Moshe (Mitchell) Silk, US Department of the Treasury - Interview with Nachum Segal

uh Moshe silk is with us he's former honorable assistant secretary for international markets at the United States Department of the treasury a pleasure to welcome you to the show great to be here appreciate that how did you get to know about him and the speed Glock and all the great life-saving work that they do right well I I describe myself as a reforming lawyer I'm not I'm not quite yet reformed now come in prior to the treasury Department I practice law for 30 years and um I had the great honor and pleasure to run the agudas Israel's pro bono Legal Services Network for 15 years and we had a number of different types of cases one area of which I took a particular interest was children's cases and I first got to Note 3 on when we we worked together to bring back a uh a child that had been abducted abroad and uh speed Knows No Limits he just gets the job done along with the the greater mudim team amazing there are a lot of people out there who may not be familiar with Amud them certainly not to the to the degree that you are why would you appeal to them to come forward and support our movement this time well amodim is a is an organization that that does not know any disciplinary borders it's really I look at it as a crisis response organization and where there's crisis ahmudim has a role and they deliver success so I really think at the end of the day um it's not it's not just a mental health issue a modem deals with societal issues and they're there when you need them a great example is during covid um touched on on everything prior to that during covid people could not get in and out of the country they couldn't move and there were crises for example in Israel and amudim was extraordinarily successful in ensuring that people could move and attend to to important critical Family Matters funerals and whatnot during during that time it's a great organization the career directions that you've gone in it's obvious that you're very familiar with both the Jewish and the secular world it's no secret what the atmosphere is right now here in the United States one of tension when one thinks about the anti-Semitism and some of the statements and actions of celebrities and others when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish Community as someone who Bridges all these different worlds what's your impression of these and what do you think can be done well frankly I'm scared we we're at a very dangerous inflection point I believe in in this particular area there was just a new article that came out from the New York Times yet again uh and the scope and the tenor of the approach of the attacks that are being waged on our community is really unprecedented it's unprecedented in scope on unprecedented in uh in tenor and unprecedented in in the approach that they're taking um and I think that our response has to be a concerted one we must push back um we must reinforce positive images of the community and we have to remind people that we are entitled of the same fundamental rights and Liberties that are granted to every other person in this great country of ours under our constitution you've done great work with public officials and we need them to step up at this time and to really including our only leaders but public officials as well drew a non-jew to step up and to really remind everybody that we're an integral part of the community that needs to be respected absolutely right a lot of young people watching tonight and you have an incredible academic and professional background what would you say to the next Generation on an evening like this two simple points one is get involved um a mudim needs people the program that I'm running under the good of Cicero now called project Clarity to deal with the perceptions that are coming on our community based on the narrative that you just referred to um needs people everybody needs people our community is large has diverse needs and there's a role for everybody it's good to be involved and secondly I I always like to make the point and I did this when I spoke last year here I'd like to remind people that the sky is the limit there's no limit to what we can do contribute in in whatever way we can and at the same time we do have to remember that the sky is indeed the limit we are a great people we're governed by uh important strictures and that's what what makes us a unique people great message thank you so much for being here tonight mosha silk and I encourage everybody to support the work of amudim we want to make sure the organization continues and continues strong we have a special video now we call it a PSA a public service video that's called shattered please watch it very carefully continue to give right now at unite2heal.com foreign [Music]