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Search for Meaning with Kari Hollend · Search for Meaning with Rabbi Yoshi

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Search for Meaning.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Yoshi's Weiback.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks everybody so much for joining us.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about our guest today.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: She's going to be talking about her new documentary, which I had the chance to watch this last week.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is powerful.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's painful.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll understand why when we have our conversation.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But first, I just want to welcome Carrie Holland.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for making time for Search for Meaning.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is a pleasure.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you're, I'm catching you in Toronto, and you're going to be heading to Los Angeles in just a few days for the screening of your film.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get to the campaign, the name of your movie, I want to just talk a little bit about you so we can get to know you a little bit better.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: What drew you first to filmmaking?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get into being a storyteller?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of by accident.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was always a cinephile, like as a child and growing up, movies and going to the movies was always my favorite escape.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it was something that I just loved and felt connected to.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: I was always kind of like the dreamer, left of center, definitely the very obvious artsy kid in the family.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my brother did his law in BA.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like we were very like left and right brain.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I sort of started my career after I went traveling.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, I went to university, I didn't finish.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: I left to go traveling and go experience the world a little bit.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And when I came back, I kind of landed in the world of publicity, but for a publicist who was working on films and specifically during the Toronto Film Festival.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that was my entry point.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then from there, I actually started working in the publicity promotions department of Disney in Toronto.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I started connecting with different people, including filmmakers.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: And this girl that was working at like a product placement company said, I have I wrote a script, it's a short film.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to produce it?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea what that even meant, but I was like, Yeah, I was always very good at just figuring things out and also connecting, hustling, like execution.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that was, I, you know, made my first short.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was over 25 years ago.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then from there, I continued.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: I actually at this point have worked across every platform.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So over my, you know, 25 years in the industry, I've worked above and below the line in commercials, music videos, branded content, feature films, TV, documentary, um, pretty much, yeah, everything at this point.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: I've had some sort of reach.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And tell us a little bit about your upbringing Jewishly in Toronto.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: What was that like?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's I've been to Toronto a number of times and I love the community.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a deeply committed and beautiful Jewish community.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was just there actually for a wedding this last June.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and such a powerful community.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that uh more broadly, Canada is experiencing a similar kind of uptick in anti-Semitism that we are in America, and and in some ways worse uh from what I've been hearing from from my Canadian friends.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But first, just growing up as a Canadian Jew and then maybe take us into the present day because it relates very much to some of the themes of the film.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up in a very lucky, you know, loving Jewish conservative family.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was certainly very much a part of my upbringing, you know, Shabbat dinners every Friday, a very closely knit, large family, observant on the holidays.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Hebrew school, you know, three days a week.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't go to Hebrew day school.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: I went to, you know, Hebrew school afterwards.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: How about mitzvah?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: My booby is actually still alive.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: She's the matriarch of her family and she's 99, turning 100 in April.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I would say I grew up Jewish and very attached to my values and traditions, but I it wasn't the headliner of my life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like, as you said when you were asking me my name earlier, I wasn't a dead giveaway that I walked around, you know, in Canada or anywhere as a as a visible or, you know, with my name being very Jewish.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: But certainly I grew up with the values, the traditions, the understanding of, you know, a lot of the history.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it wasn't, you know, um, it wasn't my my date, it certainly wasn't something that was in my day-to-day when I got older.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it it's who I am, it's part of my identity.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's as I get older looking back, so much of how I've been shaped in the world is by my family, my traditions.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: I remember after October 7th, actually, I had this weird moment where I started realizing I was like, oh, I never learned how to pray in English.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like you inherently, it's not that I spoke Hebrew, I don't speak Hebrew, but I could read and write.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: And every prayer or song that I knew, it sort of dawned on me, just connecting all these dots when you're forced to, that I was like, every song I know as a prayer is in Hebrew.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that wasn't even something that kind of occurred to me.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was just ingrained, you know.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say so much of my Judaism was at the forefront and shaped who I am.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: But reflecting after, you know, I kind of joke and call myself the October 8th Jew when I had to zoom out and realize actually how much of a part of me it is and my identity.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And certainly now, there was all these little things that I started to reflect on, realizing that it was even bigger in me than I had realized.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a powerful moment.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as it turns out, we're actually recording this on October 7th, the third anniversary of that awful, dark, and heart-wrenching day that we're still wrestling with and dealing with.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be a connection to the campaign.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, first, if you could tell us a little bit about the film, I've had the privilege of being able, thank you for sharing the screen here with me, being able to watch it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and folks in LA will have the chance to see it uh in person in the next couple of weeks.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then at some point, I'm sure after you do the circuit, people will be able to see it in in streaming uh settings as well.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But tell us about the film and and how what what it seeks to do.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you know, a quick sort of jumping point was after October 7th, I've been, you know, been working, as I said, in the liberal arts in Canada for over 25 years, which is a very progressive, left-leaning, you know, social justice, DEI-focused world that I was very much a part of and proud to be a part of.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And after October 7th, I sort of was in really a state of shock when all these people who in my arts community, I shared, or I thought I shared, a connective tissue when it came to values, human rights, you know, humanity.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I very quickly realized, without reading the fine print, that as a Jew and for my friends and family in Israel, we were sort of left out of that conversation.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like all the rules didn't apply.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I met Warren Cassella, who you now know because you've seen the film, and he's, you know, a tremendous ally journalist, um, political strategist, former lawyer, author.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he was in, I was introduced to him while he was at the beginning stages of writing um his book, The Hidden Hand, which is what the documentary is a companion piece to.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he seemed to have a lot more understanding of what was happening and and why, or at least at that point, thesis.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that was when we started making the film.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And really, the film answers, I think, and speaks to the landscape of the digital warfare, the propaganda, the disinformation and misinformation, and how those sort of in the intersection of how that's not only fueling anti-Semitism, but creating division globally and really with a much bigger goal outside of Israel, Gaza, Palestine, whatever one wants to, you know, call it, um, with uh an intention and a goal to dismantle Western democracy from within.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they've done a masterful job of it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And three years later, a lot of the things that we sort of predicted or talked about, and then were able to back up and verify were not only seeing come true, but in a bigger, scarier way than we could have sort of anticipated at this speed, I would say, you know.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the film is called The Campaign.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering, you know, what was that moment for you when you realized that what you were seeing was not some sort of organic kind of movement that was developing, but actually something that was planned and coordinated in um, you know, in a diabolically masterful way.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: When was the moment that you really understood that?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I didn't have one moment where I understood it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: For me, it was really absorbing all the different moments.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I think for someone like a Warren, because I truly like when I say I was not engaged in geopolitics before this, that's just not who I am.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was never something, you know, my therapist joke that now I sort of have like a PhD after making this film.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: But more for Warren, the discovery was very quickly after October 7th when he saw protests on October 8th popping up with the same signage, the same language in multiple countries.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like he sort of quickly, as someone who works in political campaigns, looked at that and said, you can't, that can't be grassroots.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: You can't have just from a logistics standpoint, all those things ready and prepared without there being some sort of like precursor to launching something like that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for me, it wasn't one moment.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was the journey and all the conversations, interviews, and discovery of the information is when I was really able to see it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there was a few critical moments, like in the in the film when you saw we did a focus group.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: That was pretty early on in our filming.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and even just watching the daily sort of stream of social media, because I'm not in an echo chamber.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: I very much have people, you know, of my small uh following, you know, like 4,000 followers.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say, I mean, now I would say for the three years it's shifted, but I would have said half and half are Jewish, half not.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I would see, you know, like the Motas Aziz and the Wizard Visan um posts coming out of Gaza, coming out of the left.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then I would see all the stuff coming out of the Jewish.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like I started to watch the actual noise and intersection of like this is saying this and that's saying that.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And how can there be this many, you know, people with the same information?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it then I learned more throughout this process about how bot farms work and cyber, you know, the the technological side of how they were able to do this.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, interviews like Gary Wexler, where you go back 35 years or longer, and you you start to hear, you know, wiretaps of Hamas before they were Hamas talking about this long-standing plan or goal that they have, you know, to get into higher education.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so it was for me, it was sort of the pieces of the whole journey which made me really understand it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's all I see, but it took me a while to process and and truly feel confident that that's what was happening or is happening.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: You gave us one example, just how quickly similar stories and similar language, you know, all over the world at the same moment, you realize, well, that that's not just coincidental, accidental, but it was actually planned.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are there some other examples that you could share with us from the film where as you investigated more and more in your team, and obviously working with Warren?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And for people who are not Canadian, might not realize what an important voice he is in Canada.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't someone I was familiar with, but in watching the film and then preparing myself for today, I started reading more and more about him.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh, you know, to have his voice as part of this is a really big thing, I think, uh culturally and uh and in terms of the weight he brings.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: But is there an example that he shared with you or that you discovered or your team discovered where it's like this is what I can point to that shows that this was a uh highly um, you know, a deeply cultivated campaign, nothing organic about it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I wouldn't say it's one, I wouldn't say it's one thing.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was a combination of things.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: There wasn't the there wasn't the one gotcha moment.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: I really think it was like the combination of the Gary Wexler interview.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Then you have the history of Hamas and how that, you know, plays into the ecosystem of how we got here.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have a lot of the more quiet um sort of infiltration of things when you start to look at the history of candidate candidates.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: The I would say one of the biggest uh triggers for me was the or understanding was learning about the funding into the Ivy League schools.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So working with like a Charles Asher Small and the discovery of the Qatar factor in all of this and the idea that the connection to all these Ivy League schools where you saw really this bubbling up of anti-Semitism, they all had a ton of funding from Iran and Qatar and going back, you know, like 20 years.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, I would say that was one of the early sort of discoveries with the team and getting the information from learning about the Muslim Brotherhood and then the funding out of Qatar and Iran and how that played into the global sort of campaign factor.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of the challenges I can imagine as a documentarian in a moment like this, when you're trying to document misinformation campaigns, deliberate misinformation campaigns, is you know, you're holding yourselves to certain journalistic standards that obviously the the people you're you're covering do not.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, uh their their entire um infrastructure is really about telling a big lie again and again and again in all these different ways.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you're trying to counter that using truth.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that uh when you have to play by the rules, but they don't?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it was it's challenging.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's there's a lot, first of all, we we did have to play by the rules because the whole point was trying to expose what's true and what's factual versus emotion and narrative.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, one of the things we do talk about in the film when we interview like a Mati Friedman are is the role of the mainstream media.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not even just the lack of information and and things that are, you know, shared as narratives or the AI factor or things that are completely untrue.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: You have mainstream media reporting on stories faster than they can verify them.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, our section also on the BBC, you you know, there used to be a time, as Leon Panetta said, where you had to have fact checkers.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: You couldn't just spit it out.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the amount of news stories that hit the, you know, the ether that go wide and it's out there, and then they had to retract.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: No one ever sees the retractions, so they don't matter, which we cover this in the film too.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: So the the answer to your question is how do you fight against that?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: We're still trying to figure that out because we are up against a sea of lies.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: And as Matty Friedman talks about too, uh opinions veiled as journalism.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like even the journalists can't hide bias anymore.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: It used to be you report what is the facts, and there would be a team of people who verify and vet those facts.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I have this amazing team, Christina, my co-producer, Christina Bashay, Kristen Ray, like our entire team comes from news and journalism.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Most of my team was not Jewish, actually, like a huge part of my team were not Jewish.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So they didn't have the same emotional connection.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we would be able to have these conversations about things where it would be more emotional for me because I would react to the feeling of what we were talking about versus the facts, you know.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you look at even the Nakbah, you know, as a conversation topic that people, there's there's all these things that in this conversation became this toolkit for people that are like anti-Israel, anti-colonial, all the things that they cling to.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll say, well, what about the Nakbah?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or they'll they'll refer to different dates.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, oh, yes, people were displaced in 1948, but they won't talk about the fact that it was, you know, uh a petition plan that was accepted by the Jews, um, and that the you know, the Arab population decided to go to war.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's there's so many, I think one of my bus biggest frustrations as a filmmaker, and I'm segueing here, but in the the world of the this conversation in the entertainment world is for a group of people whose whole job is supposed to be POV, like we're supposed to really understand the importance of coverage.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you if you are shooting anything and you don't have time to relight and change the camera and switch the lens to get the whole story, it's a narrative, it's not a whole story.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, the answer to the question is how do you find or how do you penetrate with the truth in this moment?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're still navigating that because unfortunately, it's a difficult time to find the truth and and verify that it's the truth.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also a difficult time to you can't really de-radicalize or de-program people with truth and facts.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: You have to reach them in a different way, which gets to another section of the film, which we can talk about later, um, our controversial sort of section.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and we're finding that that controversial section is something that is reaching people in a way that all the other things aren't doing in the same way.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go to that because I think trying to understand, you know, what might be effective when so many of us are struggling with this.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll hear congregants say, you know, Rabbi, I wish Israel did a better job with its PR.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And why don't we have a better spokesperson?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh the enormity of what we're up against doesn't always sink in uh in terms of numbers, just you know, if you think about the demographic realities, uh the numbers are not in our favor.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you think about the the funding sources, the numbers are not in our favor.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so if you have, you know, if you have the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar on the one hand, and you know, Jewish philanthropists on the other hand dealing with all the other things we're dealing with, including how do we raise money to make sure that synagogues are safe places we can visit?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we deal with legislation in places like Canada and the United States that concerns us, you know, all these other priorities we have.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have another entity that seems to be focused singly on this one campaign.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have this huge army of uh of uh people who have been manipulated to to uh believe that they're standing up for what's right.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they're their they're their foot soldiers.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: The enormity of what we're up against, the idea that if you just got a better spokesperson from the prime minister's office, we would solve that.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but tell us about that, tell us about the more controversial part and yeah, and first to speak to that, it's like you're right, there's so many blinking lights.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the one thing we're also up against, never buying numbers and funding, is time.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: We we've been in like a really maddening defense game for the past three years as a global Jewish community with so many blinking lights and trying to play whack-a-mole with what feels like you know, fires in every direction.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's there's also a collective moment where we have to take a breath and we'll see what happens with this election on either side of it and recognize that we can't just keep playing defense.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: We need a better long game offense strategy to fight this and to and for self-preservation.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I feel like everyone is having a moment of, especially on a day like today, it's so heavy and on the backdrop of so much hate.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think, you know, we have a section in our film where we we go to Israel and we interview a lot of Israelis.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, we're in Tel Aviv.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little more progressive in a left part of the city.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we were in Indie Phil.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: We couldn't go across the whole country.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have time.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we were exposed to a lot of those left-leaning voices that are critical of the government, that are frustrated with the war.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of them still, you know, that we had some BB supporters too, and this was still when the hostages were in captivity.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we had some voices that were pretty critical of the war, of BB, of you know, and that also shared a lot of empathy and support for the Palestinian, the plight of Palestinians and are angry with the status quo.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was a really interesting, I mean, it was one of the hardest parts of the film to stories to tell.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: It caused a lot of internal struggle.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: It took us seven months to edit the doc.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was one of our biggest sort of team um fights because we didn't know where to start and stop with that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we were all aware of the different backlash, which subsequently we did get from all sides.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I feel very now seeing the impact of it and and it doing what I feel it's doing, which is, you know, you asked, how do you get through to people?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for one, when you find common ground to people, it's very disarming for them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the people, and I don't want to give too much away, but people will see it's not, it's, you know, this isn't a drama.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: We all know that or scripted, but everyone knows what's happening.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: But the section in our film that's more critical, we found that a lot of diaspora Jews had more of a discomfort with it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it also helped to understand the discourse here versus in Israel.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it also is the section, you know, that we have found in our limited, you know, screenings of people that aren't Jewish or that are very anti Israel that allowed them to see something they hadn't seen.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: It humanized Israelis for them.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um it it Sort of undoes the trope of all Jews are the same, all Israelis vote for BB, everyone is a monolith.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it made them say, okay, well, if I'm getting that wrong, what else am I getting wrong?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: So our one section that's you know seven minutes of the film, or maybe it comes in and out for 10 minutes of the film, um, simultaneously made everyone uncomfortable and pause for thought.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we're finding that the balance that we struck there is truly having a profound um effect on not only the conversation within the Jewish community and in Israel, which we screened twice, where it's forcing people to kind of listen to each other because everyone wants to say, well, that's not Israeli society.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my right-leaning friends or family are in Israel.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll say, that that's not the voice.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, guys, you're all Israeli.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, whether you like it or not, you're it you you all have the same title.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's true for diaspora too.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was an interesting sort of discovery to see the pain point and fear of showing that criticism.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: But the most important part for me is having some now journalists review it and having some people that are really that were pretty on the other side have a moment to listen to the rest of what we had to say in a way that they wouldn't have before.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's really powerful to think about how a film can create discomfort, especially when it, you know, holds up that mirror to ourselves and we see a little bit of of ourselves in it and also the the parts of our our broader selves, not just you know, ourselves as individuals, but ourselves as part of a people, and to realize, yeah, that's part of who we are.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not always so flattering, but that's that's the reality of any people.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's going to be extremists on on both sides, and you're gonna find yourself uncomfortable at times with that.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then, and then of course, the hardest part is looking at yourself and saying, What what what what's ugly about me?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not just my people, but me.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to wrestle with a lot of uncomfortable moments for myself in the conversations and and put my guard down and be willing to consider things that I I had trouble considering before.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I noticed in the conversation, it's like each side, and I say side because it's become some sort of blood sport, but it's like each side's pain point is what the other one's asking to be the footnote.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like the the Palestinian casualties versus Hamas.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's like we we stop listening to each other when it starts to get into this the what about this, what about that, or why, what the reasons why, you know.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, we do go deep.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: The whole film is about the reasons why this seemingly, you know, insidious campaign is working so well.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like hats off to our enemies, they've done a really incredible job of dominating, you know, not only social media, but the psyche of young minds, because they targeted, you know, Gen Z.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: But now you're seeing it permeate sort of every everywhere, you know.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, it's uh it was definitely it's all of it's painful, you know, and uncomfortable.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's it's there's no silver bullet solution.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Look, complicated and difficult conversations like this that have deep historical roots, not decades, but you know, some of them centuries.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, well, gee, can't you just carry snap your fingers and give us a solution?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Would would that it anyway?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have been asked, by the way.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: To just solve it, to fix it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: In some of our Q ⁇ A.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: So like, what's the answer?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I I don't know.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly helping educate people and helping people understand what is actually happening is I think critically important.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So to to whatever degree this documentary can help to accomplish that for whomever sees it, you know, that is to me uh an important and necessary step along the way.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we're going to try to solve any problem, we better understand it in a deeper way.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And again, going back to that, why don't, you know, why doesn't the prime minister have a better spokesperson as if that would solve it?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with that said, there has been uh extended periods of time where the prime minister's office didn't have an English language spokesperson.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not defending that policy choice, but uh, but you know, both things could be true at the same time.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is, Hasbarak could be much better, and there needs to be a more significant investment.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israeli government needs to think about not just how its actions affect Israelis internally, but how it could affect Jewish life externally, which will eventually affect Jewish life internally.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these things are all connected.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it's all connected, and and I don't believe it's like one person's responsibility.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like the Israeli, like they have so much to deal with there.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think if I'm, you know, I actually think as a global Jewish community, we have some, you know, sitting at the table to do because we're all gonna point fingers.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think our biggest personally, and this is also people that shared different films with me, one called Jews at Third Time, which isn't new.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think our biggest existential threat is ourselves and our ability to simultaneously debate, you know, which is great and disagree.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: But what's bad is our inability to listen and come up with a uh some kind of agreement.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're diaspora, if you're Israeli, if you're Heredi, if you're Orthodox, if you're anti-Zionist, like the existential threat is the same if you're a Jew, no matter what.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: So our enemies have, you know, one goal, one agenda, one strategy, you know, a bunch of pipelines of funding that kind of go in the same direction and the same messaging.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in that pipeline, you know, we on the other hand, have like a million hoses firing in different directions.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is this is how we do it, that's how we do it.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think until we get to a place of more, a better strategy globally, we're in trouble.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm hoping that the film illuminates some of that too.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like if we spend so much time debating on what we need to do or what's a priority versus having a bit of like, you know, a family meeting globally, uh, I think I think we're in more trouble than we realize.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested, given a little bit of what you shared in your own Jewish experience and growing up in Toronto in a community where you know you were deeply connected, so much so that, as you said, you didn't realize prayer came in English too.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just like, oh, it's just Hebrew prayer.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Going through the process of making a documentary like this, has that affected or changed your own Jewish identity?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like your understanding of what it means to be Jewish is different today than it was before you started this project?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: For a few reasons.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: It became more of a priority, you know, and and more, you know, like did I light my Shabbat candles every Friday before?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Do I now?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, do I feel like it's now, you know, what what I said before was like my Judaism was like a secondary, you know, character in my story.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: And now I feel like it's, you know, the the star of my life in this moment, you know, I that will never change as far as what I practice and the importance of it for me and passing it to my children.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, it changed a lot in my appreciation.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I remember my booby saying to me when I was like in my early 20s, I come back to this moment all the time because there's so then there's so many moments, you know, she's not a survivor, but she came um before the war.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of, you know, their family and friends obviously uh, you know, died in the Holocaust.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it was something that we talked about.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember her pro making me promise her that I would keep the traditions and there was an importance of it.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And there was this like almost whisper and tension with that ask from her that I didn't realize until after October 7th, which was she understood, you know, that she understood the moment we're in now because she lived through it.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the promise was there was almost like this undercurrent of in case, like you, you, you need to hang on to it because we are always in some sort of existential threat.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I'm Gen X.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up with the generation that was pretty much the only generation.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now you can say that in North America didn't have aggressive anti-Semitism to face day to day.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: My kids are not gonna have that luxury, they don't have that luxury.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: My parents, you know, baby boomers obviously didn't, you know, they were still in the shadow of the Holocaust and they still were in a world that was pretty anti-Semitic.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like, yes, it activated me not only to be more conscious of it, practice it, but be more vocal about it.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think for our grandparents coming out of the shadows and the ashes of the Holocaust, it was like assimilate or die.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: And now I personally feel as Jews, it's like don't assimilate or die.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like we have to be very, I think, steadfast in our status of a people and a minority group on a global stage.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that was something I think that that didn't happen, and we're feeling the effects of it now.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: We let other people tell our story.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's so powerful, and I would imagine a little bit unexpected, you know, when you embarked on this project, the idea that your own Jewish identity would change in powerful ways was probably not part of the program.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was completely not.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: None of this was part of the program, by the way.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: I thought I would be making rom-coms or like Shakespeare and Love.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like this was none of this was this was not the era that I thought I'd be making a documentary about geopolitics and you know conflicts in the Middle East.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: But no, it wasn't.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it was, it's been emotional and painful and beautiful because I there were so many things looking back that I didn't really know uh were so much a part of my identity that meant something to me, you know?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it was definitely not part of what I would find out.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it's it's not just the film, it's the moment in time.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's being a Jew that's vocal in 2026.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: And in Toronto, we have one of the biggest anti-Semitism problems in the world, like factually data, you know, hate crimes.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: We don't live in a country where their gut guns are legal and there's you know, synagogues and bakeries being shot up and and schools being shot up.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think it's the I'm meeting the moment, and also the obviously the film exposed me to also think about my history.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: I I called my cousin at one point, I'm like, did you really because by the way, I was not the best student.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: So learning about Jewish history, it was like, you know, that wasn't my strong point.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I called my cousin, I said, Did you remember or realize that like all of our holidays are about people trying to kill us?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like all these things that I just wasn't paying attention to.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, right, you know, Purim and Passover.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like I started replaying the stories that I knew, but none of it like sunk in of the actual history of slavery, persecution, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, yeah, something happened, and then we ate, you know, homintosh in and I'm okay, it's time to dip the wine.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just wasn't, I wasn't really paying attention to the whole story and how that is relevant today.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm a little more versed.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: There are those moments when, you know, even when we've spent, like in my case, you know, my entire adult life studying these things, there are these moments where it hits you and you realize, oh, that was there all along, but I wasn't really paying attention to it because when you're inside the narrative, when you're inside the story, it's kind of hard to notice.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the story's different.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I once had my nephew, who's now in his early 30s, um, it was Hanukkah time, and he he was like two or three years old.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know where this came from.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been a cartoon that he saw or something like that.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: But like if you were really mad at someone and you really wanted to hurt them, you would throw fire on them.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it must have been like a cartoon or a movie.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: So he says to me, you know, Uncle Yosh, throw fire on the Greeks.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And no context.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I would thought he was talking about like modern day Greek people.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, Jacob, why would we do such a thing?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're nice people.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, don't throw fire.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I finally realized he was, he had internalized the Hanukkah story, and someone had taught him, you know, and and the and the Greeks defiled our temple.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, they were talking about, you know, the the Seleucid Greeks of you know, 2,000 years ago, but they had desecrated our temple and sought to destroy our religious tradition.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, his response as a three-year-old was throw fire on the Greeks.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you zoom out and you think about the narrative, like, oh yeah, it Hanukkah is not just about it's not just about latkas and exchanging gifts.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually a narrative here about religious freedom, but also about persecution that we can internalize.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm wondering And miracles.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and miracles.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so what is your hope for viewers who have that opportunity to see the campaign?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, making the campaign, you know, you lived it and breathed it, and it was it was part of your, I'm sure, almost every waking hour for months and months and months.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And watching the the film, by the way, the way you edited all of the material, you know, news reports.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's unbelievable how perfectly it's done.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I can only imagine the time that went into every single cut and bringing those in and clips from everywhere.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just extraordinary.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it had, you know, this powerful effect on you, and and it had an effect on me as someone watching it who, like, yeah, spoiler alert, I knew the story.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I already knew that there was a campaign, and I already didn't know every element of what you shared, but it wasn't something that was, you know, uh eye-opening for me because I'm I'm following this very, very uh deeply.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it and yet it still had this effect on me.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said right before we started recording that there were moments where I was like, I could barely breathe because it's so upsetting and uh and triggering, and it brings you, and it's like, yes.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking about my daughter who was on one of two of my daughters who were on those campuses, one at Wisconsin, one at Columbia, and I'm, you know, kind of reliving some of the trauma that she had.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, but for someone who just comes to this and they hear that it's playing at the Limley here in Los Angeles, and they want to come see it.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Town Center Five.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Town Center Five, that's right up the right up the street from me.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they come to watch it.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: What do you hope the the film will do to that person or change in that person or inspire in that person?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think a few things.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think it depends on who the person is.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: One, I'm hoping for those who don't know a lot about it, that it opens their eyes.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think for people who are sort of fit in the margins or the silent majority are confused and are and are also curious and questioning.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: I hope it sheds a little bit of light on the answer to what is happening and why.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I hope it makes people ask questions, you know, and and start to think a bit critically, which I we found that it does, you know, it it opens up a lot of pathways for people to say, oh, wait, I hadn't thought of that.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can go down these other doors, which you hope leads them to a place that brings them out of some of the lies and the tropes and the disinformation.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I hope, you know, it ends on somewhat of a hopeful note for the Jewish community too, of like, okay, we can figure this out if we, you know, come together and sort of be a little bit more strategic as a collective.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I hope for those that really didn't know what happened on October 7th, I hope it illuminates for them just how horrific, uh, painful and horrifying that day was.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I hope I hope people just leave with a little bit more of an understanding and share it.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then I think for some it's been sort of a catharsis because I think one of the biggest challenges being, you know, Jewish in this moment and in this world is feeling like you have to have so much information ready, or like a response or a defense, or like there's just so much that you feel like you have to articulate that sometimes feels impossible, especially when you feel like your back's against the wall or you're being challenged, or even just to justify your existence.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: I hope it gives people a tool that they can say in a moment of just exhaustion, like to a colleague, a friend, anyone, like, can you just watch this?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I need you to watch this because I think it will help you understand some of the things I've been trying to tell you.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I found that to be true even for people that I've had, you know, long conversations with over the conflict.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: They said, I finally see what you were trying to tell me that I really wasn't able to see before.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I hope I'm giving people a tool to help, you know, take a bit of the pressure off of having to be, you know, a scholar, a historian, a cybersecurity expert, Middle Eastern geopolitical, like all the things and something that they can just give to someone.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's really powerful and also in some ways freeing, reminding uh each other that, you know, there are things that we can do to collectively move the needle, but it doesn't fall on any one of our shoulders, including yours as a filmmaker, to try to, first of all, solve a hatred that goes back thousands of years.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: The tools with which our haters are attacking us have changed over time, of course.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that that that essential narrative that's being told and the inversions and and and the way the the lie um morphs, it's this shape shifter, but it's never really different.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's just taking on different shapes.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea that any one of us could solve such a thing is is unfair.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, just uh it adds more pain and trauma to the trauma and pain that we're already experiencing.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there are things that we can do, and being educated ourselves, and like you said, being able to share it with someone and say, you know, I'm asking you to make a commitment to to watch, you know, something that's not a it's not a 30-second TikTok video.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that is uh much, much more serious.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I want you to take that time because it's it's important.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: What I wanted to end with, uh, Carrie, is uh something in this whole process that has really given you hope.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh, you know, there's there's so much about the situation that many of us find ourselves in.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are moments where we feel a little hopeless.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how what we're up against is so huge and the lies are so insidious.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that we see so many people on college campuses and other places believing it and then repeating it that we just feel like we're done, we're cooked.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm sure there have been moments of real um hope and awakening.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: So many moments, yeah, so many moments of hope.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: Look, so many moments of despair and hopelessness for sure, and depending on the day.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: But the moments of hope for me is also seeing so many amazing people in our community come together in this time like an army and fight this, you know.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm in a group, you know, called the brigade.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like all these people are so activated and activated, working together on their own like free time and really like tackling issues and seeing the impact of it.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I think seeing our community come together is I think one of the biggest signs of hope, you know, when I say we fracture, we do, we argue, we fight, but the the unity has also been really incredible and has given me a lot of comfort.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what's giving me a lot of hope too is starting to see in moments it feels like it's worse.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And in other moments, I see the tide turning, you know.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even just today I had a call with someone, I'm bringing a delegation of Canadian film and TV people to Israel in November.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: And this was someone who's not Jewish.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: And they're not only willingness to come, but like this curiosity that they had, um, and understanding the importance of why they really wanted to see for themselves and be on the ground and connect with people there.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: So those are the moments giving me hope, you know.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then of course, like just being into in this sort of world where you are connecting with so many of the Israeli people in Israeli life and seeing their resilience and their pain turned into just like a love for life and having to, you know, literally get up every day with this unknown.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think that gives me a lot of hope too.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and seeing a global Jewish community coming together.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's, I think we have been very disconnected from one another, you know, in in a world of so much so-called connection.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I think all those things are are giving me hope.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my kids give me a lot of hope, you know.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: They're well, I say I refuse to identify as a mother of Gen Z.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: They're like on the cusp, they're more alpha, but um, maybe one's sort of a Gen Z.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: But they give me a lot of hope because I'm seeing another generation that not only is now embracing their Judaism and being proud young Jewish kids, but they also are critical thinkers.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're being forced to be, they're asking questions, they're empathetic.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I think us watching, you know, in responsibility as parents to navigate raising kids in this moment, too, is giving me a lot of hope.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Carrie, thank you so much.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hope everybody will get a chance to see the film, whether here in Los Angeles when it comes out next week or later after it goes through the festivals and such, and people can catch it on various streaming platforms.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: It actually starts playing this Friday in LA and in at Town Center Five.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll try to get the podcast up and out as quickly as possible so people can still catch it.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Carrie.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate it.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was great to meet you.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's our episode.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Search for Meaning.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe, and leave a review.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: It really helps others discover the podcast.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: And consider sharing Search for Meaning with a friend.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: They might appreciate the insights and inspiration found here.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Special thanks to our editor Josh Sterling and our production coordinator Raz Husseini.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our theme song was composed by Maestro David Cates and myself, produced by Kenley Mattis, and features a vocal by cantor Josh Goldberg.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: Stay healthy, stay hopeful, and stay tuned.