The Vietnam War - The World On Fire

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] As I stand here in Vietnam, it's impossible not to feel the echoes of the past. For most people today, the Vietnam War is little more than a distant memory, a paragraph in some history book, a scene from an old movie, or maybe a vague image of helicopters and jungles and protest signs. But the Vietnam War was more than just a war. It was a turning point in modern history. It was a clash of ideologies and a crisis of conscious. It was a moment when the world watched a superpower struggle not just on the battlefield but with its own identity. Let me break it down for you. The Vietnam War was chaos for 20 years of brutal conflict in the jungles of Southeast Asia between North Vietnamese communists backed by the Soviets and the South Vietnamese backed by America. And by the time the US their boots hit the grounds, it wasn't just a war, it was a nightmare. There were booby traps in the mud. There were enemies you couldn't see. There was humidity so thick you could literally choke on it. Over 58,000 American troops never came home. And many who did were broke in in ways that nobody could see. But in that mud, that madness, stood a man named Jack Jacobs. A nice Jewish man from Brooklyn, a son of survivors. And he wasn't just a soldier. He was a man who refused to let anyone around him die alone. On March 9th, 1968, Jack was a young lieutenant. His unit got ambushed in a rice patty by a Vietkong forces hidden in bunkers. And the air was exploding with mortars. There were soldiers dropping left and right. And Jack was hit in his head and his arms. And he was bleeding. He was dizzy. He was half blind. But he didn't run and he didn't freeze. He didn't save himself first. He got up, took control, called in air strikes, and then he looked and saw that there were many soldiers who got shot just laying out in the rice patties. And so he did what most people wouldn't. He charged into the fire, not once, not twice, 14 different times, he dragged his wounded comrades out of the battlefield through bullets, through blood, through rice patties soaked in chaos. He saved the lives of 14 men that day. He refused to leave them behind. That is courage. That's Jew who doesn't give up. That is something the Jewish people excel in. We don't run when it's dark. We don't disappear when it's hard. We don't abandon our own. Egypt to Awitz, Baghdad to Brooklyn. We carry this fire. We don't forget. We don't quit. We stand up for our people even when it cost everything. Jack Jacobs didn't just survive Vietnam. He became its moral memory. He went on to teach leadership, to mentor others, to carry the weight of those lives he saved with humility. He was awarded the country's highest medals. Pretty amazing that one of the most impactful and celebrated American soldiers in the entire Vietnam War was a Jew from Brooklyn. Because that's what a Jew is, unbreakable. So the next time you're in a moment where someone's down, don't walk away. Don't flinch. Don't disappear. Be a Jack Jacobs. Be a Jew who holds the line, who charges into the field of chaos. Because Jews don't leave people behind. Period. [Music]