Latest / In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch / Rudy Rochman

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Rudy Rochman · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

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I'm Rabbi Ami Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and
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you're listening to In These Times.
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Is it possible to dialogue with people who hate you?
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Can you reason with your sworn enemy, one who is not only deeply entrenched,
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but
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who considers you to be evil?
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I was interviewing a few students and all of a sudden this huge mob, I
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think there were over a hundred people there that were just coming at me.
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They had megaphones in my ear, they had drums bashing and you could see
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that they wanted to get violent.
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They were just waiting for the signal to be able to all pounce on me.
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And in this moment, I recognize I'm like, you know what?
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There's a reason I'm here.
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Rudy Rochman visits campuses and other hotbeds of anti Israel, anti
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Zionist activity and engages the other side with incredible equanimity.
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Calmly, he tries to open their hearts and minds to the mainstream
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Jewish Zionist perspective, and sometimes he even succeeds.
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I hope that many of you have seen his videos on social media.
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They have millions of views.
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But that's not why he does what he does.
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His mission is rooted in true belief and deep faith.
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Born in France, Rudy lived in Israel briefly before spending
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his formative years in Miami.
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He served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, and then enrolled at
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UCLA, but he transferred to Columbia when he found out that Columbia was
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considered to be the most anti Semitic university in the United States.
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Rudy graduated in 2018 and has pursued many projects all over the world,
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including the Aimed at fostering dialogue and strengthening the Jewish people.
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His work was interrupted on October 7th, when he was called up to fight at Kfar
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Aza, and then inside the Gaza Strip.
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Rudy, it's an honor to have you here, and welcome to In These Times.
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Thank you.
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It's good to have you.
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We happen to catch you a few days that you're passing through New York.
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So we're here live in our studio at the synagogue, at the
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Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.
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Let me just ask you, uh, how you doing?
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How you feeling?
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You, you, you come to the States often.
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You live in Israel.
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You do a lot of, um, I don't even know what to call it, influencing or Hasbara.
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Uh,
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how are you feeling nowadays?
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Baruch Hashem, I do a lot of, uh, bringing light wherever there's darkness, to
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focus on fixing the problems that I see, whether it's anti Semitism, a lack of
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empowerment of our younger generation, a lack of vision and mission statement
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that we have as a generation of what we're going towards, trying to transcend
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the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and so all of my work focuses on doing
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those things, and it's a blessing.
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How would you describe what you do when you, uh, come here, and I know
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that you travel around the world, I've seen, many of our listeners have, uh,
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seen clips of you on social media.
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Is it fair to describe you as an influencer?
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Is that
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how you see yourself?
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Well, I think the term influencer is usually for people who,
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what they do is social media.
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And what I do is not social media.
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I post what I do on social media.
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So what I do is more shift the pop culture.
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Um, bring awareness to these communities, go and reach out to
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these communities, help them bring Israelis and Palestinians together.
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Or whether it's fighting for anti Semitism on college campuses or fighting
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for Israel and the Jewish people.
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I was on the front lines in Gaza.
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I just got out of reserves on the North, on the border of Lebanon.
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So I'm more someone that takes actions.
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And then I use social media as a platform, as a tool to share the information
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about that to Help others be able to see light where there's darkness.
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So
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when we see, I recently saw a video of you, there were a million views.
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And you just kind of plunked yourself down in the middle of a,
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what looked like a campus, I think.
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And I, I saw another clip.
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I think it was Washington Square near NYU.
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You just plunk yourself down and start talking with people.
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That's your vocation.
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That's what you do.
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That's, that's your full time ambition.
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I'd say that's definitely a big part of what I do is going to these
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different spaces where there's so much hatred and rejection towards
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us around the Jewish people and bringing light to those situations.
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And when I look at Making a video.
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Not only is it educating the person in front of me, it could be
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educating hundreds of thousands or millions who will watch that video.
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It could also be educating Jews that for the first time learn what could you
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respond to those kinds of arguments?
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How do you remain confident?
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How do you remain calm and how do we show that we have a narrative that's
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not necessarily counter to another narrative, but an extension of the truths
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that exist within other narratives.
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So it's a sort of an art and a dance in order to be able
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to communicate in that way.
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And
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do you
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think it actually makes a difference?
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Help us out.
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I'm, uh, A couple generations older than you and you know, I mean, I,
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we do our best on, I'm on social media too, but you're the experts,
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not, not people in our generation.
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Does it really
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make a
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difference?
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Yes.
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Uh, I've seen plenty and plenty of people change their mind
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in one conversation with them.
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Sometimes it doesn't take one conversation.
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Sometimes in that first conversation you planted seeds and eventually it
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takes a few more times for them to speak to someone that eventually those
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seeds grow into a flower of truth.
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Um, but yeah, social media content does make a difference, but the
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reality is that there's something out there that's much bigger.
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Fighting antisemitism will not resolve antisemitism.
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However, you do need to fight it because if you don't, you die, meaning anti
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Semitism will go from ideas to actions, and it will continue to grow and to
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grow and to grow until it is stopped.
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And if it isn't stopped, it will get to its objective, which is to eventually
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eradicate the Jewish people for which we've seen that happen time and time
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again throughout Jewish history.
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So tell me, uh, in one of the video clips that I saw online, there were,
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looked like what was a mob of people surrounding you and you just stood there.
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And you seemed tranquil and calm, and it was kind of cool to see.
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I didn't see any physical, uh, violence or effort to intimidate
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you, uh, by, by physical assault.
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But I did see a lot of verbal violence and, uh, threatening behavior.
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And you just stood there, and you were very calm, and Are you calm?
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And, and if so, how do you explain that?
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What, what are you, what are you feeling?
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So there's a few things.
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I should say, I don't think I could do that, honestly.
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I couldn't just sit there in front of a mob, or stand there in front
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of a mob of Like maybe a hundred people, 50 people who's shouting the
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worst, most provocative things and
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just calm and cool.
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So there's a few things.
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First of all, I've always been someone calm.
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I've never lost my cool.
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It doesn't mean I haven't gone mad, but I've never said something I didn't mean.
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I never did something I didn't mean.
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And it's always been strange to me when I saw people growing up,
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losing their cool and being enraged.
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And I'm like, how do you even get to that level?
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I mean, at the end of the day, you can be mad, but you should still
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be effective with what you do.
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So that's already my nature.
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But, I look at the situation also with a little bit of Kabbalah within it.
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It's,
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uh, I guess for the listeners,
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it's Jewish mysticism.
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Exactly.
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It's the deeper answers and secrets behind, uh, the Judaism
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that we're normally taught.
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It says that there's no test given to you that you don't have
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the tools to be able to overcome.
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Meaning all the obstacles in front of us that we go through, whatever test,
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whatever problem, we should know and recognize that when we are put in front
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of them, all Our soul chose to be here for a reason to uplift us and we have
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all the tools within us to overcome.
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So when I'm in this situation, although I didn't go there for that, you
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know, I went there to interview a few people, which I was doing right before.
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Where was that?
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This was in GW in, uh, in Washington, DC.
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I was interviewing a few students and all of a sudden this huge mob, I think there
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were over a hundred people there that were just coming at me, they had megaphones in
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my ear, they had drums bashing, and you could see that they wanted to get violent.
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They were just waiting for the signal to be able to all pounce on me.
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And in this moment I recognized, I'm like, you know what?
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There's a reason I'm here.
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And it could be everyone here's first time meeting a Jew.
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It could be everyone here's last time meeting a Jew.
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And I'm gonna make sure that they are going to forever remember
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what a fearless Jew looks like.
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And I'm gonna emit that energy that shows them that I have zero fear.
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I'm gonna look them all in the eyes, and they're gonna forever remember that
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the next time that they meet a Jew, this is what they're going to remember.
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And that's all I was thinking about in that moment.
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Plus, whenever I'm in these situations, I always look at
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it as, imagine 20 years later.
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I look back at this very moment.
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What would I tell myself I should have done?
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Am I going to look and say, Oh, I was just regurgitating the negativity
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that they were projecting onto me.
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I was taking it, you know, with offense and insulting them back and making
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this about that very small situation.
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Or could I realize again, In this moment, I could have done something
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to help change that perspective.
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You know, if a patient goes to a doctor, the doctor is not going to condemn
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the patient because of the symptoms.
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They're going to try to find the source.
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So when these people are coming to me and saying all sorts of hateful
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things, it's not because that's who I really am or how they feel about me.
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They don't know me.
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It's because this is what they were taught or how they were programmed
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to see the world and to conceptualize the traumas and the problems that
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they see in the world and to say that this is because of the Jewish people.
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This is a moment that I have to be able to fix that.
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I can be able to change that.
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So I look at those moments as an opportunity to create light
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where there's darkness and not to be consumed by the darkness.
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So you considered that
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episode, for example, an extension of the purpose you went to GW and other
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places in the first place, which is to try and persuade people to try and
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dialogue, to have an actual conversation.
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And when that prospect shut off and the mobs started to surround you.
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You were still in the business of trying to influence them, but only
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this way because dialogue under those circumstances became impossible.
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Right.
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I couldn't speak.
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They were screaming loud.
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I couldn't get any word out.
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And so I was But you were still aware and conscious that you wanted to influence
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them in some way, make them think in some way.
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I was speaking without words.
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Do you ever get scared?
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No.
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You're never apprehensive about walking into a very hostile environment.
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I've been through some pretty crazy experiences in my life.
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Um, was in war several times.
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Uh, we were in Nigerian prison.
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Uh, we're working on this documentary series on the
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tribes of Israel and Nigeria.
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We got taken, kidnapped, and we were three weeks in a cage.
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I've been through some pretty crazy experiences, but every
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single time I recognize that Hashem is just giving me a test.
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And this is a test that I have all the tools within me to overcome.
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And every single time that has happened.
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Do you ever feel it's a lost cause?
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Do you ever feel that somebody is just so close minded that
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Dialogue becomes impossible.
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It's just a waste of time.
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I've seen very, very radical people change.
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And so even though the change might not come in one conversation,
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because you might be planting some seeds that take time to grow, there
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is always an ability to change.
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And if we don't do that, I know the consequences of me not
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succeeding in our generation, not succeeding in doing the dialogue.
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Eventually it becomes war.
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And I've seen that war firsthand.
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So if that's what it comes to, and we fail in actually correcting our situation,
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I'll be on the front lines of that.
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And my friends will be on the front lines of that.
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And so I'm doing everything that I can to prevent us getting there.
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Can you point to,
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I'm not necessarily asking you to share with us, but In your mind, in your
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memory, can you point to examples of people who you persuaded, at least to
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the extent of re opening their minds about the Israeli Palestinian dispute
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or the Jews?
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Absolutely.
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I have, first of all, many videos online of individuals who come into
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the conversation insulting me, saying all these apartheid, genocide, ethnic
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cleansing, colonization, settlements, which, by the way, is interesting because
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all those things is what, you know, to the world, apartheids, genocides,
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colonization, settlements, and the far left of the West feel so guilty for the
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crimes of their ancestors that rather than looking in the mirror and trying to
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correct the things that they've inherited, they're projecting their white guilt
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onto the Jewish people and using these things to try to make us seem guilty
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of what they're actually guilty of.
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I've had plenty of conversations where people are throwing these things at me.
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20 minutes later, I'm like, Hugs.
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I'm sorry.
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I didn't see it that way.
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You just taught me so much about Zionism and Israel.
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I wish every Israeli was like you.
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You know, I'm actually open to to learning more.
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So that's happened many many times.
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And these include Palestinians as well, or, you know, Americans who get
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caught up in the campus struggles?
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It's actually much easier with Palestinians to create resolution
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than it is with, let's say, a leftist white student or far right
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winger white student, because at the end of the day, the Palestinians,
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they have a stake in the game.
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They want to live a better future.
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Whereas a lot of these American students on the far right, on the far left,
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they don't actually care about what's going on in the Middle East for them.
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It's like a show.
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It's like a team to support, like a sports team for Israelis and Palestinians.
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This is real life.
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Our children will be born there or our children should be born there.
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And so we're looking at the situation as how do we transcend?
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Now, of course there are Israelis who have a lot of pain and
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hatred towards Palestinians.
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And same thing for Palestinians who have a lot of pain and hatred towards Israelis.
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So I don't know.
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Oftentimes when we get into that first part of the conversation, there might be
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a lot of negativity that gets poured out.
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But if you're able to maintain calm and control and show that our
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narratives are not mutually exclusive and that this is not a zero sum
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game, then you can actually make way.
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I imagine you've met a lot of American Jews on campus, including
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American Jews who, um, are anti Zionist supporters of BDS.
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Do you find them open to
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persuasion?
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When I was a student at Columbia, one of the first classes they made us take
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was a class called University Studies.
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And it's basically this class you don't get a grade for, it's pass
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or fail based on attendance, and it teaches you how to study, how to You
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know, get a good grade, how to use the library, how to write a paper.
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And I'm realizing as I'm sitting in this class, that it's a huge waste of time.
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It's two hours per class, two classes per week, four hours total.
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And thank you very much, but I don't need to be taught how to use the library.
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You know, so for Israelis, when we see a line, usually the
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line starts in the beginning.
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And so right away, I'm thinking, how am I going to get out of this?
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There's no way that I'm going to stay in this class and waste my time.
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And I sign in my name.
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And one day I see the kid on my right that signs his name and I see David Cohen.
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And I'm like, all right, this guy's for sure Jewish.
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And so I pass the sheet over.
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I look at David.
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I'm like, yo, are you Jewish?
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And he says, yeah.
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So and I'm like, no, relax.
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It's all good.
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You know, I'm also Jewish.
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And I'm like, listen, David, I have a deal for you.
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One day you're going to sign me in.
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I'm not going to come the next day.
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I'm going to sign you and you're not going to come.
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We're going to come 50 percent of these classes.
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And eventually we found a girl to sign us in and we never came to that class again.
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We became friends.
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I came over his house one day and he asked me, why did you come to Columbia?
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And I told him, I'm like, listen, uh, I went on Google and I typed
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in number one most anti Semitic university in North America.
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Columbia University was listed number one.
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So I came here to start the revolution of our generation for us to write
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the next chapter of Jewish history.
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Because for me, never again, doesn't mean we just say these
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words once or twice a year.
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And because we admitted these sounds out of our vocal cords,
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it's not going to happen.
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It means a generational commitment to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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And he starts saying, well, I'm not a the Apartheid and the Judaism, the
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same, uh, things that get regurgitated.
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And instead of, again, condemning him and getting mad and upset and,
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you know, shooing him off, I said, well, before we get into that,
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tell me a little bit about you.
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Where were you born?
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Where did you grow up?
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And he says, Oh, I was born and raised in the Bay Area.
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I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
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But uh, listen, I met
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a lot of Bay Area Jews who were great.
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So, you know, we're all subject to our own group reputations here.
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And so I've met some Reform Jews who are great too, by the way.
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Yeah, I mean, there's great in many places, but let's be
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real that a lot of the BDS and stuff starts from the Bay Area.
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So I asked him, okay, well before that, and he says, Oh, my grandparents
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were from the Soviet Union.
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And I said, okay.
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And before.
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He's like, what do you mean?
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I said, well, Jews don't stem from the Soviet Union.
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We came from somewhere before that.
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And he had never understood that the Jews originally came from Israel.
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And I spoke to him about the linguistic history.
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If you look at the Yiddish being spoken in Russia, it's added on Russian
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words, and you can trace the line in which a population migrated due to
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the Creoles that they're speaking.
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You could look at the genetic evidence that Ashkenazi DNA is Middle Eastern
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DNA, no matter where it's spread.
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You could look at the history books and all of He had never understood
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that he was part of this great story of people that descend from Israel.
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Started to invite him one events, two events, three events.
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At first, he didn't want to come to our events because he didn't want
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to put in the Zionist pictures.
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He's like, my anti Zionist friends don't want me to be a part of this.
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So, and I told him, well, we won't put you in the pictures.
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And after a year, he's like, you know what?
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I have to, uh, leave Columbia.
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And I told him, what do you mean?
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He's like, I have to go join the army in Israel.
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And he left and served in Magav.
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So the point of the story is not to show that this is how to convince someone to do
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the army because that was his own choice.
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But to show that when you see someone with something missing or something broken, we
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should look at them with how do we fix it?
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The way I look at Jews that become anti Israel or anti Zionist is, uh, You know,
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I took a class on psychology, and the professor was talking to us about how,
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uh, women deal with abusive relationships.
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And that there's usually three ways a woman can respond to her
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husband or boyfriend beating her.
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Uh, number one is to fight back, to stand up, and to get help.
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Number two is to make excuses.
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and say, Oh, it was just one time.
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You didn't really mean it.
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He was just drunk.
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And the professor says, the number three is to blame herself
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and say, no, no, it's my fault.
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It's because I had done this or I had done that.
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And that's the way I see the same thing with Jews dealing with antisemitism.
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Some Jews stand up and fight back.
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Many Jews ignore the problem, make excuses for it.
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Oh, it's against Israel.
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It's not against the Jews.
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It's over there.
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It's not over here.
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And then you have some Jews who blame themselves for their own trauma inside
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with their oppressors, whether it's on the far right or on the far left,
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it's happened throughout history.
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So when I see a Jew like that, I don't.
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Look at them as a self hating Jew that many people call them because
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I wouldn't look at a woman and say that's a self hating woman.
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If a woman's blaming herself for her husband beating her, I would look at that
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as that's a woman that's been through a lot of trauma and I have to help her.
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And so to my fellow Jews that are disconnected from the nation
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of Israel, from the people of Israel, from the land of Israel.
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We need to unite.
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And that doesn't mean you can't be critical of the state of Israel.
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I don't know one Israeli in Israel that doesn't criticize the government.
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There's a difference between criticizing the Israeli government
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and trying to delegitimize or to demonize our existence, our identity,
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and our connection to the land.
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You
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also mentioned something that I, I find to be, um, one of the common denominators.
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You talked about this American Jew who had no idea of his history, of his background,
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or didn't know enough, and so on.
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Do you find that to be the case as well amongst American Jews on
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campus, that basically, uh, many of them are Jewishly illiterate?
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There could be several reasons why someone rejects Israel and the Jewish people.
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It could be a rebellion towards their parents, uh, it could be a
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social pressure, it could be many things, but often and usually
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it's from a lack of identity.
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And I think, uh, you know, lack of Jewish, lack of Jewish identity,
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understanding what that means.
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Um, and it's also a failure of our Jewish education.
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I mean, going to Jewish day schools and speaking to many Jewish day
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schools all around the world.
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I mean, some of them go through 12 years of Jewish day school, uh,
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Every year they're learning Hebrew and they come out and don't speak
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Hebrew, or they're learning about how to practice Judaism rather than
19:19
how to put Judaism into practice.
19:21
Why were we not taught how to do debates, how to do public speaking,
19:24
how to defend ourselves, how to know all the counter narratives that exist
19:27
against the Jewish people so then we face them, we know what to say.
19:29
We're not given the tools to actually go and be Jews in practice.
19:32
And also we get taught of this story that's like an external religious
19:36
story that's written in some book and it's our traditions and it's
19:39
our religion, it's our spirituality.
19:41
We don't look at ourselves as a continuation of that story.
19:44
I mean, I grew up with some Jews that rejected Judaism because the way
19:46
it was taught to them and it wasn't taught in a way of liberation, it
19:50
was taught in a way of restriction.
19:51
So I think there is a lot of decolonization that Judaism
19:55
needs to go through, a lot of trauma that we need to heal from.
19:58
And that's a big part of, I think, what the next chapter
20:00
of Jewish history looks like.
20:06
You were mobilized right away after October 7th, right?
20:09
Yes.
20:10
In, uh, reserves.
20:11
Correct.
20:12
Uh, and Your first station was, uh, on the kibbutz at Kfar Aza.
20:17
Yeah.
20:18
And you saw some of the horrific tragedies and, uh, offenses and savagery that was
20:30
inflicted on the, uh, population by Hamas.
20:34
How does it make you feel to encounter in the West people who deny October 7th?
20:42
They either say, it never happened, it's Israeli propaganda, or if some bad
20:46
things did happen, it's the Israelis who did it to their own people.
20:50
It's uh, nothing new.
20:51
They did that after the Holocaust, they've done that throughout Jewish history,
20:54
and it's always about finding a way to put the Jews as the source of the blame.
20:59
And again, the way I take it is not that we are the source of the
21:01
problem, but that we're supposed to be the source of the solution.
21:05
So I look at their conclusions of trying to blame Israel, or to minimize our
21:08
humanity, or to minimize our experiences as just a, um, a symptom of that.
21:15
Emotionally, how does
21:16
it make you feel?
21:16
You saw the atrocities.
21:19
Could you, in a, in a, in an appropriate way, Mindful that there are lots of
21:24
different people in different ages that are listening to this podcast.
21:27
But could you just step back for a moment and describe what you
21:30
saw?
21:32
So I'll try to do my best with the least explicit, uh, descriptions
21:35
of it, but just an overview.
21:37
Um, I woke up at about 7.
21:41
30, 8 in the morning, to my mom knocking on the door, me opening the door, tears
21:47
pouring down her eyes, uh, her showing me the phone, and those are the moments
21:52
that some of the first videos were going viral of what was going on, of, uh,
21:56
soldiers, bodies being dragged into Gaza and people just being shot in the streets
22:01
and killed and bodies on the floor.
22:03
You were in Jerusalem?
22:04
I was in, uh, actually in Qeysar.
22:07
And weren't there sirens going off all over Israel?
22:10
Or, you weren't woken up by that?
22:11
At that point there was no sirens there.
22:12
The sirens are more to the south and to the north.
22:15
Um, and I was woken up to my mom showing me this.
22:18
And when I saw it, I mean, Israel is not, uh, new, unfortunately, to terrorism.
22:22
When I saw this, I knew that this was different.
22:24
This was not something that we had faced before.
22:26
And every minute there was a new video coming out and more people dying.
22:31
And so I knew that that meant that my unit was going to get called back up.
22:34
I'm part of the paratroopers reserves and our unit specifically
22:37
is actually considered an active unit that they can call back up at
22:40
any moment and bring back into war.
22:43
And so half an hour later, I get a text from my commander that says, come back
22:48
to the base, put my stuff in the car, not two minutes later, and drove as
22:53
fast as I could to Jerusalem to where I live, dropped off my civilian clothes.
22:57
Picked up my army bags that I had ready in case of a day like this,
23:01
drove to our base, uh, got there.
23:03
They gave us a gun.
23:04
They gave us a few equipments that we needed that we didn't have.
23:07
And we got sent to Kfar Azad at 4 p.
23:11
m.
23:11
We got there on October 7th, October 7th, and it was still in the middle
23:16
of a battle.
23:17
They still had, uh, so you participated
23:19
in the battle to liberate Kfar Azad, our
23:20
unit.
23:23
And when we got there, I mean, it's men, women, children of all kinds,
23:27
just savage butchering and the worst of images than you could imagine.
23:32
I'm not going to go into the specifics, but as much as I was prepared to
23:36
be a soldier, no one prepared me to witness a massacre of civilians.
23:40
You know, one soldier versus one soldier is one thing, but, uh, You
23:44
know, countless bodies everywhere, just killed in the most gruesome of ways.
23:49
It's not something that anyone could be prepared.
23:50
And all that I was feeling is how could we have let this happen?
23:54
This must've been for a reason for which I do think it's happened for a reason.
23:58
And how do we prevent it?
24:00
And I'm going to make sure that once I get out of here, I'm going to do everything
24:02
that I can to make sure that we don't go through things like this again.
24:06
Just a question on the, on the battle to remove the terrorists in the keyboards.
24:12
How long did that take?
24:13
About two and a half days.
24:15
So you were fighting in the kibbutz for two and a half days?
24:17
Yeah.
24:19
And why was it so difficult to
24:20
remove them?
24:22
Um, our unit isn't that big and they were all over.
24:26
They had infiltrated, they were in houses, they were on the
24:28
roofs, they were still pouring in.
24:30
Uh, part of our unit was responsible to make sure that no
24:33
more terrorists were coming in.
24:35
And other parts of the unit were, uh, You know, responsible to
24:38
make sure that wherever they're hiding, that they would be caught.
24:41
And so you want to also move carefully because there are still civilians
24:45
that were trapped in their homes and we don't want more casualties.
24:48
So it's not like you can move very quickly and it's not an open field of
24:51
like one army versus the next army.
24:53
I mean, if you go into, uh, A village, a community, a town, there's plenty
24:57
of places that one can, can hide.
24:58
I mean, you can go into the roof, you know, you can go into
25:01
the ceiling, you can go into the vents, you can go into the sewage.
25:04
There's so many places that someone can hide, so you need to be very,
25:07
very careful because one little mistake could mean the death of many.
25:10
Did you lose friends on that day?
25:12
Yeah, not on that specific day, but in Gaza afterwards, yes.
25:15
In
25:15
Gaza?
25:16
Yes.
25:17
So your unit came out unscathed in terms of killed or wounded in
25:22
the battle to liberate Kfar Aza?
25:23
In Kfar Aza, correct, yeah.
25:25
And I should say the paratroopers are considered, uh, an elite unit in the IDF.
25:33
So again, going back to my question, so I mean, you, you were there during the war.
25:40
You saw what Hamas did?
25:42
Emotionally, how does it make you feel when you encounter people
25:46
over here who either minimize what happened or deny what happened?
25:50
It's just a symptom.
25:51
They're programmed to view the world through the lens that the
25:54
Jews are the source of the problem.
25:56
And I know where this is coming from.
25:58
That's the, uh, that's one of
25:59
the examples of what I said about your, your just calmness and your tranquility.
26:05
I don't think I could do that.
26:07
I, I, uh, I wasn't there and I wasn't in the IDF.
26:11
I was in the IDF decades ago, but, um, But of course not on October 7th.
26:15
What did you do in that year?
26:16
I was a tank commander back, back in the 70s.
26:20
But even now, I don't think I could with equanimity sit down and with calmness
26:31
accept people shouting in my face that this whole thing is propaganda from 7th.
26:42
It's just amazing to me that you can kind of Let it absorb,
26:46
kind of wash through you.
26:49
And I, uh, I saw one on one of the clips that I, uh, viewed
26:51
of you at, uh, on a campus.
26:53
Just, just respond.
26:55
No, it did happen.
26:56
Said No, it didn't.
26:57
No, it did happen.
26:58
And you didn't raise your voice.
27:00
You didn't, you know, you didn't lose your Cool.
27:03
That's a remarkable thing.
27:04
Thank you.
27:04
I can't, I don't think I can do it.
27:06
I think you could.
27:09
, uh, one last question to you.
27:13
Do you have a message
27:13
for American Jews?
27:16
Anti Semitism is, uh, becoming worse and worse.
27:19
And I think it's important for us to realize that it's either we stand up and
27:23
we fight back, or it's time to leave now.
27:26
You can do the middle and do nothing.
27:29
And I think a lot of American Jews are trying to find their purpose in
27:33
this war, in this combat, in this crazy world that we're living in.
27:36
And sometimes we take inspiration from others and want to emulate
27:40
others, which is also fine.
27:41
But I think that people should look within to find what is their purpose.
27:45
And not everyone needs to go into Columbia University and, you know, Make content and
27:50
go find tribes in the middle of Africa.
27:51
Not everyone has to become the same way as another person.
27:54
And I think the way to find what your purpose is, is to ask yourself,
27:58
what are the problems that you see?
28:00
There's a reason we all see different problems, because problems are
28:03
really an expression of what our eyes are communicating to us, of
28:06
what our soul is trying to say.
28:08
Go and fix that.
28:09
So wherever you see a problem in this world, however small, however
28:12
big, Or it can be several problems.
28:14
Understand that this is your soul trying to communicate to you that this
28:17
is something that you need to fix.
28:18
These problems can also evolve with time.
28:20
Where we are when we're in our twenties versus our thirties
28:23
versus our forties can also change.
28:24
So we need to be open to its evolution and we need to recognize
28:27
that we all have certain skills.
28:30
Use those skills that you were born with.
28:32
Work on yourself to acquire more skills and use that to
28:35
fix the problems that you see.
28:36
And I think if Jews did that individually and collectively, they'd live a far more
28:40
fulfilled life than they currently are.
28:43
With that, Rudy, thank you very much for spending this time with us.
28:47
Keep up the good fight and, uh, God willing, in our lifetimes,
28:53
we'll see peace and coexistence and some degree of tranquility.
28:57
Amen.
28:58
Amen.
29:05
If you've not seen some of Rudy Rotman's videos online, I urge you to take a look.
29:10
His calmness and courage in the face of seething mobs is something to behold.
29:16
His willingness to plunk himself down in the most hostile environments and
29:20
speak directly to those who he knows not only disagree with him, but often
29:24
despise what he stands for, is remarkable.
29:28
It can only be done by a person of deep faith, one who knows what he
29:33
believes, and who also believes in the capacity of people to reason with
29:37
each other And to change their minds, to reconcile one with the other,
29:42
even after generations of enmity.
29:45
I believe in that too.
29:47
The assumption that people can respond to reason, facts, and evidence,
29:50
and be persuaded that people and nations can change, is at the very
29:55
heart of a liberal outlook on life.
29:58
I was taken by Rudy's description of David Cohen, caused me to
30:02
reflect on my own assumptions.
30:04
I'm less optimistic than Rudy in my capacities to influence
30:08
and persuade anti Zionist Jews.
30:11
Perhaps he's right.
30:13
And in any case, his single minded determination to get through to people
30:17
who may not only disagree but consider him immoral is deeply inspiring to me.
30:21
Whether or not it's too late to reach anti Zionist Jewish Gen Z's,
30:26
I'm convinced that it's not too late to reach the younger generations
30:30
or the parents of these young Jews.
30:32
It is among the highest urgencies and responsibilities now of all who
30:36
are in Jewish communal leadership.
30:39
And to all of you I say, I'm a liberal.
30:42
One of the central values of liberalism is that all human beings matter equally.
30:47
Irrespective of religion, race, ethnicity, background, or sexual orientation.
30:52
What we share is more important than what divides.
30:55
Humanity is our common lot.
30:57
We emerge from the same clay, inhabit the same flesh, and
31:02
are dissolved in the same dust.
31:05
At the same time, our tradition insisted that the universal
31:08
begins with the particular.
31:09
Everything Jewish begins with Jewish peoplehood.
31:13
Kol Yisrael arevim zebazeh.
31:16
All Jews are responsible one for the other, the sages taught.
31:21
Judaism absent Jewish peoplehood is not Judaism.
31:23
It is something else.
31:25
Tikkun olam, repair of the world, ripped from the moorings of klal
31:30
Yisrael, the centrality of Jewish peoplehood, is not Jewish universalism.
31:34
It's just universalism.
31:36
Amidst the turmoil, polarization, and anxieties of our times, do not
31:42
abandon your affection, responsibility, and loyalty to our own people.
31:47
Our destinies are tied one to the other.
31:50
We have many different views.
31:52
We believe many different things.
31:54
We are a contentious, argumentative, strong willed, opinionated family.
31:59
But we are family that assumes the obligations and responsibilities
32:04
of love for each other.
32:06
To YoungJews Know that we tried to instill in you a sense of justice,
32:11
righteousness, virtue, honor, rectitude, honesty, and decency for all people.
32:18
We are proud when your generation is active in pursuance of these values.
32:23
And if these ideals lead you to be critics of Israeli policies or the
32:27
American Jewish community, so be it.
32:29
Welcome to the club.
32:30
Every Jew, in one way or another, is a critic.
32:34
To mourn the loss of life, dislocation, and misery of
32:36
Palestinian civilians is a virtue.
32:39
To have different opinions about the nature and timing of the war
32:42
aims or a ceasefire in Gaza is entirely legitimate and appropriate.
32:47
What we did not intend is for your generation to turn
32:51
your backs on our people.
32:53
We wanted you to be Zionists.
32:55
We did not intend that our emphasis on tikkun olam, social
32:59
repair, would lead some Jews to join anti Israel demonstrations.
33:04
We did not intend for Jews to lead Passover seders in so called liberated
33:08
zones, liberated from Zionists, that violate not only university policies, but
33:14
threaten the safety of Jewish students.
33:16
Some of those protests contain anti American sentiments as well.
33:20
We did not intend to encourage or excuse Jews who burn American
33:24
flags, or support those who do.
33:27
We did not intend that criticism of Israeli policy lead to detached
33:31
indifference and a vacuous lack of compassion, For the murdered,
33:35
brutalized, sexually assaulted, and kidnapped of our own people.
33:39
We did not intend to strip Jewish solidarity, empathy, responsibility,
33:43
and mutuality from your Jewish identity.
33:46
Not only towards Israeli civilians, but soldiers your age who exhibit astonishing
33:51
courage and remarkable self sacrifice.
33:54
Many of whom laid down their lives protecting our people
33:57
in feats of enormous heroism.
34:00
At the beginning of the book of Exodus, before Moses was called to leadership,
34:06
The Torah describes this prince of Egypt's first encounter with the Hebrew slaves.
34:11
Va'igdal Moshe, and Moses grew up.
34:14
Va'yetze elechav, and he went out unto his brethren.
34:17
Va'ya'ar b'sivlotam, and he saw their suffering.
34:22
The preeminent commentator Rashi asks, If he went out to his brethren, do we need
34:27
to be told that he saw their suffering?
34:29
Since he had eyes, obviously he saw their suffering.
34:33
Rashi responds he directed his heart and eyes towards them so that
34:38
he would suffer along with them.
34:40
Direct your hearts and your eyes towards your people.
34:43
If they rejoice, rejoice with them.
34:46
And if they are suffering, suffer with them.
34:50
Mourn with them.
34:52
Support them.
34:53
Help them.
34:54
Free them.
34:56
Redeem them.
35:02
Until next time.
35:03
This is In These Times.