Rabbi Joey Haber & Soldier Sam Fried | 2 Years Since October 7 | CHAZAQ

We welcome everyone to tonight's very special program being presented by Kazak together with the SHU Hills Bach Mal QJCC and all about kindness. Very special program tonight commemorating two years since October 7th. An amazing program tonight um with singing and inspiration and and words of um words of Kizuk. Um and of course um if we can um just a quick word about the different organizations involved. Of course we know Kazak helped organize this different shir and programs like tonight different communities and has a major focus on public school outreach in over 20 different locations and has transferred over 2,000 students from public school yeshiva of course and um of course we have all about kindness an amazing organization which does what the name of the organization is they're all about kindness helping community helping families in the community that that you might know of or might not know of maybe the person sitting right next to you or your neighbor is being helped um through um all about kindness. They have different programs and initiatives to help those in need. And of course, Bot Mel is dedicated to supporting women, teens, families in the community with helping them strengthen connections in the family um through a wide variety of programming and of course um QGC has amazing programs for the community. And we thank of course the young Israel Kugar Hills for parting tonight, Rabbi Rosenfeld, and all the leadership of the show. Garden Hills of course and of course tonight's being dedicated [Music] nishmas Ben Mosha and we want to give a special shout out to um Ephraim and Milana Ila. Let's give a round of applause for the half of tonight. And I think just a quick um message for tonight. Of course, we're just a few short days away from from sukus. And we know that that that each one of the minim of of the lula of the eso the theadas and nava, they each represent a different type of Jew, those maybe who keep the the who have Torah, who have who keep the Torah, maybe those who who might not. And of course, we have to take all the species and put them as one. and and that that that's a that's a message from that that when we're taking the that the October 7th that they attacked it doesn't matter whether they were religious not religious man woman this doesn't matter the background they attacked them and of course we all have to when we take the lula the esro this year we should remember that when we're taking them we're taking all the Jews together that when you see a Jew in the street whatever it might be don't look them oh they're more religious they're less religious we're all we're all we're all united And of course it's a message for um for all of us and we're going to start of course the program with um some tollin as we call upon the RA Rosenfeld. Everyone should please rise to all the [Music] I don't know. [Music] Adon [Music] my Lord. I don't know. [Music] I keep [Music] Israel. [Music] Thank you, Rabbi. Wherever um we're going to call upon for some musical tribute by mesh. Of course, everyone can stay remain standing for as well. Thank you very much. I was to start with Va. So, if we can all just stand up for please have in mind all the 48 hostages that are still in captivity and all the victims from October 7th, 2023 [Music] is [Music] I let [Music] Leo [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm going to ask now we're going to we're going to turn off the lights. We're going to do we're going to do au going to turn off the lights. Everybody can take out their flashlight please. Going to make this a very very inspirational very intimate moment. you could all take out your flashlights. And again, we can have in mind all the 48 hostages that are still in captivity and all the victims of October 7, 2023. [Music] So, [Music] you call me I need Bash her own by [Music] au [Music] coet. I need to shade [Applause] I'm Foreign She thank you very much. Thank you Shalom for your soul inspiring music. It was very inspirational. It's right now our great great honor to um call upon Rabbi Hashem so much for the community director of Kazak, Rabbi Elamita. Shab. Ladies and gentlemen, we're now nearly two years since the horrific, the tragic October 7th massacres. You know, it's still very hard to understand and believe this even happened. So many people butchered, men, women, children in their homes and the streets, thousands injured, about 250 kidnapped with a nice 20, 30 still unfortunately staying there, some dead, some alive. can't imagine the the the pain and suffering. Families are torn into pieces. Trauma that could remain for a lifetime for those that did survive. And the question is with all these reports that potentially there might be an end to the war and all the hostages coming back, how can we really keep ourselves protected and safe? What could we do from five, six thousand miles away from Israel to help them out? It's a tiny little country the size of New Jersey surrounded by huge nations, many of whom want to see us destroy. So what could we do? I want to share with you a famous story with King Solomon. You know, if someone here knows, you know, five, six languages, we're very impressed. Wow. He's a genius. He's so smart. You know, King Solomon spoke, not just the languages of the world that we speak. He understood the barking of a dog, the chirping of birds. He knew the secrets behind every single plant. This is good for your heart. This is for your liver. This is for your eyes. This is for your hair. Adam, the wisest of all men. So one time he was approached by Siamese twins, one body, two heads. They came to him and said, "We need your help. Our father just passed away and when it comes to dividing our inheritance, how do we do it? Are we considered one person or are we considered two people? Now, if they're one person, they only get one portion of the inheritance. If they're two, they get double. What do we do? So, told one of his assistants, "Do me a favor. Get me a small cup of hot hot water." Then he went over to the Siamese twins. He covered the head of one of them with a towel. He took this drop of hot water and he poured it on the head of the other. A drop. And guess what happened? They both shouted, "Ouch." Slam said, "Oh, YOU BOTH FELT THE PAIN. THEN YOU'RE REALLY WHAT? You're one." I'm sure he was probably kicking him, but could you keep quiet for a second? You're really one. You feel the pain, you're one. You don't feel the pain, you're two. Ladies and gentlemen, we all saw the pictures. We all saw the videos of probably shouldn't have seen it. We felt the pain for the first day, the first week, maybe the first month. What's happened since then? Most of us, myself included, we move out of our lives. have to heal him. We're reading it robotically. So what could we do? Finishing stretch. There's 20 30 hostages still there. Their families are not SLEEPING AT ALL. PERIOD. AT NIGHTS, could you imagine those mothers and fathers and and wives and children knowing their parents, their siblings, their children ARE THERE FOR 700 PLUS DAYS. What can we do? There's a rule in life. When we take upon ourselves a little bit pain on behalf of others, Hashem removes the pain from that other person. Now, I'm not telling you to hurt yourself. What I'm saying is let's work on ourselves until everyone gets back home that we're gonna do something that's a little HARD FOR US. IT'S HARD TO HOLD BACK FROM THE IT'S PAINFUL. I WANTED TO SAY IT. I HAD TO TELL IT OVER. Don't say it. Givea till it hurts your pocket a little bit. Learn to till it hurts your head a little bit. Bring upon yourself quote unquote pain and say, "Hashem, I'm doing this with this of all those people that are suffering. Take away from them. I'll take some of IT IN A GOOD WAY." When we do more and we make things that are harder and we make it part of our life, Hashem takes away the tough situation from others. Keep in mind these soldiers that are there, they're a bunch of 19, 20 year olds. There's a bunch of guys here 19, 20 years old. Their life is on the line. Every step they take could be the last step of their life. So let's take upon ourselves to really really work on this matter. Take upon yourself something extra for this of these individuals. But there's one more thing which I want to add before we're going to move on to the next speaker. You know, I'm a young guy. There's many people here older than me, many people younger than me. But one thing I can tell you is what I've seen in the past two years, the anti-Israel and anti-semitic rhetoric in the world from the left and the right. Something we never could have imagined. How is THIS POSSIBLE? TO CRITICIZE ISRAEL. Everyone could criticize. But so much of it is pure hate. So much of it is pure hate. But why is this happening? Why is Hashem allowing it to happen? Ladies and gentlemen, you have to realize there's a rule in life. When I speak about you and my friends believe it, we're giving power in sham for our enemy to speak about us and for others to believe it as well. Let me repeat that. You're sitting at the Shabbat table and you're talking about your next door neighbor. You're talking ABOUT YOUR COWORKER AND YOU'RE BADMOUTHING them and everyone's like, "Really? Wow, I can't believe it. They're terrible." BY US DOING THAT AMONGST EACH OTHER, we're giving to the spiritual realms of the to speak out against us and to LABEL US DOING TERRIBLE THINGS AND IT'S believed because we're doing it to each other. We're giving coke to others who do it to us as well. I know it's hard to tell over juicy stories are very very you know it makes you feel good but ladies and gentlemen it's destructive. forget about the personal destruction you're calling to that individual. But it's also on a global scale. One thing we can accept is to really keep our mouths clean. Let's try let's try from now till the end of take upon yourselves. I know people take one hour. That's beautiful. The 1 hour day. Are we really proud of that? We got to push ourselves to make this our mission. And you'll see when you do this for THE NEXT 5, 10, 20 DAYS, WHY IT WASN'T AS HARD AS I thought it was. Once you hold YOURSELF BACK TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE TIMES, you start to feel good about yourself. And next thing you know, Abatai, we could change everything. We know it's a sevenfront war. We have Gaza and we have Iran and we have Yemen and we have Iraq and we have Syria. But that front which is the the social media front, the news front, that's also a big front because the anti-semitism spreads from there and it can reach any part of the world. God forbid. So one thing we can take upon ourselves today is we're going to keep our mouth shut when it comes to badmouthing others. It's hard but it's our mission. And when we do this, ladies and gentlemen, we're helping out all these beautiful faces that are still hostages. We're helping out all those soldiers that are still in harm's way. We're helping out as a whole. Thank you very much for everyone that got together. It's a beautiful event. Of course, young for opening your doors. Obviously we have Kazak Rabi Milana her brother Ephraim the whole team over there Bat Malik another beautiful organization in Queen thank you very much and all about kindness Queen Jewish center or Queen Jewish community council excuse me every single one of you thank you very much we shall always get together from Amen thank you for your tremendous powerful words want to thank of course Shamira for providing security for tonight. Thank you, Shamira. Want to thank Ramir was talking about social media. We actually want to there's of course on on social media there's such a um force against of anti-semitism against um and of course there's an app it's called Emissary for all. It's an app where where we're trying to if people have social media then they should they should of course they should be fighting against the anti-semitism that's going on. Everyone should of course should um get that app if they have social media and of course following the program there will be a there'll be a buffet downstairs and um to introduce our next speaker he inspires literally tens of thousands of people every single week is his inspiration his words of his go all over but what makes him so special is that he's not he's not just teaching tens of thousands of people but he's teaching tens of thousands of individuals he views them as an individual as a person to impact and of course this impact so many of K. So I saw Rise for joining [Applause] Robbie. Thank you very much. I've gotten introduced many times in my life, but your introductions are always the nicest and the warmest and and so genuine. So, thank you for that. And Rabbi, thank you for those beautiful words. I came in in the middle, but I'm going to try I'm going to try to not speak bad between now and Sukkot for two days. I know it should be easy for rabbis, but it's not always so easy. And I'm going to try my best and then hopefully, let's see, maybe two days will turn into more. Now I have to say to this whole audience, you know, over the whole month of ill, Hashem gave me many opportunities to speak in many different places and many different venues and audiences in a lot of different spots and many different size crowds. I think this crowd here tonight is by far the most shocking and surprising size crowd of of the whole month. [Applause] I'll tell you why. I have no idea why you're here tonight. When Robbie called me up, I said, "You got to be kidding me. Two nights after Yonipur, who wants to come to a speech?" Like, how many speeches have you people heard in the last few weeks? You just said yonipur. You've had a hundred different reasons. This is supposed to be the break time. There's not even a yet haram belly at this time. You're supposed to be off. You're not supposed to want a speech for another two weeks after Sukkot. I can't believe that you're actually here. I know why we're here, but the fact that you came on Shabbat literally 48 hours after Yonipur ended is very inspiring and very impressive. But we know why. We're here because of an event that impacted every single life in this room and every single life of a Jew around the world. We all remember where we were when it happened. I remember I was I was in my sh Rabbi. We have we used to have an early minan. So that Shabbat we had a minan early and a few people came into I remember it was right after of someone came over to me and said to me Rabbi did you hear what happened? I said what are you talking about? He says there was a terrorist attack in Israel. Now a terrorist attack in Israel sadly is not like a big story. So get so thrown off. He said, "There's at least 50 people that were killed." I remember already shaking 50 people killed in a terrorist attack. I don't know if we ever had a number like that in our lifetime. I don't know if we ever had a terror attack that had 50 people. I don't I don't know if I remember there were, you know, bombings of restaurants and buses, 18 people, 20 people, 50 people. And then there was like this buzz in the room and you know they said and they suspect a lot more and then we came back Shabbat afternoon and we're going to give a shy for and like rabbi the number is up to 300 and there's hundreds of there's thousands of people injured and there's hundreds of hostages and at that point is when we realized that like the world for the Jewish people had changed. And this was our 911. This was our worst on 911. When you take the percentages, this was our moment. And every single one of us in the last, like you said, well over 700 days. Every single one of us has probably spoken about it every single day since in some way, in some form. Is there a deal? Is there not a deal? what's going to happen. Hostages, not hostages. Like in one of those speeches I mentioned, I went to I went to speak in Baltimore and in the drive from the train station, we passed out a house or a business. I couldn't tell what it is. And the person has his whole lawn decked out with the pictures of the remaining hostages. And he has like a number. I think the day was it was 711 at that point if I remember correctly. And like the number changes every day. It's a big sign. And all of us have been deeply impacted. There were times initially the first few months where we wanted to talk about it every minute and then people got sick of talking and we're still talking about it really every single day. I had the opportunity to visit I guess raise of hands. How many people have gone to Israel in the last two years? Wow. So a lot have gone. So I had the opportunity to visit Telles Hospital which I was never at prior and it's one of the most inspiring and frightening places on the planet because you walk into the hospital and it's like most people there don't have both legs. Literally most people like you just walking around and this person is sitting and you're sitting person sitting in a chair. It's not appropriate to do it, but I can take a double take to make sure they have both legs that are touching the ground. And I remember one I'll give you two people that really stuck out of my head the most. One was a person who had a I don't know if it's something like to talk out of through his throat. He had been shot right through his Adam's apple and he was he was alive and recovering and he I remember he was surrounded by his family and we were there. I came with a group of boys and he was surrounded by his family. They were playing music. He was a commander and just a thought that like a man like that had survived shot right through the throat. And there was an image of another person I met that also probably stayed in my mind the most. This person was in one of the areas down south and the terrorist came to his neighborhood. I don't remember which one it was or was the area. I don't remember. And he had six children. So the terrorists came to his house and they surrounded his house and they were like swarming the neighborhood and swarming the area and surrounding his house. So he went into the safe room. Now I don't know if you know this about the safe room. The safe room protects from bombs but it doesn't really protect from terrorists. And because I guess out of protection from the bombs, it doesn't really have a lock on the door. So he went in the sap with his six children and his wife and he sat there from the morning holding the door with his b with his hand holding the door holding the door holding the door and maybe with two hands he was holding the door 9 6 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11 12 1 2 like 3:00 in the afternoon the terrorist finally got to his door and he threw a bomb at his door. And so it blew up in his face. Half his face is deformed. I think out of 10 fingers, he's missing eight. And what was so inspiring about this person was this was I think we went 3 4 months after October 7th. He said in the hospital they lit a big minor and on the first night of Kanuka on Kanuka on the first night of Kanuka this man was asked to light the minor with his two remaining fingers and he did so and in one swoop you saw the bravery of Isel, the strength of Amy is the power of our nation. But I think there's something a little sad about this whole obviously the event is incred incredibly sad. What is it? Over,200 people that were killed and h thousands of people that were that were injured and over 300 hostages and and the fact that it's still lingering. Father, I don't know how big Gaza is, but I just don't understand how every other day we hear that Israel bombed 70 buildings in the main part of Gaza and yet there's still more buildings cuz every day, how are there any buildings left? So, I don't understand the dynamics of it. But the bravery of our soldiers, you know, we actually that trip we went to six or seven army bases and to see them, to see their mindset, to see their mentality. Brother, you can't imagine what it's like, what they live in on these army bases. Rooms of 60, 70 soldiers sleeping in one room with CS, half a CS, rip cuts. But in thinking about it today for this speech, there's a part of me that's very sad. Extra sad. I'll tell you why I'm extra sad. And hopefully through this, we'll make our point. I'm actually sad because I feel like some of the things that we thought we would accomplish right away, I'm not so sure we did. We initially thought that it's going to unify the Jewish people. I'm not so sure it did. We all care deeply no matter where which background you're from, you know, but right now there's a peace process presented. The country is torn when it comes to boys studying in yeshiva. The country is torn when it comes to people being drafted in the army. The country is torn. I think it's a torn still a country that is not as unified as we hoped and wished it would be. There are people that were inspired from it and grew religiously probably many. But there are many many many who not necessarily changed that much. Even a lot of us, we cared deeply initially and did things differently initially and then it faded. I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands. But how many people can say that they are really different because of October 7th. I know you follow the news. I know you talk about it. I know you care about it. I know you're loving about Israel and the state of Israel. Obviously, that's why you're here. Even though, like I said, it's 48 hours after the border and most people don't want a speech right now. But do we change? Did it change our nation? We've given, but are we different? So I think there's an element of this that maybe would have been hard to say then, but I think we need to be we need to say it now. And I hope it's the right message to give. I'm not sure. that we just read. The says, Hashem says, "Look and see because I I am God and there's no one else inside of me. I kill and I bring back and I bring alive. I heard and I bring and I heal of enemy and no one can save themselves from me." What does this pas mean? And why does it say the word ani so many times? The answer is if you're going to be a Jew, a real honest believing Jew, there's one thing you have to believe in and that is ani. I I Hashem referring to God. I the I the ani. When a person use the word I, they usually mean or implying that I have strength, I have power, I am in control. When Hashem says I am running the world and I am can control and it's totally me and we have to have the capability of recognizing. I kill and I and I bring alive and you can't judge who I choose and why I choose and how I do it. You can have some guesses and say it's going to bring us closer to Hashem. It's going to unify the Israel. It's going to bring Mashiach. You could have all those hopes, but the way we run and way we live in this world is the word ani. I, hashem, I, I, God, I'm in total control and it's totally up to me. You know, it happens to be a few people mentioned to me since Kipur, which we said is only a day ago. They said, "Rabbi, it's funny like I got a call that concerned me right before Shabbat." I said, "It's funny. I came home for after Yonkipur and I was exhausted because of the speeches and the praying and the crying and the doing. I was mentally, physically exhausted. And at 11:00 at night, I got a phone call that was really disturbing for me. One of my daughters told me, she says, "Dad, I don't understand. The night of Yonipur, we're coming home. We have to and she's quiet." I said, she didn't talk. And then she went upstairs to her bed and about half hour later, we were downstairs, we were talking, we were learning. And then I came upstairs and I saw I said what's wrong? She was hysterical cry. I says I don't know why is Hashem sending this thought to me. Why do I have these thoughts? It's yon kipur. I want to be pure and I have these annoying, stressful, frustrating thoughts. And this morning before someone came over to me he says you know my yon was more difficult than I expected because I had these crazy thoughts. There are parts of our life on the smallest version like the examples I just gave and the biggest version like the examples I gave before that we just have to say Hashem says I am him and that is it. But if you want to be able to appreciate what I mean that Hashem is it. I had an observation the other day. We were giving a class and someone mentioned this. You know we are in a galaxy. You aware we're in a galaxy? Yes. Can you answer me in the front? What's your name? Yeah, you. >> I like you. I said that's my name, too. Okay. Do you know the name of our galaxy? We're in a galaxy. You know what a galaxy is? >> Universe. Do you know what the name of our galaxy is? >> What? Milky Way. Thank you. Wow. Okay. I didn't Okay. I didn't think that was so hard. Okay. The Milky Way is the galaxy we're in. Yseph, I'm sorry I asked you the question. I didn't mean to throw you off. Um, that's the galaxy we're in. We're in a galaxy. Do you know how big it is? You need to understand what I'm saying. Do you know how big the Milky Way is? >> You know the answer. >> Compared to the grain of sand, >> right, >> Earth and the whole world, the whole >> Okay. What you said is right. I'll say it this way. To go from one end of the Milky Way to the other end of the Milky Way would take a hundred thousand light years. Do you know what a lightyear is? Do you have a phone? Look up how long a light how far you could go in a light second. Can you look it up? You have your phone? Can you check it? How far could you go in a light second? >> How far is the sun? what >> 93. >> So 93 thousand or million >> million miles. >> So it's 92 million miles away and it's 8 minutes. So you get what that means? That means each minute is about 10 million miles. And I just told you 100,000 years. 100,000 light years. THAT'S HOW FAR THAT'S HOW BIG THE GALAXY THAT WE'RE IN. 100,000 light years. That's crazy. Or I'll put it this way. Anyone have water with a cup? I need a cup. >> Cup. Water bottle. >> Can you see if there's a cup somewhere? Thank you. 100,000 light years. That's to say it this way. Cup's coming soon. To put it this way, in this galaxy that we're in, the Milky Way, there are how many stars? two to 400 million stars. You're in a world, every star is LIKE THE SUN. YOU'RE IN A WORLD YOU YOU, if I told you there were eight sons, you'd have a hard time believing it. 2 to 400 million stars. Now, if there was one galaxy like we just described, it would be unfathomable. How about if the world had two galaxies or six or 10 or 100? You can't even comprehend that a hundred GALAXIES IS NOT EVEN believable cuz each galaxy you can't wrap your head around. You can't even wrap your head a teeny bit of a galaxy. Each galaxy is like not fathomable. 100. How about if there were 200 or 400? How about if there were a thousand galaxies? You wouldn't even believe it. But there's not a thousand galaxies. There's not even 10,000 galaxies. There's not 100,000 galaxies. Thank you very much. There's not even a million galaxies. There's not even 2 million, 5 million, 10 million, 100 million, 500 million, a billion. If there were 2 billion or 5 billion galaxies, it would be unbelievable. But there's not even a 100 billion galaxies. You know how many galaxies there are in the world? Two trillion that we know of. Are you verifying? My son said that my numbers are off, so I don't know. I didn't I didn't check it. Um, one galaxy is 100,000 light years, 400 or 300 million stars and there's two trillion of those. You understand how enormous the universe is? And that same God that created all that controls the wing of a fly knows what's happening inside of every cell in your body. He guides the legs of an ant. He knows how many hairs you have on your head or don't have on your head. Do you recognize how big God is and at the same time how small God is? Do you realize how unbelievable his power is and how minute his control is? In fact, I'll give you my little where I got a chance to see this. The most powerful trip I ever took in my life or inspiring trip outside of going to Israel was to the South African safari. My wife and I went to the South African safari. Maybe it was like eight years ago and it's an incredible place because you could see Hashem everywhere. Now you might say you could see Hashem on the streets of Queens. It's possible. But we're in Queens right now, right? Yes. You're the only one answering me. The one in the back who knows the numbers. >> Yes. Okay. Good. So, but you cannot believe what you could see in the South African safari. Let me give you an example. You go there. So, we were in this I have a travel agent that that's like very connected. He got me the number one most knowledgeable person on animals in the whole continent of Africa. His name was Jawan. And you go in this open jeep and you're like you're really coming to see the giraffe and the elephants and the lions. >> No, no tigers in Africa. >> Leopard. >> Oh, thank you. Um, but here's what was fascinating. Listen to this little example. So, we're in the jeep and next to the jeep, you see on the like on this road, the the safari is about the size of New Jersey and it's untouched. No, no, there's no doctors there. There's no workers. It's just whatever nature does. And you see on the street next to you, you like not the street, but like on this the path there's like balls that are rolling. What are these balls rolling? So the guy Jawan says that he says you see what that is that's dung. Dung is the waste of the animals and it's being rolled by a beetle called the dung beetle. There are thousands of species of beetle and these little beetles literally roll the waist. So here's let me explain to you what's happening. Here's this humongous safari. There's tons of animals and the animals lay waste. So you'd imagine the whole safari is filthy, but it's not. The whole safari is beautiful clean because these little beetles are cleaning the floor. It's like a self-made vacuum cleaner for the whole floor of the safari. It's all clean cuz these beetles roll all the waste right out. But here's the cool story. He said to me, "At some point in Australia, they had a problem. In Australia, they had a lot of mice and they realized that the reason why they have a lot of mice is because they have a lot of waste. So they said, "We have to find a way to get rid of the waste." So they said, "Wow, there's these dung beatetles in in Africa." They took a plane, a few planes, and they filled them with thousands and thousands of beetles. And then they took all these beetles, they flew them to Australia. They opened the doors and they unleashed the Beatles basically to say, "Clean up the floors of Australia." And the Beatles went out and they started rolling the waist. And within two weeks, all of the Beatles were dead. Why were they dead? They're trying to understand they were dead because as they roll the waist, they get dirty. Their joints get dirty. And since their joints got dirty, they started to freeze into place. and the joints stop moving and once they froze they died. So I don't understand why does that not happen in Africa? Why does it have in Africa? Listen to this. Because in Africa the beetles are cleaning the waste and they're moving. As they're moving the waist, there's these little mites, little bugs that go on the joints of the beetle and clean their joints so that they could keep moving and keep doing. Hashem, you're unbelievable. And I'm sitting there and I said, "One second, I'm worried about some sale I didn't make. I'm worried how Hashem is going to find a wife for my my son. I'm worried how I'm going to marry my daughter if the god who's makes trillions of galaxies. H1 impossible to describe still figures out how to get mites on a beetle to while cleaning a safari. I'm worried about his world. I'm worried about how things are happening. I'm concerned about who's in control. Who are you? Is that like a movie? The has a good mash of all this. A good mash for what happens when we hear see things or see things and follow things that are hard to digest. Are we good in the front? Are we okay? Says, "You ever go to a seamstress and you're a tailor and you ask them, you know, can you can you sew my suit or can you tailor my my my dress?" And you give it to him and you go to the seamstress. I don't know if you ever went to there, you go to a tailor, they don't have all these suits lined up neatly and all these dress lined up neatly. You said, you know what you see? You walk in, they you give them the dress, you say, "Okay, I need you to fix this." Next thing you know, they take it, they rip it, then they rip it again. They ri like, "What are you doing?" And they said, "No, no, trust me. I'm ripping it in order to fix it. I'm ripping it in order to make it whole." When we see Hashem rip something in the world, whether it's something small in your life or something as epic as October 7th, the belief of a Jew is that God's actions are pure. God's actions are tamim. They're whole. God's actions are things that we may never comprehend. We wish we do and sometimes we do. Sometimes it takes a month or a year or two years and we look back and we're like, "Now I got it. Now I know why I lost that job to get that job. I know why my daughter broke up with, you know, dating and that boy. She got that boy. I know why I lost that customer to be ready for the other customer." There are times that we do. And then there are times that we just trust the seamstress. We trust the tailor. Let me give you one such example. So in one of my speeches in the Lulu I spoke in a business. Sometimes some businesses do that they want to get a sh a class for their their whole company. So there's a room of woman and in the front of the room there was there was it was like a room of like very religious women and in front of the room there was one very religious woman and one woman that look different. I'm not judging kind of person but I just asked them like are you do you work here? You work here. You work here. And then this very religious woman in front of me. He said, "No, no, I don't work here. I just I'm close to the wife of the boss and I heard that the class is happening." So I came. I said to the lady next said, "You work here." She says, "No, I'm from Israel." I says, "What are you doing here?" She says points to this lady who was talking about the other and they says, "We got very close. You went to Shabbat. We got very close. We give future." I said, "What?" And then the very religious lady says about this other she says you know her son was in the Nova festival. I said oh she know festival. I said now like we were I was joking around a little bit and then all of a sudden we got very serious. I said your son was in the festival. How old was he? She was 31. I said what happened? She said he went to the festival and then we heard the chaos was happening. She says, "I immediately called him and instead of calling me Ima like he normally does, he called me my name. He said, "Rita." She says, "I knew something was very off." She says, "Then I called him a little while later and he said he was on his car on the way home. It's a 35minut drive from Nova to the house to the apartment." She said, "It didn't take my son 35 minutes." Four days later, he was delivered in a coffin by the Israeli army. She said, "Our son Ben was killed." I said to her, and I don't know if this is the right question to ask. I said, like, "How are you? Who are you?" I said, "I'm a little more than that. I keep Shabbat. I do like you know." I said, "How do you feel about Hashem?" He's in front of the room. She says, "I'll tell you the truth." She says, "The first month after I think that means I was angry." It does. She says, "But then now I am one with Hashem. I am like this with Hashem. I am so strong with Hashem." I said, "How about your husband?" Said, "Him also? We're so strong with Hashem." Here's a woman whose life was ripped apart. She watched the seams rip. She will likely never see the clothing come back together. She'll never be able to say, "I know why." But Hashem says, "I am in control and this is my world." And we sometimes have to be comfortable living in a world like that. I'll give you another portion in our par. This one we did get to see says should know by generations should know ask your father ask the older people and most fathers like to translate this basa is like ask your father and she says now what it means says it means ask the prophets and the elders what do we ask them the next when inherits the nations and he separates people. He establishes borders for the countries to the number of the Jewish people. What does this mean? Rashi says here's what it means. Says here's what it means. He says there was a group of people thousands of years ago they wanted to unite the world and then Hashem dispersed them and when God dispersed them you said well what are you doing why are you dispersing the world said it's specific because I want to make different nations and by making different nations I'm going to be able to create the Jewish people here's a there's a story. There's a moment that when it happened, you say, "What are you doing? Why are you dispersing everybody?" Hashem said, "Because I'm setting up the world to be whole. Don't question why I rip. Because when I rip, I fix. I'm going to give you one last story and then hopefully put this together. In a recent speech, I think it was in Mani, a broken woman came over to me, older woman, and she said, "Rabbi, my son, you're here in America. My son had some kind of exaggerated accusation against him. He's married, he has children, and he's sitting in jail." She says, "He's a great person and we have no idea how long he's going to be in jail. He's already there for many months. He might be there for many, many years ahead." And she talked to me afterwards and then she sent me an email. And I'm going to read part of her email. She says, "I mentioned that my son Jacob is unfortunately stuck in a holding place. The story is complicated. The accusations are exaggerated." He says, "We know that Hashem loves us, does not punish us, and only does things to help us grow. Unfortunately, we f with the fact that he is stuck there already for eight months with a wife and five children alone, suffering tremendously at home is hard to understand and cope. My son for 20some years, a huge about a devoted father to his incredible children is alone for and the pain is indescribable and intense. his children who are so close to him, to their father are suffering beyond description. She says, "Here's my question. Would you be able to send me an email that I could send to him?" And what kind of email do you write to someone you never met who's in jail that seems to be falsely that way and his probably in all likelihood the guards of the jails police are going to see whatever email I write. It's early morning on Kipur before. I wrote the man an email and I'll read the email and with this we'll conclude. Dear Jacob, I had the last name but I'm not going to share here. This is Rabbi Joey Hab. I heard your story and I'm mortified for you. I cannot imagine what you're going through being in jail for this long without it being clear when the end of jail will be. Sitting away from your family, etc., etc., is hard to describe. It must be an insane feeling. But I have a couple of thoughts. Hashem put Danielle Robbie two minutes is good. Hashem put Danielle in a lion's den and a firef in a ditch. Abraham in a fire of his and what we will read tomorrow. I'm sure every one of them when they were in that position said to themselves, "How in the world did I get here? I'm a great man. I'm close to Hashem. How did this end up being my plight?" Three question marks. Yet somehow those places created their greatness. It's in those places that they became people we talk about thousands of years later. So I said, "I have no idea in the world why Hashem chose you for this for now. But I do know this as sure as I know anything about Hashem." that is that somehow there is something incredible that you specifically you can achieve while you're there. I know you're about to for many years. Somehow the tilah that you say alone where you are will be greater than any tilah you've ever done before. Your courage now will somehow serve you later. Your love for your family right now is something that they will hold on to for generations. Your ability to believe means more than 30 other people combined. When you sit in jail and can't contact the outside world, I'm sure you often feel very much alone. But that's not true. Claw cares. Your community cares. For what it's worth, I can't get it out of my head. We think about you. We feel your pain. We feel the pain of your family. And in capitals, we are with you. So as I write this early in the morning on Yongipur, I hope you can feel our care and our love. I hope you can feel us rooting for you. I hope you can feel our daring for you. I hope you can have the strength to reach deep down into places you never thought you'd have to reach to to achieve something great, something that you couldn't achieve, could not achieve anywhere else with a heart full of love and care. Dining that Hashem ends this nightmare very very soon. Rabbi Joab and the mother sent me back crying. Wow, I'm teed full of tears. I can't believe you're sending me the hoop, the strength. But this is our nation. This is how we are. This is how we've always been. We've been a nation that's very small and a world that's very big. And a world, the universe that's way, way bigger than just big. We live in a world where things happen and sometimes we could fix it and understand it a day, a week, a month or a year later. And then there are things that now as we celebrate two year, commemorate two years in this moment that we deep down cannot understand. There were things that were gained and things that happened. But in many ways there are things that we could never appreciate and never digest. Why are there hostages? Some got out, some didn't get out. Some got killed, some lived. Why are there neighborhoods that lost 40, 50, 60, 80, 90 people? Why are there people that are displaced for well a long, long time, tens of thousands of people? Why are there hundreds of soldiers that went into enemies territory and some of them got killed and some of them survived? Why is it why is it that our small country has so many enemies surrounding it? Why is it that in the United States of America where we are supposed to be free and we have freedom of speech and freedom of relig religion in New York City which is probably the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel? How is it that we have anti-semites on every street corner? How is it possible that in a month from now that it's possible that New York City will elect a person who hates Jewish people to run the city? How's it possible? How's it possible? The answer is I don't know how God runs this world. I can't understand one morsel of one galaxy. Forget about trillions. And I also can't understand even the wing of a fly because if you would study just the wing of a fly for the rest of your life, you still wouldn't understand it. If you'd study one cell your entire life, you still wouldn't understand. You think you understand your God, you think you understand his world. So the resolution we walk out of here with tonight besides everything the rabbi said before is a deep belief there's a god he's running the world in the biggest way and the smallest way just like Adam we had no idea what was in store just like Hashem says I am in control we know what you do is complete so when We stand two years later commemorating the rip that the tailor made. We believe that somehow with that rip, you're going to make the world whole. Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Haver. Beautiful. I want to introduce the next speaker, Sam Freed. 28 years old from New York. He's a first surgeon in the 890th paratrooper battalion. and after serving as a lone soldier from 2020 to 2022, he returned to Israel following the Hamas attacks on October 7th. He was serving as a squadron commander and sharpshooter in Gaza. Since returning to the US, Sam has raised over $15 million for Jewish organizations and travels nationwide promoting his three pillars, empowering Jews and allies. Yeah. empowering groups and allies, fostering dialogue for peace, and humanizing the IDF. Please welcome Sanford. How's it going everyone? Little tall. All right. Mituk all of you. Thank you all for coming out. Uh thank you to all the rabbis here uh with your with your uh beautiful words. We all appreciate it. I want to make something very clear. My being here tonight is truly nothing short of a miracle. And I could thank a lot of people for that. Of course, my teammates, of course, Hashem. But ultimately, the reason I am here, it's not my merit and it's not just Hashem, it's each and every single one of you. And what do I mean by that? The last two years we have been fighting in this war. Obviously also here in the United States on the ideological battlefield, but of course tens of thousands of soldiers fighting in Aza, in Lebanon, in Syria, people flying to Iran, fighting in Yemen, overseas. And what you guys are here and you all feel like you want to be a part of the war. You want to be a part of the action in the trenches with the but you feel like I can't. I'm here. I'm not a trained soldier. How can I go and fight? I'm here to tell you with 100% certainty that we feel each and every single one of you next to us on a daily basis. The difference between a bullet hitting me in my chest, right in the head, or missing by millimeters, by inches, me hearing the the scream of the bullet as it flies right past me. It's not my merit. It's not my luck luck. It's your tilot. It's your thoughts and prayers over the last two years. The difference between an RPG hitting inside the building, inside the room that my team are in, and missing narrowly by feet. Again, it's not my merit. It's not my luck. It's your it's your thoughts over the last two years. So for my team and I who walked out safely, thank God. We all want to thank you. I digress. I want to speak a little bit about me and my my story. I'm a regular kid from Jamaica States. As was said just now, my name is Sam Freed, 28. I went to YCQ just across the street for elementary school and middle school. Um, and my dream since 9 years old was to join the IDF. And I went to Ramalas for high school in Manhattan. And as I was finishing high school, I told my parents, I was like, "Look, I'm I'm 18. I'm of age. I'm I'm drafting." And they were like, "No, you're not. You're going to college." I was like, "All right, well, let's agree to disagree." And they're like, "There's no agreeing to disagree. You're not going to the army." And I was like, "Okay, well, let's make a deal. If I go to university and get my degree and after four years I still have this conviction that I want to join, you have to give me a bra." They said, "Okay, four years come and four years go and you still want to go. You'll be 22 years old. You can make a decision on your own. Fine." Four years come, four years go and what happens? Of course, I bring it back up to my parents and I say, "Look, I have my degree. I'm going to the IDF." And they're like, "Okay, well, I guess we didn't expect this to happen. We expected you to have a girl or a job or whatever it is that's going to stop you from going, but you did your end. We'll do ours." And I draft I draft in a weird time for the world. I draft in March of 2020. Uh obviously the beginning of co and I'll just tell a quick anecdote about that what that's like. Pretty much this is the story I always love to tell. One of my teammates wasn't feeling well at the very beginning of uh the first co and my commander who was 19 years old at the time, the genius that he is, he says, "All right, guys. Let's just get this over with. Everybody drink from his bottle." Um about five days later, 1,600 people on the base were sick with COVID. Uh my my friend being patient zero. So after that, thank God everybody was fine. Um but that was CO in the army. Then after that, we did everything pretty much as normal, going on missions normally, etc. I want to speak just very briefly about two instances, two things that happened during my regular service from 2020 to 2022. Um, one is in May of 2021, maybe some of you remember, operation gardening in the walls, um, in Shot when PI shot 4,500 rockets into Israel over the span of 11 days. And at that time, we thought we were going to be going into Gaza and that that war was going to be what this war inevitably was. Uh, thank God through a whole bunch of different things that happened, not important for right now, we didn't end up going into Gaza. But my team and I were sent to Janine and Tulkam and Shim and we were doing a lot of missions in Judea, Samaria or what other people would call the West Bank. And thank God because of the stuff that we did which were really important stopping suicide bombers who were coming into Israel and planning attacks. My company uh in the paratroopers was given the award for the most outstanding company of the operation. So for me at that time, thank you. For me at that time that was really significant. It was like wow, I'm really protecting Israel, really protecting the Jewish people. This is what I came to the army for. Obviously didn't know that there was going to be a war two years later. But alas, one other interesting thing that happened in my service was in the summer of that same year. So from July to November of 2021, my base, my team and I were stationed at a base called Masha. Maybe some of you have heard of it in the news, probably not, but Masha is next to a place that you probably definitely have heard in the news called Zikim. Zikim is geographically situated where the Mediterranean Sea meets Gaza and Israel. So you're talking the base is very much on the water. Now what's important about Zikim in relation to October 7th that we'll get to shortly is that unfortunately on October 7th the terrorists also came in from the water uh and they were met obviously by the base that was just there and they also infiltrated from the gates close to that area. Unfortunately, 25 Golani soldiers were slaughtered in their beds uh in the Zikim base. Very personal for my team and I knowing that just two years to the day before October 7th, my team and I were stationed on that base. Just two years before that would have been us. Just like that, people were slaughtered. All they were wearing was their boxers and their vest. That's how they were fighting against the terrorists. Some people in the showers, just slaughtered in the showers. Think about that. So anyway, we'll get to October 7th in a second. I finish my regular service. I come back to America. I start my job in finance at a bank and I'm celebrating with a friend who is also in the same unit as me, 890. And I'm staying by him and he's also religious. We're both shabbat. So we obviously didn't have our phones on at the time. We get back to his apartment about 3:00 in the morning after going from sh to sh apartment to apartment celebrating the holiday. obviously super super exciting fun time on the Upper East Side and we go to bed and his other roommate who isn't religious, he wakes us up at about 7:00 in the morning. He's like, "Guys, guys, wake up. Israel's at war." Mind you, the other friend who's not in the army, so for us, when a non when somebody who's not in the army tells somebody who's in the army, Israel's at war, you don't immediately think the worst, right? You think, okay, maybe there was a big attack, maybe there were a bunch of rockets. Again, like I said, 4,500 rockets in 11 days and we didn't go into Gaza, so like maybe it's probably not a war. Obviously, he explains what's going on. There's civilian hostages. They're in Steot. They're in the kibbutim. They're slaughter at the festival. He puts up things on the TV and we're like, "Oh my god, there's obviously this is this is an exception. This is different." So, my friend and I, we turn on our phones knowing that we're going to be called and phone is blowing up. Thousands of messages. I mean my teammates saying you have to get here now like the skies are going to be closed is probably going to get involved from the north. This is the craziest thing ever. Some of my teammates are currently at the time were already fighting in their kibbutim. One of my best friends of his family lives in a place called is one of the next to that kibut is called they were him his father his uncle and his brother are the so before the army gets there there's like a a fast response team that has guns and everything and they're protecting the kibbuts until the army gets there there's 60 terrorists trying to get into it It is my friend, his father, his brother and his uncle who are the only thing in between them. Unfortunately, they were able to kill 25 people in a tiv and they were trying to break into Yodai and my friend and his family were holding them back. But think about that. We're in Q Garden Hills right now. Imagine the neighboring community. Somebody comes in to your homes, slaughters the people in their homes, takes the dead bodies, brings them back to the community just feet away. Think about that. That's the reality of the people on October 7th, what they had to deal with. Imagine, they don't care. Woman, child, elderly, doesn't matter. Nobody is off limits. They're all gonna die. That is what the Jews in Israel had to deal with in their homes, the safest place that they're supposed to be in the world on October 7th. It's it's very difficult for me to even imagine and it's my friends who are there. I want to share with you a quick story of of heroism on October 7th before we get to exactly what I was doing. So during my regular service, I had an officer named Shaveit Ben Moshe Shaveit. He has a brother named Ariel Bush. Ariel was a captain which is very high rank in a unit called Mal. Anybody here familiar with Mal? It's the best unit in the Israeli army. The guys do the craziest things in the entire world. If you've ever heard of the Raiden on Tbby and the rescue mission in Tbby and that was them. So Al is a captain in this unit. So he's very high ranking in this unit and they're the first team to go to Bin on October 7th. Being that he's the captain, he's the first person to go in. Him and his immediate group. Unfortunately, immediately is killed by a sniper. And Shaveit, his brother, my officer, hears this news on his way down to the exact same place where his brother was just murdered. And there's a law in Israel. If you're the last remaining child, you you and your family could decide if you're going to go to war or not. He's the last child. So on his way down with all of his equipment, with all of his gear, with all of his khim with him, he's going down to the place where his brother was just killed minutes ago. Minutes ago. And he calls his parents and he says, "I was killed. What do you want me to do? Looks like there are a lot of parents here. What would you tell your child to do? Think for a second. Impossible scenario. What did what did Shabit's parents tell him to do? They said to him, "Dafka, Dafka, because Ariel was killed, you have an obligation to go down and fight on his behalf." Because that's what he would have wanted you to do. Can you imagine? Can you imagine telling your last son after just hearing seconds ago that your eldest son was killed? You're telling him to go fight in the same place where his brother was just killed. the the spirit of our people, that is the reason that we are still here. That is the reason that we are still alive and able to be Jewish in this world because our spirit is impossible to be broken. Jumping back to what I was doing. So, I'm now tasked with figuring out how do I get to Israel? My friends are currently fighting. We need to get there ASAP. And so, I have a friend who's kind of hooked up at the consulate. We end up going to the console and we say to him, "Listen, me and my friend," we say, "we need to get to Israel now." He says, "Okay, well, the skies are closed. We we need a little bit of time, but if you could get me a list of 150, 200 who in the next 24 hours are ready to go and fight, I will charter a plane at the very least. We'll go to Cypus and take a boat from Cypress to Kyifa." Like, okay, great. We leave. My friends and I utilize a friend of ours, Chad GPT. We get 200 fake names, fake phone numbers, fake emails, and fake army IDs and present it to the console within like 3 hours. And he's like, "No, Maza, what is this?" Like, you said a list of like 150, 200 soldiers? He's like, "You were able to work that quick?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "Wow, okay. Well, I guess uh there's good news and bad news. The good news is that chances are not we're not expecting to get involved." So the skies are not going to be closed for a long time. Bad news is it's still going to take a little bit of time, maybe a couple of days before you're able to get back. Okay, Sabah. So now, as you know, obviously all the news is coming out of what's going on. I still haven't spoken to my family. I'm in the upper east side. My family doesn't know I'm going back for the war yet. And so the holiday ends, I come back to Jamaica states and I have to have this extremely difficult conversation with my family. Extremely difficult. I mean, you can only imagine my mother on the floor begging me, begging me, crying. She doesn't want me to go. I can't blame her. And you know what people ask me all the time? They say, "Sam, why did you go? You don't have to go. You're not an Israeli citizen." It's true. I'm not. God knowing one day I will be, but at the time and now I'm not. I'm 26. I have a job, girlfriend. Like, I have a life here. There's no reason that I had to go. Plenty of people were were drafting. So, why'd I go? And the two answers that I like to give to that are really, really important. The first one is that the pain of any Jew anywhere is the pain of every single Jew everywhere. What do I mean by that? I mean that most of us here probably have never met a hostage personally. Most of us here probably don't have direct family members who are in the IDF. Maybe some of us do. Most of us probably don't. Most of us here probably don't know somebody personally who is either taken captive or kidnapped or murdered or whatever. Most of us. And yet we could still cry. We still feel it viscerally when we hear that more soldiers were killed. We still feel it viscerally when we hear about a hostage that didn't make it. Because the pain of any Jew anywhere is the pain of every single Jew everywhere. It's reason number one. Reason number two, since I was 9 years old, as some of my friends here tonight can attest, I was saying I was going to join the IDF. And I always said that if I was living in the time of the Mcabes, I would have wanted to be one of the Mcabes. And if I was living in the time of the partisans fighting against the Nazis in the forests, I would have wanted to be one of them. And if I was living in the time of the Palmi trying to liberate Israel from the British, of course, I would have wanted to be one of them. And so history in this moment of October 7th, 2023 reached out its hand and said to me, Sam Freed or Sinfred as I go by in the army, here is your opportunity to be one of the few fighting Jews in our thousands of years of persecution. What are you going to do? Obviously, obviously I'm going to take that opportunity. The first thing that I could think about is we read in Melat Esther on Purim. What does it say? It says that Esther came to Mori and she said to him, Mori, what if I can't do it? What if what if the king doesn't allow me to come before him and he just kills me? What does Mori say back to her? He says, if you forgo this opportunity to redeem the Jews, redemption will come through somebody else. and not you. Perhaps this is the entire reason that you were to become queen in the first place. October 7th was exactly that for me. Perhaps this was the entire reason that I was born, to go fight in this war, to fight for our people, to be a fighting Jew, one of the few in our history. And so I go back, I rejoin my team just a couple of days after October 7th. And I remember I get to base at about 4 in the morning and my team had just finished about 36 hours of training in the field getting ready. We don't know when the ground division is is going to begin. Israel at the time is just giving time for people to escape. We also had plenty of other things to do in Israel itself. And I get to base and they're sleeping in tents outside and I I go into one of the tents where where one of my friends is, where my partner is during my regular service. I return to the same team that I was with during my regular service and my friend's name is Roy and I wakei up. I say, "Brother, I'm here. I arrived." And Roi kind of like turns exhausted, but he turns. He looks up. He's like, "Sim, it's you." I'm like, I'll never forget Roy sits up. He looks at me. He puts his arm on my shoulder and he starts rubbing his eyes. And at first I think he's just tired. He's trying to like wake up. But then I realize he's crying. Like really crying. I'm like, "What are you what are you crying about? I don't I don't understand." He's like, "You know, when you finished your service, cuz I finished my service slightly before the rest of my team." He said, "When you finish your service with us, you said to me that if, God forbid, there was a sole, there was a need for you to come back and fight, you would be here next to us, k shoulder-to-shoulder." I didn't believe you. And yet, here you are standing before me just a couple of days after the worst atrocity in the history of our people since the Holocaust, and you're ready to fight in the fight of our lives that were probably not going to come out. And I just can't believe it. Wow. Obviously, we share a very emotional embrace. And we get to work. Start off in the north thinking maybe is doing a delayed fuse and they'll just wait a couple of days and then do exactly what Hamas did on October 7th. Thank God that's not what ended up happening. Then we get sent to do very special missions within Israel, thinking that of the 6,000 people from Gaza between terrorists and civilians who came into Israel, maybe some of them were waiting, got missions, waiting, waiting, waiting to do also a delayed fuse attack within Israel. Turns out we were right. There were certain people we had to find, etc. Working with the Shabbach, whatever. Then we get sent to Aayosh again doing missions in places like Janine places like Tulam again. But ultimately we didn't want Turk or Janine. We didn't want any ofos. We didn't want we didn't want to be doing missions in Israel. What did we want? We wanted Aza. We wanted to go into Gaza. Why? Because it was personal. Not for revenge. We don't do revenge. Kama is not our thing. We wanted to be the ones who are going to bring the hostages back. One of my best friends in my team, his ex-girlfriend is Mayv. Anybody here familiar with Maya and it her brother who were taken uh captive at the festival? Thank God they're eventually exchanged. But we wanted to be the ones bringing them back. We wanted to be the ones avenging our friends murders by stopping kamas from ever being able to touch even the hair on a single Jew ever again. We wanted to be the ones who are going to bring peace back to Israel. We wanted that job. So finally, thank God, we're given the opportunity. Our number is called. We're sent into Aza and we start off in the north. We end up going to central Gaza. Then we end up going to South Gaza. We had four missions by and large amongst others but four main missions. Mission number one obviously neutralize any threat that comes our way. Stop kamas. Mission number two find as many tunnel shafts or entrances to tunnels as you possibly can. Call in the engineering corpse. Have them blow them up. Mission number three find any information on the hostages slash if you could find hostages obviously rescue them. Mission number four, all the weapons, the rockets, the RPGs, the guns, bring them back to Israel. Easy enough, right? Obviously, easier said than done, but fairly simple missions. What does it look like? Okay, so sure you guys have seen pictures and videos on social media and everything about what Gaza looks like, and I'm here to tell you it looks exactly like that. Okay, there's no lights at night. There's no running water. You're not showering for days. I think I didn't shower for 30 days at one point. I didn't even take off my shoes for 30 days at one point. Um, not a fun situation. Nobody should want more. It's not good. Okay. You're barely eating, you're literally never sleeping. It's very difficult. But what that really looks like those missions is you're taking over locations. So maybe it's a building, maybe it's an unra school that kamas is shooting out of, maybe it's a hospital that kamas is shooting out of, whatever it might be. And when you go into a location, you're looking very thoroughly at everything. You're not leaving a couch in a particular place. You're not leaving a rug. You're lifting everything up, checking not because we want to destroy the place. That's not the objective. The objective is that kamas hides things in very, very, very inconspicuous places. And so we, knowing this, have to go and find those things. It's like hide-and-seek. pretty much. And I'll give you an example. My team and I were in one of the buildings and there was a couch and we're moving the couch out of the way. Maybe looking maybe underneath uh there's there's a tunnel shaft. Who knows? We move the couch out of the way and we hear something shaking in the couch. Weird. What could be shaking in a couch? We flip the couch over, tear it open. An RPG in the couch. For those who don't know what an RPG is, by the way, maybe you've seen videos or movies where somebody has like a like a rocket on their shoulder. That's an RPG. Giving you another example, my friends, you don't get to you don't get to go to the bathroom very often on the toilet when you're in war. It's the truth. We go into a house. My friend sees the toilet. It's like, great opportunity. Wonderful. He's going and as he's about to go, he notices under the toilet there's a carveout. He's like, "What is that?" He moves the toilet. He calls over a couple of the guys to move the toilet and he sees there's a hole under the toilet. In the hole, there's a cardboard box, opens the cardboard box, 30 grenades. This is what we're up against. Normal civilian homes, normal homes that Hamas is using for terror. Every single day, every single day, we find things like this. Whether it's finding a tunnel shaft, whether it's finding an RPG, whether it's finding guns, ammunition, whatever it is, I'm not here to say that every single Palestinian is guilty or is a terrorist. I don't believe that and none of you should either. But I will tell you that in the three cities that I was in, almost every house had something. And that could be as small as a flag or a magnet on the refrigerator that in the corner has the emblem of kamas and it's a picture of a shahid. Everybody had something. Take that what it is. I want to give you an anecdote of what fighting in Gaza looks like. My team and I were tasked with taking over a strip of houses one day. And again, you're going house to house, house to house, house to house, floor to floor, room to room, etc. And when you're doing this, it's very dangerous, right? Because you should understand Kamas knows that we're coming. They see us. They're blending in. And we've already, by the way, to make it very clear here, there are no civilians left in this area. We've already escorted them out. Part of another mission that we had was escorting people to safety, right? Making sure that there's nobody left. So if somebody is left, it's assumed to be kamas. Makes sense, right? And so we go into this area and right now at this time we're in these fields, these orange groves. And then we're going to be making a left and going into the strip. And that's our job for the day. Take over these 10 houses, 10 locations. takes time. So the first team goes into the corner house before we make the turn and he sees something they see something very strange. They see guns and bullets scattered which tells us something. Usually if you go into a house you will not just find things scattered in the open. You'll find it hidden. So if they're scattered that means that kamas is there but they had to get away quickly and didn't have time to hide things. So that means we now know we're likely probably going to get into a firefight pretty soon. And so we're now in a terrorist field area. And so now we're on high alert. It's like 6:00 in the morning, 5:45. And we're preparing. We're like, "Okay, well, our mission was supposed to go into this house or this house. Now we're changing it. Okay, our mission is now to go into this one of the first houses that according to intelligence, the first house is rigged with explosives. The second house is the house that we're going to go into. But the only way to enter safely is to go into the first house because it's the closest, but it has a gate around it. So, we have to go into the gate and then we can kind of get to the second house as opposed to being exposed in the open for too long going down the street knowing is in the area. Okay. How long does it take for 35 soldiers to get through a metal gate? I don't know, 45 seconds, a minute, carrying our bags, but it's not that difficult. We go in very quickly, take off my bag. I'm a squadron commander, so I'm the head of four other soldiers, and we're going to go into the set. We're going to try and uh get to the second house. Taking off my bag, closing my clips. The last soldier comes in through the gate. Closing the gate. As we're closing the gate, you start hearing the the uh the as the RPG is approaching and you hear the boom RPG hits the gate, everybody dives to the ground, start hearing AK-47 fire, start hearing sniper fire. 20 seconds after that, boom, another RPG from opposite end. 20 seconds after that, boom, another RPG opposite end. Talking explosions, right? Everybody's on the ground. There's smoke everywhere. People are screaming. People have already been shot. Nobody knows what's going on. Nobody knows where the terrorists are. 20 seconds after that, another RPG, opposite end. We're in a bad pick. We're in a very bad place at this point. We're stuck in this gated area with no way out. And we don't know where the terrorists are that are firing at us. So, what do you do? And so, I'm on the ground crawling to get behind something so I can start returning fire. At this point, people are taking people on stretchers to the back and doing 360 perimeter to make sure that they can take care of the people who have been shot. These are my teammates, my brothers. I don't know who's alive, who's dead. I still can't see anything. There's too much smoke. And I see my lieutenant is in the front and he's screaming on the communications, "Give me as many grenades as possible." And so we give him, we start rolling him grenades. People are crawling over, giving them a grenade or two, getting back as the people in the front are firing to give us some cover. And Yotam starts throwing grenades in all directions into the place where we think it was over there. Somebody said they thought they saw somebody over there. Throwing in any direction we possibly can to hopefully hit the target. And finally, I'm laying down under this tree, maybe six foot high, probably half the width of the extender, and I'm laying down on the ground, and I'm a sharpshooter. And so, I'm not really so effective at at low ground. I want to be at height, but I can't really get into the house yet. And so, I'm looking and I'm shooting into windows. I'm shooting into doors, shooting on roofs. Maybe somebody's there. I don't see anything. I see Yotam pulls a pin of a grenade and he's holding the grenade. I'm thinking to myself, what are you doing? Why are you holding the grenade? The way, by the way, for those who don't know the mechanics of grenade, you pull the pin, you have 4 and 1/2 seconds before the grenade explodes. Okay, that's not a lot of time, but there's a handle on the grenade. If you hold the handle against the grenade, that timer doesn't begin. But you wouldn't necessarily know if the timer began. You trip and your grip releases a little bit. That timer begins. Say, god forbid, he gets shot, drops the grenade, that timer begins, and he could potentially get killed. So, he pulls the pin and he's holding the grenade. I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, yo, Tom, what are you doing? Throw the grenade. 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds. I'm like, this is crazy. Finally, he throws the grenade. Snapshot forward. We'll get back to the story in a second, but snapshot forward. I say to him, I'm like, yo, Tom, I respect you. You're my lieutenant. my superior. But what the heck are you thinking? He's like, "Listen, I was certain that I was going to die. And if that was going to be the last thing that I do on this earth, I wanted to make sure that my last grenade finds a spot, finds the location that it needs to go." I didn't want it to be stumped. Like, look, you're an animal, but like maybe do it a little safer next time. I don't know. But back to the firefight. I'm on the ground and I'm shooting. Supposedly somebody in the front sees that there's somebody shooting an RPG. Gets him before he does. Cool. And I see all of a sudden there's something obstructing my view. Like what is that? It's obstructing the view of my of my scope. And I look up and I see the leaves of the trees of the tree is falling onto me. And I start hearing the as it's hitting the tree as the bullets are hitting the tree right above me feet above me. I'm like, "Okay, that's obviously not good." Then I look to my right, not more than the distance of me in this poster and I start seeing the ground popping up from the AK-47 762 caliber bullets that are hitting the ground. As I hear theot, the screams passing by me, I'm like, "Okay, it's the end of my life. Uh, let me say schma. Say schma." And I just keep repeating schma. And I'm like, "Okay, I'm I can't just die stupid right now. I have to try and get out of here." I scream. I need I need fire, like cover fire. And finally, my friends are like, they hear me. I just keep screaming it. And they give me cover fire, a ton of machine gun fire. And I craw essentially crawl out of there. And then my teammate Assaf catches up with me and he says to me, he's like, "A we're going into the first building." I'm like, "What do you mean the first building? That building is rigged with explosives." is I can, but we don't have a choice. We can't get to the second building yet. We think the terrorists are there waiting for us. So, we have to go into the first building, get to height, neutralize position, and then get to the second building. I'm like, "Are you crazy? We're going to die." He's like, "If we don't go in, we're going to die anyway. We're getting attacked here. We're like sitting ducks." I'm like, "What did yam say?" He said like, "Okay, I guess we got to do what we got to do." You're not really thinking like you want to save your friends lives. You don't know what's going on. So you're you're just following commands to. So it's me, three of my teammates. And we start very slowly going into this first building that according to intelligence again was ridden with explosives by miracle, one of the many miracles. It was not ridden with explosives. We start going into the building. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. In the rooms, throwing a grenade. Closing the door. Explosion. Good. Next floor. Same thing. Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Grenade, close door. Boom. Good. It's me and three of my friends. One of my friends accidentally almost takes off my head, but it's a different story. We get to the top floor. Thank god. No terrorists, no booby traps. Get to the top floor in like a minute 30, which is crazy. You usually want to take your time before clearing a house properly. get to the top floor and I see on the an adjacent building maybe 300 meters away I see somebody standing on top of the building like there's no way a terrorist is that stupid to just be standing on top of a roof of a building and I say to my friend I'm like Assaf is that us or is that them terrorist shoot him like there's no way there's no way he's going to be that exposed it's just so stupid and he's like shoot him like you have to understand the context by the way two days before this there was unfortunately an incident of friendly fire in which two IDF soldiers were accidentally killed by their own which happens in war happens in every war but it's terrible and obviously you don't want to be the soldier who's telling a family member that you accidentally killed their son thinking they were a terrorist so I say to I'm like I don't want to do dudes I don't want to do friendly fire and he says and we don't have time to to to debate this. It's on me. Shoot it. Like, okay, what are you going to do? My friends are down there getting shot at. So, lot of my shot. I'm sharpshooter. I'm the only one there that can take the shot. The guy gets hit. He drops. You give a couple more shots to make sure that they're not getting back up. Immediately, I see somebody darting across the roof to the opposite side. He gets behind this water container on the roof and I don't see him, but I see his arm kind of sticking, his elbow kind of sticking out. And I'm like, "Okay, give me a new magazine. They give me a new magazine." Put in the entire magazine into the water container into every single spot. I don't see him fall or anything cuz he was hiding behind it. But ultimately, the drone guy, uh, the guy who has the drone, he comes. I tell him where I thought I saw them, where they were, where we shot them. To sends the drone up, he sees them. What does he see with them? Two RPGs, two AK-47s, a bunch of magazines. Not reading magazines, obviously, right? Gun magazines. He's like, "Okay, those are yours. Nice. Cool." At this time, the tanks finally start rolling in. They blow up a building, killing five terrorists. My friends down downstairs on the front, the machine gunners, they supposedly killed two guys who were in a house. Another guy kills somebody who has a has the RPG. All all said and done, we end up taking out about 12 13 terrorists despite them ambushing us. And by miracle by miracle, only four of us were injured. Some of us shot, but thank God nobody, no amputations, no death were good. But I want you to think about this. If they shot that first RPG as we were going into the gate, at least three, four of us are killed. If they got any of us while we were in that area, either through another RPG or through sniper fire or they even got me while I was down on the on the ground, I'm not here to speak to you. If that building was actually rigged with explosives or there were terrorists in it, we're all dead. If Yotam drops the grenade, he gets shot or trips or whatever, drops the grenade in the chaos, him and the three soldiers around him are dead. If if if if if all these things happened, we wouldn't be here today. And again, that is not it's not my merit. It's not my luck as a result of your and these kinds of things are happening on a daily basis. There was an assessment at the beginning of the war saying that between 5,000 to 8,000 IDF soldiers would be killed considering the ground offensive that we were going to do. Even one soldier is too many. But we're not even at a fifth of that. Not even at 20% of that number. And that is because of the miracles as a result of your vote. You guys are part of the war. Share one quick story. Assa, that same guy who was with me upstairs, he's not religious. And after this firefight, he says to me, he's like, "Oh my god, I need to thank Hashem, but I don't know how." I'm like, "Well, I would tell you to put on tilim, but it's too dangerous. We just got out of a firefight." Says to me, "Okay, well, what can I do?" I'm like, "I have like 70 things of that people gave me to carry on me." So, here, read taleim. So, I take out a book of uh maybe it was tikunal or what? No, it was actually safe for tim. I give it to him and he's like, "Okay, but I don't know what to read." I'm like, "Well, the way that tim works is actually really smart. It goes by the day of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Happens to be Wednesday. So I open up the I give Asaf the book. He looks at it. He looks back up. He's like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "No, what is this?" And I say to him, "What do you mean? It's it's the first paragraph of timing for Wednesday." And Assaf gives me the book and I look at it. The first two words of Wednesday's mass, a song for Assaf. Assaf has never read to in his whole life. And in the first two words, his name dedicated to him. He's like, I don't believe you. You're new. I'm like, how do I know? I'm not who am I? I don't know anything. And he starts going around to everyone. He's like, "Guys, you have to read. You're going to see your name within the first two words." Like, listen, listen. Don't don't say that to people. It's not real. Like, I don't know. Like, for you it worked. For them, it probably won't. But I think there's an important lesson here, right? And the lesson is is that it's not always the big miracles. It's not always the ones where you're safe from the firefight. It's not always the ones where where we almost went into a building that could have exploded or the terrorists missed us or whatever it is. No, those are great. Sometimes it takes two words. Two words from a book written by David 2500 years ago. Two words, one of them being his name. to give him the strength to give him the to continue and every single day after that he was reading I don't know if he still is it doesn't really matter the point is that from then on he knew Hashem is with me doesn't matter what happens I will not fear evil because God is with me so we finish Aza I come back and around February 2024 after the first wave was complete and I come back to an America that is very different than in the America that I left. I come back to an America. When I left, mind you, I didn't have a phone in Gaza. I didn't know what was going on. But when I left, people were still fairly sympathetic to what was going on. Fairly sympathetic to Israel and our ability to defend ourselves. I come back and I hear about what's going on in college campuses. I come back and I hear about the tearing down the hostage posters and I'm I'm in awe. And so I said to myself, okay, I I have an obligation right now. I was just fighting on the physical battlefield and now I have an obligation to fight on the ideological one. And so I start going around to college campuses and I start going to the encampments and I try and have a dialogue. Obviously I'm not going to be met with people who are interested, right? I went to Boise, Idaho to a Jewish comm Jewish community in Boise, Idaho. But one day I was invited to speak at a church there. So it was like 700 people say 90% weren't Jewish. And I get a phone call while I'm speaking. Obviously, I can't answer because I'm speaking, but I get a message from the Boise Police Department and they say, "Is this I call them back after. I'm like, "Hi." And they're like, "This is Sam Freed." I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "Are you staying at the at the hotel?" I'm like, "Yeah." Like, "Are you there now?" I'm like, "No." Like, "Can you get here?" I'm like, "Sure." I get there, there's like five police cars. I asked them, "What's going on?" They said four people came wearing kias and came with hammers and wrenches and tried to lynch you. They did $25,000 worth of damage at the hotel. Spray painted on the wall Sam Freed is complicit and genocide. Put posters of me all over the city with X's on my face with a wanted a wanted sign. This is what we're up against. And I'm here saying as an IDF soldier, I care about Palestinian lives. And yet they refuse to come to the table and have a conversation when I say all I want is peace. They are shooting themselves in the foot. So people will say to me, they'll say, "Sam, you're not you're not going to win. So what are you doing? Why are you fighting this fight?" My answer is very simple. Who am I fighting for? You might think, "Okay, I'm fighting for Israel. I'm fighting for the hostages. I'm fighting for I guess you guys." No. No. I'm not fighting for you guys. You're part of it, but you're not what I'm fighting for. You're not I'm not fighting for Israel or just the Jewish people at large or for my family or for my future kids, God willing. Who am I fighting for? And who are we fighting for? We are fighting for the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and the millions of Jews in our thousands of years of history of persecution that as they were being brought to the gas chambers and as they were being brought to the crematorium and as they were being brought on death marches and to the gallows and to the ravines where they were shot and as they were being brought into their shs and synagogues and locked in as it was lit a flame for them to burn inside in their last moments life on this earth. They've all looked up to God and begged. What did they beg for? They begged for a future in which some Jew would have the audacity to be strong enough to fight for them on their behalf because they never got a chance to. That that is who we're fighting for. That is who I'm fighting for. And so people will say to me, "Okay, but Sam, I'm not an ITF soldier. I'm not an influencer. I'm not on social media. I'm not I can't go around speaking. I said, "That's fine. You don't need to be an IDF soldier to fight for the Jewish people. You don't need to be in Gaza. You don't need to be in Lebanon. You don't need to be an influencer. You don't have to go around speaking to people all over the country and put and having conversations with people who hate you. You don't need to do that. What do you need to do? You need to find your fight. Whatever that fight might be. And I don't care if that's wearing a kipa in public to show solidarity. I don't care if it's wearing a hostage pin. I don't care if it's getting closer to your Judaism, saying an extra pair of saying for the I don't care what it is. Donate an extra dollar, an extra cent to make a fundraiser for the write notes to the do something. I promise you, every single person in this room, I don't care if you're 2 years old, 5 years old, 99 years old, it does not matter. We have the same stake in this game. They hate us because you're a Jew. They hate us because you support Israel. So each of us, all of us, we all have obligations to fight for this cause. Because nobody will do it if we don't. Finally, I'll say one last thing before I leave. My rabbi said something really interesting to me. He said the following. said, "Sam, war is one of the worst things in the entire world, but it isn't the worst thing in the entire world." What is the worst thing in the entire world? He said, "The worst thing in the entire world would be living your entire life without ever finding anything worth fighting for." this being in a bit having Israeli flags wearing our kipot having right here being able to celebrate the upcoming holiday and knowing we'll be safe this is worth fighting for and this is what we must fight for and continue to fight for the Jewish people will not end with us I don't care about the hate I don't care if they kill us we are not going anywhere anytime We will fight and we will continue to fight because the Jewish spirit will never ever die on this earth. Thank you. Thank you Sam for your powerful powerful remarks. Of course, thanks Sam for for joining us. Let's take the words of inspiration from Sam, rebro and of course for for of course that we should see all the the house just come home smoothly.