Dan Senor’s State of World Jewry Address (@92NY)

You are listening to an art media podcast.

Please welcome to our stage, Dan Sinor.

It's 7:30 p.m.

here in New York City.

That is the true acid test, if we have call-me-back listeners in the audience.

I told Deborah that she says, Are you going to say something optimistic tonight?

We need optimism.

And I said, I thought to myself, I can do like

Jewish optimism,

which is, you know, when someone says

things could not get any worse,

the Jewish optimist says, yes, they can.

I actually will get to optimism.

My friend and teacher, Rabbi David Ingber,

asked me to give this talk to the state of world Jewry.

And in typical Jewish fashion,

I am going to change the question

and instead and refashion it.

Instead of being the state of world jury, I'm going to talk about the state of world juries.

In fact, the two largest juries, the two largest Jewish communities in the world, Israel and the United States.

And

we consider these questions at a precarious time

in American Jewish history.

Consider just this past week, Kanye West, world famous rapper, released a new song called Hail Hitler.

The lyrics, these people took my kids for me, then they froze my bank account, and it closes with a Hitler speech.

A mile from here,

On Columbia's campus, students and outside agitators invaded

the Butler Library, donning kefias, screaming Intifada Revolution.

Also, in the past week or so, Harvard released a report that detailed pervasive anti-Semitism at the university, much of which began long before October 7th.

Unless we pretend this is only a problem on campus, We should remember that since October 7th, it seems like every day

there's another Charlottesville-style march in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.

In Teanek, Pico Robertson, Crown Heights, and instead of holding tiki torches, they're masked.

It seems like every

week, another viral podcaster finds some excuse to blame the Jews, traffic in Holocaust denial, and slander Israel.

Which is exactly what New Yorker journalist Mossab Abu Toha did when he denied the Bibas children were abducted and when he dehumanized the hostages, only this past week to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Every week, to paraphrase Lenin, there seems to be a decade's worth of Jewish history happening.

We all have images that are seared into our minds that we keep replaying.

For me,

one very close to home, the moment a group of Kafia-clad protesters, whose ringleader is a researcher at WoW Cornell Hospital, boarded a southbound five train from Union Square last summer.

He and a group boarded the train, and then they yelled,

and I quote: raise your hand if you're a Zionist, crowded subway car.

This is your chance to get out.

None of the terrified passengers pushed back.

It's been months, but every time I walk by a subway station or I ride the subway, I think about that image.

And I ask myself, what would I have done in that situation?

Another image that replays in my mind is 5,000 miles away from Union Square.

Also last year, three generations of my family visited Kibbutz near Oz, which had been ravaged by Hamas terrorists on October 7th.

One out of every four residents of Kibbutz Niroz were either killed or taken hostage on October 7th.

My mother was there.

My mother, Helen Senor, was with us on that visit to Nirz, a Holocaust survivor, 86 years old, who is from Jerusalem, and she's here tonight.

My high school-age sons, who are also here tonight, were that

my high school-age sons were also on that visit with us.

And the summer before October 7th, same family, three generations,

visited Auschwitz, because that is where my mother's father was killed after the Nazis came into her town of Kushitz in 1944.

And we visited Kushitz, and we visited with her Auschwitz.

And

it was near Oz, actually,

that really shook my kids.

And that night in Israel, I was walking with them, and I asked my kids what they thought of that visit to Niroz that day.

And I wrote down what one of them said.

He said,

I knew it happened there.

I've been there.

Meaning, I was at, we visited Auschwitz.

I saw it.

I know the history.

But I truly didn't believe it could happen here.

And I also believe, he said, the world had changed.

that Jew hunting wasn't something that would happen in my lifetime.

He and many of us

truly believed it couldn't happen.

Not in Israel,

the nation state of the Jewish people, founded to safeguard Jewish life.

And not in America, the safest home the Jewish people has known outside the Jewish state.

I'm reminded of of a column by my friend John Podhoritz, who wrote a piece for Commentary magazine last year called,

They're Coming After Us.

John detailed 20th century violence against American Jews.

Until the Tree of Life massacre in 2018, John writes, and I quote, American Jews of my age and younger simply did not feel themselves to be at any specific physical risk for being Jewish, close quote.

But after Pittsburgh in 2018, Pauway, then Jersey City, then Muncie,

then Brooklyn, then Colleyville.

And all of that was before October 7th.

And since October 7th, listen to these ADL numbers of the year 2024.

9,354 reported incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism against Jewish targets.

The highest numbers were in the year after October 7th.

More than 2,300 of them occurred in the tri-state area in our neighborhoods.

The trend is not our friend.

We may only account for 2% of the U.S.

population, but according to the FBI, we are the target of 68% of all religion-based hate crimes.

I recite the facts and statistics because the fire hose of anti-Semitism unleashed in the past year and a half has been so powerful that even now it's sometimes hard to keep track of it all on a weekly basis.

So much just gets memory hold.

I think we have a lot to worry about.

Now let me tell you:

one place I'm not worried about today,

the other center of world jury,

Israel.

Israel is more prominent and stronger than ever.

Yes, I know there's the suspended disbelief, but Israel is stronger than ever.

Now, if I had said that 18 months ago, with Israel under attack on seven fronts, from Hamas, Hezbollah, Houis, Iran, Syria, the West Bank, and UN bureaucrats,

you might have thought I'd lost the plot.

I recorded the first of what became hundreds of podcast interviews the morning of October 8th.

I remember having a conversation with my producer, Alon Benatar, where we honestly didn't know how Israel would survive it all.

None of us did.

But look at what's happened.

Imagine telling Yechiya Sinoir on October 6th that he and his senior leadership, including his brother Muhammad, who was killed, by the way, just this afternoon.

Imagine telling Yechiya Sinoar on October 6th that he's going to launch his attack the following day,

and

he and his entire leadership would be dead a year later.

Hamas decimated, its stronghold devastated, Nasrallah killed, and Hezbollah eviscerated.

The most successful clandestine operation of the 21st century, the stuff of spy novels hitting 3,000 Hezbollah operatives with explosive pagers.

Bashar al-Assad, gone.

And Iran exposed as a paper tiger.

Its Air Force offensive capability lackluster.

Its air defenses degraded.

As Rich Goldberg, a guest on my podcast, put it, the Ayatollah has no clothes.

And what about Israel's normalization with the Gulf states?

It has slowed, sure, but it hasn't reversed as many of us expected after October 7th.

Ambassadors from UAE, Bahrain, Morocco are still in Israel, and they've been there since October 7th.

And Israel's geopolitical position in the Middle East and globally is stronger than it has been at any time since the 1967 Six-Day War.

That was not Sinoir's plan, but it is Israel's new reality.

Now,

this isn't to ignore Israel's internal fractures.

Its civic fabric is fraying.

58 hostages are still being held in Gaza for 585 days as of today.

The country is being defamed and delegitimized abroad in capitals on campuses the world over.

But efforts to isolate Israel need to be considered against the fact that most major powers still want to do business with Israel.

And in some cases, because of Israel's success in the war, they want to be partnering with Israel.

I asked the distinguished British historian, Lord Andrew Roberts, a call-me-back guest,

I asked him a couple days ago, is there any precedent for this?

Has any country that we know of in history faced serious existential threats and in a single year flipped the dynamic so comprehensively on its head?

And Professor Roberts, Lord Roberts, emailed me back and said, well, one has to go back to the late first French Republic, he wrote, in the late 18th century, to find a precedent for quite such a series of stunning victories against multiple enemies on myriad fronts as Israel has recently enjoyed.

And for this, I would add,

not just the Jewish people, but the entire civilized world owes a debt of gratitude to the men and women of the IDF, its reserves, and the families that support them.

Which brings me back to all of us.

For so many of us, October 7th was a wake-up call of sorts, giving birth to what some have taken to calling October 8th Jews.

I prefer not to use that term because it implies that they suddenly became Jewish on October 8th.

But there was a crack, an opening in Jewish consciousness on October 8th.

Suddenly, many embraced their Jewish identity and community.

They were pained as their family came under attack.

As the scholar Michal Biton said, that pain we all felt, that pain you're feeling is peoplehood.

People started wearing Jewish star necklaces for the first time.

They went to rallies.

They donated hundreds of millions to emergency campaigns and sent supplies to IDF units.

And yes, by the hundreds of thousands, they listened to podcasts about Judaism in Israel.

At the same time,

the crack in consciousness, a process that took place at dinner tables and parents' forums, alumni associations, and in WhatsApp groups, quickly turned into indignation and shock.

How could this have gotten so bad?

Where was I when the forces were arraying, ready to strike?

on October 8th.

You know the journey I'm describing.

I'm sure everyone everyone here is in one of those WhatsApp groups where someone sends you an article, like, and with a message, can you believe this latest Tom Friedman column?

Can you believe?

Can you believe what Christiana and Poor just said?

And then you're like outraged, and then you send it around to everyone else and all your other WhatsApp groups.

My wife Campbell calls these the can you believe WhatsApp groups, which are like just a bunch of people saying to each other, can you believe?

But in truth, this wasn't as much

a Jewish awakening as it was Jewish adrenaline.

And like adrenaline,

the feeling wears off with the passage of time.

And I think it would be dangerous for us to return to the false sense of security we felt on October 6th.

Since October 7th, I have heard from many people, many Jews, many American Jews.

They send comments into our podcast or when I'm speaking around the country.

And I hear many of the same questions over and over.

And I'm just going to focus tonight on two of the most common ones.

The first is a version of the following.

Jews have played key leadership roles in so many pillars of society.

Finance and Hollywood, hospitals, the environment and civil rights, the arts, symphonies, museums, and elite universities.

How How could they turn on us?

We hear this question all the time.

We've spent so much, even named wings after ourselves at these institutions.

But historically speaking, none of this has mattered in stemming the tide of anti-Semitism.

No, in fact, our perceived power is deployed against us in these periods.

Jews in the diaspora have too often been, as my friend and Call-Me Back

regular

Douglas Murray has described it, Jews have been prominent but weak.

Think about that.

Prominent, we are prominent, but weak.

Our enemies think we've been proven to be weak.

Douglas's observation reminds us of the book, or reminds me of the book, The Pity of It All,

by Amos Elon.

If you haven't read it, you should.

not just a history book.

It's a warning.

Elon chronicles the story of German Jews from the mid-18th century until Hitler's rise in 1933.

It's a story that haunts me because it shatters so many of our comfortable narratives about progress, assimilation, and the supposed safety of living in an educated society.

If you haven't read the book, here's what happened.

For nearly two centuries, German Jews transformed themselves from marginalized peddlers and cattle dealers into the intellectual, cultural, and economic backbone of German society.

They didn't just assimilate, they excelled.

A community that never comprised more than 1% of the German population produced bankers, journalists, artists, industrialists, and academics whose contributions to the flourishing of Germany are well documented.

They believed in Germany.

They believed in Enlightenment values.

They believed that reason and education would triumph over prejudice.

They believed their contributions to Germany and to every aspect of German society would would protect them.

They were wrong.

I get chills when I read of how German Jews watched their neighbors, people they'd known their entire lives, turn against them.

In that book, you learn that many of the Jews thought that by downplaying their Jewishness or converting to Christianity, they could secure their place in society.

But anti-Semitism proved remarkably adaptable.

It morphed over 200 years in ways a German Jew in 1743 could never have predicted.

Now,

I want to be clear.

America is not Germany.

It's not the Germany of 1743, nor is it the Germany of 1943.

America was founded on values that it turned out Germany lacked.

Religious liberty, equality under the law, and more.

Betraying those values is not betraying the Jews, or at least not only the Jews.

It is betraying America.

This is a source of strength for us.

It is part of what makes America so exceptional.

And yet I do not need to tell many of you that we've seen this.

Jews contributing to their societies only to be betrayed.

We've seen it throughout Jewish history.

Spain in the 15th century, Iraq in the broader Muslim world, in the early 20th century, Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, France in the 19th century.

And now we're seeing echoes of it in our own time.

And if indeed this is the historical norm, which I argue it is,

and that philanthropy to certain institutions can backfire,

how must we reorient, reorganize, and reprioritize our own commitments?

That is question one.

The second question

I hear over and over and over is some version of the following.

Why can't Israel just tell its story better to the world?

If only we could get the facts out, everyone will understand.

We want to believe that the way to counter the lie is with a better story, with talking points, with media tools, better content distribution.

We want to believe that if we can just hack the algorithm, tweet that viral tweet, our kids won't have to view those toxic reels on TikTok.

attacking Israel.

Now,

the algorithm spreading the lie is definitely a problem.

But the bigger problem is the popularity of the lie itself.

It is a lie that has stood the test of time.

From Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440, which inadvertently enabled the spread of anti-Semitic blood libels in books throughout Europe, to the technologies of today.

The reality is that today there are only 16, 16, 16 million of us, and 8 billion people in the world.

I'm not saying we shouldn't fight these important fights, and I've been involved in some of these efforts.

But no matter how viral we go, the video telling a lie of a supposed Zionist genocide will still get a ton of engagement.

And on the topic of storytelling, I learned an important related lesson from my friend Tal Becker.

Tal is not only a call-me-back regular, he is the extraordinary diplomat you saw defending Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague last year, and he is here tonight.

Tal taught me that the message the West wants to hear isn't actually the one that Israel needs to deliver most of the time.

In the West, he said, we want to hear a story of compassion.

But unfortunately, given the neighborhood Israel is in, in the Middle East, Israel has to tell a story of being tough and fearless.

It's a cash, he says.

Israel has to balance these two challenges.

Us wanting Israel to be loved and Israel in its region needing to be feared.

They and we,

the Israelis and us, can't get too caught up in whether people love us.

After all, there's a reason it's called the oldest hatred.

So if we can agree that Israel isn't going to win the information war anytime soon, and that we can't make the anti-Semites any less anti-Semitic,

and that simply investing in non-Jewish causes will never be enough to grant us a get-out-of-the-pogram free card,

then what are we to do?

My fear

is that without something more lasting, a shift at the core of our approach to American Jewish life, we may drift back into that false sense of normal we were living on October 6th.

The author Sarah Hurwitz put it this way when addressing a group of Hillel student leaders.

Jews don't control anti-Semitism, Sarah said.

And I quote here, we can fight it, and I think that's great.

But I think instead of trying to bail out a tsunami with buckets, we should also build an ark.

Put differently, there's one thing that is entirely within our control, and it's the one thing that the anti-Semite Semites want to disrupt.

The one thing we can control is whether we choose to lead Jewish lives.

And not only is it within our control, but Jonathan Sachs said it best, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs.

Non-Jews respect Jews who respect their Judaism.

And it is exactly what has sustained Jewish life and Jewish lives in every century.

And I want to talk tonight about some of the ways that could happen.

How do we invest in Judaism, in Jewish peoplehood, in Jewish communal life, and in connection to Israel?

There's really only one way, immersion in Jewish tradition, rituals, ruach, and learning with other Jews.

To repeat an earlier point, as wonderful as they are, Jewish engagement cannot simply amount to very active participation in your can you believe WhatsApp groups.

It requires something more.

Judaism works by way of bubbles, my co-author and brother-in-law Saul Singer once wrote.

When encountered in a bubble, Judaism comes alive.

So let's start with bubbles for young people.

Studies show what we know intuitively, our children's circle of friends is a powerful influence on who they will become.

When does being exposed to the power of Judaism and Zionism have the greatest impact?

When it happens at the same time that close friendships are born.

For the past year and a half, I have been on a college tour of sorts, not just the one with my son, but I have been speaking at a number of campuses.

I visited Michigan, Brown, Tulane, UT, Duke, Vanderbilt, WashU, Florida, and others, usually to record a podcast and connect with Jewish students navigating a difficult difficult time.

In my conversations with these remarkable young people, I noticed that without exception, almost without exception, the students who were leading Jewish and pro-Israel communities on these campuses shared one formative experience.

They had attended Jewish day schools.

Now,

I'm not someone who typically deals in absolutes.

Life is complicated.

People are complicated.

And simple explanations rarely tell the whole story, especially when parents have to balance a range of considerations when choosing their child's school, something Campbell and I have had to deal with.

But the data here is not complicated.

It is actually quite simple.

Day school alumni are more than twice as likely to feel deeply connected to their Jewish identity compared to their peers.

They are four times as likely to feel a strong connection to Israel.

Rabbi Sachs again once said,

to defend a country,

you need an army.

But to defend an identity, you need a school.

Day schools strive to be living, breathing communities where students learn not just Jewish ideas, but how to think, how to debate respectfully across difference, and how to build community.

They learn Hebrew and how to pray.

They learn how to be a mensch.

At Jewish day schools, practicing Judaism is normative.

Studying Jewish texts, caring about Israel.

It's all the norm.

It's not weird.

There's no baggage, no connotations, and no apologizing for it.

Day schools build Jewish confidence and pride.

They develop what I could only describe as Jewish muscle memory.

I've seen this in my own family after Campbell and I decided to send our children to the Heschel School in Manhattan.

I guess Heschel is in the house.

When

we made the decision to send our children to Heschel, what was most surprising wasn't actually how it shaped our kids, but how it transformed our entire family.

Their school, the Heschel School, has become our community, mine and Campbell's community too.

Increasingly also,

day schools offer answers to some of the age's most vexing challenges.

Jonathan Haidt

has pointed to Jewish day schools as the vanguard of the phone-free schools movement.

One of the best examples of collective action, Haidt says, is the way Jewish day schools banded together to go phone-free and restore play, book reading, learning, and fun.

And

you can clap for phone-free schools.

Trust me.

And every parent of a teenager will want to clap for phone-free schools.

I have

witnessed

how these schools respond in moments of crisis.

After October 7th, there was no equivocation, no confusion about values.

For our kids' school,

Displaying hostage posters wasn't controversial.

It wasn't a difficult decision.

It was simply what you do when members of your extended family are suffering.

Just yesterday, when American-Israeli Adan Alexander returned from Gaza,

classes at the Heschel School took a momentary pause as students heard over the school intercom that he had stepped back into Israeli territory.

As I was told yesterday by Ariel Dubler, the head of the Heschel School, that wasn't a decision made by the administration.

A group of high school students came to the administration yesterday morning and asked that there be an announcement at the school when he entered Israeli territory.

And the joy that school and those kids were feeling, again,

to paraphrase Michael Biton, that was peoplehood.

Two decades ago, Jewish schools were opening across the country.

Over the last decade, schools, unfortunately, day schools, have been merging, downsizing, and closing.

But I am hopeful because of interest in Jewish day schools, which is actually increasing for the first time in years.

The Adiz family in Miami has almost single-handedly built Miami's new Jewish Leadership Academy.

The Tikva Fund created Emmett Academy just 10 blocks from here.

Tamim Academy is opening elementary schools across the country in Portland, Austin, Salt Lake City.

A Cleveland Foundation just committed $90 million to grow five local day schools.

Yavna Academy, New Jersey has built an innovative program to integrate

Yavna Academy built an innovative program to integrate students with little to no Jewish background into a dual curriculum.

Existing Jewish day schools are looking to expand and to keep up with the new demand.

You get the picture.

The beginning of a renaissance in Jewish education is already happening.

So, our question isn't whether day schools matter.

The question is: what will it take to make them accessible, affordable, and even competitive with the best secular, independent private schools?

And for far more than just 5%

of Jewish American students,

there's only one environment in America that's even more immersive than day schools, Jewish camps.

Jewish summer camps have a similarly profound impact.

92% of parents said in one survey that it directly strengthened their child's Jewish identity.

Participation is growing too as families double down on their Jewish identities amidst rising anti-Semitism.

Last summer, close to 200,000 kids, teens, and young adults attended Jewish camps, a 5% increase over 2023.

Camp is not just a seasonal touch point, it's frequently the beginning of a lifelong Jewish journey.

And yet, despite everything we know about the value of Jewish camp, it remains dramatically underfunded.

Costs are rising.

Jewish overnight camp in America alone costs $500 million annually.

Philanthropic giving to camps has not kept pace.

We can no longer view day schools and Jewish camps as nice to haves.

In today's environment, they are indispensable.

Too often, I hear from my adult friends: it's too late for me.

I miss my chance.

And so, the very people raising Jewish children, leading our institutions, and writing the checks that keep our community humming have quietly decided that Jewish learning and even real communal involvement is for someone else.

But it's not.

This is a tale as old as time.

Rebbe Akiva, the Talmudic sage, did not begin studying Torah until he turned 40.

My friend Dan Loeb, a hedge fund manager and a late learner, late Jewish learner, who did not have a bar mitzvah at age 13, took up this mantle after October 7th when he issued a very simple challenge.

Read the weekly Torah portion each week in memory of those slain on October 7th, which was the holiday of Simchat Torah.

He set up a website to get people started, put in a considerable amount of money to promote it.

The Simchat Torah challenge was born.

In just a few months, 15,000 people signed up, most of them not Orthodox.

Many learned on their own, and the challenge has spawned learning groups and community events nationwide.

So thank you, Dan, who's here tonight.

I'm reminded of a line in Jonathan Safran Forest's book, Here I Am.

Jewish Americans, he wrote, will go to any length short of practicing Judaism to instill a sense of Jewish identity in their children.

Forer's sarcasm reveals a deep truth.

We look at the next generation and we say, why don't you care?

Well, we know that they watch what we do.

One place I'm actually optimistic about Jewish America is, and you will be shocked to hear this, higher education.

Jewish students and parents are beginning to rethink the conventional metrics of excellence in higher education.

Is it still impressive where a school sits?

in the college rankings if large groups of masked students can invade, yes, literally invade the college library in the middle of finals.

Before October 7th, we were seeking prestige.

We willfully ignored what many of us had a sense was going on at America's top universities.

We found prominence at these places, but we became weak.

And only now do we know how pervasive and deep anti-Semitism at many of these places has been.

The post-October 7th evaluation of higher education is overdue, and it has created space for universities outside the so-called super-elite

to step out and stand out.

Smart institutions have begun to seize the moment.

Daniel Diermeyer, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, and Andrew Martin, the chancellor of Washington University in St.

Louis.

The Vanderbilt and WashU chancellors recently released guiding principles that push back against the dual erosion of academic excellence and ideological diversity in higher education, two pillars that have served American Jews so well over the past half century.

Dartmouth deserves mention here, too.

Most interesting, we're also seeing large public universities standing apart from the groupthink,

the groupthink that's dominating so many elite campuses.

They're launching new academic initiatives and, in cases, entirely new schools within their universities committed to civil discourse and viewpoint diversity.

These include the University of Florida and its Hamilton Center, the School of Civic Leadership.

Look, there's alma mater here.

I don't want to hold you back.

The School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin.

And the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina.

There is a hunger for alternatives, even radical alternatives like the brand new University of Austin, which just started its first class.

In each of these cases, the leadership of these institutions is also making serious efforts to reintroduce the study of Jewish thought.

They're building robust Jewish infrastructure on their campuses.

They're working on study abroad programs in Israel and forming partnerships with Israeli universities while students on other campuses debate the fastest way to divorce their institutions from the Jewish state.

And regardless of where you go to college, I would add, especially if you have not gone to a Jewish day school or a Jewish summer camp, there is a very good way to prep.

Spend a gap year in Israel.

Here again, we can take a cue from Israel, where gap years are already well established.

They're called mechinot.

Thousands of young Israelis choose to delay enlisting in the Army for one year of learning, training, and volunteering.

18-year-old Israeli and American kids are preparing for very different

life experiences at that age before college in the Army.

But what if more American Jews spent a year learning and living among their peers in Israel?

And there are already programs that offer this kind of experience.

Many even provide college credit, but we need more.

And we need to reframe the way we talk about this year, not as a delay, not as putting off college, but as a foundation for living a Jewish life.

And here again,

Jewish giving is not keeping up.

I know too many American Jews graduating high school right now who say they'd love to do a gap year in Israel, but they can't afford to go into more student debt.

If a Jewish kid heading to a U.S.

campus first wants to spend a year in Israel developing that Jewish and pro-Israel muscle memory, building friendships with their Israeli peers across the ocean, our community should do whatever necessary to make it happen.

Day schools, camps, adult Jewish education, gap years,

scaling these immersive Jewish experiences and investing in a higher education landscape where Jewish flourishing is celebrated would amount to nothing short of a Jewish renaissance.

But this renaissance will not come cheap.

These programs are expensive.

Just who is going to pay for it?

The Jerusalem Talmud expresses amazement at the generosity of the Jewish people.

One cannot understand the nature of this people, one clever text reads.

If appealed to for the golden calf, they give.

If appealed to for the sanctuary, they give.

Jewish philanthropists are extraordinarily generous.

In just one year, one generous donor, Ruth Goddessman, committed $1 billion to Einstein Medical School to make it tuition-free.

Jews are disproportionately represented on every list of prominent philanthropists.

The Talmud was right.

This is a giving people.

When asked, we say yes.

But here is the uncomfortable truth.

The overwhelming majority of Jewish philanthropic dollars go to non-Jewish causes.

I saw one statistic of 33 Jewish individuals on a Forbes 400 list with publicly reported charitable giving, no more than 11% of their giving went to Jewish causes.

I'm not suggesting Jewish generosity to the broader public square came to an end, but I am arguing that it's time for a recalibration in favor of our community's needs.

We need to invest so that we can look back on this moment decades from now and say, American Jewish life was not the same after that dark period.

It was better.

Mindy and John Gray made a

Mindy and John Gray made a big bet last week.

They donated $125 million to Tel Aviv University's Medical Center.

This kind of philanthropy, you can applaud for it, it's worthy.

This kind of philanthropy is inspiring.

And it will make an enormous difference in Israel.

But now I wonder, who will be next and who's willing to do it here in America?

Who will make the bet on American Jewish life?

I'm reminded of the speech Golda Meir delivered to a group of Jewish leaders in Chicago in 1948, a mere four months before the establishment of the state.

Her message was clear.

The future of the Jewish state hung in the balance.

They needed every cent American Jews could spare.

I beg of you,

don't be too late, she said.

Don't be bitterly sorry three months from now for what you failed to do today.

The time is now.

Now, Golda intended in that speech to raise $25 million.

By the end, she had raised $50 million,

which would have been $678 million in today's dollars.

The tables have turned.

Israel is going to be fine.

I really do believe Israel is going to be fine, in part because of Israeli strength and resilience, backed up

by the diaspora's continued commitment to Israel in every way.

But I do think the future of American Jewish life now hangs in the balance.

And I don't want any of us, whatever our resources, to regret not doing more.

Now,

all said and done, I'm optimistic about the Jewish future in the diaspora.

Not because the challenges aren't real,

they are, but because we really do have the tools to rebuild American Jewish life.

The question is, do we have the sense of purpose, the why

to match?

Hirsch Goldberg-Poland spent just three days with Eli Sharabi in the tunnels of Gaza.

In that time, Hirsch taught Ellie a lesson that would change his life, literally.

He quoted the psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.

He who has a why

will find the how.

Rachel Goldberg, Hirsch's mother, has since told me that Sharabi

used that quote from Hirsch after they were separated to keep morale up and prevent from breaking, or help trying to prevent from breaking, many of the other hostages he was being held with at given at different times.

Find your why, what's your why?

They used to say to each other.

If we can figure out our why, we'll figure out the how.

Israelis have a why, and they demonstrated it in the days and months after October 7th.

Agam Berger,

held in captivity for 450 days, had a why.

I learned, she said after her release, as my forebearers did, that imprisonment can't overwhelm the inner spiritual self.

Our faith and covenant with God, the story we remember on Passover, is more powerful than any cruel captor.

Even as Hamas tried to coerce me into converting to Islam, At times forcing a hijab on my head, they couldn't take my soul.

Her friend Liri Albag,

also a hostage, fashioned a Haggadah out of whatever materials she could find in captivity and together they marked the Passover Seder together.

Honur Shapira had a why.

In that bomb shelter, beside Hirsch,

the morning of October 7th, he faced a death squad and chose to act.

He hurled seven live grenades back at the terrorists.

before the eighth took his life.

He died saving his friends and strangers because he knew he served a people greater than himself.

Ben Zussman had a why,

a reserve officer in the IDF.

He wrote a letter before heading to the front lines in which, in case, he wrote the letter, in case the worst came to pass.

And when his parents opened the letter after his death, they found these words.

If you're reading this, Something must have happened to me.

As you know about me, there's probably no one happier than me right now.

I'm happy and grateful for the privilege to protect our beautiful land and the people of Israel.

We, the Jewish people, should look to Israel not only for its startup nation innovation.

We should look to Israelis for their clarity, for their purpose, their deep sense of identity.

Hirsch,

Ellie, Agam, Leary, Honor, Ben,

all very different people.

All very different lives.

But each of them met this moment with courage, with faith, with an unshakable sense of why.

And that is my invitation to you.

To everyone in this room, to anyone listening to the Call Me Back podcast, to anyone reading this in print in the days and weeks ahead.

what is our why?

Why are we here?

Have we achieved prominence only to find ourselves stunningly weak?

Or have we proven ourselves and our children to be, instead of prominent but weak, to be Jewish and strong?

These are not theoretical questions.

They are practical and will determine the future of our families and communities.

The state of world Jewry

depends on how we answer.

And if we answer in the way I'm suggesting, by resolving to live Jewish lives and making sure our children do as well, I'm not saying the road in the near term will be smooth.

We know enough to know that we are witnessing

another story.

another chapter in Jewish history.

There will be libraries invaded by campus mobs.

There will be Nazi graffiti scrawled on the walls of subway cars.

There will be another podcaster spreading lies and libels about the Jewish people.

Of this,

we can be sure.

I'm confident, however, that in the long term, if we strengthen our Jewish identity, our people will not be prominent but weak.

They will be Jewish and strong.

A few months ago, I attended the Briss for the son of my close friend Daniel Bonner.

Daniel and his wife Lizzie named their son in memory of someone they never knew, but whose story they told at the Briss, Honor Shapira, whose story I just told you.

And after that Briss, I began noticing something.

I began noticing and was inspired by the many young American Jewish parents here over the past 18 months who have chosen to pay tribute to some of the Israeli heroes we lost in this war.

Everywhere you look these days, it seems you might meet a young little baby Hirsch, named for Hirsch Goldberg-Poland, or baby Carmel for Carmel Gott, or Ori for Ori Donino, or Maya for Maya Gorin,

or Anner for Anor Shapira.

These young American Jews

will carry these names into the future.

I imagine

18 years from now,

young Hirsches and Honors

and Carmels and Uries

and Mayas

walking onto the quad together on one of a thousand American college campuses.

And my prayer,

my prayer is that as much as they carry their names, they will also carry their courage, their essence, that they will have a why,

a sense of who they are, where they come from,

and where they're going.

Thank you.

That's our show for today.

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others who you think may may appreciate it.

Time and again, we've seen that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the Call Me Back community, so thank you.

To offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates, or explore past episodes, visit our website, arcmedia.org.

That's arkmedia.org, where you can also find transcripts with hyperlinked resources, which will hopefully help you deepen your own understanding of the topics we cover.

Call Me Back is produced by Elon Benatar.

Additional editing by Martin Huergo.

Research by Gabe Silverstein.

Our music was composed by Yuval Semo.

Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.