w/Ashira | From Black & Jewish

Transcript:

Lio

Welcome, everyone, to the Jew function. I'm very happy to have a very special, very unusual edition. So, I'm going to kick off with a conversation between me and Seth. We're actually jumping straight to our guest today, Ashira Solomon. I'm so happy to have you. How are you?

Ashira

I'm well, and thank you so much for being so patient with me getting back to you. I'm so happy to be here.

Lio

That's quite all right. We also bungled things up, and Seth is driving to an office to join the call. He'll be here soon, in case you're wondering, but we didn't want to miss the opportunity to talk to Ashira because she's such an interesting, fascinating character. We feel like we need her voice in our circle. For anyone who's joining late to the Jew fun, and also for anyone who forgot, we're all about solving antisemitism. We are aware of the symptoms but we don't focus on them too much. We're extremely mindful of what's happening around the world in the U.S. We saw the reaction after post-October 7th. As a former guest said on the show, we were attacked on October seventh, and then we were attacked again. We're painfully aware of that, but we've been talking about it since maybe 2011, 12, 13, and we've already been sounding the alarm about what's coming. Interestingly, we did not talk about it just from the point of view of the rising incidence of hate crimes and actions aimed specifically at Jews. We're actually looking internally into the Jewish people in Israel and in the U.S. Based on our research, which is based on historic patterns, words of Jewish sages, and recent findings from network science, we put together a very interesting picture. Essentially, it says when Jews are united, they're unbeatable. They're not only unbeatable, they're inspiring the rest of the world to look up to them. When Jews fight among themselves, they provoke the opposite reaction from the world. It goes as far as to say that every major calamity in Jewish history was always preceded by great disunity among Jews. We spent our first twenty-two episodes on this show studying it. We went chapter by chapter in our history. We're lucky to have a recorded history of the Jewish people, so it's easy to follow. You see that a lot of the things that we learned in school were not exactly accurate. A lot of the pain was brought on by ourselves. Yes, there was an external executioner waiting on the sideline to exact the right amount of pain on us to sort of change our ways, to reconsider. We're not saying it's the victim's fault. That's not really what we're saying. What we're saying is we live in a closed system with rules, or laws. The laws we found to be true, the laws of nature, say that we need to provide an example within the network of human society. We need to be in the network, the hubs, creating connections. We naturally do it, but we do it to feed the human ego. Instead, nature demands us to feed a different kind of attitude, an altruistic attitude. Either we do it and the system thrives and grows, and everybody cheers the Jews, or we fail to do it, and the system starts to pressure us. We call that pressure antisemitism. That's kind of in a nutshell what we're all about. I like that Ashira is here because you are really passionate about building bridges and creating connections. You're an embodiment of the Jewish hub. That's what you are, besides the fact that you are one of nine siblings, which is already a small-world network in and of itself.

Ashira

I grew up knowing how to fight well and learned how to get along well with the people you fight with and the people you love.

Lio

Exactly. I think that's really the key, right? It's to be able to fight, to get into those passionate arguments, but then at the end to say, you know what? That was, what you said really got to me, but let's hug, right?

Ashira

The ability...

Lio

...to do that, to find something higher.

Ashira

I always give this example because people from the outside, on social media—obviously, social media is just a highlight reel of people's lives—they just say to me, wow, you come from such a big family. You guys look like this all-American family. You're always smiling and happy. I'm so close to my siblings, which is true. That's a fact. But they don't see the fighting. They don't see that my older brother and I have blow-up fights, really intense fights, and then in a month or so, we could go to France together, and we still love each other. I've blocked him on Instagram, I've blocked his phone number for like three weeks, and then we come back around and love each other. I go spend time with him in LA, he takes me out, he feeds me. So, it's like this idea that unity looks like getting along all the time—people have to move away from that. When people think about unity, they think about agreement. A lot of unity is not agreement. A lot of it is saying that because you are part of my tribe, because we're in the same nation as Jews, because we are family, I can disagree with you, but I still have this duty to love you and care for you and provide for you. I can't care for you when you need me. It doesn't mean that I agree with you, and sometimes it doesn't even mean that I like you. I remember I had a rabbi tell me, he said, listen Ashira, you have to be in community, but it doesn't mean you have to like the community. The Torah doesn't hold you to say you must like who you're in the community with, right? People need to understand the difference between liking and unconditional love. It would be nice if I liked everyone in the Jewish community, but the truth is, I don't, but I do love. I see that you're my brother, you're my sister, and I have a duty to you as a fellow Jew. But that doesn't mean I want to hang out with you all the time.

Lio

That was so beautifully said. We tried to explain to people what you just said in two minutes over an entire season. Maybe that's the charm of the next generation. You're getting someone who has like nine siblings, so that's why.

Lio

Maybe. But I'm curious, I want to kind of take a step back because you are doing a lot. You're pretty young, but you've done a lot. You've had a bunch of podcasts, and you're involved in the bridge between the U.S. and Israel. Growing up, you grew up on the West Coast, right? Did you experience antisemitism before the Sabra, like was that part of your world at all?

Ashira

No. I did a Geirut, so I converted in the last few years. Growing up, I didn't experience antisemitism, and people wouldn't even say. I'm from a very small town in California. My great-grandparents were the first black people to live in the city that I'm from. They came from the South, escaping Jim Crow, and they had 12 children. Then those children had children, and that led to me. I grew up as the only black girl in my entire school, the only black family for a couple of generations in the entire city. People always ask, did you grow up with racism? Did you grow up feeling like you were less than, etc.? I tell people it wasn't until I went to university that I was taught that life will be harder for me because I'm black, that university will be harder for me because I'm black, and that opportunities will be harder for me because I'm black. I wasn't taught these messages. Yes, I experienced certain things in school from white children, like touching my hair because it was curly and different things. My mother would probably say that her experience growing up in this cowboy town was more racist. She said something interesting. She said, at the end of the day, people just started to get along because they realized we are neighbors. We live together, and you start babysitting their children, you start working alongside others. Being with people and them being your neighbors trumps all hate and racism because then you start to get to know people. So, yeah, my story doesn't start with antisemitism, and I wouldn't even say it starts with racism either.

Lio

But how did it start with Judaism? You didn't start there.

Ashira

Okay. My grandparents had the story that we are from the lost tribes of Israel. My grandmother, she died at 48 years old from breast cancer. It was her dream to go to Israel. So she told all her children, you must go to Israel, you must go to Israel. I died... I mean, she died when I was six. God forbid, I don't want to die. But, well, not now. She died when I was six years old. I grew up with this message: you need to go to Israel, we must go to Israel. So, when I went to university, I chose to study abroad in Israel. All my friends went to Europe and Asia, and they were like, why would you want to go to Israel? And I'm like, because of the dream, you know? When I went to Israel, when I landed, I just felt at home. That's where my story kind of starts. I was just like, whoa, this is home. At this point in my life, I had traveled, and I've been to places like Italy, but it never felt like home. So it was a weird feeling to land in a country, not even get off the plane, and just feel like, oh, I'm home. I studied at Haifa University for a summer, and then I kept going back to Israel. I officially decided to undergo a conversion process, which to me felt like my return to my tribe.

Seth

Did your grandparents talk about details when they mentioned the lost tribe?

Ashira

No, they didn't have details, but everyone had Hebrew names—there were Hebrew last names and things like that. It's like, where does this come from? I think, with the Black American story, even dating back to the early 1800s and 1700s, black people always had a historical narrative attached to the Israelites. The story of the struggle, the 400 years of slavery. We have all of this history even dating back to Harlem, where there were black people who didn't practice Christianity and practiced Judaism, so it's always permeated the culture.

Lio

It's fascinating because when I was in New York, living there for many years before we started this podcast, I had just moved from Israel. Israeli culture is pretty diverse, but still, everybody's Jewish, right? But in New York, suddenly, you see other people, and they see you as another person. They start pointing out your Jewishness, which was a new experience. A friend of mine studied at a city college in Washington Heights, part of the Department of Jewish Studies. He was the only Jew in class; everyone else was black, Indian, Haitian—a mixed hodgepodge of nationalities. So, we thought, let's make a documentary about this, talk to these people, and ask them why they care so much about Jewish history and studies. Everybody came at it from some perspective—like, they were slaves, we were slaves. Interesting. They were a minority, I'm a minority. Interesting. Everybody said, you know, the priest always said they killed Jesus. Like, I want to meet the guys who supposedly killed Jesus. It was interesting. People are really attracted to it, or you have some who are like, no, we're the true Jews, and they are fresh Jews.

Ashira

Yeah. Well, those people you're talking about, which is not my family story, are like the Hebrew Israelite group in New York, who are always...

Lio

...shouting.

Ashira

Yeah, like that group, that's not the group my family came from or is associated with at all. There's so much history people don't know—like, some of the first Jews, which were Mizrahi Jews, came to Mississippi. A lot of my family is from Mississippi. They don't know there were synagogues built there, later torn down, and churches built over them. They don't know that Jews were mixing with blacks at that time. That history is completely gone—no one talks about the first Syrians who came over to Mississippi or anything like that. There was a lot of mixing that happened in the South, I would say.

Seth

There's so much mixing that happened with all the Jewish people. Yeah, I mean, who knows what's going on in Africa and what we'll discover? We lost 10 tribes, so there...

Lio

...has got to...

Seth

...be millions of Jews out there. I read one book, I don't know if it was Simon Wiesenthal who wrote it. But he goes through the whole Columbus situation when Columbus came over and all the Jewish ties around Columbus. And then I bought another book. Just because this stuff really fascinates me, about Japan and this whole Jewish...

Lio

...whole Japanese Issa...

Seth

...tribe. I guess it's—I don’t remember. I didn't read that...

Lio

...Issa, which used to carry, they believe they're descendants of the people who used to carry the Ark of the Covenant.

Seth

Wow.

Lio

Yeah,

Seth

and I also found that. So those are the two books. I finished the Columbus one, but I didn't start the Japan one. I also heard of, um, in China, I saw something recently. The Jerusalem Post published something that Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia comes from some Jewish... Now, I hope we don't find out that ISIS is Jews, but Africa probably are.

Ashira

Now we're really destroying our PR even more. It's like, wait, welcome back home, but wait.

Seth

But in Africa, certainly, there's got to be all kinds of hidden Jews there.

Ashira

Yeah.

Lio

I want to, because of our time, I want to be mindful of it, and I apologize to our viewers because this is going to be a really fun talk. We're probably going to have to have you over again, Shir. When...

Ashira

...you...

Lio

...have, right? We owe you a full hour, and so we'd like to, you know, give you the right service...

Ashira

...here. I love the vibe already. Good.

Lio

You know, I'm curious about something. Okay, so it's one thing to realize: okay, maybe we have some Jewish roots. Grandma said this and that. You go to Israel, boom, you have this feeling of home. Can't argue with that. We're feeling creatures first and foremost. It's all very clear. But then you went back and you sort of made it part of your life's mission. You're building bridges. You have the Black and Jewish podcast. You have these conversations with high-profile people. You try to bring people together, create coalitions. What's that about? Is this something that started before? I imagine it started before that. Sounds very Jewish. Yes, sounds very...

Ashira

...Jewish. Sounds very Jewish.

Seth

It sounds very Jewish of you.

Lio

Yeah, it's true. So what's that about? Like, is it a calling? I imagine it started before the seventh, right? So...

Ashira

...give us...

Lio

...a little bit of what you know, what motivates you? Why do you get up in the morning kind of speech?

Ashira

So, my background is: I have a master's in public administration. And I did tons of fellowships with the Senate of California and in Congress. I worked for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was actually a Cuban Jew but practiced Christianity and represented the Miami district. Her last time in office was 2018, and I was there with her, and she was very pro-Israel. And so, as I was working and trying to figure out, do I want to run for office? Do I want to be a diplomat? Do I want to work for a think tank? All these things. I always knew I wanted to work with something that has to do with the U.S. and Israel.

Lio

I shouldn...

Ashira

...say always. After I went to Israel and came back in 2016, I knew that I wanted to do some type of work with the U.S. and Israel. I just didn't know what it would look like. I do like to always tell people that, you know, the hand of God is really on my life because I really have no plans. Like, I never knew I was going to start Black and Jewish. I never had a dream that I was going to be in media. Like, I haven't been dreaming about this since I was five years old or something like this. It just happens that typically I say yes to something very small in my life. Yes, I want to go study, you know, at the seminary in Israel, move to Jerusalem. And then something totally big opens up, where then it's like, now I'm in media, you know, working with and doing Black and Jewish, you know? So Black and Jewish started, the podcast started because of October 7th. So, prior to October 7th, I was a political moderator, and I was moderating on political panels for women’s organizations. I met Fleurette Heller. I have to give her so many thanks because she launched me into media. So I met Fleur and the previous deputy mayor of Jerusalem. And I reached out to her because I said, hey, do you want to take like a delegation of Israeli women to these political conferences? Because there are no Israeli women represented at these conferences. And I would see all these women from the Middle East, but no Jewish women. So she said, yeah, let's do it. So we were working on that prior to October 7th. And then, maybe a couple of weeks, that was probably like September, and a couple of weeks into September, she calls me and she's like, hey, I'm starting a show called The Quad, and it's going to be like the Israeli View. I want it to be like the Israeli view: like four Jewish women, and we're conservative. Some of us are right-wing, some of us are right-center, and we're just... Having at it like The View, but in Israel. So I said, okay. And she said,

Ashira

In English?

Ashira

In English. It's in English. And so she said, you're going to be the fourth co-host. The producers have looked at you. I like you. And at this point, I've only met Fleur once for coffee, okay? So I just said yes. Like, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. She was just like, you're going to be on this show, and I yelled out yes. So, I can't say it was like this deep desire and dream for me to want to be on a talk show because I never thought about it. Then October 7th happened. So the show was initially supposed to launch in November. She calls me—Flora calls me maybe two days after October 7th, I want to say. She says, we're launching the show this week. We have to get in front of what's happening in the media. We have to fight, we have to do Hasbara, we have to do PR because the international community, as you know, on October 7th, they were all on Israel's side, and by like two days later, they were already denying the rapes, denying all the things. So we launched that same, like maybe two or three days after October 7th. We got in the studio with Emily Schrader, who's a journalist in Israel as well, and Vivian Bercovici, who is the previous Canadian ambassador to Israel, and it was the four of us, and we just got in and we started shooting what is called The Quad. So, I really encourage everyone to go subscribe and watch The Quad. It's an amazing talk show explaining geopolitics, what's happening on the ground in Israel, and really explaining the Middle East to English-speaking audiences, but it's filmed in Jerusalem. So I was on that show and I was completely new, and I started to really see. I wasn't on social media prior to this, right? So Fleur, like, you got to get on social media. Fleur, I am where I am because of Fleur Heller. You know, she just pushed me. And so I...

Lio

Maybe we're going to talk to this Fleur Heller woman. She sounds...

Ashira

Yeah, you got to get Fleur on the show as well.

Lio

You'll get Fleur on the...

Ashira

...show. Okay, I will. I'll connect you guys to Fleur. So I started to see BLM come out, which I've never supported BLM anyways, but I started to see them come out with the parachutes and "Free Palestine" and this narrative to connect Black Americans to Palestinians and try to tie our narratives together. And I'm sitting in Israel as a Jew looking at this like, wait, what? The Black American narrative has nothing to do with the Palestinian narrative. So, I got very passionate about that specifically. So, I started doing content around that. And then last summer, I was in Miami, and a friend of mine was like, you know, you need to launch Black and Jewish. And we were just sitting and talking. And I was like, yeah. And he was like, you know, there are so many people who, one, have never met an Orthodox Jew, and two, they don't know much about the Jewish community, like how insular you guys are. They don't know how it operates. And I think you would do a lot of good since you sit at the intersection of these two people groups, you know? And I really thought about it, and I said, yeah, I want to bridge the communities together. And then, also, because I have this political background, I also wanted to talk about specific issues regarding the communities individually. So, sometimes on the podcast, I'm talking to people, either Black people or Jewish people, and we're discussing how we can make our community stronger. What happened from civil rights time to now that there's a breakdown, and then other times I'm specifically talking to Jewish people about what's going on with Israel, what's going on with our own communities, and then talking to Black people and saying, what's...

Seth

...going on? Who are the people who can hear your message? And so there's the people who just agree with you right away.

Ashira

There's...

Seth

...the people who just won't agree with you, just no matter what. Who...

Lio

...are the people...

Seth

...who can hear something and are like, they have the quality that they can? Their minds can be changed. They're willing to be open to hearing something, to understanding something they didn't understand before.

Ashira

Well, the advantage that I have, and I do leverage it, is that I am Black and I speak to Black people who are culturally relevant, meaning they have some ties to the Black community where Black people already kind of trust them and, you know, like they believe in what their messaging is, and they have a good rapport with Black people. And so, because I'm speaking to people like Mike Rashid King, who's from the Nation of Islam, whom I do not agree with, who loves Farrakhan. However, he has a hold and a presence in the Black community that people trust. So, me as a person who's willing to sit down with someone like him, it kind of—they become more open to what I'm saying, you know, or if I...

Lio

Hold on, I want to ask about that. And I'm sorry, like jumping on your...

Ashira

...words. I feel...

Lio

...like you're slipping away between our fingers. No, because these are all important things. Do you feel that someone like him, who's already somewhat positioned, as you said, in a position of influence and power within a certain community...

Lio

Do you...

Lio

...feel he's actually open to changing his mind? Because people look up to him and they look up to him for certain qualities, certain things he said, he supports...

Lio

...he endorses.

Lio

And now he's sitting with you. Do you feel there's a genuine desire to open up and say, maybe I got this wrong, or maybe this, or maybe I'm right about this, but it should be like...

Ashira

...is that yes, because I'm building a relationship. So, you have to understand that some people in the Black community already have a perception of what a Jew is, and especially not Israel, but what a Jew is in America, right? What they deem as Asheknazi, Zionist, European...

Lio

...Jewish. The landlord. So...

Ashira

...they already have this perspective. So when I'm coming in, and they're speaking to me, I kind of shake their paradigm in a way, right? And so they're already more receptive. And so, me being a spokesperson for the Jewish people, because of how I look, my race, I mean, I do leverage that. I leverage being Black, right? They're more receptive when I say, hey, you know, that's actually not true. That's not what Jews believe. We believe X. Or I say, you know, you actually got that wrong. That's not how the community operates. What you see as them being anti-other is just them being insular. And the reason why they're insular is because A, B, C, and I start explaining to them who the Jews are and who we really are and what our beliefs really are. They are more receptive to me because I am also one of them.

Seth

So let me ask you the question again. Who are the people? What are the qualities of people? Where are those people who are willing to hear something and have, and at least be open?

Lio

You have people...

Seth

...who definitely agree with you already. So that's great. And you have people who it's going to take another three generations until like their mind softens to even listen to you or listen to us, right? But who are the people who are ripe now to—who are open to hear something?

Ashira

The people that I find that I've interviewed on my show who are open to hearing me are people who are highly intelligent. I would say that's their number one quality. And two...

Seth

...hearted. So are you appealing to their intellect or to their heart when you find people who are willing to change, you're able to change?

Ashira

The people that I've been talking to on my show, I'm appealing to their intellect more than their heart. So...

Seth

...they just didn't know facts? Is that what it was? They just didn't, they thought every Jew is racist, or they thought, I mean, that's what it is. You're just...

Ashira

It's the intelligence and it's the intellect because there are myths. There are so many myths around who the Jewish people are. And when you only interact with Jews from Brooklyn, and then you say that's the entire Jewish community, you're missing out on so many things. You know what I mean?

Lio

And...

Ashira

...so, I have found that trying to appeal to people's hearts and feelings don't work for me personally.

Lio

Trying...

Ashira

...to make the moral argument for Israel actually doesn't work.

Lio

Even though, even though...

Ashira

...we support Israel because we are more moral, or look what we did. We send people to Turkey and we help this country and that. That doesn't work because I don't know, they already think we're immoral. You know what I mean? Like, it's interesting...

Lio

...because...

Ashira

...they don't agree with us.

Lio

But, but no, it's, I get it, but it's interesting because for you, when you got on the plane to Israel, you felt at home. Nobody had to rationalize it to you or...

Lio

...intellectualize it.

Lio

And yet here you are finding yourself in a position of having to first explain things and set things in order and kind of mentally build a new picture. And then maybe that will awaken a more emotional picture below...

Ashira

...that. Yes, because you have people are fed misinformation and/or from their experiences. So, something they may have felt, now they have interpreted misinformation coupled with whatever they experienced a Jew to be, you know?

Lio

So...

Ashira

...I have found one. It's what...

Lio

...okay, so can people listen to the Black and Jewish podcast?

Ashira

Yes, you can listen to it wherever you listen to your podcast and on YouTube.

Lio

Okay, so we have the Black and Jewish series. Good, any other major Netflix series you're on that we need to promote? No, before you answer that, the question is, I want to turn our sights inwards right now, internally, okay, among Jews.

Lio

As we

Lio

started the show. And I'm going to drop a big bomb here, which we're not going to be able to diffuse before the end, but it's good. Today, as we're recording this, it's the eve of the Holocaust Memorial Day, not the international one, the one that we commemorate in Israel.

Lio

And so

Lio

tonight there are all the ceremonies. Tomorrow is a whole day. Growing up here, here in Israel, at least you grow up in school, they, you know, since like fourth grade, you see all these movies with these emaciated bodies of Jews in the ghettos and in the concentration camps. Pretty traumatic for a kid, but you remember it. What they don't tell you is all the stuff that kind of preceded it. Like, what were the conditions that allowed for this to happen? And Seth and I, in our show, we see, and this is something that is not a very popular thing to talk about. Such a, we're like basically Jews in Europe were on the brink of civil war. If they had the ability to, they would fight each other, you know, with weapons. They just didn't have the ability because they were living in separate communities. You have Orthodox Jews in one place, you have us in another place, Socialist Zion in another place, but they were at each other's necks. Really, the animosity, the terrible things. Like, I mean, a really terrible example to the world. And on the heels of that, or I guess the backdrop of that, that's when the Holocaust sort of explodes. I want to ask, and the feeling that I'm getting. Me and Seth is like, every year we commemorate the Holocaust. Oh, it was terrible. It was such a traumatic event. And here at the Seventh, also traumatic, we call it the Holocaust for Israel, right? But all those events are always preceded by terrible infighting. Israel was also on the brink of civil war, October 6th.

Lio

We rarely talk

Ashira

about

Lio

it

Lio

at large. What do we do about this, Seth? How do we take some of that amazing quality you described at the beginning of the show? How do we bring that sense of family back? I think that's the most important thing to take care of first. Before everything,

Seth

I may not like you right now, but I love you. You

Lio

know, I'm

Seth

going to, I mean, I might not be able to talk to you on the phone right now, but I will. You know, we will. The love has to be more important than anything that separates us.

Lio

Yes. What advice can you give Jews on this?

Ashira

It's so difficult, but you know, one thing that I do love that is part of our tradition before Yom Kippur is that we go around and we ask people for forgiveness. And we say, I don't know if I offended you this year, but will you forgive me? You know? And I think this idea of humbling yourself and asking people for forgiveness, and saying, I don't know if I offended you, but if I did, I just want us to create peace. I really like that we do that. And I think more Jews should definitely drive that in. But in terms of, like, I was watching the election, right? And I'm conservative and I voted for Trump and I have all types of opinions about American Jews and Reform Judaism and what it's doing to our politics and our people, et cetera. Right. And I've seen everyone blow up online. Jews just divide online. We've been together all year fighting, fighting, and then we divided online because some Jews wanted to vote for Harris. Some Jews want to vote for Trump, and they were like, how could you vote for Harris and not Trump? And how could you not think of Israel? And we were at each other's throats again. And so people were having a very hard time once again, right? And so I think that that type of disagreement and that type of debate is healthy, but I think we have to say, I can push away your idea, but I don't have to push away you. And so I think every Jew has to first start with themselves as well. Like, really sit down and think to yourself, like, who am I? And what do I want to contribute to Am Yisrael? And how do I want to make my nation better? How do I want to make my people better? Because, as you guys said earlier, which I agree with your whole entire premise and thesis, is that when we are unified, it doesn't matter who the executioner is, right? Like, when we're strong, it doesn't matter the attack, we always win. And when we're weak, we always break down. And so I think people really have to humble themselves. They really need to humble themselves before God, have humility, and just say, listen, I disagree with your ideas. I reject your ideas even. But you, as a person, you're my brother. You're my sister. And I have a duty to you. And maybe if people focus on their duty to Am Yisrael, their duty to their fellow Jew, perhaps that can get us over the hump of our disagreements. If maybe you could just focus on our duty because we have duties to one another. You know, I have a responsibility to you, you have a responsibility to me. And so I think focusing on duty and responsibility could be the first way. That we get over the fact that we disagree a lot, and so much so we could even hate each other's ideas. But it doesn't mean I have to hate

Seth

you. Let me ask one small piece. I know we're nearing the end here. You said duty and responsibility, right? So if I really respect someone or respect some concept, so I'm willing to stay up late, I'm willing to carry the heavy bag, I'm willing to do all that if I believe in the goal. But if you come to somebody and talk about duty and responsibility, what is the shared goal that will give the people the power to be able to do that? Because something burns in you very strong, which gives you the power to be able to do that.

Ashira

Right. Well, I think that every Jew has the shared goal of stopping antisemitism and wanting to make sure their communities are protected and wanting to make sure that Jews aren't experiencing hate around the world. I can see that. After October 7th, we've seen Jews rally together. It didn't matter if they were on the left or the right. I was in Israel at the time. I seen—I mean, before I lived next to Bet, right? So every night, Motzei Shabbat, they were protesting every night. Every Motzei Shabbat, they're protesting right outside my door. But after October 7th, I saw with my own eyes Jews come together who were not normally coming together. I've seen every Shabbat, people saying Shabbat Shalom to me. When people are on the street, we're just passing each other on Shabbat, not speaking to each other. So we have the ability to do it. The problem is, we only do it when there's a hard time, right? Like, hard times is

Lio

what we always talk about

Ashira

together. Right. So, how can we keep that same energy throughout the next year or two years or three years? And I

Seth

can't with

Ashira

having to have to go through something so terrible to remind us. So how can we keep that memory so we can say—I think it could be duty and responsibility. And the shared goal is just that we want to keep Am Yisrael one. We don't want antisemitism. We don't want people exploiting our pain. We don't want people using us, abusing us, all of these things that happened after October 7th. We want to stay together. We don't want to have this hate of, like, can I eat at your house? You're not kosher enough. You're not this enough, you're not that enough. You know, that infusion of hate within each other, and I'm talking from an Orthodox perspective, right? Because I see it from the Orthodox community with Reform and with Conservative and who's keeping what and who. You know, so this is my lens of how I'm speaking. And who's, you know, your father's Jewish, your mother's not Jewish, you know, all of these conversations, which Halacha, I know, I understand. There's a halakhic stance for this, but just for a moment, like, inviting someone into your house to have tea. To talk to them as a person, to love on them, to make sure: are you looking for a marriage partner? Do you need to get married? Do your children need something? Are you lacking in money? You know, because these are the real things that we as the Jewish people are going through and people always say, like, oh, the Jews are part of the Illuminati, the Jews are the—but no, what makes the Jews strong is that we care for one another, that we take care of each other. And so making sure that your fellow Jews' needs are met, I think, is the most important before we start to start looking at all the things that divide us. You know, that you drive on Shabbat and I don't. You know, but it's like, you know, Seth, are you—I don't know if you have kids, but, like, are your kids good? I'm worried about your kids, I'm worried about you as a person. More than just you hitting these halakha things, right? And again, I'm talking from this lens because this is the company I keep. So, yeah, I think just caring about people, caring about your fellow Jews' needs, and helping to meet their needs. And I think that will create unity more than what they think about, more than who they vote for, et cetera. Now, I have very strong opinions on who I think the Jewish people should be voting for. I really do.

Seth

We'll talk

Ashira

about that

Lio

Podcast. We'll talk about that in the next show.

Ashira

So, I say this because I have to work through this because I think, are you an effing idiot? You know, I have those thoughts a

Seth

lot. We all do.

Ashira

And then I think to myself, when I hear someone's story. You know, when I'm talking to a person and I hear about their personal issues, I'm like, in the grand scheme of things, this is still a person who's hurting at night, who can't sleep at night, who's worried, worried about their children at school. Worried about finances. We all have the same worry and anxiety and stress. And so does it really help that I sit there and call them an idiot over and over for who they voted for? Or will it help that I—and will I have more influence and maybe can persuade them if I'm focusing on their needs as a

Lio

person? Ash, we could sit here, listen to you for hours, and we'll do it on our next

Ashira

episode, I promise. I have like five more minutes if you guys have more questions.

Lio

Well, we have a lot more questions, but I also have to go because I have another thing

Lio

happening.

Lio

Look, I put a quote in the chat. We always ask people to read a quote from us, from our sages. This is from O A Naim. If you could read it for us, that'd be great.

Ashira

Indeed, when all the disputes are elevated to the root of the source, to the world of unity, unity is formed over the names of the people of Israel. That's beautiful.

Lio

Indeed. I wanted to

Ashira

add one thing, Seth, that you were trying to get me to really answer earlier about who are these people in the middle. And I said, like, they're intelligent. But the other quality that I see in the people that would be open to my message, to the Jewish people, and learning more, are people who are very active. So, they're active in their own communities and they're already solving problems. So, maybe they're businessmen solving problems or they are activists, social activists. These people who are just like talking behind a mic and don't do anything in their actual communities. Those people are harder to persuade, but the people who are actually working with people who are active and they're giving back to their communities. Those, that has been a common quality of the people that I have interviewed. They're doing all of the, they're intelligent and they're active in serving others. And those people are the ones with those qualities.

Seth

Those people are ripe to hear something new, to let something

Ashira

take root. Yes, yes, yes,

Seth

those two qualities.

Lio

Okay. So we're going to, with your help, invite a few of those people to the show and also Flor. And anyone else listening, please go check out the Quad and Black and Jewish because I'm going to listen right now because I just want to hear more of this.

Seth

Such good

Lio

energy, Ash.

Lio

Oh my God.

Ashira

Thank you. Thank you. Thank

Seth

you so much. So beautiful.

Ashira

Thank you. And

Seth

I love how the

Ashira

questions and hopefully we can meet in person at some point.

Lio

Yes, I'm in Israel, so as soon as you get here, we'll talk. And then, if not, if not before this or after this, we have another episode. But this is the Jew Function. Everyone, this is where you meet amazing people first and foremost. And along the way, we also solve antisemitism. So, please follow, like, subscribe, share, comment, all the good stuff. And we'll see you all next week. Thank you, Ashira, Seth.

Ashira

Thanks.