Rejuvenation Zoom Video: Meet the Israelis

[Music] hi everybody eve herrera rejuvenation on the land visual network it is towards the end of august 17th 2020 and the 27th day of 57.80 oh it was a very long day today and it's nice to just be sitting down um i want to introduce you all to moshe zeldman who has a wonderful organization called meet the israelis which is going to answer your question right now about why we're not talking about the united arab emirates and all that politics you're getting that from everywhere else i just wanted to have like a nice conversation with somebody who i think is doing something pretty special for israel the rest of that stuff you'll get somewhere else anyway so here we go samosa thank you so much for joining me on rejuvenation my pleasure to be here thank you for inviting me all right so you're based in jerusalem yes yes okay and what does this organization be the israelis full disclosure i'll tell my audience i heard about it from my son matanya who is part of your program and has been speaking to me about it for a while and i thought this is ridiculous this sounds like a great person to interview and for my audience so here we go so so what exactly is meet the israelis so i'll tell you just the background stories you see the context of it i'm originally from canada from toronto i made aliyah in 91. people always ask me how long you've been in israel let's say it's been about 30 years i'm starting to get i'm starting to get used to it it is it is we came in 1988 so i say now oh it's over 30 years exactly so like you know i moved to jerusalem and i find myself you know as opposed to toronto i find myself walking down the streets of jerusalem and you meet ethiopian jews that you don't see a lot of in toronto you see arabs you see soldiers with guns you see left-wing protesters you see right-wing protesters you see uh christian arabs you see ultra-orthodox jews you meet all kinds of people and uh and coming to israel as a newcomer i thought like i'd really like to just understand like what the heck is going on in this country what about what these people stand for what is it like to live in a settlement what's it like to come from ethiopia what's it like to be to be an 18 year old soldier and you know i had this dream of you know one day i'm going to take every one of these different dudes out for a cup of coffee and just you know just ask him a million questions like what's it like to be an eighteen-year-old holding a gun what's it like to be able to settle where were you worried about terrorism what's it like to be a left-winger where you feel like you're a minority because netanyahu has been in the government forever or whatever right right so i never did that i never did the personal conversations but i thought i'll just create a program that gives audiences a chance to have that kind of interaction so it's not like a lecture series it's a chance for audiences to come in i usually with um american student groups that come in college groups um they come to israel and i give them a chance to sit in one room in small groups one group's meeting uh a right-wing israeli settler one group is meeting and although author one group leading a left-wing peace activist one group is being a soldier hungers meeting ethiopian one gives me an elder orthodox jew they have a 15-minute conversation and they tell the participants they say listen you can ask them anything you want you can talk politics you can talk religion you can talk trump you can talk black lives matter you can talk about falafel whatever you want your this is your chance to get to know who this person is as an individual and what they stand for with where they stand on the political religious spectrum every 15 minutes you get to meet a different israeli and you go around the room over two hours having six very different compelling interesting eye-opening conversations it sounds like speed dating with israelis israeli society exactly it's the jewish political version of feeding basically okay so i have a ton of questions first of all what is your background that you would they were able where you did you come from like an organizational background high tech how are you different i've always been i went through the jewish day school system in toronto but i wasn't really that religious actually i'm trying to be anti-religious more or less but um i became more religious myself as i went to university i was doing my degree in toronto i did my degree in artificial intelligence uh that's why you became more religious is that how's that connected conversation because i'm thinking about i never thought of a connection artificial intelligence yeah yeah and relent spirituality okay good yeah yeah this is all the body the mind the brain it's a whole cool in any case um got married and made aliyah i was in education for many years here in israel i was teaching in various yeshivat seminaries traveled around the world i was taught in about 25 different countries uh seminars programs what are you teaching in those different basically judaism jewish philosophy jewish ideas outreach kinds of programs but even when i was back in toronto i forgot to mention that i was very involved in university as an activist on campus fighting for jewish issues meaning as a 19 year old i was already very compelled to fight for in those days i'm sure you know jewry and syrian jewry and fighting for the israel hasbro campaigns on campus fighting against missionary groups and all different kinds of you know things going on so i got i had i sort of had activism in my brain in my veins when i came to israel i studied i taught i like i said i did a lot of seminars a lot of fun for teaching a lot of classroom teaching all over the world but i always found it um limiting to be the lecturer with an audience of people who are prepared to hear what you have to say but the people who aren't that interested in what you have to say are not going to come i want to create a program where everybody's interested because you're going to hear everything you want to hear and you're going to hear everything you don't want to hear so more of an interactive kind of thing more interactive and more i'd say more um more mind expanding more getting you to think out of the box you know your average let's say your average um secular jew have been gone out of the way to meet ultra orthodox jews and vice versa your average strongly opinionated left-wing jew with his friends and his facebook page and his circle right hasn't necessarily gone out of their way to release it with settlers and have a dialogue and vice versa so the real idea behind the program is to sort of get people to rethink ideas um about judaism about zionism about jewish identity about israel identity about politics about religion by allowing yourself to hear views that you're not used to hearing which is incredibly difficult i think these days and getting more difficult uh it seems to me and i know that my audience would agree okay it's virtually impossible to find somebody to respectfully listen to you but really listen to you or even pretend to listen to you um and everybody just wants to stay in their comfort zone and whoever is in that particular zone is satan and it's not even like i don't agree with them but they're a nice person i want nothing to do with them so the audience the people that you have come there not the speakers the not the israelis that they're meeting participants they are the participants thank you i've become semilingual in two languages after being here for so long instead of blind people um they are drawn from israeli society because what you're describing now is israelis who never got the chance to meet a muslim arab and a soldier at an ultrasound i'll draw at the backstreet all in one time sitting and having a chance to do that and or are your participants from outside of israel who are getting a chance to maybe get off whatever program they're on for a few minutes if it's a yeshiva if it's torah seminary there's very specific people they're meeting with if they're on some birthright kind of a trip then it's a different kind of audience or is it both who are there when i started this three years ago my aim was visiting american jewish groups and i really thought like i just from my own experience you know you come to israel on a three week program you're on a bus and you go to masada and you go to the museums and you go to the camel rides and the beaches and the bars and whatever um so you see a lot of israel you encounter a lot of israel you don't encounter a lot of israelis right you're not really part of the conversation right you might open your at a cafe or you sit beside somebody on a bus but the idea behind this program was to get people get visitors participants jewish or non-jewish really that are coming to israel to experience not just israel but to experience israelis and the israeli conversation and the jewish zionist conversation and the palestinian the palestinian debate conversation to experience those conversations i did that for three years um with corona it really kind of put a hold on things because nobody's coming nobody's coming how did you tap into these organizations because they're you know most of them have a set schedule set places they want to go to a lot of them also want to be politically correct in the extremes so maybe their donors are saying to them oh no no no no you absolutely cannot put my group in a room with a settler it's not happening so howard that's a minefield in and of itself how will you be able to how are we able to find those groups so the truth is i i started with one connection i happen to have with one of the israeli service providers i just you happen to know somebody who works i said listen i got this idea maybe try it out with one of your groups she brought me in we did it it blew them away they loved it um and i've done almost nothing in terms of pr and marketing like it's all gonna sells itself it's i'd say any service provider looking to give their participants a different kind of experience you know not just another camel ride not just another lecturer not just another museum but something much more alive engaging it's a real dialogue um you know the my line in my program it's called me the israelis real people real opinions real dialogue right it's very real and it's very engaging and it's interesting i've never yet i've never like i said i've never had to reach out and convince people i get the calls from new organizations that hear about me that want to bring in our program that's fantastic and i've never yet encountered any organization that says well we don't want to hear the left wing or we don't want to hear the right wing or we don't want somebody error or ultra orthodox the whole point is it is pluralistic and you're you're kind of hearing all voices so it's meaning it's a it's a fair open exchange right well one of the complaints that i know i've read about in uh when it comes to groups that come here from all different sides of the of the spectrum is that they felt that they were getting propaganda whoever had brought them was going to push their party line so what you're doing is saying you guys you're hearing it well i hate to use the especially from the horse's mouth i mean this is not universal studios and you're not hearing that you're going to be able to ask these israelis whatever you want you get all different perspectives and you can ask any questions there's a whole movement now within the birthright world of students who say i don't want this scripted birthright zionist experience i want to meet palestinians i want to hear the other side for myself i don't want somebody to determine which places i'm allowed to go to and which lecturers i'm allowed to hear kind of solves that problem because like i put it like this i think that anybody who's a strong right winger let's say should be very comfortable sitting in a room where the left winger also gets to speak because if you're really confident in what you believe in you shouldn't be scared about somebody with an opposite opinion especially when you're sharing the dialogue now if you believe and i believe all my israelis will come might say listen you know your son for example this is great if this matter would say listen i don't agree with these left-wing peace activists i think they're making a big mistake but i'm happy to sit in a room with them and share their conversation i'm not scared by them it does their views don't make me insecure i believe in what i believe and i want to share it i think all make sure you kind of feel the same way yeah no he's he's actually told me that that as one of the people who is talking to one of the israelis that they are meeting he's actually very much enjoyed talking to the other israelis whom he might not have had opportunity to meet otherwise i think there's a christian arab who's in the program that he came back and told me had a fascinating conversation with and as an israeli it made him feel more connected to israeli society these people are israelis just like he is and it's interesting to see their perspective on the things that are happening here as well i mean we're all sitting in that same basket so i can tell you just from him then yeah that's pretty much the same for all of my participants so what happens three years we've been running it as a regular program frontal experience live for visiting groups um once cobit 19 hit and that kind of ground all of tours into a hall right by zoom um and we've had you know not as many but we're starting to reach out more now to do more zoom and zoom is very much built for this in other words everyone in one room together then everyone goes to their breakout rooms you have 15 minutes with you with each israeli just go to different breakout rooms right right beautifully we lose very little of the impact on zoom and it's still very engaging and very alive and people can and to some degree i suppose it's even a little better because the people don't physically have to be here in israel so you could get people who weren't planning on coming who get to meet new israelis so there's an advantage to that as well so so but do you also have participants who are israelis good questions so um one of the organizations we work with um it's an israeli organization that brings americans over and they have israelis and americans high school students doing you know encounters dialogues happening together so this year since they couldn't bring the american component of the program to the requisite the uh the or the coordinator in here said listen let's just do it for the israelis i'm like okay it would be interesting to have israelis meet the israelis right and we did it and it just blew me away how well it went it was it was the exact same level of like wow i met somebody who's a real settler i met somebody who's really ultra orthodox or a real kid like people were just blown away by it so we've decided really in the last two months especially because of corona but but even not we are now making an effort to try and reach into israeli high schools youth groups etc because i believe the program has the same power and it might even be more urgent to hear from each other and speak to each other than the american visitors that are sort of sitting in on it and also who don't have skin in the game i mean when you when you live here in israel you you need to be able to listen to opinions because that person is going to the voting box just like you are or i mean i know when my kids trip to the army including matanya for many of them that was the first really deep exposure that people would come from very different backgrounds that they had because the army isn't all exclusive and not every sector of israeli society participates in the army so there was still something missing there and the largest growing populations in israel are the ultra orthodox and the arabs right and neither of them are represented by by the army if you want to really meet the variety of israelis this kind of program really gives you face-to-face experiences with everybody what language are you running in english just english so for the visiting groups that come from outside of israel involving english we actually did one french program a few months ago but it's basically been all in hebrew in english in english and if the israelis were doing it in hebrew and it's very funny because my israelis tell me um when we did it in her sleep i think i think your son was there actually um most of the israelis said finally i get to just speak in my own language but i speak my heart about what frustrates me or what bothers me or whatever so then it was just more natural to be able to do it in their mother tongue with fellow israelis that's so interesting i would also say not even in the language part which definitely is huge and there's cultural references that then you can make to other israelis but i would say also in terms of the dialogue being more around the dining room table yes you know i would imagine that some israelis are loath to criticize israel maybe too much to others i mean they're going to but they're still it you know they don't want there's so much israel bashing going on in the world that maybe they don't want to add to it but when you're sitting with other israelis they bash away i mean we're always you know it's like it's family so you can complain about everything everything's on the table you know you know and also the truth is israelis are more um they're more familiar with the nuances in other words you know my my ultra-orthodox dude who comes and does his thing most of them are you know they're just waiting for somebody to ask the question why don't you guys serve in the army and you realize well a lot of these young american jews don't even know about this issue of about folks using there so they first have to get them bothered by the questions so then they could i think that you all i didn't know it was an issue right no because so there's other issues maybe more i don't know pluralism in israeli society or what you mentioned like in ethiopia so i think a lot of non-israelis don't understand what a variety i'll just put it bluntly of skin color we have in this country right and how very much you know you don't have that i'm not going to say we don't have people who are stupid and racial and have their stereotypes of all kinds just because we're you know normal or a normal society of people who are you know have their problems but uh but you don't have that the real intense divide like you have for example in the united states right now so it's very different what i find interesting is the at the end of every program i do a survey and i say i do a pre and post survey the pre-survey asks the question have you ever sat down to have a meaningful conversation with a christian arab muslim arab orthodox jew left-wing right-wing soldier et cetera and most people are most not connected to ethiopians out of everybody interesting which is interesting is that most of them have never especially living in america or canada or south africa they've never met an ethiopian jew they might know a little bit about the story about jews that travel through the desert of sudan to come to israel very few of them let's say this most of them are shocked to hear that as ethiopians that were rescued and brought to israel to this day they still face racism all the riots that were going on last summer being murdered because there's a real issue here and most most outsiders it's again it's sort of this airing the dirty laundry like we don't want to promote to the world that there's this actual endemic problem of racism but it's a real issue and ethiopians want people to know about the issue right and here they're free to speak about it exactly and you know and get it fixed which is what we absolutely have to do um and but there's a lot of those stereotypes for example so you know that settlers run around and i don't kill their babies and eat them for breakfast that the ultra orthodox uh snuggle aspect of israeli society and just you know just want welfare i mean there's a lot of stereotypes like that so now so now you told us how gay participants how do you get the israelis the ones that are talking to the participants so that's a really good question um it's a good question because you know i i i came as a jewish young guy from canada to israel married with my kids just you know sitting and you know teaching teaching my stuff like i don't i don't have a natural database of left-wing activists and ethiopians and soldiers right right so the truth is honestly it was a lot of just going on facebook and looking people up and contacting them saying listen i got this program do you want to try it out um i i am an active member on facebook of about four different ethiopian groups i might be the only white guy there i don't know and left-wing groups and right-wing groups and i just i i kind of i get around and i get to know people and people like like your son who come to the program say well that was amazing i want to do it again i want to get my friends involved you know most i'd say most settlers would love to get more good settlers speaking in the program most wingers yeah without it getting filtered through whatever journalist is interviewing you or whatever's going on what's fascinating is you know the way the program most of the program is like i say going around the circles and you know every 15 minutes meeting different israeli and the program with everybody together one big circle and i ask them i say how many of you um heard something today that shocked you that you never heard before almost everybody heard something shocking i didn't know that i didn't realize that i never considered that there's a lot of that and then when i then i give the students the chance to say listen you can pose any question you want you know to all the israelis and right now in one room you've got six very different opinions so somebody asked one of our seminars last summer one of the students asked um he asked the israelites said how many of you feel like you're a minority in your own country and all six said yes yeah yeah of course the minority orthodox they all hate me ethiopian was all during the riots well i'm like ethiopian and you know there's places i can't get a job and and the left winger said well you know the whole country is the right wing and db's and empower forever and nobody listens to me the settlers say well everyone hates the settlers so everybody at the same time is this a good thing we all feel like minorities have a country no but it means that everyone has a desire to want to sort of you know correct the misunderstandings and misconceptions you know let me show you what a normal settlement was like let me show you what a what a normal box viewers like they want to be in the program and have a chance to create that you know answer questions and present their case and then and give their information but maybe you've also tapped in here on the difference between a melting pot society and a multi-ethnic society yes because i've always said i mean i think that the latter is preferable we shouldn't all become you know it's like you can have your your your uh vegetable soup where you see the carrot you see the zucchini you see the potato or you can take that little blender thing and make one big mushroom mix it all up right and mix it all up and you know while everybody there i would hope feels israeli but i don't know if that's true if they're coming to the program i mean let's say some if you have muslim arabs or christian arabs would they say they feel israeli would your most orthodox say that they feel israeli or how do you even define israeli someone who holds israeli citizenship someone who lives here how do you do that so those questions themselves end up being so complicated because you know i'll have i'll have my ultra orthodox guy who might say something like yes i'm israeli i love the land of israel but i don't believe in i don't believe in zionism i don't believe in in the modern secular zionist state of israel what are you doing here right then the error comes along and says yes i'm on a program called meet the israelis but i don't really call myself an israeli i call myself a palestinian or i call myself a muslim i call myself an arab i don't identify as an israeli i think israelis are the jews and i feel like i don't have a stake in the game i don't have equal rights so it's just fascinating yeah so at the end of the day if people come out saying wow like it's really confusing there's a ladies you don't identify you know there's no you don't mean americans who don't identify as americans or canadians who don't identify yeah it's rare to find right yeah so here i don't know anymore actually whatever they feel like in any day right but the idea of people how people relate to their their jewish identity or their israeli identity their views of zionism etc it's it is a really complex nuanced conversation you don't get it by having it with the people who can present their side and hearing them all at once you know i spoke to the last guy he said this what do you think about that and you get to hear the differences and go back and ask them again right i suppose to some degree it is self-limiting because someone who really doesn't feel like an israeli isn't going to come on your program you know if you have or even if you have let's say um a muslim israeli but he's afraid maybe he'll come on as a meet the israeli and his community will get upset with him what are you doing you're you know consorting with the enemy or someone let's say from the ultra orthodox world someone might say how can you do that it's a secular program so i suppose the people who really are in that situation aren't going to join so you have perhaps the people from those sectors who are stepping out of their comfort zone and that's kind of we don't end up getting the real extremes right in any of the in any of our camps but the reality is i'm not looking for the extremes for the sake of having an extreme i'm looking for something that's more or less representative of a middle ground right whatever right-wing view or left-wing viewer or iranian view or so you're right but i've often had you know i've had arabs who say i'm not i've had even ethiopians actually say you know is this a government thing am i going to get in trouble for speaking my mind are you filming it you're going to be posted on facebook for sure have a certain nervousness about being very open or we're not recording anything this isn't government controlled it's a totally open program right uh people get comfortable and they feel very good about having a chance to have the conversation do are they can they get in touch with someone like do you give out the email addresses of the people who spoke so if they want to continue the conversation so what happens is and not every israeli i have has the the means or the will to be in touch with every participant after the program but somebody comes to me and says i'd love to be in touch with um with whatever the your left-wing guy said he doesn't have time but i'll give you a couple of email addresses about other israeli left wingers who'd be happy to be in touch with you right right that's so so now were you you seem like the kind of guy who never just sits and rests on his morals so what do you have what's like your future plan here especially given at least for now the travel ban you know we're not going to physically have as many groups coming in here probably well into 2021 from what i'm understanding right now until there's a vaccine or still people feel safe um you want to expand it to like different age groups so right now you said you're talking you're mainly with students but i can think of a whole lot of grown-ups if you will and some of the groups that i have guided over the years women's groups etc who probably would benefit tremendously from a program like yours let's say i mean i'm just thinking about this women's group that comes a lot it's kind of birthright for moms i've spoken about it before who might enjoy meeting with women from these different sectors just with women and hearing what it's like to be a an arab woman in israeli society uh uh you know doing a program exactly like that in september we're doing it all weekend first time and it's it's a it's a women's mission of some sort i'm not even i don't remember the name um they're a new organization for you they said they want six women that represent you know the affordable care act women left-wing women right etc etc so we're definitely open to moving in many different different directions our main focuses right now are basically because of z through zoom right it reads american audiences especially that aren't coming to israel i mean those who are coming to israel and have kind of a zionist bug and want to get here on birthright or whatever they're kind of already half in the game and they're already engaged to some degree right just by coming yeah but if you have a huge percentage i think it's more than 50 of american jews that have no interest in coming together they're just not that connected for a program or a federation event or whatever but they don't have the israel bug they don't have that much of an inclination to come so we're going to bring israelis into your living room through a zoom program that's one effort to work on that front um the second one is like i say doing with israeli high schools now we're starting to work with israeli high schools both zoom and live we're going to be doing an initiative starting in october um my dream really is um to take the israelis that i have and when travel is a little easier and that the restrictions aren't there aren't as severe to bring the israelis to the states on tour being all six israelis and have them go around to different communities you know to do media events and go to high schools and go to federations and hillels and campus groups and you have so many american jews and non-jews that have never had that kind of israel experience right everyone's eating a falafel you're meeting israelis and hearing you're watching them argue with each other you're hearing the issues that they deserve that you're deaf that they're definitely going to hear the fireworks always happen at the end of the program when the israelis start you know yelling at each other right but then they're all talking afterwards and going out for a beer and that's the difference yeah exactly that's really the difference is that they can get totally worked up and even animosity and you're an idiot and you know you're and then like it's over and okay yes about but we gotta learn how to live with each other you're not leaving any time soon and i'm not leaving anytime soon exactly and that's that's why it's not a melting pot in other words the multiculturalism is i accept the reality that as strongly as i disagree with you we live in the same tiny house called the land of israel we've got to figure out how to get along even if we never agree about basically but it's because if the ship sinks we're all on the same the same way so that's that's a very big but you saw them you're talking about when you say america even you're canadian i assume you mean north america no i just did not so no it's why is it in my mind because i went to a physical therapist last week because i've been having a back issue which thank god she was amazing and she's from toronto so she said to me it took me moving to israel to become american yeah exactly because everybody just assumes i'm america like canada it's north of america it was very funny but you look you could i mean just in english you go to australia zoom now through zoom we did a couple of south african programs we did an australian program we did a montreal program yeah we have been reaching out to look right now the major effort like i'm saying is to reach out to jewish groups that are looking for more programming now that their programs aren't coming to israel it's either one of two things it's either i can't get to israel how do i give them an israel connection and an israel experience right right and number two it's even for non-jewish audiences that want that was my next so that was my next question would you also do this for a non-jewish audience 100 yeah we haven't yet it hasn't been on our agenda all right guys i've got many non-jewish listeners let's do this let's do it more than happy to eat it's for sure just as suitable for for the non-jewish audience there's nothing nothing particularly jewish about the bergen that would exclude anybody right right except for the arguing but actually truth is everywhere so that's totally fine so how does someone get in touch with you if uh they're like wow this is something i'd like to do so i'll be happy to post my email address if you want to be in touch in terms of bringing organizations participating in other programs zoom programs and our website i think our website my email address i can give you you can post and that'll be the best way to read in touch with them okay so it'll be in the text that accompanies this uh this show and that's there i mean there must be some kind of cost involved no no i pay my israelis and they're just administrative costs and keeping up programming people run the program et cetera so that it depends on the size of the group demand if it's zoom or if it's live but there's a you know for a large group i would do maybe eight israelis for a small group of 20 or 30 we would limit it to three or four israelis to keep intimate so it really depends on the size of the group defensive zoomer if it's live and but yeah we have a we were priceless for all the possibilities all the options i try to limit it to um maximum eight to ten israelis per group okay a group of let's say um 50 israeli participants i'd want to have no more than six or seven um six or seven israelis you know you don't want to have one is really talking to 12 or 15 people right exactly in your classroom again i want to keep it as a more intimate dialogue right and like the male female ratio like i mean yeah yeah you do that there's women as much as possible depending who's available but it's an equal number of men and women israelis who are who are involved right right i want to tell you one very for me a very touching story that please so we did a group in tel aviv um it was a zoom call actually and um my normal three left wingers who are available weren't available that day so one of them they must have been demonstrating against me exactly i've got a very close friend uh her name is stav she's great you know she'll get what you're doing she'll be great so you know i interviewed my phone and sounded good and changes to the program um so then it comes time for the zoom it's about five minutes before and i make sure everyone's online and all everyone's wi-fi is working everything so this woman stop comes on and um it's pitch black i'm like stop i can't see you at all she's like well it's dark in here so we'll turn on the lights she says i'm blind i don't know where the lights are in my apartment they never turn on the lights i'm like oh i didn't know you're blind she's like oh you didn't she's like you invited me to speak not because i'm blind i'm like no we needed a left winger so she said wow you know she's i get invited to speak in lots of places but i'm coming as the blind person what's it like to be blind and here you're inviting me to speak in a program and you don't get from blind i just want to hear my views as a left-wing israeli like people actually want to hear what i have to say that's beautiful it took her five minutes to find the light switch okay [Laughter] all right but to me it was it just even for me it broke a certain boundary of like you know i look at somebody in blind they think it was blind you know that becomes their defining uh orthodox left right and you realize yes they live in a settlement yesterday they study in yeshiva all day and they don't go to the army but but they have a life and they have kids and they have a boyfriend or girlfriend and they have they have a whole rich story to how they got to where they are and you want to see the person behind the label right that's a big part of what a big part of creating a level of tolerance is realizing you know like i said real people real opinions real dialogue i can i can respect them as a person who was entitled to their beliefs even if i'll never agree with their beliefs at least i was exposed to them i heard it from them i understand it better now i don't think of them as somebody i could ever deal with or talk to mm-hmm [Music] you know listening to him thinking this is like so obvious i mean why didn't someone do this a long time ago this is just when i tell you i i've been involved in jewish programming for decades now and you know to set up a good program and have the right speaker and the right cost person the right right environment and the weather has to be good as a millionaire you know as a yes be under control here it is so unscripted you just throw them into the room and say yeah talk and it always works great nothing has to be scripted or limited other than time like different things everything happens in 15 minutes but um it's so organic and it's so real that i just don't touch it and just run by itself and everybody loves it right you just let it fly and let everybody do their own thing yeah yeah have you ever had to like stop a program or kick somebody out either participant or speaker because something got too heated it was inappropriate or i don't know without mentioning names of course of course yeah your son never got in trouble put it out for that no no no no so i had the two summers ago my ultra orthodox fellow who prides himself on not really reading newspapers not knowing what's going on in the world not exposed to gender issues and gay pride parades and everything else so uh he was speaking to a group and this one girl said i'm a lesbian how do you feel about that and he literally said what's a lesbian like he just didn't know he didn't know the term lesbian doesn't that was very you know very his own wow very sheltered in his world yeah so she described herself and he's like that is gross like how could you do that that was his reaction and she started crying and she got up and walked away and said i can't deal i can't deal and she walked out of the room and she's like she says i can't hear any more israelis this was triggering for me she got very excited about it but at the end of the program she came back in the room and went to him came to this person and said i want to come to your house for shabbat no kidding because she realized like it wasn't coming from anger he's just being very honest about something he's never encountered and somehow it was so somehow she found something very authentic about it instead of getting offended by it it took her a while good for her though she went out of the way i know it's amazing really good for her because she could have just gone into the corner and pouted and been upset and everybody would have understood what a hundred percent yeah but uh amazing really there's an authenticity that makes people appreciate like you know you're not you're not here to try and twist my arm or make me feel bad or try to you know propagandize me it's just people honestly expressing their opinions and sometimes you're going to like it and sometimes you're really not part of the education is you're willing to explore it is part of education wow that's a great story i'm glad you shared it i really am glad you shared it and you know sometimes people will say to me because the western aliyah is more of a of a pull aliyah usually than a push aliyah at least up until recently most people came from north america from australia weren't coming because of religious persecution we're running away from anything we're coming because we want to live here and one of the things that i've heard over the years is you don't find those israelis really in politics like you don't find though those will leave the english speaking if you will just to give it kind of a frame um so involved in the public sphere but what i have found is that with initiatives such as yours or things having to do with you know like uh kids who need special help like you know different kinds of programming we're very much overwhelmed even over represented and uh and it's perhaps because in the countries from which we come if you want to do something significant for the jewish world or for the israeli world you have to do it yourself it's not like the jews who came from the soviet union where everything was controlled by the government or even if you're in israel where there's a ministry for everything and it's it's less than it used to be but usually there's someone to write to or someone to call there isn't you don't have that you want to put up a synagogue your community puts up the center you're on your own yeah or a day school or anything you're on your own and i think some of that initiative spills out when we do come here and say there's something missing in israeli society instead of saying who can i'm going to be the person who steps up right i think a classic example of that no so i think part of it is being the outsider looking at the society and saying why does everything have to be so intolerant why can't no like i mean like why don't people just sit down and talk to each other why does it have to be so hard you're clearly canadian i think it is a compliment you should one of the i'm really just trying to make israel more canadian at the end of the day you're right but okay like i'm looking at an outsider and saying like i don't you know just sit down and talk to each other you don't have to agree but you know instead of just yelling and you know courtesy and respect yes those are nice words those are nice words fantastic okay motion zelda thank you so much for joining me today everybody the just tell me what the website is i'll repeat it now meet the israelis.com okay that's what two days meet for my carnivore listeners there we go okay calm and my email is moshe eat israelis.com okay and like i said anybody's interested in both israeli organizations that want to bring us in for israelis in hebrew okay jewish groups outside of israel that want to do it by zoom or who are bringing groups to israel and we're sort of aiming at all the jewish obvious non-jewish audiences where we're open to expanding it to anybody who's interested in engaging in this kind of podcast okay so of course i absolutely can't resist giving what you know was on the news cycle the last couple of days maybe you'll get a letter from dubai or i don't know united arab emirates saying all right we're normalizing ties it's time to meet the israelites exactly stranger things have happened so i wouldn't put anything the sign of good things it's a sign of good things okay all right thank you so much for joining me here everybody you can be in touch with me even at the land of israel calm i want to thank ben and tabitha and uh and i want to wish you all also the new month of elul is coming up in just a couple of days the big month before the high holy day so um there's a lot going on and i just hope everyone is listening as well and if you do want to hear something a little more political and you're listening to this kind of in lifetime when it's coming out on tuesday i am going to be hosting a webinar on tuesday night israel time um might be too late actually now that i think about it for you guys but no the truth is i think you'll have some time um you can go on to the one israel fund facebook page you can sign up you can register for that but it will be on there even afterwards and uh so you know we just got a lot going on it's it's i'm finding it amazing even though i don't have chores how then i'm busy with doing other things so we're all kind of reinventing ourselves these days with the world's out of control in so many other ways mush thank you so much again really thank you for having me and your program and if i have any ideas i'll just shoot them your way love to be here absolutely terrific okay everybody all the best all right everybody eve harrow uh rejuvenation for the land of visual network and that is gonna be it for today take care everybody goodbye