Michael Eisenberg: Iran, USA, Israel: What Comes Next [Israel & Diaspora II 1/4]

High friends, a quick word from our sponsors, the incredible organization, Muggen-Dovid-Adome. There's a symbol most of us have seen our entire lives yet rarely stop to think about. The red star of David on the side of an ambulance or emergency motorcycle. Muggen-Dovid-Adome was founded in 1930, 18 years before the state of Israel even existed. There was no Israeli flag yet, no army, no government. Just Jews in pre-state Israel who understood that when someone needs emergency care, someone must show up. 95 years later, that is still exactly what they do. From missile attacks to heart attacks, from mass casualty incidents to delivering babies. Muggen-Dovid-Adome or MDA is Israel's National Emergency Medical Service. Their mission, protecting, saving, and giving life. MDA is responsible for Israel's National Blood Supply, collecting and storing it safely in the world's first underground blood bank. They partner with the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, as well as Israel's police and fire services, responding to every kind of emergency across the country. And here is something remarkable. 90% of MDA's first responders are volunteers. They are Uxiva students, teenagers, soldiers between shifts, ordinary people who made an extraordinary decision that when the siren goes off, they run toward it. Not because they have to, because they choose to. On October 7, MDA medics were in Keyblitz, Beery. They were at the Nova Music Festival. They treated the wounded, identified the fallen, and kept working, even under fire. There is a Hebrew word that captures this spirit, "Akhra'iyyut," responsibility. Not the kind that weighs on you, the kind that defines you. The kind that says, "I am the person who shows up." For 95 years through war, terror attacks, pandemics, and everything in between, the same question has always been asked. When something happens, who will be there? For Israel, the answer has long been the same. Muggen, Dovid, Adome. And I think that is worth understanding. They need our support, especially now. Please visit afmda.org/give to donate now. Want to wish a quick, happy 50th birthday to one of our listeners, Harrison. Your love for the 1840 podcast reflects exactly who you are, thoughtful, searching, deeply committed to living a meaningful life. You bring these conversations into our home, into our family, and into the way you show up every single day. We love you to infinity podcasts, Michelle, Kobe, and Dylan, wishing a happy 50th birthday to Harrison. Hi friends and welcome to the 1840 podcast, Reach Month, weeks for different topic balancing models and civilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timers of Jewish ideas. I'm your host, David Bischewkin, and this month we're exploring Israel's relationship with the diaspora, a topic we have touched on in the past. And we are now returning to this podcast as part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas. So be sure to check out 1840.org/1-8-FOR-T-Y. Or you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to first share my appreciation, our colleague, Sruly Fruchter, who has worked with us for a whole bunch of years. He began as an intern and then became our director of operations and really oversaw so much of our growth over the past few years. It has rode on to his next adventure and is no longer with 1840. And I did want to publicly share my appreciation for everything that he has done for the growth of 1840 and wishing him tremendous success in his future endeavors. We love you and appreciate you Sruly. Today's episode is always a little bit difficult because this is not a political podcast. I do not keep a float of all of the changing political dimensions. And when October 7th broke out, we spent a long time just trying to process what are the events that are unfolding in front of us? How do we make sense of them? The lens with which we try to approach issues is rarely political. There are many great political podcasts. I'm not going to list all of them right now, but I'm sure you know them. They're really, really wonderful and it is not what I am focused on. I think at 1840 we have always been focused. Obviously on the Jewish people and secondly on the vision for Jewish life and Jewish practice, what is our shared collective vision for Judaism? And when the war broke out in Iran, the most recent war and there were missiles being dropped on Israel and people running into bomb shelters, I felt very misaligned. I wasn't sure if we should stop our episodes and just talk about what's going on, especially right before Passover each year we focus on families and family dynamics, what we call intergenerational divergence. And to me at least, I don't think people come to 1840 for breaking updates on what is happening with Iran and the Middle East, at least certainly not from a political perspective and not from a security perspective. This is not the focus of our work. And yet I'll be honest, I guess the experience in America because we're on living now, the distance feels so much stronger because of the relative calm that we have at least in the United States compared to what our brothers and sisters have been experiencing in Israel. The divide I think is much darker now than it was even after October 7th. After October 7th, the whole world felt upside down wherever you were. Obviously the closer you were to Israel the more acutely you felt it. But there is no question that the sense of the entire world feeling upside down. I'm not sure if we have felt that over the last, you know, months or so with what is happening in Iran. And I felt on a very personal level like a sense of distance from the urgency, from the seriousness of what is transpiring. And it felt not only appropriate but very necessary to take a little bit of time after Passover, after Pesach and revisit what I have always promised is a topic that we will continually revisit, which is this transitional moment of our relationship with the state of Israel, the Jewish people around the world who do not yet or do not have plans to move to Israel. What is our relationship? What is unfolding in Israel? And more than anything, not in terms of the political situation or the security situation, what do we hope comes next after this? What is our focus? What is our project? If God willing, our most serious enemies are vanquished, what is the project now of the rebuilding of the Jewish people and the state of Israel? And when I have questions like this that kind of border both on the political security questions, but really what's driving my inquiry, what's driving my curiosity, is the future, is the future of the Jewish people, is the future of Yiddish kind of Jewish life and Jewish practice. When I have such questions, I turn to a friend who is also a former 1840 guest, my dear friend, Michael Eisenberg, Michael Eisenberg, who is an investor, inventor capitalist in Israel, also a very accomplished Torah scholar who has written many, many books on Torah Thos, but more than anything, he's one of the people I enjoy more than anyone else to sit and just talk honestly and sincerely, what is happening right now? What is going on? What are we witnessing? What should we at least be praying both in action and thought and in words should come next? And that is why when I was looking for an overview to really understand, where are we right now? What is this moment? What does it represent? Where should our focus be? It was not a question of who to turn to. Michael is very often in the room with the prime ministers, with the generals, talking about the unfolding security situation in Israel, as well as a deep understanding as an American about what world jewelry, American jewelry, but more than anything else would I admire most about. Michael is his commitment to really visioning for the Jewish people. What is the vision for Amkhail Yisrowel, for the collective body of the Jewish people? Where are we headed and how do we get there? So it is my privilege and pleasure to approach these incredibly important questions about what comes next for Israel and for the Jewish people. It is my pleasure to introduce our conversation with Michael Eisenberg. Welcome to my dear friend Michael Eisenberg, thank you for joining Michael. David, it is great to see you. I wish we could see each other in person more these days, but the travel has been harder as you know and I look forward to welcoming you here at Israel soon. Amen, God willing. You're reminding me a story about my father. My father was in Kerr-Biab in the Ushiva 1967 and he had a Yemenite Israeli, Jerusalem and it was the end of the six day war and my father, you know, along with Robyn Willig and Robyn Miller from Gruz, they were all together in Kerr-Biab and they went to Jerusalem and to Jerusalem for Shavuz. Right after the war 1967, what an incredible moment. He comes back to Yisheva and his Yemenite Israeli, Jerusalem says to him, "No, Baruch, T'Alela Aritzu, you're going to make Al-Ayaah." And my father said, "In Mirza Shemur," he would say, "God willing." God willing. And the American Jerusalem said to him, "Al-Tidag, Hashemur Zezat, Talib H-Ha." Don't worry, God wants it, it depends on you. That's what that reminds me of. I love it. So I wanted to begin by taking like a general pulse. You know, I'm in America right now and so much of what's happening in Israel and with Iran, it's filtered through the headlines and through media. And I wanted to just take your pulse of where you're standing in Israel from your vantage point. You've been involved in very high level meetings. How is the war going in Iran right now? So first of all, you know, we're recording this podcast. A few days into the ceasefire. In the ceasefire, the Iranian's fired on Bahrain. I think it's seven times today and they fired on Kuwait and they fired on Saudi. So it's kind of a tenuous ceasefire. And the president has just started the blockade of the straight of Hormuz. And I think we're right right now as a ten ceasefire. I was somewhat joking today that traffic is back in Israel. We have no missiles, but now we have traffic. And I think it's fair to say that this is a wait and see moment where the Iranians are going to have to make some hard decisions probably. And if they don't make the hard decisions, which should have been made a long time ago and forced a long time ago, and you know, President Trump's right. It's been the failure of many U.S. administrations to enforce our Pony Iran that they cannot have a nuclear weapon. That's the cyniquan on. The president has said that. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that. I've heard it myself. Now on top of that, I think it's very important to say that this is an evil, evil, evil regime. Okay. What they do to their own people is beyond evil. And I think is Jews. When we look around the world and we asked wherever people in late 1930s and early 1940s, we should be asking of ourselves the same question. Where are we for the Iranian people being hung and slaughtered? As this regime carries out, it's evil doctrine. Obviously, in any political organization, there are more hardliners and less hardliners, but I think it's hard to stand by the wayside and say, hey, you know, they turn off the internet because, you know, they didn't want people watching Netflix. I think they turn off the internet because they don't want people knowing what's going on there. And my sense is it's bad. And I don't think we have a right as a people. I don't think we have a right as a world to stand by while this regime continues to slaughter its own people. And why it continues to terrorize its neighbor. And I think the last point that's really important to point out is the following. Israel has known and give Prime Minister Netanyahu credit for this. For decades that Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel, but not only also to the world. It is an existential threat. And what this war has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is that Iran was an existential threat to the world. And this is a numerous ways. Number one, they have a nuclear weapon or the ability to build a nuclear weapon. They told Secretary Woodcott or Special Envoy Woodcuff that I made that mistake on CNN, Colleen, Secretary Woodcuff and I got tens of messages. Tens of messages. I think our listeners, you'll get one or two and I know who they're from. So don't worry about it. Special Envoy Woodcuff said that they told them proudly we can make 11 nuclear bombs. And they'll threaten the world that number two, we now know because they fired on Diego Garcia that they have ballistic missiles they can reach Europe. That's the second thing we know today that might have been in a doubt in some people's mind before. Number three, we know they are willing to fire ballistic missiles, not just on Israel, but on the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain. They've all born the brunt of this and they were fired on the US if they could and they will and they fired on the UK and our friends and they tried to fire it on Cyprus, which is an EU member state. And the last thing we've learned, which is also critical, is that they're willing to engage in economic terror, closing the straight up for moves, attacking the oil pipelines of neighboring countries, tapping the gas fields in Qatar, is economic terrorism the first right. And by the way, while Israel followers on military targets as the US or IRGC targets, they fire in civilian centers. A rod is a civilian center in Israel. You know, they fired on hotels in Bahrain and the UAE in Saudi. So these are people that don't play by rules that Westerners like to believe that they play by. They're playing by an entirely different rule book. And that rule book is number one survival at all costs. But number two, we want to disrupt your way of life. We want to extinguish your way of life. That is what radical Islam seeks to do and the Shiite version of it, you know, empowered by this state sponsor is rabid. And the last thing to add is the following. October 7th started with Hamas in Iran, proxy attacking Israel. Iran spent decades building a ring of fire around Israel. Hamas, khizbalah, shite proxies in Iraq, the hoodies and Iran itself. Look, nobody attacked khizbalah after October 7th, but they attacked Israel. Nobody. Okay, we're defending ourselves against Hamas and Gaza and they attacked us. And so what Israel's had to do over the last two and a half years is dismantle this ring of fire, this reign of terror. Hamas, khizbalah, hoodies, and Iran and their other proxies around the world. But at the same time, the world is discovered that Islamism, not Islam, Islamism, radical Islam is cancerous and needed to be nipped in the butt. At least the UAE recognizes that is or recognize that president Trump recognizes that. I'm not sure that Kyristar or a man with my chrome recognize that yet. UAE knows it, Kuwait knows it, they've all out of the Muslim brotherhood, which is by the way, Sunni not Shiite. You know, this is a real issue that the West is going to need to confront over the coming decade, no matter how this war in Iran ends. That's exactly where I wanted to go with the next question, because you know, I look at this segment with Iran. We use terms like end game. This is kind of the end of a very long game that began really before October 7th, but became much more acute on October 7th. And what we have seen in the last two and a half years, and it's really startling, it's destabilizing, is the language with which people talk about Israel. How much easier it is to joke around Netanyahu running the world. And I'm not talking even about the most virulent anti-Semites out there. I'm talking about, you know, cute reels on Instagram where guys have their hands up and they're saying, Benjamin Netanyahu, my ex-girlfriend is developing nuclear weapons. Can you please attack her? Which made me giggle also. I've seen a bunch of these videos. What's the underlying message is that Israel has been repainted as an aggressor, and for a lot of people and it's become so much more mainstream, is to question Israel's relationship with the United States of America. My question is threefold. We obviously needed to respond that we needed to respond strongly. Was this worth it? Was it inevitable? And will we ever get back to a time? Do we want to get back to a time where, you know, the classical intertwining of the American and Israeli flags is the status quo of the American sentiment. So first of all, I'm very thankful for two things. One that I don't have Instagram and two that I don't have TikTok. TikTok is the Chinese Communist Party sewage system in which it kind of spews it into America to contaminate the water. And Instagram is just, I don't know what to tell you. I haven't been on it. I don't blame you. So I'm thankful for that. It's how you maintain your sanity, you know, extra Twitter, which I find better. It doesn't have silly videos, thankfully. Correct. Isn't itself challenging. And fake mainstream media, you know, it's funny, but when you end up in some of these rooms, you realize how much of what the reporting is just like, now what happens? And it's a real word of caution. I used to say when they started writing about me in the business world, I knew things that weren't true. And you say, but why do I believe things about other people? So I just stopped believing all this stuff and tried to do my own research. That's kind of point one point to is, I think October 7th taught us, should have taught everybody. They're waiting till a problem is too large is existential danger in Kerni. And you need to be aggressive. It's not popular because the world likes, you know, Shosh Dill as they would say, in the British and English. You know, I think we continue to find out whether by the way it's true in business and it's true in politics and it's true in military affairs that if you don't rock the boat, you know, your boat gets rocked. So being preemptive is generally right not wrong. I keep finding it's unpopular, but it's right not wrong. In the same way, by the way, that being contrarian and investment is very unpopular for a long period of time. That's how you make money. The famous investor Howard Marx and Oak Tree has this two by two matrix in which he says, you know, you make a good investment or bad investment, you make a good investment, but it's consensus. You don't make any money. You have to make a good investment that's non-consensus, which means you have to live with shame and ridicule for a long period of time. And so I don't think we can afford to kind of sit back and let the game come to us. We need to be preemptive. And I think that is morally correct in addition to everything else. Now about the United States, 11 years ago, I wrote a book called The Vanishing Jew, which unfortunately literally called this moment in time. My view is that since 2008, the financial crisis, anti-semitism has been on the rise because financial challenges, and which I think parts of America have been since 2008, cause rises in anti-semitism. And since it's always beneath the service, it's bad economics that lets it flourish. That's kind of point one. Point two is if you look at the results around people expressing anti-Semitic opinions, you learn something really interesting. These people hate the United States of America. They don't want it to be successful. So actually, Tom Friedman said that he hopes America and Israel lose the war against Iran so that Trump and Netanyahu are not right. I mean, you must be a heater of the United States of America to believe that. And it is probably being a self-hating Jew at the same point in time. I'm sure I hang out some of your listeners with that comment. Thank you for that. Tom Friedman is most consistently wrong human being over the last 30 years. And somehow he tells a column in the New York Times. I still remember some time in the 2000s. It's great epiphany he had about the Saudi peace deal. My God. Anyway, the America that I grew up in, the America that was founded by the founding fathers was the hebrazist Christian country. That's a fact. It's a fact of history. The America is changing. And there's some people don't believe in American meritocracy. They don't believe in the American dream. They don't believe in the Christian values of America, the Judeo-Christian values of America that it was brought up on. Those people hate America. And they also hate Israel. And they become anti-Semitic. It's got nothing to do with this war. It started before. Check the stats. They've been ticking up long before the war in Gaza. Now add to that October 8th on October 7th Hamas attacked Israel on October 8th the world's most planned attack on Jews and on Israel was launched on social media and on campuses and other places across America. Well organized, well funded. We're now seeing some of these networks being exposed. And that was launched. Now I said this to you before the Jewish institutions have been asleep for decades. Letting this faster. Much like Israel was asleep about Hamas and Gaza. It's fair to say. When you say that Jewish institutions have been asleep, what would you have wanted to see Institute. to be more vigilant about. Let's start with the following, the average age in most of the kind of leadership of these institutions compared to my startup companies is a giant gulf. Interested. And part of that is that it's paid a play. And so these are technologically unsophisticated for the most part institutions, whereas the enemy was playing a very technologically sophisticated game. That's number one. And that has changed a little bit since October 7th, but really not enough. And the world has changed technologically over the last 20 years and particularly in the last five years and even more so in the last two and a half years since the chat GPT moment. And if you don't put a young blood in these kind of AI and native or internet and AI people, you're running at disadvantage. Number two, you asked about preemption versus responsiveness. You know, jujum is actually been responsive. And number three, and here I'm with Brett Stevens on this big time. You don't fight any semitism. That's a silly notion. We have to be proud Jews. We have what to say. And if you don't stand up and be super proud of it, you lose the young kids. You lose the people. And you lose the battleground. And you retreat. How is it possible the Jewish communities to not turn up on the college campuses of Harvard and Yale and these other places to support these students? You know, when I was in the University, you know, that YUSSR went all the way to Russia to stand up. Sure. And there was Operation Torres Shield to Israel 1991 when I was in the Shiva there. People used to turn up. It's an interesting contrast. Why do you think the Jewish community was mobilized? The diaspora, the American Jewish community. And maybe a time site, I was too young to remember, but we're so mobilized for Russian Jewry, for the fall of the U.S.S.R. And we were, I wouldn't say mobilized, but I don't like talking negatively about anybody, but I didn't feel the same mobilization institutionally when it came to October 7th. I felt it almost more acutely in the Orthodox world, the lack of mobilization. The 1980s, when I grew up and used to go down and protest at the U.S. and for Soviet jury, I think was still both less than 40 years after the Holocaust. I think people still remember that. I think a lot of Jews, not my family, for what it's worth, were immigrants to America, you know, second generation Americans, and understood that you needed to fight for these rights. I think on some level, Jews have become very, very comfortable in the United States of America. Famously, the Meshechachma says at the end of Parsis Bukhukos, I about the Jews of Berlin. They say Berlin is Jerusalem, like with Teneck. Not one or two people have said, "This is our Jerusalem, you know, of the East Coast, or of America." You know, when you get comfortable, you don't want to rock the boat. And so you don't turn off. And I think, you know, in general, I wrote this in my book too. Fourth generation becomes assimilated into culture. And that's roughly where many American Jews are at right now. I want to get back to exactly that point about the fourth generation. But I want you to just come back to the question of America and Israel, just to kind of wrap a bow on this. Are you worried that this relationship is now irreparably different and that there's no way to get the genie back in the bottles? Or is there a perspective where, you know, this was inevitable and actually a good thing? Like, I don't know. Here's the answer to the question. I think since the destruction of the temple prophecy was given to fools, I will say the following. I don't think there's ever been a stronger relationship between two governments anywhere in the world than there is right now, but in the United States and Israel. It's incredibly strong. The partnership is incredibly robust. Not just in war, by the way. You know, I was involved in setting up a Paxillico with my good friend under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg. And here, General Erizaskel, who runs the Israel AI authority, Israel is a founding member of Paxillico, which is the global supply chain under the US Aegis for artificial intelligence. You know, that's super, for robust. The military intelligence cooperation has been robust for a long time. I think it showed up in spades here. I think if you ask commanders in the US military, they've learned a lot even from Israel in this war and vice versa as well. And so the military collaboration is very, very strong. US investment in Israel is exploded. Over the last two and a half years, it was already robust. I just got off the phone with one of the big P firms who bought a company here since October 7th for about a billion dollars. And they're looking to double down. And the economy here has been extremely strong in the collaboration with the US. So I wouldn't been against it. But you have to be blind not to see some of the changing sentiment on the fringes, both the right and the left fringes of the American body politic. And you know, the horseshoe theory of politics works every time. Explain to our listeners what the horseshoe theory of politics is. The horseshoe theory of politics is at the edges, the far right and the far left are actually much closer than the centers are to each other. And they kind of close it to top. Historically, by the way, the far right has been, let's call it more deadly, but the far left has enabled much more anti-semitism because it provides a fig leaf for, by the way, particularly Jewish far left has a tendency to do that. That's his historical fact. I think the same thing is true right now. That's what you had over the Biden era. And you know, in the universities, which is that the far left embedded in the university with this grand project of erasing everybody's identity and dealing only in victimhood, kind of enabled the rise of safe spaces that were safe from, you got to keep Jews out. I mean, you've got on the right now, the Tucker Carlson's of the world, who have become, you know, rapidly anti-Semitic, not just anti-Israel in quite extreme ways, and I think those things meet. And so unquestionably, you know, those two forces are rising, not just in America, they're rising globally. But I think the core point of this has nothing to do with America, okay? We are in the middle of four simultaneous revolutions now. And it's really critical to understand this. Number one, democratic governments are challenged globally, okay? It's not just that you think like New York cities fall in a part, London's fallen apart. Paris is falling apart. France is falling apart, England's fallen apart. Sweden has its challenges. But even the Israeli bureaucracy, I think we're in, by the way, in the best shape of many. And so democratic governments are really, really challenged now. The second thing is that the social welfare state, which has been the state of affairs for at least the last 80 years in the UK, it's 100 plus years since after World War I, the welfare state is crumbling. All of these countries are massively indebted. They can't afford to make the social welfare payments. You have people on welfare for way too long, second and third generations. Education systems failing in many of these places. The social welfare state is both bankrupt, failing, and will disappear. And that's scary because it means an entire change of the economic model of countries. The third thing is that war is back, because we're Jews and because I live in Israel, I like to think of October 7th. But that's the second war. The first war was Russia attacked Ukraine. And that is still causing perturbations for good reason across Europe right now. I like to say that we're gonna be Siphon's second in and first out because Russian Ukraine were first in. But since then we've got stuff going on in Sudan and Somalia and it's been a couple of skirmishes in Southeast Asia. And the world has become increasingly unstable, right? The US and Venezuela, now Iran, and Iran attacking the Gulf States and they are gonna see it like the world is going through a perturbation that we haven't seen in 80 years. And so war is back. And then the last thing is AI. That's the fourth revolution of our time. And it's massive. It's massive. People don't understand how fast this is happening and how important this is and how important it is to kind of be a technological leader in this era. Okay, we have this era of the need for energy and electricity, which is carbon, atoms and solar and nuclear and all that kind of stuff. At the same time, this notion of AI disrupting just about everything on planet Earth is a big deal. And it will be undermining, we're just at the beginning of it. It's the bottom of the first to use the baseball metaphor. And that's going on everywhere. And I think this is undermining people sense of security and stability and who they are and what they are and what they're gonna become. And that's causing, I think, a big political disruption. In addition to causing economic disruption and a geopolitical disruption. If Israel is able to neutralize Iran and it does not have any immediate military threats, obviously we want a safe and secure Israel. My question has always been because I am not a political junkie. I actually don't even like talking that much about politics. But I am a Jewish people junkie. And I am very curious about what you think the project needs to be on the other side of an Iran war with an imagined safe and secure Israel. And I want to actually throw in, if you'll allow me, that Beshak Hachma that you mentioned. Reve Mayor Simkhah of Da Vinz, whom my dear friend, Davi Safir just did a beautiful overview on in Mishbach, a magazine has a very famous commentary. I believe in Parkes, Bukhukhosa, where he talks about the curses and how in each generation we're kind of looking for a synthetic enemy and adversary. We don't do well when we are kind of complacent. We come to a new place. And the first thing that Jews want to know is we need Judaism. We need infrastructure for Judaism. They build infrastructure and the next generation they kind of grow up with infrastructure. And then the third generation is like, what now? What do we do now? Which is why the fourth generation very often deteriorates and falls apart because they don't have an adversary. If you do the math, we are four generations in from the American Jewish community being the largest Jewish community in the world. It basically lasted four generations. From after the Holocaust till right now we're basically neck and neck with Israel just pulled ahead a little bit. But it lasted about four generations. That's my grandfather, my father, me, and now my children are the fourth generation of this American stop. And the question that I've been thinking about is what is the next big project for American Jewry? And even more so, what's the next big project in Israel? Meaning if they no longer had the pressure of security, what is the next big project of this fourth generation in the land of Israel, of what they need to rebuild? And how do these two projects, if they both in fact exist? The project of American Jewry and the Giddish kite that we're building in Israel, how do they intersect? - Well, that's a big one. - That's a big one. - Let me just hit two quick notes. - Please. - The first one to mess you up. I don't think the mess you're talking about says that we have synthetic enemies or we create synthetic enemies. What he actually says is that as Jews become rooted in complacent and they've even built total reinstitutions in the lands that they go to, God brings upon them a storm. He's writing, I guess, it's probably 45 years before the Holocaust. [BLANK_AUDIO] for the Holocaust at this point and it's quite prophetic. What he basically says is that Jews become more comfortable, God has to rattle them with anti-Semitism. He says there, I hear people saying Berlin is Jerusalem, that shows that they're settled and unfortunately we all know what happened. That's point 1.2 is you're not a political scholar or need that much interest in politics but you are a Bible scholar. And I'm always fascinated by the line in Safer Shofteam in the book of Judges where the Navi says, the prophet says, "Vatishko to Arids are Baim-Sanat." And in appears I think it's three times in the book of Shofteam you go, "Why did I have to tell us that the land was silent or placid for 40 years? Let me help you. It's because that was a giant hitish. The fact that the land of Israel was quiet for 40 years, unperturbed by the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites, whoever it is, that was a giant revelation. 40 years, 40 years, wow. Which means it's not going to be quiet. And I think that's actually a feature or not a bug. That's actually a feature, the land of Canaan of Israel, which travelers walk through, which trade routes went through. We'll talk more about this in a second about what's coming afterwards, which the Imech, the Indian Middle East corridor that's being talked about now with incredible gusto because what's happened in the Strait of Hormuz will go through Israel because geographically it's very, very central to the world. The Mediterranean border is Europe. It goes to Asia, if you go to the North and to the East. It goes south into Africa, which has the fastest growing population on planet Earth today. It's just a very, very central place in the world, not endowed with that many natural resources, although we are in energy independent now because of the gas fines off the coast. Toron never talked about the off the coast, only about the seven species on the land. And it matters geographically because of that you can know the meaningful life. And so you ask what's the project? And I have a view that comfort or comfortable or quiet is over time ossifying. And I think one of the things about Israel, where it is, what Avram Avino, Abraham our forefather, who had to contend with, you know, animosity and famine. And you know, Yitzhak Isaac who contended with the Philistines and the people stealing his water and animosity in Jacob, that confrontation, that adversity created greatness. And so part of what I consider a little of me life work is to try to figure out what does Israel become in its next 78 years. And I'll say that that is boxing for the Jewish people. Exactly. When God says to Avram, come to Israel. Avram is a wealthy man. But God says to him, you know what you're going to be blessed. And blessing we know this refers as a bizavis. It's in the Pussycum in the Varmus in Duran, it's very obvious. Means material blessing. We have a commandment to be a prosperous society. The notion that many, in at least the ultra-orthodox community in Israel have adopted a Paspamele Chtocha, you should eat only salt and water is nonsense. That's for maybe a few people. It is not an aspiration for a country. Anyone who thinks that theologically has never read a piece of Torah before, he doesn't understand that that's a curse and not a blessing. And so God says to Avram, be prosperous. By the way, it's not enough to be prosperous. You must make everyone around you prosperous. Heyey, Brakhab, be a blessing. Venevruh, Khubachak, Khomash, Khotat, Amal, all the other nations around you will be blessed through you. We have a responsibility through our innovation, our innovation economy, through our natural resources. And today, by the way, we supply Jordan and Egypt with gas. Okay, we power their countries. That is a blessing. By the way, one could argue that that is also on some level military insurance. But it is a blessing to be able to share that and power other people. We have a responsibility as a people to spread monotheism. When Hashem says to Avram cross over the line, cross over the river, come in from the north. As the measures famously says, when Avram sees the people working the land during the right seasons, he says, those are the people I want to be among. That is in the land of Israel. Because we have a responsibility to work and to be productive. As a society and to be able to export that, the innovation, the produce. And by the way, the Abraham Accords has led the UAE to being a $3 billion trading partner with Israel. In a short few years, it's incredible. After the war with Iran, whenever it ends and we're not through it yet, I fully expect the Bahrain and UAE who are signed currently under the Abraham Accords and other nations around us will become part of this brotherhood. And that will include the children of Jaffith, of Yaffith as well, which is the Greeks and Cyprus and other members around the agency and around the Mediterranean. And we have an opportunity, we have a responsibility to show what does a God-faring people. And by the way, one of the interesting things about Israel is what I call the median Israeli is different from the median American, even the median American Jew. The median Israeli has some regime three and four kids. Doesn't matter who it is, both the spouses work. They served in the military or national service. They pay their taxes and they believe in God. They are to use Hebrew words, mischidate, late tariag. They made a keep old tariag, so it's none of us do by the way. And they may re-tail him, they may put on filling in the morning. I have so many stories, by the way, about people I've traveled with who put on filling the morning. One of them even asked me about so-so-mantvila, what's the last time we didn't feel it. And they even are not kosher restaurant in the place that we went to. Amazing. It's how I do myself, but it's amazing. And these people believe in God. And so we have a responsibility as the children of Abraham, as the children of Isaac to turn Israel into a model society. A society that empowers the aspiring poor, not the poor of choice, the aspiring poor, when your brother falls down, you pick them up. That should be part and parcel of the society that we want to build. That's an economic thing. We should be the most innovative nation around. Because when you're innovative, you can export both your values and your brachat, your blessing, your prosperity. We should want to have engagement with our neighbors to bring them around, to be friendly with them. And that is an aspiration of a society that the Torah is a blueprint for, in my opinion. The Torah is not some ephemeral thing of personal spiritual growth. It's a blueprint for a society. That's why it says, "Vichy Savoel learns when you come to the land." It's a blueprint for an actual society, not a community or shulantinak, not as based measures, gavol and lakewood, not a temple and Cincinnati, for an actual living society. Now, for 2000 years, we haven't had to deal with these problems. So we're still learning how to use power. We're still learning how to budget. We'll still learning how to field an army. We're doing a pretty good job with it, thank God. We're still learning what all this means. How do you do foreign relations? Right? We don't have frameworks for this, for 2000 years. And the last thing I'll say is the following, in an era of so many confused countries, where following, I hope, the area of progressivism and multiculturalism and all this nonsense, where countries need to find their ethos. And a lot of new house wrote this. I wrote this also in my book called We The Israeli Heroes. Same idea. Israel and Zionism are the blueprint for the future of successful societies. And by the way, you see Germany adopting Zionism right now. The mandatory draft is making its way down, you know, flying the flag, not multiple flags flying. Their German flag is coming down the pike. It makes some Jewish people feel uncomfortable. Germany is Israel's closest ally in Europe right now. Poland is another one. You wouldn't imagine it 80 years ago. We're kind of not surprised that the Spanish have turned on us again for some reason. But Zionism is a blueprint for a model society. It's a, by the way, a blueprint for a Torah society, for a God-fearing society. Versaity has a will to live and define its own identity and export its innovation, its economy, its power. Our Torah has a model for an economy. We need to adapt it from modern times. It hasn't been done in 2000 years. Our Torah is a model for justice system. We should be adapted. But we can do it. There's a model for a government structure. We should be proud of that and embrace it. And that's an incredible project. If my kids, I'm too old. If my kids grow up and I think they're going up with this notion, you know, Rabbi Shalom Rosner, the person I love very much, said an incredible thing in his son's wedding in the middle of the war. Incredible thing. He's said, growing up in America on the Torah, Rabbi Salavacic, I understood that there are myths of his commandments, between man and God and midst of his commandments, between man and his fellow man. From my kids I've learned that there's a third category of commandments that between a man and his nation, his country. "Beyna Damla Amo." "Beyna Damla Amo." Beautiful. "Beyna Damla Amo." I've adopted that from him. I think he's right. And you asked me like, part of what's happened between American and Israeli Jew right now. And I say this with some pain, by the way, what I'm about to say right now. The last two and a half years we've gone through very, very different experiences. Now, 100 years ago when the early pioneers came to Israel, there was a difference between what happened in Europe and what happened with these pioneers. And they grew apart. They did grow apart only because European and then North African, or Arab country, or Jewish needed Israel to kind of come back together. In our communities, I've got two daughter-in-law who come from Sephardic or Adopt Mizra'ah families. That's all coming together now. This generation, my generation of kids who serve shoulder to shoulder the military, the lowest people of country in the world, see a broader view of Judaism than the average kid in Tinek and Lakewood. Oh, undoubtedly. And they have national aspirations. I'm finally served by my son when he was like 11 or 12 or 13. I don't remember where we were in New Jersey for the summer. And we're dropping kids off at campuses like, what are these people doing? They say, well, you know, dropping the kids off at campus, taking them to shul. This is not, meaning, any demeaning manner, just different. Okay? So, what are they doing? Well, you know, they go to shul to come back. What are they doing? Like, what matters for our people, for our country? You couldn't grasp it. And I think since October 7th, that's even emerged more. Now, our kids have gone a couple thousand days and reserved duty. That's a senior in experience. It's changed in entire generation. There's 450,000 people in this country that have gone a battle. And that's their kids and their wives. And we've been through a different experience. How this comes together, after it's, I don't know. But, quote unquote, Judaism changes at the same time. It's inevitable. It always has. I love the way you frame this moment of transforming. I think you've used this term in the past. I'm going to use it now, transforming Israel into an empire that it really becomes the model of what it means to run a country, Jewishly. The question I have is where that leaves American Jewry. We had four generations, as I mentioned before, of American Jewry being the primary drivers. And to me, the most unique part of the American Jewish experience was religion became voluntary. We had to figure out how to preserve religion under completely voluntary freedom of religion, freedom of practice. That was always the mantra of America. And it's why so many people thought traditional Judaism would absolutely disappear. What's so interesting, it was specifically in America that we were able to foster the highest level of commitment to Jewish education. Probably the highest we've ever seen though, it's hard to know particularly the highest levels of commitment to halacha which goes hand in hand with education. We have seen remarkable things accomplished in America, we're kind of left with this problem more acutely in America of what now, but I was wondering what you thought of the notion of America being this four generation incubator, teaching the Jewish people how to preserve religion when it is not forced upon you. We built day schools, color war camps, make it fun, make it good schmack, give out prizes, all these things that we do that now is the moment that we almost need to share what we have learned in America. How does Yiddishkite persevere when there are no methods of coercion? You have to make sure that it can justify itself just from the experience. And that, and I say this with a great deal of humility and reverence is something that maybe Israel is still learning or is still developing. What do you think of that thesis or do you have an alternative one? Turn around for a second. Those yellow books I believe are the penine alaqa, right? Sure is. And who's to the right of that? This is the Koranach. The Koranach. And the Koranach was published where? Israel. And the Koranach was published by Pwnout. Since the Rav and Ramosha, finestein, the Ramosha I think died in '85 or '86 and the Rav died in 1993. It'd be hard press to find a meaningful safer that's come out of American jury over the last or set of his farm over the last 30 years. No disrespect meant to any be hard pressed. But in the last 30 years or so, there's an explosion out of Israel. Incredible Torah. So I think what's happened is Torah flourishes when it meets real life and new challenges. Let me get out of the comfort zone. Some of our greatest chiles and chuvas, response over the thousand years plus of the genre are because of complex circumstances. And you know, whether it's Ravrimon or Rav Millamed or Rav-I-Ben-A-Law, Rav-Midana, the tonnach explosion of the gush, the virtual base measures, which is really started in the gush, it's been explosive. And I think culture is upstream of politics and culture is upstream of, call it, resilience. And so what I think you see happening is the early days of American jury, which kind of transferred out of Europe, has now moved completely to Israel in terms of who sets the tone and what matters, can you see it on Taitseh Torah? You know what's interesting about this? It's an interesting data point that my nephew sensitized me for. Is that in American Yashivas, they still speak Yiddish or Yashivas. But in the Israeli-Harradi Yashivas, the kids have no connection to Yiddish. It's like, we don't need Europe for our authenticity. I'm going to go to the Yashivas. They are full Hebrew in all of them. The younger generation of Haredim as opposed to the older generation of Rabbunim and Asconim is Zionized at the end of the day. And that's why they want to integrate at the end of the day. They're being held back by the Rabbunim, by the Asconim and some of the Gvierim in America. They know it, everyone knows it. It's like it turns up my door every day. It's very obvious. And it's hard because the social pressures and the sanctions are very high. But the broader point is the following. You're asking about American jewelry. There's 350 million people in American today. Maybe getting closer to 400 million. There is a shrinking Jewish population in America. Jews were 2.1% of the population. Maybe now it's like 1.71.8% depending on the account. One more generation where you call the fourth generation, which you talk about the Orthodox community, but you've lost a large number of Jewish people along the way. So as a percentage of the US population, Jews will shrink over the coming decades. That's 0.1. When you shrink your political influence wanes. When you shrink more broadly, your industries shrink. Okay. Doesn't mean it's America's not a big place and you can make a lot of money, etc. But like the Jewish infrastructure industry starts to come under more pressure. Just like that. It's a numbers game. And so when you play the movie forward, you know, a few decades, I think American jewelry will still be around. I'm sure we'll still have vibrance. They'll probably still have pay-sock programs because everyone's forgotten how to make pay-sock. But it will be more like the UK than it is like the American Jewish experience that you know, which is a smaller, more insular community, which continues to do business and probably as you know, you see, it was a day school, but it will become a much smaller minority population with a lot of this influence. In Israel at the same time, he's going to grow. My own viewers were headed into the golden decades of Israel right now. We'll get past this political stalemates we've had over the last 70 years. Like I said, we're still figuring this out. Like it's early. I want to point out, you know, thank God, thank God that the judicial reform in Israel didn't lead to a civil war because at the same time period in the United States of America, in the 1860s, same time after founding the state, you ended up with the civil war over slavery, over a legal issue. Like we forget this, it's in my new book coming out in Dvarum. But it's a legal issue. Will the new states allow slavery? Okay. What is the power of the judicial branch of government? Thank God. We have so much to be thankful to God about for this, touch on about this, so much that we didn't end up there, it could happen. It happened in the time of Shlomo Amelah II. Shlomo Amelah dies. The kingdom split. It's roughly 80 years. This happens in the history of humanity, in the history of the history of our people. This happens because we keep dovening that it doesn't happen. And so when you think about what happens to American Jewry, it becomes less powerful over time. That's a scary thought for me, by the way. You should be a scary thought for you. I think, by the way, we'll see over the next 10 to 15 years, a significant amount of your high agency people moving to Israel. By the way, today I got three in bounds from people just graduating first rate Ivy League colleges looking to move to Israel after they graduate in June. Wow. Today, by the way, I'm sure there's a thing anywhere as first rate Ivy League college, but nonetheless they go to Ivy League colleges. You know, there are these, and I'm painting with two broad of a stroke, but there are these three major populations within the Jewish population, Israel. There is what we call a charade community. We call it national Zionist community. And then finally a community that we sometimes call chelone or more secular community. There are winds of change and are happening in each of these. One that I at least rarely talk about in 1840, but I think it is important to think about in the very highly secularized parts of Israel. What is the religious vision? Should we have a religious vision for the very sizable part of Israel that seems, I hate speaking this way, but seems very distant from Jewish identity, Jewish practice. They talk about a new identity of an identity of an Israeli rather than Jewish identity. Do you see any movement or opportunity in this population to ensure that Israel does it fracture at the seams? You know, because we have these very different communities. We're never all going to be the same. I don't think you have this vision where we're all going to be datilumi or we're all going to be charade. We're all going to be chassidish or at. There's always going to be religious diversity in Israel, but what do you think is the game plan for the people who reside in Israel, a Jewish country, but seemingly seem so distant from Jewish life and Jewish practice? I think I'm going to surprise you here right now. Who left Egypt? The Jews. No, they did not. The Israelites left Egypt. The Naysie, Israel left Egypt. The children of Israel. That is, Yaku, or for farther Jacobs, other name is Israel. There were no Jews in Egypt. There were no Jews who came into the Promised Land. Jews is an exilic existence. Called the Judeans, turned into the Jews, is an exilic existence. Now, Ben Gurion in his infinite wisdom called it the state of Israel. Not the state of the Jews, by the way, it's the Jewish state, but it is the state of Israel. And therefore, the people who live there are Benayis, Israel, the children of Israel. And so your framework for thinking about the problem is your exilic, Tinek, Judean, Jewish framework. And I think an incorrect framework. That's point one. Point two. I said before that the median Israeli believes in God. By the way, it's like 85% of Jewish Israelis may be higher, believing God. That's a big deal, not a little deal. Today I saw this incredibly inspiring picture of a soldier who had a safer Torah pack on his shoulders. He like a safer Torah knack sack to go on a Lebanon. And marched in, could have been my kid in the group. I have no idea. He marched in a Lebanon with a safer Torah on his shoulders. Now, that's not a religious battalion. That's it. Everybody battalion. And they blow the shofar. Just like they did when they came into the land of Israel. And catch this. If you go in Tel Aviv, in Khotish Elul, in the week before Rasha Shana, you will see so many what you called Khiloni or secular young people in Shulf for Silihot. Not Silih, for Silihot. When you go to the Khotel before Rasha Shana and in a service you may Chuvah, the days of repentance, you see all of Ami's are all there. There is right now an emergent Israeli identity. It is belief oriented. It's not what I would have grown up on and you grew up on as Halakhik. And they do mitzvahs and they say, "The Hillam." And by the way, you see plenty of people today, plenty. I've been seeing this for five years. My good friend, you know, Alan Fiber. I told him, "There's five years, there's a campy." Because you people walk around and sit in Sanoyamaka all over the place. It's something you wouldn't see in America anywhere and it's emerging because identity is shaped by a number of things. One is our life experiences. Two is the calendar. I love this point. Okay. Our calendar is the Jewish calendar. You're off-Fachanaka. You dress up to go to school on Purim and everybody does. It doesn't matter which part of society you're in. It's so underestimated how much culture is produced by a calendar and Israel runs on the Jewish. Everybody goes to satire. Fasting on young kippers in Kyrgyzstan. No way drives on young kippers. Unfortunately, it's a day of national bicycle accidents in some places. But the calendar matters and language matters. Hebrew is the language of Tanakh. And so turns and phrase are biblical. Okay. And some of them, by the way, are tomutic like Malachikh. Famous life in the Gammara. These are turned. of phrase. These are idioms in society and it's borrowed from Talach from Torah and the average Israeli knows to sing Animami and on the way the average Israeli no matter how he go up on the way out of battle and into battle. I know Sadat Senghachino Kobayti's soil and he knows a bunch of Prochimif Tehilam and so the kind of notion of the anti-religious Zionist of 100 plus years ago who was rebelling okay he was rebelling against what he or she saw as you know 100 years or 2000 years of inaction to bring redemption to our people right. Benguryon was a Mishikist he believed in the redemption of our people read his writings people in America don't we Benguryon's rights. I love his writings. He was focused on Goulon redemption and without an emphasis on Goulon redemption it's hard to build a country it's hard to build an identity. Now when it started with that just like you said about American jury we're now fourth generation Israeli and fourth generation israeliism you have an emergent identity okay which is this mix of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi and Subbery and Israeli and people came from here and people came from there and it's still emerging it hasn't fully coalesced yet but you see kind of its outline you can kind of limits contours it believes it's not fully on what we call halacha the Jewish holidays or the Jewish holidays or the Israeli holidays or the Israeli holidays to go back to what I said because it was the Israelites commanded on Haggah Matsot the Matsah holiday not Passover on the Matsah holiday that's why you see people you walk around the parks everyone's eating Matsah right on Pesach and on Shavuot you know staying up all night and learning is like a goal of saying it started in Italy right you think that's like the highest you know form be cool even in the kibbutz they bring first root there's all ceremony around it the kibbutz and it's agricultural and it works and so this is emergent we don't know what's gonna look like yet but it's emergent and that is going to take on a different form because it's got national elements to it like I said before they were brought by Rosner bin Adam Lambo she demanded his nation my son saying what are they doing what about this is national it's not fully formed yet but it will become over the coming 20 to 30 years and that emergent beneath our air identity the Israelite identity which is more comfortable and Arabic than it is in English because that's what's around us and it's very international because India's a rising power and hey we're close and hold do I push the beginning of the gigla the last last redemption they came in the time of the second temple came from Hoduat Kush from India until Ethiopia by the way the opi is an ally of Israel will be a bigger ally of Israel over time Somalia land for those who don't know the map of Africa is close to India this is all coming together now over the next decades and century and it is our kids responsibility like I said I'm old already it's going to be our kids responsibility to build this regional empire of goodness of monotheism of belief in God's name and belief in God's goodness and his providence and the ups and the downs and the belief that we can build a uniquely Israeli economy that our Ghegeem that our holidays have real import even today then when I go out into the Sukah I don't have to be afraid that it's going to hail or snow or rain it's like the Ramam says I'm learning more than my son this morning Ramam says the guy to the perplexed in the third Gaelic he says why do you have Sukhas when we have Sukhas because you know it's not too cold it's not too hot you know I remember Hurricane Gloria on Sukhas when I was a kid you don't have that here and it rhymes and that impact all that stuff impacts your identity when you can sleep in the Sukah without being in you know in 50 layers of clothing let impact your identity over time the thing that I love about you and you know it reminds me of I think it's a story attributed to Rev Israel Salantar where he would tell people you worry about other people's gosh me is and worry about your own Rochneus worry about other people's material success and worry about your personal religious success we oftentimes have a meaningful fast and somebody corrected me once don't wish somebody a meaningful fast that's between him and his God have an easy fast be worried that his body is working that he's healthy and it's okay you can wish him an easy fast so what I love about you is how your economic station the work that you do in investing in companies is so deeply spiritual and mission oriented by last question is the origin story of why aren't you a rabbi in an Israel you shevo you know you do put out the svarim you teach a tremendous amount of Torah but you're professionally not an educator how is it that you merge these two worlds of being so deeply motivated by Amiast Rawelle but you didn't take the typical route of teaching Torah when I was finishing why you actually had an offer to go to Houston to go to Atlanta to teach I'd done both the Ahadin Qura'v work for many years in America so in 1991 the Gulf War happened and Saddam was saying instead of you know firing on America fired on Israel and I think I can't remember it was 40 or 41 scud missiles landed in Israel and we were running back and forth to seal the ones at the time because they were afraid of chemical weapons and so you'd go into these rooms you put the tape on the door gas mask yes mask by the way that was operation Torah Shilah I'll never forget when those kids from why you turned out I thought it was amazing and inspiring at the time you know the Gulf War went on and ended on Purim as is now famous about a week later I found myself in the Ornithorium in Shivat Haritseon in the Gush a Withrov Amital who was one of the two Russian shevas now I went to the Gush because Rabbi Michael Hacht who was my eleventh grade Rebi and you know the associate dean of the Shiv University who needs her for Shalama and you know it was deeply invested in me and and I love him very much he said to me Michael you need to go to Gush to learn with the Rihanna Lichtenstein go to Gush to learn Rihanna Lichtenstein that's why I went to the Gush anyway almost two years being there and she ended the Gulf where I found myself in the Ornithorium Amital who I barely had a relationship with if at all and I asked him a question in the Shivabhachar and by the way I should say that that year I was learning within Israeli Jerusalem I Hebrew gotten better and Rihanna Amital spoke to him in Hebrew and I asked him whether there's a bigger mitzvah of his sovereignty swell settling the land for somebody who made Aliah and moved to an unpopulated place it didn't matter you know the negative of the Galeel or if I moved to a populated place like Jerusalem or Tel Aviv that would be the same fulfillment of the mitzvah of his sovereignty swell of settling the land and he looked at me and says that goes to the out it's nonsense your question is complete and that are nonsense which you need to do is make Aliah move to Israel and open a factory to employ 10,000 people and then he emphasized that they could earn an honest and decent living like my jaw dropped I've been in Shivabh education my whole life I never heard or rabbi or anybody talk about the economy about empowering other people about hey this is your responsibility to ensure that other people earn an honest and decent living literally on the spot inside of me I all right I'm gonna move to Israel it's if I can employ 10,000 people it's good to be young and stupid that has stayed with me the epilogue to the story which I'm not sure I've ever told you I never talked about this story I don't talk about myself and I never talked about this story Rihanna Amital turned 80 I get a call from somebody who said that Rihanna Amital wants me to go on stage is 80th birthday party party wasn't a party it was obviously an educational event at the opening of nail mine who signed like 2,000 people and tell the story of your all you know I didn't know about Amital and I become very close sensitive story and he's someone I appreciated his wisdom his simple complexity well said he cultivated his own moral intuition I think in a very very powerful way and more than that he didn't ask people to follow him he he famously said I don't want more Amital him I don't want more Amitals I want you know people to know forge their own path anyway so it's a birthday party and I said you know no one knows this story there's no one he's what he's talking about he knows that I know it in 10 people or 15 people in the room know it no he didn't insist anyway I get on stage and he's got like this treasure grin on his face and I know I'm in trouble I just landed that morning from the business trip to the States I get on stage there and I said no Michael tell the story of your all yeah I tell the story so it turns you says no so how many people do you employ right now I said you know I don't know it's also high tech you sell companies I don't know if I can count those you see get off the stage and get back to work make sure you're in front of people you know quit the central Rihanna Amital but the message is deep which is our job of building the Jewish people and our responsibility for it just doesn't end and comfort is not a benefit I've often wonder about the puss of Kintanach about Ishtachascaf no the tachashtena so someone sitting under his vines and his fig tree if that is a blessing or a curse because you need look at this it actually you know in Tanach it led early on to a curse you know the people were doing very well in the time of Shlomo Amitach and then it everything fell apart everything fell apart and I think some tension in the system is actually valuable it's what makes us alive it's what makes us meaningful you know I finished with a bit of a thing I met a guy on Friday you're saying story I get a call out of a blue from a firm I say why please spend a half hour with this guy and I've been very busy I put it off they call me in December okay I think it's been extremely busy the war this that the other anyway the guy called me said you know he's still here from America could you please take a half hour on me don't Friday I met him for a half hour and quote I was like guy from California you know it's a little connected I told her seventh happened he's done well in high tech you know that's kind of our connection he started to come here to volunteer he said I literally serve food to Chialin you know on the border to go in they let me turn up there and I felt the sense of meaning I felt being around these people that they had meaning in their lives that they were doing something that was challenging it hard but it would be lasting for the Jewish people the guy grew up in Great Neck he lived in California so I said what he doing here is why came in December and I couldn't leave wow and then the war happened here right before poor him and everyone called him said come back I said come back this is meaning he said and I turn up in the shelter lives in Tel Aviv I turn up in the shelters in Tel Aviv and everybody asked me if I need a Shabbat dinner and everybody asked me to take care of me and people want to engage with me you know some of the wives need help because their husbands are in reserve duty and he said I'm doing meaningful work and my future is in the place where the Jewish people will have lasting meaning wow my place is in the place where the Jewish people will have lasting meaning that is a powerful sentiment I cannot thank you enough if you'll allow me rapid fire I promise sir you had mentioned before he took a lot of knocks at the media I am curious when you really want good information about what is going on in Israel I usually ask people what books they recommend this is happening too quick this book will be written in another 10 years where do you turn to get news about Israel I'm in a sort privileged position which is I'm in the room come Correct. And so I don't need to call. But where would you recommend if somebody wants to know what is really going on in Israel? Do you have a recommendation? Call your friends and family. I like that. Pick up the telephone. Don't send a WhatsApp. Don't send a text message. Don't send an email. Pick up the telephone and call your friends and family. Ask them what's going on. Ask them how they're doing. Ask them where their kids are. Ask them what they're feeling. That is the most authentic thing you can find out. That is holy. You had mentioned you're always turning out new books. I don't need to ask you what you would do if I sent you back to school because you managed to write books even when you're not in school. What is the next big book project that you are working on? I'm working on two right now and I will get one of them out first. I have been writing Diveritora on the parasha and events economics Israel for the last seven years. I've compiled at this point all of gracious and sort of through it. I'm in the middle of writing the introduction. I will publish five years of compiled writings on Genesis on Beratius and I am close to finishing my series on all of Torah on the economic approach and statecraft approach of the Torah. I'm close to finishing Diveritim Duteronomy. I just submitted a key say to my editor and Kisavo is written. So I've got three and a half more in Hebrew or English is coming out. Those are Hebrew. I am failing in English translations of the book. The Beratius book on the compilation will come out in English too at the same time because I have published them simultaneously in Hebrew and English. But stuff that I write originally in Hebrew which is the big series ever. Only one of those book is coming out which is on Beratius. Sure. True of life and prosperity has come out in English and then my book on Esther has been out in both Hebrew and English. That's fantastic. I would recommend that to everyone. My final question, especially now, curious about your sleep schedules. What time you go to sleep, what time you wake up these days. As you know about me, I'm like a morning guy and I normally get up very early and I still do most days. But since I've done some work with the government, the government here operates for actually reasons like through the night. And so it has thrown off my sleep schedule. And so I find myself a couple of few nights awake getting home between like one and three a.m. in the morning. If that happens, I end up getting up a little later sometime before so much more on Kriishma. Michael Eisenberg, I cannot thank you enough really. We don't know where things are headed but the fact that you think about it with such clarity with such thoughtfulness, I think everyone's minds at this moment need to be, what are we building together? And the inspiration and the clarity, I cannot thank you enough for joining me today. That's actually the last thought I want to leave you with love because you asked throughout this conversation about the separation between American jewelry or different experiences in Israel. And I think the right question to ask is what is the challenge we are taking on together to people to ensure that through the perturbations and complexity of the complexities and it's going to be complex. We're like, I keep saying this everywhere. I'm going to listen to me. We're like three and a half years into the 10, 12 year revolution right now. Okay. It's early. It's early. And they'll continue to kind of perturbations. What are we doing together to ensure that the people of Israel writ large emerge from this stronger with more our vote, not our duty, not unity necessarily, but more mutual responsibility for our future than we came into this. My wife makes this distinction often. There's like this thing in the diaspora of Ahrvut of unity. No, the key thing is our vote is mutual responsibility. That is the key thing, not false unity. I love that. That's the project and we need to figure that out and everyone's got to be all in. We have no choice. There's only 13, 14, 15 million of us around the world. We got to do this. And that's what I'm calling on you to do. Ahrvut not Ahrvut. All the differences, what's the mutual responsibility we'll all take to make sure this gets better over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years. Michael Isaberg, thank you so, so much for joining today. Thanks for being with us. One idea that came up in our conversation and we spent a fair amount of time discussing and it's one that we have spoken about in the past. And that is the words of Rev. Mayor Simphe of Da Vinzk in his commentary on the Torah known as the Meshech Chachma, his name of the commentary on the Torah. His words in Pasha's Bikrokosa which of course we can link to in the show notes. But it's this remarkable reflection which begins in the middle of the paragraph. He says, "Kach, he darka, shell, hauma." This is the way, this is the narrative, this is the cycle of our nation of the Jewish people. And he proceeds to kind of list of how the Jewish people constantly are thrown out of land and then need to reestablish themselves. And it goes through a very similar cycle. They come to a land he says that is foreign to them, that does not have any Jewish infrastructure, it doesn't have Jewish education, doesn't have, you know, kosher establishments or anything like that. It's a barren land that's never had Jews before or serious Jewish populations. And that first generation that gets there, like they lose a lot of their knowledge in Jewish life starts to dwindle. The next generation are the people who grow up and think, "This can't be it. We have to start rebuilding Jewish life here. We can't just throw away and assimilate. We need to rebuild." And that is the next generation ends up rebuilding and working on building Jewish infrastructure or educationally, communally synagogues, et cetera, et cetera. And then you have a third generation who kind of grows up with that infrastructure. And now they have this society and community where Jewish life is thriving. It is the next generation, the fourth generation. He says that is struggling. The fourth generation grows up. They don't remember the struggles of their great grandparents who first came to the land, who had no infrastructure, who didn't have the Jewish education, who abandoned so much. And they're just looking. That fourth generation says, "What now? Where do we go from here? Where should we be building?" And it's that lack of mission. It's that lack of project that often deteriorates the character of the collective Jewish people. His words in Hebrew are genuinely remarkable where he writes, "Hallow, ain biyad, hador, lahosef ma." There's a generation that is going to ask themselves, "What do we add to all of this? How do we build upon all the infrastructure that already exists with his God their negeravosam? Ma'yahsa, khifatsa, adam, haasuh, his God their ul-khadash. What does that next generation do? Who grows up with all of the infrastructure in place? Where do they build and how do they build? This is the question of this moment. We are the fourth generation following the destruction of European Jewry. We had four generations where the majority of, it's not the majority, the largest population of Jews lives in North America. We had four generations of this. It began with my grandparents' generation. They actually even proceeded. The Holocaust, they were born here, but that was the first generation that was in America without European Jewry to look at. Meaning early American history, just to be clear, we would look towards Europe for authenticity. Once European Jewry was decimated in the Holocaust, we had a generation who essentially was cut off. Many of our listeners, I'm sure, your grandparents, or your little bit older, your parents, spoke a native Yiddish. They still were connected to that world of European Jewry. But right now, we are four generations in following the destruction of European Jewry, where we have essentially been the largest population by we, I mean, North American Jewry has been the largest population of Jews in the world. That moment has already gone. It is now the largest Jewish population is now in Israel. And I believe the question is, what are the lessons of American Jewry? What did we learn from the last four generations? What is the message? And what comes next? And it is my belief that the underlying message of American Jewry is that this was the exile, the first exile that tested us not because of coercion and oppression, but tested us because of the freedom of America. We needed to learn how to develop a model of Jewish life that could sustain itself without coercion, without state power. For most of the European exile that we had during that period and not just in Europe, but in Africa, all around the world, religion and religious life did have state power. Rabbis were able to tax, they were able to punish, they could determine where you live, and there was a real motivation for people to affiliate with the Jewish community because otherwise they were not going to have the rights and benefits that were bestowed upon them by whatever empire or king gave to the Jewish people. In America, we had the freedom to practice Judaism anyway that we wanted. And if you look around that American Jewry and Judaism in the diaspora, you will notice that there are a whole lot of different streams and a whole lot of different choices on how to practice Jewish life. We were all learning to do the same thing. How could we create a model of Judaism that can sustain and perpetuate itself without state coercive powers? To me, that is the model and test of diaspora at North American Jewry and the lesson that we have learned over the past four generations. Now, I have obvious thoughts and feelings of which models have really shown the test that have been able to cultivate Jewish education, Jewish life and Jewish practice, which communities have rose to the occasion and perpetuated a model of Judaism that we can be confident that even without coercion, even without persecution is something that people want, that motivates people to participate in Jewish life, not because they're being forced, but because they want the Jewish life itself. I want to be a part of this. No one's forcing me to keep Shabbos. I keep Shabbos because I want Shabbos. Your parents can force you, your teacher can force you, your rabbi can force you. This is the reality of American Jewry. and it took us a very long time to really embrace this reality. It was not easy and we lost a lot of people through assimilation along the way. There was never a period and it was easier to assimilate into the host culture than this American exile. But we've also learned miraculous things. We've learned how to model a Jewish life where it is cool, where it is exciting, where young people want to affiliate. You walk the hallways of some Jewish schools and you don't see kids blah and embarrassed and we're in the Nerdy Jewish school. There's a sense of pride and excitement. The mantra that you will hear at floor hockey games of young kids singing "Gishmok to be a Yid." It is enjoyable. It is exciting. It is inspiring to embrace your Jewish identity. That is a very unique product that we have learned and developed. You know, American Jewry started with a refrain that was famously criticized by Ravmocha Feinstein. But Jews used to say "Schwerz is a Yid." It is hard to be Jewish. After the decimation of European Jewry, we began America with this sense of Schwerz is a Yid. It is not easy. It's not great being Jewish. It's very tough. And the truth is Jewish life does require a lot of sacrifice. But the sacrifice and the commitment that is needed for Jewish life is the very catalyst. It is through commitment. It is through sacrifice that we're actually able to uncover and find not the Schwerz as a Yid. It's difficult to be a Jew, but "Gishmok to be a Yid." It's so awesome. It's so wonderful. Datora, the Mitzvoss, the community, the people. And I believe this is the moment where the Yiddish Kite that we have fostered in America is simply miraculous. But the question is where do we go from here? And I believe this is the time that we take this vision of Yiddish Kite and we bring it to Israel. This is what the state of Israel needs more than anything. Not to say God forbid. I just want to be very clear. I am not criticizing the Yiddish Kite of Israel. It is wonderful and amazing. But the same way that European Jewry, infused and transformed American Jewry, I believe that American Jewry is going to transform through Aliya, through the connections, through people going there, sharing ideas, sharing thoughts, becoming even more connected. And as we said, it's not about Ahtus. It's about Arvut. It's not about unity. It's about responsibility. And anyone who has a model of Yiddish Kite, which is joyful, which is inspiring, we have a responsibility to share it. And God willing in this moment, in this transitional moment, when we can feel the wheels of history turning, we will take this miracle that has been fostered over the last four generations. And God willing, share it with the entire world. So thank you so much for listening. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited by our incredible friend, Dina Emerson. Thank you so much, Dina. I don't know what we would do without you. If you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, review. Tell your friends about it. You can also donate at 1840.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue to put out great content. You can also leave us a voice mail. With feedback or questions that we may play on a future episode, that number is 212-582-1840-16. Once again, that number is 212-582-1840. If you'd like to learn more about this topic or some of the other great ones we've covered in the past, be sure to check out 1840.org. That's the number 1-8, thought by the word 40-F-O-R-T-Y.org. 1840.org/reuncrollsifyvideosarticles. Recommended readings and weekly emails. Thank you so much for listening and stay curious, my friends. Show me his soul. Oh, she aries his soul. The eye of God is so ill. Oh, my dreams are my soul. Show me his soul. Show me his soul. Show me his soul. Oh, she aries his soul.