November 21, 2023 • 56 mins
Our guest this week is Allison Josephs, who Rosie met thru social media years ago. Allison's platform, @JewInTheCity, is a non profit organization that works to change negative perceptions about Orthodox Jews and Judaism.
Rosie and Allison sit down together to have a real exchange on what they each see has been happening since October 7, 2023. It is complex, and they both are resolute in their thoughts and feelings, sharing with respect and an honest desire to understand one another. The common goal being safety and peace for all.
Not a light listen, but an extremely important conversation; one that cannot be avoided, and one that is happening all over the world. Please join us.More info on Allison Josephs' organization: https://jewinthecity.comPlease send any comments or question by voice memo to OnwardRosie@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Well, hello everybody. You made it here. How are you?
It is almost Thanksgiving? So what can I say? Today
is going to be kind of a heavy show. No
matter who you are, no matter where you come from
or what you think, it's hard to talk about the Mideast,
especially right now. Make no mistake, it's a complex and
difficult conversation and has been for generations. But because of
(00:32):
social media, I think things have only grown more difficult,
more isolating. People are angry, heartbroken and exhausted, and we
need to have real conversation. We need to understand each other.
We need to come together with peace in our hearts. Today.
My guest is Alison Joseph's, who I met through social
media a couple of years ago. Her screen name is
(00:55):
jew in the City. Her platform is representation and education
as to who the Jewish people truly are. She has
done this long before the events of October seventh, and
I thought maybe this would be a good place to start. Here,
we are having a conversation myself and Alison Joseph. Well,
(01:26):
Hi everybody, it is me Rosi O'Donnell talking to Alison Joseph's. Hello, Alison,
It's very nice to meet you, sort of here on
the zoom.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Likewise, great to meet you as well.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, how long have you been online? And do you
remember when we first connected? Was it like what a
couple of years ago? Was it?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
It was a couple of years ago you were posting
about Minn Orthodox life. And since my nonprofits you in
the City handles depictions of Jews and media, and our
founding mission was specifically to look at Orthodox depictions.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And I had some opinions about that show.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yes, indeed, Now were you raised Orthodox yourself?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I was not.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And the interesting thing is that I was really raised
to hate Orthodox Jews, to judge Orthodox Jews. I was
raised to be a proud Jew, but that was kind
of more like culturally Jewish and you know, some holidays
and a sense of that the Jewish people should continue
because we've been through so much.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
But I grew up in New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
We would go to Manhattan maybe once a month, out
to dinner, out to a Broadway show, and I would
see the Orthodox just kind of looking so weird, so different,
so extreme, so backwards, and I.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Felt kind of ashamed of them, actually, And then did.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
You did you feel ashamed of them? Because you were
taught that or did you feel it because they were
just so other.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
So I think I was taught that my father took
care of Classidic Jews when he did his residency at
Mount Sinai, And I remember some of my earliest memories
in life was him coming home from the hospital and saying,
they're dirty, they're smelly, they're ignorant, they can't speak English.
Imagine that perspective on any other minority group. I mean,
it would be pretty shocking and bigoted, But because we're Jewish,
(03:21):
it was kind of like we can look down on
the wrong kind of Jews. We're the good kind of
Jews and those are the bad kind of Jews. And
I will tell you that media only reinforced everything my
father taught us because media, essentially both news media and
fictional media, picks up on the crooks, creeps, and extremists
of the community.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right, would you say for every minority or would you
say just exclusively for Jewish people.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think media has been damaging for every minority for
most of the time. What there has been in recent years, thankfully,
is a shift now for more nuanced, more understanding and
understanding that continued negative depictions leads to danger in terms
(04:08):
of how that minority fares in the world. And that's
you know, that's the work that my nonprofit is doing
now for the Jewish community. So I guess what I'll
say is that I think there's been a lot of
progress for other communities. We're certainly not there yet. I'm
sure if you speak to, you know, any person from
a different minority group, they will be able to flag
for you what they still don't like about their depictions
(04:30):
or the representation. And I also think that they'll be
able to point to real progress made.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Now, your dad was is a doctor, Yeah, and he
would only use that kind of language about Orthodox Jews.
He wouldn't use it about other minorities around you.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Correct, because he was an open minded person who didn't prejudge.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So did you ever say to him I find that offensive?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
No, because I agreed with him.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I had no people in my life to counter that
narrative because I had never interacted with them. So my
father sort of set the stage as to what I believed.
And then you know, newspaper headlines and you know TV shows,
books and movies reinforce those ideas, and there were no
real person examples to counter those ideas.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Now there are some wonderful depictions of Orthodox life on
TV on now they are much more than there used
to be. There's not only My Orthodox Life, which was
kind of a reality show and sensationalized, and they were
looking for characters to to I almost said exploit, but
(05:47):
there you go to exploit. And but you know the
names that I'm thinking of of those Israeli shows with
that I loved, Unorthodox was one of them, I believe right.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You're thinking of and Orthodox.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So look Stissel and there was really the Stistlemania that
took the world. And I think the reason that people
went so wild over Stissel was it was because the
first time we were seeing the humanity beneath the beards,
beneath the wigs within this community that seemed like a
world away. And I appreciate that Stissel did show the
(06:23):
humanity of ha Readi characters. It was excellent writing, excellent acting,
and you did get to know them and that was huge,
That was groundbreaking. My complaint with Stissel is it's the
most second most insular Orthodox community in Israel. And what
I find is that for Orthodox Jews like me, that
(06:45):
you could call me Centrist Orthodox or modern Orthodox don't
really ever get depicted, and people don't really know the
difference between us and the people living in the second
most insular community in Israel. And one of my good friends,
who's a reformed Jew, who saw me become observant in
high school, she asked me what I thought of it,
and I said, it's a great show.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
It's a little extreme, and she said, huh, funny coming
from you, I said, because you think I'm living just
a life. She said, yeah, pretty much. And so my
husband and I are Ivy League educated. We travel the world,
my kids are exposed to all different types of people,
and we're both very devout, and we've also taught our
children to understand that everybody contains a divine spark, and
(07:27):
not everybody comes to the same conclusion. People have different
life experiences, they come to different outcomes, and we're here to,
you know, to live and sort of see the humanity
and the positive qualities of the diverse tapestry of you know,
of mankind.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right, And how did you go from being a cultural
Jew to an Orthodox Jew? What inspired that transition in you?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, So, first of all, I did not know that
such a thing was possible. I kind of thought that
the normal Jew like me were born normal and the
weird Jews were born that way.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
But what ended up happening was that.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And there's a term for what I did, which is
called to be a balshuva, a master of return. When
I was eight years old, a father in my public
school had a mental breakdown. I walked into my fourth
grade home room in nineteen eighty eight. My classmates were crying,
huddled around their desks. I immediately knew something was off.
Found out that the night before, Angela's father had killed
(08:28):
both children and himself, and so God, I was going
to a triple funeral that week and not even nine
years old, And sort of, as all this heaviness of
death was sitting on my child like mind, I realized
that what's going to happen when I die? I will
end my time in this world at some point. And
(08:52):
then I stopped the question before that, which was why
are we here in the first place, And being only
eight years old, I assume my parents must know the
answer to that. They brought three daughters into the world
so over a bagel breakfast, you know, probably the Sunday
after the funerals, I said, by the way, why are
we alive? And my parents just stared at me, and
(09:12):
it was this devastating realization that they literally had no plan,
they had no wisdom to share. And I started asking
other people in my world, and the response I basically
got was nobody knows. Don't think about it. And the
problem was that, like the cat was already out of
the bag, and I couldn't stop thinking about the thing
that everybody told me not to think about.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So that's so interesting that happened to me when I
was that age as well with the Vietnam War, that
I would watch it on TV because I'm sixty one,
and we would see it as we were eating dinner,
these horrific images, and my father I started to cry.
I would cry when I watched the news, and he said,
(09:54):
you can't watch the news anymore. Go to your room.
You're not allowed to watch the news. That was the
answer right to to a little eight year old girl,
you know, who was was scared and whose mother was
dying and was you know, it was a traumatic event
at that time that made me question kind of everything
and kind of laid down my moral compass for me.
(10:18):
Were your parents supportive of your desire to go towards
these these bigger ideas at such a young age. Where
when did you make the switch to knowing that an
orthodox life might be the one that inspired and filled
your heart?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yes? So it was about seven years of insomnia and
often on panic attacks. As long as I was distracted,
I was the life of the party, the straight a student.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Everything was great.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
When the distractions would stop, I would sort of go
into this point of panic. And I've learned more about
mental health sort of during COVID, and I realized now
that I was disassociating. When I was sort of go
to that point of will be somewhere or nowhere for eternity,
I would feel myself flying out of my body, which
only reconfirmed this idea that nothing here is really real,
(11:06):
and I would just be really terrorized, terrified in this
loop of thoughts. And although I felt the love and
protection of my parents, they weren't big enough to stand
up to eternity next to me and their protection and
their you know what they provided for us, and it
wasn't enough because I was sort of coming face to
(11:27):
face with you know, time and space. So They were
supportive of my being, I think a precocious thinker. The
reason that it ended up getting to going back to
my heritage was they sent us to an after school
Hebrew high after our bot mitzvahs. They didn't really care
for us to become more.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Did you go to a public school, a private school,
a Jewish school, what did you attend?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I attended a public school until eighth grade, and then
a private school for high school. And so while I
was in both public and private school to sort of
supplement our Jewish you know, knowledge and community, they sent
us to this Hebrew high after our bat mitzvah's and
it was there that, for the first time in my life,
I got to meet real, live, actual Orthodox Jews. So
(12:17):
no more headlines, no more negative messages from my father,
but my own personal interactions. And what I discovered was
that these people were living these really meaningful and positive
lives and they were not the weirdos that I had
been led to believe they are. Let me clarify, there
are still some weirdos. I'm not gonna master the entire community.
(12:37):
There's for sure weirdos, but there's weirdos everywhere I spent
my first Shabis, my first Sabbath with one of my teachers.
In my mind he was coming from a Stistle community,
even though he lived in one of the biggest modern
Orthodox communities in the Tri State area. I couldn't quite
parse the difference. But what I'll tell you is that
my soul was yearning for what they had, what I
(12:59):
saw in their home. When I studied Torah in depth
in his class, there was something that I had really
been longing for, and my soul felt complete and sort of.
The follow up point to this exposure to this new
way of life was in a tropical rainforest in Hawaii
when I was sixteen. During that year of sort of
exploration and opening up my mind, I saw a tree
(13:22):
that I was convinced had been painted on by just
some artists in the forest. And when I looked to
the top and saw the color went all the way
up this huge shoot. It's called rainbow eucalyptus, something inside
of me transformed. I like to call it a moment
of clarity, or for a split second, I delved one
layer deeper into perception and I discovered unity running throughout
(13:43):
all of existence. And in that moment when I felt
this unity surround me. I suddenly realized this is what
they must mean when they say God. And I was
an agnostic and atheist, certainly not a believer before that,
but sort of happening upon this moment in the Hawaii
and sort of being filled with something so big and majestic,
(14:06):
something shifted inside me forever. And once I sort of
named that feeling, I thought, let me look into my
heritage to see if I can delve deeper into that
experience of God to get that feeling back again.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
That's intense. You were sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Well, if I was thinking about the end of my
life at eight, I had to get to enlightenment by sixteen.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
You know. Now, what was your family's response were they
when you you know, you come and you say, I
know God, I feel a spiritual center and I'd like
to follow this? Your family was accepting and.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Nope, no.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So what I'll tell you is that my mother had
the strongest sense about Judaism. She had a religious grandmother
and grandfather that basically only spoke Yiddish, and although they
couldn't communicate, you know, in English, she we had fond
memories of their relationship to Judaism and so she was
more supportive. I was a bit of a nerdy teenager,
(15:08):
so if I was acting up and my mother wanted
to ground me, she would say, no shabas for you
this week, little girl. Like that was literally I got
to cancel. My punishment was getting shaba is canceled. My
father thought that I was becoming one of these extremists,
that he was taken care of that. Again, he completely
judged I think very unfairly, and so at all of
(15:29):
sixteen years old, I said, if you think then I'm
ruining my life and the life of your unborn grandchildren,
then please save me from this cult. But here's the deal.
You don't get an opinion until you learn something, because
ignorant people shouldn't weigh in on debates. So learn something,
meet who I meet, come for shabis, where I go
away for shabas, And once you've educated yourself, let's engage
(15:50):
in a debate. He didn't want to do it, didn't
want to do it, and eventually realized that he does
have to learn to properly debate me. So he began
to study to spite me, and after about a year
of studying and experiencing shobas for himself. He was almost
fifty years old. He said, you were right and I
was wrong, and now it's time to play catch up.
And he and my mother and both of my sisters
(16:12):
all became Orthodox.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Wow, that's pretty fascinating. What a strong manifesto you are.
You were able to sort of change the essence of
your whole family at a young age.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And my parents have fourteen Orthodox grandchildren. And again, we're
all living in this space now of very devout, very committed,
you know, to this spiritual way of life, and also
holding space for the larger world and you know our
role in making it better and sort of understanding the
complexities and nuances of humanity.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Had you at sixteen or even at eight, experienced anti
Semitism yourself.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
So my parents raised us in a town with almost
no Jews, and maybe in first grade, our neighbor across
the street, Larry said to us, I'm speaking your language,
called me a Jewish jerk. In fourth grade, a girl
named Charlene told me that Jewish people howl the moon
(17:18):
and prayed to the devil.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So I sort of had this sense of.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Being the lone Jew in sort of a larger gentile
world and kind of knowing what it felt like to
not belong. And it's truth is that after you know,
kind of the George Floyd was killed and there was
a lot more understanding happening about the experiences of many
people of color in this country. I read many narratives
(17:45):
of black women talking about kind of being that lone
person in a larger society that was not like them. Obviously,
you know, I didn't have the outward look that identified me,
but I was sort of known as the Jew. I
was the only Jewish girl in my grade for most
of my time in public school, and so I.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
In jity, you were the only one.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
There were towns that my parents could have moved to
that were more Jewish, they just did not move there.
I went to Catholic Mass before I went to an
orthodoxoal just to give you an idea of sort of
how little few Jews there were around me. My town
was predominantly Catholic Italian and a real pride around that,
(18:29):
you know, sort of ethnicity, and I appreciated their pride.
I just didn't have that sense of that sort of
community for myself. I really kind of always felt like
the lone Jew.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
We'll be back with Alice and Joseph's right after this.
(19:06):
So let me ask you, Allison, tell me what the
world has been like for you here in the United
States since October seventh. Tell me your fear level, tell
me your tell me what's been going on for you specifically.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So, when we were little, probably five years old, my
mother sat my sisters and me down, and she gave
us a warning. She said, things are good today, but
things were good in Germany, and things were good in Spain.
And every country eventually tires of its Jews, and one
day the US may tire of us as well. We
may need to run. And so this is oh wait,
(19:47):
how old were you? Probably five years old?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
And I think this is sort of the experience that
so many Jews grow up with a certain knowledge that
we I may never expressed to non Jewish people, and
so from the outside there may be this sense of
things look pretty good. In fact, I only came to
sort of understand this part of my identity when a
(20:14):
non Jewish black man asked me a few years ago.
There was some ongoing violence, you know, towards the Hasidic
community from the black community. We did this program called
Me to Jew in the city, make a friend where
we put up a tent in Harlem and gave out
coffee and rugelach to try to Let's have conversations, let's interact,
Let's stop being on different sides of the street, but
let's get to know each other. This guy came by
(20:36):
and he said, no offense, but you seem like you're
doing okay, Like what persecution do Jews feel? And this
got me back to this point of I've had this
knowledge my whole life that we may have to run
one day. I summed it up as Jewish baggage is
never being able to fully unpack. So I started asking
people online did you get such a talk? And not surprisingly,
(20:59):
many Jewish people in my network reported as similar talk.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Some talks included.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Have your passport always ready if the person was visibly Jewish,
it was you wear a baseball cap in this setting,
or look for the exits you know if you're in
this type of Jewish building. But then I realized that
the talk is actually a talk that every single Jewish
person gets. Nearly in the Passover Satar in the Hagadah,
we say every year, in every generation, our enemies.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Rise up to destroy us.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
So although my mother told us this talk when we
were young, and that seems like a young age to
say something so heavy, we had actually been learning this
message since the first time that we went to a
passover Satar, and so I think that to answer the
question about what has the world been like since October seventh?
So I grew up having nightmares about the Holocaust. We
(21:50):
learned about the Holocaust, you know, in social studies, probably
starting in fifth sixth grade.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And when you're.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
A Jewish kid, I think most Jewish kids go home
and have nightmares afterwards about the Nazis rounding you up.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
And I think the non Jewish kids too. I think
it is a terrifying concept to introduce to a child
and you know who's going to be the oppressor and
who's going to be oppressed. And I don't know that
that exclusively was for Jewish people. I think that every
child that is forced to sort of face the atrocities
(22:25):
of humans against each other was terrorized by the truth
of the Holocaust.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
It could be, you know, I've sort of I know
what my experience is and what my you know, Jewish
friends have reported back. I'll tell you something else, and
I'm curious if you've thought of this too, And I
did actually do an informal pull on our social media channels.
There seems to be a large percentage of Jewish people
that sort of test their strength against whatever they're experiencing.
(22:53):
So what I mean is, let's say you're out somewhere
and you're really thirsty. You put yourself into the situation
of how would I have managed on a cattle car
being shipped off to Auschwitz? Wow? You We came home
a couple of years ago during winter breaking. It had
snowed and I didn't have boots, and we cut out
of the plane, you know, got our car our uber
(23:14):
and I had to walk through the front lawn that
was full of snow with just low shoes, And I
thought to myself, how would I have fared during the
Death March?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
And Gerda Stein? You know the story of Gerda Stein father,
her father told her put on your boots and it
was the summer and she said, Daddy, He said, you
don't disobey your father. And it was those boots that
allowed her to survive the Holocaust that she listened to him.
That he didn't survive, but she survived, and she ended
(23:45):
up marrying the American soldier who freed her concentration camp.
And he went over to her and said, she opened
that it was they were in a bicycle factory where
they had walked walked and walked and walked, and they
were in the bicycle factory and he opened the door
and she was there, and she warned him. She said,
(24:07):
I just need you to know we're all Jews. And
he said, and so am I. And then they were
married and they have very many children, and they live
in Arizona, and all those stories, you know, haunted me
as well throughout my life. Now, I'm not claiming any
comparison to the heritage and the trauma tattoo on the
(24:31):
cellular DNA I feel of Jewish people in our recent
lifetime since the Holocaust. I'm just trying to really understand
how it all went so wrong since October seventh, Like
after nine to eleven, the United States had so much
(24:55):
goodwill from around the world because of the terrorist attack
that occurred, and then that didn't seem to happen after
October seventh, now correct, I don't know if that's because
it seemed as though the response was very quick and
(25:16):
very brutal. That it almost shook people from focusing on
the seventh. Do you think that that's what occurred or
what do you think is the reason for that.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
I think that there's a lot of anti Semites that
are out there, and I think that and this goes
back to kind of the media depiction of Jews sort
of reinforcing this. Jews are seen as privileged and powerful
and wealthy and white and kind of being in control
of everything, and so people kind of don't have room
(25:51):
in their mind to see us as the oppressed and
the victims. I think in the Holocaust, that's kind of
like the one exception, and there's kind of the sense
that that bad thing happened, and now, look, Jews are everywhere,
and I think that. Look, I do work in diversity,
equity and inclusion. We founded the first and only Jewish
Hollywood Bureau a couple of years ago. What we discovered
(26:14):
was that every other minority group had been advocating for
decades in Hollywood for fair and whole and nuanced depictions,
and no one ever did it for the Jews. Why
Because Jews run Hollywood, because Jews have all the power,
because Jews don't need any help, and so you know,
what I think really is kind of the challenge is
that in the minds of so many people, Jews are
(26:35):
at the top, So how could we be struggling? How
could we be at the bottom. Jews have not been
included in so many of these initiatives around listening to
the stories of the marginalized, hearing what they're experiencing, understanding
the baggage that they're carrying, how it fits into the
larger tapestry of how other groups tell their stories. And
(26:55):
I think because of that, people that normally are as
too to you know, being sensitive about.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
The social justice issues and exactly right.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
And by the way, David Bidil talks about this and
Jews don't count. It is a masterpiece that he wrote
explaining how this social justice movement left out the Jews
and why we do belong in that conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, it's it's a fascinating dilemma to try to wrap
your head around it, really is. I know, personally, for
me that my response to the Israeli response of Gaza
and all the death that's happened since then, you know,
(27:41):
has has gutted me and millions of other people, never
mind the people there. And I find that the accusation
of anti Semitism is so painful to people who are
not but want the want the bombing to stop.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
So I think the thing about unconscious bias, and I
think that this is something that the black community really
brought out in the last few years, is that we
can be good people that have good intentions, and we
can have so many unconscious biases sort of like written
into our I don't know, not say DNA, but sort
of like experience or how we see the world, that
(28:23):
we may not realize what we believe. Let me ask
you a question, like, what was your feeling, you know
when the US responded to nine to eleven and you know,
went to Afghanistan to get rid of al Qaeda.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, I went on TV with no war spray painted
on the back of my jacket, and I spoke to
Phil Donniu about our need for clearer minds and that
we could not go and invade a country that did
not attack us on nine to eleven. And I got
in a lot of trouble personally and professionally. But I'm
(29:00):
a pacifist. I'm against war, you know, I'm against the
I'm against what's going on in Gaza. I can't watch it,
and that doesn't mean I'm anti Semitic to me, and
I don't like the accusation. I feel it's unfair. I
feel I feel the pain of my friends, large percentage
(29:20):
of Boom or Jewish. I feel their pain. I see
their pain. I've had friendships end in the last month
over this, you know, over if you don't, if you
don't write this instead of cease fire, then you are Hamas.
I'm like, well, now, come on, are you seriously going
(29:41):
to say that to someone who says, well, maybe the
response is not legal, the response to the tragedy. No
one denies the atrocities. Nobody denies some.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
People are actually let me actually just correct you there,
because there are actually people and just in terms of
you know, explaining what we're going through. So what I
would say is that the Holocaust nightmares of my childhood
started playing out in real time updates on social media
and hearing about the beheadings and the burnings and the
rapings of women where literally they said their limbs were
(30:17):
ripped off. It is like a level of terror, and
it feels like we are a small people and it
feels like this is a distant cousin. That's how the
Jewish people feel about each other because we are a nation.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Well, you know, I would expect terror from Isis and
hisbola and hamas, but I don't expect that behavior from Israel.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Okay, So just to clarify, do you think that targeting
civilians going into a civilian population and they literally had
lists of homes with people written in them who was
going to be home on October seventh so they would
know who to be able to attack. They had a
list of women that they were planning to rape. I mean,
they have detailed records that they kept. Do you not
(31:01):
see any difference between the specific targeting of civilians versus
the trying to minimize civilian casualties by targeting ramas like,
do you not see any differentiation.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
In Well, I don't think that there's a lot of
thought given to the civilians.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So what I would like to sort of push back
on that is that Israel is doing an extraordinary amount
to try to prevent civilians from being killed. Look, the
reality is that I appreciate your consistency that you spoke
out against the US, you know, going to Afghanistan, because
I do think that not everyone that's complaining about Israel's
(31:42):
response had the same perspective with the US and in Afghanistan.
So I do appreciate that, you know, you're a pacifist
through and through what the IDEF does do as Ramas
embeds under schools, under hospitals, and the US has confirmed
that they've embedded under hospitals. The IDs made twenty thousand
(32:02):
phone calls to Palestinians to warn them to get out.
They've hacked it, nowhere for them to go, so so okay.
So in terms of where they can go, the IDEF
actually made a humanitarian corridor to help Palestinians leave the area.
Hamas was there with snipers, actually shooting both Palestinians and
the IDF. The Hamas is also there with snipers as
(32:26):
Palestinians were trying to leave the area. Israel is doing
humanitarian pauses every day. They've provided incubators to the hospital
where Hamas has there.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
They cut off food and water, Allison, they're starving people.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Okay, ten let me let me let me ask you
a question.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Did the US provide food and water in Germany when
we fought the Nazis?
Speaker 2 (32:49):
There were four million German civilians.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
That was a war where there were two there were
nations against each other. This is an ideology, a terrorist group,
a horrific outgrowth of the worst of humanity. It's not
a country.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
I mean you know what.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Israel unilaterally left Gaza in two thousand and five. They
left them with greenhouses. This was a beautiful built up
area that Jewish people had been living in. They literally
ethnically cleansed Gaza of Jews, and the idea of pulled
Jewish people out of Gaza in order to say you
(33:29):
have this land, we will help you to develop it further.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
We want to partner with you.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
And by the way, this was after five other instances
of you know, Palestinians being offered a two state solution
that they rejected those every single time. In two thousand
and five, Israel unilaritly left Gaza, and they could have
done anything they wanted to, and there were plenty of
governments around the world that were ready to give funding
(33:55):
help build it up. Instead, very sadly, a majority of
Palestinians voted Ramas as their government. And once Ramas has power,
as we both know, Ramas is not going to be
giving up power Look, my heart breaks for any innocent
Palestinian that is living there under this horrific, terrifying regime
and they don't have any way to get out or
(34:16):
get food.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
We'll be back with Alice and Joseph's right after this.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Since I'm not a pacifist, I need to just ask
you a question, which is, how do you stop bad people?
How do you stop Nazis and al Qaeda and ISIS
and Haramas? If you're going to take a pacifist approach,
like literally, what are you supposed to do? Well, I
don't think you can kill all of the Palestinians in
order to end Hamas. Wait, so I didn't say that
(35:03):
we're doing that. And just keep in mind that Israel
is risking their soldiers' lives by making this into a
ground war, which, as we both know, is a much
more dangerous thing to do. If Israel wanted to just
carpet bomb all of Gaza, this thing could be over
in a few minutes. They have the firepower to do
so they are carefully going from building to buildings.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Well, I look, I dispute that, Allison. I think that
anyone watching what's going on can't claim that Israel has
the moral high ground of trying to save lives in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
What did you have to say online when Hamas shot
three rockets at the Israeli hospital in Ashkaloge Did you
have any comments on that?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Well, there are all kinds of distortions coming from the
media about what's happening there, including I think some of
the ways that you've just presented your opinion of what's
happened there, that there's an altruistic Jewish identity that would
take care of such things as innocent civilians. I believe
(36:10):
that's who Jewish people are. That's what I believe the
Tora represents. That's what I believe Jewish people are about.
It's not that they are about what's happening now in Gaza,
that that what's happening now. I got in trouble because
I said genocide and friends said, how could you say that?
(36:30):
Or how could you say cease fire? I will always
say cease fire. I will always try to save the
lives of innocent people. There's no collateral damage in a war,
there's just humans. So I'm not who's to blame, though
it's Hamas not to blame. There was a ceasefire on
October sixth, Yes, and I do have some questions about
yahu In. What took six to eight hours to get
(36:52):
there to help people in the most the most protected
area in the Midwest, the most cameras and security footage
per per mile per kilometer. How did that happen? And
you know, nine to eleven, the United States needed a
reason to get into war in the mid East, and
it seems as though bet Yahoo got what he wanted
(37:15):
on that day.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I mean, I think that's no matter your opinion on
this man, this was really like the most horrific Jewish
attack in the life of anything.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
How did it happened? And how did it happen? So
there were eight breaches? How were there eight breaches.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
In the LD? So it seems like Iran was involved.
It seems like Russia was involved. There was a major
hacking that happened that just destabilized everything, took all eyes
off of everything. They also simultaneously had rockets firing to
get people to look.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
In the wrong direction.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
So while they were looking where the rockets were firing,
they were able to open and infiltrate the the fence.
And let me just clarify, Egypt has a very significant
wall with Goz. Egypt has blockaded Gaza and they don't
allow any free passage into Gaza. Their wall is high,
it's thick, it's deep into the ground because they know
the Palestinians build tunnels. The wall between Israel and Gaza
(38:14):
is just a fence, and it.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Was on just a fence. We've seen it.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Did not see did you not see the bulldozers that
just in that part?
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I agree they were fences, yes, and that's the that's
the majority of the wall. I actually was shocked to
find out that Israel did not have a wall as
significant as Egypt does. But they do not like this
is what I would put onto you. I appreciate that
you want to decrease, you know, the loss of human life,
and in the end, I want to decrease the anti
(38:46):
Semitism that's happening, and I want Israel to realize that
they're creating more terrorists every hour this goes on.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
So you know what I think, when we fought back
at Isis and when we fought back at al Qaeda, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
These are.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
These are extremist Islamic terror groups. These are not Muslims.
This is a certain radical ideology, and unfortunately, I think
the only way to defeat them is to destroy them
for any innocent I'm talking about the terrorists, not the people.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
If you I mean.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
The head of Hamas said right after October seventh, they'll
do another one, and another one and another one. Their
goal is to annihilate every single Jew in Israel. And
they've also called for global jihad and an enafada all
over the world, which.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
There's no argument that they are the worst of the
worst in terms of terrorist groups. And something about their
life and their history of being, as Jimmy Carter said,
an apartheid state, being in an apartheid situation when he
(40:00):
write that book, and he got in so much trouble.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Jim tell me what's in apartheid state about Israel? How
would you describe that? What do you mean by that? Well?
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I was shocked when I went there to find out
that there was not free passage, that there were separate
roads that Palestinians had to walk on, in roads that
Israeli's got to walk on.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
I've been to Israel, I've lived in Israel. I have
no idea what you're talking about. There are no separate
roads for Palestinians. In fact, there are one hundred and
thirty thousand Palestinians that have work permits that go to
Israel every day.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
So I don't think that how Israel has treated the
Palestinians is an apartheid type government.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
So let's just separate things into two different categories. There's
Israeli Arabs, two million Israeli Arabs that live in Israel proper.
They're full citizens, they are in the Supreme Court, they
are CEOs of major banks, their television you know, hosts,
I mean, doctors, lawyers, you name it. They go to
(41:02):
the universities. Let's contrast that to the fact that there
are basically no Jews in any other Middle Eastern Muslim countries.
In fact, eight hundred and fifty thousand Jews were ethnically
cleansed from pretty much every other Middle East and North
African country.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
In the forties and fifties.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
So just to say those countries don't have Jews living
there and they don't you know, have full of reti.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Doesn't mean they don't live there. It means that there's
an oppressive government that penalizes one race over the other
and fields so.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Jews for the few Jews that are left in these places,
they cannot live safely and comfortably. It is certainly a
scary and terrifying way to be one of the lone
Jews left in Iraq or Iran. That sort of a thing.
So I think in terms of the Israeli Arabs, they
have full citizenship, they have there have you know, made
success in many of their careers. Then there's the separate
(42:00):
issue of Palestinians. Israel has offered or sort of the
world the un different entities have offered Palestinians their own
state on five occasions. In two thousand, Bill Clinton sat
down with Arafat and you know, he was basically offered
ninety four percent of the West Bank Gaza, East Jerusalem.
(42:23):
Bill Clinton said that Arafat said no fourteen times in
two weeks and never once asked for a counter offer.
Five years eight years later, Ahood almart sat down with
Mohammad Abas to offer even more land, and he still
said no. Instead of giving a counter offer, they came
back with violence, and in the middle of that, Israel
(42:45):
unilaterally left Gaza and again gave them a piece of
land that they could have turned into Palestine and could
have built up and could have taken care of their citizens.
That was the dream your average Israeli and your average
Jew once the two states. The problem is that when
over and over again you offer two state solution and
what they say again and they're saying this at March,
(43:06):
is they want a one state solution, and a one
state solution means the death of Jews, the end of Jews.
And when you see these protesters, and I've seen a
bunch of videos online where they say where should the
Jews go?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
They say Jews should go to Hell.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
So, you know, I think if there are people that
you can work with and both sides are saying they want.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
You, you can't demonize people.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
No, I'm not saying a people.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I'm mentioning the leaders that the leadership has rejected.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Well, Justice Thod NETANYAHUO doesn't represent the vast majority of
Jewish people in Israel. I don't think that Hamas represents
the Palestinian people.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Or the Palestinian authority. Look between Hamas and the Palestinian authority.
Just a few months ago, the people of Gaza were
polled and eighty eight percent said they would vote for
Hamas or the Palestinian authority.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Both you know, are It's kind of what I'm hearing, Allison.
And this is why it's so pressing to me, is
what I'm hearing from Jewish friends who I love, who
I have been friends with for many, many, many years,
is there's nothing we can do. We have to do this.
There's justification for genocide. And I know that's a word
(44:17):
that that infuriates people, but it's so hard to witness it,
to watch it, and to think what those horrible people
did on the seventh is you know, we're going to
outevil them by.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
What so was I'm defeating the Nazis genocide of Germany.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
No, defeating the Nazis was not because we didn't go
and try to kill innocent people. When we were we
killed the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah, but four million civilians died in Germany during World
War two, es far during World War Yes, but this
but this is a war though, this is not between
two countries.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
It's between one very very militarized country, a group of
oppressed people.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
So here's the thing that I'm gonna say, with kindness
and with respect, I think when you describe the power
of Israel, those powerful Jews, I think, unknowingly you are
stepping into an anti Semitic trope, which I don't blame
you for because I really do believe you have a
kind heart and you love your Jewish friends. But I
do think that when you view the Palestinians as the
(45:24):
oppressed people and the big, bad, powerful Jew on the
other side, I really do think that that is an
ancient anti Semitic trope of the powerful Jews.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
We'll be back with Alice and Josephs right after this.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
During Passover, when we talk about the ten plagues, we
take ten drops of wine out of our cup because
even though the Egyptians enslaved us for two hundred and
ten years, Jewish values implore us to feel even the
pain of our enemies. And so again, I can't speak
for every single Israeli, but what I will tell you
(46:22):
is that when an Israeli Jewish person commits a crime,
they go to jail. There is it's a democracy, and
there are consequences. There is no democracy right now under
Hamas's rule. And I think, you know, I think the
reason your Jewish friends are reacting so strongly is because
there is no moral equivalence between a terror organization who
(46:43):
stated mission is to annihilate all Jews and an army
of a sovereign democratic nation who is simply trying to
protect its citizens from getting hacked up, like literally like
children with their arms cut off.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Can't say that, Alison, we see we see baby's arms
being pulled from the rubble every day. So how can
you help what we not?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
This is what I would love.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Which evil is worse?
Speaker 3 (47:09):
I think the evil that targets innocence is for sure worse.
What I would love to see as a solution is
have Egypt open its border, have a temporary you know,
time and place for Palestinians to make a safe exit out.
Let Israel do its job to finish off Kramas, because
it will protect not only Jews, but anyone in the
world who is peace loving and has liberal values. You know,
(47:33):
we are we are living in basically the worst case scenario.
Like we're not at the gas chambers yet, rosy, but
like people. The day after October seventh, my husband went
to the train station, Penn Station, and there was a
rally celebrating Israel had not done any response yet, and
there was simply a celebration of Ramas supporters that were
(47:54):
out there in this country.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Shame on them, it's shame on their soul.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
This is and this is happening all over the world.
And look, we all want peace. We pray for peace
three times a day as Jewish people, and we see
that as a piece, a worldwide piece. But we will
not sit back and be killed and we will not
be defenseless Jews.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
And that's my message.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Well, you know what, Alison, I've admired you and how
you speak up for your people and what you believe,
and I have loved engaging with you. And you know,
I am deeply troubled, as many millions of people are
across the world by what's happening. And it's really so
(48:39):
unbearably depressing to me that it's hard to function. And
instead of saying things that I believe on the internet,
because you know, the serenity, prayer, the wisdom to know
the difference the things you can change and the things
you can change, there's nothing that a hashtag is going
to change in this, you know, a biblical problem. That's
(49:01):
that's it's it's it's it's not going to change. So
I've been resorting to doing videos about my squirrels because
I can't I can't bear it, Alison. The truth is
I can't bear it. Just like your soul was crushed
at eight years old and your spirit opened up, I think,
you know, my soul was crushed as well, by by
(49:22):
war and by having to visualize it. And and then
the the people all over the world who do have power,
the television industry, they decided we're not going to show
war anymore because it upsets the masses too much, you.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Know, like your father, like your fat.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
And now you know, we get it in our handheld devices,
and it's it's it's too much, it's too harrowing. And
you know, I grew up a Catholic kid where nobody
said I love you, and nobody, uh was very mushbooky
or you know. And I went over to Lourie Shackner's
house and her mother kissed me on both cheeks and
(50:01):
my mom had just died and hugged me and they
had a shag rug and leather couches. And I have
held Jewish people in very high regard in my life,
almost as a goal of something to want to be.
I've loved my kids, I think like a Jewish mother
loves her children. And I learned it from watching the
(50:22):
families on Long Island, and you know, to be called
anti semitic, my son had a brisk performed by Amoil.
I am not anti Semitic, and to be accused of
it by people that you love is unbearably painful. It's
such a horrific thing to accuse someone of, especially when
(50:43):
that's not the truth for them.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
I very much respect your position, and I really do
believe you're coming from a good place, So I will
give you my stamp of approval from that place.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Well, thank you, I'll take it. I'll take it.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
But what I would, I guess, just have you and
any of your listeners just sort of consider examine is
that we don't have We don't want to die again. Basically,
we don't want another October seventh. If the world would
partner with Israel and take in refugees so we could
just get rid of the people that are vowing to
(51:18):
come in and massacre us over and over again, Israel
would take it in a heartbeat. This is they're literally
trying to do whatever they can. And I know you
say that you doubt that.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
I No, I don't doubt that. It just it sure
doesn't look like it from this point of view. You
know what, war is a horrible thing. I think nobody
is going to downplay how horrific war is. This is
not a world that Israel wanted.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
The people that Hamas attacked in that rave, in that festival,
those were the peace lovers. They thought a woman that
spent her life building bridges and seeing the best in
humanity and like it didn't matter. And like I would say,
that's you know, maybe some of the worst of this
that the people that wanted to sort of have that
vision of how we all live together and understand each other.
(52:05):
Ramas is just like in a whole different universe right now,
and while they walk the earth, we are all in danger.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
And I think, really like what the goal is.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
And when I speak about the Israeli army, like I
don't you've met Jewish men before, We're not necessarily like
the rambo macho type. Like these are mostly like family
guys that are going home and just want to I
don't know, not be fighting. They're doing this so that
their wives and children don't end up like hacked up
(52:35):
and you know, gang raped. It's really like, I know,
you don't like the outcome, and neither do I, but
to not do anything could mean the annihilation of the
Jewish people. So if any countries want to get involved,
to take in refugees, open the corridor in Egypt, let
Palestinians get a safe you know, exit away, so Israel
(52:55):
can eradicate Ramas. That is the goal. I have a
ton of Israeli fans. They are terrified, and they're also
resolute that we're not going to have another Holocaust. We
will defend ourselves, and we won't be ashamed of defending ourselves.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Okay, and don't be ashamed when some people don't understand,
because it's hard to understand sometimes. You know, nobody wants that.
Nobody wants another Holocaust. Nobody wants another you know, nobody
wants anti ramp at, anti Semitism that's occurring in college
campuses all over the world. And you know, I mean,
(53:32):
it's uh, it feels like the end of the world
to me. And that's that's the most depressing part of it.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
So I will say, as a person of faith in
the Jewish tradition, we have this concept of yamosamashiach of
you know, of a Messianic era where there will be
world peace and nations will you know, lad down their
sores and turn their swords into plowshares. And it is
some times hard to picture how that could happen. And
(54:03):
get what I'll tell you is that I have felt
more unity and sort of brotherhood with fellow Jews in
a way that I've never felt in my life before.
That is one of the signs that Jewish tradition says
will happen before these days of peace, worldwide peace.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
So I'm continuing to pray and to hold I'm.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
For worldwide piece too else and that's my whole goal.
And and the end of the end of this, because
it's it's so unbearably painful, I'll give it an amin.
I'll give it one as well, shall own to you
and to all of Israel and to all of its people.
I don't want anyone killed, I don't want anyone terrorized.
(54:44):
And I thank you for being here. This is, you know,
a conversation that I think is going to happen a
lot of Thanksgiving homes and and let's hope that that
we can have conversations like this one where no one
accuses someone or yells at someone or you know, bases
them and then Hopefully that's the path that will go
down together, walking together to find peace in this world. Finally,
(55:08):
you know, thank.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
You, thanks so much. Thanks for the platform to do it.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
You're more than welcome. We're not going to take any
questions today. I just wanted to offer this conversation which
maybe will bring some solace. This Thursday is Thanksgiving. Be
(55:35):
with your tribe, your blood, your family, your chosen family,
your friends and loved ones. Find some peace with each
other if you can, and I'll see you back on
December fifth with one of the most fabulous humans around
Murray Hill. Till then, people onward,
Well, hello everybody. You made it here. How are you?
It is almost Thanksgiving? So what can I say? Today
is going to be kind of a heavy show. No
matter who you are, no matter where you come from
or what you think, it's hard to talk about the Mideast,
especially right now. Make no mistake, it's a complex and
difficult conversation and has been for generations. But because of
(00:32):
social media, I think things have only grown more difficult,
more isolating. People are angry, heartbroken and exhausted, and we
need to have real conversation. We need to understand each other.
We need to come together with peace in our hearts. Today.
My guest is Alison Joseph's, who I met through social
media a couple of years ago. Her screen name is
(00:55):
jew in the City. Her platform is representation and education
as to who the Jewish people truly are. She has
done this long before the events of October seventh, and
I thought maybe this would be a good place to start. Here,
we are having a conversation myself and Alison Joseph. Well,
(01:26):
Hi everybody, it is me Rosi O'Donnell talking to Alison Joseph's. Hello, Alison,
It's very nice to meet you, sort of here on
the zoom.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Likewise, great to meet you as well.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, how long have you been online? And do you
remember when we first connected? Was it like what a
couple of years ago? Was it?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
It was a couple of years ago you were posting
about Minn Orthodox life. And since my nonprofits you in
the City handles depictions of Jews and media, and our
founding mission was specifically to look at Orthodox depictions.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And I had some opinions about that show.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yes, indeed, Now were you raised Orthodox yourself?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I was not.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And the interesting thing is that I was really raised
to hate Orthodox Jews, to judge Orthodox Jews. I was
raised to be a proud Jew, but that was kind
of more like culturally Jewish and you know, some holidays
and a sense of that the Jewish people should continue
because we've been through so much.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
But I grew up in New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
We would go to Manhattan maybe once a month, out
to dinner, out to a Broadway show, and I would
see the Orthodox just kind of looking so weird, so different,
so extreme, so backwards, and I.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Felt kind of ashamed of them, actually, And then did.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
You did you feel ashamed of them? Because you were
taught that or did you feel it because they were
just so other.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
So I think I was taught that my father took
care of Classidic Jews when he did his residency at
Mount Sinai, And I remember some of my earliest memories
in life was him coming home from the hospital and saying,
they're dirty, they're smelly, they're ignorant, they can't speak English.
Imagine that perspective on any other minority group. I mean,
it would be pretty shocking and bigoted, But because we're Jewish,
(03:21):
it was kind of like we can look down on
the wrong kind of Jews. We're the good kind of
Jews and those are the bad kind of Jews. And
I will tell you that media only reinforced everything my
father taught us because media, essentially both news media and
fictional media, picks up on the crooks, creeps, and extremists
of the community.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right, would you say for every minority or would you
say just exclusively for Jewish people.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think media has been damaging for every minority for
most of the time. What there has been in recent years, thankfully,
is a shift now for more nuanced, more understanding and
understanding that continued negative depictions leads to danger in terms
(04:08):
of how that minority fares in the world. And that's
you know, that's the work that my nonprofit is doing
now for the Jewish community. So I guess what I'll
say is that I think there's been a lot of
progress for other communities. We're certainly not there yet. I'm
sure if you speak to, you know, any person from
a different minority group, they will be able to flag
for you what they still don't like about their depictions
(04:30):
or the representation. And I also think that they'll be
able to point to real progress made.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Now, your dad was is a doctor, Yeah, and he
would only use that kind of language about Orthodox Jews.
He wouldn't use it about other minorities around you.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Correct, because he was an open minded person who didn't prejudge.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So did you ever say to him I find that offensive?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
No, because I agreed with him.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I had no people in my life to counter that
narrative because I had never interacted with them. So my
father sort of set the stage as to what I believed.
And then you know, newspaper headlines and you know TV shows,
books and movies reinforce those ideas, and there were no
real person examples to counter those ideas.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Now there are some wonderful depictions of Orthodox life on
TV on now they are much more than there used
to be. There's not only My Orthodox Life, which was
kind of a reality show and sensationalized, and they were
looking for characters to to I almost said exploit, but
(05:47):
there you go to exploit. And but you know the
names that I'm thinking of of those Israeli shows with
that I loved, Unorthodox was one of them, I believe right.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You're thinking of and Orthodox.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So look Stissel and there was really the Stistlemania that
took the world. And I think the reason that people
went so wild over Stissel was it was because the
first time we were seeing the humanity beneath the beards,
beneath the wigs within this community that seemed like a
world away. And I appreciate that Stissel did show the
(06:23):
humanity of ha Readi characters. It was excellent writing, excellent acting,
and you did get to know them and that was huge,
That was groundbreaking. My complaint with Stissel is it's the
most second most insular Orthodox community in Israel. And what
I find is that for Orthodox Jews like me, that
(06:45):
you could call me Centrist Orthodox or modern Orthodox don't
really ever get depicted, and people don't really know the
difference between us and the people living in the second
most insular community in Israel. And one of my good friends,
who's a reformed Jew, who saw me become observant in
high school, she asked me what I thought of it,
and I said, it's a great show.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
It's a little extreme, and she said, huh, funny coming
from you, I said, because you think I'm living just
a life. She said, yeah, pretty much. And so my
husband and I are Ivy League educated. We travel the world,
my kids are exposed to all different types of people,
and we're both very devout, and we've also taught our
children to understand that everybody contains a divine spark, and
(07:27):
not everybody comes to the same conclusion. People have different
life experiences, they come to different outcomes, and we're here to,
you know, to live and sort of see the humanity
and the positive qualities of the diverse tapestry of you know,
of mankind.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right, And how did you go from being a cultural
Jew to an Orthodox Jew? What inspired that transition in you?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, So, first of all, I did not know that
such a thing was possible. I kind of thought that
the normal Jew like me were born normal and the
weird Jews were born that way.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
But what ended up happening was that.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And there's a term for what I did, which is
called to be a balshuva, a master of return. When
I was eight years old, a father in my public
school had a mental breakdown. I walked into my fourth
grade home room in nineteen eighty eight. My classmates were crying,
huddled around their desks. I immediately knew something was off.
Found out that the night before, Angela's father had killed
(08:28):
both children and himself, and so God, I was going
to a triple funeral that week and not even nine
years old, And sort of, as all this heaviness of
death was sitting on my child like mind, I realized
that what's going to happen when I die? I will
end my time in this world at some point. And
(08:52):
then I stopped the question before that, which was why
are we here in the first place, And being only
eight years old, I assume my parents must know the
answer to that. They brought three daughters into the world
so over a bagel breakfast, you know, probably the Sunday
after the funerals, I said, by the way, why are
we alive? And my parents just stared at me, and
(09:12):
it was this devastating realization that they literally had no plan,
they had no wisdom to share. And I started asking
other people in my world, and the response I basically
got was nobody knows. Don't think about it. And the
problem was that, like the cat was already out of
the bag, and I couldn't stop thinking about the thing
that everybody told me not to think about.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So that's so interesting that happened to me when I
was that age as well with the Vietnam War, that
I would watch it on TV because I'm sixty one,
and we would see it as we were eating dinner,
these horrific images, and my father I started to cry.
I would cry when I watched the news, and he said,
(09:54):
you can't watch the news anymore. Go to your room.
You're not allowed to watch the news. That was the
answer right to to a little eight year old girl,
you know, who was was scared and whose mother was
dying and was you know, it was a traumatic event
at that time that made me question kind of everything
and kind of laid down my moral compass for me.
(10:18):
Were your parents supportive of your desire to go towards
these these bigger ideas at such a young age. Where
when did you make the switch to knowing that an
orthodox life might be the one that inspired and filled
your heart?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yes? So it was about seven years of insomnia and
often on panic attacks. As long as I was distracted,
I was the life of the party, the straight a student.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Everything was great.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
When the distractions would stop, I would sort of go
into this point of panic. And I've learned more about
mental health sort of during COVID, and I realized now
that I was disassociating. When I was sort of go
to that point of will be somewhere or nowhere for eternity,
I would feel myself flying out of my body, which
only reconfirmed this idea that nothing here is really real,
(11:06):
and I would just be really terrorized, terrified in this
loop of thoughts. And although I felt the love and
protection of my parents, they weren't big enough to stand
up to eternity next to me and their protection and
their you know what they provided for us, and it
wasn't enough because I was sort of coming face to
(11:27):
face with you know, time and space. So They were
supportive of my being, I think a precocious thinker. The
reason that it ended up getting to going back to
my heritage was they sent us to an after school
Hebrew high after our bot mitzvahs. They didn't really care
for us to become more.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Did you go to a public school, a private school,
a Jewish school, what did you attend?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I attended a public school until eighth grade, and then
a private school for high school. And so while I
was in both public and private school to sort of
supplement our Jewish you know, knowledge and community, they sent
us to this Hebrew high after our bat mitzvah's and
it was there that, for the first time in my life,
I got to meet real, live, actual Orthodox Jews. So
(12:17):
no more headlines, no more negative messages from my father,
but my own personal interactions. And what I discovered was
that these people were living these really meaningful and positive
lives and they were not the weirdos that I had
been led to believe they are. Let me clarify, there
are still some weirdos. I'm not gonna master the entire community.
(12:37):
There's for sure weirdos, but there's weirdos everywhere I spent
my first Shabis, my first Sabbath with one of my teachers.
In my mind he was coming from a Stistle community,
even though he lived in one of the biggest modern
Orthodox communities in the Tri State area. I couldn't quite
parse the difference. But what I'll tell you is that
my soul was yearning for what they had, what I
(12:59):
saw in their home. When I studied Torah in depth
in his class, there was something that I had really
been longing for, and my soul felt complete and sort of.
The follow up point to this exposure to this new
way of life was in a tropical rainforest in Hawaii
when I was sixteen. During that year of sort of
exploration and opening up my mind, I saw a tree
(13:22):
that I was convinced had been painted on by just
some artists in the forest. And when I looked to
the top and saw the color went all the way
up this huge shoot. It's called rainbow eucalyptus, something inside
of me transformed. I like to call it a moment
of clarity, or for a split second, I delved one
layer deeper into perception and I discovered unity running throughout
(13:43):
all of existence. And in that moment when I felt
this unity surround me. I suddenly realized this is what
they must mean when they say God. And I was
an agnostic and atheist, certainly not a believer before that,
but sort of happening upon this moment in the Hawaii
and sort of being filled with something so big and majestic,
(14:06):
something shifted inside me forever. And once I sort of
named that feeling, I thought, let me look into my
heritage to see if I can delve deeper into that
experience of God to get that feeling back again.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
That's intense. You were sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Well, if I was thinking about the end of my
life at eight, I had to get to enlightenment by sixteen.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
You know. Now, what was your family's response were they
when you you know, you come and you say, I
know God, I feel a spiritual center and I'd like
to follow this? Your family was accepting and.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Nope, no.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So what I'll tell you is that my mother had
the strongest sense about Judaism. She had a religious grandmother
and grandfather that basically only spoke Yiddish, and although they
couldn't communicate, you know, in English, she we had fond
memories of their relationship to Judaism and so she was
more supportive. I was a bit of a nerdy teenager,
(15:08):
so if I was acting up and my mother wanted
to ground me, she would say, no shabas for you
this week, little girl. Like that was literally I got
to cancel. My punishment was getting shaba is canceled. My
father thought that I was becoming one of these extremists,
that he was taken care of that. Again, he completely
judged I think very unfairly, and so at all of
(15:29):
sixteen years old, I said, if you think then I'm
ruining my life and the life of your unborn grandchildren,
then please save me from this cult. But here's the deal.
You don't get an opinion until you learn something, because
ignorant people shouldn't weigh in on debates. So learn something,
meet who I meet, come for shabis, where I go
away for shabas, And once you've educated yourself, let's engage
(15:50):
in a debate. He didn't want to do it, didn't
want to do it, and eventually realized that he does
have to learn to properly debate me. So he began
to study to spite me, and after about a year
of studying and experiencing shobas for himself. He was almost
fifty years old. He said, you were right and I
was wrong, and now it's time to play catch up.
And he and my mother and both of my sisters
(16:12):
all became Orthodox.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Wow, that's pretty fascinating. What a strong manifesto you are.
You were able to sort of change the essence of
your whole family at a young age.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And my parents have fourteen Orthodox grandchildren. And again, we're
all living in this space now of very devout, very committed,
you know, to this spiritual way of life, and also
holding space for the larger world and you know our
role in making it better and sort of understanding the
complexities and nuances of humanity.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Had you at sixteen or even at eight, experienced anti
Semitism yourself.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
So my parents raised us in a town with almost
no Jews, and maybe in first grade, our neighbor across
the street, Larry said to us, I'm speaking your language,
called me a Jewish jerk. In fourth grade, a girl
named Charlene told me that Jewish people howl the moon
(17:18):
and prayed to the devil.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So I sort of had this sense of.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Being the lone Jew in sort of a larger gentile
world and kind of knowing what it felt like to
not belong. And it's truth is that after you know,
kind of the George Floyd was killed and there was
a lot more understanding happening about the experiences of many
people of color in this country. I read many narratives
(17:45):
of black women talking about kind of being that lone
person in a larger society that was not like them. Obviously,
you know, I didn't have the outward look that identified me,
but I was sort of known as the Jew. I
was the only Jewish girl in my grade for most
of my time in public school, and so I.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
In jity, you were the only one.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
There were towns that my parents could have moved to
that were more Jewish, they just did not move there.
I went to Catholic Mass before I went to an
orthodoxoal just to give you an idea of sort of
how little few Jews there were around me. My town
was predominantly Catholic Italian and a real pride around that,
(18:29):
you know, sort of ethnicity, and I appreciated their pride.
I just didn't have that sense of that sort of
community for myself. I really kind of always felt like
the lone Jew.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
We'll be back with Alice and Joseph's right after this.
(19:06):
So let me ask you, Allison, tell me what the
world has been like for you here in the United
States since October seventh. Tell me your fear level, tell
me your tell me what's been going on for you specifically.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So, when we were little, probably five years old, my
mother sat my sisters and me down, and she gave
us a warning. She said, things are good today, but
things were good in Germany, and things were good in Spain.
And every country eventually tires of its Jews, and one
day the US may tire of us as well. We
may need to run. And so this is oh wait,
(19:47):
how old were you? Probably five years old?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
And I think this is sort of the experience that
so many Jews grow up with a certain knowledge that
we I may never expressed to non Jewish people, and
so from the outside there may be this sense of
things look pretty good. In fact, I only came to
sort of understand this part of my identity when a
(20:14):
non Jewish black man asked me a few years ago.
There was some ongoing violence, you know, towards the Hasidic
community from the black community. We did this program called
Me to Jew in the city, make a friend where
we put up a tent in Harlem and gave out
coffee and rugelach to try to Let's have conversations, let's interact,
Let's stop being on different sides of the street, but
let's get to know each other. This guy came by
(20:36):
and he said, no offense, but you seem like you're
doing okay, Like what persecution do Jews feel? And this
got me back to this point of I've had this
knowledge my whole life that we may have to run
one day. I summed it up as Jewish baggage is
never being able to fully unpack. So I started asking
people online did you get such a talk? And not surprisingly,
(20:59):
many Jewish people in my network reported as similar talk.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Some talks included.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Have your passport always ready if the person was visibly Jewish,
it was you wear a baseball cap in this setting,
or look for the exits you know if you're in
this type of Jewish building. But then I realized that
the talk is actually a talk that every single Jewish
person gets. Nearly in the Passover Satar in the Hagadah,
we say every year, in every generation, our enemies.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Rise up to destroy us.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
So although my mother told us this talk when we
were young, and that seems like a young age to
say something so heavy, we had actually been learning this
message since the first time that we went to a
passover Satar, and so I think that to answer the
question about what has the world been like since October seventh?
So I grew up having nightmares about the Holocaust. We
(21:50):
learned about the Holocaust, you know, in social studies, probably
starting in fifth sixth grade.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And when you're.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
A Jewish kid, I think most Jewish kids go home
and have nightmares afterwards about the Nazis rounding you up.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
And I think the non Jewish kids too. I think
it is a terrifying concept to introduce to a child
and you know who's going to be the oppressor and
who's going to be oppressed. And I don't know that
that exclusively was for Jewish people. I think that every
child that is forced to sort of face the atrocities
(22:25):
of humans against each other was terrorized by the truth
of the Holocaust.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
It could be, you know, I've sort of I know
what my experience is and what my you know, Jewish
friends have reported back. I'll tell you something else, and
I'm curious if you've thought of this too, And I
did actually do an informal pull on our social media channels.
There seems to be a large percentage of Jewish people
that sort of test their strength against whatever they're experiencing.
(22:53):
So what I mean is, let's say you're out somewhere
and you're really thirsty. You put yourself into the situation
of how would I have managed on a cattle car
being shipped off to Auschwitz? Wow? You We came home
a couple of years ago during winter breaking. It had
snowed and I didn't have boots, and we cut out
of the plane, you know, got our car our uber
(23:14):
and I had to walk through the front lawn that
was full of snow with just low shoes, And I
thought to myself, how would I have fared during the
Death March?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
And Gerda Stein? You know the story of Gerda Stein father,
her father told her put on your boots and it
was the summer and she said, Daddy, He said, you
don't disobey your father. And it was those boots that
allowed her to survive the Holocaust that she listened to him.
That he didn't survive, but she survived, and she ended
(23:45):
up marrying the American soldier who freed her concentration camp.
And he went over to her and said, she opened
that it was they were in a bicycle factory where
they had walked walked and walked and walked, and they
were in the bicycle factory and he opened the door
and she was there, and she warned him. She said,
(24:07):
I just need you to know we're all Jews. And
he said, and so am I. And then they were
married and they have very many children, and they live
in Arizona, and all those stories, you know, haunted me
as well throughout my life. Now, I'm not claiming any
comparison to the heritage and the trauma tattoo on the
(24:31):
cellular DNA I feel of Jewish people in our recent
lifetime since the Holocaust. I'm just trying to really understand
how it all went so wrong since October seventh, Like
after nine to eleven, the United States had so much
(24:55):
goodwill from around the world because of the terrorist attack
that occurred, and then that didn't seem to happen after
October seventh, now correct, I don't know if that's because
it seemed as though the response was very quick and
(25:16):
very brutal. That it almost shook people from focusing on
the seventh. Do you think that that's what occurred or
what do you think is the reason for that.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
I think that there's a lot of anti Semites that
are out there, and I think that and this goes
back to kind of the media depiction of Jews sort
of reinforcing this. Jews are seen as privileged and powerful
and wealthy and white and kind of being in control
of everything, and so people kind of don't have room
(25:51):
in their mind to see us as the oppressed and
the victims. I think in the Holocaust, that's kind of
like the one exception, and there's kind of the sense
that that bad thing happened, and now, look, Jews are everywhere,
and I think that. Look, I do work in diversity,
equity and inclusion. We founded the first and only Jewish
Hollywood Bureau a couple of years ago. What we discovered
(26:14):
was that every other minority group had been advocating for
decades in Hollywood for fair and whole and nuanced depictions,
and no one ever did it for the Jews. Why
Because Jews run Hollywood, because Jews have all the power,
because Jews don't need any help, and so you know,
what I think really is kind of the challenge is
that in the minds of so many people, Jews are
(26:35):
at the top, So how could we be struggling? How
could we be at the bottom. Jews have not been
included in so many of these initiatives around listening to
the stories of the marginalized, hearing what they're experiencing, understanding
the baggage that they're carrying, how it fits into the
larger tapestry of how other groups tell their stories. And
(26:55):
I think because of that, people that normally are as
too to you know, being sensitive about.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
The social justice issues and exactly right.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
And by the way, David Bidil talks about this and
Jews don't count. It is a masterpiece that he wrote
explaining how this social justice movement left out the Jews
and why we do belong in that conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, it's it's a fascinating dilemma to try to wrap
your head around it, really is. I know, personally, for
me that my response to the Israeli response of Gaza
and all the death that's happened since then, you know,
(27:41):
has has gutted me and millions of other people, never
mind the people there. And I find that the accusation
of anti Semitism is so painful to people who are
not but want the want the bombing to stop.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
So I think the thing about unconscious bias, and I
think that this is something that the black community really
brought out in the last few years, is that we
can be good people that have good intentions, and we
can have so many unconscious biases sort of like written
into our I don't know, not say DNA, but sort
of like experience or how we see the world, that
(28:23):
we may not realize what we believe. Let me ask
you a question, like, what was your feeling, you know
when the US responded to nine to eleven and you know,
went to Afghanistan to get rid of al Qaeda.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, I went on TV with no war spray painted
on the back of my jacket, and I spoke to
Phil Donniu about our need for clearer minds and that
we could not go and invade a country that did
not attack us on nine to eleven. And I got
in a lot of trouble personally and professionally. But I'm
(29:00):
a pacifist. I'm against war, you know, I'm against the
I'm against what's going on in Gaza. I can't watch it,
and that doesn't mean I'm anti Semitic to me, and
I don't like the accusation. I feel it's unfair. I
feel I feel the pain of my friends, large percentage
(29:20):
of Boom or Jewish. I feel their pain. I see
their pain. I've had friendships end in the last month
over this, you know, over if you don't, if you
don't write this instead of cease fire, then you are Hamas.
I'm like, well, now, come on, are you seriously going
(29:41):
to say that to someone who says, well, maybe the
response is not legal, the response to the tragedy. No
one denies the atrocities. Nobody denies some.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
People are actually let me actually just correct you there,
because there are actually people and just in terms of
you know, explaining what we're going through. So what I
would say is that the Holocaust nightmares of my childhood
started playing out in real time updates on social media
and hearing about the beheadings and the burnings and the
rapings of women where literally they said their limbs were
(30:17):
ripped off. It is like a level of terror, and
it feels like we are a small people and it
feels like this is a distant cousin. That's how the
Jewish people feel about each other because we are a nation.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Well, you know, I would expect terror from Isis and
hisbola and hamas, but I don't expect that behavior from Israel.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Okay, So just to clarify, do you think that targeting
civilians going into a civilian population and they literally had
lists of homes with people written in them who was
going to be home on October seventh so they would
know who to be able to attack. They had a
list of women that they were planning to rape. I mean,
they have detailed records that they kept. Do you not
(31:01):
see any difference between the specific targeting of civilians versus
the trying to minimize civilian casualties by targeting ramas like,
do you not see any differentiation.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
In Well, I don't think that there's a lot of
thought given to the civilians.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So what I would like to sort of push back
on that is that Israel is doing an extraordinary amount
to try to prevent civilians from being killed. Look, the
reality is that I appreciate your consistency that you spoke
out against the US, you know, going to Afghanistan, because
I do think that not everyone that's complaining about Israel's
(31:42):
response had the same perspective with the US and in Afghanistan.
So I do appreciate that, you know, you're a pacifist
through and through what the IDEF does do as Ramas
embeds under schools, under hospitals, and the US has confirmed
that they've embedded under hospitals. The IDs made twenty thousand
(32:02):
phone calls to Palestinians to warn them to get out.
They've hacked it, nowhere for them to go, so so okay.
So in terms of where they can go, the IDEF
actually made a humanitarian corridor to help Palestinians leave the area.
Hamas was there with snipers, actually shooting both Palestinians and
the IDF. The Hamas is also there with snipers as
(32:26):
Palestinians were trying to leave the area. Israel is doing
humanitarian pauses every day. They've provided incubators to the hospital
where Hamas has there.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
They cut off food and water, Allison, they're starving people.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Okay, ten let me let me let me ask you
a question.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Did the US provide food and water in Germany when
we fought the Nazis?
Speaker 2 (32:49):
There were four million German civilians.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
That was a war where there were two there were
nations against each other. This is an ideology, a terrorist group,
a horrific outgrowth of the worst of humanity. It's not
a country.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
I mean you know what.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Israel unilaterally left Gaza in two thousand and five. They
left them with greenhouses. This was a beautiful built up
area that Jewish people had been living in. They literally
ethnically cleansed Gaza of Jews, and the idea of pulled
Jewish people out of Gaza in order to say you
(33:29):
have this land, we will help you to develop it further.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
We want to partner with you.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
And by the way, this was after five other instances
of you know, Palestinians being offered a two state solution
that they rejected those every single time. In two thousand
and five, Israel unilaritly left Gaza, and they could have
done anything they wanted to, and there were plenty of
governments around the world that were ready to give funding
(33:55):
help build it up. Instead, very sadly, a majority of
Palestinians voted Ramas as their government. And once Ramas has power,
as we both know, Ramas is not going to be
giving up power Look, my heart breaks for any innocent
Palestinian that is living there under this horrific, terrifying regime
and they don't have any way to get out or
(34:16):
get food.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
We'll be back with Alice and Joseph's right after this.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Since I'm not a pacifist, I need to just ask
you a question, which is, how do you stop bad people?
How do you stop Nazis and al Qaeda and ISIS
and Haramas? If you're going to take a pacifist approach,
like literally, what are you supposed to do? Well, I
don't think you can kill all of the Palestinians in
order to end Hamas. Wait, so I didn't say that
(35:03):
we're doing that. And just keep in mind that Israel
is risking their soldiers' lives by making this into a
ground war, which, as we both know, is a much
more dangerous thing to do. If Israel wanted to just
carpet bomb all of Gaza, this thing could be over
in a few minutes. They have the firepower to do
so they are carefully going from building to buildings.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Well, I look, I dispute that, Allison. I think that
anyone watching what's going on can't claim that Israel has
the moral high ground of trying to save lives in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
What did you have to say online when Hamas shot
three rockets at the Israeli hospital in Ashkaloge Did you
have any comments on that?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Well, there are all kinds of distortions coming from the
media about what's happening there, including I think some of
the ways that you've just presented your opinion of what's
happened there, that there's an altruistic Jewish identity that would
take care of such things as innocent civilians. I believe
(36:10):
that's who Jewish people are. That's what I believe the
Tora represents. That's what I believe Jewish people are about.
It's not that they are about what's happening now in Gaza,
that that what's happening now. I got in trouble because
I said genocide and friends said, how could you say that?
(36:30):
Or how could you say cease fire? I will always
say cease fire. I will always try to save the
lives of innocent people. There's no collateral damage in a war,
there's just humans. So I'm not who's to blame, though
it's Hamas not to blame. There was a ceasefire on
October sixth, Yes, and I do have some questions about
yahu In. What took six to eight hours to get
(36:52):
there to help people in the most the most protected
area in the Midwest, the most cameras and security footage
per per mile per kilometer. How did that happen? And
you know, nine to eleven, the United States needed a
reason to get into war in the mid East, and
it seems as though bet Yahoo got what he wanted
(37:15):
on that day.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I mean, I think that's no matter your opinion on
this man, this was really like the most horrific Jewish
attack in the life of anything.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
How did it happened? And how did it happen? So
there were eight breaches? How were there eight breaches.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
In the LD? So it seems like Iran was involved.
It seems like Russia was involved. There was a major
hacking that happened that just destabilized everything, took all eyes
off of everything. They also simultaneously had rockets firing to
get people to look.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
In the wrong direction.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
So while they were looking where the rockets were firing,
they were able to open and infiltrate the the fence.
And let me just clarify, Egypt has a very significant
wall with Goz. Egypt has blockaded Gaza and they don't
allow any free passage into Gaza. Their wall is high,
it's thick, it's deep into the ground because they know
the Palestinians build tunnels. The wall between Israel and Gaza
(38:14):
is just a fence, and it.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Was on just a fence. We've seen it.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Did not see did you not see the bulldozers that
just in that part?
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I agree they were fences, yes, and that's the that's
the majority of the wall. I actually was shocked to
find out that Israel did not have a wall as
significant as Egypt does. But they do not like this
is what I would put onto you. I appreciate that
you want to decrease, you know, the loss of human life,
and in the end, I want to decrease the anti
(38:46):
Semitism that's happening, and I want Israel to realize that
they're creating more terrorists every hour this goes on.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
So you know what I think, when we fought back
at Isis and when we fought back at al Qaeda, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
These are.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
These are extremist Islamic terror groups. These are not Muslims.
This is a certain radical ideology, and unfortunately, I think
the only way to defeat them is to destroy them
for any innocent I'm talking about the terrorists, not the people.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
If you I mean.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
The head of Hamas said right after October seventh, they'll
do another one, and another one and another one. Their
goal is to annihilate every single Jew in Israel. And
they've also called for global jihad and an enafada all
over the world, which.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
There's no argument that they are the worst of the
worst in terms of terrorist groups. And something about their
life and their history of being, as Jimmy Carter said,
an apartheid state, being in an apartheid situation when he
(40:00):
write that book, and he got in so much trouble.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Jim tell me what's in apartheid state about Israel? How
would you describe that? What do you mean by that? Well?
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I was shocked when I went there to find out
that there was not free passage, that there were separate
roads that Palestinians had to walk on, in roads that
Israeli's got to walk on.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
I've been to Israel, I've lived in Israel. I have
no idea what you're talking about. There are no separate
roads for Palestinians. In fact, there are one hundred and
thirty thousand Palestinians that have work permits that go to
Israel every day.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
So I don't think that how Israel has treated the
Palestinians is an apartheid type government.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
So let's just separate things into two different categories. There's
Israeli Arabs, two million Israeli Arabs that live in Israel proper.
They're full citizens, they are in the Supreme Court, they
are CEOs of major banks, their television you know, hosts,
I mean, doctors, lawyers, you name it. They go to
(41:02):
the universities. Let's contrast that to the fact that there
are basically no Jews in any other Middle Eastern Muslim countries.
In fact, eight hundred and fifty thousand Jews were ethnically
cleansed from pretty much every other Middle East and North
African country.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
In the forties and fifties.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
So just to say those countries don't have Jews living
there and they don't you know, have full of reti.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Doesn't mean they don't live there. It means that there's
an oppressive government that penalizes one race over the other
and fields so.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Jews for the few Jews that are left in these places,
they cannot live safely and comfortably. It is certainly a
scary and terrifying way to be one of the lone
Jews left in Iraq or Iran. That sort of a thing.
So I think in terms of the Israeli Arabs, they
have full citizenship, they have there have you know, made
success in many of their careers. Then there's the separate
(42:00):
issue of Palestinians. Israel has offered or sort of the
world the un different entities have offered Palestinians their own
state on five occasions. In two thousand, Bill Clinton sat
down with Arafat and you know, he was basically offered
ninety four percent of the West Bank Gaza, East Jerusalem.
(42:23):
Bill Clinton said that Arafat said no fourteen times in
two weeks and never once asked for a counter offer.
Five years eight years later, Ahood almart sat down with
Mohammad Abas to offer even more land, and he still
said no. Instead of giving a counter offer, they came
back with violence, and in the middle of that, Israel
(42:45):
unilaterally left Gaza and again gave them a piece of
land that they could have turned into Palestine and could
have built up and could have taken care of their citizens.
That was the dream your average Israeli and your average
Jew once the two states. The problem is that when
over and over again you offer two state solution and
what they say again and they're saying this at March,
(43:06):
is they want a one state solution, and a one
state solution means the death of Jews, the end of Jews.
And when you see these protesters, and I've seen a
bunch of videos online where they say where should the
Jews go?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
They say Jews should go to Hell.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
So, you know, I think if there are people that
you can work with and both sides are saying they want.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
You, you can't demonize people.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
No, I'm not saying a people.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I'm mentioning the leaders that the leadership has rejected.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Well, Justice Thod NETANYAHUO doesn't represent the vast majority of
Jewish people in Israel. I don't think that Hamas represents
the Palestinian people.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Or the Palestinian authority. Look between Hamas and the Palestinian authority.
Just a few months ago, the people of Gaza were
polled and eighty eight percent said they would vote for
Hamas or the Palestinian authority.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Both you know, are It's kind of what I'm hearing, Allison.
And this is why it's so pressing to me, is
what I'm hearing from Jewish friends who I love, who
I have been friends with for many, many, many years,
is there's nothing we can do. We have to do this.
There's justification for genocide. And I know that's a word
(44:17):
that that infuriates people, but it's so hard to witness it,
to watch it, and to think what those horrible people
did on the seventh is you know, we're going to
outevil them by.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
What so was I'm defeating the Nazis genocide of Germany.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
No, defeating the Nazis was not because we didn't go
and try to kill innocent people. When we were we
killed the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah, but four million civilians died in Germany during World
War two, es far during World War Yes, but this
but this is a war though, this is not between
two countries.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
It's between one very very militarized country, a group of
oppressed people.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
So here's the thing that I'm gonna say, with kindness
and with respect, I think when you describe the power
of Israel, those powerful Jews, I think, unknowingly you are
stepping into an anti Semitic trope, which I don't blame
you for because I really do believe you have a
kind heart and you love your Jewish friends. But I
do think that when you view the Palestinians as the
(45:24):
oppressed people and the big, bad, powerful Jew on the
other side, I really do think that that is an
ancient anti Semitic trope of the powerful Jews.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
We'll be back with Alice and Josephs right after this.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
During Passover, when we talk about the ten plagues, we
take ten drops of wine out of our cup because
even though the Egyptians enslaved us for two hundred and
ten years, Jewish values implore us to feel even the
pain of our enemies. And so again, I can't speak
for every single Israeli, but what I will tell you
(46:22):
is that when an Israeli Jewish person commits a crime,
they go to jail. There is it's a democracy, and
there are consequences. There is no democracy right now under
Hamas's rule. And I think, you know, I think the
reason your Jewish friends are reacting so strongly is because
there is no moral equivalence between a terror organization who
(46:43):
stated mission is to annihilate all Jews and an army
of a sovereign democratic nation who is simply trying to
protect its citizens from getting hacked up, like literally like
children with their arms cut off.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Can't say that, Alison, we see we see baby's arms
being pulled from the rubble every day. So how can
you help what we not?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
This is what I would love.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Which evil is worse?
Speaker 3 (47:09):
I think the evil that targets innocence is for sure worse.
What I would love to see as a solution is
have Egypt open its border, have a temporary you know,
time and place for Palestinians to make a safe exit out.
Let Israel do its job to finish off Kramas, because
it will protect not only Jews, but anyone in the
world who is peace loving and has liberal values. You know,
(47:33):
we are we are living in basically the worst case scenario.
Like we're not at the gas chambers yet, rosy, but
like people. The day after October seventh, my husband went
to the train station, Penn Station, and there was a
rally celebrating Israel had not done any response yet, and
there was simply a celebration of Ramas supporters that were
(47:54):
out there in this country.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Shame on them, it's shame on their soul.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
This is and this is happening all over the world.
And look, we all want peace. We pray for peace
three times a day as Jewish people, and we see
that as a piece, a worldwide piece. But we will
not sit back and be killed and we will not
be defenseless Jews.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
And that's my message.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Well, you know what, Alison, I've admired you and how
you speak up for your people and what you believe,
and I have loved engaging with you. And you know,
I am deeply troubled, as many millions of people are
across the world by what's happening. And it's really so
(48:39):
unbearably depressing to me that it's hard to function. And
instead of saying things that I believe on the internet,
because you know, the serenity, prayer, the wisdom to know
the difference the things you can change and the things
you can change, there's nothing that a hashtag is going
to change in this, you know, a biblical problem. That's
(49:01):
that's it's it's it's it's not going to change. So
I've been resorting to doing videos about my squirrels because
I can't I can't bear it, Alison. The truth is
I can't bear it. Just like your soul was crushed
at eight years old and your spirit opened up, I think,
you know, my soul was crushed as well, by by
(49:22):
war and by having to visualize it. And and then
the the people all over the world who do have power,
the television industry, they decided we're not going to show
war anymore because it upsets the masses too much, you.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Know, like your father, like your fat.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
And now you know, we get it in our handheld devices,
and it's it's it's too much, it's too harrowing. And
you know, I grew up a Catholic kid where nobody
said I love you, and nobody, uh was very mushbooky
or you know. And I went over to Lourie Shackner's
house and her mother kissed me on both cheeks and
(50:01):
my mom had just died and hugged me and they
had a shag rug and leather couches. And I have
held Jewish people in very high regard in my life,
almost as a goal of something to want to be.
I've loved my kids, I think like a Jewish mother
loves her children. And I learned it from watching the
(50:22):
families on Long Island, and you know, to be called
anti semitic, my son had a brisk performed by Amoil.
I am not anti Semitic, and to be accused of
it by people that you love is unbearably painful. It's
such a horrific thing to accuse someone of, especially when
(50:43):
that's not the truth for them.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
I very much respect your position, and I really do
believe you're coming from a good place, So I will
give you my stamp of approval from that place.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Well, thank you, I'll take it. I'll take it.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
But what I would, I guess, just have you and
any of your listeners just sort of consider examine is
that we don't have We don't want to die again. Basically,
we don't want another October seventh. If the world would
partner with Israel and take in refugees so we could
just get rid of the people that are vowing to
(51:18):
come in and massacre us over and over again, Israel
would take it in a heartbeat. This is they're literally
trying to do whatever they can. And I know you
say that you doubt that.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
I No, I don't doubt that. It just it sure
doesn't look like it from this point of view. You
know what, war is a horrible thing. I think nobody
is going to downplay how horrific war is. This is
not a world that Israel wanted.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
The people that Hamas attacked in that rave, in that festival,
those were the peace lovers. They thought a woman that
spent her life building bridges and seeing the best in
humanity and like it didn't matter. And like I would say,
that's you know, maybe some of the worst of this
that the people that wanted to sort of have that
vision of how we all live together and understand each other.
(52:05):
Ramas is just like in a whole different universe right now,
and while they walk the earth, we are all in danger.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
And I think, really like what the goal is.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
And when I speak about the Israeli army, like I
don't you've met Jewish men before, We're not necessarily like
the rambo macho type. Like these are mostly like family
guys that are going home and just want to I
don't know, not be fighting. They're doing this so that
their wives and children don't end up like hacked up
(52:35):
and you know, gang raped. It's really like, I know,
you don't like the outcome, and neither do I, but
to not do anything could mean the annihilation of the
Jewish people. So if any countries want to get involved,
to take in refugees, open the corridor in Egypt, let
Palestinians get a safe you know, exit away, so Israel
(52:55):
can eradicate Ramas. That is the goal. I have a
ton of Israeli fans. They are terrified, and they're also
resolute that we're not going to have another Holocaust. We
will defend ourselves, and we won't be ashamed of defending ourselves.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Okay, and don't be ashamed when some people don't understand,
because it's hard to understand sometimes. You know, nobody wants that.
Nobody wants another Holocaust. Nobody wants another you know, nobody
wants anti ramp at, anti Semitism that's occurring in college
campuses all over the world. And you know, I mean,
(53:32):
it's uh, it feels like the end of the world
to me. And that's that's the most depressing part of it.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
So I will say, as a person of faith in
the Jewish tradition, we have this concept of yamosamashiach of
you know, of a Messianic era where there will be
world peace and nations will you know, lad down their
sores and turn their swords into plowshares. And it is
some times hard to picture how that could happen. And
(54:03):
get what I'll tell you is that I have felt
more unity and sort of brotherhood with fellow Jews in
a way that I've never felt in my life before.
That is one of the signs that Jewish tradition says
will happen before these days of peace, worldwide peace.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
So I'm continuing to pray and to hold I'm.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
For worldwide piece too else and that's my whole goal.
And and the end of the end of this, because
it's it's so unbearably painful, I'll give it an amin.
I'll give it one as well, shall own to you
and to all of Israel and to all of its people.
I don't want anyone killed, I don't want anyone terrorized.
(54:44):
And I thank you for being here. This is, you know,
a conversation that I think is going to happen a
lot of Thanksgiving homes and and let's hope that that
we can have conversations like this one where no one
accuses someone or yells at someone or you know, bases
them and then Hopefully that's the path that will go
down together, walking together to find peace in this world. Finally,
(55:08):
you know, thank.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
You, thanks so much. Thanks for the platform to do it.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
You're more than welcome. We're not going to take any
questions today. I just wanted to offer this conversation which
maybe will bring some solace. This Thursday is Thanksgiving. Be
(55:35):
with your tribe, your blood, your family, your chosen family,
your friends and loved ones. Find some peace with each
other if you can, and I'll see you back on
December fifth with one of the most fabulous humans around
Murray Hill. Till then, people onward,
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