Rejuvenation: Discussing Rosner’s Domain

[Music] hi everybody eve harrow on rejuvenation for the land of visual network it is july 14 2020 the 22nd day of tammuz 5780 a very hot day in many in many spheres in israel and i'm really delighted and honored to have with me today small roster who is of the list of what he does is would take up most of the show but just the short version author journalist thinker writer you name it uh been around for many many years so thank you so much moell for joining me today it's my pleasure i also grow tomatoes on uh on the roof oh really i love tomatoes i really do the is there's nothing like an israeli tomato seriously right it's just true absolutely absolutely so um you have you you write for a lot of israeli papers you wrote for haaretz uh for married as well as new york times and many papers in english how did you israeli born with israeli-born parents get so involved in uh in the diaspora in in writing actually in very high-level english by the way um for people outside of the country well first of all i i'm sure that your listeners would notice my accent so they'll know i'm i'm an israeli born i actually learned how to speak english at a fairly late age and started writing in english only when i was uh 37 years old so two years two years ago right 15 years ago but yeah it was it was relatively late in life i i did israeli journalism in hebrew for many years and only fairly late in life i started doing my the whole english gig i came to it fairly late now how did i become involved with the with the diaspora jury and you know israel diaspora relations i i should say it was almost an accident uh when we were we i mean my wife and i were 25 26 years old we decided to take a break from our uh early career and go abroad for a year we ended up being in a small jewish community in canada in kitchener ontario canada and we lived there for a year and this was my first introduction to a north american jury and we loved the community and we loved the people and we realized that there is a whole world going on out there that we are not familiar with right and this ignited my interest then many years later i became a chief us correspondent for horowitz daily an israeli newspaper that you mentioned i wrote for and when i became an american correspondent i started writing about the you know the daily affairs of the american jewish community i became involved with it in a as a journalist and and it stuck with me ever since so ha harris for my listeners who don't know is not known well most of my listeners i would say are conservative and i i think that you also at least have been called a conservative whether you think of yourself as that or not was actually oh i was called i was called by many a names a liberal but i was called everything i i consider myself to be a centrist and and you're right hearts is much more to the left right than where i am so what do you think about the paper because a certain certain journalists for art let's say like you don't levy are even you know even left-wing israelis get very upset with some of the things that he writes do you think he has an important place in the dialogue though well i i think it's important that israel has room for all voices to be heard uh i oftentimes do not enjoy the views expressed in it's uh i have many um misgivings about the way it conducts its business especially in english and i'm not sure it's good neither for the paper nor necessarily for israel but i think it's important to remember you know this is a free country and everybody has the right to have a voice and if people want to uh be radical or to be to vehemently condemn israel or oppose israeli policies you know that's the right i don't have to agree with them i don't have to read the newspaper but i must let the the newspaper have the right to to write whatever it wants to write right although the problem with it is that it turns other people who really don't know the context of the whole story as you as a and i do against israel and that's been i think a dangerous side effect but speaking of nature so i i would encourage especially especially you know outside of observers and not to read just one newspaper from israel and to remember that there are many viewpoints and that you have to balance certain viewpoints with with with the different viewpoints so you have been published quite a few times in the new york times and there has been a lot of noise on the in the new york times about perhaps not allowing their writers to express their opinions as we would as you just mentioned is important for it to happen in israel so do you think that that rule that applies here in israel and that we're going to fight for the for the right of anybody to say what they want to say even if we vehemently disagree with what they have to say do you think they're losing that in the united states or outside of israel a bit look when i'm looking at the united states i i must also remember that i'm an outside observer i do not live in the united states currently i'm quite familiar with the scene i lived in the washington area for a number of years and i'm a keen reader of american history and american journals and and so i i know quite a lot about the states but for me to pass judgment on the united states and to say these are the trends and i'm and i'm certain that it's going uh to a bad place i think that would be an overstatement am i um happy with everything that's been going on in the united states no i i'm not happy with everything i think there is um a very strong sense of partisanship in the united states today and i think that people are living in their silos and aren't always willing to consider views of the other side this is true for conservatives and for liberals i see it more on the liberal side in recent days but we should remember but this is also true for conservatives the conservatives aren't always willing to consider the the viewpoints of liberals as well i don't think israel is at the same place i think in israel we are still we still have a much more tolerant discourse it gets angry uh we sometimes um you know we get into shouting matches and we don't always listen carefully to uh to other people's views but i think the atmosphere here because he's really smaller and more family-like in many ways more close-knit society i think the situation here is still somewhat different and on on this um on this issue i hope israel remains more like israel and less becomes more like the united states and how about europe what do you feel about what's happening there to be honest uh my familiarity with europe is is really not i don't feel that there is real depth to it so surpassing judgment on what's going on in europe um is not for me when i look at europeans and the way they speak about israel i'm not happy i think that europeans tend to have a very shallow view of what's going on here but on things other than israel i really can't say anything of any significance about europe are you concerned about anti-semitism that seems to be rising or maybe is just kind of being more uncovered these days in europe and and in the united states no i i think it's rising and i think it's rising among other reasons because of the time that passed since the uh world war ii and the holocaust i think what happened from 1945 up until a few years ago was some kind of time out the jews you know got a a time out from robert anti-semitism because of the very strong impression of the holocaust in in the western western minds and i think this memory is waning and that's one of the reasons we see anti-semitism becoming again something that people can talk about out in the open without feeling ashamed there were always anti-semitic uh sentiments among you know uh westerners and and in other countries but i think for a time it was almost illegitimate to have anti-semitic views and express them as if this is something that that is you know just a common thing that people can have um and and this illegitimacy of anti-semitism is waning right and i think that's a you know problematic and worrying process what do you think about the polish elections that they just had it's interesting because i think the first election since the pandemic right i don't know if that makes a difference but uh do you think that it does do you think that the situation that the world is in now where everybody is also because of the lack of travel we talk about an echo chamber before you think there's more of that like within different countries maybe more a little more nationalism in a negative sense because people are not being exposed as much as they might have been to other cultures in the last few months i'm just wondering like you know if this if these travel restrictions i love to travel i know that you go around you think it's having an it's going to have an effect on the politics as well well i'm sure it's having an effect but i think the the the more dramatic effect of the of the pandemic is the sense of uncertainty that people have uncertainty combined with with fear or apprehension of what the future holds this is true both for the health situation but maybe even more so for the economic situation and we know that in times of uncertainty there is a tendency to look for radical ideas for quick solutions uh you know populist ideas are becoming uh more common and and more acceptable to people we see this in the united the united states for sure we see it in some ways in israel and in other countries as well so so this um atmosphere of uncertainty and of looking for quick fixes for complicated problems that's a dangerous situation and it can lead to all kinds of of problems that we might see in the near future all around the world so i was speaking to my husband this morning who's a he's a physician he's a primary care physician and he's called you speak with one another that's already a good thing um but yeah he makes me coffee so that buys that buys a lot that i have with my two medjool dates that's my breakfast every morning but he doesn't see how we're going to avoid another lockdown with the numbers rising and but but the question is and as somebody who is also very excited that the pools are opening and i'm hoping that they stay open long enough for me to at least get there once or twice in the coming week i know that's a very selfish comment to make um the question is then what happens long term you know you talk with talk about this is going to be a long-term situation and it seems like let's just talk as israelis because really we're not that familiar with what's happening in other countries with our israeli government so let's say we have a lockdown now for 10 days which is what they're talking about maybe they're saying 10 days because the public will scream and yell if it's longer than 10 days so they'll keep extending it then what happens so we lock down for 10 days the numbers maybe go down a little bit and then we don't reopen we reopen you know where do you where do you see this going if you if you were in charge of the covid cabinet okay which i would probably like if you were because i'm not crazy about who is in charge what would you say now to the israeli public and and where would you go i know it's an unfair question you're not an economist but you have thoughts you think all the time for you but where would you take this now look we we are holding this conversation the very problematic time for israel and it's very clear that israel you know we we had two phases of of dealing with the with the uh with the plague we started we started well the government handled the early stages of the pandemic in a with a with a sense of responsibility uh with hands on the wheel and you know not everything was perfect you cannot expect everything to be perfect when so many things are uncertain and unknown but the government did well in handling the situation for a while and then everything just went away without i'm not even sure why for some reason the government lost control of the situation you know there was public pressure we went back to normalcy very quick without much consideration of the possible implication of such things and we lost control and and i think that that we are now this week at a situation when the government is trying to regain control of the situation and it's very difficult it's difficult not necessarily because the measures are difficult to come up with it is difficult because there is no public trust because the public no longer trusts the government and everybody is certain that everybody else is trying to trick him you see it within the government there's no trust between the different factions within the government so they are blocking you know just yesterday a head of a committee a member of likud defied her own prime minister so that swimming pools said that you are pleased with the decision i'm not pleased with it because i don't understand the rationale but exclusive committee heads i'll agree with you there i'm being very selfish i admit it yeah they defied the prime minister and decided to do something that the government does not want them to do now we see it everywhere when synagogues are closed then you see haredi politicians shouting why synagogues are closed and demonstrations in tel aviv are still going on and when you not allow bars or restaurants to open then people ask well why not restaurants but we do have wedding halls so everybody's highly suspicious of everybody else's motivations and everybody's certain that the government is working not to make things better but to appease public opinion or special interest groups or or you know people with with power or people with money and and this is a this is a dangerous situation you know we we we know the the famous expression from the book of judges you know in those days there was no king in israel everyone did has as he pleases yeah um it feels in in some sense that this is what's going on in israel today and i want our king nothing not in the undemocratic sense in the democratic modern sense but we need our king to restore its ability to project power and restore order and until it's done um i can't tell you what the future holds it's it's a very it's a troubling and dangerous situation so you have four children correct i have five are they out and about i assume they're not little teenagers well one of them is on a cruise ship near the shores of brazil for the literally four or five months he's stuck there he cannot get off the ship he went there to be a security guard and i hope he's coming back soon one of them is a soldier another one is will become a soldier in about a month so he's just graduated from high school and he's gone august yeah he's going into the military and i have a younger daughter a 13 year old daughter the family princess she'll still be with you wow or the witch you know depends depends on what day and and you know who you ask she's 13. she's 13. oh just wait [Laughter] i i'm laughing but with great sympathy having raised four daughters of my own so it's fine you'll be fine you might want to start drinking now though just a suggestion right get some things online but your son who's off the coast of brazil that that's crazy i mean brazil also has been one of the hot spots yeah well he's he's on a ship and they're fairly you know they're they're secluded no one is coming on wow on board or or going off board so they're stuck there there's no pandemic on on the ship but but he's stuck there but the israeli government made a great effort to bring israelis back from all over the world is that a possibility or he oh no he'll he'll come back he's fine he's fine i have no no real worries about him he's just he's just there and you know it's it's this is just one of these many crazy things that are happening around the world because of the pandemic you know each person has his or her own crazy story to tell so and this is just one of them this is your family's crazy story exactly okay but you said you mentioned you have one soldier and another soon-to-be soldier in the august uh in the august draft so what do you think about the bigger picture that's happening here in the middle east you know we're we're talking about opening pools and we've got covid and we have all the little not so little but the more internal concerns but it doesn't remove us from the neighborhood that we're in here in the middle east and uh a lot of the people around us aren't you know they're still doing whatever nefarious things our neighbors do so what are you thinking about iran and syria and you know a lot of this is off the front pages because everyone's concerned with other things but it's still there so what are your thoughts about uh especially because you've got a lot of skin in the game as they say with two kids in the army this is not some theoretical thing for you well i have i have skinny in the game as someone who lives here raises uh i have a family here i have my parents here i have my brothers and sisters here and their families you know and i have friends and and you know my country right um what do i think about the middle east you know the in in in one sentence there's nothing good going on in the middle east right now all trends that we see are not positive trends you know maybe a few threads of positivity uh you can see the uh growing coordination and even cooperation between israel and some arab states to confront uh iran and its allies so this is one positive trend you might think that the pandemic is doing something good in taking the minds of some governments off the bad things and on to having to deal with their domestic situation but other than that you know the middle east is still the middle east uh there is an ongoing a battle within the middle east between highly radical governments and regimes and those who prefer to have a sense of stability um for for the people who live here and i think that this this clash between revolutionary radicalism versus stability i'm not saying democracy i'm not saying it's not about democracy or liberalism or western ideas it's just this very simple thing of revolution versus stability this is the clash that we've seen uh for many years in the middle east and it is still going on and i don't think it's disappearing anytime soon so you're asking me what israel has to do the simple answer is we have to be very strong we have to be strong enough to know that we can defeat any potential fall because people are coming to get us and we need to stand firm and make sure that they that they can do such thing so based on that what is your feeling about if it's going to even happen and now it looks like it's really been shelved applying israel sovereignty energy in samaria versions of the the plan of the century the trump plan lots of different names out there you think it's something that we shouldn't be dealing with now that it should be put away for for a bit until things come down or we should make a statement we should shake it up a little bit given what else is happening here in the middle east and the fact that the pa is not exact hasn't exactly proven to be a peace partner the way so many people hope decades ago so so i think the discussion about annexation really mixes two things that uh that we don't have to mix one thing is the issue of israeli sovereignty in parts of the of judea and samaria what people call the west bank it's clear that many of the areas in this territory are going are now and are going to remain under israeli jurisdiction for forever you know i don't see any situation any uh possibility that israel will ever give up on gucci on or on malaya du mim you know the what we call the settlement blocks i don't see any situation at least not in the many many years to come that israel is going to give up on the jordan valley as its security border so this is one thing and in in this sense annexation is you know just a word just a symbolic it's a symbolic move to say publicly what we already know this area are going to remain under israeli jurisdiction and sovereignty now do we have to make this symbolic move right now you know that's so that's a whole different debate and the two sides basically you know it's a it it's really it's a close call it's a close call you can say we have an opportunity because of the trump administration and it might not be there in a few months so let's let's just make the move and hope for the best and the other side would say well why now um the the judea and samaria aren't going anywhere israel is not going anywhere we can do it now or we can do it 10 years down the wall road and it doesn't really matter so i i think i think most of all the discussion about annexation is um is not that important it's really important it's again if anyone thinks that israel is going to give up or withdraw from these parts of the west bank that we are speaking about you know that person is delusional it's not happening um on the other end if anyone thinks that if we don't do it now we can do it later well i'll ask why not what's why now what's the urgency we are already there we already have control over this territory so again i understand both sides of this situation and i'm not highly emotional about it in any way i i don't think it matters that much now i understand why you describe yourself as a centrist because that's pretty much exactly what that uh what that would convey so it's getting off of politics and all of that i really want to talk about a book that you published not long ago on a topic that absolutely fascinates me as someone who's lived here for many decades and raised children here who are all over the place when it comes to their judaism and uh israel judaism portrait of a cultural revolution so perhaps tell my listeners a little bit about this book and and something that those of us who live in israel are very aware of and people who don't are not as aware of as they should be which is also why they should read the book i'll just plug that for a second in there right yeah yeah they can get it on on amazon uh the english ver both the hebrew and the english version of it and they can order it in paper or in a digital format so that's uh and i should also say that i i'm the co-author of the book i wrote it together with israel's leading pollster a mathematician professor camille fox from tel aviv university and and and the book is just is not based on our important and interesting thoughts it is based on data we gathered a lot of data about the way israelis think and behave israeli jews the way they think and behave and we came up with a special hopefully different way to describe the cultural aspect of israeli life what we basically argue in this book that in 70 years israel revolutionized the idea of what it means to be jewish how does one go about being jewish how the way we feel about being jewish the way we celebrate our jewishness judaism in israel is different than any judaism that we are familiar with anywhere else or at any different time it's a it's a it's really a new thing and that's why we call it we don't call it judaism we call it israeli judaism as if it's one word because israeli judaism indifferent and just to highlight a few of the differences first of all israeli judaism is very national in sense judaism in israel is not a religion it's a sense of belonging to a nation much more than it is a religion of course people here there are religious people in israel who do all kinds of religious things as part of their belonging to the jewish nation but even for the half of israeli jews who are not religious who are secular israelis judaism is pretty much a way of life and they view it as an expression of their nationality for them lighting candles in hanukkah and raising the flag on yomatsumat independence day these are two aspects of judaism and they are not essentially different the fact that hanukkah is mentioned in the talmud and that independence day is a modern creation of the state doesn't you know it doesn't make much of a difference so the national aspect of it is is one thing that is uh that is worth mentioning and the other aspect i would mention is you know it is it is almost a cliche to say that being jewish is difficult it's a struggle we are a struggling minority and we have to invest a lot of effort in being jewish you know if if you live as i did for a few years in a small jewish community somewhere you have to struggle to find kosher food you have to look for a synagogue you have to belong to a community you have to pay your dues you have to do all kinds you have to be very active to remain to remain a part of the jewish community of the jewish people one of the things that israel revolutionized is that it made judaism the easy choice the default mode in a way yeah you know a few weeks ago well it was a few months ago before the pandemic there was a group of you know jewish executive from the philadelphia area who came here and they asked me to brief them on the findings that we have in the book and you know i gave them all kinds of statistics about israeli jews what we do what we celebrate what we do not celebrate and ultimately you know at the q and a session one of them asked me so so what is judaism in israel and my response was judaism is what israel is called life this is what we do we breathe we breathe judaism it's it's part of our daily routine we live by the jewish calendar we we we celebrate by the jewish god we don't have to invest any special effort in being jewish and and in this way israel is really different than any other jewish environment in history well you know maybe in the in the days of the of the first temple it was the same we don't really know but for the last 2 years there was never a jewish community in whit in which it was so easy and comfortable to be jewish to live jewishly and it's not at all the same in other jewish communities in the world so just understanding this and understanding the way israeli judaism works and takes i think is very important both for israelis and for jews around the world because some of the difficulties that we have in this so-called you know dialogue between jews in israel and jews in other communities is lack of understanding jews in israel do not understand the way jews elsewhere live and jews in other countries the united states or australia or canada or britain do not understand why israel is so different they don't understand that we say jewish or judaism as if we all agree on what this is but the fact of the matter is that judaism in israel is israeli judaism and judaism in other places is not israeli judaism it is some other kind of some other stream of judaism and these are very different things but do you think that that's also part of the reason why there's now adrift it seems that me and i grew up in the united states so for me i'm like just getting back to the swimming pool analogy i'm swimming in judaism here it's just that's the way it is and for me and i and i appreciate it tremendously because i know what it's like to not have that but it seems that many jews outside of israel except for the pockets of orthodox jews who really are keeping the rituals as strictly as they can and making the effort to send their kids to day school and to belong to the synagogue and really and it's costing them a lot of money as well and i don't even know if that's sustainable that's a whole other conversation but other jews are seeing their judaism as being validated by liberal beliefs okay to be a good person to care about others which is all part of judaism to respect others that's how they're manifesting their judaism now and the nationalistic aspect of israeli judaism which you mentioned is perhaps pushing them away from israel because nationalism or patriotism is seen as somewhat of a dirty word or even what you mentioned a few minutes ago being strong right because being strong infers that there's an enemy out there that you have to protect yourself from and all of these fly in the face of where i think diaspora judaism is trending so while you and i living here and i'm going to assume that you see this as a positive thing israeli judaism i do i do there's a perhaps there's a price to be paid vis-a-vis our co-religionists who are not in israel so what do you think about what do you think about that well i don't think about it as the price i think about it as a challenge it is a challenge the fact that the fact that uh um what we have in israel is a is a jezreeli culture that's what we call it in the book we have a jew israeli a majority israeli culture it creates two two kinds of challenges it creates a challenge vis-a-vis non-jews who live in israel because you know we have a jewish majority country but there is a 20 to 25 percent minority in israel who are not jewish and we need to to live alongside these population and let them feel as if they are part of this country and let them be you know full-fledged citizens who participate in the culture and the life of of this country that so that's one challenge when you have a jew israeli culture and non-jewish minority and it also creates a challenge with non-israeli jews because we have a jew israeli judaism and they have a non-jew israeli judaism and and and there's a gap here that we need to find a way to abridge and it's difficult and i'm not sure that we always uh go about it in the right way i think we tend to focus too much on where we disagree you know we we look for solutions where we can't find them you know we immediately go and talk about you know trump versus obama netanyahu versus you know all these problems that that we cannot we cannot resolve rather than try and look for the things on which we agree and to look for the common things that we can share uh as part of our of our are being uh one one group one people we are one people that's the way it is this is our story our story begins with the family of jacob uh going down to egypt it's a family becoming a tribe becoming a people moving out of egypt as a people and only then receiving the torah so we are a people first and a religion second and you know those who who do not remember this are going to probably drift away from from our culture because modernity is a great challenge for all religions including the jewish religion and one of the strengths that we have one of the ways in which we can meet this challenge head on and beat it is because we are not just a religion we are much more than a religion we have the jewish people policy institute for which you know at which i work as a senior fellow we call it the jewish civilization interesting it encompasses you know we have the sense of peoplehood and culture and shared history and text and the religious aspect of it of course that's also very important all of these aspects are important and keeping them keeping them all is one of the ways for us to beat the challenge of globalization modernity universalism and all the other things that makes it more difficult to be jewish in this world so in normal days when i function as a tour guide and people come here both jews and christians that i guide and also there's a organization momentum that comes and brings jewish women here to kind of really get to understand their judaism in a different way and one of the things that i say to them and is there's um there's a discrepancy in the translation when you talk about a secular israeli so if i describe a secular israeli to someone who doesn't live in israel and i describe it and i believe this is a good description someone who speaks fluent hebrew who has friday night dinner with their family virtually every single week who has a seder on passover probably fasts on yom kippur and um maybe even believes in a higher power all right there's something out there now that describes a secular israeli which to many people would mean not religious but if you describe if you describe someone outside of israel as that you're probably talking hardcore conservative and i'm not even sure if we're there because of the hebrew because one of the things that i find is really tragic is the lack of hebrew knowledge michael goodman talks about this extensively is not knowing hebrew really disconnects people from our texts and from even with all the translations so you know to say that i understand what you're saying about israel being a very jewish country and i think that people don't realize that even even israelis who consider themselves not religious are very very jewish in all the parameters that i just described so the the question is what happens to israelis who leave israel and we see this and i know from myself and from relatives that i have once you leave israel once you leave this little bubble of jewish civilization if you will or jewish culture jewish culture um then is there any if you're not observant in the sense of let's say or keeping shabbat or something that holds you into a jewish community do you think that there's really a chance and we see it from some of the israelis who have left israel to drift away from that is it enough to feel culturally juju israeli as you put it no the jew israeli judaism works in israel yeah this is this is a culture connected to a certain place with its certain rules and certain you know this is a majority culture if you move out of israel and into a place in which the jews are a minority you cannot practice your judaism as a majority culture right and and you must you know then you must decide you can you can become more religiously observant or you can you know become part of the community or you can drift away you cannot retain your sense of belonging in the same way observing uh jews really judaism when you live in in palo alto california or in or or in chicago or in whatever or in paris france this works here because it it depends the it works in israel because israel works for it because of the calendar because of the school system because of the military service because of workplaces because of the way we you know because of television and hebrew and and we're speaking in hebrew yeah hebrew hebrew is a very important component of it but you know in in the book in israeli judaism in the book we give the example of of the holy day of shavuot okay it's a minor one day holiday if you live if you live abroad if you live i don't know in pensacola florida chavoit can come and go and you will not even notice it yeah if you live in israel two weeks before schwart whenever you watch tv you will have to watch you know ads for cheesecake cheesecake yeah and cheese products and if you go to the supermarket there there are sales for cheese products etc it is something that you're surrounded even without investing any effort in it without even thinking about it you are surrounded by jewish culture and that's why it's so easy and that's why it works only here and not elsewhere do you see a a wave of aliyah because of a combination of factors the pandemic or the anti-semitism that's rising or an economic situation that'll start getting shakier for people outside the country do you see that uh we're gonna suddenly get an influx of jews coming in i think more jews will be coming in in the coming years but it depends a lot on on you know on the economic situation both in other countries and in israel the the most important driver of immigration this is not just true for aliyah you know most most people who immigrate do it for economic reasons first and then for all other reasons so first we need israel to be a thriving economically successful country to to be considered a good home a good place to live in israel becomes or even if israel remains or becomes even more so such place then jews will be tempted to come here because you know israel really it's a wonderful place yeah we have our challenges but you know i live in tel aviv i love it it's a great it's a great place so if the economic situation here is is solid and if israel is secure and safe and of course if the situation in other places is not as secure or as safe or as uh economically successful then people will be coming here uh if the if things are reversed then people will be leaving israel rather than staying in israel but i'll give you i'll give you just one statistic i know our our conversation is is coming to an end so so this is a statistic i really love because it's really it really captures in in one with one number the essence of israel's success okay okay i'll just take you back exactly 100 years ago or maybe give or take yeah give a take 1918 okay the end of world war one 100 years ago do you know how many jews lived in what was then palestine in this territory um half a million maybe i'll give you the the right answer is sixty thousand end of world war one sixty thousand jews thirty years later israel was born 1948 with six hundred thousand six hundred thousand right a hundred years later 2018 that's two years ago we passed the mark of six million jews living in israel yeah so that's a hundred times more jews within a hundred years from 60 000 to 6 million in a hundred years if anyone thinks that israel is not a dramatic successful amazing enterprise just look at this number right from 60 000 to 6 million in 100 years it's an extraordinary number it really is and a very young and vibrant population you have four children i have seven the family the strength of the family here which is really the core i think of any society is enormous the love that we have i mean you mentioned your parents when i spoke about your children in the army you're boys in the army and you said okay so my boys are in the army but this is my country my parents are here my siblings are here it's a very different sense of the membranes are very different here when it comes to that and i don't know if there's another place in the world right now that has that kind of vibrancy and i would even say optimism and that's how i want to end this talk with that optimism because very much the news very you know gloom and doom and covet and the numbers it's a weird time to talk about you know to be optimistic but yeah it's so it's better to be optimistic and the bottom line is that uh we're still having babies and the most important thing is our children and the society and we still see a very bright future here uh with all this happening i don't see a wave of gerida you know the opposite of aliyah uh to anywhere individuals maybe but certainly it's not a conversation here now that people are running to new zealand no the the old joke you know in the early days of the state they they had this joke that the the last one leaving they're not the lights yeah we are a country of of nine million people more than six and a half million jews no one is going to turn off the lights here no no one's going to attract light and i think there is also slowly a wave of appreciation from the minorities here in israel uh even though they're not swimming in the judaism because they're muslim and christian or whatever it is and but there's still an appreciation for this country and an understanding that it's a heck of a lot better than virtually any other place and i think we have a whole conversation about that totally it's a very interesting topic as well yes yes and and go good so i'll have you back because i also want to talk about the russians who came who technically are not jewish but feel very israeli and the rabbinate and so we're going to book another conversation because i was making notes and there's still so many things that i'd like to talk to you with pleasure okay small roster thank you so much for joining me here today on rejuvenation on the land of israel network where can people reach you if they want to follow you now or get your books how did they go about finding you at rosner's domain on twitter again i would urge him to go um and um you know look at israeli judaism portrait of a cultural evolution revolution available on amazon okay fantastic all right so i'd like to thank tabitha and ben for putting out this show and all of you you can also reach me if you'd like to eve at the land of israel.com so take care everyone be safe and healthy and have a wonderful week and uh we'll be back eve harrow on rejuvenation take care everybody goodbye for now tune in to israel uncensored with josh haston for a very special interview with ashagir araro founder of the ethiopian israeli heritage center in tel aviv i'm proud zionist that i understand i'm the first generation ethiopian jew who in my family that is able to live free as jewish and we cannot take it for granted and we have to fight for it that's israel uncensored with josh