Very pleased this afternoon to be joined on this edition of the Warning podcast by Rabbi Tina Grimberg, who leads the Congregation d'Ache Nobam in Toronto, Canada. Welcome, Rabbi Tina.
Pleasure, pleasure, Thank you, Steve, Thank you for having me.
My pleasure to have you with us.
Our times now right our times. But I'm I'm glad to be here and to speak with you.
There is an aniversary today that is of note in the United States, December nineteenth, and it marks the day where, one week into service in Belgium as part of the advancing United States Army, twenty six year old Master Sergeant Roderick Edmunds of Knoxville, Tennessee was taken prisoner in the German counter offense of that history remembers as the Battle of the Bult And as it came to be, Master Sergeant ed Madmins, aged twenty six, found himself on January
twenty seventh, which is coincidentally another important date which I'll mention in a second. But Master Sergeant Edmunds, on the day that Red Army forces liberated Auschwitz, found himself standing in front of almost thirteen hundred Americans as the senior American soldier in Stalog. There were no officers, no lieutenants, captain's majors, just the twenty six year old master sergeant.
The Nazi commandant out and demanded that the Jews be identified and separated from the rest of the American soldiers. Master Sergeant Edmunds said nothing to anybody, did not consult, and he said, we will do that. We are all Jews here. And as the Nazi commander withdrew his side arm and held it to Master Sergeant Edmund's heads and bredon have pulled the trigger. The Master Sergeant's counter offer, at age twenty six was, you could kill all of us.
We are Americans. We don't do that. We are all Jews, and that you will be a war criminal and will be hunted to the ends of the earth as we win this war which was by then which was by then evident. He came home and never told anybody about
this story. He had three marriages. His son was a Baptist minister, and his last wife handed these wartime diaries, and the son found the name, found the story, and was reading a New York Times piece apparently about a real estate transaction involving former President Nixon, and in that story, by happenstance was an element of this tale by the lawyer who represented Richard Nixon, who was one of the three hundred Jews there that day that was saved, and
he was declared years after his death righteous amongst the Nations, and the first American serviceman to be so declared. But
his capture was eighty years ago today. In that battle, Adolph Hitler's last gas in Europe, in a war that killed upwards of one hundred million people and led to the genocide of the Jews, was underway on December sixteenth, on the same day that a former American president and the leading Republican candidate for president in the United States talked about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country, which
is absolutely hilarian Nazi language. You are an immigrant to Canada, you are a Rabbi, you are a Jew, and I heard you deliver a sermon over Yam Kapor. I believe that I think was one of the most brilliant expositions I've ever heard anybody deliver on the subject of anti Semitism. So I wanted to have you here today to talk about that subject and open it up by asking about that incident from eighty years ago where going to the
sermon that I heard. Anti Semitism that you grew up with in Europe in the East of Europe is very different. But the anti Semitism, as I understood your sermon troublingly seems to be enduring.
So, first of all, thank you. I am very privileged to serve a congregation the hey, no, I'm and I it was you know, I was honored to have you there. And then, you know, after that developed this connection. I didn't want to write that sermon. I didn't want to write it. And usually when I struggled with sermons and trying to choose a topic to speak on, they're all often done several conflicting ideas that absolutely fight for my attention. But here there was no choice. And this is before
October seventh. I felt compelled to write. And I'm not sure what was guiding or maybe I do what was guiding my hand was a difficult sermon to research, and more so actually to be able to say it out loud that I began to re experience the trauma of growing up. So, you know, working in my in a capacity as a Rabbi. I go to the hospitals very often and I speak both to patients and doctors. And one thing began to show up in the last over a decade is that there is not one type of cancer.
There are millions of type of cancers out there. That and maybe I'm exaggerating, I'm not a physician, but in other words, there are many antisemitisms as well as their antisemites. So not one antisemitism is alike any other antisemitism because people come to it from some often very personal ideations or group ideas, and then they adapted themselves. So the antisemitism of Soviet Ukraine, maybe to some degree with different
than antisemitism I encountered in the United States. But let me just say that story of a argent standing up a twenty six year old young man to be able to have these inspiring words is a strike. And that's what we found in the United States. I actually came to the United States first the nineteen seventy nine. I was sixteen year old girl. I finished had to finish high school, then went to graduate school, and then subsequent ended up in Canada and went to seminary in New York.
But it was. I remember the first years in the United States and I thought to myself, my goodness, there there is a world that's of this. Not only that, but I met American Christians who were so passionate about Bible and about their Jewish roots, meaning from Christianity, that Christianity burst from that. Actually, George and every corner, and Indiana was extremely friendly side for me. I found friends there. So my experience of new world was very, very positive
and free of this feeling of oppression. So let me just say, on account of the Soviet antisemitism. You know, anytime society is oppressed, as we know, there will be an ugly underground of infection that will be rising up from the masses. And so the Ukrainians were oppressed as well, and intellectuals were oppressed as well. And God forbid, if you are a different sexual orientation, there was plenty of those who would have turned you in and you would
be deemed as a pervert. The pain of antisemitism will experience was not only that. At times it was so difficult you didn't understand what was it about, meaning why would you not be liked? I mean I was a kid, I was a girl. What could I possibly have done, but the fact that we had no Jewish educations, so I had no Jewish pride, I had no Jewish knowledge,
There was nothing to combat. To be able to look at this dark force and feel that I have the spiritual ammunition to be able to counteract, to be able to respond to it turns you on the inside, an inside and it turns into shame. So you have an identity of a Jew, but you did not have the education and the privilege of learning because it was forbidden. So in the United States, you know, that was initial years of prosperity, but then you will run into an
issue as well, because it does exist among people. But that antisemitism was somewhat different, you know, in its shape. And one thing that was a big surprise, and I mentioned that in a sermon in a story, is that it came with a smile that I was not ready for. That came with kind of that political correctness I did not see. But when you turn on a social media, that antiseptis that cancer actually echoes very much the terrible reality of the Soviet Ukraine that we you know, we
came from. So there's some very similarities to the I call it that cancer, and it's in every every organism. In other words, when organism is troubled, it will show up. And what can I say in terms of the treatment and education and counteract in I'm blissful to say that in my interface work with churches and even moss and and in in a larger sense, I found so many friends who wanted to stand to stand by I asked, both in against antiseptism or any phourbias for that matter,
because it's never one, you never paid one. Usually it's like you quite the gialtarian in one in terms of its dislikes of a certain minority. And then it sort
of mushrooms. But as as as painful some of this is, I also want to say that there is incredible connections and the number of phocals that came after October October seventh to me from my uh, from my non Jewish friends, as well as traveling hours and hours in my study with my congradians who stay the world, my colleagues, my art community, my liberal circles has turned away its face. So I know I'm beyond the questions. You're ready to
do your prepared so I'm gonna pull back. But but find that sermon was hard to conceptualize in to write, and I felt I had no choice. It was the king.
Let me, let me, let me come back to two things that you said before we push forward into the world that exists post October seventh. So your family survived, It's survived the programs, it survived the Nazis, it survived the Second World War, you survived. How many Jews were there in Ukraine before nineteen thirty.
Nine, It's an It's an excellent question. So Ukraine, I cannot answer you. But in order for Hitler to kill three million of Polish Jews, you have to have over three million. So I only have I just you know, I don't have I wasn't prepared to delve into statistics. I'm happy to send it to you later on. So with the pale of settlement, which is alland Belarus, Ukraine
and some Russia Soviet Union or Greater Russia. And I'm sorry, I know we're also speaking after the war with Russia to Russian Ukraine developed, So all of it sounds how should I say, infected, But nevertheless, it was a great saracet empire. There was a huge number of population of Jews, who ended up living in that eastern part of Europe
because they conditioned for many years, were also favorable. One thing I don't want to paint is that Jewish history say has been nothing but uh plethora of oil and oil Judaism. It's like it was always awful. We had we had years of Asbury right, and and also years where in the same time there was a prosperity and horrible things. So so it was Allish nobility actually that asked Jews to come from Germany and settle and develop trade in along the Rhine River and then take us
into eastern Europe. The trade was developed so Poland can be developed. One of the famous the kings of Poland was Kazimir and there's a selection in Kraka where I worked with the Ukrainian refugees in the past two years. Jews and non Jews, majority non Jews who fled water with Ukraine. They they settled along the rivers and developed trade and developed merchantry, which helped Poland to blossom in terms of its uh it or developed Poland in terms of its you know, in terms of its economic system.
So Jews settled and then of course with the Soviet they inherited the Great Mother. Russia inherited quite a number of Jews, and by well and Soviet Union was established and all a sudden, the limitations and quarters of Jews entering universities was taken off because we were limited by the way, so was in Canada. You could not go to medical school like the world quotas that were very serious.
They didn't just was it not. I think nineteen fifties when I think, if I'm correct, what us were lifted, But I have to check that date, so forgive me that that year. But when it was lifted, then the Jews rushed to universities because they wanted to learn. So it wasn't only yeshiva learning learning religious concept. It was also cultural in general of civil to enter civil society,
and before that as well they were. But so my family survived, and the reason we survived World War two is because both my mother's family and my father's family. My mother's from Key of a Plaid East and my father was relocated with his mother all over the Volga River and because of the stalin Grad, horrific battle that turned the tide of Eastern Front of a war. It was the bloodiest of battles where you know, the number
of young men perished is unspeakable. My father survived and then my parents met a sweethearts in a dorm because he was destroyed. Nazis destroyed going in in the meantime, ordering thirty Southern Jews in three days. I have a great end who died in that massacre. And then as the key was liberated, the key was again destroyed because they were pushing Nazis back, you know, through Europe. And so my parents returned and they met and they fell
in love with children. So great love story. But so families survived because my grandfather, one grandfather was drafted into the Soviet army, served as an autist and came back wounded and died within a few weeks after victory was proclaimed. But he could see his boys. My father.
Well, one of the things that you said is you talked about these periods of European history. So there are through the centuries, there's a Jewish identity that is continuous, contiguous in Europe, in these countries. But by the time you are growing up, you don't have much of a
Jewish identity. And I wanted to ask you about that because what that says to me, Ronald Reagan used to talk about this almost in a way that I received as a kid as a cliche or a platitude, But it was this notion that freedom is only ever one
generation away from being extinguished. And I think a deeper reading of American history is that if you look at some of the indigenous tribes the laws of culture, is that one of the great enduring crimes of the Nazis and an immediate aftermath and of the Soviets, was the extinguishment of a five thousand year old culture. And it is possible, even within just a generation.
You can destroy it.
To be able to destroy it and to do it, it is that fragile. And it probably speaks because of that fragility to the incessancy of the aspiration to finish the job right to to to to wipe out and and to destroy it, because there's been a there's been a perpetuity the hate, to the stigmatization. There has always been a there has always been an impulse to get the Jews throughout out throughout history, and I just wonder,
you know, thinking about the fragility of that. And you told this story in your sermon about the young man who goes off to college wearing a symbol a necklace of his Jewish identity.
Right huge, I've never seen and then I never seen it. I think it wasn't as big.
And then within a short period time, you know, that first symbol of identity extinguished, and really about the commitment necessary to the sustainment of identity, of culture and ultimately nationality before we before we get in October seventh.
Right, so let me let me just you know the there's an excellent article that's been circling by a full more sense for his I think teachers for Northwestern, very talented writer, and he is a page he's a professor of Slavic literature, and his specialty isn't the Stayevski especial And of course you know, no one writes about suffering
better than nineteenth century Russian writers. And he brings the case of the Stayevsky says that how come men who who can talk about suffering with such sensitivity, such an incredible intellectual, be so anti Semitic? What is it that feeds the brilliant mind and soul in all other ways
but not to see suffering in its fullness? And he develops and tries to understand to the point that he says, well, he quotes one of the I think Russian literary critics, but one of them he says, well, he says, he wrote, if the whole world hates Jews, there must be a reason. There must be a reason, if it's to our generation, there was something something about these people that so that's
so dislikable. So he gives the more Doctor Morrison gives a very interesting example of particular antisemitism that Dostoyevsky doesn't want to own being an intellectual, so for him it's a philosophy. He says, he's not antisemitic. But the fact is that he blames Disraeli right at that time, the right hand men in uh, you know, in in English parliaments.
He blames him uh for of capitalism becoming more and more so pronounced that he hates all the Jews for bringing capitalism to the world and destroying the souls as a result of that. That actually religious aspirations that should be the the masses. And his antisemitism, which he doesn't want to own. He says, I don't hate Jews, but he does it in a philosophical way, and that will take us to October seventh, because antisemitism will more into
different forms. So even Dostoyevsky, great Dostiyev idea, is it about against Jewish industrialisms who war or or bankers and so forth, the next generation will find it in a different place. So as much as I would like to say that that when it comes to if you have some anti Israel rhetoric based on the fact that you criticize lack of democracy in Israel, I don't understand how that relates to bombing or bringing guns in a Jewish day school in diaspora here in Canada. Just take ten
minutes away from my house. So you hide your sensibility behind a different philosophy. But the fact, as you put it, it does exist, and it changes form in different in different generations, and it attacks this cancer attacks lulnerable souls, souls that do not spend an mind enough time in critical thinking. Do they choose isolation by looking in Boy, now, my goodness, I'm speaking to you from my love of the little pink color iPad. Boy, it knows what to
feed me. If I want a pillbox, yes, if I need a exercise particular for women over fifty, boy, it knows me better than I know myself. And you have these vulnerable souls who are fed and ted and fed with the material that they cannot both. Often often they to warp through to question, to read, greater to hear other people, so anticipitism. At times it was driven by the church. How come the mad tradition, the Judaism rejected Christianity of Christian roots? How dare you? It's a hate
of a parent, It's a dislike that religion. Christianity was rejected for Spanish and prosponsionquisition. My witness the amount of land that was confiscated and wealth from the people who were accused Antichrist or burned at a stake unbelievable. That's materialistically driven, So you have it's not about the people. It's about often what the people meaning. I'm not about the Jews. It's about what the system that produces this poison? What is it after? And very often it will incorporate
lost individuals. Crusades picked up along with its pillage the finest of Europe. But everyone couldn't read, couldn't write when the pitchfork was going to liberate Jerusalem from infidels, and under the way to a bit of looting and killing. Well, there were plenty of little villages along the way indiscriminatory murder. Right,
So you have it. You have this in a You can have, for example, interaction and office where your Jewish boss was not really terribly kind to you, and all of a sudden you will walk out hating average that you meet Jewish person didn't do the right thing. I want all the Jews do the right thing, to be most generous, mos standards, the sweetest, open caring, only all
the best. That's why I would interrupting it is how do you take this extraordinary tradition that was divided but that was absolutely uh deprived to me and give it over with love and affection and spirit for good.
Let me ask you a question and apply your very formidable intellect towards it. How how do you process the three president's t two presidents now one former president University of Pennsylvania president since resigned. Some of the leading global higher education institutions in the world, world famous everywhere MIT
University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University. That the question about anti Semitism is answered as it is within a human lifetime of the Holocaust, which central lesson is expressed as a
combination of never again and never forget. How can it be that, thirty years after Schindler's List is released in the culture, that the culture, at least in an elite academic sense, has moved from point A to point B without much conversation about any of the space that exists underneath point A to point B. I think it's incredible and begining you meditate.
On that, so let me see and forgiving me. At times I don't I mean, I don't know if because it's it's sort of bennic thing, but at times it or myself in particular, do not stay very focused, but eventually hopefully get to what to where we would be heading. Uh. I think, first of all, the idea of freedom of speech I do not believe exists in the full sense. We actually not free to say what we think. Sometimes it's a good idea and sometimes it's not a good idea.
What I when I listened to the three women speaking, I was horrified for a couple a couple of issues. First of all, there were my fellow women meaning that you should know what oppression is like. And by the way, this is not because my entire feminine experience and feminist experience were in the presence of oppressive a system or oppressive man. No, but as a female who worked and rolled them and been part the sensitivity was a lot
of sensitivity. Was stunning. Forgive me if I expect at this moment.
From a from a lover of the world, from another mother, such distance of sensitivity. So first of all, you might have to edit this, this piece ode. So I'm continued speaking what I was upset, and I would expect the same from men as well.
But what the second thing I was, I was stand by. They looked scared to me, and I look for those science as as both as a rabbi and as a therapist. With these three women looked frightened. They were frightened to speak what they really thought. And the idea of intellectual freedom in university is very much under attack, and I don't know if we'll ever fully existed. Maybe there was
a little renaissance period in between. They were looked frightened of what will be the consequence if they really say what they think, because I don't believe they have done. So they looked behind their response invisible to us. There were members of the board they were donors. There were all there were groups of students and student body to which they were answering. I did not feel we received a truly in depth what they thought of reality. They were what you call in a Jewish kitchen path part
means neither meat, neither neither milk. It is usually belongs to vegetables and when And they were in front of the woman who was spectacular interviewer of an examiner. She was the panic I think her last name, what Congress war was unbelievably clear and an antarget. So first of all, this is what I thought, This is what I saw.
The other thing is the power in the and the our feeling that overlooming subject of the Holocaust, Urban Cutler, whoist who is was uh, you know MP and I think I'm saying it correctly for a liberal party here in Canada. And who is also was charged with anti to deal with the anti Semtism because regular regular threats of death threats that are posed against him. But at the conference in nineteen Semitism, which was planned and nobody expected after October sevenths It was planned way before, but
it just happened to be after October seventh. In Ottawa. He said, remember this is still this is twenty twenty three, nineteen forty three, and it's caught up. It was like, you're right, we can't be. We know we have a lot more going for us than we did in nineteen forty three. We have democracy on our side, we are vocal, we speak, and so forth, so on. For a while I repeeded this, this is twenty twenty three, this is not nineteen forty three. I'll tell you what's a problem
with it. So I would compare my Jewish reality compared to a gas champer. As long as they're not going to put me in a in a gas chamber, everything else is not okay? Or is it okay?
Do you see like this, this specterrum of between living a good life of a free person in the world, either being of various faith communities.
In general, being a Jew, being a vibrant Jew, being outspoken Jew. The next step, as long as it's not Orschwitz, then it's okay. Well, there are plenty of things that's not Auschwitz. That's not okay. The fact that my son has to be concerned of what's happening on campus is not okay, And it's not Auschwitz. And what we're hoping is that a simple human being burdened with the war
may be fired. Maybe lonely sitting in front of this computer will make a sophisticated leaf that will say, well, if I continue reading these horrible articles about Jewish people, I might end up like a Nazi, and then I can actually destroy and kill. That's a very very sophisticated journey. You try to think individual on w is frankly are I don't want to see people. I want to see them in the best possible light and hope for their
for their openness and rehabilitation, if I may say. But what we're asking for people to do is these terrible minds make a very very hugely that where their prejudice can take them, and I don't believe majority people can. And then there are some individuals that will take as in my son's school and walk through his high school he's now in university, walk through his high school and next thing you know, there is the police. There's a bum threat and all the kids have vacated three times.
Three times. So no, it's not nineteen forty three, but I have to tell you the bar is pretty low.
I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about that and make that comparison. And so I think about this completely differently, and I'll lay it out from for you, because I think about it not as somebody who is even converting to Judaism, but just as somebody who's fifty three, who's reached middle age and has a and has a perspective on time and as an amateur student of history. Nineteen forty three is a year after the Wance Conference
where the murder of the Jews is officially planned. And really what we recall of the Holocaust, such as it was, the mechanized, industrialized murder through the gas chambers, the incineration, the confiscation of good its properties Auschwitz. All of this killing takes place between nineteen forty two and January spring of nineteen forty five, including up through the very very
last minutes that the Nazi Reich existed. They were killing Jews to the very last second, including after Hitler killed himself. And so if you think about nineteen forty three, in that moment, how did you get to nineteen forty three? And that took twenty years, That took Brooke nineteen twenty three from Adolph Hitler's puch, and you can divide that twenty years, you can divide it in half. It took ten ten years from Hitler's push to taking power, and
it took ten years to nineteen forty three. It took six years to start the war, It took two years to strip Jews of their rights, and it took five years to get to the largest state program in history.
And in nineteen forty in the United States, Charles Lindbergh came really within organizing one vote away the cancelation of the American military draft, which would have made an invasion across the Channel impossible before say, nineteen forty six, which meant that the Holocaust, such as it was would have gone on for much much longer. And the question in twenty twenty three isn't about nineteen forty three, it's about where are we in the trajectory and in the of
an unfinished story. The one thing I know historically to be true is that when we talked about the history we've talked about, the sixteenth century was deadlier than the fifteenth, The seventeenth, more than the sixteenth, the eighteenth, more than the seventeenth, the nineteenth, more than the eighteenth, the twentieth the deadliest of all. And we come to the middle
of the century with an existential moral proposition. Mankind can now extinct itself with weapons that are within them, the power of the gods contained within them, the power of the proverbial gods. War hasn't stopped, but the acceleration of disaster has slowed until the end of the life spans of the people who survived the events, and the political hope of the preeminent leader for the good for freedom.
In that moment, Franklin Roosevelt, in a discussion with the Canadian Prime Minister, goes on late at night and he says to Prime Minister Kinging that his aspiration is not that the world to come, this American led, freedom led international order will endure forever. He just wants it to
last for as long as everybody is alive. On the day the war is won, and the youngest of those people are about eighty years old, and we have this wave of amnesia sweeping at a time where we know how that story ended, but we have no idea where this story is going going.
My son was fast, you know, the eighteen year old young man who said, I'm much less concerned about Israel and much more concerned about Jews in you know, in diaspora. I think the side actually turned. If diaspora, a Jewish community was concerned about, you know, how Israel will fare, actually I think it's the other way of how we're going to do. Look, one of the Jewish concept is that you're not allowed to despair, even if it feels like it's dark. So I I was in a car
with human instead and we speak Fressian. I grew up in Kiev and the language of love is Russian for me. Even even so you know, my you know, what's happening in Ukraine and with Russia is also complicated than heart
wrenching two. But always I speak Russian to him often enough, and I said, you know, I never thought that when I chased train out of Ukraine, and that's exactly what my sister and I did, and I talk about it in a book where you know, we were lost to get to get off the platform and the train began to move and two young women myself and my sister were left. My parents were in a in the heart itself, trying to help elderly and pulling people in, but all
departures like this are are filled with chaos. I said, when I chase that train, I never thought that you would ever have to face anti Semitism. Your grandfathers and our goal was to create the world without it for you. But that's not the case. That's not the case. So what do I see in my work and in my son, is actually this crisis a weakened Jewish identity. There are number of responses. You know, when when things are hard
for the Jews. The laws around Hanukah and that is customs and you know, traditions, and we just finished this extraordinary festival of light. You're supposed to announce miracle, and you put Johanukiya, your minora, right at the window or outside. In Israel, they go into a box outside on the streets. You see these beautiful boxes with lit thenora's And when things are really hard for the Jews, you put Johanukiya,
you light it on the table inside the house. So at times in our history we have to light it in the house, and the times we light it right there at the window. So some Jews chose to go on the inside, and others have been absolutely inspired to go. And I have been asked to do more conversions and more young Jewish people have been calling and asking what giving me traditions to live by than I have ever had in twenty years, twenty five years of serving Jewish community.
So actually where it's going from? I want to examine this from oi to joy and that we will face this. And I am both frightened and determined that if we give education to our children and our people to live this beautiful Jewish righteous life, work with very deeply with interface in interface dialogue, which I do regularly with my Christian colleagues and friends as well as people of other
faith and visual about democracy. We stand the chance, We stand the chance, and overall the world is better and than it's used to be. We actually, depending on numbers used to pillage each other, there a lot better with greater success. We are more civilized as well as more sophisticated to kill. Absolutely, But I I see the light even when there's darkness around me, and to see people seeking out their Jewish identity and the roots and say
yi laheim to life. And I can be there from that place of of shame and of lack of education as a Jew who fled that terrible system. Judaism in the Soviet Union was erased, but it was left in your pastport to know you're a Jew. By the time it got to me, there was my grandmother's Yiddish whispers and little stories here and there. But Judaism in in in in the North America and in education that we try to impart has the life giving and life surviving skills for the future. And I will not stop to
share that education. And so your concern is absolutely history can present that trajectory is scary. Where we are in this trajectory, you can say in nineteen thirty eight maybe, and then it doesn't take long. I don't believe this will unfold as such. But when I speak to Holocaust survivors, I cry with them. And one thing I want to say, I want to today's my father's your side. You know
he died four years ago. You couldn't have found more elegant men, more charm being more involved with his two more in love with his wife and his two girls. And he served in the Soviet Army. His father served for entire years of the war along with Ukrainians, along with was big it was Biggist and along with George gans to fight a horrible, horrible war of Hitler. I'm glad my father isn't seeing what he's has not. He died before the war in Ukraine unfolded. I will shood
to live to one hundred and twenty. But I have to tell you, I'm glad he didn't see this and to see Holocaust survivors and what he would have seen on October October seventh would have destroyed my parents. To see Holocaust survivors reliving this is absolutely devastating. So what do we do? We bring them to hear our children sing in Hebrew? What do we do We make phone calls to Israel and here ISRAELI speak about spirit and future and desire for peace. What do we do every
Saturday morning eight sixty four, Shepherd? Where you were therefore high holidays? We bring people in the sanctuary and we sing and we dance and we educate. So no, no, we won't let it happen. No frighten us.
Let me ask you a final question, and that's two.
What do you say to young people who are watching the terrible consequence of October seventh on fold without any historical context, in complete ignorance about the cost of war, the horror of war, the intellectual construct of of just war, the consequences of violations of international law being committed by hamas in terms of embedding themselves with civilian population, including militarizing hospital facilities, elder care facilities, childcare facilities, so on,
so on and so forth. But no matter the casualties are high, is.
You feel for civilians lost?
A Jewish baby's life and its loss in the eyes of God is no greater or less loss than a Arab baby, or Muslim baby or Christian baby. That all are equally a tragedy, tragedy in a a front. But that when an event like this happens, when an evil manifests itself, yes, that the evil must be confronted, and that that confrontation will will mean violence and death and destruction at an epic scale that cannot be averted, but can be the beginning of an error of peace on
the other side if people so choose it. But how do you explain this to a to an eighteen year old, to a twenty year role that is reacting on their social media feeds emotionally to the images of war.
You know, so we've been quite quite privileged to live in a time where you know, the war is not underground in Canada or in the United States, we have it's elsewhere, right, you know, it's kind of overseas, right, But these images are brought close to you. What is amazing is that how that war is offull anywhere, including Rwanda, including in Syria, including in Afghanistan. So Middle East is affected by and a gas is affected by horristic war. But this is not the only place where our justice
needs to be stirred and spilt. That's number one. It's impossible to explain so much in such a short period of time. First of all, the attention of teenage young people is very short. I see it when I try to have a conversation and get to a third sentence, and I don't know if you have teenage children, but you they ran out like it's amazing. It's a you're onto something else, almost like a toddler. Forgive me. I don't mean to infantilize them, but there is a bit
of rite you. Well, so there was one. I think the most I can do I can't control media, and very often it's profoundly unfriendly and frankly lack of nuance, lack of nuance to compare, to compare the death of hostages that were only and uh and what happened you know in those in a southern Israel, to compare, to make the equivalents so easily without distinguished? What does that mean to come into someone else's home? What does that mean?
The battleground? Yes, life is life. However there is a nuance in different You cannot do it on the fly. And the little social feeds they receive a young people received are actually support their inability to discipline, to read, to digest and to have a critical thought That takes effort, that takes And that's what's the beginning of my conversation when I thought, really you have to really think through something. They are they want quick answers, and I see credible
isolation in young people. On one hand, I can with my want to be all over the world any time I can do anything. It means I can do nothing because everything is not it is not anything. So so the depth of analysis is really missing us. The media content that just hardly hardly is uh uh is supportive. So I would say to those who are all to pay attention, you have series of dialogues without punishment or harsh judgment, but desire to say, well, tell me why
do you feel and think like this? And would you be open to me challenging or another opinion. So I don't see this on a larger scale. I see this on one to one and we've done so also at the Darnoa where in polarization of are you and Darenauum is not a place of polarization. It's a very tolerant, loving community. But there is a room for grief. I mean, what happened on October seventh the beyond bit despicable, but barbarism.
I also feel for Gaza civilian who is warning her child, or her beloved mother or anyone knows who's under rubble. So I have to have room to love with both, with both parts of your heart. Is possible. It's possible to be belonging to a group and seeing the group a central element of your of your manifestation of life in this world as part of it, and see humanity. But that's what we need to teach. That's what we need to teach. Is it easy? The answer is absolutely not.
Did we lose that next generation? I refuse to think that we have has it been difficult for all of us? I my study turned into a place of tears for people who are grieving, grieving what has taken place, and grieving their place in the world. We are in the threshold, but I feel that will hold hands and even if it's dark at times doesn't mean light. Light doesn't shine.
What a perfect place to leave it. Leave it there with Rabbi Tina. Thank you so much for your time, your words of wisdom. Thank you for watching. Make sure you subscribe to our channel so you never miss a video. Also, for more content just like this, please consider joining our Warning premium community. You can find out more in the description below.
Dudes to a bench whom you should think you