Speaker 1: Very pleased this afternoon to be joined on this edition
Speaker 1: of the Warning podcast by Rabbi Tina Grimberg, who leads
Speaker 1: the Congregation d'Ache Nobam in Toronto, Canada. Welcome, Rabbi Tina.
Speaker 2: Pleasure, pleasure, Thank you, Steve, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: My pleasure to have you with us.
Speaker 2: Our times now right our times. But I'm I'm glad
Speaker 2: to be here and to speak with you.
Speaker 1: There is an aniversary today that is of note in
Speaker 1: the United States, December nineteenth, and it marks the day where,
Speaker 1: one week into service in Belgium as part of the
Speaker 1: advancing United States Army, twenty six year old Master Sergeant
Speaker 1: Roderick Edmunds of Knoxville, Tennessee was taken prisoner in the
Speaker 1: German counter offense of that history remembers as the Battle
Speaker 1: of the Bult And as it came to be, Master
Speaker 1: Sergeant ed Madmins, aged twenty six, found himself on January
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, which is coincidentally another important date which I'll
Speaker 1: mention in a second. But Master Sergeant Edmunds, on the
Speaker 1: day that Red Army forces liberated Auschwitz, found himself standing
Speaker 1: in front of almost thirteen hundred Americans as the senior
Speaker 1: American soldier in Stalog. There were no officers, no lieutenants,
Speaker 1: captain's majors, just the twenty six year old master sergeant.
Speaker 1: The Nazi commandant out and demanded that the Jews be
Speaker 1: identified and separated from the rest of the American soldiers.
Speaker 1: Master Sergeant Edmunds said nothing to anybody, did not consult,
Speaker 1: and he said, we will do that. We are all
Speaker 1: Jews here. And as the Nazi commander withdrew his side
Speaker 1: arm and held it to Master Sergeant Edmund's heads and
Speaker 1: bredon have pulled the trigger. The Master Sergeant's counter offer,
Speaker 1: at age twenty six was, you could kill all of us.
Speaker 1: We are Americans. We don't do that. We are all Jews,
Speaker 1: and that you will be a war criminal and will
Speaker 1: be hunted to the ends of the earth as we
Speaker 1: win this war which was by then which was by
Speaker 1: then evident. He came home and never told anybody about
Speaker 1: this story. He had three marriages. His son was a
Speaker 1: Baptist minister, and his last wife handed these wartime diaries,
Speaker 1: and the son found the name, found the story, and
Speaker 1: was reading a New York Times piece apparently about a
Speaker 1: real estate transaction involving former President Nixon, and in that story,
Speaker 1: by happenstance was an element of this tale by the
Speaker 1: lawyer who represented Richard Nixon, who was one of the
Speaker 1: three hundred Jews there that day that was saved, and
Speaker 1: he was declared years after his death righteous amongst the Nations,
Speaker 1: and the first American serviceman to be so declared. But
Speaker 1: his capture was eighty years ago today. In that battle,
Speaker 1: Adolph Hitler's last gas in Europe, in a war that
Speaker 1: killed upwards of one hundred million people and led to
Speaker 1: the genocide of the Jews, was underway on December sixteenth,
Speaker 1: on the same day that a former American president and
Speaker 1: the leading Republican candidate for president in the United States
Speaker 1: talked about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely hilarian Nazi language. You are an immigrant to Canada,
Speaker 1: you are a Rabbi, you are a Jew, and I
Speaker 1: heard you deliver a sermon over Yam Kapor. I believe
Speaker 1: that I think was one of the most brilliant expositions
Speaker 1: I've ever heard anybody deliver on the subject of anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to have you here today to talk
Speaker 1: about that subject and open it up by asking about
Speaker 1: that incident from eighty years ago where going to the
Speaker 1: sermon that I heard. Anti Semitism that you grew up
Speaker 1: with in Europe in the East of Europe is very different.
Speaker 1: But the anti Semitism, as I understood your sermon troublingly
Speaker 1: seems to be enduring.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, thank you. I am very privileged
Speaker 2: to serve a congregation the hey, no, I'm and I
Speaker 2: it was you know, I was honored to have you there.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, after that developed this connection. I
Speaker 2: didn't want to write that sermon. I didn't want to
Speaker 2: write it. And usually when I struggled with sermons and
Speaker 2: trying to choose a topic to speak on, they're all
Speaker 2: often done several conflicting ideas that absolutely fight for my attention.
Speaker 2: But here there was no choice. And this is before
Speaker 2: October seventh. I felt compelled to write. And I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what was guiding or maybe I do what was
Speaker 2: guiding my hand was a difficult sermon to research, and
Speaker 2: more so actually to be able to say it out
Speaker 2: loud that I began to re experience the trauma of
Speaker 2: growing up. So, you know, working in my in a
Speaker 2: capacity as a Rabbi. I go to the hospitals very
Speaker 2: often and I speak both to patients and doctors. And
Speaker 2: one thing began to show up in the last over
Speaker 2: a decade is that there is not one type of cancer.
Speaker 2: There are millions of type of cancers out there. That
Speaker 2: and maybe I'm exaggerating, I'm not a physician, but in
Speaker 2: other words, there are many antisemitisms as well as their antisemites.
Speaker 2: So not one antisemitism is alike any other antisemitism because
Speaker 2: people come to it from some often very personal ideations
Speaker 2: or group ideas, and then they adapted themselves. So the
Speaker 2: antisemitism of Soviet Ukraine, maybe to some degree with different
Speaker 2: than antisemitism I encountered in the United States. But let
Speaker 2: me just say that story of a argent standing up
Speaker 2: a twenty six year old young man to be able
Speaker 2: to have these inspiring words is a strike. And that's
Speaker 2: what we found in the United States. I actually came
Speaker 2: to the United States first the nineteen seventy nine. I
Speaker 2: was sixteen year old girl. I finished had to finish
Speaker 2: high school, then went to graduate school, and then subsequent
Speaker 2: ended up in Canada and went to seminary in New York.
Speaker 2: But it was. I remember the first years in the
Speaker 2: United States and I thought to myself, my goodness, there
Speaker 2: there is a world that's of this. Not only that,
Speaker 2: but I met American Christians who were so passionate about
Speaker 2: Bible and about their Jewish roots, meaning from Christianity, that
Speaker 2: Christianity burst from that. Actually, George and every corner, and
Speaker 2: Indiana was extremely friendly side for me. I found friends there.
Speaker 2: So my experience of new world was very, very positive
Speaker 2: and free of this feeling of oppression. So let me
Speaker 2: just say, on account of the Soviet antisemitism. You know,
Speaker 2: anytime society is oppressed, as we know, there will be
Speaker 2: an ugly underground of infection that will be rising up
Speaker 2: from the masses. And so the Ukrainians were oppressed as well,
Speaker 2: and intellectuals were oppressed as well. And God forbid, if
Speaker 2: you are a different sexual orientation, there was plenty of
Speaker 2: those who would have turned you in and you would
Speaker 2: be deemed as a pervert. The pain of antisemitism will
Speaker 2: experience was not only that. At times it was so
Speaker 2: difficult you didn't understand what was it about, meaning why
Speaker 2: would you not be liked? I mean I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I was a girl. What could I possibly have done,
Speaker 2: but the fact that we had no Jewish educations, so
Speaker 2: I had no Jewish pride, I had no Jewish knowledge,
Speaker 2: There was nothing to combat. To be able to look
Speaker 2: at this dark force and feel that I have the
Speaker 2: spiritual ammunition to be able to counteract, to be able
Speaker 2: to respond to it turns you on the inside, an
Speaker 2: inside and it turns into shame. So you have an
Speaker 2: identity of a Jew, but you did not have the
Speaker 2: education and the privilege of learning because it was forbidden.
Speaker 2: So in the United States, you know, that was initial
Speaker 2: years of prosperity, but then you will run into an
Speaker 2: issue as well, because it does exist among people. But
Speaker 2: that antisemitism was somewhat different, you know, in its shape.
Speaker 2: And one thing that was a big surprise, and I
Speaker 2: mentioned that in a sermon in a story, is that
Speaker 2: it came with a smile that I was not ready for.
Speaker 2: That came with kind of that political correctness I did
Speaker 2: not see. But when you turn on a social media,
Speaker 2: that antiseptis that cancer actually echoes very much the terrible
Speaker 2: reality of the Soviet Ukraine that we you know, we
Speaker 2: came from. So there's some very similarities to the I
Speaker 2: call it that cancer, and it's in every every organism.
Speaker 2: In other words, when organism is troubled, it will show up.
Speaker 2: And what can I say in terms of the treatment
Speaker 2: and education and counteract in I'm blissful to say that
Speaker 2: in my interface work with churches and even moss and
Speaker 2: and in in a larger sense, I found so many
Speaker 2: friends who wanted to stand to stand by I asked,
Speaker 2: both in against antiseptism or any phourbias for that matter,
Speaker 2: because it's never one, you never paid one. Usually it's
Speaker 2: like you quite the gialtarian in one in terms of
Speaker 2: its dislikes of a certain minority. And then it sort
Speaker 2: of mushrooms. But as as as painful some of this is,
Speaker 2: I also want to say that there is incredible connections
Speaker 2: and the number of phocals that came after October October
Speaker 2: seventh to me from my uh, from my non Jewish friends,
Speaker 2: as well as traveling hours and hours in my study
Speaker 2: with my congradians who stay the world, my colleagues, my
Speaker 2: art community, my liberal circles has turned away its face.
Speaker 2: So I know I'm beyond the questions. You're ready to
Speaker 2: do your prepared so I'm gonna pull back. But but
Speaker 2: find that sermon was hard to conceptualize in to write,
Speaker 2: and I felt I had no choice. It was the king.
Speaker 1: Let me, let me, let me come back to two
Speaker 1: things that you said before we push forward into the
Speaker 1: world that exists post October seventh. So your family survived,
Speaker 1: It's survived the programs, it survived the Nazis, it survived
Speaker 1: the Second World War, you survived. How many Jews were
Speaker 1: there in Ukraine before nineteen thirty.
Speaker 2: Nine, It's an It's an excellent question. So Ukraine, I
Speaker 2: cannot answer you. But in order for Hitler to kill
Speaker 2: three million of Polish Jews, you have to have over
Speaker 2: three million. So I only have I just you know,
Speaker 2: I don't have I wasn't prepared to delve into statistics.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to send it to you later on. So
Speaker 2: with the pale of settlement, which is alland Belarus, Ukraine
Speaker 2: and some Russia Soviet Union or Greater Russia. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I know we're also speaking after the war with Russia
Speaker 2: to Russian Ukraine developed, So all of it sounds how
Speaker 2: should I say, infected, But nevertheless, it was a great
Speaker 2: saracet empire. There was a huge number of population of Jews,
Speaker 2: who ended up living in that eastern part of Europe
Speaker 2: because they conditioned for many years, were also favorable. One
Speaker 2: thing I don't want to paint is that Jewish history
Speaker 2: say has been nothing but uh plethora of oil and
Speaker 2: oil Judaism. It's like it was always awful. We had
Speaker 2: we had years of Asbury right, and and also years
Speaker 2: where in the same time there was a prosperity and
Speaker 2: horrible things. So so it was Allish nobility actually that
Speaker 2: asked Jews to come from Germany and settle and develop
Speaker 2: trade in along the Rhine River and then take us
Speaker 2: into eastern Europe. The trade was developed so Poland can
Speaker 2: be developed. One of the famous the kings of Poland
Speaker 2: was Kazimir and there's a selection in Kraka where I
Speaker 2: worked with the Ukrainian refugees in the past two years.
Speaker 2: Jews and non Jews, majority non Jews who fled water
Speaker 2: with Ukraine. They they settled along the rivers and developed
Speaker 2: trade and developed merchantry, which helped Poland to blossom in
Speaker 2: terms of its uh it or developed Poland in terms
Speaker 2: of its you know, in terms of its economic system.
Speaker 2: So Jews settled and then of course with the Soviet
Speaker 2: they inherited the Great Mother. Russia inherited quite a number
Speaker 2: of Jews, and by well and Soviet Union was established
Speaker 2: and all a sudden, the limitations and quarters of Jews
Speaker 2: entering universities was taken off because we were limited by
Speaker 2: the way, so was in Canada. You could not go
Speaker 2: to medical school like the world quotas that were very serious.
Speaker 2: They didn't just was it not. I think nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: when I think, if I'm correct, what us were lifted,
Speaker 2: But I have to check that date, so forgive me
Speaker 2: that that year. But when it was lifted, then the
Speaker 2: Jews rushed to universities because they wanted to learn. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't only yeshiva learning learning religious concept. It was
Speaker 2: also cultural in general of civil to enter civil society,
Speaker 2: and before that as well they were. But so my
Speaker 2: family survived, and the reason we survived World War two
Speaker 2: is because both my mother's family and my father's family.
Speaker 2: My mother's from Key of a Plaid East and my
Speaker 2: father was relocated with his mother all over the Volga
Speaker 2: River and because of the stalin Grad, horrific battle that
Speaker 2: turned the tide of Eastern Front of a war. It
Speaker 2: was the bloodiest of battles where you know, the number
Speaker 2: of young men perished is unspeakable. My father survived and
Speaker 2: then my parents met a sweethearts in a dorm because
Speaker 2: he was destroyed. Nazis destroyed going in in the meantime,
Speaker 2: ordering thirty Southern Jews in three days. I have a
Speaker 2: great end who died in that massacre. And then as
Speaker 2: the key was liberated, the key was again destroyed because
Speaker 2: they were pushing Nazis back, you know, through Europe. And
Speaker 2: so my parents returned and they met and they fell
Speaker 2: in love with children. So great love story. But so
Speaker 2: families survived because my grandfather, one grandfather was drafted into
Speaker 2: the Soviet army, served as an autist and came back
Speaker 2: wounded and died within a few weeks after victory was proclaimed.
Speaker 2: But he could see his boys. My father.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that you said is you
Speaker 1: talked about these periods of European history. So there are
Speaker 1: through the centuries, there's a Jewish identity that is continuous,
Speaker 1: contiguous in Europe, in these countries. But by the time
Speaker 1: you are growing up, you don't have much of a
Speaker 1: Jewish identity. And I wanted to ask you about that
Speaker 1: because what that says to me, Ronald Reagan used to
Speaker 1: talk about this almost in a way that I received
Speaker 1: as a kid as a cliche or a platitude, But
Speaker 1: it was this notion that freedom is only ever one
Speaker 1: generation away from being extinguished. And I think a deeper
Speaker 1: reading of American history is that if you look at
Speaker 1: some of the indigenous tribes the laws of culture, is
Speaker 1: that one of the great enduring crimes of the Nazis
Speaker 1: and an immediate aftermath and of the Soviets, was the
Speaker 1: extinguishment of a five thousand year old culture. And it
Speaker 1: is possible, even within just a generation.
Speaker 2: You can destroy it.
Speaker 1: To be able to destroy it and to do it,
Speaker 1: it is that fragile. And it probably speaks because of
Speaker 1: that fragility to the incessancy of the aspiration to finish
Speaker 1: the job right to to to to wipe out and
Speaker 1: and to destroy it, because there's been a there's been
Speaker 1: a perpetuity the hate, to the stigmatization. There has always
Speaker 1: been a there has always been an impulse to get
Speaker 1: the Jews throughout out throughout history, and I just wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about the fragility of that. And you
Speaker 1: told this story in your sermon about the young man
Speaker 1: who goes off to college wearing a symbol a necklace
Speaker 1: of his Jewish identity.
Speaker 2: Right huge, I've never seen and then I never seen it.
Speaker 2: I think it wasn't as big.
Speaker 1: And then within a short period time, you know, that
Speaker 1: first symbol of identity extinguished, and really about the commitment
Speaker 1: necessary to the sustainment of identity, of culture and ultimately
Speaker 1: nationality before we before we get in October seventh.
Speaker 2: Right, so let me let me just you know the
Speaker 2: there's an excellent article that's been circling by a full
Speaker 2: more sense for his I think teachers for Northwestern, very
Speaker 2: talented writer, and he is a page he's a professor
Speaker 2: of Slavic literature, and his specialty isn't the Stayevski especial
Speaker 2: And of course you know, no one writes about suffering
Speaker 2: better than nineteenth century Russian writers. And he brings the
Speaker 2: case of the Stayevsky says that how come men who
Speaker 2: who can talk about suffering with such sensitivity, such an
Speaker 2: incredible intellectual, be so anti Semitic? What is it that
Speaker 2: feeds the brilliant mind and soul in all other ways
Speaker 2: but not to see suffering in its fullness? And he
Speaker 2: develops and tries to understand to the point that he says, well,
Speaker 2: he quotes one of the I think Russian literary critics,
Speaker 2: but one of them he says, well, he says, he wrote,
Speaker 2: if the whole world hates Jews, there must be a reason.
Speaker 2: There must be a reason, if it's to our generation,
Speaker 2: there was something something about these people that so that's
Speaker 2: so dislikable. So he gives the more Doctor Morrison gives
Speaker 2: a very interesting example of particular antisemitism that Dostoyevsky doesn't
Speaker 2: want to own being an intellectual, so for him it's
Speaker 2: a philosophy. He says, he's not antisemitic. But the fact
Speaker 2: is that he blames Disraeli right at that time, the
Speaker 2: right hand men in uh, you know, in in English parliaments.
Speaker 2: He blames him uh for of capitalism becoming more and
Speaker 2: more so pronounced that he hates all the Jews for
Speaker 2: bringing capitalism to the world and destroying the souls as
Speaker 2: a result of that. That actually religious aspirations that should
Speaker 2: be the the masses. And his antisemitism, which he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to own. He says, I don't hate Jews, but
Speaker 2: he does it in a philosophical way, and that will
Speaker 2: take us to October seventh, because antisemitism will more into
Speaker 2: different forms. So even Dostoyevsky, great Dostiyev idea, is it
Speaker 2: about against Jewish industrialisms who war or or bankers and
Speaker 2: so forth, the next generation will find it in a
Speaker 2: different place. So as much as I would like to
Speaker 2: say that that when it comes to if you have
Speaker 2: some anti Israel rhetoric based on the fact that you
Speaker 2: criticize lack of democracy in Israel, I don't understand how
Speaker 2: that relates to bombing or bringing guns in a Jewish
Speaker 2: day school in diaspora here in Canada. Just take ten
Speaker 2: minutes away from my house. So you hide your sensibility
Speaker 2: behind a different philosophy. But the fact, as you put it,
Speaker 2: it does exist, and it changes form in different in
Speaker 2: different generations, and it attacks this cancer attacks lulnerable souls,
Speaker 2: souls that do not spend an mind enough time in
Speaker 2: critical thinking. Do they choose isolation by looking in Boy, now,
Speaker 2: my goodness, I'm speaking to you from my love of
Speaker 2: the little pink color iPad. Boy, it knows what to
Speaker 2: feed me. If I want a pillbox, yes, if I
Speaker 2: need a exercise particular for women over fifty, boy, it
Speaker 2: knows me better than I know myself. And you have
Speaker 2: these vulnerable souls who are fed and ted and fed
Speaker 2: with the material that they cannot both. Often often they
Speaker 2: to warp through to question, to read, greater to hear
Speaker 2: other people, so anticipitism. At times it was driven by
Speaker 2: the church. How come the mad tradition, the Judaism rejected
Speaker 2: Christianity of Christian roots? How dare you? It's a hate
Speaker 2: of a parent, It's a dislike that religion. Christianity was
Speaker 2: rejected for Spanish and prosponsionquisition. My witness the amount of
Speaker 2: land that was confiscated and wealth from the people who
Speaker 2: were accused Antichrist or burned at a stake unbelievable. That's
Speaker 2: materialistically driven, So you have it's not about the people.
Speaker 2: It's about often what the people meaning. I'm not about
Speaker 2: the Jews. It's about what the system that produces this poison?
Speaker 2: What is it after? And very often it will incorporate
Speaker 2: lost individuals. Crusades picked up along with its pillage the
Speaker 2: finest of Europe. But everyone couldn't read, couldn't write when
Speaker 2: the pitchfork was going to liberate Jerusalem from infidels, and
Speaker 2: under the way to a bit of looting and killing. Well,
Speaker 2: there were plenty of little villages along the way indiscriminatory murder. Right,
Speaker 2: So you have it. You have this in a You
Speaker 2: can have, for example, interaction and office where your Jewish
Speaker 2: boss was not really terribly kind to you, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you will walk out hating average that
Speaker 2: you meet Jewish person didn't do the right thing. I
Speaker 2: want all the Jews do the right thing, to be
Speaker 2: most generous, mos standards, the sweetest, open caring, only all
Speaker 2: the best. That's why I would interrupting it is how
Speaker 2: do you take this extraordinary tradition that was divided but
Speaker 2: that was absolutely uh deprived to me and give it
Speaker 2: over with love and affection and spirit for good.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question and apply your very
Speaker 1: formidable intellect towards it. How how do you process the
Speaker 1: three president's t two presidents now one former president University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania president since resigned. Some of the leading global
Speaker 1: higher education institutions in the world, world famous everywhere MIT
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University. That the question about anti
Speaker 1: Semitism is answered as it is within a human lifetime
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, which central lesson is expressed as a
Speaker 1: combination of never again and never forget. How can it
Speaker 1: be that, thirty years after Schindler's List is released in
Speaker 1: the culture, that the culture, at least in an elite
Speaker 1: academic sense, has moved from point A to point B
Speaker 1: without much conversation about any of the space that exists
Speaker 1: underneath point A to point B. I think it's incredible
Speaker 1: and begining you meditate.
Speaker 2: On that, so let me see and forgiving me. At
Speaker 2: times I don't I mean, I don't know if because
Speaker 2: it's it's sort of bennic thing, but at times it
Speaker 2: or myself in particular, do not stay very focused, but
Speaker 2: eventually hopefully get to what to where we would be heading. Uh.
Speaker 2: I think, first of all, the idea of freedom of
Speaker 2: speech I do not believe exists in the full sense.
Speaker 2: We actually not free to say what we think. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's a good idea and sometimes it's not a good idea.
Speaker 2: What I when I listened to the three women speaking,
Speaker 2: I was horrified for a couple a couple of issues.
Speaker 2: First of all, there were my fellow women meaning that
Speaker 2: you should know what oppression is like. And by the way,
Speaker 2: this is not because my entire feminine experience and feminist
Speaker 2: experience were in the presence of oppressive a system or
Speaker 2: oppressive man. No, but as a female who worked and
Speaker 2: rolled them and been part the sensitivity was a lot
Speaker 2: of sensitivity. Was stunning. Forgive me if I expect at
Speaker 2: this moment.
Speaker 3: From a from a lover of the world, from another mother,
Speaker 3: such distance of sensitivity. So first of all, you might
Speaker 3: have to edit this, this piece ode. So I'm continued
Speaker 3: speaking what I was upset, and I would expect the
Speaker 3: same from men as well.
Speaker 2: But what the second thing I was, I was stand by.
Speaker 2: They looked scared to me, and I look for those
Speaker 2: science as as both as a rabbi and as a therapist.
Speaker 2: With these three women looked frightened. They were frightened to
Speaker 2: speak what they really thought. And the idea of intellectual
Speaker 2: freedom in university is very much under attack, and I
Speaker 2: don't know if we'll ever fully existed. Maybe there was
Speaker 2: a little renaissance period in between. They were looked frightened
Speaker 2: of what will be the consequence if they really say
Speaker 2: what they think, because I don't believe they have done.
Speaker 2: So they looked behind their response invisible to us. There
Speaker 2: were members of the board they were donors. There were
Speaker 2: all there were groups of students and student body to
Speaker 2: which they were answering. I did not feel we received
Speaker 2: a truly in depth what they thought of reality. They
Speaker 2: were what you call in a Jewish kitchen path part
Speaker 2: means neither meat, neither neither milk. It is usually belongs
Speaker 2: to vegetables and when And they were in front of
Speaker 2: the woman who was spectacular interviewer of an examiner. She
Speaker 2: was the panic I think her last name, what Congress
Speaker 2: war was unbelievably clear and an antarget. So first of all,
Speaker 2: this is what I thought, This is what I saw.
Speaker 2: The other thing is the power in the and the
Speaker 2: our feeling that overlooming subject of the Holocaust, Urban Cutler,
Speaker 2: whoist who is was uh, you know MP and I
Speaker 2: think I'm saying it correctly for a liberal party here
Speaker 2: in Canada. And who is also was charged with anti
Speaker 2: to deal with the anti Semtism because regular regular threats
Speaker 2: of death threats that are posed against him. But at
Speaker 2: the conference in nineteen Semitism, which was planned and nobody
Speaker 2: expected after October sevenths It was planned way before, but
Speaker 2: it just happened to be after October seventh. In Ottawa.
Speaker 2: He said, remember this is still this is twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three, and it's caught up. It was like,
Speaker 2: you're right, we can't be. We know we have a
Speaker 2: lot more going for us than we did in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three. We have democracy on our side, we are vocal,
Speaker 2: we speak, and so forth, so on. For a while
Speaker 2: I repeeded this, this is twenty twenty three, this is
Speaker 2: not nineteen forty three. I'll tell you what's a problem
Speaker 2: with it. So I would compare my Jewish reality compared
Speaker 2: to a gas champer. As long as they're not going
Speaker 2: to put me in a in a gas chamber, everything
Speaker 2: else is not okay? Or is it okay?
Speaker 4: Do you see like this, this specterrum of between living
Speaker 4: a good life of a free person in the world,
Speaker 4: either being of various faith communities.
Speaker 2: In general, being a Jew, being a vibrant Jew, being
Speaker 2: outspoken Jew. The next step, as long as it's not Orschwitz,
Speaker 2: then it's okay. Well, there are plenty of things that's
Speaker 2: not Auschwitz. That's not okay. The fact that my son
Speaker 2: has to be concerned of what's happening on campus is
Speaker 2: not okay, And it's not Auschwitz. And what we're hoping
Speaker 2: is that a simple human being burdened with the war
Speaker 2: may be fired. Maybe lonely sitting in front of this
Speaker 2: computer will make a sophisticated leaf that will say, well,
Speaker 2: if I continue reading these horrible articles about Jewish people,
Speaker 2: I might end up like a Nazi, and then I
Speaker 2: can actually destroy and kill. That's a very very sophisticated journey.
Speaker 2: You try to think individual on w is frankly are
Speaker 2: I don't want to see people. I want to see
Speaker 2: them in the best possible light and hope for their
Speaker 2: for their openness and rehabilitation, if I may say. But
Speaker 2: what we're asking for people to do is these terrible
Speaker 2: minds make a very very hugely that where their prejudice
Speaker 2: can take them, and I don't believe majority people can.
Speaker 2: And then there are some individuals that will take as
Speaker 2: in my son's school and walk through his high school
Speaker 2: he's now in university, walk through his high school and
Speaker 2: next thing you know, there is the police. There's a
Speaker 2: bum threat and all the kids have vacated three times.
Speaker 2: Three times. So no, it's not nineteen forty three, but
Speaker 2: I have to tell you the bar is pretty low.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about
Speaker 1: that and make that comparison. And so I think about
Speaker 1: this completely differently, and I'll lay it out from for you,
Speaker 1: because I think about it not as somebody who is
Speaker 1: even converting to Judaism, but just as somebody who's fifty three,
Speaker 1: who's reached middle age and has a and has a
Speaker 1: perspective on time and as an amateur student of history.
Speaker 1: Nineteen forty three is a year after the Wance Conference
Speaker 1: where the murder of the Jews is officially planned. And
Speaker 1: really what we recall of the Holocaust, such as it was,
Speaker 1: the mechanized, industrialized murder through the gas chambers, the incineration,
Speaker 1: the confiscation of good its properties Auschwitz. All of this
Speaker 1: killing takes place between nineteen forty two and January spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty five, including up through the very very
Speaker 1: last minutes that the Nazi Reich existed. They were killing
Speaker 1: Jews to the very last second, including after Hitler killed himself.
Speaker 1: And so if you think about nineteen forty three, in
Speaker 1: that moment, how did you get to nineteen forty three?
Speaker 1: And that took twenty years, That took Brooke nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: three from Adolph Hitler's puch, and you can divide that
Speaker 1: twenty years, you can divide it in half. It took
Speaker 1: ten ten years from Hitler's push to taking power, and
Speaker 1: it took ten years to nineteen forty three. It took
Speaker 1: six years to start the war, It took two years
Speaker 1: to strip Jews of their rights, and it took five
Speaker 1: years to get to the largest state program in history.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen forty in the United States, Charles Lindbergh
Speaker 1: came really within organizing one vote away the cancelation of
Speaker 1: the American military draft, which would have made an invasion
Speaker 1: across the Channel impossible before say, nineteen forty six, which
Speaker 1: meant that the Holocaust, such as it was would have
Speaker 1: gone on for much much longer. And the question in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three isn't about nineteen forty three, it's about
Speaker 1: where are we in the trajectory and in the of
Speaker 1: an unfinished story. The one thing I know historically to
Speaker 1: be true is that when we talked about the history
Speaker 1: we've talked about, the sixteenth century was deadlier than the fifteenth,
Speaker 1: The seventeenth, more than the sixteenth, the eighteenth, more than
Speaker 1: the seventeenth, the nineteenth, more than the eighteenth, the twentieth
Speaker 1: the deadliest of all. And we come to the middle
Speaker 1: of the century with an existential moral proposition. Mankind can
Speaker 1: now extinct itself with weapons that are within them, the
Speaker 1: power of the gods contained within them, the power of
Speaker 1: the proverbial gods. War hasn't stopped, but the acceleration of
Speaker 1: disaster has slowed until the end of the life spans
Speaker 1: of the people who survived the events, and the political
Speaker 1: hope of the preeminent leader for the good for freedom.
Speaker 1: In that moment, Franklin Roosevelt, in a discussion with the
Speaker 1: Canadian Prime Minister, goes on late at night and he
Speaker 1: says to Prime Minister Kinging that his aspiration is not
Speaker 1: that the world to come, this American led, freedom led
Speaker 1: international order will endure forever. He just wants it to
Speaker 1: last for as long as everybody is alive. On the
Speaker 1: day the war is won, and the youngest of those
Speaker 1: people are about eighty years old, and we have this
Speaker 1: wave of amnesia sweeping at a time where we know
Speaker 1: how that story ended, but we have no idea where
Speaker 1: this story is going going.
Speaker 2: My son was fast, you know, the eighteen year old
Speaker 2: young man who said, I'm much less concerned about Israel
Speaker 2: and much more concerned about Jews in you know, in diaspora.
Speaker 2: I think the side actually turned. If diaspora, a Jewish
Speaker 2: community was concerned about, you know, how Israel will fare,
Speaker 2: actually I think it's the other way of how we're
Speaker 2: going to do. Look, one of the Jewish concept is
Speaker 2: that you're not allowed to despair, even if it feels
Speaker 2: like it's dark. So I I was in a car
Speaker 2: with human instead and we speak Fressian. I grew up
Speaker 2: in Kiev and the language of love is Russian for me.
Speaker 2: Even even so you know, my you know, what's happening
Speaker 2: in Ukraine and with Russia is also complicated than heart
Speaker 2: wrenching two. But always I speak Russian to him often enough,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, I never thought that when
Speaker 2: I chased train out of Ukraine, and that's exactly what
Speaker 2: my sister and I did, and I talk about it
Speaker 2: in a book where you know, we were lost to
Speaker 2: get to get off the platform and the train began
Speaker 2: to move and two young women myself and my sister
Speaker 2: were left. My parents were in a in the heart itself,
Speaker 2: trying to help elderly and pulling people in, but all
Speaker 2: departures like this are are filled with chaos. I said,
Speaker 2: when I chase that train, I never thought that you
Speaker 2: would ever have to face anti Semitism. Your grandfathers and
Speaker 2: our goal was to create the world without it for you.
Speaker 2: But that's not the case. That's not the case. So
Speaker 2: what do I see in my work and in my son,
Speaker 2: is actually this crisis a weakened Jewish identity. There are
Speaker 2: number of responses. You know, when when things are hard
Speaker 2: for the Jews. The laws around Hanukah and that is
Speaker 2: customs and you know, traditions, and we just finished this
Speaker 2: extraordinary festival of light. You're supposed to announce miracle, and
Speaker 2: you put Johanukiya, your minora, right at the window or outside.
Speaker 2: In Israel, they go into a box outside on the streets.
Speaker 2: You see these beautiful boxes with lit thenora's And when
Speaker 2: things are really hard for the Jews, you put Johanukiya,
Speaker 2: you light it on the table inside the house. So
Speaker 2: at times in our history we have to light it
Speaker 2: in the house, and the times we light it right
Speaker 2: there at the window. So some Jews chose to go
Speaker 2: on the inside, and others have been absolutely inspired to go.
Speaker 2: And I have been asked to do more conversions and
Speaker 2: more young Jewish people have been calling and asking what
Speaker 2: giving me traditions to live by than I have ever
Speaker 2: had in twenty years, twenty five years of serving Jewish community.
Speaker 2: So actually where it's going from? I want to examine
Speaker 2: this from oi to joy and that we will face this.
Speaker 2: And I am both frightened and determined that if we
Speaker 2: give education to our children and our people to live
Speaker 2: this beautiful Jewish righteous life, work with very deeply with
Speaker 2: interface in interface dialogue, which I do regularly with my
Speaker 2: Christian colleagues and friends as well as people of other
Speaker 2: faith and visual about democracy. We stand the chance, We
Speaker 2: stand the chance, and overall the world is better and
Speaker 2: than it's used to be. We actually, depending on numbers
Speaker 2: used to pillage each other, there a lot better with
Speaker 2: greater success. We are more civilized as well as more
Speaker 2: sophisticated to kill. Absolutely, But I I see the light
Speaker 2: even when there's darkness around me, and to see people
Speaker 2: seeking out their Jewish identity and the roots and say
Speaker 2: yi laheim to life. And I can be there from
Speaker 2: that place of of shame and of lack of education
Speaker 2: as a Jew who fled that terrible system. Judaism in
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union was erased, but it was left in
Speaker 2: your pastport to know you're a Jew. By the time
Speaker 2: it got to me, there was my grandmother's Yiddish whispers
Speaker 2: and little stories here and there. But Judaism in in
Speaker 2: in in the North America and in education that we
Speaker 2: try to impart has the life giving and life surviving
Speaker 2: skills for the future. And I will not stop to
Speaker 2: share that education. And so your concern is absolutely history
Speaker 2: can present that trajectory is scary. Where we are in
Speaker 2: this trajectory, you can say in nineteen thirty eight maybe,
Speaker 2: and then it doesn't take long. I don't believe this
Speaker 2: will unfold as such. But when I speak to Holocaust survivors,
Speaker 2: I cry with them. And one thing I want to say,
Speaker 2: I want to today's my father's your side. You know
Speaker 2: he died four years ago. You couldn't have found more
Speaker 2: elegant men, more charm being more involved with his two
Speaker 2: more in love with his wife and his two girls.
Speaker 2: And he served in the Soviet Army. His father served
Speaker 2: for entire years of the war along with Ukrainians, along
Speaker 2: with was big it was Biggist and along with George
Speaker 2: gans to fight a horrible, horrible war of Hitler. I'm
Speaker 2: glad my father isn't seeing what he's has not. He
Speaker 2: died before the war in Ukraine unfolded. I will shood
Speaker 2: to live to one hundred and twenty. But I have
Speaker 2: to tell you, I'm glad he didn't see this and
Speaker 2: to see Holocaust survivors and what he would have seen
Speaker 2: on October October seventh would have destroyed my parents. To
Speaker 2: see Holocaust survivors reliving this is absolutely devastating. So what
Speaker 2: do we do? We bring them to hear our children
Speaker 2: sing in Hebrew? What do we do We make phone
Speaker 2: calls to Israel and here ISRAELI speak about spirit and
Speaker 2: future and desire for peace. What do we do every
Speaker 2: Saturday morning eight sixty four, Shepherd? Where you were therefore
Speaker 2: high holidays? We bring people in the sanctuary and we
Speaker 2: sing and we dance and we educate. So no, no,
Speaker 2: we won't let it happen. No frighten us.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a final question, and that's two.
Speaker 1: What do you say to young people who are watching
Speaker 1: the terrible consequence of October seventh on fold without any
Speaker 1: historical context, in complete ignorance about the cost of war,
Speaker 1: the horror of war, the intellectual construct of of just war,
Speaker 1: the consequences of violations of international law being committed by
Speaker 1: hamas in terms of embedding themselves with civilian population, including
Speaker 1: militarizing hospital facilities, elder care facilities, childcare facilities, so on,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But no matter the casualties
Speaker 1: are high, is.
Speaker 2: You feel for civilians lost?
Speaker 1: A Jewish baby's life and its loss in the eyes
Speaker 1: of God is no greater or less loss than a
Speaker 1: Arab baby, or Muslim baby or Christian baby. That all
Speaker 1: are equally a tragedy, tragedy in a a front. But
Speaker 1: that when an event like this happens, when an evil
Speaker 1: manifests itself, yes, that the evil must be confronted, and
Speaker 1: that that confrontation will will mean violence and death and
Speaker 1: destruction at an epic scale that cannot be averted, but
Speaker 1: can be the beginning of an error of peace on
Speaker 1: the other side if people so choose it. But how
Speaker 1: do you explain this to a to an eighteen year old,
Speaker 1: to a twenty year role that is reacting on their
Speaker 1: social media feeds emotionally to the images of war.
Speaker 2: You know, so we've been quite quite privileged to live
Speaker 2: in a time where you know, the war is not
Speaker 2: underground in Canada or in the United States, we have
Speaker 2: it's elsewhere, right, you know, it's kind of overseas, right,
Speaker 2: But these images are brought close to you. What is
Speaker 2: amazing is that how that war is offull anywhere, including Rwanda,
Speaker 2: including in Syria, including in Afghanistan. So Middle East is
Speaker 2: affected by and a gas is affected by horristic war.
Speaker 2: But this is not the only place where our justice
Speaker 2: needs to be stirred and spilt. That's number one. It's
Speaker 2: impossible to explain so much in such a short period
Speaker 2: of time. First of all, the attention of teenage young
Speaker 2: people is very short. I see it when I try
Speaker 2: to have a conversation and get to a third sentence,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if you have teenage children, but
Speaker 2: you they ran out like it's amazing. It's a you're
Speaker 2: onto something else, almost like a toddler. Forgive me. I
Speaker 2: don't mean to infantilize them, but there is a bit
Speaker 2: of rite you. Well, so there was one. I think
Speaker 2: the most I can do I can't control media, and
Speaker 2: very often it's profoundly unfriendly and frankly lack of nuance,
Speaker 2: lack of nuance to compare, to compare the death of
Speaker 2: hostages that were only and uh and what happened you
Speaker 2: know in those in a southern Israel, to compare, to
Speaker 2: make the equivalents so easily without distinguished? What does that
Speaker 2: mean to come into someone else's home? What does that mean?
Speaker 2: The battleground? Yes, life is life. However there is a
Speaker 2: nuance in different You cannot do it on the fly.
Speaker 2: And the little social feeds they receive a young people
Speaker 2: received are actually support their inability to discipline, to read,
Speaker 2: to digest and to have a critical thought That takes effort,
Speaker 2: that takes And that's what's the beginning of my conversation
Speaker 2: when I thought, really you have to really think through something.
Speaker 2: They are they want quick answers, and I see credible
Speaker 2: isolation in young people. On one hand, I can with
Speaker 2: my want to be all over the world any time
Speaker 2: I can do anything. It means I can do nothing
Speaker 2: because everything is not it is not anything. So so
Speaker 2: the depth of analysis is really missing us. The media
Speaker 2: content that just hardly hardly is uh uh is supportive.
Speaker 2: So I would say to those who are all to
Speaker 2: pay attention, you have series of dialogues without punishment or
Speaker 2: harsh judgment, but desire to say, well, tell me why
Speaker 2: do you feel and think like this? And would you
Speaker 2: be open to me challenging or another opinion. So I
Speaker 2: don't see this on a larger scale. I see this
Speaker 2: on one to one and we've done so also at
Speaker 2: the Darnoa where in polarization of are you and Darenauum
Speaker 2: is not a place of polarization. It's a very tolerant,
Speaker 2: loving community. But there is a room for grief. I mean,
Speaker 2: what happened on October seventh the beyond bit despicable, but barbarism.
Speaker 2: I also feel for Gaza civilian who is warning her child,
Speaker 2: or her beloved mother or anyone knows who's under rubble.
Speaker 2: So I have to have room to love with both,
Speaker 2: with both parts of your heart. Is possible. It's possible
Speaker 2: to be belonging to a group and seeing the group
Speaker 2: a central element of your of your manifestation of life
Speaker 2: in this world as part of it, and see humanity.
Speaker 2: But that's what we need to teach. That's what we
Speaker 2: need to teach. Is it easy? The answer is absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Did we lose that next generation? I refuse to think
Speaker 2: that we have has it been difficult for all of us?
Speaker 2: I my study turned into a place of tears for
Speaker 2: people who are grieving, grieving what has taken place, and
Speaker 2: grieving their place in the world. We are in the threshold,
Speaker 2: but I feel that will hold hands and even if
Speaker 2: it's dark at times doesn't mean light. Light doesn't shine.
Speaker 1: What a perfect place to leave it. Leave it there
Speaker 1: with Rabbi Tina. Thank you so much for your time,
Speaker 1: your words of wisdom. Thank you for watching. Make sure
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Speaker 2: Dudes to a bench whom you should think you