Celebrating A Letter in the Scroll

Opening remarks

Andrew Klaber, Chair, US Board of The Rabbi Sacks Legacy: We are, each of us, as Rabbi Sacks explained, a letter in the scroll of Jewish history and civilisation. To be a Jew is to be a link in the chain of generations. We are part of a 4,000-year-old story, a story that extols the sanctity of life, loves and demands justice, calls us to be our brother's keeper, and proclaims the oneness of God.

The number of Jews in the world is smaller than a minuscule statistical error in the Chinese census. And yet, when all of us, from across the political and religious spectrum, add our voice to the 304,805 letters in the Sefer Torah, we blaze warmly, unstoppably, eternally. And in these challenging times, we must blaze together.

Rabbi Sacks said it best, from “A Letter in the Scroll”:

“I cannot tell my children and grandchildren what they should be. Only they can make that choice.

But I can tell them where we came from, where our ancestors were travelling to, and why it was important to them that their children should carry on the journey. This is our story, yet unfinished, and there is a chapter that only they can write. The most eloquent words that God spoke to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets was to call their name.

And their reply was simply, “Hineni.” Here I am. That is the call Jewish history makes to all of us to continue the story, to write our letter in the scroll.” 

While recognising all of tonight's panellists, we are extremely grateful to have Natan Sharansky, who just arrived from Israel, honour Rabbi Sacks' legacy, as we approach the fourth yahrzeit.

We are especially grateful to Natan, who has agreed to become the Chair of our global advisory board, succeeding another Jewish luminary, Senator Joe Lieberman, zichrono livracha. As Natan Sharansky writes in the Foreword, to “A Letter in the Scroll,” “As an assimilated Jew living under a dictatorship in the USSR, I did not have the power to change my fate. Once I discovered my Jewish identity, and with it a connection to our people, our history, our tradition, our shared future still ahead, I also found meaning, purpose, and courage.

Our shared Jewish identity, and all it implied, banded us as Soviet Jews with our brothers and sisters all around the world. And this bond helped us not merely rebel against the USSR, but also to win.”

In closing, we are all letters in the scroll.

Our parents, our grandparents, all those who came before, had an inner resilience that protected them from fear and despair. It was not a naive faith, but it was awesome in its power. 

Jews keep faith alive, and faith keeps the Jews alive.

Our faith defeats our fear. 

As we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7th, Rabbi Sacks' seminal letters are vital words to live by. 

Screening of the animation, “Why I am a Jew.” (see transcript at https://rabbisacks.org/videos/why-i-am-a-jew/)

Moderator, Dan Senor: Are we good to go? All right.

Hello, everyone. My name is Dan Senor. I am here with a very distinguished guest, Rabbi David Ingber, Michal Cutler from Israel, who's the Chief Envoy for Antisemitism on behalf of the Israeli government.

David Ingber is the Rabbi at 92nd Street Y, the Head of Jewish Life, and he's the Chief Rabbi of the Romemu congregation. 

And then someone who needs no introduction, Natan Sharansky, here to my left. 

We are sorry that we are a little delayed starting. I was told that there was a line all the way out the street to get into this event, and it was the ultimate compliment for those of us who do a lot of speaking events.

When I overheard someone say, “I mean, it's even bigger than Kol Nidrei, you know?” It's like, really filled the place. Although, actually, the rival to that is, as you said, I even heard people came from the U.S. Open to come. I mean, Michal didn't mean players from the U.S. Open, but they were people who were at the U.S. Open and decided to dip out of the U.S. Open.

Normally, it's the other way around. You dip out of the Safra Centre to go to the U.S. Open. It's a tennis tournament, a tennis tournament.

Natan's like, he's like, I know what Kol Nidrei is, but what's this U.S. Open thing you're talking about? Next year. Next year. 

We are here on the first day of Elul.

We are here while six families in Israel are sitting shiva after loved ones in each of their families were slaughtered a few days ago by Hamas. We are here at a time of crisis. Rabbi Sacks wrote in the “Letter,” and sort of, how do you have a conversation like this against the backdrop that we're in, this moment of crisis? Rabbi Sacks wrote in “A Letter in the Scroll,” he wrote, “Crisis is creative. It allows us, as more settled times do not, to encounter an ancient heritage afresh.”

So he says, “As settled times do not.” Settled times do not allow for that. We are certainly living through unsettled times, and I guess that's Rabbi Sacks' way of trying to be upbeat, that this is a time where we're kind of shaken up, and when we're shaken up, we can actually think anew and think creatively. 

And we're going to try to do some of that tonight. The four of us are going to have a conversation, then we're going to leave some time to open it up for Q&A from all of you.

Before we, and we will touch on the crisis, the actual crisis, but David, I just want to start with you. The book, “A Letter in the Scroll” - the title, those words, “a letter in the scroll,” what does that evoke for you? 

Rabbi David Ingber: Well, first of all, I just want to say again, reiterating how important it is for us to gather together at this moment. As I've immediately felt that we’re in a Jewish space, with amcha, with our people together, just to gather at this moment, it's just itself a remarkable thing, a remarkably settling thing, just to be together.

The “letter in the scroll” is an image that, of course, it's in the Midrash, it's in the Talmud in a number of places, that there are x number of letters in the Torah, and each soul of a Jew is one of those letters. 

When I think of that image, two things come to mind for me at this moment, specifically at the nexus that we're at here. One is that there is, you know, we know that in Jewish Law and Halacha, if one letter in the Torah is missing, it makes the Torah pasul, it makes it, right, the Torah is not usable in that way.

There's something profoundly sad at this moment as the ‘letters,’ right, of those six neshamot, the six souls that were taken, that were murdered, not taken, they were murdered. And to sit here in the chasm, the abyss, and the void that is left by those ‘letters’ is one profoundly important feeling that I'm bringing tonight, and I'm sure many of you share that. 

But another image also comes to mind, and it's a story, it's an amazing story, and when I went with my community to Israel, back in November, went to the Nova Festival site, and there was a tent - and some of you might have been there recently - and there was a tent at the site, and inside the tent, someone came running to me and said, said, “Rabbi Ingber, Rabbi Ingber, come, there's a tent over there, and they're writing a Sefer Torah.”

And I walked into the tent, and they were writing a Sefer Torah, and each person could tell the scribe, you know, hold the scribe and say their name, and then each letter that would be written, that would be written in your merit, in the merit of those souls that were taken there. 

And I came out, and I thought of the story that some of you might know, a story from the Talmud about a great rabbi named Hanania ben Teradion. It's a story about a time during the Roman occupation when Jews were prohibited from learning Torah in public, and this courageous rabbi went out and learned Torah in public, and he was then taken into the square, and he was wrapped in a Torah, and then he was put on fire, and burning at the stake, and his students stood around and said to him, “Rabbi, Rabbi, what do you see?” 

And he says, “I see klaf nisraf v’otiot porchot ba’avir.” He said, I see the parchment is burning, but the letters, the letters are flying.

The letters are flying. The letters can never be destroyed. 

And I think that what Rabbi Sacks was pointing to, in this incredibly evocative way, was saying the preciousness of each letter is, of course, so precious that without a letter, a Torah is no longer a viable, valid Torah to be used in synagogue.

But of course, you know, we can't destroy letters. Letters, in some profound way, are eternal, and that each and every letter is both unique and eternal, and that reminds us of that deployment that all of us have here in this world as Jews. To bring about a better world, to make the world a holier place, and so it brings us here to this moment in a profound way. 

Dan: Michal, you, in many respects, you're living like the quintessential Israeli public service life in this crisis. You are trying to explain to the world what antisemitism is during a wave of unimaginable antisemitism. You are an immigrant to Israel who has raised four children in Israel, and three of whom are serving in the army today, while you are here doing your important work in the West. 

And you and I talked about this sort of the burden and the privilege of being a Jew, and I just, there's a section in here, a passage, that Rabbi Sacks writes about that I think is particularly relevant to the life you're living.

He writes, “There have been,” this is in the chapter, “Ambivalence and Assimilation,” which is very, very relevant to this moment. “There have been two tragedies in modern Jewish life,” Rabbi Sacks writes. “The first was external and physical, the rise of racial antisemitism from the Kishinev pogroms in Russia to the Dreyfus Affair in France to the Final Solution and the death camps in Nazi Germany.

The second was internal and spiritual. Antisemitism did more than threaten and eventually take the lives of Jews. It left a trace of the Jewish soul.” Sorry, “It left a trace in the Jewish soul. Jews began to see themselves not as the people loved by God, but rather as the people hated by Gentiles. That turned Jewishness back from a faith to a fate, from a positive destiny to a tragic misfortune.

Mordechai Kaplan once wrote, quote, ‘before the beginning of the 19th century, all Jews regarded Judaism as a privilege. Since then, most Jews have come to regard it as a burden’.” 

And those words were written in 1934, so before the Holocaust.

So I guess, Michal, you're explaining antisemitism to the world, you are fighting antisemitism, but you're also talking to a lot of young people and you're talking to a lot of young Jews. Burden, privilege, how do you think about that, given all that you are seeing and all that they are seeing? 

Michal Cotler-Wunsh: So thank you. Just to start as well, just to thank everybody for being here, for taking the time, for leaving the tennis Open, and really for coming together.

And to thank the Sacks Legacy that I've been honoured to partake in as we try to bring to life what I think is probably the most important language - and I don't just mean English - that we can be utilising through dark times and good times, that Rabbi Sacks left us this living legacy and now has passed on to us the responsibility to bring it to life.

I just want to share before I enter that, that for me, “A Letter in the Scroll” was actually a part of my leadership roles, if you will, when it was first had come out, I was a board member of my children's school in Canada, and it has actually guided me along the 20 years, because we're launching the republication with Natan’s Foreword, the understanding that it has guided and instructed and inspired every single part of my own personal journey as a parent, as a public servant, now Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, is all I could say is I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for having a book such as this, and now with Natan’s Foreword to share the understanding that Natan actually is the lived proof, an example of the importance of each person being “A Letter in the Scroll.” 

What has been actually the most overwhelming piece of my exchanges and interactions with young Jews is to try and make accessible how it can be that in response to the worst attack of Jews since the Holocaust, fuelled by antisemitic hate, that burned and raped and mutilated and massacred and abducted hundreds on 10/7, how it can be that in response to that, what we've been witness to is a tsunami, not a rise, a tsunami of antisemitism.

And once again, I lean on Rabbi Sacks' teachings, to be able to try and make accessible to young  - and not so young Jews - what it is that we've seen. What it was that 10/7 and the responses to 10/7, fuelled by the very same antisemitism, exposed for us all to see. And it is what he speaks about, very importantly, of the mutation of antisemitism - “the oldest hatred in the world,” that Professor Wistrich actually called it - the oldest hatred in the world that has mutated, as Rabbi Sacks explains, by latching onto the guiding social construct of the time, if you will, right? Religion, science, and, you know, sort of the modern religion of our times, human rights. 

And the understanding that in that way antisemitism has mutated over thousands of years, creating new strains, enables us to understand what we have seen. How it can be that in response to the worst attack of Jews since the Holocaust, there will be a tsunami of antisemitism that could have been predicted. If we understand that this strain of antisemitism, that is anti-Zionism, has been enabled by the same mechanism, Natan Sharansky's mechanism, the three Ds, the demonization, and the delegitimisation, and the double standards, that rather than, or in addition to, targeting the individual Jew - demonised, delegitimised, applied double standards to - barring him or her from an equal place in society, has just morphed. So that the State of Israel, intended to be the State of the Jews, has become the Jew among the state - demonised, delegitimised, applied double standards to, barred from an equal place in the family of nations.

And so that when you understand that this strain of antisemitism actually latched on to the guiding social construct of our times - that is international law, the international rules-based order of human rights, the institutions created, mandated, entrusted to uphold, promote, and protect that international rules-based order equally and consistently - you can suddenly understand what it is that we are witnessing, and in that sense, it's very empowering to understand what you're seeing. 

Rabbi Sacks just wrote in last week's parasha, actually, about the importance of a leader being able to make accessible, in whatever capacity, whether it's a spiritual leader, or a political leader, or any kind of leader - and certainly he was a leader - to make accessible, or to interpret what it is that we are seeing, because it's not self-explanatory to understand reality. 

Things happen, but to understand what it is that we're seeing, it's very helpful to have somebody interpreting it for you.

And the most important thing that you realise with a younger generation is that we - actually, I think probably the three of us, not Natan - lived an anomaly. We lived an anomaly in Jewish history. We thought it was the new normal, and there's a generation that is experiencing the normal of Jewish history.

It's us who lived the anomaly, and now it is on us, incumbent upon our generation, to support the generation that is actually living the normal in Jewish history. To be able to make accessible what it is that we're seeing, and in that sense - and maybe we'll delve a little bit more into it - but in understanding that the tsunami of antisemitism can only be identified and addressed or combated with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism  - so that I don't forget to say that in this space - because every single person here, with the notion of “A Letter in the Scroll” and that ”Hineni,” has a role, whether it's in school or in university, or at work, or in the city that you live in, or with regards to the legislators who represent you, or the White House strategy. In whatever capacity you can impact, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition has never been more important. If we are to be able to identify and combat all strains of what is, as Rabbi Sacks describes, “an ever-mutating, shape-shifting virus.” 

That is primarily the conversations that I've had with young people around the world, Jews and non-Jews alike, and I think that it has been a very, very thought-provoking moment in which empowering individuals to remember their history, to reclaim their identity, including - we'll delve into it, I hope, a little bit more after - and to renew the covenant that Rabbi Sacks speaks of, has been that moment that we're in. 

Dan: Natan, I want to pick up on something Michal said about, you know, we were just living through the anomaly, and I want to come back to that with you, but before we do, can you just briefly describe to us your relationship with Rabbi Sacks, because you first knew him before he was the chief rabbi of the UK, right? 

Natan Sharansky: Rabbi Sacks, he was rabbi of some big shul in London.

Michal: Marble Arch.

Dan: Every rabbi says they're a rabbi of some big shul. 

Natan: Well, the word Marble Arch meant for me as open America, what's it called? Open America, yeah, tennis hall, okay. 

Dan: U.S. Open.

Natan: U.S. Open, sorry, yeah. So that's as much as I knew about that synagogue that I was invited, and we were speaking, and it was about Soviet Jewry, then it was relatively just the first years after our victory, and I drew attention to how he really connected our struggle in a very natural and simple way. And the struggle of these British students in housewives, 35s, there was quite a, almost like in New York, there was movement. And how he connected it with the Bible, with Parashat Hashavua, and I thought really that he was like making everybody to feel that they are part of the Bible story. That all the struggle, it was only a few years ago, but it's absolutely the same as what was a thousand years ago. 

That's how we got to know one another, and then when he was Rabbi, Chief Rabbi, and I was in the government, among other things, dealing with the problems of Diaspora Jewry, and we had many meetings, and if, I don't know if you compare, I'll tell one episode, because it was very typical.

Once there was another campaign of antisemitism globally. We are in the beginning of 2002, 2001, and I have to come to England to speak to Jews, to speak to the parliament, to speak to - well, what Michal is doing now in much better English than I - but then I was doing that. And Rabbi Sacks calls me just before my flight and says, “No, I'll come to pick you from the airport, because we now have suddenly important meeting organised. You will not have time to go to the hotel.”

And so I went out of the aeroplane, and what is the meeting? He said, “We go to Archbishop Canterbury,” the ‘chief priest’ of Britain.

I said, “‘My God, I'm meeting with Jews, I'm meeting with politicians. What I have to talk to him about? Is to explain my Three Ds?”

And he said, “No, you talk about your prison experience. You have your psalm book with you?”

I said, “Yeah, of course, I have my prison psalm book.”

And he said, “Well, tell him,” because he said, “Then we need, we don't have to convince them again and again that we are not such bad people. We have to make them feel that what they owe to us, that all their spiritualities, they took it from us.” 

So really, I spoke about my prison experience, about how I read Psalm book without understanding what is written there, and then the first phrase which I could understand is, “And when you go through the valley of death, you fear no evil, because God is with you.”

And then I told him about my really close friend, who became a close friend, Orthodox, Orthodox Christian, who he couldn't get, he was confiscating his Bible, his, and my psalm book, and then when we got, how we had our ecumenical readings, how we were reading both, I'm sorry, New Testament and Psalms. 

And at this moment, his hands start trembling, and he almost was crying. So, and all what I knew about this bishop, that he's really, he doesn't like us, he all the time speaks about suffering of Palestinians, and why we are wasting time on him.

And I have to say that after this, he really became, well, I don't think that he changed his opinion about Palestinians and about Israeli government, but he became very, very understanding, and in fact, fight against antisemitism. 

So, that is the almost mystical touch of Rav Sacks, who in fact had, no, but yes, he was very powerful explaining to Jews in very simple words about ourselves. But he was also very easily crossing the borders, any borders in this world, and in making the world feel how our story is also their story.

And well, I have to say, we became friends, of course, outside the ???. I never thought that for my children and for my in-law children, he will become Russian, because each Shabbat, when they look for some parshanut, they first, and when you go to the synagogue and take something to read with you, they are taking Rav Sacks. 

Dan: And I want to ask you about what Michal said. I'm not going to ask you if you were shocked by October 7th. I think everyone was shocked by October 7th. I'm more curious if you were shocked by what followed October 7th, that, you know, we all thought that the outrage of the world would be directed - naively, I guess - at least I thought, the outrage of the world would be directed at those who were slaughtering Jews, when in fact, the outrage of the world was directed at Jews for objecting to being slaughtered.

And what Michal described was what I naively thought was going to happen, but then what actually happened was the norm, and we've just been living  - to borrow from Charles Krauthammer - this “holiday from history” for the last several decades, but you've lived through this history, and so what followed October 7th, were you shocked? 

Natan: Well, first of all, I was shocked by the failure, I was shocked by the failure of Israel, of our intelligence, of our politicians, of the concepts that really, well - I was in four governments and twice resigned - so I was against many of these concepts, why we left Gaza, and so on, but the fact that we will be so not prepared, it was a big shock. And of course, all the tragedy of the fallen soldiers and the tragedies practically in every family. 

But the other shock was about the world that I thought I know very well, because I was fighting with the antisemitism on the campuses. 20 years ago, I said that that is the most important battlefield, so I said to Arik Sharon, and we started many programmes. I was, I spent a lot of time on American campuses, there was a lesson, since the war started already, it is my sixth visit to America, and I always go to the campuses, because I really, I can't believe what I see. 

I always believed, and was writing about it, that progressives are not liberals, they're not our partners, but that they will be so openly working against human rights, against rights of women. You remember this march of one million women on Washington, Linda Sarsour's antisemite, and debating Jewish organisations, and your and my organisations here, that of course, they are antisemites, but because of women is so important, that we cannot be, not be part of this march. 

And then none of these organisations, not only didn't say a word about the most awful rape of our - maybe of our century -, but on the campuses, there was celebration, that's how the liberation begins. And then with all my experience about Marxism, what is happening, most vulgar Marxist religions, with all my experience, with all my understanding of our terms, I could never imagine that so easily America, still the only hope of struggle of democratic distance all over the world, that so easily public opinion can abandon the principles on which America lives.

And I asked, well we had a programme which started 20 years ago, actually him on the campuses, that is easily fellows on campuses, I asked all of them, from Ivy League, everybody, which organisations of human rights, that you were developing relations - not you, but Hillel was developing relations - with them for many, many years, which of them publicly expressed, not solidarity, sympathy, and the only organisation they could bring was federal society in the Yale University, it's like evangelists of academia. They're the only ones who express sympathy.

So I have to say that, of course, it was deep disappointment for me, shared by our leadership, but the fact that American public opinion is a big part of it, are not our allies in this, the most American issue which can be, that was shocking. 

The good thing is that, exactly as in Israel, you can see what a great young generation we have. We could never think we were so cynical about our young generation, they're teaching us today to be noble, what it is to not understand that your life, there are things which are bigger than your life, and many great things. 

I think now we see it suddenly, not suddenly, but that young generation of American Jews on the campuses who looked like a lost ‘letter in the scroll,’ really, how they're coming back. Just now, the leader of New York Jewish Federation told me, Eric told me that the poll shows that 47 percent of, 43 percent of American Jews feel themselves more connected to Judaism after the same self-promotion, so there are some good things happening in this whole situation.

Dan: David, you, you lead a very pluralistic congregation, and a very young congregation. You, I think - I want to be careful how I say this, I don't use my words carefully - but you, you attract a lot of, you have over the years attracted a lot of Jews to your congregation, who could come for services, commit without being too committal. Suddenly, and a lot of students from Columbia, by the way, a lot of people from, given your proximity to Columbia University. And suddenly, it's hard to be a little committal, because you're, you're facing a lot of vitriol, and I think there are a lot of Jews who, young Jews, who find themselves weirdly sympathising with the vitriol, or just becoming apathetic, like, what do I need this for? 

David: Right. 

Dan: How do you, how do you talk to them? 

David: Well, one of the things that I was just, Natan, what you just said, also, quoting from, from Eric, the statistics, I think one of the things, bringing us back to the book, this is, this book stands in a long line of works over Jewish history that are gearing themselves, in a way, towards those who would otherwise not engage, right? 

So, for whatever reason, it could be a countercultural moment, like Maimonides, Rambam, wrote Moreh Nevuchim, The Guide for the Perplexed, after his generation were influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, and had made their way, and had to have a polemical pull from a book, and so he wrote it to answer their questions, right? 

Almost, it says, in the Ethics of the Fathers, in Pirkei Avot, it says, “Da ma leHashiv,” you have to know how to respond, right? How do you respond to questions about faith?

And I think Rabbi Sacks, essentially, his writing is written prolifically. In this particular book, as he writes himself, he's trying to say, let me answer the question, ‘Why am I Jewish?’ And he also acknowledges, and we all, those who read the book, acknowledge that he, that historically, that's a unique question.

Even though we had the Rambam and others who wrote books trying to persuade Jews that Judaism had answers to questions that might lead them astray. For the most part, Jewish identity was a given, and ‘Why be Jewish?’ was, might not necessarily have been the question that would have arisen to somebody for whom Judaism was so obvious, right? And so, he had to write a book to write persuasively about why you should be Jewish, and only one chapter is about antisemitism. And so, in some sense, you know, Rabbi Sacks, the movement here was to illuminate things like antisemitism, but it was trying to create a positive Jewish identity rooted in, ‘Why be Jewish? Because it's beautiful. Why be Jewish? Because it's compelling. Why be Jewish? Because it'll change your life for the better. Why be Jewish? Because we are proud to be the inheritors of an oeuvre of literature and ideas that have changed the face of humanity.’

So, he was giving all the positive reasons, you know, getting to know you through the yes, the positive Jewish identity, what Rabbi David Hartman called Sinai, right? Mount Sinai, Revelation.

But he also, Rabbi David Hartman, talked about Auschwitz, right? Or which one of, you know, which one of these poles will pull us? Will it be negative Jewish identity? The Jewish identity formed by what the goyim, or what the non-Jews, or what those who hate Jews will think? 

Or will it be rooted in Sinai, positivity? 

And I think this book, you know, is deeply Sinaitic in that way. It's all about the beauty of Judaism with one piece. I think that what we're discovering now over the last - to some extent, in the modern State of Israel for the last 76 years - is also going through its own evolution, which is that for many in the generation, and maybe in my generation to some extent, the givenness of the need for the State of Israel was so obvious that you would very rarely find a book that would be an analogue of “The Letter in the Scroll” about the State of Israel, its need, its necessity, its beauty.

You know, nobody, someone had to come along and write a book like “Start-up Nation,” you know, and tell people about how, how did you know? 

Dan: There are a few copies here tonight. 

David: I know, you know, Start-up Nation, you know, that Israel is more than just, you know, going to Israel and bringing tuna cans and a duffel bag and all that kind of thing back when I was growing up. It's this incredible, you know, unique, unique beacon of light in the desert.

And so I think that what we're awakening to, not just the antisemitism, but the antisemitism that is now anti-Zionism, is that we have to, we are being called upon, to formulate, articulate, speak to a generation of young Jews for whom the givenness of the State of Israel is no longer a given.

And that the givenness of America maybe for them is, is their bedrock, which of course is, you know, for those of us who know how quickly these things change, it's not really solid ground either. And, and who are influenced by a very targeted, decades-long, strategic, ideological campaign to undercut some of the basic premises about which, that many of us took for granted.

And so it's kind of funny, like here we are to talk about “Letter in a Scroll,” but we're talking about antisemitism. And in my synagogue, I don't think in other synagogues, if, if, you know, God willing, when this, when we're back on the other side of this, synagogues, unlike maybe Orthodox synagogues, will still have to contend with why be Jewish, right? 

From being the Chosen People to being the choosing people. 

How do you, when someone walks in your office and says, you know, I just took a Buddhism course and I'm five generations, you know, I'm Jewish all the way back to the High Priest, but I'm thinking of going to an ashram. What, what do you give them? What's your compelling answer? And Rabbi Sacks, I think was one of the great articulators, one of the great and most eloquent expositors of why be Jewish. I'll give you a hundred reasons why being Jewish is a really great idea for you and for the future of the planet. 

So I think that that's what I tell my people, which is why be Jewish, because why wouldn't you be? You're born Jewish.

It's, it's so beautiful. It's so compelling. It's so enriching.

I mean, you know this from your books, “The Genius of Israel,” so many things that we as Jews have given to the world over the centuries, the millennia, are themselves the bedrock of what it is to lead a really good life, a human flourishing life, right? That's the highest calling. 

Dan: And, you know, there's a tendency in this moment, post-October 7th, for many of us to be just consumed with the fight, to be consumed with the argument, to be consumed with the debates. I sometimes joke that all of us, every single person in this room, I can say with certainty, are now in a higher number of WhatsApp groups over the past year than you were before October 2023.

WhatsApp is booming. Because, because there are like these little virtual communities that were formed where all people are doing - I joke with my wife, I call them the, can you believe WhatsApp groups - Because all these WhatsApp groups have basically reduced to are people sharing the latest outrageous article from like the BBC or the New York, the latest Tom Friedman. You did it to me yesterday, by the way, David.

I don't want to, I don't give you tzuros, but yesterday you sent me a Tom Friedman's article. “Can you believe what Tom Friedman wrote?” And I know it's disgusting. See, he's still revved up.

You know, he can add them to your WhatsApp groups. And, but there's a tendency to just get so energised by the rage, by the understandable rage, but that doesn't answer the question you're raising, which is, okay, but for what? We're angry. We want to argue, for what? What are we actually protecting? What are we actually defending? I just want to, and I think you want to jump in, but I just want to quote one, one, something here from Sacks.

He says, “Just before Moses said these words, he made an even more poignant request, quote, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ And then he says that these two verses are connected. 

We can only pass on to our children what we ourselves love.

We cannot order our children to be Jews. 

We cannot deprive them of their choice, nor can we turn them into our clones. All we can do is to show them what we believe and let them see the beauty of how we live.”

David: Before we pivot to Michal, I just want to just, on that last piece, you know, the abyss that is created by this moment, we've always, in the last 76 years, we have depended upon Israel for Jewish identity. Birthright. I mean, it's a, it's a, outside of the Orthodox world, numbers have plummeted. And as somebody who was reared in the Orthodox world, left it and is in some paradox universe, like Orthodox paradox, I, I, 

Dan: It's like part therapy, right? 

David: Yeah. Like as an intervention for North American Jewish life, which was really struggling and has struggled with keeping people engaged with what do you do when you no longer have an Israel for the next generation? And so that's, it's kind of, it's a problem. It's a big problem that needs to be solved for. 

Dan: Michal.

Michal: So, I mean, I guess I would continue from there and say, I think what's most unique about Rabbi Sacks' gift that he gave us is, especially when I attribute sort of, not just the mutation of antisemitism, but, but the secular religion of our times being human rights, is that he doesn't come at it from the universal to the particular, which is usually the motion that I, you know, would say the majority of human rights activists and, and champions would have taken, including the ones sitting to my right, probably from the universal to the particular.

But Rabbi Sacks comes from a very, very clear, particular identity to the universal. I think that it's a very unique movement that in part answers, at the very least, where I think is the role and the responsibility of our generation in a post-10/7 reality. And I can't but shake the notion - and I didn't think about it before tonight - that we're talking about “A Letter in the Scroll” and what was desecrated so devastatingly on Shabbat Simchat Torah was our Scroll, that had kept us for thousands of years, except that this generation is probably - for the first time in thousands of years of Jewish history - in the position to realise what Rav Soloveitchik - and Rabbi Sacks actually, I think, writes about it, perhaps not in this book - sort of as a call to action to us to pivot from the Covenant of Fate to the Covenant of Destiny.

For that, you need to be in the position to opt in, right? It's not an attribution or a pushing from the outside external hatred or antisemitism, if you will, that defines who you are in the Covenant of Fate, but rather an extremely opposite motion that says, no, the Covenant of Destiny requires us to opt into our identity. 

And I think that in that sense, if there's a silver lining that I have sort of experienced over the last 11 months of travelling, it's the notion that we're having a conversation which we needed to have. Considering that 76 years ago, as a people, we returned to our ancestral homeland after millennia, thousands of years of exile and persecution, in which the conversation we had was a completely different one than the one we need to be having once we do have that ancestral homeland to which we returned as a prototypical indigenous people, after thousands of years of exile and persecution. By the way, that's just Israel's Declaration of Independence.

And I insist that we go back to it because I think it's a formative text in the ability to lean in to this next chapter that we are writing together, if you will, our generation specifically, opting in, utilising and anchored through the mission, vision, values so clearly, brilliantly, in a prophetic text really written by Ben-Gurion and others, and the understanding of what the State of Israel is for the people for whom it is a nation state. That is us, whether half of us or a little less than half of us living in it, or a little more than half of us living in the rest of the world, primarily right here in the United States. 

But what really astounds me when I think about the moment that we're in, and the incredible responsibility that we have to transcend and reach across real or perceived differences right here in the United States, is that - again, I go back to this social construct that's guiding much of the conversation, right - human rights and social justice. Except that our idea of social justice, it's just from last week's parasha, is very different than the social justice that has played out. I don't think that it was intended that way, but then the social justice that has actually disempowered in this division of victim and victimiser and oppressed and oppressor. 

And in last week's parasha, when you understand that we all have to give tzedaka, right, tzedaka is not charity, it's something we need to have a conversation about. Tzedaka is compulsory, tzedaka is actually something that we all have to give, the poorest poor person that receives tzedaka has to also give tzedaka. And so the nearest sort of translation that Rabbi Sacks wrote about in this Covenant and Conversation last week for tzedaka is not charity at all. It's social justice, but it's a completely different understanding of what social justice is. In that you are never a victim, you are never oppressed, you are always with agency and with capability to pull yourself up from the place that you're in.

And if I bring it back to the conversations that we're having in progressive spaces in the United States, in that division of, I would say, a collapsed morality that he wrote about in his last book. right, and actually to me the testament was that after reading his last book, “Morality,” I couldn't shake that feeling that he predicted it in the responses to 10/7, right. What the responses to 10/7 were, were an indication of the collapse of morality. If you could not unconditionally condemn without a ‘but,’ unequivocally condemn without a ‘but’ at the end of the sentence, what it was that happened on 10/7, that's not progress, that's like Middle Ages regress. 

If you could not unequivocally condemn it, that was the indication of the collapse of morality, and here we are, actually, in this incredible opportunity of all places for the United States of America, based on the same idea that we have carried for thousands of years. That's what the United States was built on, the understanding that what ails the societies, the spaces and places in which antisemitism festers - predicting the collapse of the coal mine, if you will, us being the canary - is actually a really important message for American Jews, in the role that American Jews have right here in the United States of America. Not just in combating antisemitism, but in actually preserving what the United States represents in this, you know, beacon of freedom, and I think that that has been a lot of what we've seen in the opting-in piece. In the positive, and not just in the combative WhatsApp groups of, ‘Oh my god, did you see?’, which I am in many groups. 

Dan: I know, ‘Can you believe?’ 

Michal: Can you believe?

Dan: All right, I'll open it up for questions.

Go ahead, Natan. 

Natan: Do you want to finish your question, because you didn't answer part of his question. 

Dan: Thank you.

Natan: He said everybody is now angry. What are you angry for? I think... Meaning you can't only be angry. Oh yeah, okay, so I think, by the way, you said about WhatsApp groups, that there are many new WhatsApp groups.

You know how many WhatsApp groups who threw Jews out of their groups on the campuses? Everybody who says he or she is Zionist, or even expresses sympathy to our victims and so on, is thrown from a number of WhatsApp groups. 

So good, at least we know where we should be and where we should not be. But about the anger, it's an interesting question, because of course we are all angry, and because of our tragic stories, and some because of our government, and some are angry on the irresponsible oppositions.

If you think to that, what in the end we are all angry for? We are angry with ourselves. We Israelis, how we could be so arrogant? Some people convinced us that we are a start-up nation, and we believe that we are so... 

Dan: Okay, hold on, hold on. I take this tzorus from so many Israeli journalists. You are a start-up nation. Start-up nation yields incredible signal intelligence. Whether how to use that signal intelligence is a judgement, but the technology is as robust as it ever was.

But you're touching a nerve. 

David: Can you believe he said that? 

Natan: Guys, we convinced ourselves with the help of some Americans, but we convinced ourselves that we have such a good intelligence, and we have such a good technology, that we don't need soldiers of the... We cut the number of our divisions because we decided that we don't need it. We are like God. We can do anything. So it's our anger. 

What American Jews are angry about? Well, of course, again, you're angry that this Senator said like this, and this.

In the end, it's my arrogant opinion of the one who is sixth time I'm coming to America and talking to a generation. I think in the end, you're angry how you could be so blind. 

David: Yes.

Natan: And how you convinced yourself. Look, you know about the books. Even here, I didn't ask, thank you, but there is mine, Gil Troy's book, “Never Alone.”

So what is it? Why never alone? The moment you join your Jewish identity, you will be never alone. So of course, Rav Sacks said it much more powerful, but maybe you are repeating from elsewhere. But what happens when Jews of America, not only of America, so decided that they don't need Judaism.

They have Tikkun olam. They have human rights. That is our religion.

We have so many allies. And then you find out that when your only religion is human rights, you'll be alone. You'll be alone because if it is not connected to some deeper values, then something. I think that's the end of the thing. That's what you're angry for. 

David: This is something that our friend Micha Goodman spoke about this, that in the aftermath of the 1973 war, of course, there was the conversation about the concepsia. Like what was the concept that we didn't, that was proven wrong, that we didn't understand, we didn't see. And in its aftermath, we had to revise. And in Israel now, all of the different concepsiot that were wrong.

And Americans have their own analogue. It's what I'm hearing you saying, Natan, is that we have concepsiot here as well in the Diaspora, that in the aftermath of 10/7, we're going to have to look at very carefully and understand what we didn't see. And that's why we're upset.

Michal: I want to add to that just one sentence. Because, you know, the questioning of the concepsiot, I think it's very important that we do together as a people. And I'll say why.

I very much connect to what Natan just said. You know, the Jewish people, we're not a religion. We have a religion. And we're not a culture. We have a culture. And we're not a country. We have a country. 

What we are is a people. 

Except that we created, and that's why actually the Declaration of Independence is so very important, both for the conversation within Israel and outside of Israel, and for our shared conversation.

The shared conversation that we need to be having is about that idea of not being just a religion or just a culture or just a country. It is a shared conversation that we need to be having as a people. And actually, if we begin there and are comfortable with the questions or the answers that we give ourselves.

And one thing I want to say about “Start-up Nation” is we also have to learn not to make an exit. Right? Meaning the State of Israel is 76 years young. It's very young for a country.

And we are not making an exit this time. This is something we have to see through. Our shared project as a people - yes, we succeeded in building, I'm going to say the basement. You come to Israel, it's gorgeous, we're done. We're so not done. We built the first level, if you will, the physical tier.

But we need, our generation needs to be building the second tier, the values, if you will, so that we're not making an exit. We're actually continuing to build so that we continue in this shared project together as a people. And I think that's in many ways the shared conversation about the concepsiot that we need to be having with a lot less hubris of telling each other how it is.

Right? Not Israel telling North American Jews or Jews around the world how it is. But also, not global Jewry telling Israel how it is. Meaning a very different kind of conversation that we have had for the 76 years.

Dan: Yeah. Take a couple questions. There's a roving mic, I think. Maybe, maybe not. Right over here, we'll just ask you a question. We'll do it without the mic.

Question from audience, inaudible

Dan: Michal, why don't you take that? 

Michal: Well, first of all, the awakening that needs to be done is happening right now. The awakening that needs to be done is the understanding that - and I often give this analogy - you know, 140% of the people, our kids, our husbands, our wives, our daughters, 140% of the people called up on 10/7 showed up. 

That's an incredible statistic.

That's unbelievable. They came from all over the world. They got on planes. They sat in the bathrooms that El Al let them sit on. 140%. 

When you were collecting money for tactical gear that my 17-year-old was then disseminating all over Israel, the reason that you were collecting, and we were buying helmets with all kinds of reasons, but one of the reasons is that 140% of the people that showed up, that were called up, showed up. And that is, to me, the most important notion of “Hineni.”

The understanding that when you ask that question, what's going to wake us up? If this is not going to wake us up, I don't know what will. And in that sense, look, 2024 is not 1944. We have a nation state. We have sovereignty. We have an IDF with half of us living there, and we have relative safety and security for the rest of us living in the rest of the world. 

Now that means that there are 6 million boots on the ground right here that have to show up 140% of the time and not wait for someone else to be doing it.

There is no one else. It is on us, each and every person. 

Dan: I want to... 

David: Amen.

Dan: Amen. Can I just ask David, you, and then you jump in. You have made this, in one of your sermons, this very sharp point that you don't believe this is a time for constructive criticism of Israel by Jews.

When Michal says, we're here, we're the cavalry. Can you... 

David: I said that on your podcast. I said it in my sermon, and I'll say it.

And I said it to Michal earlier. And we were using the word, and you just used it again, deployment. And I think that on October 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, when 140% of the people came back, no one asked their friend, who did you vote for in the last election? And were you at the judicial reform protests in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? Nobody.

They got together. They said, we have to fight an enemy, and the enemy is clear. And we'll figure out our politics afterwards, because we're brothers and sisters.

We're one family. We're one arm. 

And I feel the same way here. And I said it again and again to my liberal progressives, to anybody that would listen to me. Now is the time for us to be deployed for Am Yisrael and for the State of Israel and for the Jewish people. And if anything I say, in any way, shape, or form, might even, like in any way, shape, or form, might harm or put or endanger the security of those who live, who actually have skin in the game, my job is to make sure that that never happens.

That's my job. As a public figure, as someone who has a platform, my job is to make sure that those who live in Israel - Jews, non-Jews, you know, Muslims, Christians, anybody who lives in Israel - is safer because I've spoken in some way, shape, or form from my platform. And I think that's what you were saying about having six million boots on the ground here is a very profound and powerful way to say that.

We are all deployed. We are all deployed. We all have a role to play in safeguarding the Jewish people.

Natan: I want to add to answer to one of the aspects of your question when you said, what is different? Antisemitism, modern antisemitism exists from Durban conference. It's true. And we were fighting all these years.

What is different now? The thing is that we all here spent a lot of time trying to convince that there is deep connection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. And for this we went in “Three Ds” and international definition. 

So let's say the truth.

There were a lot of people, maybe majority of people, who are very sceptical about this connection. In Israel, many people really felt, from the government down, that antisemitism is not our problem. It's the role of these Diaspora Jews who decided not to come to Israel. That's why they have antisemitism. And there is such a simple answer. Come make aliya and there’ll be no hate. 

That's strange, but many people really believed that, some still believe. On the other hand, how many Americans felt that anti-Zionism has nothing to do with them? To the contrary, if only the Israeli government would not behave so rudely and so stupidly, we would have no problems. 

Remember on the previous conflict, which was on ‘21, what angry letters were from rabbis that we have nothing, we don't want to have to do anything with this Zionist project, because it's a settler's project. Look what crimes they are doing with things. 

I was speaking with one rabbi who was saying, we decided we have to build our identity without Israel. For 2,000 years, Jewish identity was not connected to Israel. Look how many problems we have now. 

So there was a feeling on both sides that we are trying to convince the de-demonization that it's all the same problem. Officially, there are so many good articles about it. Many people on both sides believe that it's not their problem. This time, we have no choice. We have to accept that all this anti-Zionism in America is not because Israel fights in Gaza.

And we have to accept that the global anti-Zionism is our problem. We see what's happening. So when Israel has problems, Jews of the Diaspora have problems, and vice-versa.

I think that has been changed. We don't have now to invent formulas. We don't have to convince.

People suddenly feel that that's an attack on all of us in the same way. And that's, I think, one of the things which does help us to build today much. Well, Jews always felt solidarity. Here, the other UJ Federations can say that there's money for Israel. But raising money or writing checks, it's still not this deep feeling of common faith. And so now, we cannot run away from this.

We are one people. We have one past, one future, and we will come and we have to fight.

Dan:  We'll take one more, I think, over here, one more question, and then we'll wrap it up.

Questioner, inaudible 

Oh, sorry. Well, I'll try to, let's just, why don't you ask your question, then you'll ask your question, then we'll... 

Let's get a few questions, and then we'll wrap it up. Yeah.

Dan: I don't know if there's someone up here. I feel badly. I've neglected the upper decks.

Questioner, inaudible.

Dan: We were just talking about that. We were just talking about that. Yeah. Go ahead. Last one. Oh, yeah. Okay. So let's try to hit these. I want to start with the question about, and it's really for our Israelis here, the intra-Jewish, intra-Israel divide.

I will tell you, after this past weekend, I was doing television interviews, and I was stunned by it, because every time I would try to defend Israel, the interviewers - some, not all - would say, well, look, you know, because they made it basically sound like Netanyahu himself pulled the trigger and killed those six Israelis. Like, he basically had the gun in his hand, and but for him, they, you know... 

David: Friedman's article. 

Dan: Friedman. There we go. There we go. 

David: Can you believe it? 

Dan: This is like a live WhatsApp conversation.

David: Can you believe it? 

Dan: That was Friedman's article. You see, now I'm doing it. Okay.

I was like, you do remember there's this organisation called Hamas, right? That, you know, let me just... And they're like, well, look, we're not quoting anyone, but the Israelis protesting in Israel. And Biden. Here we go.

And okay. But no, but let's focus on the Israelis in Israel. They're saying, look, hundreds of thousands of people storming the streets.

They're the ones saying these things about Israel's government. So we're just quoting them.

Michal: I want to say something that breaks my heart, because there have been hundreds of thousands of Israelis lining the streets, not only for the funeral, funerals of the six hostages who were executed, lining the streets silently.

I came from, directly from a funeral in Ra’anana for one of the hostages, Almog, but we have also buried 703 soldiers and the entire country has lined up in silence. Nobody's taken pictures of the hundreds of thousands that have been silent. 

And that is, to me, a testament that we have to remind ourselves that those that scream the loudest are not necessarily representing what we should be paying attention to.

It is true that we live at a time, and that's not to dismiss the pain and the agony and the profound right to demonstrate by the way, which is an attestation to Israel's being a democracy. And of course we will have an election. And if what will happen is a change in government, then so be it, of course.

And that's okay too - which I've said in every single interview in the last 24 hours that I've been here - because that has been invariably the focus of all of my interviews, where I had to remind over and over again. 

Six hostages were just executed at point blank in the back of the head. One of them was also an American Israeli. And the last I remember when ISIS executed Americans, there was outrage at those that executed the Americans.

Why the double standard? Where does that come from? 

And we have to remind ourselves that we also hold ourselves to a double standard. Israel is just as imperfect as, oh, I don't know, some other democracies I know. And the fact that we hold ourselves to a double standard actually in very many ways harms us.

Israel is just as imperfect as all other countries struggling with what all other democracies are currently struggling with, in a digital age we didn't even get into, and so on and so on. 

And a part of what we see on the streets in Israel, and the protests are that, and a part are the pain and the suffering of an 11-month war, and part are the outrage of families that are heartbroken. 

And I want to tell you something.

Hamas knew exactly what it was doing when it abducted 251 people and continues to hold 101 of them. They knew that it would rip us up from the inside, and they knew that there would be a way to be able to shift the blame - which is precisely what's happening - that instead of being demanded to have consequences not just on Hamas, a genocidal terror organisation, but one proxy of a murderous Islamic regime in Iran alongside the other proxies, but actually of the country's housing and aiding and abetting Hamas. Qatar, for example, cast to be an honest broker.

I mean, it's outrageous. It's outrageous. 

And the understanding that instead of pressuring Israel to make concessions, there are many people in this room that have a rule to remind every single day that what we need to be doing, including in the United States of America, is ensuring there are consequences on terror organisations, proxies of a genocidal regime in Iran, that when you zoom out, you understand, is literally waging war on our civilisation. That's what I go back to the beginning, 10/7, was. 

And so the Israeli piece, just to go back to that, we have to shift the focus. That's part of the role that we have in understanding Israel as a democracy struggling with all other things that other democracies struggle with, in addition to everything else that it has to contend with and cope with, and so on. I think that that's a very important piece. 

Dan: Final comments, David, and then Natan. 

David: I think around the ally piece, I want to come to Debra's question.

Dan: And tie it into the student. 

David: No, the student and also the question about anti-Semitism and anti-racism and so on. I think that it's really, and coming back to the globalism, there's an amazing Rashi, the beginning of Parashat Shemot, where when Pharaoh wants to move the Jews into slavery, he has to begin with something true, right? And it appears also with Bilaam, that you can never fully lie. You have to begin with some piece of truth. And there's some piece of truth in almost every element of these ideologies. Of course, they become completely distorted, and they become distorted and weaponised and so on.

And so I think when it comes to allyship, here's what I would say about allyship. Of course, we need allies. And of course, we need, we don't want to be alone in that sense. We want to be able to partner with other groups, but on our terms. And we have to be clear on what our terms are. And if someone says that they don't want to be your friend because you're a Zionist, the answer is, like, the answer is okay. Great.

And by the way, that's not even the beginning of it. I think that Jewish institutions should be demanding of our allies, that they show up for us in the ways that they want us to show up for them or the ways that we have shown up for them.

In my universe, around the Women's March, in African-American churches around the country, almost every liberal synagogue that I know of in the world on MLK weekend must, must, there's an unwritten rule somewhere, that you have to give a sermon about racism. You have to. 

But there is no such unwritten or written in any way rule that in African-American churches around this country, there should be one dedicated Sunday where every preacher preaches about antisemitism in the black community. And there should be, right? And there must be. And there must be, we should be holding, right, all other religious institutions around this country when we lock arms with Muslims. That's great. You know, Rabbi Sacks was a deep ecumenism person.

But we should be holding them accountable. 

To what extent are you addressing antisemitism in your communities? We know Islamophobia is a huge piece in the Jewish world. We have to hold our allies accountable and hold them to standards where they are actually real allies, right? 

They should be standing up to the bullies in their communities who don't let people identify as Zionists.

We should, we should have those allies standing with us and being able to make statements. And if they can't, then we should be walking away from those quote-unquote ally alliances. They're not true friends.

And find fewer friends, but who are real friends and not these kind of like Pollyannaish and kind of ambivalent friends. That's what I would say to them. 

Natan: Well, if I understand correctly, the last statement, question, statement, I think that what you said that in view of all these, maybe, let's say, separation over Israel are defending our Jewishness, representing us in this struggle.

And we in America should concentrate on strengthening institutions which do good for everybody. More or less, that's, that's okay. 

Audience member, inaudible.

So, well, first of all, there was, yeah, okay.

So, I want to, I was the activist and spokesman of two groups, Zionist movement in Soviet Union and human rights movement. And there was a lot of doubts, or even criticism, from both sides that you really have to choose or you are with us, you're nationalists, you're fighting for our rights, and we want to leave this country. We don't want to change this country. Who needs it? 

On the other hand, well, are you nationalists? Do you, are you concerned only about your own rights or you are concerned about the freedom of the world? And so, choose. You cannot be both. 

And I always felt that that's a deep, deep mistake, that if we have strength to fight for human rights, it's only because we discovered our identity and vice-versa.

If we disconnected from human rights, then we disconnected from the spirit of Judaism. 

And I have to say that that is exactly what I think some kind of mistake - not mistake, it can be explained why - but that Israel at some moment decides that all these global human rights or liberalism, it's, we are too busy with fighting for our survival. 

Audience member, inaudible.

Yeah, no.

No doubt. I have to say that you don't even have to convince because overwhelming majority of American Jews feel that they are liberals. And the mistake was not there. The mistake was that because we are liberals, that everybody who is for progressive, well, they are our allies, but they are not our allies.

So, I want to say that globalism, meaning that abstract democratic institutions, without, without connection to your personal identity, have no power, no sense. That's your discovery. On the other hand, that feeling of Israel that we are so, unfortunately, so busy with fighting against our enemies without, as we just now we see, too much sympathy, even from, even our best friends are not really ready to defend us to the end of this struggle. That's why human rights is not for us.

And I don't think we can succeed only if both, as you just now said, that when you're fighting for democratic institutions of America, you are not compromising your Zionism by no means. 

And why is it you say Israel should not compromise the real spirit of Judaism? I recommend everybody who wrote about it. Go back to the letter and get the answer of the first question.

The letter of 500 students of Columbia University four months ago, when is the result of all those awful things which are happening at Columbia University? Here I agree that all this went so far because Jewish students in the last 20 years, majority of them chose to be silent. 

And it is not really American way of fighting for your human rights to be silent. And these students are writing, as the name was, in our own name, 500 students with their signatures, with their addresses, and not to be, I don't know, say, we are Jews, we are Zionists, that is, Zionism is part of Jewish identity.

And the American government and the administration of Columbia University are obliged by American laws to defend our identity as we understand it. And that's, I believe, that is the right position for American Jews. And if you will take this position, all of you, as I said, thousands of students on every university will take this position, then really all the American institutions of this great democracy will be working for us and not against us.

Dan: All right, we will leave it there. I want to thank this distinguished panel, the digs at Start-Up Nation notwithstanding. Rabbi David Ingber, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Natan Sharansky, thank you all for an illuminating conversation, and have a good night.

Closing remarks