gone wrong from your social critic philosophical point of view?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] The papers are right. There is-- there has been and there still is-- a real problem. If you compare the European situation with the champions, the world champions, who are the Israelis-- the world undefeated champions of the vaccination-- even if you compare to America, who did very, very badly till the election and with the new administration speeding now greatly, we in Europe are bad.

Why? Two reasons, I would say, two political reasons. Number one is the fact that European institutions still do not work. And this is a sort of stress test, a test of our European institution. And alas, it's more than-- this is a tragedy test. It is a test by fire. And the test asked to European [INAUDIBLE], are you working or not? Not working so well. This is the first reason.

Second reason-- in some of our countries, and maybe in my fatherland in France more than anywhere else, there is a huge weight-- weight, burden-- of administration, bureaucracy. I don't like to say that too much because it sounds like France is a socialist country, and so on, which it is not. But it is true that we have in our [FRENCH] state, lover tradition in France, this burden of a huge bureaucracy for-- it is clear that in France, for example, we should have decided since weeks to spread the vaccines, to ask to every nurse of France to administrate the vaccine, which is not very complicated. We should have liberated the vaccines.

But the mix of liberalism and bureaucracy in our country, in France, is not good. There is an unbalance between the two. So these are the two reasons. Europe has no political body has no political will, or not enough. And number two, then there is a sort of loss of the will when the will expresses itself in the bureaucracies and administration--

[ALAN KADISH] So what would you do to fix that?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] --experiment in America to such an extent and from far.

[ALAN KADISH] So what would you do to fix it? What's your suggestion to fix it?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] What I would suggest, and what I did suggest publicly and sometimes when I could in private conversations, is what is happening now-- to ask every doctor, every nurse in sane and good condition to vaccinate, not to have bureaucratic and centralized distribution of the vaccines with too much here and not enough there and so on-- a more liberal way of spreading, delivering, and injecting. And now it begins since one or two weeks.

And what I ask, every time I can, is to follow the Israeli model. So sometimes it does not please some of my French interlocutors. But the fact is that Israel is a model in many grounds, but also in this one.

[ALAN KADISH] Yeah. So something very similar happened in the United States as well, as you pointed out. Initially, it wasn't just the central administration that was the issue, but we were very restrictive in who got the vaccine to be sure that, quote, "the right people" got it first. But what that meant was much of the power was taken away from hospitals, pharmacies, and very few physicians actually had the ability to control distribution. Once that was liberalized, it was much easier to make sure that we increased the vaccination rate. And I agree with you completely that that needs to be done.

Perhaps the topic of what ought to be done going forward to prevent this kind of inefficiency in the future is something we could talk about at another time. But I think the message of the Israeli model is that tight coordination between the public health system and the health care delivery system, and a national will of unity-- which Israel has always been very good at when they can agree on things-- is what was responsible, I think, in large part for the miracle.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] And there is another thing in Europe and also in America, but it happens to be in a surprising way stronger in Europe, is the conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories. One should not have expected that, but it happened. When the vaccines came, you had, in the public opinion, in France, among the doctors and the nurses themselves-- and sometimes among scientists like the Nobel Prize, Jean Luc Montagnier in France-- some crazy conspiracy theories about vaccines. Vaccines are a tool in the hands of grand capital. Vaccines are a way to control the citizens and so on. And this harmed so much and delayed the reply in such an extent, these conspiracy theories.

And it was, and it still is, rather hard to prevail, to overcome these theories. And we had-- maybe you heard that-- but there is a terrible big part of the body of those who care, of the nurses and so on, who are still not vaccinated. Because even in this population, there is this idea that vaccines is not as simple as we could think, that we have also our anti-vax movement, to speak as in America. And this is also an element which was very important.

[ALAN KADISH] You're absolutely right. And in many places in the United States, 30% or 40% of the health care workers have been unwilling to show up for vaccination, which is just shocking and is a problem we'll have to deal with.

Let me turn for a second to something else that appears a few times in your book, which is Judaism. Now, I mentioned in the introduction you wrote a book about the genius of Judaism. You've referred to yourself as a proud Jew. And I particularly enjoyed the Talmudic discussion about [HEBREW], the best of doctors go to hell, so to speak.

So how does your Jewish background and thoughts about Judaism enter into this book? Because that's only one example of how it appears in several places in the book where you talk about the Bible and talk about the role of Judaism in your thinking. So tell me a little bit about that, how that's evolved in your thinking and how it relates to the coronavirus.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Generally speaking, I would make the same reply about Judaism as the one I did about philosophy. I suspect, and I believe, that none of my workings, none of my reflection, is immune from Judaism. Judaism is embedded everywhere. And even when I speak of Michel Foucault, or when I speak about Blaise Pascal or [INAUDIBLE], Judaism is implied, number one.

In this book particularly, and as you know since I know that you read this little book, there is two main topics in which Judaism is implied. Number one, the one you mentioned, this very strange Talmudic saying, [HEBREW]. The best doctor-- and not so to say, it is said properly-- will go to hell. So I try to make, to lead, a little Talmudic reflection of my own on what this means.

How can the rabbis of Talmud express such an apparently absurd judgment? And I look at the explanations gave by Rashi, by [INAUDIBLE], by a lot of the famous and great Talmudists, and I exclude them one by one. And I reach the explanation of this quote, of this word, given by the maharal of Prague, who says, more or less, in a few words, to make it very short, that the best doctor is the one who deals perfectly with the body. He does it so perfectly that he reduces the body to an addition of organs, and he does that so much with such an application that he severs the stock of organs and the body from the life, the intelligence, the spirit, which is this light which enlightens the package, the stock, or the package of organs.

And to do that, to consider the life as being just life, to consider that the material part of our self being everything, to sever, to cut, to ignore, even if you are not a believer, this unmaterial part of our being, this deserves hell. This is not good. This is bad.

This is one example. Another example of the implication of my Judaism in this reflection is, I wonder in the book what will remain from this current crisis, what will remain, and what will remain for the worst. For example, this way we are dealing with of social distancing, this way of isolating ourselves in our Zoom conversation and so on, this was absolutely necessary and still is. It is necessary since one year. Maybe it will be necessary for months. I don't know. But it is necessary.

But it is necessary as a provisional ill. I miss the real contact. I miss the embracement of my brothers in humanity. I miss the other.

One of the teachings of Judaism, in any way you consider it, this importance of the other. If you are a Jew of the study of the Torah, everyone who listens to us knows that you cannot study Torah alone in your loneliness. Torah, the wise man said that there is a war, a war for Torah-- war meaning [HEBREW], body to body, soul to soul-- between at least two, if not three, if not a little school.

You cannot study Torah alone. It cannot be a confined or confinated. I don't know how you say. A lockdown practice-- impossible. If you are as me, as I am, a liberal Jew, there is no sense in being a Jew if you are not oriented toward leaning to the rest of the world, your human brothers.

Judaism is a practice. This practice is the practice of the otherness. If you forget that, if you believe that Judaism is just being with you, yourself, and I, meditating, connecting yourself with the sky, it is not being a Jew. It is being maybe a Catholic, a great Christian. But being a Jew, it means the work, the constant deal with the others.

So what do I want to say? That though, again, this confinement is absolutely necessary, we should have in our mind that we have not to get accustomed to that. It would be a disaster if in a few months, we say, at the end of the day, Zoom is great, and the end of the day, Facebook is the best. At the end of the day, my friends on Instagram are more real friends that my friends whom I really embrace in real life.

And Instagram is OK. I have an Instagram account. I have a Twitter account. But I know that it is a weak life. I know that it's a fake life. And I long for, I long for, the real incarnated life out of this because I'm a Jew, also because I'm a human being, but also because I am a Jew.

[ALAN KADISH] So you make two very interesting points about human collaboration. One relates to the study of Torah. And Michael Shmidman, who's our Dean of Jewish Studies at Touro, and I have recently written a book called The Jewish Intellectual Tradition, where we talk a lot about how important collaborative learning is in the Jewish tradition and how that's been one of our contributions. So I agree with you completely that that's crucial.

I think as far as the way we communicate and deal with each other is concerned, I think you and I are pretty much in the same generation, and I think we feel exactly the same way. Some of the younger generation somehow seem to have lost some of that human contact in the way they communicate through social media and others. And that's why I think that your concern about whether we'll get back to warm human interaction is well founded. Because I think for some people, this sort of existence was beginning even before COVID, right? And influencers with millions of followers rather than friends were kind of a way of life.

But I also want to distinguish two things. There's work-related productivity and there's human contact. I think we and others have shown that work-related productivity can actually be pretty good in the current system. Particularly, we don't have to commute. But it's the human aspect of things that I agree with you we fear we're going to lose.

Let me focus on one other thing you said. In the book, you seem, on the one hand, to say what you just said, which is the isolation and the restrictions have been absolutely necessary. But on the other hand, at times, expressed skepticism about the power structure and about the negative consequences of it. If I can ask you about your most recent point, what you're suggesting is you pretty much think what's been done up till now has been somewhat necessary, but what you really want to do is make sure it doesn't continue. And that's the paradox of our response. Is that fair?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Absolutely. It's absolutely correct. We improvised, and we invented a crisis reply to this tragedy. It has to remain a crisis reply. And the worst would be to get accustomed to love it, to find that it is more comfortable than the connected life and so on. So there is sometimes-- in other words, people are speaking a lot, at least in Europe, about the world of tomorrow.

I'm very careful on that, maybe because I'm too Jewish, but I'm very careful. For me, the world of tomorrow is something very serious. In a way, Judaism is, as a whole, a practice of that, but considered as a messianism, as things like that, not just separating ourselves from the good practices of practice of human connection which was prevailing before. So for me, this is a real question.

And the real danger, if the humanity we are entering in was to get rid of being tired of these practices of the world before, which was interconnectivity, inter-human collaboration, political quarrel, friendship and love, and so on, and relationship to our eldest, all of that-- and the real danger now would be that a sort of tiredness of freedom, a tiredness of-- to be tired of worry of relationship with others, which could happen through this pandemic. This would be tragic. This would be a real tragedy.

And to be tired from the rest of the world, by the way. Because when we say that we confine ourselves, and when we say that everyone has to stay at home, what about those who have no home to stay, first of all? And what about this huge part of the world which is, of course not cursed, but which is such a bad shape, which needs our heart full help? The poorest countries in the world, those where the light of democracy-- meaning the American creed, the Western spirit, and the Jewish wisdom-- are so required. Are we going to again close our doors, close our windows, and confine ourselves in our self, separating therefore us from this part of the world? All of this concerns me.

[ALAN KADISH] So one of our questioners actually asked about one of the points you made, which is, I think we do collectively have a responsibility to make sure vaccines get to everyone in the world. And of course, we probably haven't done enough of that. And I would hope one of the things that happens in the future is that the Western countries, particularly as more vaccines become available, do our best to get it out there. Russia and China, although the effectiveness of their vaccines haven't been as fully vetted, have made attempts-- not for, I think, ethical reasons, but rather for practical and power reasons-- to get vaccines into the poorer countries. And I think that we need to continue to make a strong effort to do that.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] This is crucial. And you made the point-- for ethical reasons. Because I hear so often in America and in France that it is our best interest, and our vested interest, to help the rest of the world. Because if not, it will come back as a backlash to us. What does it mean to be safe - oh? OK, but the main reason why I would like to spread the vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna is for brotherly reasons, because we are our whole humanity, because we are brothers in humanity, not just because it would be a bad deal to be us vaccinated and to let the disease to progress in the rest of the world. This is such a selfish motivation of that.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me-- before taking a couple of other questions from the audience, let me ask you a summary question about the book, which is, why did we get it so wrong? In the book, you correctly point out-- and we've talked today about a lot of the things you think we failed as a society globally in our response to the virus. Why did we get it so wrong? What is it about our society that made us susceptible to the madness and led to us missing the boat in so many ways other than the vaccine development, which, as you point out, has been a shining example of an exception?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Because it was difficult. First of all, when you are in front of the unknown, it is very difficult not to make mistakes. And we all made mistakes.

And number two, maybe because we are in too much positivist and scientist time of our history, and maybe we did not hear enough other than doctors. We heard in America, for example, crazy people on one side, some bad politics who were denying the reality of the pandemic. I don't want to insist on that. But we had-- you had these huge voices who were spreading some obscurity in the whole thing. And on the other side, only scientists.

There are some philosophers of course, journalists, historians, educators, specialists of the relationship between generations who should have been heard from the beginning. For example, the barrier-- the social distance rules, they were necessary, again. What do they imply? Which consequence can they have in the future of a society?

We should have had on CNN, on the French TV also this point of view. We should have had some sociologists, some specialists of the history of civilization telling us what a shake hand is, when it arrived, when it came, in which civilizations its does not happen, and so on and so on. These questions were desperately absent from our collective reflection. This may be the little thing which we did bad, so too many doctors and not enough other specialists or sorts of wisdom.

[ALAN KADISH] Well, we have one of each today. So the next question from the audience is, do you support mandatory vaccination from a philosophical and ethical point of view-- that is, telling people they have to receive a vaccine? Do you support that?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Do I support what?

[ALAN KADISH] Mandatory vaccination, requiring people to get a vaccine-- let's say, before coming to work.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] I recommend and I wish some huge campaigns telling people why vaccination is great, why vaccination is safe, why vaccination is the reply, and that there is no other. I'm not in favor of obligating people. I'm not in favor of compelling people. I'm in favor of convincing them. And I'm sure that if we do this way, which we are more or less doing, people will-- the most reluctant will soon understand that they have to. Even if they have hesitations and so on, they will do it. But not compel.

[ALAN KADISH] Is that because of your skepticism about the power of government and society, that you're skeptical about that application?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] No. Because again, I'm trying to understand the balance of advantage and inconvenience. I think that we can have more or less the same result by convincing, and that if we compel, we will have some other countereffects-- the rise of conspiracy theories, for example, which will badly balance the good of the vaccination.

[ALAN KADISH] In the book and in your comments today, you talk a little bit about the negative aspects of isolation. One of our questioners asks, one of the issues that you address in the book is there have been some, throughout history-- and in the Jewish tradition as well, although they're a small minority-- those who believe that private contemplation can have enormous advantages. So do you think there's a role for it? And how would you put it with your skepticism of the isolation?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Again, private contemplation-- if I heard well-- private contemplation, lonely meditation is not such a Jewish concept. It is probably in other spiritualities, and I respect them-- Christianity and so on. The experience of a Christian is experience of him and God, and especially of the Protestant, of the evangelicals.

Being a Jew, there is-- if you really consider the book seriously, very seldom, very rarely means a self-confinement, a self-meditation. It is very hard to be a Jew without the pilpul, the dialogue, the quarrel with the others. This is one of the singularity-- of the peculiarity-- of the singularity of Judaism, that it's very rare except in very big situations of crisis. In [INAUDIBLE], for example, very rarely it is required to stay at home.

In the Jewish history, if you look, there are very few occasions where this is required from a Jew to stay at home, to stay with himself, and to have a selfish and deep dialogue with [FRENCH], with the holy. No, it's a collective practice, at least, as I said, [INAUDIBLE]. I am not a Christian. I'm sorry.

[ALAN KADISH] So let's close with, what do you think we need to do differently in the future to be better prepared for something like this? Because you've talked about our failings and why we failed, and you've said we need more-- basically, if I could summarize semi flippantly only-- we need more philosophers. So what can we do differently in the future to prepare for the next crisis?

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] Number one, we have to protect the great treasury which we got in this year, which is the cooperation between scientists, even if they disagree-- again, even if they disagree. Even if there is no such thing as the one single and holy body of scientists, at least they proved that when they brutally talk and communicate, there is huge progress. We have to save this treasury, number one.

Number two, we have to be prepared. We were taken by surprise by this virus. I deeply think-- alas, I'm sorry-- but I deeply think that we have to be prepared physically, spiritually, intellectually, politically to new viruses. Viruses, alas, is part of the worst of human condition. Again, humanity is not an addition of angels. Humanity is a mix of good and evil. We know that.

And we are not living in a sort of super humanity which could think that it got rid of the negative part. So among these negative part with which we have to live is the possibility of viruses. There will be more. And I think that if it comes, we should be technically prepared, medically fit as much as we can, but not overwhelmed by this huge fear which struck us at first.

Number two and number three, we have urgently to reconnect and to renew with what I will call, at least in a French way-- or maybe French and American-- the liberal values, which is the best of the Jewish tradition, the best of the American creed, and the best of European spirit, which is liberalism in any way you consider it. This has been at stake for a moment. It has to prevail definitely, and we have to cherish this heritage in order to confront the next episode of this terrible and bloody carnage, which is the story of viruses. We have to cherish the liberal values [INAUDIBLE].

[ALAN KADISH] So I want to thank you again. In this time when we've all been severely stressed, and perhaps mad, ideas like yours and careful thinking and the application of human values are extraordinarily important. So I want to thank you again for joining us on Touro talks, thank the audience for listening, and I hope that sometime in the near future we can meet in person--

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] We will.

[ALAN KADISH] --and shake hands.

[BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY] We shall.

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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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