Dan Senor Sends Us to Voicemail

Summary

ASK A JEW – DETAILED EPISODE SUMMARY

Podcast: Ask a Jew
Episode: Dan Senor Sends Us to Voicemail
Date: June 10, 2026
Guests: Dan Senor (Call Me Back podcast host, author of "Startup Nation" and "The Genius of Israel"), Yael ("Chila," secular Israeli), and Chaya Leah Sufrin ("Anya El," Orthodox/Haredi)

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Overview:

This lively and candid episode features a sprawling, humorous, and honest conversation with Dan Senor. The hosts, secular Israeli Yael and her Orthodox co-host Chaya Leah, explore Jewish identity, Israel-diaspora tensions, navigating Shabbat observance as a sports fan, political divides within Jewish communities, and the evolving perception of Israel both internally and externally. The tone mixes intellectual depth with irreverent banter, recurring jokes, and open disagreement.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Jews, Shabbat, and the Challenges of Being a Sports Fan

Timestamps: 00:06–14:35

• The Knicks' (and New York sports) playoff run is used as a lens for Jewish cultural dilemmas, especially the Shabbat-observant community.
• Dan shares humorous anecdotes about Orthodox Jews calling into local sports radio with questions about watching games on Shabbat.
• Chaya Leah details the inventive ways her sons try to follow games without violating halacha, highlighting the nuanced boundary between “the letter of the law” and “the spirit of Shabbat.”
• Debate arises around workarounds (e.g., leaving TV on, using a security guard as an informant) and what counts as keeping Shabbat "in spirit."
• Jewish sports pain as formative—a recurring punchline:

  "Being a Jets fan really is being Jewish. It's learning to deal with adversity, with suffering, with constant disappointment… and still finding pockets of joy." — Dan Senor (13:10)

Notable Quotes:

• "I always tell my kids, maybe your keeping Shabbat is going to be the reason your team wins. Maybe Hashem is going to reward you." — Anya El (06:19)
• "Can you have someone else turn on the TV for you? ...If it's in your home, then it's violative of Shabbat." — Dan Senor (07:44)

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2. On Parenting, Public Life, and Jewish Sports Trauma

Timestamps: 14:35–23:30

• The burden of Jewish parents embarrassing their kids by talking about them on podcasts and in public.
• Bill Simmons’ “Parent Corner” and stories of how children react to parental public storytelling.
• Anya’s story about the “key challah” custom unintentionally leading to embarrassing attention in her children’s schools.
• A story about Chaya’s son being publicly identified as ready for dating due to podcast oversharing.

Notable Quotes:

• "Why do they hate the podcast?" — Dan Senor
  "They cringe from me... They just think it's so embarrassing that their mother's like, you know, on a podcast and talking..." — Anya El (14:37–14:38)

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3. On Work-Life Balance, Chabad Rabbis, and Sacrificing Family

Timestamps: 19:05–24:35

• Dan and the hosts reflect on the personal costs of juggling public careers, communal obligations, and family.
• Discussion of dropping balls/not always dropping the same ball; wrestling with whether we most frequently "drop" the important things (family, relationships).
• Anya shares a moving story from her father—a Chabad rabbi—about unintentionally pushing his own child aside at a Seder to "be there" for someone else, likening it to the sacrifice of Isaac.

Notable Quotes:

• "When you juggle too many balls, the balls that get dropped are sometimes those balls that belong to the people closest to you." — Dan Senor (19:45)
• "I committed the sacrifice of Isaac yesterday. I did it." — Anya El, quoting her father (23:01)

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4. The Genesis and Impact of "Startup Nation"

Timestamps: 24:35–33:42

• Dan recounts working in the Bush administration in Iraq, then moving into writing about Israel’s innovation scene.
• He describes skeptical initial reactions from some Jewish institutions—as "Startup Nation" reversed the charity-based diaspora narrative, reframing Israel as an indispensable, self-sufficient economic power.
• Internal Israeli conflict between pride ("look what we built") and insecurity ("we're under attack"), as well as how this duality is perceived (and not always understood) abroad.

Notable Quotes:

• "We were telling a story about Israel as the indispensable economic partner... not Israel as a welfare case." — Dan Senor (33:05)

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5. Could "Startup Nation" Be Published Today?

Timestamps: 33:42–41:02

• Dan reflects on whether such a pro-Israel narrative could be published (or even promoted) in today's climate of surging anti-Zionism and campus activism.
• He notes the fraught timing of his second book, "The Genius of Israel," published one month after October 7, 2023.
• Media reactions—some finding the book’s optimism about Israel “out of time” or “tone deaf” post-October 7.

Notable Quotes:

• "This may go down as the worst timed title for a book in the history of publishing." — (recounting New York Times review, 38:41)

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6. Israel, American Jews, and "Finger-Wagging"

Timestamps: 41:02–49:49

• Chaya shares her frustration with American Jews “lecturing” Israelis about moral imperatives or the right way to handle the conflict, particularly after the October 7 attacks.
• Dan, in contrast, suggests that while the anti-Zionist Jewish voice in America is loud, it is not as large as it seems—media overrepresent actual numbers.
• The difficulty American Jews, particularly youth, have in articulating or connecting to Jewish identity in the absence of strong Israel or religious formation.

Notable Quotes:

• "I just don't have patience right now for American Jews who think they understand or can have an opinion on what's going on... There's such an unevenness to what our experiences are." — Anya El (41:03)
• "The critics, the Jewish critics of Israel, actually represent smaller numbers than their voices represent." — Dan Senor (44:09)

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7. Jewish Education, Identity, and the Modern Jewish Bubble

Timestamps: 49:49–62:35

• The hosts and Dan debate the roots of anti-Zionism among Jewish youth, with Dan emphasizing the crucial role of day schools, camp, “Jewish bubble” experiences, and immersion.
• Chaya laments that American Jewish communal life often centers on social action or "making the world a better place," at the expense of teaching Jewish history, Torah, and a sense of peoplehood.
• A call for anchoring youth in positive Jewish identity before expecting them to stand up under pressure on campus.

Notable Quotes:

• "You can choose for that [your kids’ formative world] to be in a Jewish bubble or not. But if they're in a Jewish bubble... their whole ecosystem... was Jewish community." — Dan Senor (59:16)
• "We made it so blah, right? And so now... we're asking them to act... about their Jewish identity and... they have no skills in it." — Anya El (57:14)

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8. Orthodox Diversity, and Contrasts within American Jewish Life

Timestamps: 62:35–65:09

• Anya reflects with pride on her son's recent Touro college graduation as an example of Orthodox diversity, juxtaposing it against less anchored forms of American Judaism.
• The gap between New York Orthodox Jewish density and less fortified communities outside this "bubble."

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9. Politics, Jewish Identity, and New York's Divisive Jewish Figures

Timestamps: 65:09–78:29

• Open distaste for Brad Lander, Mamdani, and their ilk—painted as archetypal “bad Jews” for leveraging anti-Israel sentiment for political gain.
• Dan draws a parallel to the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn, arguing that this dynamic is not new but historically dangerous.
• The normalization of extreme anti-Israel rhetoric—calling Israel genocidal, echoing anti-Semitic canards—inevitably leads to rising antisemitism.
• Recurring theme: "outworsing" each other (who can make things sound bleaker or more offensive), blending humor with deep frustration and anger.

Notable Quotes:

• "He [Brad Lander] will say, 'I'm not an anti-Semite. How could you say that? I like Jews who agree with me that Israel is a settler colonial state.'" — Dan Senor (66:55)
• "They are not just throwing kerosene on the fire. They are lighting the fire." — Dan Senor (75:36)

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10. Closing Banter, Conspiracy Theories, and Fun

Timestamps: 79:59–89:04

• Rapid-fire last questions: Dan’s favorite conspiracy theory is that powerful actors are perpetually sabotaging the New York Jets.
• Yael: Katy Perry is JonBenet Ramsey.
• Dan describes what it's like being recognized, stopped, and quizzed (or his wife being quizzed about his podcast) while out in Jewish spaces in NYC.
• Shared feeling among the hosts that their main contribution is providing a community where Jews can feel "anchored" and not "crazy" for supporting Israel in a hostile environment.
• The episode ends with jokes about the self-deprecatory humor and Holocaust survivor standards for judging food.

Notable Quotes:

• "The most common feedback I get... is people are just appreciative of having a space where they don't feel like they're taking crazy pills." — Dan Senor (85:03)

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Notable, Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “Come for the sports talk, stay for the Holocaust jokes.” — Chila (88:54)
• "My wife told me that no one would be interested in this book, but I should still write it.” — Dan Senor (28:12)
• “We honor the office, not the person. But if the Rebbe was alive today, I do not believe he would say the same thing about someone like Brad Lander.” — Anya El (78:06)
• "Anchoring: It turns out it's not that hard to care about this community." — Dan Senor (62:35)

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Structure

• Humor and Depth: Frequent pivots between irreverence (sports, conspiracy theories, parental embarrassment, Holocaust jokes) and earnest debate (Jewish identity, existential threats to Israel, antisemitism)
• Contrasts: Secular vs. Haredi experience, Israel vs. Diaspora, optimism vs. despair
• Recurring Themes: Jewish resilience, internal criticism, the value of communal anchoring, media distortion, moral leadership, and generational disconnect

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For Listeners New and Old

This episode exemplifies Ask a Jew’s unique voice: freely mixing the sacred and the profane, refusing easy answers, and offering both laughter and lament about the Jewish experience today. The guests’ candor, especially Dan Senor’s self-reflection and willingness to engage tough questions, offers valuable, occasionally provocative insight into the modern Jewish psyche—in America, Israel, and beyond.

Transcript

[Dan Senor]

Foreign.

[Chila]

Hi, welcome back to Ask a Jew where a secular, sinful Israeli speaks to her holy religious friend, Anya El, here with Chile. We've, we've finally reached boss level in this podcast. Right. Because we have dancing over here of Call Me Back fame. I don't know what we're going to do after this. Like, who's left us to interview God. God.

[Anya El]

Get God on Moses.

[Dan Senor]

The New York Knicks. The New York Knicks. You guys go start having some of the New York Knicks on next. That'll be like, that's the appropriate step up.

[Chila]

Can I start this podcast saying something absolutely terrible? Yeah. I don't know if I want the Knicks to win because I feel like this city does not deserve any joy or happiness right now.

[Dan Senor]

I, I, I, I got a lot to say about that, what you just said. So you need to tell me if that's where we want to start.

[Chila]

Oh, boy. I feel like most of people have turned this off right now.

[Dan Senor]

But also I actually want to say. All right, sorry, go ahead. I cut you off. You said no, no, you're not going

[Chila]

to get a word in if you don't cut us off.

[Dan Senor]

So please, okay, finish your thought and then I'll get in.

[Chila]

No, that's it. I'm just, I don't know, I see everybody so happy and I'm like, I feel like we should be in a four year mourning period. But that's just me because we allowed this.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, no, I understand that we can talk about that. But I wanted, that being said, I actually think, I mean, the energy around the Knicks on this momentum ride. When is this podcast gonna release, by the way?

[Anya El]

This week.

[Dan Senor]

This week. So it'll be during while the Knicks are playing their home games in New York. So you know, game three and four will be in New York, so the timing's perfect. So a, I just love the energy and all the excitement about a New York sports team making it and having a shot at the title at the championship. So that's exciting. But it also brings out what is most hilarious to me about New York Jews and New York sports fans and New York Jewish sports fans. So this is like the cliche only in New York. It really, this is only in New York on Friday. So I assume you guys, wfan, the sports radio. This is not probably. Okay, so you know what I'm talking about. Okay, so one of the shows is co hosted by Evan Roberts and Tiki Barber. And Tiki Barber is a former running back NFL player for the New York Giants. And let's just assume Neither of them are Jewish. And they take calls in from New York sports fans. Right? That's basically what they do. They take calls in and they banter. It's classic from another year before, you know, podcast and everything. This was from another era, like just classic sports talk radio. And I cannot tell you the number of calls they got on Friday from observant Jews calling them with dilemmas about whether or not they could watch Game two, which was on Friday night because it was on Shabbos. The game was after. Was after sundown. And these guys, I'm thinking with these poor guys, Evan Roberts and Tiki Barber, like, who's calling them? Go to see your rabbi. Like, you're. Why are you calling these guys? And you would think they would be totally flummoxed. And instead, of course, as is classic for a New York Jewish sports, you know, community, they had points of view and actually informed points of view. And they're going back and forth on what the appropriate balance is, is to strike with keeping Shabbos and keeping track of whether or not the Knicks win Game two or not. And it was. It was. It was like. I was like, wow, this is great.

[Chila]

Can you be on? Like.

[Anya El]

Well, let me tell you from experience, I have.

[Dan Senor]

Here we go.

[Chila]

Okay.

[Anya El]

I have four boys. I do not have daughters. I only have sons. We are a crazy sports family. My kids are obsessed with all the big. All the major sports and teams and players. It is an issue every year for different sports reasons, thank God. Football generally is not an issue, but it sometimes is, especially during holidays. This year is going to be a disaster because Rosh Hashanah and Simcha's Torah are all Saturday and Sunday.

[Dan Senor]

Hey, can I tell you something even worse? My son pointed out to me the other day, My son pointed out to me the other day on Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, I think it's on. Rosh Hashanah is. The jets were big jets fans. The New York jets have, you know, it's their. I can't remember if it's their. It's their first game or their second game, whatever. Maybe it's their home opener. I don't remember. And it's also the weekend of the subway series between the Yankees and the Mets, all in one weekend. All one of the high holidays. It's unbelievable.

[Chila]

So, so much so.

[Anya El]

We do not leave the TV on. We don't do that. But what the kids.

[Dan Senor]

Why not? Why not?

[Anya El]

Because it's.

[Chila]

We. We really.

[Dan Senor]

Because this came up, by the way. This came up on wfan.

[Anya El]

I'll tell you why we don't. Because it's really not in the spirit of Shabbat and holidays. It's not what we call Shabbos dick in Yiddish, right? Like it's not, it's not in the spirit of the holiday we did leave on the tv. I'll tell you when I remember clearly. I lived in New York at 9 11. I lived in my grandparents house and my grandparents who were very Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, they had a little television. They left it on the first Shabbat after 911 because my grandfather felt like we had to be keeping up with what was going on in the news and what was happening. So during a war I could see

[Chila]

an argument a lot less fun.

[Anya El]

A sports game, we wouldn't. But my kids will go up and down the streets looking for houses that windows are open that they could see on the screen. They'll go to restaurant, stand outside restaurants and bars watching the game from a distance. They will talk to everyone they pass by. Do you have the score? Do you have the score? The security guard at every shul is the most popular person. Everyone thinks it's because he's like protecting us. It's because he's going to give all the scores of what's going on. They are surrounded by the kids the entire Shabbat when there's a big game on. So we find different ways. And like I always tell my kids, maybe you're keeping Shabbat is going to be the reason your team wins. Maybe Hashem is going to reward you.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, can we stay on this for a moment? I want to stay on this because this, this really you. I wish you would have heard the conversation on base. On base, wfan, where they were putting these questions to Rav, Tiki and Evan. They came back with a couple of proposals. Tiki and Evan to these Jewish callers. Okay. One was why can't you keep the TV on? So that's just okay now. Then the question became, well, because you're using. If you keep the TV on, you're using electricity or. And then they were so informed, they even said, well, but don't some Jews keep the lights on? Don't they keep the lights on over Shabbat, right? It's fair. Or of course the Shabbos timer like that, the lights go automatically on for Shabbat, so why can't the TV be on? So then I was thinking I actually found myself in a weird dialogue with him, even though I wasn't even calling in and then I thought, well, but with tv, you're consuming the content. It's not just the act of turning on the tv if the TV happens to be on. But you're. But you're consuming it. You're like, you know, it's. That. That's its own violation. But then I thought to myself, but then they would say, but isn't that the same with light? If the light is on, you're consuming the light. You see what I mean? So you're.

[Anya El]

This is Talmud. Right? Now we're really writing a page of Talmud.

[Chila]

We should have your father on chaila to discuss this.

[Dan Senor]

The other question they. Then someone else called. I mean, I couldn't believe. This was, like, classic. Like, only New York would so many people be calling. And then. And then someone else called, and then they got into a whole, you know, discussion and debate about whether or not you. A version of what you're saying about the Shabbat. Security guard. Can you have someone else turn on the TV for you? And I guess you're saying, not, because if it's in your home, then it's. It's violative of the Shabbat. Okay, but. But then. And then could you rely on someone to just keep you informed that that was its own discussion? Sounds like you're okay with that.

[Chila]

I think that's kosher, right? I smell like that.

[Anya El]

I'm good with that.

[Chila]

I saw on Twitter somebody said that, like, the security guard at his shoal posted the front page of the New York Post on the wall for everyone. And he was, like, the most important person in shul that morning.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, I'm gonna give you one more. And I know this is not what you wanna talk about for the whole hour, but I do wanna just say one other topic came up, which is the cool thing in New York for the away games is there's all these public places in New York where people are watching. So, like, Central park has a huge screen set up.

[Chila]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

MSG has. There are places you can just kind of walk around in New York and see the game without, like, going to see the game or without turning on your television. So if your family were in New York and you guys were out for a Shabbat dinner or at Chul and you're walking back and you were walking through Central park and they could see the screen from afar.

[Anya El]

Yeah.

[Chila]

What do you think? I would be okay.

[Anya El]

What? I wouldn't be okay. I would be fine with that. I wouldn't want my kids to, like, bring a chair and sit down and park themselves there again because. And I know people are going to have a hard time understanding the difference and the nuance, but it's really about like this concept of the spirit of Shabbat. What is it? What is it? You know, and so we try to, we try to skirt this line of like, like law and just sort of feeling, you know, and, and knowing that it's Shabbat and that it's different. Now my boys would say, you know, we're in our hats. They, my kids wear the black hats and the suits and their white shirts on Shabbat. So they feel automatically like it's different than a random Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. But so they, even if they're sitting and watching the game in Central park wearing their Shabbos gear, I think they would still feel like it's Shabbos and know that they, you know, just to

[Chila]

keep that they're also representing.

[Anya El]

Yeah, but, you know, I made a joke. I mean, and then we'll continue, but on to something else. But I made a joke to someone the other day now that I feel really bad about because she was telling me that her kids are going to the Maccabi Games. You know, Maccabi is, the movement has like Jewish Olympics. And I made a joke and I said, Jews are so bad at sports that were not even in Paralympics or Special needs Olympics. We have our own fourth kind of Olympics right after Regular. And I meant it out of love. And they were so offended.

[Chila]

Oh, wow.

[Anya El]

And I was like, I do know

[Chila]

some people who got into the Maccabia Games because they play a particular sport that needed athletes. Yeah. So they're like, oh, you know how to like, wind surf, then we need you.

[Anya El]

I love that my kids are into sports. I think it's great for religious kids. It's such a good outlet. Not that they're all the best role models. I don't, it's not that. But it's such a good, it's such a healthy outlet for the kids. They, they. I, I'm thrilled with it.

[Dan Senor]

Play is a healthy outlet for kids, whether religious or not. I mean, I, it, it breaks my heart since COVID that youth sports has been in somewhat of a crisis and decline. And I think, I mean, both my kids are, my boys are very into sports. And one of them, quite seriously and I, the only thing, one, one of the many things I marvel at is the hours and hours a day between all his training and his practices and his games and da da, da. He's not on his phone. Hours and hours and hours. Sometimes there's like major news events happening in the world that I just assume every human being, including 17 year olds, know about. And hours will pass and he knows nothing about it. I'm like, that is great.

[Chila]

What sports does he do?

[Dan Senor]

He plays tackle football.

[Chila]

Oh, wow. Okay. That's quite. Seriously. Yes.

[Dan Senor]

He plays quite tight.

[Chila]

Okay, well, I apologize. I want to take back everything I said because now I feel like I'm a terrible New Yorker and I love the city. I worked for this city for six years. I love it.

[Dan Senor]

I'm with you. I'm with you on.

[Chila]

I don't want anybody to experience joy right now.

[Dan Senor]

Your sense of despair about the city, I share that. But this is a. This is a special moment.

[Anya El]

But I have one comment on your jets fandom. I feel like anyone who's not a die hard Patriots fan is anti Zionist and anti Semitic. That's my feeling. Robert Kraft is a tzadik, a holy person who does so much for Israel and the Jewish people.

[Chila]

He cured anti Semitism with that ad. Yes.

[Anya El]

He's solved.

[Chila]

There's been nothing since. There's been nothing.

[Anya El]

No. But we should all be die hard Patriots fans. That's all I'm saying.

[Dan Senor]

I have so much to say. You are opening up a can of worms. And I know Robert as well, and I adore him, but do we really want it? Like, we can do the whole hour on this if you're fine. It's your call.

[Chila]

Are you not triggered at the gate? I went to a Jets game once, and as an Israeli, I was so triggered by the air raid siren thing that they have that goes off and every time I wanted to hide under the bench.

[Dan Senor]

No, that I know. But I think being a Jets fan, unlike being a Patriots fan, I should add, being a Jets fan really is being Jewish.

[Chila]

It's true.

[Dan Senor]

It's learning to deal with adversity. It's learning to deal with suffering, with constant disappointment.

[Anya El]

Disappointment.

[Dan Senor]

And still finding pockets of joy in the disappointment. So you learn to take life's disappointments and say, but I'm going to still dig deep for the joy. And I'm almost gonna make a ritual out of these disappointments and figure out how to find joy in them. So there's I. I can. I have a whole, like, draw on this. I think being where the Patriots. It's like the Patriots might as well be from, like, the Hamptons. Like, everything's great. They're always, like, they're always winning Super Bowls. And then when they're not winning Super Bowls. Don't worry A year from now, we'll draft a new quarterback, and then we'll be in the Super Bowl. It's like, that's not. That's. Come on. That's like joining the nice WASP Country Club in Southampton. That's not. That's not. That's not being Jewish. But whatever.

[Chila]

The most we've talked about sports in this entire podcast.

[Anya El]

I mean, I could keep going.

[Dan Senor]

I hope your sons are listening.

[Anya El]

Yeah, right. They hate this podcast. But anyway, her sons.

[Chila]

This is a favorite story we love to tell her sons. When they can't wake up in the morning, their yeshiva friends put the phone on near their bed and start playing the podcast and then run away.

[Dan Senor]

Why do they hate the podcast?

[Anya El]

They cringe from me. They just are embarrassed. I don't know. They just think it's so embarrassing that their mother's like, you know, on a podcast and talking and like, oh, my God, if I dare talk about them. And my son was like, walking down the street. Three of my kids live in Brooklyn now. Cause they're adult. My kids are older. And someone walked over to my son and said, oh, I heard you're ready to start dating and getting married. You know? And my son was like, how dare you say that in public? He was so upset.

[Chila]

So I tried.

[Dan Senor]

So one of my favorite podcasts is a. And it's really the first podcast I ever started listening to was. It's called the Bill Simmons Podcast, which is like, do you know Bill Simmons? Okay. It's like a sports and popular culture, mostly sports podcast. And during football season, NFL football, he does a two episodes a week on what's going on in the NFL, basically. And one of the episodes, and he always does it with this buddy of his who's named on the show called Cousin Sal. And for whatever reason, they started this tradition many, many years ago. At the end of every episode during football season, they have this segment called Parent Corner. And Simmons and Cousin Sal each tell a horrifying or hilarious story from parenting from that week. That's huge. It's unbelievable, these stories. First of all, they happen to both be great storytellers. And if you're raising kids, you're like, every story, you're just like, I've been there. I've been there. And on the one hand, I love it. It's now sad for me. Cause Simmons kids are now like, one's about to graduate college, one's going to college. I can't be like, I know these kids. Like, I feel like I've been growing up with them. You know, and so, like, I feel like, what does he do now with Parent Corner? Like, what does he do? I'm like, all like. And. But I think to myself, he gets so detailed about his kids and I think about like, what you're describing with your kids. Like, his kids, are they not horrified?

[Anya El]

Yeah, like my kids. And we had an episode early on where we talked about, like, I was in the beginning of our podcast relationship. I would do a lot of explaining about the orthodox world and whatever. And in one of our earliest episodes, I taught, I talked about this thing. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the Shabbat after Passover, there's a custom to make challah with a key in it or to make it the challah in the shape of a key. It's an old, I don't know, it's like an old custom and it's become revitalized. But if you look at pictures on social media that people post of their key shaped challahs, they very much resemble a male body part that we are not going to mention by name. And so I kind of talked about that and made, you know, I made a joke. And so we started getting all these pictures of people's what we were calling dikhalas and et cetera. And my kids who are in yeshiva, like, I, you know, I feel for them because that was like. So, yeah, that's why they hate my podcast.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, I get it, I get it.

[Anya El]

And they want to get married. All right, so anyway.

[Dan Senor]

Right, right.

[Chila]

I feel like we're going to finally start 20 minutes in or something.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, so now let's do Mets versus Yankees.

[Chila]

I have nothing to contribute. Go ahead.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[Chila]

No, we're very excited to have you on. When I first reached out to one of your producers who's a friend, and I said, do you think we can get Dan on Ask a Jew? And he said, you know what he said? He said, I can't even get Dan Cenor on Call Me Back.

[Dan Senor]

Because.

[Chila]

Which is your show, obviously, because you're. Because you're very, very busy man. And Kyla and I were talking, we're like, what do we want to ask him? I was like, you're very successful in podcasting. You've written a bunch of books, you have a great career. What are you bad at? What do you really suck? There must be something you suck at.

[Dan Senor]

Do you want my wife to come in here? She should maybe take over this part of the conversation. She would have a lot to say on this top I'm, I'm bad at a lot of things. Do you really? Is this therapy? I mean, is this like a mid career?

[Chila]

Would you rather talk about Iran again? The Straits of Hormuz, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody cares.

[Dan Senor]

I'm actually not very good at sports. How about that?

[Chila]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Anya El]

Something, something.

[Dan Senor]

I, I mean, I mean, I. Let's talk about. Honestly, I really could, could. My, My wife would say, whether I'm good at things or bad at things, she would say I have too many things going on.

[Chila]

Okay, okay.

[Dan Senor]

That's so, so that, that would be like the. It, like, it's so. So that I have too many. This is not, by the way, this is not to say for a second like one does in a job interview or a college application. Like, you know what I mean? What is your biggest challenge? Oh, I just, I work too hard. Yeah, I try, I try. I'm always trying, you know, and I just. Sometimes I need to not try so hard. That's not.

[Chila]

I give too much.

[Dan Senor]

She's.

[Chila]

She.

[Dan Senor]

Exactly, exactly. Always just want to be too helpful. Yeah, no, no. She would say, I, I'm. I, I try to juggle too many balls. And when you juggle too many balls, balls drop. And often when they drop, the people, the balls that get dropped are sometimes those balls belong to the people closest to you. So you just gotta try not to be busy with too many things.

[Anya El]

Our teacher, who taught us about marriage before we got married, told us, and I'll never forget, she said, life is about juggling lots of balls in the air, and it's normal that balls drop. Make sure you're not dropping the same ball over and over again. If you're always dropping the same ball and it's always your spouse or your kids, but you're always really good about work, then you know, that's not a good balance. You have to sometimes allow things to balance each other out.

[Chila]

I heard it like I heard an airport analogy that I liked once, that you need to always have some planes in the air, some planes on the ground, some planes landing, and no planes crashing.

[Anya El]

Right.

[Chila]

Yeah, I can do that.

[Dan Senor]

To your point about the not always having the same ball, I'm not sure I agree with that. Because what my wife, what Campbell would say is, she would say the problem with people who juggle too much is that they believe that when balls drop, their bias will be letting the balls drop. This is coming back to my earlier point that belong to the people closest to you because, you know, they'll always deal with it. They'll always kind of let the ball go tumbling down and then let you pick it back up. And like, whereas, whereas, whereas people who aren't that close to you may be less forgiving or less tolerant. So you're actually. Human nature is to be more mindful of the people less close to you. Yeah, that makes sense because you're. Cause you're like, you're kind of more worried about that balancing act, and you kind of like the stuff at home or relationships that are close to you, or you're like, oh, those. They'll have my back no matter. You know what I mean? So that's the unhealthy part.

[Anya El]

You're actually naming an issue that a lot of Chabad rabbis and their families struggle with that I'm going to mention

[Dan Senor]

here that I. I tell I in another life, I would be a Chabad rabbi.

[Anya El]

People are going to be uncomfortable. I think my friend, my follow people who listen, who are Chabad, are going to be annoyed at me for saying this. But I grew up the daughter of a Chabad rabbi in Rebbetzin, and I know from that experience and from all my friends that often in the relationship that the Chabad rabbi has to his community, it's much easier to push your kids and your family to the side when ne want to be there for the congregation and the community. And my father has this story that he always tells about a seder that my brother had, like, was in fourth grade, he had learned the man Astana in Yiddish, and he was so excited to say it at the seder, and he, like, set his place up right next to my father so that he could say it. And then a guy came in who hadn't made an rsvp. My father kicked my brother out. I'm only telling the story because my father always tells it. He kicked my brother out of that seat and put this guy who just walked in last minute next to. To him, you know, to my dad. And my brother left and didn't come back to the seder. He went to sleep for the night and he didn't come. And he never. He didn't say the mana. And my father didn't notice until the next day.

[Dan Senor]

Oh, wow.

[Anya El]

And then the next day in Seoul, my father spoke and he said, I committed the sacrifice of Isaac yesterday. I did it. I sacrificed my son because I wanted to impress this guy who came and he didn't rsvp. He wasn't important to me. He was a random guy off the street. And I pushed my son away and I Mean, this is, and it's something that all of us struggle with. I mean we, I'm telling you a deep story, but how many times in our own personal lives are we experiencing that moment?

[Chila]

Was he a donor though? Because if he was a donor, I mean, still. Okay.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, I think the other, I'm curious. I mean, I, I, I friends of mine who are like, I'm friends with this rabbi at our kids day school who's orthodox. He's, I don't know how old he is. Late for early 50s. He has eight kids.

[Anya El]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

So his oldest is, is married. His youngest is like three or four. And, and I honestly don't know how he does it. And his wife works full time. I, I, honestly friends of mine, I just don't know how they, and he's like so engaged in our, in our community, you know, at the school and he's fully involved and obviously he's very present. He has a big job at the school. I just don't know how people do it. I mean, I just. Anyways, so I think about chabad rabbis in that regard. Like, oh my gosh, like A, a million kids. B, in charge of a community. C, what you just described, feeling you have to, yeah. You know, be very responsive to people.

[Anya El]

Yeah. It's a big job. So how did you get into like what I don't understand, when you wrote your books, Give us like a short timeline of like you wrote a book about Israel. Were you already in, you were in the US Government. Somehow you were ended up in Iraq. Were you a soldier? I don't know what's going on here. I don't know. Then you had a podcast. Oh, no,

[Dan Senor]

I'll do it briefly. I'll do it briefly. Okay, okay. So my bar mitzvah portion was. No, I won't start there. I won't start there. I, I worked in the Bush administration. That's the Iraq part. When you mentioned Iraq. I worked in the Bush administration for the Pentagon and the White House in 2003 and 2004. And I was based in Iraq for, and Doha and Kuwait for a little bit, but mostly Iraq for about 15 months and then came back June 2004 when the US government handed and the coalition handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis and I was back in the US I was living in New York. I was work, I left the administration. I was working, I was doing some media, a lot of media stuff around Iraq and what was going on in the Middle east and I was doing some investing in the business world and then I also got this idea to write this book called. Which became titled Startup Nation, which was based on two experiences. One experience was working with a lot of Israeli entrepreneurs over the years, including at that time I had invested with a lot of, of a number of Israeli startups. And I always felt that when people thought of Israel, non Jews, when most people hadn't spent much time in Israel or thought about Israel, they had two images. They had like maybe three images in mind. They had, they had the IDF camels. They had camels or. Yeah, I would say camels or I would say like, like, like kibbutz, kibbutzim, like from another era or, or Haredi Jews. Like, you know, they have these images and that there was like this whole other slice of Israeli life that most people. If I told people, do you know that Tel Aviv, that Israel is the most important innovation economy outside Silicon Valley in the world. In the world. Like, it's not even close. It's like Israel, sorry, it's Silicon Valley, then it's Israel and then it's like a huge drop off. Like, it's like I said, not even, it's not even close. More Israeli startups, more startups on the. Or more, more Israeli companies on the NASDAQ than any country in the world outside the United States at the time. Highest density of startups in the world. More global venture capital being drawn to Israel than any country in the world on a per capita basis. When I tell people this, they thought I was nuts. They couldn't understand, they didn't associate. Now we associate Israel with all of these things. But back then I was working with some Israeli entrepreneurs who I thought were some of the most interesting, compelling entrepreneurs in the world. Again, several of whom I had invested with. So that was one motivation for writing the book. And then the other was when I was in business school, I was getting my mba before I was in Iraq, before I was in the Bush administration. I took a group of 30 students to Israel, all of whom were first timers. 27 of the 30 were not Jewish. The three that were Jewish had actually never been there before. They were from all over the world, these students. India, Portugal, the uk, Canada. Just thinking about some of them, obviously the US and, and I wanted them to see the tech economy and the whole startup scene in Israel. And at the end of the trip they were saying, we get the, the what we get. Like what, what you're showing us, what is happening here is amazing. How did you know? Like, like some of the data I just rattled off, they were seeing it firsthand. But they were saying, but how? Like, how did Israel pull this off? How did it pull it off in the least likely of places, surrounded by enemies and a state of war since its founding, no natural resources. So the combination of those two experiences or those two sets of experiences led me to believe there's a great book to be written here. And so Saul Singer, who's my brother in law, who at the time was a writer for the Jerusalem Post and was living, he made Aliyah with my sister in 1994. And he and I are very close and we're always my thought partner. We're always brainstorming on things. And, and I said, you know, there's a great book to be written that just explains what's happening here, Israel, like this Silicon Valley in the least likely of places and why, why it exists, how Israel pulled it off and what the world can learn from it. And so we, we pitched it to, we got an agent, we pitched it, and my wife told me that no one would be interested in this book, but I should still write it. She still thought. The good news is she still thought we should write it because she knew we were passionate about it, but she wanted us to go into it eyes wide open, that no one would ever be interested in this topic. And I keep reminding her it's been translated into over 30 languages, which means a lot of people were interested in it. But anyway, so we wrote the book and so that's where I started. I mean, I've been very involved with Israel over the years. I have a lot of family in Israel, as I said, I, I've been very involved with activism, political activism on the US Israel relationship. For a number of years. I'd worked in government and politics, but I've never been out there as like a, a commentator or analyst or in this case, a storyteller about Israel. And so that's, I think that's probably where it began, that ultimately that book led to the second book and then obviously it's connected to the podcast.

[Chila]

When did, when did Startup Nation come out?

[Dan Senor]

2009.

[Chila]

2009. Do you think it could be? Because it's a very, I mean, it's a wonderful book. I think everybody should read it. I think it's absolutely still relevant today. But it also, it showed people like another, and I hate to use the word hasbara, but it showed people a different side of Israel that they don't normally see. That is a very positive, It's a very positive book about Israel. Do you think it could come out today in like a major publishing house.

[Dan Senor]

Wow, that's a great question. I will tell you, we had challenges last time when the book came out that I didn't. That would have never. That on the one hand, like I wouldn't have ever imagined today. So. But your question is. I'm going to come back to that. When the book first, when we first wrote the book, we had no problem pitching it to our Simon and Schuster. Sorry, it wasn't Simon. Simon Shu did the second book. It was Hachette Books. It was, the imprint was 12 books. John Karp, who's Jewish, who was the editor on it, but he was not like, he's not some Zionist activist type. But my point is, in the kind of secular and certainly non Jewish book world, people were excited about it. They thought it was a great story. So they had no, like, mishigas about it. Like, they had no, like, oh, this is cool. This is, you know, and it came out as a business book. And it was. But then, so we wrote the book and then to build up excitement and begin the marketing, we started go. I started, I saw was in Israel, but I was here. I started going around and meeting with like, different Jewish community organizations, trying to get them excited about the book, hopefully, you know, make purchases, promote it, host events, et cetera. And I'm going to meet with the boards and the leadership and the professional staff of some of these Jewish organizations whose names I won't mention. And when I walk through the book to them, they were slightly horrified because. And they were not excited about it. It was a fascinating phenomenon. And the reason I realized as I kept doing these pitches, and I was like, why is this landing so? Like, I don't want to say like in a negative way, but like, certainly like sort of a muted, muted way. And I realized for much of a lot of institutional diaspora, Jewry, institutional, like the major organizations, their whole story about Israel is Israel is a charity case, right? It was that their focus in the Diaspora was we need to be there for Israel because Israel's under siege and Israel is, you know, suffering and Israel is, you know, under the gun and Israel is weak and we need to be there to take care of Israel.

[Anya El]

And.

[Dan Senor]

And we were telling a different story. We were telling a story about Israel as the indispensable economic partner of the west and the indispensable innovation partner of Silicon Valley. And that the world gets as much, if not more from Israel than Israel gets from the world. And that if you're not figuring out how to partner with Israel, you're in trouble. You meaning like business and economic centers around the world. Like, we were telling a much. We were telling a story about Israel as a source of strength, not Israel as a. As a. As a, you know, as a welfare case.

[Anya El]

Yeah.

[Chila]

By the way, that's a conflict that. That's a conflict that I think really exists within Israeli society, too, that on one hand, we're always like, look at us, you know, this is an Israeli invention and Eurovision and everything's, you know, we're so amazing. But also we're under. Constantly under attack. And both things are true at the same time. Right.

[Dan Senor]

I am constant. Constantly struggling with this. Like, constantly. Like, even in the last 48 hours. On balance, I believe Israel is better off as a. As a story about a source of strength in the world, because I think ultimately, in the world of geopolitics, which is what I'm most focused on, decision makers in capitals around the world are generally drawn to strength. They want to partner with. With actors that they think have momentum, that are strong, that are clever winners. That are winners. Exactly. People want to be with winners. They do not want to be with charity cases. And so. And I think Israel has entered that. That realm now, where it's not like. It's obviously not just us writing about Startup Nation, but just globally. There's a sense, even these pathetic European countries that think that they're, like, making a big statement about voting at the UN for a Palestinian state and making these strong statements from foreign ministries or the chancelleries criticizing Israel for this or that, they still are desperate to do trade deals with Israel to do defense deals with Israel to do so. I mean, because they know there are basically two laboratories today for the future of warfare and defense. There's two. That's it. It's Ukraine and it's Israel. And both of them have extraordinary stories, by the way, of what they've accomplished, but they want. I think the Israeli story is even better than the Ukraine story. We can get into that. But I think they. So they want to piggyback onto that. Why did the Abraham Accords. Right. The Abraham Accords did not happen because the Emiratis and the Bahrainis felt badly for Israel and they didn't happen. Yeah, the poor Jews, we got to be there. Or it didn't happen because they, like, suddenly became Zionists, like, oh, you know, Herzl. The wisdom of Herzl and Jabotinsky, you

[Chila]

know, and so they read Alan Dershowitz, the Case for Israel.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, exactly. No, they believed Israel could help address their own problems and challenges. They wanted to partner with a country that helped them, not a country that they had to help. And I think that is the future of the Middle East. I think that's Israel's future, like, now. So I'm actually quite bullish on Israel's future. So I think ultimately that's the direction we need to lean in and that Israel, God willing, should continue to lean in. That said, you're right. Like, at the same time, like, even. Even these last few days, like, I was just thinking about what Israel's dealing with with Lebanon and, you know, and just. And then, I mean, everything it's dealing with, I don't. We can get into it.

[Chila]

No, but I'm just thinking, this is.

[Dan Senor]

This is crazy. People are like. People are like, well, are you surprised? Despite all of Israel's gains, it still has, you know, Hezbollah on its southern border, and it still has that. I'm like, yes. Do you ever stop and think how crazy it is that this tiny little country has, like, give me another example. Give me another comp in the world where a country of Israel's size, which has a tiny population, no strategic depth geographically, and is literally surrounded by people on most of its borders that are waking up every day saying, how do we destroy this country? Like, I'm sorry that they don't have that all cleaned up in a tidy bow. Like, this is a. They're in an impossible situation. So I agree with you. Like, I go back and forth with the extraordinary accomplishments and the challenges, but I didn't answer your question because I

[Chila]

forgot to get there.

[Dan Senor]

It was a great question.

[Chila]

Yeah. Today they would make.

[Dan Senor]

I should be running the interview. No. Would the book have been published today?

[Chila]

It would have a forward by like, Chenk Uyghur, and they would have to publish, like, a book about how fiber optics are a Palestinian invention.

[Anya El]

Exactly right.

[Chila]

Right.

[Dan Senor]

I would say, would the book get published today? That is, I don't know. I mean, I'm like, sad to say, I don't know. I mean, for instance, I'm not even thinking about the book being published. I'm thinking about the book. Like, when the book came out, I spoke. I did a million lectures around the country, I'm thinking. And I spoke at all these college campuses, and no one thought twice about. I mean, I spoke at Berkeley. I'm thinking of some of the places I spoke. It just didn't even. But I'll tell you, the bigger challenge of a book coming out was our second book, the Genius of Israel came out I mean, this is so came out November 7th, 2023. Our publication date was exactly one month after October 7th.

[Chila]

Wow.

[Dan Senor]

And obviously, as you know, like these publication dates are locked in before, I mean, you know, months and months before. And so we had no control over the publication date. And the publication date was November 7th. And so we had a book less. And it was less about the tone. To your point, like would people have spilkes about writing a book? Like, would they be uncomfortable? Like publishers about. It's less about that. It was like. I remember Brett Stevens, who was reviewing the book, called me after he had submitted the review and saying, you guys need to figure out how to change the pub date of this book. I said, brett, we cannot change the pub. The date of the book. He said, you will look like idiots with a book coming out a month after October 7th when not just tone deaf, you look at out of time. Meaning this is after Israel experienced the biggest screw up in its history. After the only thing that's comparable to it is the Yom Kippur War. I mean, being told they looked hapless, they looked like a paper tiger. And you've got a book called the Genius of Israel. Like it's Ethan Bronner who wrote a review for the New York Times for the book and he obviously he had committed to write the review before October 7th, but obviously it did deliver the review after October 7th, because the book was published November 7th. And I think, I don't remember off top of my head, but he said something like in the New York Times, he said this may go down as the worst timed title for a book in the history of publishing. Like that you could write a book after calling it the. And he said, he said the year after Israel, Israeli society tearing itself apart with the judicial reform fight. And then it culminates with the October 7th attack. Israel being completely caught off guard. And then these guys come out with a book called the Genius of Israel. Real genius, guys.

[Anya El]

Well, while we were talking, I just, you know, I have a brother who lives in Israel and he just posted in our family chat that schools were closed for tomorrow in Israel, by the way. So I don't know what's going on.

[Chila]

Yeah, something seems.

[Anya El]

But the point, the reason I'm mentioning that is because in relation to what we're saying, I just don't have patience right now for American Jews who think they understand or can have an opinion on what's going on when the Israelis. And again, I'm not one of these people. Oh, if you're Israeli, you get to have an opinion, but Americans don't. But I have no patience for American Jews lecturing Israelis right now. I've lost my patience. Like, they're not home. We, my kids go to school every day and they're fine. My brother is at home with six kids in a bomb shelter in and out off school more days in the last three years than they've been in school. Okay. I'm just, I'm so sick and tired of the Americans being like, we're going to have a moral argument to make to the Israelis. I just, I can't take it anymore. And I've tried to be diplomatic. I try to hear it, I. To try, try to understand it. I want to be there. I want, I want to be in this conversation with the Diaspora jewelry and with Israelis. But there's such an uneven, an unevenness to what our experiences are that I just don't know how we can really be in conversation with the Israelis in this way. Do you, does that make sense to you, Dan? Like, do you know what I'm saying?

[Dan Senor]

Do you, do you feel, do you feel that American, you're dealing with American, like you have exposure to a lot of American Jews who are doing kind of a lot of finger wagging at Israel?

[Anya El]

Yes, yes.

[Dan Senor]

See, I don't, I don't.

[Chila]

But maybe because you're, they're not in your orbit or. I don't know.

[Dan Senor]

But what orbit are you, you guys are getting this.

[Anya El]

I see it on main. Well, I mean, not to call out, well, whatever.

[Dan Senor]

I mean, just the three of us. Just the three of us.

[Anya El]

I think some Jewish institutions, I think some denominations of Jews like that there's this idea that yes, we love Israel and in theory, and we support it. In theory. Theory. And yes, October 7th was terrible. And we believe in the worst thing. Yellen. I get so nervous when people say we believe in the existence of Israel,

[Dan Senor]

like that Israel's right to exist. Right to exist. Like you would say that about any other country, say, you know, has a right to exist.

[Anya El]

I know, but if you come talk to an average liberal Jew and I, I hate being so blanket about it. But if you come talk to an average liberal, liberal Jew living here in Long Beach, California or anywhere in Southern California, they have laundry list of things that they're upset about that's going on in Israel and with the Israelis, right. Like they're angry at the Israelis. They're, they have a.

[Chila]

We're angry at ourselves too. We Israelis are also. I was thinking Dan's book, like The Genius of Israel. Israelis need to read that because we're spending so much time. And that's bothering me a lot in the last three years and before, like thinking the worst things about ourselves too. So it's such a mind. Excuse my language. Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

When we wrote that, when we wrote Startup Nation by friend Tal Kanan, who's, who's a former Israeli Air Force pilot and who I went to business school with, actually met him in business school here in the U.S. but he, he at one point was asked about in an interview, and he said it actually. I mean, Saul is Israeli, but he's an American immigrant, you know, so he's, he's. So he, he said it kind of takes. And I obviously don't live in Israel. He said it almost takes people from the outside to capture what's going. What's special because we, he says we like people who grew up here, spent their whole lives here, been in it. They wouldn't have. Like, we wouldn't.

[Chila]

No, it's normal.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah. And it's the, and it was the same. And it's the same with. I think it's the same with the Genius of Israel. How Aretz did this big magazine piece when the Genius of Israel came out, because it was all about how we argued that Israeli society is actually one of the most healthy societies they must

[Chila]

have in the world.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, right. And it actually. And of course, all these. But what about judicial reform and what about the haredim? And what about the, you know, they're all like, they're all like pointing to. And what we argued in the book is we said, oh, you're saying that Israel is a polarized society and that has issues on which to be polarized. Yes, Israel has that, as does most of the world today. Everyone is going through polarization. Each one is dealing with its own, you know, issues in terms of what the vessels for polarization are. But this is a phenomenon of our times. The question is, on balance, which society would you bet on to kind of hold together? Which society has social and civic shock absorbers that keep the country together even when they're at each other's throats? Again, I don't want to digress into a whole going deep on the book, but that was basically our argument. And so when we had the data to prove what we were arguing and why Israel. And this guy who wrote for her arts went into it is such a skeptic. And he basically wrote this magazine piece saying it was written in Hebrew. He basically said, I'm a skeptic. I was a skeptic. But wow. Like, when you actually look at the data, this is a pretty great place. Dare I say. He was almost like.

[Chila]

And then he was fired from Haritz.

[Dan Senor]

Then he was fired from Haritz and he was told to leave the country. No. And so I think there's something, what you're saying, the whole. With American Jews, you know, pearl clutching and kind of like that, that. I don't know, maybe I'm. I feel like it's more stark than that. I think. I think there's the critics, the Jewish critics of Israel, which actually represent smaller numbers than their voices represent. What I mean by that is I think they're very loud. I think they get a lot of attention because they're like, their voices are like, outsized. Their voices are outsized in part because those in the media want to elevate. They're incentivized. You know, Christian Amanpour would have Peter Beinart on her, like, show every night if she could. You know what I mean? Like, they want to elevate these voices. So you think that their voices are louder than they are or. I have, like, I have spoken to a lot of college campuses before October 7th, but also since October 7th, and I'll have presidents of universities or professors at universities say, you know, when the encampments or the anti Israel rallies on campus, you know, there's a lot of Jews involved. Jewish students, they always tell me this. Then I said, really? How many?

[Anya El]

Right.

[Dan Senor]

No, really, like how many? And they're like, oh. So they, they like, every time there's an SJP rally, there's always a Jewish student who speaks. I'm like, right, A Jewish student, right? Or like two or three. Yes. They're very strategic about always having a Jewish student speak at the rally. So they like, that's a great.

[Chila]

But it's a problem.

[Dan Senor]

The perception is they're outside. But actually, statistically, do you really believe statistically that that's represent. Like, I actually, I will tell you, among young Jews. And I. So I'm not in an Orthodox community. I'm in a very quintessential pluralist Jewish community in terms of where, like the school we're involved with and just where I am on the Upper west side. And so. And we have all walks of political life and socioeconomic life in this community and religious life and ideological, you know, we have real ideological diversity on Israel. We don't. It's pretty. The support for Israel, the love for Israel, the activism for Israel, the sense of peoplehood. With Israel, the inclination to give Israel the benefit of the doubt is pretty, pretty strong. And again, these are among. And these are. So I wonder whether or not you are reacting to, you know, loud voices rather than large numbers.

[Chila]

But it's being sold back to us too. Like, that's my problem with it.

[Dan Senor]

That's the problem.

[Chila]

It's being reinforced in media. And my new biggest pet peeve, and I have many, is like this representation of anti Zionist Jews in the culture. So if there's like a TV show or a, you know, a play or something, and you know, they will never, the Jewish character will never utter a word about Israel anymore. That's like taboo. And I feel like they're trying to, like people are trying to sell this back to us as mainstream. And I mean, let's be honest, a lot of young people in their 20s don't feel any, you know, affinity to Israel as Jews. I'm not saying you need to love Israel. Everything Israel does. Of course I don't.

[Dan Senor]

But like, but are these people, but do these people that you're describing feel a strong connection to Judaism?

[Chila]

No, but they still consider themselves Jews and you know, they do their bagel and their pickles and their lox and they're not going to be around in another generation. But I still, I still worry about that because I, and I asked this of a lot of our guests, like, what would you tell a young, and I'm sure you get this question, a lot of like parents or young people. Like, I feel like there is no price to pay today to be an anti Zionist Jew. Right. Like you're not, you're just like, like existing in society.

[Dan Senor]

There's a lot of reward.

[Chila]

There's a lot of reward. But like, what would you do? Like to turn that tide. And you can't say Jewish day schools.

[Dan Senor]

Why? Because we're, I mean, I won't.

[Chila]

We talked about it all the time.

[Anya El]

That's the answer.

[Dan Senor]

I'm obsessed with Jewish day schools. Yes, I'm obsessed with Jewish day schools.

[Chila]

Okay, let's say somebody in Nebraska who does.

[Dan Senor]

And I'm obsessed with, with gap year programs.

[Chila]

Okay.

[Dan Senor]

In Israel.

[Chila]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

So why aren't a lot of. I won't say these things, but why are you, why are you silencing me?

[Chila]

Well, something smaller, something I thought told

[Dan Senor]

me, a free flowing conversation and now you're, now you're.

[Chila]

I told you the one thing you can't talk about is Jewish day schools. No, I'm kidding. Something more, you know, something like, like an emotional connection, something that is not a big life decision.

[Anya El]

There's nothing. What do you mean? Dan's right when he says about Jewish day school. What? What do you want? We tried the Holocaust, right? We tried throwing kids here. This is the camps.

[Chila]

Are you saying we did the Holocaust? Is that what you're saying? No.

[Anya El]

We tried using that as a way to get Jews to care, right? We tried to hold up all the piles of bodies and we took them to Auschwitz and we said, oh, look, look. And they still didn't care.

[Chila]

And we did.

[Anya El]

Birth. To me, birthright is a hundred times. And you know me, I love the Holocaust, right? But my Israel, the birthright trip is a thousand times more important to me than going to see Auschwitz. And that is a big change that we as American Jews have to flip in our heads because we haven't been able to. I would rather build today a museum of Israel here in America. Let's have an Israel museum, right? Where we come and see all the wars that we fought in the hot Israel. Put hot Israeli soldiers all over, have spots where you could take Instagram photos with hotties in their uniforms. That to me, that's much more important than anything we've been pouring money into fighting anti Semitism or any other BS work.

[Chila]

But I also think you need to teach. Like. Okay, I have an answer to my own question and I'm just thinking about

[Dan Senor]

not only are you banning. Not only banning what? What I can say. Yeah, but you had like a self licking ice cream cone. You already knew what you, you went into this with like a plan.

[Anya El]

This is stupid.

[Chila]

Listen, dad, when you have us on call me back, you can ask us questions.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, fine, go ahead. You had a spiel ready to go. You just wanted to make it sound conversational.

[Chila]

I didn't because I asked all our guests this questions and then.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, I'm still gonna respond, but go ahead.

[Chila]

I wasn't listening. I was thinking about my answer and I came up with answer no. But I think these, I think people, like, there's something at the core of the Jewish American identity that is very much about the other. It's very like outward facing, right? It's always like, what do they think of me? Are they trying to kill me? Do they like me? Do they accept me? And I get it. You're Diaspora, you're a minority. I didn't grow up like that. I grew up Israeli. I just feel like people need to start, like, stop listening to everybody else and start listening to yourself. Start listening to people around you, like these Jewish kids. They will Give the benefit of the doubt to every single activists that they meet and every single person that comes with a grievance. Do you think they would listen to a chabad rabbi if he came to talk to them? So, like, well, now when they go

[Dan Senor]

to Jewish day school, here's my, here's my. I actually think they'll listen to every grievance and they'll give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Except for two different projects. One, the Israeli project, and two, the American project. I think these same people, these same people that are, that are intrinsically and instinctively hostile to Israel, generally speaking, are also hostile to America.

[Chila]

A million percent.

[Dan Senor]

And I get this all the time when I speak on college campuses where a Jewish student will say to me, my, you know, someone in my dorm or someone in the, you know, the, you know, candle Making literature club or someone in the, you know, someone in my class or someone of this. They, they are so critical of Israel and what's the best way? They're just, they think everything Israel does is wrong. Then what's the best way to turn them around? You know, what's the best way to. And I know you're asking about, yo. You're asking about Jews who have this sentiment, but I think it applies to both, you know, Jews and I. And my response is don't even try to engage them on Israel. Don't. I said start with a different question. You want to engage these people, Ask them a different question. Ask them how they feel about America.

[Chila]

No, you're right.

[Dan Senor]

Do they believe that, that like the original sin of Western civilization was. Was 1976 was like the founding of. Sorry, not 1776. Sorry. Do they think the founding of America was like the original of the west? Do they think 1619 is more important than 1776? Like, do they think that, like, there's nothing America could do that is right, that there's like a stain on the country forever based on the way in which the founding of this country occurred? And they like the 100 plus years whatever, following the founding of the country. Is that, do they think that is how they think about America or do they say America's a complicated place and it's had all sorts of twists and turns since its founding, but it's generally trying to get better and it's, you know, as, you know, generally trying to, you know, advance and progress in the right way? And it's doing it in ways and with precedence and with innovations in terms of the development of its society. That is, it makes it a total outlier. In the world way ahead of most of the rest of the world. And therefore America is actually making the world not just for Americans, but is actually a net contributor making the world a better place. Do they believe that or if you said that, would they think you're absolutely crazy? And they actually think it's the former. And if you tell me that they're so locked in to the evilness of America as an idea, not just, just how Americans live or decisions Americans have made, but America like the American idea, the American experiment, if they believe that it is corrupted and broken from its founding and it's irreparable and it's not redeemable, then they're never gonna have anything but a hostile view to Israel.

[Chila]

But I agree, a lot of these people hate America. They hate Western civilization. Everything is a dead white man. They definitely hate capitalism, which.

[Anya El]

But also, yeah, but to drill down on the Jewish piece of it, because I think what Dan's saying is so true about all young people and all Americans in general right now and everybody in the West. But if you want to drill down on the Jewish piece of it, we have done such a disservice to so many American Jews by saying, you know, it's not about the Torah, don't worry about that. It's not about Israel, don't worry about that. It's not about our history, it's about, you know, cleaning the beach and being a good civic engager and make sure

[Chila]

you vote and the environment.

[Anya El]

Well, we made it so blah, right. And so now we're face a tough situation, right? We're facing, you know, I think it's not just October 7th, which is horrible, but it's Covid. It's the digital age, it's October, it's all of this together. And we're asking them to act, to think very, to ask themselves difficult moral questions, difficult things about identity. And they have no skills in it. They literally have no skills. If you sat me down and asked me to talk about some deep physics question, right. I, I would look at you blankly and I would run away because I know nothing about physics, right? And we're asking young Jews, and by the way, I don't only say young Jew. I'm 45 years old. We're asking Jews my age, okay, my a 45 year old adults to think deeply and critically about their Jewish identity and about the place of Jews in the world. And they have no scaffolding, they have no way of being able to answer these questions. And so we as a community now have to say to ourselves, how do we rebuild that? What are we giving? What are the ingredients to give a Jew the opportunity to engage in these ideas?

[Dan Senor]

I just want to yell. I'm going to join the pile on here. I'll just add to this. Look, even though you tried to muzzle me talking about day schools, I am going to say one other thing about day schools, but it's not day schools. It's what Saul, my brother in law, who my co author I was talking about earlier, he had this term, many years ago about the idea of Jewish bubble experiences. Like, you want young people to be in Jewish bubble experiences. Now, the term bubble now has a negative connotation, but it actually is a fantastic image because when you're in a Jewish bubble and you're with other Jews who are all living a similar Jewish life and your whole world for whatever time that is your whole Jewish world, is that, is that bubble experience, whether it's a day school community, or whether it's a camp or whatever, traveling, a summer trip, a teen trip, it is, or whatever it is that not only are you living a Jewish life, you're living God, you know, hopefully a connection to Israel, but you're also. Young people are. That's when, like, they're having formative experiences and formative relationships. That's when. That's when their whole social milieu, like, that's their. What's where their friendships are being made. I mean, I will tell you, I mean, I've just seen it with my own kids. Like, I like to think that Campbell and I have had a big influence on our children and who they are. But I'm, you know, I've seen enough to know that the friendships they have are the biggest factor. And the community they have and the pack of friends that they have is the ball game. Like, like, we're, we're there, we matter, right? But we're marginal. We can steer here, we can steer there, but it's basically, they are not spending 8, 10, 15 hours a day with us. So, I mean, maybe, you know, on Shabbat or whatever, pocket, but that day in, day out, that is not their world. And so we have to make a decision, what is their world gonna be with their world of friendships again, those social experiences? And you can choose for that to be in a Jewish bubble or not. But if they're in a Jewish bubble, it's not about, like, oh, we drove that piece of information in their head at this time, and we taught them about this argument about Israel at that time. It's that their whole. Their whole world, their whole ecosystem at key formative periods of their lives was Jewish community. And part of that Jewish. That Jewish life, that Jewish learning, you know, becoming Jewishly literate, the experiencing Jewish rituals, the Jewish joy, the scaffolding, like, all everything. You just, you know, that Israel winds up being part of that. It's not the only thing, but it, like, it becomes part of it. And so later in life, when being supportive of Israel because you're on some college campus where people are losing their minds becomes harder. You're like, yeah, this is harder. But. But you know what else is hard? What else is hard is abandoning my Jewish identity, my Jewish community, because that's what I grew up with, and that's who I am, and that's who my people are. So, yeah, defending Israel is hard, but, like, I. I couldn't imagine living any other way. It's hard to. Hard to ask kids to be thrust into that college campus situation where these maniacs are taking over libraries and dorms and building encampments, and tell that Jewish kid, go take those people on. Go argue with them, go debate them. And they're like, why? You didn't say any of this Jewish identity or Jewish community was important for my entire life.

[Anya El]

Exactly.

[Dan Senor]

I didn't grow up with anybody who cared about these things. And now when you're telling me it's all downside, there's no upside, I have no upside. It's all downside. You asked me to thrust myself into this fight. That means nothing to me. So I don't mean to bring it back to day schools or that whole category, but I do think things get hard. And when things get hard, you gotta say to yourself, are Jews anchored, or do they feel unmoored? And if they're anchored, then it actually turns out it's not that hard to care about his community.

[Chila]

Anchoring.

[Dan Senor]

It's so interesting and. Oh, go ahead, go ahead. No, you go ahead.

[Anya El]

No, I was just gonna say, like, it's interesting because as we're talking about this, I'm thinking about my experience as an Orthodox Jew in this country, and my kids, what they're. How. How they're experiencing their identity. And my son, my oldest, just graduated college this week in New York. He went to Turo, you know, and Turo is an Orthodox school.

[Chila]

Say that he graduated with honors.

[Anya El]

You did, But I was sitting at the graduation and I was looking around, and, you know, there were 500 grads for our listeners.

[Dan Senor]

She put. Kyle, she put that in the chat, asking you all to Say, just make sure to graduate. Because she didn't want to be the one.

[Anya El]

Exactly.

[Dan Senor]

She didn't want to be the one.

[Chila]

Out of how many students? Out of how many students?

[Anya El]

There were 15 academic awards. He got one of them. But anyway, the point I was, I wanted to make is like I was sitting in that room in, at Lincoln center in Manhattan, and I'm looking around at this community of 500 students. The girls and boys are separate. You know, the girls are in the front, the boys are behind them because they go to school separately. But they have one graduation. And I looked around at the crowd of parents and grandparents and friends. It was such a diverse Orthodox world, right? There were people with long payest, there were chabadniks, there were modern Orthodox, there were Syrians. I mean, it was really a story of American Orthodoxy in a room. And then they get up and my kids, my sons who are with me, not the graduate, are like, are we at Hogwarts? Because they had never seen like, you know, the, the pomp and circumstance of like the professors all coming up in these long beards, right? And Shaitl's wigs, like women in wigs who are deans of the different departments of TURO coming up and having this like really American secular, you know, ceremony. But like, it was so Jewish, right? They sang the American national anthem, then they sang the hat tikvah, then they had four Hasidic singers come on stage and sing a Yiddish song. And I'm like, and my son is going to medical school hopefully. And I'm like, look how far we've come. And I contrasted that with what I'm seeing here every day in Long beach, right, with the experience that a lot of Jews are having here, which is so far from that experience that my kids are having. And it's just an interesting. What's the word? Like, I don't want to say like disparity, but there's like a big difference in the, in the experiences even what your kids, Dan, are having in, in New York than what kids outside of the New York bubble, you know, or outside of the Orthodox bubble. I mean, there's just like two stories to tell here, I think, of American Jewry.

[Dan Senor]

But yeah, I, I will say, though, I guess to this point about Jews who are, who are proudly hand wringing about Israel or very publicly hand wringing about Israel, again, I think the numbers are smaller than is actual, I mean, in terms of the actual numbers than is kind of elevated or represented in the media and the, you know, other platforms, I do Think back to where I forget. One of you was. Was rooting for general sense of despair in New York City. I don't know who was. Yeah. Okay. I don't remember. Yeah. Al was rooting for. We can't be happy at all.

[Chila]

No, I'm not. It's already here. I just want us to embrace it. Four years.

[Dan Senor]

I know. I'm. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. But what, what. What I find among the many things I find so alarming about Mamdani or what Mamdani represents or Mamdani ism, you know, to the extent that it's like a movement, which I kind of think it is. It's more. It's bigger than just him. But what he's testing is this idea of good Jews and bad Jews. And he's making him. He's establishing himself as, like, the arbiter of good Jews and bad Jews. So good Jews are Jews that trash Israel. Right? Good Jews. Those are the Jewish events. He'll go to Truas annual gala, like all these. These are. This is what he'll participate in. And he will. And he will say, I'm not an anti Semite. How could you say I'm an anti Semite? I, I, I, I. I like Jews who agree with me that Israel is a settler colonial state.

[Chila]

Yeah. I like watermelon.

[Dan Senor]

I have nothing against those Jews, which, by the way, is very. So, like, that was a thing in the Soviet Union. I mean, you can read Dara Horn's. She has a whole chapter on this. And people love dead Jews. About how this Soviet embrace of Jews with a gradual airbrushing from Jewish identity in history, any connection to Zionism. And that was very much. And so now the question is, will Mayor Mamdani attend a synagogue where there's an Israeli flag on the bema or where they say a prayer for the state of Israel or say a prayer for. For Israeli soldiers.

[Anya El]

Well, he could go to Satmer and then.

[Dan Senor]

Right, that's the one he goes to. Right. Okay.

[Anya El]

About any of it.

[Chila]

And you know who is the worst person here out of all of them? And I'm sorry to say this, but Brad Lander. Lander.

[Dan Senor]

I don't. I knew you were gonna say that. I knew. By the way. Just let the record show. Before you even said his name, before you. I even saw the bee forming in your mout.

[Chila]

I said, brad fucking Lander.

[Dan Senor]

Articulate for me why you find him so loathsome, because then I'm gonna articulate for you. Why I find him so loathsome. You go first.

[Chila]

I've had fantasies walking around my apartment and what I would yell to him like a crazy person if I saw him at Trader Joe's. Brad Lander had an opportunity to choose a side. It's like Hashem came down to him and said, you're Jewish, you're Zionist, or you claim to be Zionist. There's this other people here who want all the people around you dead, and they're willing to embrace you if you're willing to kind of be their fig leaf. What do you choose? Do you choose this kind of like appealing to the people that hate you and throwing everyone else under the bus, or do you choose your morals and your values and the love of your community or people? And Brad said, is that even a question? Of course I'm going to choose the fucking Jew haters. And it just, I, I'm embarrassed for, for anybody who's, has such a weak sense of self like that.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, I actually think Yale, it's, it's worse than that, if you can believe it.

[Chila]

Are you going to swear, too? I don't think we've ever heard you swear, Dan.

[Dan Senor]

No, I don't swear. But, but I, but, I mean, when I'm really riled up, I'm not nearly as riled up.

[Chila]

I mean, Brad Lander doesn't rile you up, then I don't know what's going to happen.

[Dan Senor]

He does, he does. But, but I, I will. The reason I say it's worse than that is I, you know, Dan Goldman, Congressman Dan Goldman, who Lander's running against, incumbent congressman. You can agree with him, you can disagree with him. I don't think anybody, I mean, his politics are not my politics. I, I, I know him, I like him personally, but I, you know, he's, he's definitely a, a, a partisan Democrat elected official. I think his Democratic and progressive credentials are second to none. He was the chief counsel for the first impeachment of Donald Trump. So it's like he worked with the House Democrats on the impeachment of Trump before he was elected to Congress. I mean, this is like he's, I mean, again, again, these are not my issues. But if these are issues for the base of the Democrat Party, he's been way out there on ice and confronting ice. I mean, all these issues, one would associate with kind of the progressive energy of today's Democratic politics. You should not have a problem with Dan Goldman, except for one problem. He's a Jew that supports Israel and That is the reason, that is the reason he will sadly probably lose his reelection is that issue. That issue. Not because he's not tough enough on Ice, not because he's not tough enough on Trump, not because he's not working on other issues, economic issues or quality of life. It's because he will not excoriate Israel. That's. And that so, and that Lander is like found that wedge. There's no way Brad Lander would say I'm going to run against Dan Goldman. If Dan Goldman were shared his, you know, Lander's point worldview on Israel. It's this whole you have a Jew running against a Jew finding the wedge being Israel. That is like.

[Chila]

You're right, it is.

[Dan Senor]

That is like.

[Chila]

It is.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, it is worse. No, I'm about to even say and now that was my one worse. I'm going to go even like more intense.

[Chila]

Even worse.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, I'm going to outdo my worst. Like this is like Lander, if you look at the rhetoric he uses, he's constantly talking about the genocide. The genocide.

[Chila]

That's new, by the way. It's all new.

[Dan Senor]

Say more.

[Chila]

No, I think he just started talking about this stuff.

[Dan Senor]

I agree.

[Chila]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

Obviously when he was comptroller of, of New York City, he was, he was approving investment in Israeli companies, including Israeli Defense.

[Chila]

He read a few.

[Dan Senor]

So suddenly, but suddenly it's a genocide

[Chila]

and change his mind. Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

Right. Okay, so, so, so what makes me so sick about Lander and Mamdani, but Lander even worse because I guess to your point, because he's Jewish, is

[Chila]

these

[Dan Senor]

men say, we do not wish any violence upon Jewish New Yorkers.

[Chila]

Right?

[Dan Senor]

They will say that. They will say that. Right. But people in our city, and not just our city around the world are being radicalized. In part, I want to say only, but in part because of the normalization of ideas and language that is used to describe Israel. Okay, so if you constantly say Israel is a genocidal state or an apartheid state, or is guilty of war crimes or is training their dogs on how to rape people or whatever your latest thing is, right? If you constantly kind of normalize those ideas, how do you blame someone who hears that at a certain Jewish institution, be it a synagogue or day school or Jewish community center, they say a prayer to honor and express support for or the health or the well being for the genocidal soldiers. How do you say that's okay? How do you live in a city and say, wait, there's an Israeli flag. That's the equivalent of a swastika. You're telling me Brad Lander and Mayor Mamdani and they are locking arms with what you have just told us is a genocidal state. I can't just be okay. They're not my quote unquote, fellow citizens, we don't have a respectful civic disagreement. You've told me they are Nazis. There are Nazis in our midst.

[Chila]

I can do.

[Dan Senor]

Here's a question for Brad Lander. I'm not gonna let you outworse me yet.

[Chila]

I'm gonna outworse you.

[Dan Senor]

Okay, Lander and Mamdani, here's a question. New York City is home to the highest. I would. I'm gonna check this stat out, but I'm pretty sure the highest, or if not the highest, one of the two highest concentrations of Israelis living outside of Israel. Right? So look at how many. I mean, there are a lot of Israelis, many close friends of mine who live in New York, who are residents of New York City, who are. Who are contributing to the economic growth of New York City. They are running tech startups. They are. They are working. They're doing all sorts of things here. These are all people who served in the IDF, Mr. Lander and Mamdani. These are all people who actually, maybe during the war, were called back to reserves. I have family members who live here in the United States who were called back and went and fought during the war and then came back here to live their lives in New York City as residents of the city that Mamdani leads and potentially and constituents of could be future would be. Actually, I'm thinking of a couple in particular would be future constituents of a Congressman Brad Lander. Does this mean you have genocidal. Not just people who are supportive of the genocide, but they were the implementers. These are the implementers of the genocide in your midst sitting here. How do you use that rhetoric and then be shocked, appalled when there's violence against those people in your city? So they are like. They're like throw. They're like. They're not just throwing kerosene on the fire. They are lighting the fire.

[Chila]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

You know what Hashem can do?

[Anya El]

Hashem should give Brad Lander and Mamdani. And by the way, we have one in California, this guy. Guy, Scott Weiner. I don't know if you know who he is. He's also a piece of who was. You know, he was in the Jewish Caucus, and he was so sympathetic to everything going on. Then he started talking about genocide. One day. He just decided they just wake up one morning Hashem should give them all hemorrhoids. That's all. I don't wish bet on them. But.

[Chila]

But that's about to give me Dan. That's why. Then you need to sacrifice the Knicks for the greater.

[Dan Senor]

This is wrong.

[Anya El]

No, no.

[Chila]

I don't want you, the Knicks to lose, but I will outwurst.

[Dan Senor]

You're about to outworse me.

[Chila]

How about appearing smiling like a grinning idiot in a campaign ad next to a woman who went out on October 8th to celebrate? As we were still trying to figure out how many people were kidnapped, and my Instagram feed was full of photos of people saying, has anybody seen my son? This woman who. I don't blame her for doing that because I have zero expectations for somebody like that who goes out to celebrate. But for just. I feel such disgust for somebody who is willing to just sacrifice every piece of humanity and just appear alongside somebody like that. Yeah, like the bar is so low to begin with. The bar is already super low. I don't fault people who meet with Mamdani, okay? That's how I've adjusted my bar. But appearing alongside this woman who's celebrating October 8th when your relatives in Israel are still trying to figure out who's dead and who's alive, it's just. It's. It's embarrassing.

[Anya El]

I want to comment on that for a second because the Rebbe.

[Chila]

We can't. We can't leave Dan on this. Dad's like, I need to go.

[Anya El]

I'm sorry that I'm bringing it back to the Rebbe. But the Rebbe was asked in the 70s about what to do when there's a mayor who's in office that you don't, you know, chabad invited the mayor. Forgot which mayor it was who was. Had said something anti Semitic.

[Dan Senor]

In New York City.

[Anya El]

In New York City, the Rebbe, Yeah, they had invited him to some chabad event. Event, you know, as an honor. And so they wrote to the Rebbe and they were like, how could you bring this guy to your event? And the Rebbe said, we honor the office, not the person. Right. We're honoring. We are inviting the mayor of New York City has nothing to do with that. And so a lot of orthodox people, I think, use that argument as why they would, you know, meet with people or whatever. I don't think it. I do not believe in. I don't care who's going to tell me I'm wrong. If the rebel was alive today, I do not believe he would say the same thing about someone like Brad Lantern.

[Chila]

To go himself.

[Dan Senor]

No, I, I don't believe I will tell you why. I think you're right. I agree with you. There's a very good, more contemporary comp, which is the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the uk.

[Anya El]

Exactly.

[Dan Senor]

And Jeremy Corbyn was, when he was on the rise, and I should remind people, in 2017, people thought there was a very good chance he could get elected Prime Minister. He was the leader of the Labour Party. British politics was and is broken. And Corbyn was on the move. And he is Mamdani or Brad Lander. I mean, he's the same.

[Anya El]

He's a hemorrhoid elf, actually.

[Dan Senor]

He was. We should have seen what was coming here based on what was happening with the Labour Party in the UK and the Chief Rabbi of the uk, which never weighs in. The Chief Rabbi in the uk, historically, Jonathan Sacks, they do not weigh in on British politics. And that was, I think, maybe the first time, or if not the first time, one of the. It was a big moment where the Chief Rabbi of the UK actually weighed in and said, this is different.

[Anya El]

Right, Exactly.

[Dan Senor]

This is different. And I do think there is a this is different moment. And it's not just about, quote, unquote, respecting the option.

[Chila]

Should have happened a year ago.

[Anya El]

Let's ask me one more question, quick.

[Chila]

I was just going to say that the good news is that I heard this theory on an Israeli radio show that it seems like people are starting to move on from hating Israel to hating AI And I'm totally here for that because I think it's like takes the heat off of us a little bit.

[Dan Senor]

But, but just wait, just wait. How many they're going to start pointing to how many Jews are the heads of these AI companies and the researchers and the. It's, it's, it'll come back. It'll come back.

[Chila]

Yeah, it always does. But. Okay, we'll let you go. But one last question each. Do we have time?

[Anya El]

I'm doing one question. What is a conspiracy theory that you believe in? Come on, one.

[Dan Senor]

That's such a good question. Look, this is going to sound really parochial and it's really how this conversation started, but I do think there are a lot of actors out there, very powerful actors that are committed to, to effectively relegating the New York jets to a life of dismal performance. And I mean, I have so many, I have so much data on this that, that I can show. Oh, yeah, well, first of all, I mean, I don't know, like the last super bowl, the Seattle Seahawks won the last Super Bowl. Sam Darnold was the star quarterback who. Yeah, you know, he's a New York Jet. I know, but the jets drafted Sam Darnold in 2017. I mean, but you had Aaron Rodgers

[Anya El]

and you still couldn't do anything. Nothing personal, but.

[Dan Senor]

And then Aaron Rodgers went to the Steelers and the Steelers made it to the playoffs. So I can keep going on and on and on. Like we get these amazing players, they do terribly with us and then they go and have these storied careers elsewhere. I think there's a lot. Anyway, is it to do?

[Chila]

Hopefully it's not the Jews that are behind it.

[Anya El]

No, hopefully not.

[Chila]

But you never asked me. My favorite conspiracy theory is that Katy Perry is actually JonBenet Ramsey. And there's a lot of data on this. I'm just saying I did not make this up. But. Okay, my last question for you. What is it like for you to go to Fairway or Zabars or anywhere with Jews? And what's one question that you're like, if I ever hear this question again, I'm going to explode.

[Dan Senor]

Boy, my, my camp, my wife would have a field day answering this question.

[Chila]

We're interviewing her next week actually.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, she's really got the goods. She's really got the goods because she,

[Chila]

because you have, you're probably nice. You're a nice guy, right? You're probably like, that's, that's one of

[Dan Senor]

her criticisms of me. You say what I don't do well is she says like, I'm too, I'm too.

[Anya El]

You engage with people.

[Dan Senor]

But when I told her this morning, by the way, this morning, morning, I. Because, because we got into an argument about, about. She had a very busy week work wise. She had like, you know, anyways, she's got the startup and she had all these people she's very busy with. And she's like, I just need a weekend to decompress.

[Chila]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

And. And I don't want to, like, let's just not make plans and let's. And I'm like always making plans and I always want to, you know, And I was like, oh, we got to see these people. These people are in town. Oh, Avi's in from Tel Aviv. Let's have more coffee. He just had a baby. Literally, like, this is a true story. Like we're literally. And she's like, what did I say? Like, no, like I need to decompress. And I finally said to her, I said, the difference between you and me is I, I derive energy from people Like, I. Like, yeah, people are around, and that, like, gets me going. And she. It. Like, she does not. She's not wired there. And she. By the way, she said, yeah, statement of the obvious. Like, she's been telling me that for years, that this is where we're so. So when we go out and people want to talk about the podcast or talk to me about something I've talked about on the podcast, she literally is like. I mean, she can see them coming, too, when they're coming at me. Like, she can see them coming. But the most. But what I was gonna say is the most common question is not the question I get, it's the question she gets, which is the number of times she tells me in a week that people she meets or speaks to, some of whom she knows and some of whom she doesn't know, they say to her, what did you think of Dan's latest episode? Or what did you think about the argument Dan and Nadav got in on the. And they ask her this, and she says, how do I break it to these people that I don't listen to your podcast? She says, I don't know what they're talking about. Like, I don't know. And I don't want to deflate their enthusiasm because they just assume that I'm sitting there hitting refresh on my podcast feed at. Whenever there's a. And she says, they really think. She goes, I hear you yapping away for hours a day, every day. The idea that when I have a free hour that I'm gonna put my earbuds in and listen to you talk for an hour is like, that's what people think I would do.

[Anya El]

Oh, my God.

[Dan Senor]

She goes, it's the last. She's like, I. Right?

[Anya El]

She's like, what?

[Dan Senor]

Like, yeah, I get a break for an hour. She's out right now. She's walking the dog.

[Chila]

She actually asked us to interview you. We didn't. We weren't planning on doing this.

[Dan Senor]

She's not walking the dogs. And by the way, she's listening to a podcast. I know that because I. She'll come back from her walks and she'll say, oh, I was just listening to the. But she never says, hey, I was listening to what you. During that one hour I have off of you, I'm going to. You know. So that is. That is actually. That's.

[Chila]

That's amazing.

[Dan Senor]

But I will say, on a more serious note, the most common. It's not so much a question. The most common feedback I get from people, the most consistent Feedback I hear is. And it's not so much about my podcast, but I just think it's the way people feel generally. It's that people are just appreciative of having a space where they don't feel like they're taking crazy pills. We're in a world right now where everywhere we go and every conversation we're having with people like, am I taking crazy pills? Like, did I. Did they just do that? Did they just say that? Like, did they really just, like, say, yeah, you know, Israel trains canines to rape people in prisons. Like, do they? That's just, like, a thing now. And that's like, a normal thing. And now we have to actually release medical studies that show that dogs cannot actually rape. Like, this is where. This is where we are.

[Chila]

Anybody can make them. It's those brilliant Jews.

[Dan Senor]

Right? It's right. Startup nation. And so. And so we're. And so it's like people are losing their minds in a way. And so I do feel what part of what the podcast Call Me Back is Tapped is like, in ways that Alana and I could not have ever imagined is what's resonated is this sense of people feeling like, okay, I'm not losing my mind. I know there are disagreements within Israel. I know there's a healthy debate within Israel. I can hear people who may disagree with each other, but it's like within a band, you know, it's like within a. Or like a realm of normalcy. And so, like, a version of that, like, not articulated exactly as I just said it, but that's, like, the questions or comments I get is, like, usually reflective of that sense of, like, people feeling. Coming back to our earlier point, like, kind of anchored. Right.

[Anya El]

Yell and I were walking in Nordstrom's in midtown Manhattan together, and a woman recognized us from the podcast. And she was like. Like, oh, my God, you're Ky and Yel.

[Chila]

Oh, my God.

[Anya El]

And she started freaking out. She was on the phone with someone. She's like, I'm standing here with Kyel.

[Chila]

And they were.

[Anya El]

We walked out of there. I'm not exaggerating. Our heads. They had.

[Chila]

She's forgotten about. They had to knock down the wall.

[Anya El]

They had to knock down the wall to let our heads out of the store because we were so inflated with our own egos. I mean, it was the. I'm not going to lie. I'm not. It was the best feeling in the whole world.

[Dan Senor]

Did you tell the Nordstrom manager, you can set up a counter. We can do autographs? Like, we'll do photo photos now.

[Anya El]

No, we went. I mean, we left there. We thought, oh, my God, we're not gonna be able to walk down the street in Manhattan anymore. Everyone's gonna mow us down. Meanwhile, no one else noticed us.

[Chila]

It's only happened there and in Crown Heights. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan Senor]

Well, as my wife would say, the. The. The. The. The. The most unpleasant experience these days is. Is us. When our family, when we fly to Israel, the. Ll. Like the gate. The ll gate is like. Right. Yeah, That's. That's a version of that.

[Anya El]

Yes. Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

You just described. And she will. And she will say, once we're seated on the plane, we're trapped. Right? We're trapped.

[Chila]

You need to buy the seat next to you if you're flying alone just because somebody's like, oh, God.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, true.

[Anya El]

Well, thank you so much, Dan, for giving us guys.

[Dan Senor]

This was fun. I got. I got pretty. I got pretty revved up. I will say. I. I like the way. It was a very Jewish way to have this conversation that, like, who could outworse? Like, what was the most. The most awful thing just to try to outworse each other. That was good.

[Anya El]

I mean, literally, when we go, we go. In my family, my. My grandparents are Holocaust survivors, so I feel like I can say this.

[Chila]

She's always showing off about her grandparents.

[Anya El]

The way we judge food is like, would Bubby have eaten it in 1945 if she would not have eaten it? That's how, you know it was really bad. Right? Like, if Bubby would have eaten it in 45. Okay. It's. It's o. You know, so that's how we. That's how we do everything is out. Out horror, the next thing.

[Dan Senor]

Right.

[Chila]

Come for the sports talk. Stay for the Holocaust jokes. That's right.

[Dan Senor]

There you go.

[Chila]

Our tagline and.

[Dan Senor]

And. And the hating on Brad Lander.

[Chila]

Oh, anytime. Anytime.

[Anya El]

Thank you, Dan.

[Chila]

Dan, thank you so much.

[Dan Senor]

Good talking with you, Sam.