People of the Pod

Latest Episodes:

A White House Meeting with Antisemitism Envoys from Around the World Mar 16, 2023

Show notes

Two weeks ago at the White House, a group of antisemitism envoys from around the world attended an AJC-convened gathering as part of the efforts of an interagency group created by President Biden to build a national strategy to combat antisemitism.

This week, two of those envoys, senior European antisemitism officials from the EU and Germany join us to discuss that meeting and share how their governments have addressed rising antisemitism.

Katharina von Schnurbein, European Commission Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life, and Felix Klein, Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight Against Antisemitism, also discuss their experiences fighting Jew-hatred in Europe and their impressions of the state of antisemitism in the United States. Klein is also an alumnus of Project Interchange, an AJC institute that brings global decision-makers to Israel to learn about its reality and complexity for themselves.

*The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.

____

Episode Lineup:

(0:40) Katharina von Schnurbein, Felix Klein

_____

Show Notes:

Read:

International Antisemitism Envoys Join AJC-Convened Meeting at White House-

American Jewish Committee (AJC) convened a meeting at the White House of antisemitism envoys from around the world as part of the efforts of an interagency group created by President Biden to build a national strategy to combat antisemitism.

American Jews Shouldn't Be Afraid to Be Jewish-

In this Newsweek column, AJC CEO Ted Deutch writes that urgently creating and implementing the first-ever national action plan to effectively combat antisemitism in the U.S. is essential. The safety of Jews and the health of our society are at stake.

Be Part of the Society-Wide Effort-

AJC's Call to Action Against Antisemitism in America is a dynamic tool to mobilize and unite all Americans in the fight against antisemitism. Read the Call to Action.

Watch:

How Can Governments Win the Fight Against Antisemitism?-

At AJC Global Forum 2022, Katharina von Schnurbein joined U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt to share how American and European governments are responding to the frightening resurgence of antisemitism.

Listen:

87 Ways to Fight Antisemitism: Inside the EU's New Plan to Combat Hate-

When the EU unveiled its first Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life, a multi-faceted plan that incorporated many recommendations from AJC, Katharina von Schnurbein shared how that strategy is being implemented and what it means for European Jews and the entire Jewish diaspora.

Women's History Month: Meet Felice Gaer, Human Rights Champion-

Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod

You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org

If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Women's History Month: Meet Felice Gaer, Human Rights Champion Mar 08, 2023

Show notes

She's one of the world's most effective champions of women's rights, human rights, and democratic values. For Women's History Month, we speak with Felice Gaer, director of American Jewish Committee's Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights. Gaer, who fights for religious freedom, the rights of women, and against antisemitism, highlights the importance of women's voices in an often-male dominated field. She has been appointed to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, serving five terms (three as chair and two as vice chair), and was the first American elected to serve on the UN's Committee Against Torture. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. _____ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Felice Gaer _____ Show Notes: Read: JBI Appeal on the One-Year Anniversary of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Listen: 10 Trailblazing Jewish Women on AJC's People of the Pod Dr. Ahmed Shaheed on first UN human rights report wholly dedicated to antisemitism Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. _____ Transcript of Interview with Felice Gaer Manya Brachear Pashman: Felice Gaer has served as the director of AJC's Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of human rights, affectionately known here as JBI since 1993. During that time, she has specifically focused on the rights of religious freedom, the rights of women, the prohibition of torture and the struggle against antisemitism globally. She has been appointed a public member of at least nine US delegations to United Nations Human Rights negotiations, including the Vienna World Conference on human rights in 1993. And the Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995. She was the first American elected to serve on the UN's Committee Against Torture. In fact, she served five terms, and she was appointed to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, where she served as chair and advised the President and Congress on US human rights policy. And even though she's not a lawyer or a court justice, on March 30, she receives the Honorary Member award of the American Society of International Law, the preeminent international society in this field, as we mark International Women's Day this week and women's history this month, Felice is with us now to discuss today's human rights challenges and the challenges she has faced as a woman in the Human Rights world. Felice, welcome to People of the Pod. Felice Gaer: Thank you, Manya. Manya Brachear Pashman: So let's start with the beginning. Can you share with our listeners a little about your upbringing, and how Jewish values shaped what you do today? Felice Gaer: Well, I had a fairly ordinary upbringing in a suburb of New York City that had a fairly high percentage of Jews living in it–Teaneck, New Jersey. I was shaped by all the usual things in a Jewish home. First of all, the holidays. Secondly, the values, Jewish values, and awareness, a profound awareness of Jewish history, the history of annihilation, expulsion, discrimination, violence. But also the Jewish values of universality, respect for all human life, equality before the law, sense of realism, sense that you can change your life by what you do, and the choices that you make. These are all core Jewish values. And I guess I always have found the three part expression by Rabbi Hillel to sum up the approach I've always taken to human rights and most other things in life. He said, If I'm not for myself, who will be, and if I'm only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? So that's a sense of Jewish particularism, Jewish universalism, and realism, as well. Manya Brachear Pashman: You went to Wellesley, class of 1968, it's an all-women's college. Was there a strong Jewish presence on campus there at a time? And did that part of your identity even play a role in your college experience? Felice Gaer : Well, I left, as I said, a town that had a fairly sizable Jewish population. And I went to Wellesley and I felt like I was in another world. And so even as long ago as 1964-65, that era, I actually reached out to Hillel and participated in very minor activities that took place, usually a Friday night dinner, or something like that. But it really didn't play a role except by making me recognize that I was a member of a very small minority. Manya Brachear Pashman: Here on this podcast, we've talked a lot about the movement to free Soviet Jewry. As you pursued graduate work at Columbia, and also during your undergrad days at Wellesley, were you involved in that movement at all? Felice Gaer: Well, I had great interest in Russian studies, and in my years at Wellesley, the Soviet Union movement was at a very nascent stage. And I remember arguments with the Soviet Ambassador coming to the campus and our specialist on Russian history, arguing about whether this concern about the treatment of Soviet Jews was a valid concern. The professor, who happened to have been Jewish, by the way, argued that Jews in the Soviet Union were treated badly, but so was everybody else in the Soviet Union. And it really wasn't something that one needed to focus on especially. As I left Wellesley and went to Columbia, where I studied political science and was at the Russian Institute, now the Harriman Institute, I found that the treatment of Soviet Jews was different in many ways, and the capacity to do something about it was serious. We knew people who had relatives, we knew people who wanted to leave. The whole Soviet Union movement was focused around the desire to leave the country–not to change it–that was an explicit decision of Jewish leaders around the world, and in the Soviet Union itself. And so the desire to leave was something you could realize, document the cases, bring the names forward, and engage American officials in a way that the Jewish community had never done before with cases and examples demanding that every place you went, every negotiation that took place, was accompanied by lists of names and cases, whose plight will be brought to the attention of the authorities. And that really mobilized people, including people like me. I also worked to focus on the agenda of internal change in the Soviet Union. And that meant also looking at other human rights issues. Why and how freedom of religion or belief was suppressed in this militantly atheist state, why and how freedom of expression, freedom of association, and just about every other right, was really severely limited. And what the international standards were at that time. After I left Columbia, that was around the time that the famous manifesto from Andrei Sakharov, the world famous physicist, Nobel Prize winner, was made public. It was around the time that other kinds of dissident materials were becoming better known about life inside the Soviet Union post-Khrushchev. Manya Brachear Pashman: So you left Colombia with a master's degree, the Cold War ends, and you take a job at the Ford Foundation that has you traveling all around Eastern Europe, looking to end human rights abuses, assessing the challenges that face that region. I want to ask you about the treatment of women, and what you witnessed about the mistreatment of women in these regions. And does that tend to be a common denominator around the world when you assess human rights abuses? Felice Gaer: Well, there's no question that the treatment of women is different than the treatment of men. And it's true all over the world. But when I traveled in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the height of those years, height of the Cold War, and so forth, the issues of women's rights actually weren't one of the top issues on the agenda because the Soviet Union and East European countries appeared to be doing more for women than the Western countries. They had them in governance. They had them in the parliament. They purported to support equality for women. It took some years for Soviet feminists, dissidents, to find a voice and to begin to point out all the ways in which they were treated in the same condescending, patriarchal style as elsewhere. But in those years, that was not a big issue in the air. It was unusual for me, a 20-something year old woman from the United States to be traveling around Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, meeting with high officials and others, and on behalf of the Ford Foundation, trying to develop programming that would involve people to people contacts, that would involve developing programs where there was common expertise, like management training, and things of that sort. And I was really an odd, odd duck in that situation, and I felt it. Manya Brachear Pashman: I mentioned in my introduction, the Beijing World Conference on Women, can you reflect a little on what had a lasting impact there? Felice Gaer: Well, the Beijing World Conference on Women was the largest, and remains the largest conference that the United Nations has ever organized. There were over 35,000 women there, about 17,000 at the intergovernmental conference. I was on the US delegation there. The simple statement that women's rights are human rights may seem hackneyed today. But when that was affirmed in the 1995 Beijing Outcome Document, it was a major political and conceptual breakthrough. It was largely focused on getting the UN to accept that the rights of women were actually international human rights and that they weren't something different. They weren't private, or outside the reach of investigators and human rights bodies. It was an inclusive statement, and it was a mind altering statement in the women's rights movement. It not only reaffirmed that women's rights are human rights, but it went further in addressing the problems facing women in the language of human rights. The earlier world conferences on women talked about equality, but they didn't identify violations of those rights. They didn't demand accountability of those rights. And they said absolutely nothing about creating mechanisms by which you could monitor, review, and hold people accountable, which is the rights paradigm. Beijing changed all that. It was a violations approach that was quite different from anything that existed before that. Manya Brachear Pashman : Did anything get forgotten? We talked about what had a lasting impact, but what seems to have been forgotten or have fallen to the wayside? Felice Gaer: Oh, I think it's just the opposite. I think the things that were in the Beijing conference have become Fuller and addressed in greater detail and are more commonly part of what goes on in the international discourse on women's rights and the status of women in public life. And certainly at the international level that's the case. I'll give you just one example, the Convention Against Torture. I mean, when I became a member of the committee, the 10 person committee, I was the only woman. The committee really had, in 11 years, it had maybe said, four or five things about the treatment of women. And the way that torture, ill treatment, inhuman, degrading treatment may affect women. It looked at the world through the eyes of male prisoners in detention. And it didn't look at the world through the eyes of women who suffer private violence, gender based violence, that is that the state looks away from and ignores and therefore sanctions, and to a certain extent endorses. And it didn't identify the kinds of things that affect women, including women who are imprisoned, and why and where in many parts of the world. What one does in terms of education or dress or behavior may lead you into a situation where you're being abused, either in a prison or outside of prison. These are issues that are now part of the regular review, for example, at the Committee Against Torture, issues of of trafficking, issues of gender based violence, the Sharia law, the hudud punishments of whipping and stoning, are part of the concern of the committee, which they weren't before. Manya Brachear Pashman: In other words, having that woman's perspective, having your perspective on that committee was really important and really changed and broadened the discussion. Felice Gaer: Absolutely. When I first joined the committee, the first session I was at, we had a review of China. And so I very politely asked a question about the violence and coercion associated with the population policy in China, as you know, forced abortions and things of that sort. This was a question that had come up before the women's convention, the CEDAW, and I thought it was only appropriate that it also come up in the Committee Against Torture. In our discussion afterwards, the very stern chairman of the committee, a former constable, said to me, 'You know, this might be of interest to you, Ms. Gaer, but this has nothing to do with the mandate of this committee.' I explained to him why it did, in some detail. And when I finished pointing out all of those elements–including the fact that the people carried out these practices on the basis of state policy–when I finished, there was a silence. And the most senior person in the room, who had been involved in these issues for decades, said, 'I'm quite certain we can accommodate Ms. Gaer's concerns in the conclusions,' and they did. That's the kind of thing that happens when you look at issues from a different perspective and raise them. Manya Brachear Pashman: You talked about being an odd duck in your 20s, as a woman traveling around Eastern Europe, trying to address these challenges. I'm curious if that woman in her 20s would have been able to stand up to this committee like that, and give that thorough an explanation? Or did it take some years of experience, of witnessing these issues, perhaps being ignored? Felice Gaer: Well, I think as we go through life, you learn new things. And I learned new things along the way. I learned about the universal norms, I learned about how to apply them, how they had been applied, and how they hadn't been applied. And in that process, developed what I would say is a sharper way of looking at these issues. But the Bosnian conflict in particular, made the issue of gender based violence against women, especially in war, but not only in war, into a mainstream issue, and helped propel these issues, both inside the United Nations and outside, the awareness changed. I remember asking the International Red Cross representatives in Croatia, just across the border from Bosnia, if they had encountered any victims of gender based violence or rape, and they said, 'No.' And I said, 'Did you ask them about these concerns?' And they sort of looked down and looked embarrassed, looked at each other and looked back at me and said, 'Oh.' There were no words. There were no understandings of looking at the world this way. And that has changed. That has changed dramatically today. I mean, if you look at the situation in Ukraine, the amount of gender based violence that has been documented is horrifying, just horrifying, but it's been documented. Manya Brachear Pashman So is the world of human rights advocacy male-dominated, female-dominated, is it fairly balanced these days? And has that balance made the difference in what you're talking about? Felice Gaer: You know, I wrote an article in 1988, the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, about why women's ri…

Full show notes at the publisher

How to Support Jews of Color Feb 28, 2023

Show notes

Rabbi Sandra Lawson, Reconstructing Judaism's first director of racial diversity, equity and inclusion, joins us to talk about how you can support Jews of color. The social media influencer uses her platform both online and off as a queer Jew of color to drive hard conversations around racism, homophobia, and antisemitism. Rabbi Lawson, who feels a deep responsibility to serve American Jews, is full of Jewish pride amid a rise in anti-Jewish hate.

*The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.

____

Episode Lineup:

(0:40) Rabbi Sandra Lawson

____

Show Notes:

Check out:

AJC's State of Antisemtism in America Report 2022

Take this quiz to test your knowledge of how antisemitism impacts America and its Jewish population

The Power of Joy: Reflections on the Jewish Month of Adar by Rabbi Sandra Lawson

Listen:

Our most recent podcast episode: The Jewish Experience in Ukraine Amidst Russia's Invasion

Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod

You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org

The Jewish Experience in Ukraine Amidst Russia's Invasion Feb 23, 2023

Show notes

One year after Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, Vladislav Davidzon, European culture correspondent for Tablet Magazine, shares what he's witnessed as a war correspondent on the frontlines, and predicts the future for his beloved country and the Jewish community he's proud to call home. We last spoke to Davidzon hours before the Russia-Ukraine war began, when he was on the ground in Kyiv – listen now to his dispatch a year on, as he joins us live from our New York studio. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Vladislav Davidzon ____ Show Notes: Read: What You Need to Know About the Wagner Group's Role in Russia's War Against Ukraine Preorder: Jewish-Ukrainian Relations and the Birth of a Political Nation Watch: Kiyv Jewish Forum: Ted Deutch, AJC CEO, Addresses Kyiv Jewish Forum 2023 Panel: Ukraine as the Israel of Europe with Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Managing Director of AJC Europe, Bernard Henry Levi, philosopher, and Josef Joffe, Stanford University Listen: Podcast episode with Vladislav Davidzon, recorded February 23, 2022: Live from Kyiv: The Future of Ukraine and its Large Jewish Community Our most recent podcast episode: How Rising Antisemitism Impacts Jews on College Campuses Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. ______ Transcript of Interview with Vladislav Davidzon: Manya: On February 24th, 2022, just hours before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Vladislav Davidzon, founding editor of The Odessa Review and contributor to Tablet Magazine, joined us live from Kiyv to share the mood on the ground as Russian forces were closing in. Now, one year later, Vladislav joins us again, this time in person, in our studio to share what he has seen, heard, and experienced this past year since the Russian invasion of his home. Vladislav, it is so good to see you alive and well and in person. Vladislav: Thank you so much. This is so surreal. I'm so grateful, first of all, for your interest, for your affection, for your graciousness, for your respect. But I'm grateful to be here exactly one year later. It was the last thing that I did in the workday before the war began, before the old world ended. And I went off to dinner with my friend, now of blessed memory, Dan Rappaport, who was an American Latvian born Jewish financier. It was also the last time I saw him. He died under very suspicious circumstances. He died falling out of a window in Washington, DC, or of a roof, on the seventh floor, three months later. I just have extremely intense emotions about that six hour period because…I was talking to my wife, my wife's French Ukrainian, she was back in Paris. I said, if anything happens tonight, I'll call you in the morning. Things are gonna go down tonight. And then I did this podcast with you. And so, it's really amazing to be back with you a year later. Manya: Yes. I mean, I am so grateful to see you because I really was very worried. I worried that that was going to be our last conversation, and that I would not get a chance to meet you in person after that. And in addition to everything, you've been working on a book, The Birth of a Political Nation, which we'll talk a little bit more about shortly. But, first tell me, tell our listeners how you have managed to survive and tell the stories that need to be told. Vladislav: It's not pretty. I mean, it's just, it's not elegant. I'm a Ukrainian Russian Jew, so I kind of went into primordial, bestial mode, like Russian Ukrainian, Jewish survival mode, like my grandfathers and great-grandfathers during World War II. I just, you know, something clicked and your your training and your skillset and your deep cultural characteristics click in and you just go full on Hemingway, Lord Byron, and then you just go to war. Like a lot of other people, I went to war. I burned out after about six months and I needed some months off. I was just rnning around like a madman, reporting, getting my own relatives out, helping whatever way I could, helping my family close down their businesses, helping run guns, going on t radio, you know, just collecting money, going to the front, just, going off on an adrenaline rush. And it's admixture of rage, testosterone. Adrenaline, survival, rage, all the cocktail of horrific, let's say toxic masculine character [laughs]. I know you can't, I I know. I'm ironic about that. I live in Eastern Europe, so you can, you can still make fun of all that stuff in Eastern Europe. I don't know if you can here, but, you know, jokes aside. I just went into this deeply primordial state of Ukrainian Russian civilizational structures of brutal survival and fighting. And that went on for about six months, at which point I just crashed and collapsed and needed some off time. Manya: How much of your journalistic instincts also fueled your push on, your forging ahead and surviving just to tell the story, or was it more a familial connection? Vladislav: I have skin in the game. I'm from there. I mean, my ancestors are from there, two of my grandparents were born there. My family lived there for hundreds of years. I'm married to a Ukrainian Jewish girl. I have family there. My friends are, these are my people. I'm deeply tribal. Obviously you take the opportunity as a journalist reporting on a country for 10 years and almost no one cares about it. And you're an expert on it. You know all the politicians and you know all the, all the stories and you know all the storylines. And you, you have contacts everywhere. You know, of a country like the back of your hand. And suddenly it becomes the focal point of the world's attention and it becomes the greatest story in the entire world. And of course, you're prepared in a way that all, all these other people who paratroop in are not prepared, and you have to make the best of it. And you have to tell stories from people who wouldn't otherwise have access to the media. And you have to explain, there's so much bad stuff in terms of quality of reporting coming out of Ukraine because so many amateurs went in. In any given situation, there are lots of people who come to a war zone. You know, in wars, people, they make their bones, they become rich, they become famous, they get good looking lovers. Everyone gets paid in the currency that they want. Right? But this is my country. I've been at this for 10, 12 years. I don't begrudge anyone coming to want to tell the story. Some people are opportunists in life and some people are extraordinarily generous and gracious. And it almost doesn't matter what people's motivations are. I don't care about why you came here. I care about the quality of the work. And a lot of the work was pretty bad because people didn't have local political context, didn't have language skills. And a lot of that reporting was so-so. I made the most of it, being an area expert. And also being a local, I did what I had to do. I wish I'd done more. I wish I went 500% as opposed to 250%. But everyone has their limits. Manya: What got lost? With the poor reporting, what do you think with the stories that you captured, or what do you wish you had captured, giving that additional 250%? Vladislav: Yeah. It's a great question. I wish that I had known now what I know a year ago, but that's life in general. About where the battles would be and what kinds of people and what kinds of frontline pounds would have particular problems getting out to particular places. For example, I know now a lot more about the evacuation of certain ethnic communities. The Gagauz, the Greeks. Ukraine is full of different kinds of people. It's a mosaic. I know now a lot about the way that things happened in March and April. Particular communities went in to help their own people. Which is great. It's fine. a lot of very interesting characters wound up in different places. Much of Ukrainian intelligentsia, they wound up outside the country. A lot stayed, but a lot did wind up in different places like Berlin and the Baltics. Uh, amazing stories from, uh, the volunteers like the Chechens and the Georgians and the Lithuanians and the Belarus who came to fight for Ukraine. Just, you know, I wish I'd kept up with the guys that I was drinking with the night before. I was drinking with like six officers the night before, and two of 'em are alive. Mm or three alive now. I was with the head of a Georgian Legion two nights before the war. Hang out with some American CIA guys and people from the guys from the American, actually a couple of girls, also hardcore American girls from the US Army who were operatives and people at our embassy in Kyiv who didn't get pulled out. These are our hardcore people who after the embassy left, told whoever wanted to stay on the ground to stay. I met some very interesting people. I wish I'd kept up with them. I don't, I don't know what happened with them or what, what their war experiences were like. So, you know. Yeah. Life is full of regrets. Manya: You talked a little bit about the ethnic communities coming in to save people and to get them out. How did the Jewish communities efforts to save Ukrainian Jews compare to those efforts? Did you keep tabs on that? Movement as well. Vladislav: Oh, yeah. Oh, in fact, I worked on that actually, to certainly to a smaller extent than other people or whatever. I certainly helped whatever I could. It was such a mad scramble and it was so chaotic in the beginning of a war. The first two weeks I would be getting calls from all over the world. They would call me and they would say this and this and this person, I know this person needs to get out. There were signal groups of volunteers, exfiltration organizations, special services people, my people in the Ukrainian Jewish community who were all doing different things to get Jews out. Tens of thousands of people were on these lists. And I would figure out to the extent possible with about 50 people, 40 to 50 people, what their risk level was. And I would give 'em advice. I have a gay friend, one of my wife's business partners, who was the head of a major television station. And he would, he would've been on the Kill list because he was in part of intelligentsia and he was gay. I gave him particular advice on where to go. I said, go to this village–and men aren't allowed of the country, and he wasn't the kind of guy who was gonna fight. I said, go to a particular place. I told him, go to this village and sit here and don't go anywhere for two months. And he did this. Other people needed to be gotten out. Holocaust survivors, especially. We have horrific incidents of people who survived Stalin's war and Hitler's war and who died of heart attacks under their beds, hiding from Russian missiles. There were many stories of Holocaust survivors. Typically, it's old women by this point. It's not it's not gentleman. Women do live longer. Older women in their nineties expiring in a bunker, in an underground metro station or under their bed hiding from missiles, you know. Horrific stories. but people who survived Auschwitz did get killed by the missiles. We have stories like that. And so to continue, there were many people working on getting elderly Jews out. Getting Jewish women out. Jewish kids out. There were, in fact, there were people working on getting all sorts of people out. And that's still going on. And I met a Jewish member of the Ukrainian parliament last night who did this for two months. Uh, I saw, I saw my acquaintance who I hadn't seen in two years. Yeah. There are a lot of people I haven't seen in a year, obviously, for the obvious reasons. I saw an acquaintance who's an Israeli educated Ukrainian member of parliament. He spent the first three months just evacuating Jews, driving convoys of special forces guys, former Mossad guys, special operatives into cities like Mariupol, Chernigev to get Jews out. Literally driving through minefields at a certain point with buses full of elderly Jews. And he told me last night that they got 26,000 Jews out. Just in his organization, which was Special Forces guys, Ukrainian police volunteers, Ukrainian Jewish guys who came back from Israel with IDF training, a motley collection of people. But they set up an organization and they went in, and they got people out. Manya: That's amazing. So I know before, when we spoke before you were splitting your time between Ukraine and France, because your wife is of French descent as well. For your most recent piece for Tablet, the most recent one that I've read, you were in Tel Aviv doing an interview. So where have you spent most of your time, in this past year? Vladislav: In my head. Manya: Yeah. Understandable. Vladislav: I've spent, if I had to count up the dates of my passport, 40 to 50% of my time in Ukraine, over the last, less than the last three months for various family reasons and, you know, working on my book But half the time in Ukraine, in and out. I've been all over, spent a lot of time on the front. That was intense. That was really intense. Manya: You mean as a war correspondent on the front lines? Vladislav: Yeah,I was in Sievierodonetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Lysychansk, Mykolaiv. I was all over the front. I was with the commanding general of the Southern front in a car, driving back from the battle of Kherson, and we got stripped by a Russian sniper three times and they hit our car. They just missed by like a couple of centimeters, side of a thing. And the guy actually usually drove around in an armored Hummer. But the armored Hummer was actually in the shop getting repaired that day and was the one day he had an unarmored Hummer. And we were just in an unarmed car, in an unarmed command car, black Mercedes, leaving the war zone a couple of kilometers out, just a Russian reconnaissance sniper advanced group just, you know, ambushed us. They were waiting for us to, maybe they were just taking pot shots at a command car, but they were waiting for us as we were leaving. Took three shots at us and the car behind us with our bodyguards radioed, they're shooting, they're shooting. I heard three whooshes and three pings behind it. Ping, ping, ping. And we all thought in the car that it was just rocks popping off the the wheels. But actually it was a sniper. So, you know, there, there was a lot of that. It was very intense. Manya: Did you wear flak jackets? Vladislav: Yeah, well, we took 'em off in the car. When, when you're on the front line, you wear everything, but when you get out of the front line, and you're just driving back, you don't wanna drive around with it, so you just take it off in the car. And that's exactly when they started shooting us. Yeah. They would've gotten us, if they'd been a little bit luckier. Manya: Well, you moderated a panel at the Kiev Jewish Forum last week. Our CEO, Ted Deutch and AJC Europe Director Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, were also there. Your panel focused on the new Ukraine. What does that mean, the new Ukraine? What does that look like? Vladislav: Thank you for asking about that. Let me start with talking a little bit about that conference. Along with Mr. Boris Lozhkin, the head of Ukrainian Jewish Confederation. I put together with Tablet where I'm the European culture correspondent, wonderful, wonderful conference. It is…

Full show notes at the publisher

How Rising Antisemitism Impacts Jews on College Campuses Feb 13, 2023

Show notes

Unpack the findings from AJC's State of Antisemitism in America 2022 report on young U.S. Jews, including those on college campuses, with the Senior Director of AJC's Alexander Young Leadership Department, Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman. We also hear from Northwestern University student Lily Cohen, whose efforts to encourage constructive dialogue following a disturbing antisemitic encounter on her college campus has sparked hostility, friendship, and above all, a renewed sense of Jewish pride. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman and Lily Cohen ___ Show Notes: Read: AJC's State of Antisemtism in America Report 2022 Take this quiz to test your knowledge of how antisemitism impacts America and its Jewish population Cohen: I am more proud of my Jewish identity than anyone can ever hate me for it Listen: Our most recent podcast episode: Breaking Down the Headlines from Israel: From Secretary Blinken's Visit, to Terror Attacks, Protests, and More Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. ____ Transcript of Interview with Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman and Lily Cohen Manya Brachear Pashman: This week, AJC released its State of Antisemitism in America 2022 report, its fourth annual look at the perceptions of antisemitism among American Jews and the American public. So much has happened since AJC launched the annual survey in 2019, one year after the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and so much has been learned, given the rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses. This year survey included new questions directed toward current and recent college students and their parents. Here to discuss the findings of those questions and more is an occasional guest host of this podcast, Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman. AJC 's Senior Director of the Alexander Young Leadership department. Meggie, thank you for bringing your expertise to that side of the mic. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: Thanks for having me. Manya. Manya Brachear Pashman: And with Meggie to share her own personal experience with antisemitism on campus. This school here is Lily Cohen, a junior at Northwestern University, whose efforts to encourage constructive dialogue on her college campus has sparked both hostility and friendship. Lily, welcome to People of the Pod. Lily Cohen: Thanks, Manya. Happy to be here. Manya Brachear Pashman: So, Meggie, I want to start with you. If you could please share with our listeners why this annual report is important, and what some of the more significant findings were? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: Thanks, Manya. So part of what makes our survey really unique is we're both looking at how antisemitism affects the lives, of the actions of American Jews, but we also compare that to how the American general public perceives that threat. And over the last year, it really feels like we're experiencing a surge in antisemitism that's particularly affecting young Jews within the campus space. But to actually gain a better understanding, we specifically surveyed those who are current students, or recent graduates, or parents of current students. And what we found supports those feelings, it really provides data, and in certain areas, unfortunately, a more dire picture. Some of our topline findings are: more than a third of current or recent Jewish college students encountered challenges on campus related to their Jewish identity. And what we found is that growing antisemitism is affecting the behaviors and decisions of young Jews today, both in person and online. One out of every five Jewish college students reported feeling unsafe on their university campus because of their Jewish identity. A staggering 85% of U.S. Jews between the ages of 18 to 29 have seen or were themselves targets of antisemitism online. Manya Brachear Pashman: 85%, wow, that is staggering. How much of that had to do with students' support for the existence of Israel? Or was that a separate finding? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: I would say this is intrinsically linked to what we will hear from Lily, is that there's pushback students experienced when publicly supporting Israel, 14% say they have felt or have been excluded from a campus event or group because of assumed or actual connection to Israel. So these findings really speak to that level of fear and intimidation that we can't allow to become normalized on the college campus. Manya Brachear Pashman: Of course, AJC has been doing this report for four years, the questions for college students, about the college experience were new this year. But what are some of the constants that keep emerging each year that AJC does the report? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: The constant, which is an unfortunate one, to be frank, is that antisemitism remains a real problem in American society. We found that 41% of American Jews reported the status of Jews being less secure than a year ago. That's 10 percentage points higher than 2021. That's a big number, a big jump. One in five feel unsafe when attending Jewish institutions with which they're affiliated. You mentioned what changed. And I think a reality is that the growing rate and feelings of antisemitism are creating a broader awareness within the American ecosystem. So over nine in 10 U.S. adults say that antisemitism is a problem for everyone and affects society as a whole. Fewer adults this year have discussed never hearing or knowing the term antisemitism, that went down from 16% in 2021, to nine this year. Manya Brachear Pashman: Meggie, in January of last year, someone entered a synagogue and Colleyville, Texas, and there was a hostage situation. Many people heard about this in the news, how did that affect people's anxieties when responding to this survey? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: Yeah, so that's something we asked about specifically. And the reality there is that it both increased concern around antisemitism within the Jewish community, while simultaneously raising awareness in broader society. And for those who might not remember all the details of that really harrowing experience, someone came into Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, a group was doing Shabbat services like so many of us do. He then took Rabbi Cytron-Walker and other Jewish worshipers hostage for 11 hours. And that motive, which is a really important part for us to understand here, was the release of someone named Aafia Siddiqui, herself in prison on terror charges, because he thought that due to antisemitic beliefs in Jewish control, that Jews would be able to make her release possible. And that false notion that Jews control media, banks, governments, that antisemitic conspiracy theory showcases how theories like that move into tangible threat. And of course, the heroism of Rabbi Cytron-Walker ultimately allowed for his escape and the escape of his fellow Jews inside. But that was a harrowing experience for Jews in this country and something where it felt like it could have been any of us. And our data shows that. So for American Jews who had heard of Colleyville, were aware of it, the majority said it made them feel less safe today. One in five American Jewish respondents feel unsafe attending Jewish institutions that they are affiliated with, because of fears of antisemitism. I personally think about that when I drop my daughter off at Jewish daycare. And I know I'm not alone in that. So the reality of the attack and growing attacks, just like in Colleyville, is that it's both adding very real fears to American Jewry, while simultaneously leading to increased awareness of antisemitism within the broader American public. Manya Brachear Pashman: As counterintuitive as it might seem, the finding that more people, more adults have heard the term and know the definition of antisemitism. That's actually a good thing when you can't take a stand against something or avoid it if you don't know what it is. And I think part of that awareness was because of Colleyville. But also because of the many other issues that were in the headlines. Kanye West's very high profile, antisemitic tirades, Kyrie Irving's endorsement of an antisemitic film, the FBI warning that was issued to New Jersey synagogues, including my own back in the fall. And in fact, this survey research was done during that time period, correct? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: Yes, exactly. And I think Manya, that kind of reality or that predicament, however you want to look at it is exactly right. So both of those incidents, like you mentioned, both with Kanye and with Kyrie Irving happened while our survey was in the field. So, you know, my presumption is that they really did raise awareness on these issues. And that's reflected in our data. We also saw that after, we saw that with celebrities speaking out, we saw it with the NBA's response to Kyrie. What also can't be overlooked with Kanye specifically and I'll also say particularly before he had his kind of like broader cultural downfall, there today or something like 15 million Jews here across the world. Kanye, before his Twitter was banned had 30 million followers. His reach can't be stated enough, especially when we have cultural figures, who are peddling deeply antisemitic tropes. And I think our data shows that. Our data shows that that bleeds over into the broader American public. Manya Brachear Pashman: I want to talk a little bit about the statistics, the findings, about how young people seemed especially affected by these fears by these anxieties, and actually experienced more of the hate out there, than adults our age, older than 30, that is, right? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman: So that was a feeling that many of us had going into the survey, but it was just that: a feeling. And one of the profound things about this year's survey is that we were able to understand empirically, not just anecdotally, that American Jews are experiencing antisemitism differently than other generations, often at a higher rate. So among young Jews 18 to 29, who experienced antisemitism online, one in four said that that online encounter made them feel physically threatened. That's compared to only 14% in the over 30 set. We found that 85% of American Jews are experienced antisemitism online or on social media, as compared to only 64% of Jews who are in that over 30 set. And I think what's also really important here is that these anxieties are leading to behavioral changes within Jewish college students. And these are often changes that they feel forced to make. So one in five current or recent students avoided wearing items that could identify them as Jewish. 18% felt uncomfortable or unsafe at a campus event because they were Jewish. And I think students feel singled out for who they are and what they believe in. That's not okay. More colleges and universities need to acknowledge and ensure that Jewish students feel safe and are protected. And also, our data shows that young students are noticing they feel unseen, almost six and 10 of Jewish young adults think antisemitism is taken less seriously than other forms of hate. And I hope that's a number that people hold on to because if we're creating and have a generation who feel unseen, clearly more work needs to be done by broader society. Manya Brachear Pashman: Lily, this is probably a good time to bring you in since we're talking about your peers. You are a junior at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, my old stomping ground. You started attending there nearly three years ago, what have you witnessed since you arrived? Lily Cohen: Something that I have noticed frequently over the past about two and a half years was this sense on campus, similar to what Meggie was talking about, of Jewish students feeling a little bit concerned sometimes about sharing all of the parts of their Jewish identity specifically when it came to talking about Israel. And the other side of this was seeing a lot of sort of activist students on campus, very active and vocally anti-Israel, and sort of creating a climate that made it uncomfortable for Jewish students to be loudly and proudly in support of Israel. And the result of that, that I noticed among a lot of my friends, was sort of shying away from maybe posting when they were traveling to Israel, or posting in support of Israel. And a lot of this was on social media. But as things have moved back in person on campus, as we've come out of the pandemic, I think a lot of both the anti-Israel activism and the fears about displaying our pride in our Judaism and in supporting the State of Israel, have also sort of turned more in person. And so in a lot of senses, this has looked like anti-Israel students on campus, adorning walls and different areas of campus with phrases like 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,' calling Israel an apartheid state, calling it a genocidal state, and equating Zionists of all forms- American Zionists, and Israelis in the IDF and the Israeli government- sort of as one. And so I think that has likely contributed to a lot of the statistics that Meggie was mentioning, just because all of this combined is making, at least in my case of what I've noticed here, it's making at least my college campus feel like a more hostile environment for Jewish students. Manya Brachear Pashman: So when you first arrived, almost three years ago, were you expecting that level of hostility? And did you feel compelled to speak up, or not so much? Lily Cohen: Quite honestly, coming in, I didn't expect this as much because I'd spoken to a lot of Jewish students before getting to campus. And I had asked them what their experiences had been like. And if they had seen or witnessed or experienced antisemitism on campus, and very few of them really had anything to share. Some of them mentioned that sometimes Israel comes up in conversation, and some people agree with you, and some people don't. But it didn't really seem to be as pressing of an issue. But then early on my freshman year, in the fall, before I was even on campus, since we were at home, online, for COVID reasons, there was some action going on on campus. It ended up becoming this complicated thing. But the organization that had organized this action, which originally had nothing to do with Israel, with antisemitism, with anti-Zionism, but this organization came out sort of against all forms of hate. And in that list of types of hatred, included both antisemitism and Zionism, and sort of saying that both of those were very problematic and hateful ideologies. And this was kind of before I had a Northwestern community at all, I was still in my childhood bedroom in New Jersey, kind of watching this unfold on social media, and especially seeing this happen for the first time before I had a community and while I was not even on campus, I very much shied away from speaking up. Manya Brachear Pashman: So what changed this year to break your silence? Lily Cohen: I think it was sort of just by nature of this is my third year here, my second year now fully in person. So I feel pretty established in my communities, the organizations I'm a part of, especially the ones sort of outside of Hillel and the Jewish spaces, which were the ones that I was originally more hesitant to be publicly pro-Israel in. I'm a little bit less worried about the backlash, because I know that I have fo…

Full show notes at the publisher

The New Ways France is Combating Antisemitism Feb 08, 2023

Show notes

France just released its latest national plan for combating antisemitism. AJC Paris Director Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache joins us to break down this new initiative, share how French Jews are impacted by rising antisemitism, and give us a behind-the-scenes look at the role AJC played in helping craft the plan. In April 2015, AJC praised the French government for launching its first comprehensive plan to fight antisemitism and racism, and a year earlier for establishing the position of Inter-ministerial Delegate to Fight Racism and Antisemitism, reporting directly to the prime minister.

*The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.

___

Episode Lineup:

(0:40) Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache

___

Show Notes:

Read:

AJC Paris Welcomes Updated National Action Plan to Combat Racism, Antisemitism, and Discrimination in France

Listen:

Our most recent podcast episode: Breaking Down the Headlines from Israel: From Secretary Blinken's Visit, to Terror Attacks, Protests, and More

Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod

You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org

Breaking Down the Headlines from Israel: From Secretary Blinken's Visit, to Terror Attacks, Protests, and More Feb 02, 2023

Show notes

The Jerusalem Post's Lahav Harkov joins us this week to help us understand all of the big news from Israel, from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit, to rocket attacks from Gaza, terror attacks in Jerusalem, ultimatums from Russia, massive protests, and proposed changes to Israel's Law of Return. Harkov is the senior contributing editor and diplomatic correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. Episode Lineup: (0:40) Lahav Harkov ___ Show Notes: Read: What You Need to Know About the Palestinian Terror Attacks in Jerusalem Listen: Our most recent podcast episode: Surviving the Unimaginable: A Child's Story of the Holocaust Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. __ Transcript: Manya Brachear Pashman: This week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Jerusalem as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dealt with more rocket fire from terrorists in Gaza, ultimatums from Moscow, and protests to propose judicial reforms and changes to Israel's Law of Return. Here to share what she sees and hears on the ground is Lahav Harkov, senior contributing editor and diplomatic correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. Lahav, welcome back to People of the Pod. Lahav Harkov: Hi. Manya Brachear Pashman: So let's begin with the visit by Blinken. His jaunt to Jerusalem was on the calendar for a while. But given the escalation of violence in recent days, and the Cabinet support for legalizing more settlements, did Blinken's agenda change? Lahav Harkov: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that you know, it's updated according to whatever is going on at the time, he has to be, you know, have his finger on the pulse. And so the issue of terrorism did come up. And he did make some really important remarks, just about how horrific it is and how just completely unacceptable it is to attack a place of worship, as a Palestinian terrorist did on Friday night. But of course, that was followed by another terrorist attack the next morning, in which two people were killed. Manya Brachear Pashman: So his original agenda included a strategy of how to deal with the nuclear situation in Iran. Can you kind of update us on where Israel stands on that situation right now and how it's dealing with hostilities from Iran? Lahav Harkov: Yeah, you know, it's not so different from what it was in the previous government, right. There's some nuances that are different, but overall, Netanyahu opposes the Iran deal. But that deal is not so much on the table anymore anyway. Netanyahu openly says that Israel has done things to stop Iran from developing certain weapons, which seems to be a hint at an attack in Isfahan, which is a city in Iran, in what apparently was a drone manufacturing site. But of course, Netanyahu would not get into that level of detail. But there's been reports, it was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, that it was Israel that did it, sort of in coordination with the US. Manya Brachear Pashman: In other words, taking matters into Israel's own hands and taking care of the situation within Iran. Lahav Harkov: All the reports say generally that it is in coordination with the US. So you know, Israel is doing it. But I guess you could say Israel is taking matters into its own hands, but it's not acting, like at cross-purposes with the US. Manya Brachear Pashman: So was there progress made in the conversations between Netanyahu and Blinken? I mean, are the United States and Israel still on the same page when it comes to Iran or were there sticking points? Lahav Harkov: Overall, I think that Netanyahu would like a more aggressive approach to Iran. You know, more sanctions, more willingness to strike, but I think that they're still in a good place. Overall, they're sort of, again, working towards similar purposes, working in the same direction. It's not a point, you know, if Netanyahu was Prime Minister, I don't know, a year ago, and the Biden administration was really actively pursuing the Iran deal something Netanyahu thinks is a great danger to Israel and in the world. That's not where we are, right. The Biden administration has all but dropped the deal. And with the massive protests and the violent suppression by the regime, you know, the Biden administration is not in a place where it's looking to cut Tehran any slack. So, the differences, I guess, are, maybe they're not small, but they're not as big as they could have been, even just six months ago. Manya Brachear Pashman: So another topic that Blinken had hoped to discuss this week was diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. I don't know what that did end up on the agenda as significantly as was intended, but how likely is that to happen? And if it's likely, what's the timeline and what are the caveats? Lahav Harkov: So I think it's very premature to talk about a timeline. The Saudis themselves, in any public statement, when the top officials are asked about this issue, they say that there needs to be some sort of movement on the Palestinian file before there can be peace with the Saudis. That being said, that was the case for the entire Arab world for the past 23 years or so, and yet Israel established relations with four different Arab countries in 2020. And so it's possible that Netanyahu can once again make the seemingly impossible happen. And certainly, you know, I think we saw maybe a baby step in that direction after Friday night's terrorist attack. One of the countries that condemned that attack was Saudi Arabia, which is not the usual thing. And so that was very interesting. But I still think that it's very premature to be talking about timelines. I don't know when it's gonna happen. But Netanyahu is really, really intent on trying. Manya Brachear Pashman: So, Secretary Blinken also hinted that the proposed judicial reforms could undermine Israel's democracy, and that this common connection with the United States, this democratic connection, right. Let's talk about those reforms, which many legal scholars have said, could weaken the Israeli Supreme Court? Can you walk us through those proposed changes and why there's so much concern? And frankly whether that concern is overblown? Lahav Harkov: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I take a little bit of issue with the premise because there certainly were a lot of headlines that said that blinkin said what you said he did. But when you look at what he actually said, which anyone can find on the State Department website. He said that Israel and the US share democratic values. He said that the sort of very robust debate going on about the judicial issue, but he didn't actually mention the judicial issue, but it was in response to questions about it. And it's sometimes not, but he said the robust debate is indicative of a strong democracy. So none of these things to me sounded like Blinken chiding Israel, I think he was being very cautious. And I would be surprised if he did support these judicial reforms, although really, he shouldn't take a position this way or other. But I think that he was a lot more cautious, and a lot more neutral in his statement than the way it had been reported in a lot of places. Now, I understand that behind the scenes, he did express caution. But I think the way that this was reported on was sort of slanted and inaccurate, almost everywhere. But moving forward, look, the judicial reform, it goes very far in the opposite direction of where things stand in Israel right now. But where things stand in Israel right now is also extremely unbalanced. You know, you're supposed to have checks and balances between the different parts of government. And, there's only checks and no balances right now, like the court can really check anything that the government and the Knesset does. But the Knesset and the government have no bearing, no influence practically on what happens. The process of selecting judges, for example, is there's a joint committee, that includes politicians and judges and the Bar Association. And essentially, it's slanted so that the judges have, you know, outsized influence, for example. And all kinds of things like that. It takes a really long time to explain it. So I'm not gonna take our whole half hour to explain the judicial reform. But I will say two things. First of all, I often find it deeply ironic when Americans criticize the reform, because certain parts of it will just make it more like America's system. Right? So when people say like, oh, it's not democratic, you know, to have politicians having too much of an influence on the judicial selection process, I think to myself, well, how do you think Supreme Court justices are chosen in America, right? And then there's just like, another thing that happens in the Supreme Court in Israel is that you have an extremely broad concept of standing in the court, like an NGO can bring a case before the court, even though they have nothing to do with it. Like let's say, I don't know, an NGO can say that Israel is building on property that actually belongs to Palestinians, even if the Palestinians aren't suing, and haven't spoken to that NGO. And in the US, right, the idea of who can have standing before the Supreme Court is much narrower than that. So to me, it's like people are hearing what's being said by certain figures that they like to read or hear from in the media and they're just echoing out without really thinking. That being said, I do think that the reform swings, it does like a one ad, right where you have an extremely powerful judiciary and you want to fix that unjust injustice of an imbalance. But this reform, the way it stands now, creates a new imbalance, it's just in the opposite direction. But I think that, Israel's system is built on compromise. We have a coalition system, you have a lot of different parties there. They're sort of push and pull and in the end, you have to agree on something. Now, it's true that this coalition, they all want to make big changes to the courts. But I think that in the parliamentary process, which of course, includes the opposition, that they are active parts of the committee that's legislating this reform, I think it will end up more moderate than it is now. And you know, and people can debate about the degree right, like to what level should there be reform? Netanyahu says that it's not going to be exactly as it was proposed at first, he says that I will hear the opposition out, and that there will be changes made. I know a lot of people just don't believe him. You know, he is a polarizing figure. But he's not the only person involved with this bill who says that. And so my hope is that that's what will happen in the end. And that, as Blinken, actually himself said, that hopefully they will be able to reach some kind of consensus or if not consensus, than just a broad section of the Knesset working together. Manya Brachear Pashman: So what is fueling the protests? The direction of the imbalances is particularly sensitive. Is it just the polarizing nature of it being a Netanyahu administration? What's fueling the protests? Lahav Harkov: I actually think there's a little bit of both. I think first of all, there is a subsection of the protesters who are genuinely outraged by the reform, and maybe not the concept of reform itself, maybe they think it just goes way too far and puts too much of the power in the hands of the politician, as opposed to the courts. You know, there are people like that, certainly, you have a lot of figures from the legal world who joined the protest and speak at the various protests. On the other hand, for basically the entire time since we started our whole crisis where we had five elections in four years, there's been protests outside the Prime Minister's residence as Netanyahu was Prime Minister. So you know, almost the entire time, minus a year and a bit. And there was a protest movement, and it ebbed and flowed. There were bigger protests and smaller protests. But I just think that this is an outgrowth of that. And honestly, it's been every week since the government was formed. I guess that's like six weeks now. And the first protests were not really so focused on the judicial issue, they were focused on other sort of social issues, which that's also something that we could discuss about this government. But, they then shifted to the judiciary, which I think gave them like, an intellectual gloss, sort of, it made it seem more serious than just people who are angry at this government. But I do think that it certainly was a building on an existing, anti Netanyahu protest movement. Manya Brachear Pashman: So what are the social concerns causing concern and fueling protests? Lahav Harkov: There is a lot of sort of homophobic and very strongly anti-gay rhetoric coming from this coalition, coming from specifically within the religious Zionist party, and some of the things being said are very ugly, and I think like hurtful to people who are gay and there is a lot of concern about that. And I would also add that there's misogyny coming from the same people as well, in terms of not even just women in the army, because I think it's fair to have a debate about, you know, whether it's appropriate for women to be in combat roles, et cetera. Like there's a debate to be had there. And I wouldn't jump to saying that's misogyny, but other things just about like women's roles in society that, you know, I wonder what year it is when you hear those people say these things. What's interesting is that it's not the Haredim who are saying either the homophobic or the misogynistic things for the most part, because they, their idea is sort of, we have our community and we do things within our community one way and sort of, even if they disapprove of what other communities do, they're less involved. Let's put it that way. But it's the religious Zionist party, which is, for many years, sort of a bridge between those two parts of society. But I would say in recent years, at least, the political religious Zionism, if not the actual communities, leads towards the Haredi direction. So anyway, it's been coming from them. Netanyahu has said that there's not going to be any anti gay laws, and nothing's going to change. I believe him that that's what he wants. I would say that between the judicial stuff, and also, you know, these things about LGBT people, you know, Netanyahu can't say no to everything that his partners want, because then he won't have a coalition anymore, they'll quit, and we'll go to another election. And so I don't know where the breaking point is going to be. But in order for Netanyahu to maintain his coalition, there will be a breaking point somewhere. Somewhere, he's going to have to say yes, even though he really wants to say no. Manya Brachear Pashman: So another change, proposed change, that has sparked tremendous concern among Jews, at least here in the diaspora, is the possibility that people who are not recognized as Jewish under Jewish law will be restricted. Right now the Law of Return allows every Jew to emigrate to and live in Israel as long as they have at least one Jewish grandparent. The definition of a Je…

Full show notes at the publisher

Surviving the Unimaginable: A Child's Story of the Holocaust Jan 26, 2023

Show notes

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Sam Harris, who is one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust. As a young child, Sam watched in horror as his family was taken to Treblinka and murdered, but he and his two older sisters were able to beat the odds. Listen as Sam recounts the unimaginable struggles he faced during one of the darkest periods in human history and how his experience motivated him to play a central role in the founding of the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

*The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.

Episode Lineup:

(0:40) Sam Harris

Show Notes:

Read:

Sammy - Child Survivor of the Holocaust by Sam Harris

Watch:

Full live recording of this episode

Listen:

Interview with Howard Reich, as mentioned in this week's episode: The Art of Inventing Hope: Elie Wiesel's Masterclass for Humanity
Our most recent podcast episode: 'Leopoldstadt' Actor David Krumholtz Sees Tom Stoppard's Holocaust Play as the Role of a Lifetime

Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod

You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org

'Leopoldstadt' Actor David Krumholtz Sees Tom Stoppard's Holocaust Play as the Role of a Lifetime Jan 19, 2023

Show notes

Since its Broadway opening last fall, Tom Stoppard's "Leopoldstadt," a play about a multigenerational Jewish family in Vienna, based on Stoppard's own family history, has been met with critical acclaim. Hear from celebrated actor David Krumholtz, who plays the patriarch of the family, on how his Jewish identity has been transformed by the role, why he speaks to his young children about antisemitism, and the importance of Holocaust education today. _ Episode Lineup: (0:40) David Krumholtz __ Show Notes: Leopoldstadt: Tickets and more information Photo credit: Joan Marcus Listen to: Our most recent podcast episode: Shabbat Shalom No More? One Year Later, Colleyville Synagogue Wrestles with Impact of Hostage Crisis Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. __ Transcript of Interview with David Krumholtz: Manya Brachear Pashman: Since its official Broadway opening on October 2 2022, Tom Stoppard's latest play Leopoldstadt has received widespread acclaim. One of the hottest tickets in town, it has been extended through July 2023. The drama follows multiple generations of a Viennese Jewish family over half a century, beginning in 1899. Through the Holocaust and beyond, the fictional family and the story is based on Stoppard's own. When he was in his 50s, the playwright learned that he was Jewish and had lost his grandparents and many other family members in the Shoah. With us now to discuss his role in the play is actor David Krumholtz, who plays Hermann Merz, the tragic patriarch of this fictional family who has converted to Catholicism for purposes of social and professional mobility, but discovers in the end it is to no avail. David, welcome to People of the Pod. David Krumholtz: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Manya Brachear Pashman: So I described your character as tragic, but it is a play about the Holocaust. So would you say all of the characters in this play are tragic? Would you agree? Walk our audience through Hermann Merz's approach to life, to his Judaism. David Krumholtz: I don't see the character as tragic at all, which is sort of a conversation I needed to have with Patrick Marber, our director before I even auditioned for the role. I think he's heroic in many ways. He's doing the very best he can for his family, and for the future generations of his family, and in doing so, he has had to shed his Judaism. You get the sense, though, that he was kind of raised in the religion of business. The most important thing he inherited, this textile factory from his father, and his father did very well. And it seems to me that he was groomed to take over and bring it to great success, build it farther than his father could have ever imagined. And for the sake of his family, and for the sake of future generations. So, certainly converting to Catholicism in late 19th century Austria, was one of the ways to do that, you know, he wasn't labeled anymore, it opened up channels that he probably would have had a harder time getting in on. He did all that he possibly could do to benefit from the choice. And it's a choice, ultimately, that he must have known broke his mother's heart, and alienated him from his family, from the more religious members of his family. And yet, he did it anyway. And he does suffer for it. And it seems to me he's willing to suffer for it. But when we learn about him, is that at the very core of who he is, he is Jewish. At the first instance, of someone challenging his Judaism or, you know, mocking his Catholicism, he's ready to kill the guy, literally. So we get the sense that this is a very, very deep seated issue that comes from, as he explains through a story about his grandfather being bullied for being Jewish. It's true. There's a trauma there that he is doing this from, it's not all just business-minded and flippant. This is something that he has been tortured by his whole life by the time we meet him. Which is why he has so many strong opinions on Israel and the future of Jews, and assimilation in Austria. Vienna, being at the time, the cultural center of the world with an emperor king who emancipated Jews from all wrongdoing. And was a sort of Jewish sympathizer who gave Jews quite a lot of leeway that they didn't have prior to his reign. So things are looking up when we meet Hermann Merz, looking up not only for his business and his family, but for Jews in Vienna. I think he has every right to feel positively about the future, think positively about the future, and not want to move his entire family to the middle of the desert. He's righteous in that indignation. And sadly, time tells a different story. The next, you know, 40 years of his life, teach him that his ideals and his hopes for the future were obsolete or were futile. And that's the tragedy of the story of Hermann Merz. But I don't view him as a tragic figure. Manya Brachear Pashman: But what you're referring to is there's a kind of an ongoing debate through the play between Ludvig, his brother in law, if I'm not mistaken, and Hermann, and that debate is about assimilation and what the definition of assimilation is. Ludvig says assimilation doesn't mean to stop being a Jew. Assimilation means to carry on being a Jew without insult. Would you agree with that definition? And would you consider yourself assimilated, by that definition or another? David Krumholtz: I think for the time in which the play is set, that is a very keen definition. The idea of being anything other than what religion you're raised in, identifying with a nationality, let's say, was a novel concept at the time. The term thrown around by Ludvig in that scene a couple times is the word ordinary Jew, ordinary Jews, meaning not rich, middle class Jews who don't have access to all the luxuries that my character does. And that's an interesting little phrase there. ordinary jew, What is an ordinary Jew, what separates us? What makes you know, a Hasidic Jew a Hasidic Jew, what makes an assimilated Americanized for instance Jew, the same Jew or a different Jew? What's the difference? I personally like to think that there is only a matter of degrees of religiosity between the two. I would hope that as appreciative of I am as I am as an assimilated Americanized Jew, as appreciative as I am of the Hasidic community of the religiosity of the ultra Orthodox community, the Orthodox community, that those communities would be as appreciative of me, that there'd be no judging. Especially at this point, 80 years, past a genocide that we all suffered through, where it didn't matter how religious you were, at the end of the day, all that mattered was what was on your birth certificate. And one would hope that, 80 years later, we're all sort of on equal footing with one another. And we've all carried on being Jews without insult in one way or another. I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens, which is the most multi-ethnic, multinational place on Earth, believe it or not, per capita. Queens represents more nationalities than any place on Earth. Just the borough of Queens alone, not to mention the entire city of New York. So for me, there wasn't any corner to fit into, it was all a melting pot, and I could be whatever I wanted to be. And so over time, after Hebrew school, and having had my Bar Mitzvah, I felt strongly that I didn't necessarily relate or feel attracted to the more religious tenets of Judaism. But that culturally I was Jewish. And I've taken great pride in playing Jewish characters, and telling the story of Jewish people over the last 30 years, in my work, when I get the chance to. and so in that way, I've carried on being a Jew without insult, you know, it is part of my identity, this play has made me sort of realize how much of that identity I maybe took for granted at times. But for the most part, it's nice to be a part of something that makes a clear statement. And that statement is that Judaism is more than just a religion, it's a cultural existence, it is something unique unto itself. And there are, there's a lot to be proud of, there's a lot of amazing history to be cherished and celebrated, and to be celebrated as well. Manya Brachear Pashman: So how did you find your way to Leopoldstadt? And I will follow that up with a question of, how have you found your way to your Jewish heritage, kind of discovering what you might have taken for granted through Leopoldstadt? David Krumholtz: Patrick Marber, the director of Leopoldstadt, had his sights set on me. It flabbergasted me to be honest, I haven't done a stitch of theater in 30 years. I'm not your sort of prototype for the role on paper. And yet, he was enamored with my work and sensed that it would all pan out nicely. And so I don't look a gift horse in the mouth. So I took the opportunity. My father would have loved this play. My father was a deeply devout Jewish culturalist at heart. You know, he grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was surrounded by Jewish people, his upbringing was surrounded by old world Jews who had settled in America prior to the war, and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who had just come back. That was his reality growing up as a kid in New York. And so these themes were an obsession for him his whole life. So I thought, well, one way to connect was to evoke the memory of my father, and so I did that, and in doing so, I came to some pretty tough realizations, one being my father was quite frustrated with me, and how I sort of abandoned the religion, early on in my life. There comes a time in, I think, in a lot of people's lives where they question the existence of God, they question the existence of biblical history. And that was happening to me and it frustrated my father a great deal, because he had a tremendous amount of faith. And it's only recently that I've had to take on quite a bit of faith in my life now that I'm a father and being an actor is a leap of faith. It took me a long time to realize that. I just know from doing this play, that it would have made my father very, very proud. And that if he could tell a story this is the story he would tell. And so, for me, rediscovering my Judaism, through this story, as a tribute to his life, is the formula for success. And for me finding greater pride and being Jewish than perhaps I've ever had before. Manya Brachear Pashman: That's beautiful. This was not a typical role for you, and you hadn't done a stitch of theater for 30 years. I believe I read somewhere that, in fact, when you're making your commute into the city to do these shows, you call someone to kind of share how intimidated you are by this play, and that that call settles you down. Do you still do that? David Krumholtz: There are certain days I just have to do that. The weight of this role is heavy. This is a heavy responsibility. In many ways, the role of Hermann is kind of, along with other roles in the play, but he's one of the anchors of this ship that is sailing to great success on Broadway, and that's not lost on me and you know, when I walk out of the theater at night and, and get teary eyed thank yous from our patrons, who clearly have been deeply impacted by what they've just seen. It's not lost on me. And so yes, you know, little old me on the way in, in my car to the city has to sometimes call anyone. But typically, my family, someone in my family and just sort of say, Hey, this is quite a mountain to climb and hang in here. But there are moments certainly where the pressure is enormous, and I feel unworthy of the glory of playing this role. It's just part of who I am. It's what motivates me. Those feelings of insecurity actually motivate a great performance, or what I hope is a great performance. And, so I make those calls. And, you know, and like I said, they're family mostly because to me, family is just deeply important, and they know me better than anyone. Manya Brachear Pashman: Well, that leads me to ask about the family tree in Leopoldstadt, which plays a very important role. It's published in the program, so that you can study it. In fact, someone told us to study it before we even watch the play. I don't know if it made that much of a difference. It made so much more sense afterward. But there are, I believe, 31 characters in Leopoldstadt, is that right? 24 of them are members of this extended family. And even in the play, there's a reference to how confusing that family tree can be. Why? What's the point of that kind of complicated, many branches of that family tree? David Krumholtz: Well, it's a stroke of brilliance by Tom Stoppard who's written quite a few pieces that are strokes of brilliance. It's purposeful. It's so that at the end of the play, when your frustration mounts at not knowing exactly who every character is, there's so many characters, and how they're related to each other. When that frustration mounts, you can equate that frustration with the fact that each one of those people, each one of those characters, individualism didn't matter. At the end of the day, they were killed for being something they couldn't help but be. They were killed for being Jewish. It didn't matter what their hopes were, what their dreams were, what their aspirations were, it didn't matter whose mothers were, who's who, you know, whose sons had mothers and whose mothers had sons. none of it mattered. Death is the final, there's so much finality in death. And at the end of the play, we get a sense of that finality, that there is no coming back. There's only memory, there's only memory. And memory, for as impactful as memory can be at times, is also a thinly veiled representation of the real person. And so when our audiences walk out of the theater going, I didn't get to know that character, I didn't get to know that character…you knew as much as they knew about themselves, before they were killed, before their life ended. The frustration you feel with the frustration of generations worth of Jewish families that lost their loved ones. And that's the point. Yeah, Manya Brachear Pashman: You talk a lot about walking out of the theater and how you encounter audience members. My husband and I walked out of the theater, and we kind of stood off to the side, just really in stunned silence. We were still processing everything we had just watched and heard. And these two ladies came by and they were taking smiling selfies outside the right by the poster. And my husband and I were like, Did you just see the same play that we saw? shocked that, you know, they show it was there, you know, maybe first time on Broadway and you know, this was a Tom Stoppard play, it's exciting. But we were so kind of emotionally drained. David Krumholtz: We've been told by a lot of audiences that they're not prepared to clap for us, when we take our vows, that the ending in the play is so deeply tragic and so stunning that suddenly there are these actors on stage taking their vows. And, our crowds aren't quite ready to process. The difference between what they just saw and reality, the difference between 1900 and 2023. And we feel it as well. And we are as a cast somewhat desensitized to the trauma of the play. But during the rehearsals, and during our first couple of weeks of runs, we all had a very, very, very diffic…

Full show notes at the publisher

Shabbat Shalom No More? One Year Later, Colleyville Synagogue Wrestles with Impact of Hostage Crisis Jan 12, 2023

Show notes

One year ago, Jeff Cohen was taken hostage during Shabbat services by an antisemitic attacker. Hear from Cohen, who is now the president of Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, about all that has transpired since that traumatic day and how the attack has impacted him and the Colleyville Jewish community. Bradley Orsini, the Secure Community Network's senior national security advisor, also joined the conversation to share what steps American Jews can take to protect and empower their communities amid increasing antisemitism.

____

Episode Lineup: