JEWS Have a Strange Rule About Other JEWS

I was just in Slovenia. Let me ask you a question. Do you know any Jews in Slovenia? Probably not. Do you know anyone who knows any Jews in Slovenia? Probably not. In fact, most people watching this have probably never heard or thought about whether there are Jews in Slovenia, but there are. Not many, but just enough to remind you of something remarkable. Because here's what's amazing. If one of those Jews knocked on your door this Friday afternoon, 5 minutes before [music] Shabas, and said, "Hi, I'm Jewish. I'm traveling. Is there any chance I could join you for the Zuda?" For almost every observant Jew watching this, the answer should be and would be yes. Think about how unbelievable that is. Imagine a complete stranger [music] from another country who speaks a different language, who grew up in a different culture, has a completely different profession [music] and way of looking at the world. And you and you've never met him before in your entire life. Yet, if he's Jewish, he's family. Where else in the world does that exist? A Frenchman doesn't automatically invite another Frenchman into his home [music] just because they're both French. or an Italian doesn't automatically open his door to a random Italian tourist [music] because they happen to share the same passport. But a Jew, a Jew from Croatia, a Jew from Australia, a Jew from Argentina, a Jew from South Africa, a Jew from Toronto, [music] somehow we all walk into each other's homes and sit down around the same [music] Shabas table. Why? Because Judaism was never meant to be a club or a nationality or a [music] zip code before anything. It's a family. Families don't always agree. Families [music] argue sometimes. Family members have different ways of doing things, different accents and different foods they like and different men hugging, but at the end of the day, they're still family. And that is perhaps [music] one of the greatest miracles of the entire Jewish people. We are scattered across the globe. [music] Yet somehow someway, we've never stopped having room for one more Jew at the table. Because whether we always feel it or not, we're not just the same religion, we're the same family.