Hello everyone, and welcome back to people Drew on NO podcast this week.

I have an interesting episode for you guys because it's more like a conversation with a friend than anything else.

I'm bringing on ZE Silver or Zach Silverman.

Zach is a content creator who speaks on Jewish peoplehood, anti-Semitism and Israel.

He has been involved with or worked for numerous Jewish and Israel organizations such as Habad, APEC, the ADL, Jewish Federation, Hillel, and Jewish National Fund USA.

Zach lives in Phoenix, where he desperately tries to convince everyone that the dry heat is in fact a real thing, but also the weather is great eight months out of the year.

I learned of Zach around two years ago from my brother Daniel.

Daniel saw one of Zach's videos on TikTok and he sent it to me.

And then I don't remember how Zach and I connected exactly, but we did online and we've been friends ever since.

I've only seen Zach once in real life.

We met up in person in New York with a group of other Jewish social media people for dinner.

It was awesome, and I hope Zach and his wife come visit more often.

I love talking to him about all things Jewish life because he's really seen it all as he'll talk about.

Zach's been the staff at a campus Hillel, he's been a fundraiser.

He really has a profound understanding of how Jewish communal life and nonprofits work.

On top of that, he's a great debater and he structures his thinking in an interesting way, so that always adds a lot to the conversation.

I'm really interested to see what's next for him and how he decides to continue his career.

Zach and I agree on most things, especially our disdain for a lot of Jewish content creators.

But our first disagreement we discovered was around Hillel as an organization.

As a former staff of Hillel, and being on a pretty proud Jewish campus, Zach's experience with Hillel is overwhelmingly positive, whereas my experience on my ultra liberal, pathetic campus is overwhelmingly negative.

You'll hear us debate this, and I'm very curious to hear your opinion.

Who do you think had the more compelling arguments?

I think if I boil down the crux of the debate, Zach would argue that the issues with Hillel I call out are campus specific or unique to every college Hillel, which is true.

I would just counter that with at what point does Hillel International have an obligation to intervene and at what point is Hillel International complicit in allowing failing Hillels to operate status quo?

Anyway, I'm excited for you to hear it and please let me know your thoughts.

One other call out I want to make before we get started.

I really enjoyed hearing Zach talk about how to disprove or have conversations with people who disagree with us.

I don't know how many of you saw the New York Times interview with Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of ADL.

I personally am not shy about my criticisms of the ADL, but I thought Jonathan Greenblatt represented us really well.

What you see unfold in that interview is the New York Times reporter constantly trying to redefine what anti Zionism means or anti-Semitism means.

And Jonathan countering with the fact that these words have clear definitions, you are defining them incorrectly.

Let's use the right definitions here and throughout the interview.

They're kind of stuck there because they can't agree on these definitions.

In this episode with Zach, he teaches us how to get unstuck from this place by humoring the other side, playing out a scenario with their definition even if we know it's incorrect, and then pulling like a gotcha at the end to show that the other side was hypocritical or incorrect.

I think this method can be very effective, but it can also be abrasive because it will turn the person away.

The gotcha approach works really well in front of an audience so that even if your relationship with your opponent becomes strained, the audience sees their hypocrisy and so then you quote UN quote win the debate.

However, in a one-on-one conversation, especially one where you want to maintain or sometimes even repair a relationship, I personally don't recommend this method.

And I hold myself true to this word because you've seen me have numerous conversations on this podcast with people I strongly disagree with.

I always have a great relationship with them after the episode because the approach I use is not one that belittles them.

In conclusion, these various debate approaches all have merit, you just need to apply them at the right time.

Anyway, I'm excited for you to get to know Zach a little better, and I highly recommend his sub stack if you're not not yet subscribed.

He finds really unique, interesting topics to discuss on there, for example, like what we ought to do about the death of the Conservative Jewish movement, which is my favorite Jewish movement, may I add.

So again, I recommend it for now please.

Enjoy this episode.

Hey, Zach, Thanks for being here.

Welcome to PEOPLE.

Do you want to know?

Oh.

Thanks.

I'm so glad that you think I'm a Jew.

You would want to know that people would want to know.

Are my friend.

And so in that regard, I feel like it's kind of an unfair advantage.

But you're actually one of the people I found on the Internet that I really love and admire.

So even if you want my friend, I would want to have you here.

Thank you.

I think it's very lovely that one thing that has really, I've really come to appreciate is actually gaining Internet friends from this because I didn't think that I was ever going.

I mean, I didn't think that I was like going to do content creation.

I wanted to write a fantasy book with an allegory about the conflict.

And it didn't turn out that way, which I think is a good segue into who I am or like how I got into this a few years ago.

I, it was fun and not fun employed.

It was not fun.

I was unemployed and I had been watching a lot of television and I had also been getting back into fantasy and sci-fi and I needed something to keep my mind busy.

And one of the things that I wanted to do was just like create a world.

I think it's just, it's fascinating to create a world.

And so I just started to do it.

Then it was based off of Christian, Judaic, Islamic type of theology.

Because I feel like that never really gets looked at or if it ever does, it's always like evil in fantasy and sci-fi.

And the Long story short of it was I had built this world and then I was like, Oh well, this is kind of cool.

I wonder what kind of story would exist inside of this world.

And so then because I had built it around this theology and around this, you know, dichotomy, I went with basically an allegory for the Israel Palestine conflict.

Now, this was fall of 2022 is when I started writing this.

And again, I didn't really have the intention of writing a book.

I just needed something to fill my time.

And it brought me a lot of enjoyment.

And then I got so into it that I was like, well, you know what, What would it be like to actually publish?

And so when I started looking to the publishing world, I realized, like, how insanely difficult it was to even, like, get an agent to write you back.

Like I had been in the tech world for a hot minute, including, like, try to build a startup.

And I had talked to venture capitalist.

I had gotten, you know, a little bit of money, not from any institutional money, but enough, like, from, you know, to know that it's all like, you really need to convince somebody that your idea is a good one.

And I was genuinely convinced that, like, it was easier to get $1,000,000 check from a venture capitalist and it was for an agent to sign you.

So when I started looking into the independent publishing world, you know, one of the first things that it said was to start marketing your book before you had finished it.

And so I went on to TikTok, then I started to market my book and I got heavily into book talk and starting probably around, I guess March, April, May was when I really started to go deep into it.

And I started to follow a lot of book talkers, you know, reviewers, authors, agents, all these things.

And one of the key things that I learned as I was building these relationships and I was following was the issue around diversity in the publishing industry, especially in fantasy and sci-fi.

And they were talking about how, you know, most heroes are white males and most authors that are published are white males.

And we need more diverse voices.

We need more diverse main characters and everything.

And at the time, like, not because I was like faking it or anything, like I genuinely supported that notion because I think it's just good to have really high quality, diverse characters.

And so I made videos about this.

I would engage with this.

And then Fast forward and October 7th happens and it's a whirlwind, as we all know.

And October 8th, I don't even know if it took October 8th.

Yeah, it must be because I was not.

I was still, I was like, so flabbergasted by the 7th.

I wasn't on TikTok.

But, you know, the 8th comes around and I'm seeing all of these book talkers just immediately being like, we need to support Palestinian authors, Israel's committee, a genocide, everything of the sort.

And I reached out to a few people and, you know, I didn't have really deep relationships, but I had enough of a good relationship to be like, hey, we've spoken before.

I'm letting you know I'm Jewish.

I'd love to talk with you about this more because, you know, it's a lot more complicated.

It's a lot more nuanced than you think it is.

And I got no responses, like none.

All of a sudden, I realized very quickly that this is not going to go well.

So I decided to literally delete every video.

And I went private.

And I was just like, well, I got to figure out what to do because in the midst of all of it, it was a matter of, I had also for probably about a month or two, decided to try querying agents.

And one of the key markers about querying agents is that you have to very much like personalize it.

So you have to go to their websites, you have to look into what they like, you have to mark something that's of note to them and whatever.

And every single agent on their manuscript, which list or anything of the sort was all talking about wanting to elevate diverse voices and this or that.

And that's kind of a key marker to know that what they're looking for is like, not a person that looks like me.

So I took two or three weeks to be like, wow, I don't know what to do.

And of course, like in those first two to three weeks after October 7th, I mean, we were all just like distraught.

And just especially with my job, I mean, it was front and center 8 hours a day at my office with the news on the donors were in the office and we were just all shaken, especially because, you know, our work is directly with people in Israel and all specifically the people who were attacked.

It was a lot.

But then, and so I was like on Twitter, like X trying to argue with people like just really come on, like, give me the fight, give me the fight.

I didn't have that big of a an audience.

And so like, not a lot of people engage with me.

It didn't give me that catharsis to like just yell into the void.

I needed the fight.

And so then there was this one guy named Rathbone on TikTok and he's like the absolute worst.

And he finally said something that just like pissed me off.

And so I stitched him and it went viral.

I was like, this is the first video that I've ever made on TikTok that's like viral.

So then I made it like a couple more and because of the comments and because of everything, like it got me that fight that I was looking for.

And I quickly grew to, you know, like 1000 followers that gave me the ability to jump on lives.

And from there there was the debates and everything.

And so then I got banned a couple times and the rest is history.

Man, I learned so much about you that I didn't know.

I had no idea you were interested in writing a book.

I thought you were just, you know, a guy who decided to go on TikTok because you saw that there was something wrong about what was being said about Israel and Jewish people.

And you wanted to, you know, say your piece.

OK.

It was entirely selfish.

It was entirely selfish.

Like the point of it all was at pure catharsis.

I just needed, frankly, to yell at somebody because that's all that I could do.

But I think what is most fascinating to me about what you do is it's never scripted.

You go on these 5 minute videos and they're perfectly executed, but you never prepared.

Yeah, well, so that was the other thing, reason why I think TikTok worked so well for me because I like TikTok rewards that TikTok rewards the authenticity, the pulling up the camera and just like speaking into it.

And you know, I've been talking about this since I was 17 years old.

So we're going on 17 years now.

I'm 34 in which like specifically about this, but I did like high school debate And one of the key markers of any, you know, high school debater is someone that knows how to think on their feet in a matter of moments in order to not just say their piece, but also say it eloquently and say it in a logical manner.

And on top of that, like I've also been fighting on the Internet for a decade.

And I think that's also like where I have a little bit more of an advantage than a lot of people.

And also where I come at it from a different way than a lot of people who are kind of like new to Internet debating and Internet fighting.

Because like I, when I was 22 years old, like I was a part of a Facebook group of like politico's that were from around the country that weren't necessarily like political operatives or anything like that.

They were just like people who were interested in discussing politics.

And like a buddy of mine was like, hey, like, if you're looking to scratch that, it's like I am all the time.

You know, I have this Facebook group.

And so somebody would post an article and there would be people from across the political spectrum from around the country that would, you know, just have at it in the comments.

And between that and also like spending a lot of time on X, like I was debating on the Internet when it was still 180 characters or whatever it was before it was to like before they increase the character limit.

And so even that gives you have to be quippy, you have to be smart, you have to be sharp, because if you if you stalled even a moment, you've lost the Internet debate.

Also, I will say, like sports debating kind of like weirdly prepares you for something like this because it teaches you how to deal with irrational people.

And so for me, it's just a matter of I have so much in my head and I have to get it out that I just let it flow and tick tock reward such things.

And I really appreciate that.

Now it's been what, 2 years since you've been doing this?

And I've seen you kind of evolve and test different concepts of content.

And you and I talk about this offline all the time.

So you started on TikTok, you started with stitching people, then you moved on to your own commentary.

Then you did satirical videos.

Now you're expanding into Instagram.

You're doing your own podcast where you're interviewing people.

You're doing a newsletter where you're writing very centrist, interesting angles about Jewish issues that have been going on for a while and how you think we might solve them.

As you're reflecting on these two years, what do you make of it?

What do you make of our community?

And where we're at?

So for me, the way that I have always approached the content is I want to say something unique.

I had a lot of people reach out to me via DMS and all sorts of things who would ask me what is my take on a certain issue.

And a lot of the really big stories, I actually wouldn't say much because there's not much more to be said.

If there's a hundred Jewish and Israel content creators that are all saying like the same thing, what value do Ioffer right in any way whether, and it doesn't matter about whether it's a 92nd video or it's like a, you know, 60 minute podcast to me.

If you are out here staring into the camera, why won't they just release the hostages?

You must really.

And I'm just like, yeah, I'm so glad.

Thank you so much for offering that that important video to release the hostages.

And so for me, it was always a matter of like, what's this different angle that I can take?

And I think that's what has helped resonate and why even though maybe I'm not like as big as a lot of people, I feel like my audience, the Java RIM, so one would say have a feel like a deep relationship and have created a really cool community across the board.

And more so than anything, I think that there's sometimes you have to communicate different things in different ways.

And so I think it was like the Adidas thing that I did, one of those kind of like character videos and whatnot.

And I think that sometimes just ranting about something is not going to effectively communicate the message that I'm trying to get across.

The way to do it is through satire because that's usually how people ultimately, no matter what, always end up changing their mind when they are just about to agree with you.

And then they realize like, Oh, no, just kidding.

Wait, what do you mean?

No, I, you were, you and I were, we were on the same page, but now we're not.

What do you, what's going on here?

They get very defensive.

I want them to sit with that almost like defensiveness now going forward, like what I've always tried to do, like with the sub stack and with the podcast and everything is like, what is this unique, different angle that I can take?

And so when it came to the sub stack, my perspective again was what is the angle that nobody's thinking about?

And so I don't necessarily think it's from like a centrist perspective, right?

Like I, I don't want to have people believe that I'm like toeing the line or sitting on the fence where it's all well this way, in that way, I have a very clear sense of conviction and I have a very clear and, and I take a stand on everything.

But I want to figure out how do I take that stand in a way that is a very provocative or thought provoking in some ways.

And also to that it doesn't come off as something that is like angry or that is something that is purely emotional.

So, so for example, the last subset that I posted was like, if Palestinians want peace, they have to accept that their narrative is a lie.

Now, that headline is very provocative and it's for a reason.

But that's also because it's true in that like the Nakba is a lie that they tell themselves and that doesn't come from a place of emotion.

That's all you're lying about your story.

Like I published like there's this Atlantic article from like 1961 or 1964 in which like when you read, it's very long because this reporter who actually did journalism, you know, I can't believe it that somebody actually would do journalism.

And they went to like all the different Arab camps, like Arab parts, you know, because remember, 1964 is even before the Six Day War.

So Egypt still controls Gaza, Jordan still controls today and Samaria, West Bank, and then you have Lebanon and Syria.

And she like went to all these camps and you're and also spoke to Arabs inside of Israel.

And like the things that they were saying, the talking points of the things that they were telling this reporter are the same things that they're telling today.

And it's all based off of this.

They admit that it's a lie.

And so to me, I think that I'm providing an evidence based argument that also has the outcome, which is I want peace too, right?

I'm not coming at you just to, you know, make you feel bad about yourself or because I'm petty or spiteful terms.

Palestinians like I want peace too.

But I'm just going to be honest with you.

That says if you want peace, right?

Because you tell me you want peace, I'm letting you know that this is what it's going to take.

And it's we're going to require you to do some really hard work that's not only for Palestinians, but also for liberal Jews and for liberal Zionists to really come to grips with what is it going to take to actually get the outcome that they want.

And that, I think, is something that not a lot of people do because either they say we have to just keep going for peace and not do the hard work that requires it, or they say, I actually just hate Palestinians, I hate Arabs.

They can all go screw themselves.

And I'm going to tell them that, you know, that they suck.

And I want to find that middle ground.

And I know that it can be found in a way that frankly kind of accomplishes both and hits both sides in various ways, but requires both sides to sit with something.

When you were asking about what is the state of kind of like our community and our people and also like where our content creation is, you know, at some point the content creator apparatus is going to quickly fizzle and then dissipate all together.

Once we move on to everything once the day after happens, whenever that does, it's going to go away.

And I think that the people that made their bones off of this are going to struggle eventually, depending on how big you are, you know, you could last a little bit longer, but at some point it all fizzles out because we have to move forward.

And I think that's.

Where the podcast comes from, which, you know, like, I don't want to, I have a like the political side of things, but the real podcast that I really love doing that, that we're going to do as well is, you know, called on the Road to Zion.

And the reason I called it that was because for me, my favorite thing, and it's actually my favorite piece of content I do, is it's conversations with different Jews who come from different places, who approach our tradition in very different ways.

And it's literally like why it's called On the Road to Zion because we're all on a journey.

And it comes from my Jewish engagement background.

My favorite job ever was working for Hillel at the University of Texas at Austin as a Birthright recruitment coordinator, in which I would recruit UT kids to go on the trip and I would go on the trip with them and then I would keep them engaged when they come back.

And it was the moment that I really learned what does it mean to build an authentic relationship.

And just listening to the stories of hundreds, hundreds of Jews from mostly from Texas, but you know, from all over really gave me this profound understanding of how important it is for people to understand that the diversity of our people is not just Ashkenazi, Sephardic, you know, Moroccan, Persian, whatever.

It's each individual person has a understanding of our tradition, has a unique approach to our tradition because of just who they are as a person.

And I think that we need to start doing that.

And like for me, I keep wanting to do more and more positive oriented content because it's so easy to do the negative.

It's so easy to report on the news.

It's so easy to criticize Netanyahu and everything.

And I literally just had an Instagram video where like I was like, how awesome is it to be Jewish, right?

Let's just remember guys, like it's awesome.

They did so poorly.

And I even decided, which I've never, I never do.

I, you know, went to my story and I was like, guys, if you want to feel better about yourselves, if you want just feel better about the world, about being Jewish, but you need to engage with positively Jewish content.

You're in charge of your algorithm.

So if you're only seeing destitute, then despair, that's on you because you're engaging with it, you're commenting it, you're the one that's making angry comments and likes on terrible news.

So even if you don't want to, you know, click on mine, click on somebody's that is positively oriented and that's the direction that I hope to take.

This is a great lesson of people don't always do what they say they want to do.

Like if you survey a 1000 people, 1000 Jews, and you ask them what kind of content do they want to consume to feel better, all of them will probably say we want to consume positive content.

And then when you go and look at what they actually consume, it's very different.

I was thinking about this recently.

We were talking about it at work, this idea that people have higher confidence in their ability to do something than they really do.

Like we over bias on our ability to be successful.

And the old experiment that was done to test for this was I'm just going to ask you, Zach, do you know how a toilet works?

I.

Think so.

Like the water goes down and I don't actually know how.

Like the flushing works, no.

OK, so most people would say, yeah, I know how a toilet works.

And then their head, they're thinking, you flush, the water goes down, and then off we go, right?

And then what these experimenters did is they actually gave the respondents the parts of the toilet.

OK.

You told me how it works.

Set it up so it can flush.

Water.

That's funny.

Bottled water and nobody had it right.

And this is a great illustration of the point.

Most people will say that they want something or they know how to do something, and then when it's time to put it in practice, they're lost and they're confused.

And this is kind of what we're seeing today just on social media.

Now, you mentioned this, and I'm not letting you off the hook because this was a planned conversation for this episode.

You brought up Hillel.

Yeah, no, I did that on purpose.

I'm sorry guys, I tricked you.

So hello, in my notes for this podcast, I wrote Let's talk about Hillel VN.

That was my note to myself.

OK, talking about hello.

People who have listened to this podcast over the course of time have heard me say multiple times that I will never miss an opportunity to drag Hillel.

And you and I have had conversations about this and I think we've netted out on some like ground truth.

But for the sake of experiment, I want to discuss it with you and see where we net out today.

So this is my philosophy on hillel #1 Hillels are not all the same.

And they're heavily influenced by the student body at that university.

I went to a very liberal university, University of Minnesota.

It is being investigated by the Trump administration as one of the five schools with severe anti-Semitism.

They have issues.

The student body there, even when I was a student, and now it's even worse, while my brother is a student there is very progressive, liberal, woke, if I may, and a bunch of them don't understand Israel.

They don't think it's important to the livelihood of the Jewish people.

And I'll go as far as to say that many students at the University of Minnesota think Israel's the bad guy here.

They're not proud to support Israel.

They just say they're Jewish.

But you know, that doesn't make me a Zionist.

It's that kind of thing.

And my theory on Hillel is I have a few issues.

One, I have a overarching philosophical issue, which is if you go on the website of Hillel, you cannot find the word Zionism anywhere.

On their website.

They say that they take students to Israel, but they do not use the word Zionism Zionist anywhere.

And to me that's pretty telling.

And I'm guessing it's a method of not alienating students from engaging with Hillel programming by being thrown off that.

Oh, it says.

This is for Zionist or whatever.

The next thing about the website and in general that starts to kind of signal little red flags or warning signs for me is that their mission statement is something to the tune of we want to be the most inclusive space for students everywhere.

And something about the word most inclusive rubs me the wrong way in this time.

Because Jewish organizations or organizations that live by Jewish ideals are not necessarily designed to be most inclusive.

And being most inclusive can sometimes prevent us from having moral clarity or steadfast stances on certain issues.

So there are some students who have harmful beliefs that shouldn't be included because what they believe is bad for the Jews.

And in a progressive campus like University of Minnesota, you have Hillel in this vicious cycle of, well, we need students to attend our programming, but the students we have don't want to attend anything that's proudly Jewish.

So they start regressing to the mean or catering to the lowest common denominator, where Hillel becomes nothing but a quote on, quote, safe space for Jewish students to sit there and do their homework.

But in terms of action, like being cognitively demanding of these students or asking them to engage with difficult questions about what it's like to be Jewish or be supportive of Israel, we never get there because those students are going to check out.

And Hillel cannot have them check out because otherwise they can't get funding and you know, the director is going to lose their job.

So it's almost like a misaligned incentives where they're optimizing for demonstrating that as many students as possible attend their events, but because they're optimizing for that, they're actually harming Jewish life as a whole.

And that's why I'm not supportive of Hillel, because I think if you're trying to optimize for volume, you're not standing for anything really.

So I think a lot of what you said holds a lot of weight.

I don't think intrinsically what you said is intrinsically false when it comes to a variety of various Hillels.

I think where people misunderstand A Hillel and also the mission of it and also the value of it is what does it mean to be inclusive and the end all be all for Jewish life in America is not Israel.

Obviously I am a Zionist.

Obviously I'm a big fan of Israel.

And what I will also say is that for the American Jewish community, Israel is not the end all be all for how they relate to Judaism, how they identify with Judaism and what brings value to their life, into their Jewish life.

And so I, I think #1 to kind of address the whole Zionist thing versus, you know, whatever, sure, you might not be able to find the word Zionist specifically.

But at the same time, if you actually look to the programs, to the things that they fund, to the partnerships that they have with every single pro Israel Zionist organization out there.

If you look at a former student of mine is like now the associate vice president or the associate director of like Israel program, where like they literally have an emergency response team.

So anytime that there's Abds Bill on campus, they send somebody to that Hillel in order to help fight it.

And they use their level of expertise in order to better help them with emergency communications, with memos, with relationship building, with helping students with their speeches during the whatever.

And so if we want to look at the symbolic thing, like if I'm taking a choice between an organization that says that they're a Zionist, but all they really do is, you know, go to rallies and protests and they just make videos.

Or I have an organization that maybe doesn't say the word Zionism specifically and outright, but they're the ones that are actually helping defend Israel at a practical level, both in the short term and the long term.

I'm taking the latter every single time that's at the that's at the big level.

And I think that what people want, and this is where we probably would agree, which is over the last couple of years, you have a lot of content creators that are doing, you know, that are saying big things.

They're very loud.

They go to campuses and they get filmed engaging with somebody or they put on a costume or they and they go and trick somebody at the man on the street, or they go and hold up a sign that says release the hostages now in the middle of Times Square.

And we both know that literally does absolutely nothing.

It accomplishes nothing.

And other than to make us all feel better about ourselves, that's it.

And to me, when I think about people and their understanding of what actually accomplishes things, what makes a difference, I think about the difference between the organizations that outright call themselves Zionist and not going to call anybody out specifically, right?

But when I think about what do they do and how they help.

And then I think about what Hillel does on the day-to-day basis because every outside pro Israel organization loves to swoop in and, you know, do the rally and do this and, you know, help them with Israel flags and this or that.

And then they go away and they leave whatever hurricane that they have caused left with damage, left to be cleaned up by somebody else.

And that's somebody else's hello because they're the ones that are doing the hard work day-to-day by building relationships with the Dean of students, that are building relationships with the president of universities, that are building relationships with City Councilman, with state senators, with governors.

Like the executive director of Hillel has a Direct Line to any governor, like depending on the state, obviously, but like those are the types of relationships that are built every single day.

And those are the types of relationships that are what used when things really come to a head and come to matter.

And I don't appreciate how many people don't understand that and have the gall to criticize an organization because of what they see on the outside and what they think is the most effective way, which is usually not effective at all.

So why is it that when you have a campus that has the top 1% of anti-Semitic incidents and all college campuses, their best line of defenses will just make a safe space for you?

What I think you're saying is true and it doesn't address the fact that the conversations that are had with the governor and the president are not good enough.

Like it's great that you have a line of communication and you're quote UN quote building relationships.

My critique is that's all gone nowhere because at the end of the day, the students are still getting attacked.

The anti-Semitic incidents are still rising.

And what I'm seeing is but we're willing to make Zionism a bad word to not alienate students.

Like it's almost like a false dichotomy to me.

It's not.

You either have the Zionist organizations that don't actually do anything or the quiet organization that's really doing the hard work behind the scenes.

My critique is Hillel ain't doing the hard work behind the scenes because these students are struggling on campus.

I do hear you.

And you're right that that's not, it's not an either or, it is a both.

And I think that where Hillel's and every and like you said, right, like every Hillel is different and every Hillel is going to have a little bit more, a little bit less power, especially also relative to the state that they exist in and the city that they exist in.

So, for example, the Hillel at USC or UCLA is going to have a very different relationship with the mayor of LA, of Los Angeles and, you know, the governor of California then for instance, in Arizona, right?

The politics of the state in which the Hillel exists in does have a significant impact on how they have to operate and also their effectiveness because sometimes like, for instance, the University of Minnesota, like Tim Walz, what are we going to do right?

There's nothing to be done about that guy.

Or like the the mayor of Minneapolis who's like Jewish, right?

But you know, he's a certain he approaches his Judaism.

We're like, is he, you know, that type of Jew that we're all looking for to defend us.

And he operates inside of a political context in a political system that would punish him for doing that.

And so no matter what you do, whether you're incredibly quiet behind the scenes or you're incredibly loud, more, more often than not, you're going to end up fighting against a greater system.

And you kind of have to hope that like that changes over time because there's really nothing to be done because you could be as loud as you want on Harvard's campus, but Harvard president is still not going to help you.

Because the only thing that caused them to change their minds was getting basically being told that half a billion dollars was going to be taken away from them.

And so for my purposes, the way that I think about if we're looking to protect you as students on campuses, if you're expecting any organization on campus, Hillel Habad, anything to like be the savior of Jews, like I think that you're always going to be disappointed because it's just not what they do.

Now going back to what you were saying about the safe spaces and also like the people you know, and how do we engage students, I probably would have pushed back on you more prior.

I certainly would have pushed back on you more prior to October 7th.

I think where I'm at now is this stance of we have to really create a fence around Israel the same way that, you know, we see that we have to create a fence around the Torah.

And I think where some people are going too far is that they're saying that we can't allow anything because it would, you know, help our enemies or, you know, it gives credence or credibility to any type of criticism or to the anti-Semitism.

And that's only going to lead to the backlash that that we don't want.

What I would say is that where every Hillel now needs to take a hard line, whether they're on a super progressive campus like the University of Minnesota or, you know, at Tufts University or anything like that, is is to say, this is what Israel is.

This is what Israel is.

We are in favor of the existence of Israel and we will not tolerate any questions around that and we will not tolerate anti-Semitic criticism.

I think where you can draw the line is to say if you say that it's an apartheid, like that's not an idea that we're going to, that we're going to allow to be spoken about in this building or in our spaces.

If you say that Israel's committing A genocide, that is not something that we are going to allow to be discussed here, because that is an anti-Semitic blood libel, right.

And that's not happening because you have JVP students who are coming to that Hillel and calling the shots and having their JVP gatherings.

And that.

In the safe space.

And that is where and that is where I would 100% agree with you, but that is not a Hillel International policy to allow that that's.

An individual Hillel.

Issue and that is unfortunately a result of the structure of Hillel.

And you know there's a benefit in a in a downfall to how they're structured, which is you have Hillel International as a 5O1C3 that is this umbrella organization.

And then you have individual Hillels that operate on campuses that are also their individual 5O1C threes.

And so where I think Hillel could improve.

The MLM of Jewish organizations.

It's actually like the opposite, where like they end up.

I think that like that structure.

I don't personally like that structure because I think it ends up competing with one another.

But anyways, but it creates this type of thing where you have like executive directors, for instance, that are not effective and that can essentially impact the lives of Jewish kids for decades, essentially because they are not effective.

And our Jewish community unfortunately suffers because half the population wasn't engaged because of how the executive director operates.

And the only people that are keeping that executive director accountable is their little local board of directors.

And usually those local board of directors are filled with people that for the most part, it's changing now, but for decades it was filled with people that are just really happy, go lucky and just want to help college kids.

And they haven't been approaching it from this very deep, meaningful place of this is the most important time in a Jewish person's life.

And we cannot rest on our laurels.

We have to drive it hard.

And that's changing a lot in the Hillel world.

So where I think that Hillel needs to be more hello international needs to be more heavy-handed is basically saying to local Hillels that if you, if you're going to use our brand, right, if you're going to call yourself a Hillel, you cannot hold these people in in your spaces.

And it doesn't matter what your local board has, whatever it is, you cannot hold these types of ideas and these types of programs in your spaces.

And where I think that we also as a community to come up with because we love to criticize Hillel and people love to criticize Jewish nonprofits in general.

I went, you know, I was on X just yesterday and there is a prominent woman, you know, 150,000 followers who was like, you know, it's ridiculous that Jewish professionals don't even know like the basics of Judaism.

And I'm like, let's go, let's talk about it because, you know, I'm just a, I'm a fundraiser, right?

And if you think that I need to be like a rabbi that like just to raise money for our community, that's ridiculous #1 And you know, we can go off on.

But the point is that what was funny was I asked her, I was like, well, what do you do?

What do you like, you know, you're so mad about Jewish education in this country or how lack how little Jews know about Judaism.

Well, what do you think she's like, well, I'm raising my 6 kids as a homeschooler.

Like I'm homeschooling my 6 Jewish kids.

And I'm like, OK, so nothing like you're focused on yourself.

That's literally the opposite of Jews in this most individualistic American way.

A response that you can have about Jewish education because that's not who we are as a people.

And is it interesting that you?

Have this idea about Jewish nonprofit professionals and yet you know and how little we know about you use them and yet you're not acting as a Jew around Sedaka or about communal support.

And so for people, it's if you want to criticize Hillel or any Jewish nonprofit about how we operate, well, then put it up.

Sorry, I'm using the money thing because of the video.

Put it up, you have dollars.

I don't trust them with my dollars, I told Hillel.

They will never see a nickel a dime for me until they fix their shit.

My Hillel University.

Of Minnesota, but.

That's okay, right?

So that's okay, right?

But there are other Hillels that can be supportive.

And if you don't want to support the big pool of Hillel International, go and find one Literally like that is the that's the only thing that we have as a community that like where we can really truly influence things is with our dollars because we just don't have the numbers for it.

And so if you want to change your local federation, get involved, put the money up.

If you want to change your local Hillel, get involved, put them.

I promise you like the cost of entry for your average Hillel, like at a donation level to be a board member is way lower than you think.

It is not like $5000 or $10,000 for most local hills.

It's 500 bucks, right?

And if you're a young professional who cares deeply about it and $500 over the court and you think that this is just so important, then sacrifice the coffees, sacrifice whatever you want and put the money up and put the time in.

Be on the board and explain your position, why this is important.

But there's so many people that decide to criticize and this is what bothers me.

You know, the criticize.

And yet when you ask them, well, what do you do?

Not even in regards to this organization that you're criticizing.

What do you do?

And their answer is, I go to shul.

Their answer is, will I do this for me and my family or I am involved in this way, or will I make content?

And it's like, no, that's not how this works.

Hey I do make content.

But what I'm saying, which is fine, right?

Which is fine.

But what I'm saying is that if you, if you want to see the change in the world, you have to be the one to make it.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

But like, I know, and and I said that, and I said that deliberately because I know that it's not actually my quote, but I think that people that are not aware of the operations of Jewish nonprofits don't necessarily understand just how easily it would be to influence an organization, even a larger one.

Because I will tell you this, especially if you are young, especially if you are young, if you raise your hand and say I would like to help, they will grab you and drag you into every leadership position, into everything.

They are begging for you to be involved.

And all you have to do is be willing to put the money up to show that you're actually invested because they're never going to change for somebody that isn't invested personally, financially and with their time.

I think that's fair.

And that brings me to my next question to me.

You do a lot of.

Grassroots work, which I think is very important, and I get stuck in the spiral of like, grassroots work is incredibly important.

Having meaningful conversations with Jewish people, helping them shape their opinion on topics is very important.

And at the same time, we have these different tornadoes of issues that are happening to the Jewish community all simultaneously.

And it feels like the bigger organizations, the people who have the leverage, are not handling them either as fast as we would like or in the way that we would like.

We have, you know, the ongoing war in Israel and everybody's unhappy that the war is continuing and no one can affect change.

We have anti-Semitism in the diaspora and everyone knows it's happening.

And at the same time, it doesn't seem like it's getting better.

We have death of the Conservative Jewish movement.

No, no.

A small issue that deserves some recognition near and dear to our hearts.

We will revive it.

We will revive it.

Yeah.

So you have like all these concurrent problems at different levels of magnitude that are happening.

And I just take a step back sometimes and I'm like, how the hell are we going to fix any of it?

I thought about it a lot.

I started to write a book like a nonfiction, one that puts all of my ideas together because so much of it is systemic in nature and you can't affect one without affecting the other.

I think that where the conclusion I came to in general is we need to shift our focus to an outcome oriented attitude.

I think for the longest time we as a community are exceptionally proud of ourselves for money spent and participation had and people in the room and we need to stop.

The question should not be how many 22 to 40 year olds participated in a young adult leadership program over the last 12 months.

It should be how many of these alumni are engaging in Jewish Communal Life Post program?

So are they involved?

Are they on boards?

Are they donors?

Are they involved on committees?

Are they professionals?

Whatever it is, come up with a standard, come up with a rubric that says this is the measurable outcome, that says that we succeeded in our mission.

And then measure that over a time period, right?

So it's not going to happen in one year.

But you see, OK, we're going to have this, you know, leadership institute, right?

Every federation loves a good leadership institute and.

Sorry I'm just sitting here and in my head right away I was like ah so that's why having a mission statement that says you are the most inclusive Jewish organization for students is a shit mission statement.

You just proved my point.

Because that's not outcome based, it's an outcome.

No, but I mean missions are different.

Missions are different than out.

There's a so you have mission should not be outcome based, right?

Like missions are supposed to be lofty in nature and the way that you like structure businesses, right, is like you have like your mission, vision and goals and like that.

It's kind of like Simon Sinek's.

I don't know if you've ever seen his why video.

It's like the first Ted X, you know, Ted video that ever went viral 15 years ago.

But it's you know, you have your why, then you have your how and then you have your what.

And the why should not be tangible.

The why does need be lofty.

The why needs to be emotionally based.

Your how is your strategy, but your what is what I'm talking about.

We need to change the what's and so.

Well, the why should not be inclusive inclusivity either then?

I mean, it can be though.

Like I think that it depends on what your definition of inclusive inclusivity is like.

Why?

Why inclusivity for the sake of inclusivity?

Like because I think that like the inclusivity with offense, if the fence is too like if the if the yard is too small, then you've also lost the plot.

And so you have to be inclusive enough that says for that allows for someone to be the equivalent of the Israeli who is standing outside on hostage square protesting Netanyahu every single week.

You have to allow for that person to be inside of your Hillel.

Because if you're not, then what are we doing here?

And that and like you can't tell me that the soldiers that are fighting in Gaza that then go to hostage square on when they're off of reserve duty are somehow anti Zionist and shouldn't be included in a Hillel space, right?

All I'm saying, and I don't think I'm articulating it to the best of my ability, is optimizing for inclusivity to me is a lot less important than optimizing for proud Brazilian Jewish future, for example.

I'm just spitballing here.

Think that like the proud Jewish resiliency includes more people than I think because the code I think that maybe where the it's there's like the inclusivity word is code for allowing for anti Zionists in or people that are against Israel or that people who want to like literally, you know, believe that Judaism is entirely a social justice movement that has nothing rooted in our tradition or anything like that.

And you can just get rid of the Torah.

And I'm not saying that and I'm not saying that those people should be included.

What I'm saying is that you should optimize for the most inclusive space, not in all inclusive space, the most inclusive, but going back to it, which is what are the outcomes that we're trying to accomplish?

And the outcomes that we're trying, that we should be trying to accomplish is that we are creating or that we are affirming strong Jewish Zionist college like adults.

And so the question is, if that is the outcome that we want, well, how do we do do that from a how and from a why perspective?

Because that's gonna create it.

That's gonna create the outcome.

What you said to me should it be, in my opinion, the mission of Hillel.

Make sure go to my wife.

I'm gonna go call her in right now.

Yeah, give them a call.

Let them know, because if their mission is to be the most inclusive bullshit space, whatever, they're going to have the problem that they have today.

If their mission statement is to build the next generation, blah, blah, blah, whatever you just said so beautifully and eloquently, that's a different story.

That's a mission I can get behind.

For sure.

And I think that type of attitude needs to go into every Jewish organization.

So like I was saying, you know, when every person, federation out there, you know, talks about Leadership Institute, the question is like, are you having this because you just want the participation?

Or are you doing this because what you're actually trying to do is create the leaders and every single one of them will say we're trying to create the future leaders of our Jewish community.

Well then, OK, like how do you measure that, right?

How many of the people that participated are on committees?

How many committees for how long they're on those committees, you know, boards and everything of the sort.

And it's the same thing with Jewish summer camps.

It's the same thing with any organization out there or any mission or frankly, synagogues, right?

Like what are we actually trying to accomplish as a synagogue?

And that obviously like we're trying to get more members and we're trying to get not only more members, but more people who engage in Judaism on a regular basis.

Moisture House is the same way.

And so I think what happens is we all look at the number of people that walk into a building and say, wow, we had 100 people show up to a Shabbat dinner, like last night.

And we had 200 people that show up to a Shabbat dinner.

OK, great.

I'm so glad that they showed up for the Shabbat dinner.

But that your goal as an organization is not to have Shabbat dinners.

Your mission is to create more people who are doing more Jewish things.

So the question is beyond that, what are they doing that is Jewish and how are you measuring that because that and if everybody does that, if everybody becomes more outcome based and actually is honest with themselves, that says the dollars that we spent did not accomplish.

And for donors, they can finally say to themselves, hold on a SEC, I just put $100,000 into your leadership Institute and I'm looking over the last four years and only 20% of the participants are involved in committees and on boards and our donors.

So clearly what this is doing is not accomplishing the thing that I gave you $100,000 for.

So I'm not going to give you the $100,000 anymore unless you change in order to improve this number.

And once everybody starts operating from that perspective, we're going to start to see the change holistically.

I think that's super fair.

And the other thing I think is that you should host a debate class for Juice, like how the Art of a good conversation debate, how to structure your thinking.

I think that's very important.

And I see the shortcomings of our own people when they get interviewed, you know, by publications on CNN, whatever, or like Piers Morgan, for example, people go off the rails.

And if it was structured like a good debate and people had the skills to respond in a debaty way, it would be a lot more productive and interesting.

But that's for you to figure out in your coming years.

When your newsletter gets a million subscribers, you will release a master class.

Well, so here's what I will.

I'll give you a little short snippet.

And here's the key that I use that will, I think, open the door for anybody out there that is hoping to have different types of conversations that are more effective and that are more productive.

And the answer is to speak the language of your opponent.

So in any conversation, right, if you're speaking English and they're speaking Spanish, you're not going to understand one another.

And if you're trying to and anybody listening to that conversation is going to clearly see that know what?

Nothing is happening as a result.

That same idea exists in a debate.

And So what the pro Palestine people have or the anti Israel people have is a set of language.

They have a dogma, they have jargon and they have ideas that they all adhere to.

And that's how they argue their point.

And then what we do is we believe that the jargon and that the ideas are illegitimate.

Prima facie on face.

We don't even want to engage with it.

We don't even want to engage with it.

But then what that leads to is people who use language that is not understandable because at the end of the day, the average person who's listening to us debate, that person is probably far more familiar with their language around colonialism, around apartheid, around any type of social justice language in general.

The average, especially like liberal, is far more aware and they understand their language.

They understand Spanish far more than they understand our English.

And So what we have to do is learn how to speak Spanish.

And so that's what I do.

So when someone says settler colonialism and I say, I could go one hand, which is it's not settler colonialism, it's not cycle.

Instead, what I do is, OK, well, let's talk about settler colonialism because of course, this is what you say, settler colonialism, but isn't this what like the Arab Muslims did over the course of 1400 years?

And I say, no, well, that's don't this.

And I'm like, so let's dig in.

And so now all of a sudden I'm playing on, I'm playing with their language.

And now they have to because they can't get rid of their language.

They can't just say like no, that that that was settler colonialism is not a legitimate idea.

No, it is because you said so now let's work with that or you're a settler colonialist, right?

You benefit as an American from settler colonialism.

So leave, give the land back to the indigenous population, say, well, this is okay.

So you are frankly no different than Israeli from 2 generations from now.

You're no different.

So why do you get to stay and benefit from settler colonialism?

But they have to leave.

And that right there forces them to engage with theirs.

And so the audience hears that and says, well, that person's a hypocrite.

That person doesn't actually believe what they believe because if they did, then they would leave.

Or Indigenous in population, which is.

I asked them, what is your definition of an Indigenous person?

And there's five different definitions.

And they all work for Jews.

And so then I say, OK, well that fits Jews.

So we're the indigenous population.

And then they'll say something like, well, your 2000 year old connection doesn't count when people have been living there for 500 years.

So then I just ask, well, then give me a number, When does Indigenous connections disappear?

And it's so once again, it's playing on their field because I know their ballpark better than they do.

But it's because I have engaged with their language and with the discomfort of their language.

And I think that the vast majority of people who want to debate this issue are extremely uncomfortable with even engaging in the idea because if you're not able to even humor yourself, that says, you know, maybe Israel is settler colonialism, maybe Israel, maybe the Jews aren't indigenous anymore.

Like in unless you're able to sit with the discomfort of those ideas in order to engage with them in an honest way that ends up in the at the conclusion that obviously we all know, which is that it's not sub colonialism that Jews are indigenous.

But if you're not able to engage with that discomfort of the language, you're never going to be able to speak it.

And if you're never able to speak their language, you're never, ever going to engage with them in a real way.

And you're certainly not going to convince people who don't speak our language they speak theirs.

Very good, what can I say?

Tell me, how can people connect with you and learn more about your work and hopefully more debate tips?

Would love for everybody to follow me on TikTok, Instagram.

I'm going to get back into the get back into the podcast sub stack for sure.

On sub stack, I'm Gomva Gom, which means this and also that.

It's able to hold those two truths at the same time.

That's where we live.

That's the only way to live and that's the only way to move forward.

So you can connect with me there.

Thank you so much for doing this.

I have one final question for you.

It's one that I ask every single guest.

Who would you like to nominate for people you want to know?

Who would I like to nominate for people you want to know?

I don't know your full roster because you've been doing this for so long and I have not been doing this as long as you have.

I think that if I could put somebody out there.

Have you interviewed Shay Sabo, Judean CEO?

No, definitely reach out to her.

I think that she's a patrilineal Jew.

Her dad is Jewish, her mom is Romanian, But like she comes at it from very similar perspective than I think some of the other people that you've interviewed around like this very deep connection with the land.

And she says that like we're all Israeli, like, you know, we're all Israelites, like that kind of thing.

And so I think that she comes at it from also like just a very deep love of our people and really our connection to the land.

And I think she's very eloquent and she speaks a very beautiful story.

Thank you.

This is a fantastic nomination.

I'm so grateful we did this.

Thank you this was amazing I had so much fun.

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