← The Rubin Report
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- [00:01]
A
It was not easy to be an unconflicted Jew at Harvard because there was the hostility towards Israel, overspilled Israel, and it still does, which is why there was a real sense of discrimination against Jews, not just against people who were, you know, protesting for Israel's right to exist. And unfortunately, this is. I mean, I use Harvard. We use Harvard as a sort of symbolic example, but it is hardly the only example of that in America, especially on elite campuses, people sometimes forget, and this is why I say it's important to also embrace friends of the 5,000 campuses in America. There were protests on, like, 150 or 200 of them, but almost all of them were elite campuses. So that should tell us something about what we're not doing right.
- [01:08]
B
Rabbi David Wolpe. Rabbi, how are you?
- [01:11]
A
I'm well. How are you, Dave?
- [01:13]
B
I'm doing all right. So I thought since it is the end of 2025 and you're the official. I don't know if I could have put this in the title, but you're kind of the official rabbi of the Reuben Report. Before we get into Hanukkah and the story of the Jews and all the stuff that we sort of talk about a few times a year and relate back to current events, how do you feel about the state of the Jews in 2025?
- [01:41]
A
So I'm constitutionally hopeful. So I think that while there are a lot of challenges, there's a lot of bad stuff going on. I always think about it in historical perspective, and in historical perspective, we are still living in a beautiful and blessed time. And so while there is, as I said, especially with regard to Israel, there are enormous challenges still. There is in Israel, there is in America. I mean, for our ancestors, this would have been unthinkable. So what I would say is I'm alarmed but not desperate.
- [02:22]
B
How do you gauge the hate or the stuff that is said about Jews online versus reality? And if I go online and I tweet anything about Israel, it's an endless deluge of awful nonsense. And fortunately, over the last few weeks, we've learned a little bit more about the X algorithm. And a lot of it is from foreign countries, a lot of it's highly manipulated. There's all that kind of stuff. And then there's also reality. And I have found over the last year that that maybe this, the secondary story outside of politics, just sort of the general culture war, is the disconnect between online and offline. How. How do you gauge that?
- [03:01]
A
There's no question that people who are more Online are more. Are more despairing, because they do. See, I mean, it's not just the algorithms, it's just the very nature of being anonymous and getting more clicks when you're outraged or angry. And yet most people, face to face, most are capable of being reasoned with and talked to. And so I think that to the extent that we can actually have interpersonal interactions, we will do much better than if we mediate all of our interactions through screens. So, yeah, I think the world is better than it is online. But I also, as you know, I don't want to minimize, like, what goes on, you know, internationally with things like Eurovision and countries boycotting it because of Israel. And so there's what to be concerned about, even apart from online behavior.
- [04:04]
B
Right, so what do you. We'll do a little bit of politics and then. And then I want to really dive into the story of Hanukkah and some of the lessons that we can learn from that. So when you're watching sort of the political moment where we've seen the left really dive into the kind of anti Israel craziness and now seemingly some of the fraying on the right, which again, I'm having trouble calculating how much is real world versus Twitter world, what do you feel is your role as a rabbi, as a spiritual leader amidst that? Because politics has infected virtually everything. So we've talked about it plenty of times before. You know, you're at the pulpit trying to explain biblical stories and everyone wants to talk politics with you.
- [04:42]
A
So my sort of. My line, if I have a particular line, is we have seen too much to be naive, but we are too wise to be hysterical. I really think that that's the note we have to strike. Because screaming that it's the end of the world, it's neither helpful nor true. But on the other hand, I think being aware that the rise of anti Semitism has real consequences in, in this country and elsewhere is incredibly important. And so what I tell especially Jewish audiences is we are much better at identifying enemies than we are at embracing friends. And there are actually a lot of people of goodwill who really want to see America succeed and like fraternity thrive and so on. And so we have to learn how to make common cause with people of goodwill in every part of the political, ethnic, religious spectrum. And ultimately I have enough faith in humanity to think that that will prevail.
- [05:53]
B
Is there a certain irony here that Jews seem to be really good at building things, whether it's in the case of Israel, you know, making the desert bloom, or going to virtually Every country that Jews are in, and when it's good for those countries, it's good for the Jews. And they are so intertwined in the success of those countries. But while focusing on building things, maybe, maybe Jews just haven't been focused on branding. And that really has been sort of the problem here.
- [06:16]
A
I think that's a big part of the problem, is that we. We get defensive and outraged and surprised when in fact, we should be more methodical and thoughtful sometimes about how to present ourselves to the world and how to interact with people who really don't understand us. Because there is so much more discourse about Jews than there is understanding of Jews. And I think Jews don't always realize that. I sometimes say to Jewish audiences, how much do you know about Kashmir or Nagorno Karabakh? You assume everybody actually understands about Israel, but they don't. They may talk about it. It doesn't mean they understand it. And so there is this branding and also educational aspect that is really important.
- [07:01]
B
And I thought you meant a cashmere sweater, that old schmat.
- [07:04]
A
They know a lot about that.
- [07:05]
B
That they know a lot about.
- [07:07]
A
All right, so let's place for you.
- [07:09]
B
Yeah, exactly. All right, so let's talk about Hanukkah a little bit. We've done this a couple times on the shows over the years, but I like talking about some of the history of these things, of these holidays with you. Why people keep telling the same stories over for thousands and thousands of years. But Hanukkah, which is a kind of, in some sense, a smaller holiday, but I'll let you elaborate on that. It obviously looms large just because of the time of the year and Christmas and all of that stuff. But also I think there is a political reason, which is that it's about the place, the Judean Hills, that a certain set of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, et cetera, et cetera, don't want any Jews living in today. But it's literally, they wish you a happy Hanukkah on Twitter, and then they will tell you that no Jews should live in the place that they are honoring the. Well, they're not honoring the holiday, they're giving lip service.
- [07:57]
A
That is true. So it is in the Judean hills. That is absolutely the case. Judea and Samaria are the way Jews have traditionally referred to what are now called by some of the occupied territories, but also even more deep. I mean, we have this around Christmas as well, where people wish you a Merry Christmas. And you want them to understand that they're celebrating the birth of a Jew thousands of years ago in Israel, where they don't think there should be any Jews today. And this is essentially the reason that Hanukkah is celebrated is because it was the regaining of sovereignty in the 2nd century BCE that is 200 years before what Jews call the Common era, what people would refer to commonly as the birth of Christ in the land of Israel. And the Seleucid empire, which is what we think of around Syria today, a little bit larger than that, was successfully challenged and conquered by the Maccabees. And that was the beginning of a stretch until the Romans of independence in Israel. And it was then when the Romans came along and the Jews kept revolting against them that they renamed it Palestine to, in fact, insult the Jews. So it is a deep dive into the history of the place that, as I said before, most people don't know or understand.
- [09:29]
B
I thought there's also just relative to some of the things we've been talking about in the country over the last year. I mean, there's so much about immigration now and assimilation. And in some sense, the story of Hanukkah is the Jews refusing to assimilate, but on their own land, as opposed to people who are now coming to Western nations and refusing to assimilate. So there's another nice lesson in there, actually.
- [09:51]
A
It is absolutely true. Jews refused the predominance of Greek culture. They obviously borrowed some Greek culture, but the predominance of Greek culture as an overmastering culture in their own land, as they did, by the way, later against the Romans, they said, we won't worship Roman emperors. And that was a cause in part of the Jewish revolt. And. Yeah, well, America, remember, is unique in that what America asked of people was to bring their culture, but to be American. And for most of history, when you came into a land as migrants, immigrants, whatever you said, I'm going to support and protect and care about this land. And for Jews, at the time of the Maccabees, it was sometimes they had foreign rulers, but as long as they gave the Jews autonomy to worship and to care about God the way they did, they generally didn't have problems. The Romans didn't. When they gave autonomy to the Jews. It was when they said, you can't have your culture that the Jews revolted, in this case with Hanukkah successfully, and they rededicated the temple, which had been defaced and almost destroyed.
- [11:07]
B
What do you think we can learn, I mean, Jews, Christians, maybe even non believers about. About faith in general. Through this holiday in that, you know, the, like, bumper sticker version of the holiday is, well, the oil lasted eight days. That's why there's eight nights. But it was sort of a. That was the miracle in and of itself.
- [11:22]
A
Right.
- [11:22]
B
We seem to demand bigger miracles these days, but there's probably some lesson in believing there.
- [11:27]
A
Right. So there is a lesson in the. In the light. Absolutely. Even though the story came much later than the Book of Maccabees, we learn about the story of Hanukkah from the Maccabees 1 and 2, which are not in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, but they were written later. But really, I think the great miracle of Hanukkah is that it means rededication. Hanukkah doesn't mean dedication. It means rededication because the temple had already, hundreds of years before, been dedicated. And I think the miracle of faith is actually in rededication because it's not saying I believe, it's saying I believe again and again and again. At the beginning of our conversation, you said to me, like, how are you feeling about the Jewish people? And my feeling is, you know, again and again and again, there have been challenges, and yet we have rededicated ourselves to the mission and the purpose and the sacred calling of the Jewish people. And I think that's for anyone of faith, that's really the miracle. And even in small areas of life, like, what does a marriage require? It requires rededication, not just a ceremony. What do children require? You can't, like, raise them on one day. You have to commit to it every single day. And I think that really is the heart of Hanukkah.
- [12:48]
B
Is that also kind of the root of the hate? In a weird way, it's like, man, we pogrom these guys and we holocausted them and we kicked them out of this place and we stole that from them and all. And they are, pardon my French, rabbi, and they are still here.
- [13:05]
A
They refuse to die. It's absolutely. I mean, that there certainly is part of. Look, if you read, for example, the Quran. So Muhammad was very friendly towards the Jews until they said, by the way, we're not going to adopt your faith. The same thing happened with Christianity. The early Christians assumed the Jews would accept Jesus. And then they said, no, we actually are remaining Jewish. And that assumption that you should. I'm fine with Jews as long as they're exactly like me, but if they refuse to be like me, then they should disappear. That's what Jews have contended with for thousands of years. And what We've tried to insist to the world is what Rabbi Sacks memorably called the dignity of difference. That is, being different is actually a good thing, it's not a bad thing. And I used to say that.
- [13:57]
B
Wait a minute, are you telling me diversity is not our school?
- [13:59]
A
I was just gonna say that. When I was teaching at Harvard, I used to say, if only you would really treasure diversity, you would actually recognize that the Jews are the original apostles of diversity.
- [14:10]
B
And. All right, wait, let's talk about teaching at Harvard for a second. So people hear Harvard, they hear Rabbi. These are things that shouldn't be at odds with each other, but somehow probably are to some extent at this point, even in the theological sense.
- [14:26]
A
I'm gonna guess it was not easy to be an unconflicted Jew at Harvard because there was the hostility towards Israel, overspilled Israel. And it still does, which is why there was a real sense of discrimination against Jews, not just against people who were protesting for Israel's right to exist. And unfortunately, this is. I mean, I use Harvard. We use Harvard as a sort of symbolic example, but it is hardly the only example of that in America, especially on elite campuses, people sometimes forget, and this is why I say it's important to also embrace friends of the 5,000 campuses in America. There were protests on like 150 or 200 of them, but almost all of them were elite campuses. So that should tell us something about what we're not doing right?
- [15:28]
B
Well, what does that tell you about the secular mind as it pertains to, I guess, belief, or maybe just myopic belief in oneself instead of something else.
- [15:37]
A
It tells me that weirdly, what is promoted as open mindedness led to closed mindedness was like the secular world is open to all sorts of things and to ideas that the narrow religious mind would never accept. And then you solve law, a sort of closedness. Look, I approached the protesters at Harvard several times. They would not speak to me. And one of them told me, we were told not to speak to you. And I thought, like, who's open minded and who's close minded here? I just want to. I want to hear what you have to say. No, so are you, as it relates.
- [16:15]
B
To just sort of the state of the world then now outside of America and outside of some of this stuff, it seems to me the Arab nations have basically now realized, after two and a half years of trying, of a slow death, you know, an attempted slow death of Israel. They've realized Israel's staying. I think this administration fully backs that. And it's done a lot of things to make that the case. Do you like. Do you see peace? When people talk about, well, there's peace now, to me, it's not real peace, but it's just like, we're not going to kill each other temporarily. But do you sense that there will ever be something that really would be peace in the. In the sort of lofty sense of the term?
- [16:52]
A
So I was in the UAE in Abu Dhabi just a few weeks ago, and I saw the Abrahamic faith center there, which has a mosque, a synagogue, and a church in the same area. And they're all exactly the same square footage, which I thought was a brilliant thing to do. And so I saw, like it is, there are people there who genuinely just want to live and prosper and do well. And to the extent I think that poisonous ideologies can be tamed, there will be peace. But as you know and I know, there's a lot of money and a lot of animosity that keeps fueling the fire. And unfortunately, destruction is more efficient than building. It takes a long time to build and not much time to destroy. So I'm hopeful that that spirit will catch and that people in other nations in the Middle east will look to places like the UAE and say, look at the life they're living, which is really a very successful and hopeful kind of cooperation, not only with Israel, but with their neighbors. And I would say peace is not immediate, but. But the horizon of history is long.
- [18:13]
B
What do you think about that from an American perspective? Because, you know, basically since October 7th, one line that I've said repeatedly is, you know, you don't have to, as an American, you don't have to care about the Jews one way or another. You certainly don't have to care about Israel or any other country. But I think as an American, you should care about, well, a Americans of which there are many Jews. But you should also care about the future of your country. And if you think that, oh, if we can just boot the Jews or the Jews will have no influence or whatever it is, that this place is going to be better after, that's just simply not how it works. I think it's baked into the code. What do you make of that?
- [18:45]
A
I think that, I mean, look, people who say, you know, it's all about Israel forget things like the Iran Iraq war, which was much, much, much more destructive than anything that ever happened with Israel and its neighbors. The jihadist ideology is a danger to the world. It's not only a danger to Israel and So when you see the movement for peaceable Muslim countries in the Middle east, we have an enormous interest in helping that, boosting that, promoting that, and our support for Israel and convincing people that you won't actually wipe this nation off the earth is, I think, a tremendous contribution to the possibility of peace.
- [19:30]
B
So as we're also rolling into the new year, what are some of the themes that you get as a rabbi as the new year rolls around? People trying to put to bed, maybe some bad habits, come up with some new inspirations. I mean, what are like the main.
- [19:46]
A
Themes that you give? I'll tell you what's really important this year is in part to say to people those things which people classically did, like having face to face conversations, like reading books, like writing something before you put it through the AI as opp. Having the AI write it for you. And then that's how you train a person to be a thinking soul. And we desperately need to train our children not to let AI do the thinking for them, but to train them to think and then for it to be augmented by the wonder wonders of technology. And so to the extent that we can recapture what is native to humans, actually, that the screens sort of take away from us is the extent to which I think we'll have a much more successful and flourishing culture.
- [20:36]
B
So is AI going to replace God? That seems to be one of the new things popping up online, that we're going to replicate him or clone him or something.
- [20:44]
A
I don't think so. I remember the Tower of Babel. The replacing God idea has already been tried and did not succeed. But I think AI is something to clearly be concerned about. But it also could confer great blessings on us if we are wise enough to be able to use it wisely and not to be used by it.
- [21:05]
B
Now, give me something biblical to close us out here. Just give me a parable, a story, something so that people who. I encourage today's December 22, I encourage everybody to be offline as much as possible and be with family, just away from the devices, at least till January 2. Give me something I can take with them as they disappear.
- [21:28]
A
So the story of Joseph is a good inspiration here. Remember, Joseph tells his brothers about his dreams and he tells his father about his dreams and his brothers resent him for it. And they throw him in a pit and he goes to Egypt and then he ends up interpreting Pharaoh's dreams and rises to be the viceroy of Egypt. And the question is, Joseph fell by dreams and he rose by dreams. What's the difference. And the difference is, he fell when he could only hear his own dreams, but he rose when he started to listen to the dreams of others. And I think if we can listen to each other's dreams, and not only our own, we also will rise.
- [22:05]
B
And that is the New Year's message. Rabbi David Wolpe, I thank you for your time, as always.
- [22:11]
A
Thank you.
- [22:13]
B
If you're looking for more soulful vibes to spark your inner guru, check out our Spirituality playlist. And if you want to watch full interviews on a wide variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist. All right. Over here. And to get notified of all future videos, be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell.