B (4:32)

That was awesome to be on this show, really. I just, I'm an admirer of yours. So it's a mutual thing we got going on here.

A (4:41)

My experience over the last two years has been this astonishing encounter with American Jewish ignorance. Now, the smartest American Jews, the most knowledgeable, the ones penetrating deepest into the secrets of the universe, in the physics departments of the finest universities, that's who I'm calling ignorant. The great lawyers of the American Jewish community, the great scholars in many ways of the American Jewish community on a thousand issues. And the story I like to tell was me going once to give a talk at Harvard Law. And one of the students comes up to me after the talk and the student explains to me that they're genuinely terrified on campus. They're not scared that people will attack them. It's a lot more interesting than that. This Harvard Law student comes to me and says, I can't cross the lawn or Harvard Yard. I think it was wherever the encampment was, I think it was Harvard Yard without them yelling at me. Zionism is colonialism. This kid looks Jewish, wears a kippah. And I said to him, this was the spring of 2024, so early in this whole two year period. I said to him, well, that really, you know, I'm sorry to hear that. That really sucks. Like, that's unpleasant. And he said, no, you don't understand. It really hurts. And I did not take this kid seriously because at the time I had people I knew who were hostages held by Hamas in Gaza at the time. I had family members who were soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon, on the Lebanese border facing Hezbollah at the time. I did not have a lot of patience for the suffering of Harvard kids, even Jewish Harvard kids who come to my talks. And I said to him, okay, you know, it hurts. Israelis your age are in a war, you know, you can handle this. Like, take an example from people who are really struggling with larger problems. And he said to me in response, and I never forgot this, he said to me, no, what hurts is that I don't know the answer. They're saying, now this is. That's it, that's it for him. Now it's me. They were saying to him, zionism is colonialism. Zionism is fundamentally illegitimate. Zionism is a distillation of the great evils of history. And this kid who is Jewishly affiliated, Jewish believing, connected, Harvard Law, the creme de la creme of what every Jewish mother hopes their kid will be. But nevertheless, this kid didn't know whether Zionism really is evil or not. And I got a little angry at him and I said to him, you don't know if Zionism is colonialism. Really, this is what troubles you. I mean, the Jews of Israel are 90% refugees. Like they're the grandchildren of almost entirely of refugees. They were kicked out of the Arab world more completely than they were kicked out of post Holocaust Eastern Europe. Three continents emptied of Jews. Three continents, by the way, emptied of many minorities. The Roma probably also experienced something quite akin to the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. People don't talk about their genocide, but it was similar in so many ways. But the Jews experienced this total inability to actually live in the Arab world. Jews can't live in Iraq. They were all refugees. And no colonialist project in history was ever founded by refugees. Some of them absorbed refugees. None of them were founded by desperate people. The Jews had nowhere else to go. They couldn't get into America. America had the emergency quota laws. They couldn't get into Canada or Britain or Brazil. They literally had no Britain. Imperial Britain didn't even let the Jews escape Europe to India, never mind to Palestine, where there's a whole problem with the Arabs, India. They literally closed India to the Jews trying to escape the Nazis. And so the Jews with literally nowhere to go, who are all refugees. And by the way, the Jews have an ancient tradition of belonging to this place. Every synagogue on Earth for 2000 years prays to Jerusalem. No church in France ever prayed to Algeria when the French started colonizing Algeria, or the British in Kenya or any other colonialist project. That's. These are unique features of Zionist colonialism. And they don't have a single mother country. Right. Colonialism is a description of a power structure in which a powerful country arrives at a place usually to exploit its resources or its people and then takes advantage. And when you bomb them, as the FLN did in Algeria or the MAU MAU rebellion in Kenya or some other places, they go back to their mother country. Well, the Jews had no mother country. So other than the fact that they have no mother country, an ancient tradition of belong, desperate refugees with no other other than that, yeah, sure, colonialism. End my rant. The kid takes a step back. He's embarrassed for me. He has this embarrassed smile on his face. He looks at me and he says to me, holy shit, I'm invincible. And he walks out. That was it. That's what he needed. He did not know the most basic outline of the most basic ideas of the Jewish experience enough to just counter that simple scream on a college campus. And so my question to you is, how big is this problem? What do the polls tell us? How bad is it? Is he representative? Is this Jewish generation capable of facing this moment? Or what actually are America's young Jews, the young generation of the American Jewish community, actually experiencing?

B (10:09)

Now, Khabiv, I think your rant is. Is spot on. I've had many similar experiences. I want to be a little bit bookish, if that. If that's okay initially, to kind of present, share with you some of the history, some of the. Some of the challenges of what we're seeing, how we got, how we got here, to answer whether or not, you know, this is as big of a problem as you're suggesting, and also what the. What. What we could look at moving forward. So let's go to your specific example. Your specific example is this young student has no idea how to deal with the question Zionism is colonialism. So there's an idea from the Mishnah, I want to go all the way back to the Mishnah that says know what to respond to the heretic. Now I want to use that as an example because it's not that you have to be able to respond to the heretic, whoever, in whatever context it is. And by the way, we're all heretics in different ways, but the concept of Dama Lahashevla apikarp know what to respond. There was a great rabbi who said, it's not that you need to know what to respond in order to respond, but if somebody on the other side of something that is antagonistic towards your sense of self, his name is the Tifer Israel. He says, if someone else has the ability and knows so much more about your own story than you, then you have a problem. So the concept is da, know enough in order to respond. Not that you have to respond, but you gotta know your story. So here's what we know and how we got here as a Jewish day school system and well beyond the Jewish day school world. So from surveys that we've seen from our friends at Boundless, we know that 34% of the general population say they are familiar with the term Zionism. 14% could direct, could, could accurately defined the term. Define the term Zionism. Now if you say that's the general population, what about the Jewish population? If you're between the ages of 18 to 40 years old, around 42% could define the term Zionism. And if you don't know what Zionism is, and if you don't know what colonialism is, then it's going to be very hard to be confident in your skin. That's from general data, but there's a lot more than that. When we surveyed students, we surveyed many middle school students and Jewish day schools. Jewish day schools, 62% of those that went to Jewish day school could not define what Zionism was, simply could not define it. I remember in 2022 when Abu Mazen was being interviewed and he was talking about the Munich massacre 50 years prior, and he talked about Holocaust. You want to talk about Holocaust? How about the Holocaust committed against the Palestinian people in Deir Yassin and Qibya and Kvar Qasim. And I would show that clip to students across the world, in Australia, in the uk, Canada, the US wherever they were. And I said how awful it is what Abu Mazen just said, that like comparing the Holocaust to what's going on in Israel? They're like, yeah, horrible. And then I said to them, how many of you have heard of Deir Yassin? How many of you have heard of Kfar Qasim? How many of you have heard of Qibya? All the hands go down. I went to one of the top high schools in the country after the 7th of October, and the principal shared with me confidentially, so I won't share the name of the school, but one of the top Jewish schools in the country. After the 7th of October, he gave a map to his students and said, where is Gaza? Most of them could not identify it.

A (13:39)

Just to clarify, these are Jewish day students, Jewish schools, everything you've just described Jewish private schools where people pay through the nose for young Jews to learn the Jewish story.

B (13:48)

And I want to get into why. I think this is because there's also good. There's also good. I want to be very clear. There are many Jewish schools that are doing incredible work. But this is an issue that doesn't just revolve around Jewish day schools at all. There is a deep irony here. And the deep irony is that Jewish civilization has always treated education as sacred. The Talmud talks about that a city, that a world exists because of the breadth of school children and a city without Jewish education is not a functioning Jewish community. Maimonides codifies this. And in the United States of America, or let me say it, much better, over a hundred years preceding the existence of the United States of America, Jewish education emerges in the Americas. As early as 1655, Congregation Sharif Israel emerges in New York. But what happened was, and this is from my professor Moshe Sakalao, who taught me in grad school, he said that a Jewish child in New York City almost invariably was educated by the Jewish community. What that meant is that all non Jewish schools in New York at this time were denominational, which meant that Jews could not have attended them. So the whole Jewish day school system, I want to go through the history of it because it's totally modern. Between 1880 to World War I, that's where you had the appearance of the Yeshiva day School. By 1924, you had restrictive quotas that were adopted. But there were around 2 million Jews that fled pogroms like you mentioned, and other oppressive conditions in Russia, Poland and Romania. And then they settled in the US and in 1886, the first modern American day school was established on the Lower east side of New York. It had the name Yeshivat Yitzchayim. There are also other schools called Yeshivat Yitzchak Elhanan, that was created in 1897. Then there was RJJ, which was created in 1900. And here was the purpose of their education. They actually write it out very clearly. The goal was to study the Jewish religion, which meant the Talmud, the Bible and the Code of Law, which referred to the Shochan Aruch. They learned a little bit of Lashon Hakodesh as they called it, which was Hebrew, and they learned jargon, which was Yiddish. And then the Jewish day school world moves on. And between the two wars you had three major schools emerge. Flatbush in 1927, Ramaz, where my wife went in 1937, and Maimonides School also in 1937, which was established by Rabbi Joseph Barisoloveitchik, who was one of the leading rabbis of the 20th century of in the United States of America. Since then. I want to go through day school enrollment. You had in 1944, around 7030. 1946, it rose to 14,095. In 2000, there were 670 schools. Jewish Day schools with a student population of around 185,000. By 2018-19, 292,172 students in these schools. That's a lot of students. But it also represents only around 10% of the Jewish world at this age. Maybe in Canada the numbers are two to three times the amount in Jewish day school. In Australia it's around 50%. But here's a number that's absolutely staggering. There are A total of 5,000 non Orthodox Jewish high school age kids who go to Jewish high school in the United States of America. A total of 5,000. That is nobody.

A (17:14)

So almost the entire phenomenon, it's born as a religious education. And almost the entire phenomenon today is Orthodox.

B (17:22)

Yes, there are. I spoke to one of the heads of the conservative movement just a couple days ago. They said there's probably maybe 12 to 15 conservative high schools left. And by the way, people could fact check these numbers. You know, I'm off by a little bit if I'm off by anything by a little bit. But there are A total of 5,000 non Orthodox Jewish high school age kids who go to Jewish high school in the United States of America. And that is between. We have roughly between 5.7 to 7 million Jews in America. Now there's the Jewish day school world and then there's the outside of Jewish day school world. And the question is, where does Israel education fit in to all of this? Meaning you spoke about Zionism is colonialism and dealing with that Challenge. Where does Israel education fit into this, please? So what happened was I gave you what a general curriculum looked like, and that was on purpose. It included the code of Jewish law, it included the Talmud, it included the Bible. Very often, Talmud became the sacred cow. The sacred cow. Like you spend most of your time learning the Talmud in a Jewish high school, specifically if the number is around 80. I'm putting aside Hasidish schools and Haredi schools in the United States of America. Let's just talk about modern Orthodox conservative reform, though. We should talk about that another time. The Haredi schools, at least 80% of these high schools are modern Orthodox. And for Modern Orthodoxy, Talmud is often the sacred cow. Understanding how to study Talmud, understand Talmud, it's core to identity. What happened was in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and 80s, let's say the 50s to 80s, what Israel education was, was actually called Zionism education. It wasn't Israel education as we have it today. What that meant is there was Hebrew culture as a focus, Zionism as a focus. I go back to my parent yearbook from camp. They went to an amazing camp called Camp massad. And in 1977, I saw their yearbook from 1977. And in their yearbook, in a sleepaway summer camp chaviv. In a sleepaway summer camp, they had a yearbook that had bead or neged for or against recognizing the plo. In Hebrew. In Hebrew. In an American camp. In Hebrew. This is their yearbook. Education, Hebrew culture, Zionism. That was core to the identity.

A (19:50)

The point was to take Zionism's argument that there's a distinct Jewish Hebrew culture and instill that in the kids. Explain to me the difference between Israel education and Zionist education over the course of the 40 years.

B (20:05)

So there was no such thing as Israel education. Yet that is a field that emerged 15 years ago. Ten to 15 years ago, this was called Zionism education. That was 50s to the 80s. And that meant inculcating into Zionist culture, feeling like you're part of this revolution that took place. It was sexy, it was cool. It was like physically dirty. Like you think fingernail Zionism, like you were part of something. You're part of the new Jew, not like the Shepsala, like bent over Jew. You were, you were, you were studying to be part of that. Now, what is interesting, and scholars point this out, like Bethlehem, Horowitz, that people didn't actually know so much about Israel, but they, they were like sideline cheerleaders of it. And they looked, they liked it. It was, it was something that they appreciated because they saw but they didn't, they weren't very familiar with the. All the aspects of Israeli society. And then the 1990s there was a focus and throughout this also there was a focus on aliyah. I remember in fourth grade and this. It's hard to imagine schools that this would take place. I had someone come visit from Israel. I remember this vividly. And she told us we were all evil for living in the United States of America and if you were a real Jew, you should be in Israel. And I remember even then as a nine year old thinking that maybe she's right. But I don't know if that's the right message for us. Like, I don't know that that's the right. But that was kind of the focus of the education. I went to a sleepaway camp in which in the Ramkul, the microphone, they would say like that was the focus Israel.

A (21:51)

Just to clarify, you grew up in the community in Baltimore. This is the Orthodox community and very much the, you know, Ralph Sulavechi Yeshiva University, very Zionist.

B (22:03)

And I went to a community high school. I did not go to mono Orthodox high school. I went to community high school. And there is where, where I want to get into what then happened in the world of Israel education. And I apologize if this is bookish, but like people really have to understand this because it allows us to understand how we got to the Zionism is colonialism and not knowing how to deal with the problem. In my 11th grade we had, you know, a lovely teacher, good guy. Israel education was malpractice. And what I mean by malpractice is it wasn't his fault. This is what Israel education was then. It was actually just Hasbara. It was Israel advocacy. When they say this nasty thing, you have to say that when they say something negative about Israel, you say something positive. When they say occupied territories, you say disputed. When they say Deir Yassin, you say never happened. And the second intifada is what changed everything. There were two things that emerged right around the time the second intifada. First of all, birthright in 1999, right before the second intifada. That's when Birthright launched and then got all of its push at the time of the second Intifada and beyond, because the focus was Jewish continuity. And the other thing was Israel advocacy. Hasbara for Israel. And there were all of these different organizations that emerged between 2001 and 2004. 12 new organizations, 11 of the 12 new organizations. Myths and facts stand with us. Hasbara fellowships feel for truth. All of These organizations were focused on advocacy. They were focused on Hasbara. And then in the 2010s, that's when things shifted. People started to see that that approach to connecting to Israel in many ways was failing the American Jewish community. Many ways failing the community. Because what it did is it said, here's what's going on, and it's your job across the pond to defend everything. But that's not really educational. That's not an actual education. That's being taught how to respond to an issue. And there are four different types of how you talk about Israel that the scholars have then noticed. Number one is called Israel advocacy, which is training and defending. That is the most primary one. Number two is Israel studies. That's when you analyze. That's the verb there. Number three is Israel branding. That's when you sell something like Israel's branding would be, I don't know, cherry tomatoes ways. Check out how amazing Israel is. And then there's the fourth one, which is called Israel education with a capital bolded, underlined E. And that is cultivating your Jewish identity with the history of Israel, with the politics and civic society of Israel. But the idea is it's your identity and how you see Israel into that story. And what's now happened in the last 10 years, let's say 2015-2016-2025-2026, is that this has now become the main way to teach about Israel. And I believe if we as a Jewish world commit to teaching about Israel seriously, not to defend, but to think, not to have talking points, but to have frameworks, then our young people will be in a much better position, because they're not fearful of losing debates, they're fearful of losing confidence.

A (25:36)

Noam, you're saying really important things for me because I have heard again and again and again young Jews who are saying things like, I was always taught that Israel was perfect. And it has been a terrible shock to me to discover that Israel might be bad. And I will have just given a talk and I will have said something like, we actually have to remove Hamas from Gaza. And then I will deeply, deeply criticize angrily the Israeli government, the Benvir and Smotrich wing, but also Netanyahu himself. I have a deeply, deeply pro Israel position, but I am totally aware and say out loud that my country sometimes makes terrible mistakes. Obviously, it's a country. And then a kid will come up to me afterwards and say, I was taught that Israel's perfect. And even the kind of talk you just gave was not a talk I ever heard. Growing up. And my response to these kids has been in my head, even if I didn't say it out loud. Grow the hell up. First of all, I don't believe you that the Jewish community taught you that Israel's perfect and your only job is to rah rah Israel. No Israeli kid grows up like that. What are you talking about? We're constantly talking about the problems in our history. You tell an Israeli kid Israel's perfect.

B (26:50)

I think you're factually wrong about that. From at least 10 years ago, meaning the way 10 years ago and prior to that, it was a very unique school that was willing to actually explore the story of Israel as opposed to defend the story of Israel.

A (27:06)

Tell me more about that. Because I did not respect, and till 20 minutes ago, did not respect the young American Jew who said, they told me everything was perfect. And it's a terrible shock to discover it's not perfect.

B (27:18)

They're right. 10 years ago. I think often right now that is not accurate, but it is accurate in many institutions. And I could go through this, like, if you and I were to talk about. You and I have gotten in funny, funny conversation on unpacking Israeli history that I've always enjoyed about, like, what is Zionism? And you always make fun of me because you're like, no, Zionism was a rescue project. That's what it is. That's what it's always been. And then I'd quote, like, Miha Josef Berdichevsky or Rabbi Cook or other people who have more. And then I say some, like, flowery understandings of Zionism. I think that. I actually think that one of the challenges is that people don't actually understand what Zionism is. But if your education is saying to young people, guys, they're going to teach you that Israel's an apartheid state. Here's the response. They're going to teach you even Zionism is colonialism. Here's the response. They're going to teach you that Israel was born in sin. Here's the response. What that does? Is it, you know, and by the way, people listening, I'd be like, are probably like, yeah, yeah. What's the response to all of that? Like what? Come on. No, I'm giving me. And I would say, like, we have to stop Amazoning Judaism and Amazoning Jewish and Israel education. It's not snap of a finger. Here's the response. Here's the response. You actually have to explore now these issues. You might say, don't explore them. There are people who are of the persuasion that say, hey, listen, you don't respond to a blood libel. So why would you respond to this sort of thing? I think that that's the wrong approach as well, because you could actually, it's such a great educational opportunity. What is Zionism? And learn what Zionism is. What is colonialism? Learn what colonialism is. And where do you. As if we're doing capital E, bolded E, underlined E. Where do you see yourself as a Jew within this story? How do you make sense of it? So what Israel education is? And there's a great book called Teaching Israel, which I love and everyone should read it, but it's. It describes Israel education, capital E, bolded E, underlined E, as a mirror. As a mirror that you see Israel. If you're Jewish, you see Israel as part of your story. And when you do that Khaviv, what you see is, you know, I think I'm like, I don't know, I'm like a B minus looking guy. Like, not horrible, not great, like fine, somewhere in there. But you know what? I see warts and I see beauty. It's a mirror. That's what it is. That's what Israel education is. If the Jewish state, Chavi, if you're talking about within Israel, it's different than America, but within Israel you're able to say, here's the good, the bad and the ugly, as I see it. And then there's. That's Israel education. Israel studies, which is what the academy should be, is not Israel as a mirror, as the analog, but Israel as a window to look into something objectively. What do you see out there? What is out there? What's. What's happening on the streets. And what we've done in the Jewish educational world is some schools are doing this really well. Like Jewish educational surgeons are doing this really well. Really well. And I would break those into probably, I think in terms of categories, three different categories. There's schools who strike while the iron is hot. And what they say is, you know what, after the 7th of October, let's actually teach about Israel. Let's actually do this Noam. And they'll bring us in, they'll bring Chaviv in, they'll bring unpack for educators in. And yes, we work with 13,000 plus educators, but after the, after, you know, after a year of the 7th of October, back to Gemara, back to Halachah, back to Tanakh, they only strike while the iron is hot. That is one, that is one segment of the population. I would argue it's a meaningful segment of the population. And then there's another segment of the population which I describe as strike while the iron is cold, which is, you know what? Maybe the topic of Israel is not so sexy anymore. Maybe it's not the type of topic that's, you know, going to get you millions of viewers or listeners anymore, because it's not the front news anymore. But you know what? It's part of our identity. If you're a Jewish school, it's part of our identity. And if we want young Jews to go out there representing Zionism, then, damn it, they have to know what Zionism represents. That's what they have to do. Whether or not. Whether or not it is hot right now. And so there are schools who are doing that. 7th October sparked within them this need to do serious Israel education, which means making a decision. And the word decision comes from the route deci, which means to cut off. To decide means to say, I am doing this, I am not doing that. And they are responding to the moment by striking while the iron is cold and integrating it into their curriculum. 9th through 12th grade or 6th through 8th grade. And then there's the other schools. I would say even beyond that, our schools have been doing this for a long time. Put aside the 7th of October. They just know that this is the future. They know that if you want to have a healthy Jewish identity, then it has to be sacred. It has to be central. It has to be part of this, put aside any external factors. So to answer your question, if we actually want to solve this problem, this is the crazy thing. It's solvable. It's actually solvable that young Jewish kids graduating Jewish middle school or Jewish high school graduating from BBYO or graduating from NFTY or graduating from NCSY or any other Jewish club. It's actually possible to make sure that as a result of their engaging with you, they're able to go into university and beyond, into their professional sector and say, I have a clear Jewish identity. I know my story. I could figure out what my story actually means, what it actually looks like. Like, that is really, really powerful. Rootlessness leads to disengagement, and disengagement leads to attrition. And this is how identity erodes quietly, not through hostility alone, but through uncertainty. And that uncertainty is something that we could prevent.

A (33:34)

My feeling, and I think it's bolstered by everything you're saying, is that. Is that history education is everything. History education is who we are, where we come from. History education grounds you. I am more comfortable in A pro Israel American Jewish crowd. I'm one of the most comfortable people in the room saying Israel did something wrong because I'm totally Israeli and that can't be taken away from me. And the affiliation has to be strengthened, has to be held onto. It's slightly more abstract now. These are people, I think, who will lay their physical bodies on the tracks for, for the Jewish people and for Israel, but they don't actually have to. And so it hasn't. It's not something they've actually experienced. And so it's easier for an Israeli to be critical of Israel plus, you know, a lot. So it's like it's harder not to be critical of a real human society. Right? Because you see its flaws. And the being critical is easy because my grounding in history means that I can't take my people's story to ridiculous ahistorical places. I can't reach the point where an anti Zionist Jew out there in America and I've met a few and they've approached me and been angry. Sometimes I'll talk to their parents and the 21 year old back from college on vacation will want to have a conversation or parents have sat me down with their kids. I was giving a talk at their house or at their synagogue and they brought the kids and then found me afterwards. And the kid will not know the most basic things. So they'll allow themselves to say things like they'll say they're anti Zionist and I'll say, well, where should the Jews have gone? And they'll say America. And I'll say ah. But that wasn't an option. The Americans get a say on whether the Jews can go to America. And then they'll say okay, fine, well somewhere else, you know. And I'm like, where? And they're like, France. And I'm like, you'll never guess what happened to the Jews of France. There's a reason 90% of French Jews today are Sephardi. And then they'll say ah, Australia. And they'll just keep saying and I'll keep. And then I'll be like, so where actually? And they'll be like, well, I didn't realize those things. I literally had a kid come up to me after a talk and say to me, I just want you to know I agree with what you said. The Jews had no other option. Okay, fine, no, Israel had to be founded. I'm still an anti Zionist and I'll explain why I'm an anti Zionist. This Israeli government is unconscionably callous and cruel and I cannot support that. So I'm still an anti Zionist, I want you to know that. But I accept the historical point you're making that Israel had to be founded. I'm standing there with the kid who just said to me, I'm a Zionist. I just deeply dislike Bibi. I don't know what to tell him. I have Israeli polling that says that he's with 40% of the Israeli public. How do you tell somebody now he needs to hold on to anti Zionists for what? Social cache in his social circles? This is a college age, kid. I don't know. But when you're grounded in that basic story, you don't have to be right and you don't have to be left and you don't support the war in Gaza. You don't have to do anything. You can have radical politics, you can have silly politics politics. You can go anywhere you want, but you can't be anti Zionist because all the other Jews in the Eastern hemisphere are dead. Outside the English speaking world, statistically. I know, apologies to French Jewry, et cetera, they're dead. And so it's just not a thing. It's a historical make believe. And so how do I always thought this is the answer, this is the solution. And then we'll have a new generation of young Jews who know who they are because they learn their history. That's the core. They learn their history. By the way, if the Jews are learning good Jewish history, they're also learning Jewish ritual, Jewish religion, Jewish belief, Jewish textbooks, Jewish languages, the Jewish bookshelf, right? That's the answer. And that's the only answer. There is no other answer. This is my belief. But now I'm thinking everything you just told us was about day schools. And day schools are only 10% of the kids. And the kids I'm meeting out there, some of them went to day schools. A lot of them didn't. A lot of them actually come to my talks, in a campus, on a jcc, wherever I give a talk, they'll come to my talks and they'll come up to me afterwards and they'll say to me, I got nobody. I only discovered I'm a Jew because being a Jew suddenly became dangerous. They're watching people like Ben Shapiro. All Ben Shapiro wants to do with his life is fight progressives. But he can't fight progressives. He's too busy fighting rabid, literal Nazi antisemitism rising within the Republican movement. And so they're watching that and they're saying Wait a second. Now I suddenly have to be a Jew again. I don't know what that means. Let's expand beyond day schools. How do we reach all those kids? There's a real hunger. Every Chabad will tell you on campus, every Hillel director will tell you and has told you and I've heard you talk about it also on campuses that they're flooded with people, they've grown and grown and grown Jewish kids are looking for other Jewish kids. Is history as core as I personally think it is? It happens to be my obsession. Maybe I'm blinded here to what other things are core. Is history fundamental to building that Jewish future, that next Jewish generation that will take on the fights, shoulder those burdens and win the culture wars the Jews have to win in America to be safe in America. And two, how do we reach everybody who's not in the 10% that has the ability to be in a day school?

B (38:59)

Let me just say about the Jewish day school situation, it's, it's unnerving to me because it is eminently solvable. Again, if Jewish day schools want to prioritize this and want to say, here's the canon of Israel education. Here are the 50 names, the 50 ideas, the 25 skills, the different ways to actually analyze issues. Jewish day schools, middle schools and high schools could do this. They just have to centralize it a bit more. And it's possible, like I mentioned, like with unpacked for educators, it's beyond possible. And other places, but like, it's beyond possible. But let's go beyond Jewish day schools. Here's what we know. Just in general, 8 in 10, meaning 80% did some math for you there. US Jews say that caring about Israel is an essential, important part of what being Jewish means to them. Lovely. But we also know that half of Jewish Americans between the ages of 18 to 34 thought that Israel committed genocide. And 18 to 29 year olds, you know, are the only group of Jews who are more sympathetic to Palestinians than they are to Israelis. That is what we know. How do you square those two? What does this really mean?

A (40:14)

Can I ask you? Yeah, I'm sorry, I want to ask this because I want to understand. Are they sympathetic to Palestinians, believe Israel has committed a crime in Gaza and like, like that the war is unjustified and therefore the dead are just. Just but also feel connected to Israel? No, it's. There's nothing preventing a Vietnam War protester from being a patriotic American who says America shouldn't be doing that? Or, or is this a turning On Israel. Is this anti Zionism among the young people or just the Gaza war was wrong?

B (40:44)

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, I think to your story earlier. People don't know what Zionism is and don't know what anti Zionism is and therefore say that they are anti Zionist if they believe either of those two things I just stated because again, I strongly, strongly do not agree with the association of Israel committing genocide and saying that over the last couple of years. And I also believe that you are not necessarily anti Zionist if you believe that Israel did things that you think are heinous. Because we could just do that all the time. Throughout history, Israel to believe that a country does not commit atrocities is to live in a land of fantasy, period. It's complicated because of the amount of libels that the non Jewish people throughout history have committed and accused the Jews of. That's what complicates it. But from an identity perspective, one could absolutely, absolutely love their Jewish identity, love Zionism, want to cultivate Zionism and think that Israel does things that it abhors, like. Of course that's true. Israelis, like you said, think that. Right. But I want, I want to, I want to talk about, like, how do you actually. What do we do outside of the Jewish day school world? Well, again, let's increase the numbers. Sleepaway camp. Just. I think that the immersion is remarkable. That the being away from parents is, is, is, you know, a tremendous experience. Being away from phones. Being away from phones is just like you have this opportunity to be seven, eight weeks, whatever it is something like that in this immersive experience where you have fun, where you are with people who are 17 and 18 years old and you're only 14 or 13 years old and you look up to them. Just imagine this experience. We cannot squander that either. It cannot just be fun and ATVs and you know, you know, basketball and like, those things are great, they're great, they're awesome. But you have this seven, eight week immersion experience and sleepaway camps have the opportunity to also do this immersive experience like I was talking about from Mossad from 1977, that's not happening on many, many, many, many sleepaway camps. It's not happening. And it can happen. Let me just say this. Youth groups, they do, you know, they'll bring in Tiffany Haddish and she's cool, she's really cool. And Tiffany Haddish will come and do something fun with a youth group. And that's great that they do that. And they should Continue doing that. But now they have to level up. If you have all of these young people surrounding you and they're in this one place, I believe that it's time to level up and actually get a literacy. They're with you, they're there, and it's possible to do that. And then the last way. So you have the youth groups, you have the sleepaway camps, you have the Jewish day schools. The last group is the biggest group. They're the group that are on their phones all the time. They don't have the luxury of going to Jewish day school or synagogue school or camps or youth groups or church providers. They're not part of it. And I don't know what that number is. Let's say it's 50% of the American Jewish young world. Let's say it's something like that. Okay, maybe it's a little bit more. They're on their phones. There are ways to reach young people on their phones. And to your point about unpacked, our target demo is secular and Jewish and non Jewish people who are between the ages of 18 to 34. And right now, what we're seeing is that 72% of our audience is either millennials, Gen Z, 51% of the audience is not Jewish, or 51% of the audience is Jewish. Sorry, I think 45% is non Jewish and 4% is ill defined or undefined. But that's what we know right now. And it is possible. And my argument is if it's possible to teach all young Jews their story, it's not anything other than necessary. If it's possible, it's our responsibility. That's where I am right now. There are solutions to this. And we have to figure out how to leverage these opportunities through curriculum in schools, through areas of focus in schools, with sleepaway camps, ensuring that it is part of the immersive experience and saying, yes, fun is great, but fun is not enough. It's not enough. Youth groups, same thing. It's not enough. And they're doing great things in all these youth groups. They're doing amazing things. But they could level up. They could level up. And I think now is the time. And if we really believe that we want young people to represent Zionism, then they have to know what Zionism represents, like I said. And that's a decision for all of us.

A (45:39)

My last question. So how do we do this? Camps. Great. What Unpack does online is a fantastic model. The hunger is there. What else should happen? And not just what else should happen. Who else is There, the American Jewish organized world. I don't want to come at institutions complaining, okay? The federations, the local communal federations, run sometimes some of the biggest charities in town, wherever they happen to be. They have so many responsibilities. They do so much. But there are these vast defense organizations. There are so many academic institutions that are not taking part. How many Jewish funders paid for Israel institutes at American universities? Some of those Israel institutes have scholars I've talked to, I've learned from, I love, I respect. Fine. A lot of them have just gone silent over the course of this inter. Or they're not studying Israel, they're critiquing Israel and validating the critique of Israel. Not critique in the academic sense, but critique in the activist sense. And, and so all of that Jewish money that went into, let's, you know, if they won't study Israel honestly. And the Middle east studies institutes, because people, you know, mainline professors at Columbia will now side with the ayatollahs just because they hate Israel. That kind of activist academia becomes the monolith of academia. And so they'll found Israel Studies institutes separate from the Middle east studies institutes. And the Israel Studies institutes will then get captured because a single ideology is permitted on campus. Where have they been? And so we have this real question. Okay, this is. To me, this feels like a desperate moment. Not a desperate moment in the sense of danger, but a desperate sense of a moment of decision. We are reaching a fork in the road. American jury has to decide what its future is. We can reach the kids on TikTok, but we're not doing it in a serious way. American jury isn't getting up and doing it in a serious way. How does American jewelry get up at a large level and essentially do what unpacked is doing?

B (47:38)

But 10 exit, 20 exit, 50 exit.

A (47:41)

Yeah, just 20x unpacked.

B (47:43)

Yeah. Well, why is he. I mean, there.

A (47:45)

Listen, the budgets are so big, but, like, the concern is real.

B (47:51)

Yeah. I think that, you know, if you, if you look at how much money Qatar spends in shaping ideas for the world, they don't dip their toes in.

A (48:00)

Right.

B (48:00)

It's not like, here's a few hundred thousand, let's see what, let's see what you do with it. It's. That's not the way they think about it. It's. I think they have a billion dollars a year on, on that sort of education as they see it. And they create these YouTube channels and then they create these news channels, and then they create these. They create the professorships. They, they have. They have all of that. The Jewish world, we are doing a lot of it. I do want to give credit in the last, I know Haviv, this is a little bit new for you in the last couple of years. It is so much better than what it was seven, 10 years ago. Like, like, I, I, I think the Jewish world has, is eons, eons ahead of where it was eons.

A (48:43)

Tell us about that.

B (48:44)

Well, there, there, like, listen, I don't want to give too much credit, but the ecosystem was a lot of organizations just separately working on by themselves. Now I could tell you there are organizations that come together and they say, let's solve these problems together. And we have conferences where we talk about solving these problems together. Birthright has sent, I don't know, 800, 900,000 young participants to Israel now partners with people like us to say, hey, we have the participants, you have the content. Let's figure out how to get this going together. You have Route 1, an organization that brings, you know, thousands of young Jews to Israel when they're 16 years old. A lot of people don't know about this when they're 16 years old. Prior to like, meaning before Birthright age. One of the Cornerstones of Route 1 is they partner with other organizations to ensure that these students participants know the story of Israel a bit more. They have courses before and then they do interventions again afterwards. So these are things that are actually happening on the ground. And it was not happening to the same extent at all seven to 10 years ago. And on top of that, the how has changed. It is malpractice to do Israel advocacy hasbara in an educational setting now. And when people are behaving well, they know that, they know that you can't do Israel advocacy in Hasbara anymore. They know you have to do serious education, good, bad and ugly and how you see yourself in it. And the vast majority of Jewish educational institutions are doing that now as well. Now funders sometimes don't recognize that that's necessary because they're, they're not the professionals. They're there to like, kind of defend Israel, like whatever you can do to defend Israel. And the funders that are, I would say, behaving well understand that it's not just about defending Israel. It's about ensuring that the story of Israel is actually understood by this generation. And the number one thing that young Jewish people demand is transparency and honesty. That's clear. They don't have transparency and honesty. Then they are out. And so we're seeing positivity on that front as well, there is a good element there. The terms, I could just tell you some of the academic terms from the late 2000s, 2010s, there were authors that were talking about committing and critiquing that that should be the focus of Israel education. Or wrestling and hugging, or there was Connect and Expose. What I like to talk about is goosebumps with complexity. Like, that's my framing of Israel education. There should be goosebumps. You should fit, feel something, feel like you're part of something. I mean, you saw my kids in Israel and my son's bar mitzvah. You came and celebrated with us. There's goosebumps. There's like emotional vitality to it. Like, this is part of our story. And there's complexity. There's complexity. Like, with that, there's like, okay, but I'm not just going to show you the saccharine aspects of Israel, the sweet, the juicy. I should also show you that. But there are also different elements of Israeli society. And what that does is that that shows young people respect. And if we could show young people respect at scale with podcasts, with videos, I would love for Jewish Federations of North America, this, the most overarching group of, of Jewish institutional life, to come together and say, let's create this. Let's figure out what 20x, like you said, Khaviv, looks like. If you have, you know, 478,000 subscribers are already there, how do we get to 4.8 million in the next three years? And it's not just Israel education. I do want to say this because I haven't said this yet. It's also Jewish identity. If young Jews don't know their story, yes, Jewish history, yes, Israeli history. But if they don't know the value and the knowledge of Judaism. And now I'm talking outside of the Jewish day school world, but also within the Jewish day school world. If they can't articulate what it means to be Jewish, if I said to you, what is Judaism? And all you could tell me was, you know the rituals and didn't know about the peoplehood. Or if I asked you what is Judaism? And all you knew about was peoplehood, meaning family, and didn't know about the rituals, I would say that you don't have a healthy diet of a Jewish education, we could provide that at scale. Now it's there. It's doable, not just through unpacked, but through other content creators. Like we created this division, Khaliv, I don't know if you know about it, called Amplified, where We are amplify different Jewish content creators, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. And we are providing them with community, we are providing them with editing of their content. And we're trying to say what we've done unpacked, let's do that to 10x20x30x with different Jewish content creators and Christian creators and Muslim creators. So I think that there's an excitement about finding the new thing to do. And it's happening, it's happening. We just like, I wonder what's holding us back from just 20xing it and saying game on and let's, let's like really? It's such a fun problem to solve. By the way, isn't it fun to scale Jewish education? And the reason I love that even more is instead of fighting anti Semitism, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight antisemitism, fight anti Semitism, fight it. Let's our friend, I believe she's our mutual friend, but maybe just my friend, I don't know Sarah Hurwitz, who said it better than anyone, stop trying to sweep away the floods and start building an arc on this, on these floods. And it's an arc of Jewish education, an arc of Jewish identity. And there are different planks. You got to know current events, you got to know the history of Israel and you got to know Judaism. If you have those three things, like a good man named Chaviv Rehtagore once said, if you know your story, you are invincible. Nobody could do anything to you. Because if you know your story, it's the same idea of Da Malahashi of Latpikaras. You don't have to respond to that person. You don't have to do that, no problem. But if you know your story, like when I know my story, Chaviv. And if Israel does bad things, it doesn't do anything to my goosebumps with complexity because I know my story and I'm part of my family and I view them as my family. And if I have that, then I don't have to defend everything Israel does to ensure I have a good identity. Because that makes no sense. It's my story, it's my people, it's my family. And. And sometimes my family does weird things and bad things, but they're still my family. So people have to feel like it's their family. We could do it.

A (55:05)

Noam, that was amazing and wonderful because all of the infrastructures and methodologies in this new age of TikTok that's dissolving the old ways of doing things, our kids are off somewhere where we don't understand all of that problem is also the solution. And that's what I hear from everything you're saying. And people should check out unpacked. It is a content platform. Just go there. You'll watch fun, exciting, interesting movies. There's cool stuff there about the Mossad. Like if I haven't gotten you on learn your Jewish history, Go for the Mossad, stay for the Jewish history.

B (55:44)

Exactly.

A (55:44)

Thank you so much. It's time to stand up and 20x it all. And we already know how to do it.

B (55:50)

Can I give you one closing story? I just want a closing story that you could either edit out or include. I just think this story. I say this story all the time. Because this is a story I want the American Jewish world to be thinking about. It's from the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. And he had a student who had a friend whose son was about to become a bar Mitzvah. The friend wanted his son to meet this great Rebbe. And they entered his study and the Rebbe greeted them with his like such warm handshake and his piercing eyes. And he asked the bar Mitzvah boy, who wasn't religious at all as far as my understanding, he said, are you a baseball fan? He was trying to make a connection. The bar Mitzvah boy replied, he was. The Rebbe asked, Yankees or Dodgers? So he knew what was going on. And the boy replied, dodgers then. So the Rebbe said, does your father have the same feeling for the Dodgers as you have? And the boy said, no. Does he take you out to games? The Rebbe really wants to know. He wanted to connect with him. The boy said, well, every once in a while my father actually does take me to a game. It's amazing. We were at a game a month ago. The Rebbe said, how was it? The 13 year old confesses it was disappointing. By the sixth inning, the Dodgers were losing 9, 2. So we decided to leave. The Rebbe looked at him. Did the players also leave the game when you left? The Bar Mitzvah boy stared back at the Rebbe. She was shocked. He said, rabbi, Rabbi, the players can't leave in the middle of the game. Why not? Asked the Rebbe. Explain to me how this works. So the boy launched into this full explanation. There are players and there are fans. The fans can leave when they like. They're not part of the game. Even if they leave, the game continues without them. But the players can't do that. It's their job to stay and try to win until the game is over. The rebbe looked at the boy, this Bar Mitzvah boy, and he said, now you understand Judaism either you could be an observer of the history, you could be observer of the story, you could be in the stands and you could leave whenever you want. You can leave whenever you want. But if you have a stake in it, if you're writing the story, then ultimately you're not leaving ever. This is your game. And my message to your audience, to my audience, to anyone listening, is be in the game. Be in the game. And we need education. We need to know our history. We need to know our story. And if we know our story, we have to bear our story, which is to actually live it. And if we bear our story, B E A R, we also have to bear our story, B A R E tell our story. We have the ability to do it, but we have to be in the game. So, Khaviv, thank you so much for having me and letting me share some insights that I hope were helpful for your audience.

A (58:22)

Dr. Noam Weissman, thank you so much for coming on.

B (58:24)

Thanks for having me.