w/ Doron Keidar | The right kind of Jew

Lio: I'll let you know in a second who's going to be our guest today. But if you just got here by accident—there are no accidents—you are strongly encouraged to check out the first season, the first 22 episodes where we lay out the entire history of the Jewish people and the story behind antisemitism, the way we see it, explained according to the laws of nature, backed by historic patterns, the words of Jewish sages, and recent findings from network science. It all adds up beautifully, I might say, and we talk about it in those first 22 episodes. There's also a great learning experience on TheJewFunction.com. You can follow us everywhere at The Jew Function on X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok—wherever there is a gathering of people, we'll be there. So that's us. And we invite people here to talk about their point of view. We invite people here who have a point of view on antisemitism, not simply the symptoms and what's going on in the world—is it up, is it down, is it dangerous, is it more dangerous here or elsewhere. It's important information, but there are great podcasts for that. We are inviting people because we want to connect with people, because we believe everyone has a little point in the heart that feels some great truth about Jews. And we believe that if we want to solve this problem—really solve it, not just alleviate some of the symptoms or push it by another 10, 20 years—we've got to get to the root of it. And so we invite people who have a great point of view, who are already active, either for the Jews, sometimes against the Jews. We've had some great conversations; check those out. And today I have an amazing guest, and I'm not saying it lightly. Every guest is special, but this guy is really an all-around—he's a real mensch. He's an international speaker. I think he's been on active duty since 2003, fighting with the IDF, and then staying on as a reservist in an elite special mobility unit within the IDF, with 20 years of experience in Gaza, Lebanon, Judea, and Samaria. He's active right now. In fact, he was not far from where I live at the scene where the missile hit in Petah Tikva just two days ago, so it was very close. And beyond that, he's also a great communicator, and he's worked on a really interesting project. It's called I Am Israel, and I think now there's a sequel: I Am Israel, The Mountain of the King, about the Temple Mount. We'll talk to him about that. And he's also active with Cry For Zion, a movement advocating for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount. So he's very busy. I don't know how he had time to also get married and have four kids—maybe we'll get some tips on that as well. But I'm very, very happy to not spend this evening by myself in the safe room here. So please welcome Doron Keidar. Good evening. Good evening. How are you, man? Tired. Yeah, I get you. I'm pretty tired.

Doron: It's been, like you just pointed out, a very busy season for my team and me, being that we're deployed and trying to manage our lives, our families, and conducting very complex operations in Gaza that basically throw off our sleeping schedule as is. In addition, we have to run to shelters in our break time when we're trying to catch up on sleep because of Iranian rocket attacks, etc. So it's been a very interesting season. And I think what's really the positive of this is that I would say we're living in the most historic season ever in the history of the Jewish people. And I would say also for the world. This is a very pivotal moment. And I see it as a privilege, even though it's wearing us out. It is a privilege. If you step aside and look for a moment and see what we're involved with, it's an immense privilege, because I know as a child, the last time I was a part of anything this big, in my mind, in my history of wars, was probably the Gulf War. And at that time I was just a teenager and did not get to participate in stopping the bad guys. This time I get to participate in stopping the bad guys. And that's a huge privilege in many ways. Wait, you were here in 1991? Oh, yeah. I was living in Kiryat Shmona. And literally, we were under constant rocket fire from both Lebanon and Iraq. And my brother and I were the only ones who did not get evacuated out of the town of all the children. They got all the children out during that war and sent them down to Eilat, to hotels and whatever, because my parents, being American and not really good Hebrew speakers, I guess they just didn't get the memo. So we literally lived through the Gulf War in the areas that were targeted during the war.

Lio: Yeah, I was in Tel Aviv. I remember it vividly. I even made a short funny movie about it years later, when I was in New York. So your parents are—just to get the story, because you clearly sound American, but you grew up here. Give us a little bit of a genealogical background here. Just go a few generations back. I don't know, Abraham—just something.

Doron: Well, I'll give you the skinny because it is a very different story for most Israelis growing up here. My family originated from the United States. Both my biological parents came from Christian homes. My father grew up in a Protestant home, and my mom actually was Catholic. My father grew up in a pro-Jewish home, pro-Christian. They weren't necessarily Zionist, but they believed in defending the Jewish people. And so during World War II, my dad was 15 years old, lied about his age, and joined the war, because that's how deeply impacted he was by his father, who made it very clear that the Jewish people are God's chosen people and we have to defend them. And that's essentially what led to, years later, his becoming an electrical engineer, which he learned through his service in the military. He was in the Navy's submarine units, and so he learned electrical engineering, even though he didn't finish high school and all that. And then when he got out of the war, he started in electrical engineering and became one of the top contractors in Fort Lauderdale–Miami during the building booms of the ’60s and ’70s and so on. And then after the Six-Day War, they needed U.S. contractors to come to Israel as part of the negotiations with Egypt. America said, fine, we'll send contractors and all kinds of different infrastructure as part of that deal. And so my dad, of course, jumped on that. And that's where he met my mother—his third wife—shortly after that. She was not a Zionist. She was not all into all that, but she was willing to live in the Middle East, in the middle of a war-torn country like Israel.

Lio: She was roped into the Middle East, yeah.

Doron: And basically roped into his crazy idea. And that's how both my younger brother and my twin brother were born here. And we had a tragedy in our home. My twin brother died at two years old from a fire. I, by a miracle, survived, because we were both in the same crib together. So I shouldn't have survived either, but I did. And that essentially derailed my family, that whole tragedy years later. And we essentially—my younger brother and I—ended up in foster care. And then the rest is history, kind of: got married and started my future, went to Bible school, studied theology in the U.S., came back to Israel.

Lio: Oh, okay. So I was missing that part. So the tragedy happened here, but then they went back home and that's when you yourself made the move back to Israel.

Doron: No, so I ended up in foster care in Israel, in Haifa. So we left Kiryat Shmona to Haifa, to a foster family that took care of us. The father was a former actor. He was the professor of performing arts at Fordham University. He's the one who, if you like, “founded” Denzel Washington. And then at the height of his career—acting with people like Anthony Hopkins in films and all that—he literally just left it all to start a drug and alcohol rehab in Israel. And so that's how he and his wife ended up in Haifa.

Lio: Was he Jewish?

Doron: No, he wasn't. He was a Christian. His wife was Jewish. So his wife was Jewish, which is why they came to Israel, because they were part of a church ministry. It's a big ministry in America called Teen Challenge. And it came out of a very well-known church in New York City called Times Square Church that was pastored by David Wilkerson, who was a very big figure, a legend in the evangelical world in those days. He's no longer with us, but that was who his mentor was. That's where he got a passion for working with drug addicts and alcoholics and helping them get rehabilitated. So they wanted to copy that in Israel because they were shocked when the husband and wife came on a honeymoon to the wife's homeland. So he's a Bible guy, got real deep into the Bible and prophecy and all these things. And he said, let's go to your homeland. And so here he's studying about Israel as a Christian who was passionate about Israel. And they discovered in the early 90s that there was a drug pandemic in Israel. And it kind of blew them away, especially when they found out that in Jerusalem of all places, because it's Jerusalem, the city of gold, the holy city, and there's sin and bad things here. Is that even possible? So it's like this dreamy idea that these Christians had that got kind of shook with reality, so to speak. Kind of like the Ethiopians when they talked about the Sigd celebrations that they would have in Ethiopia, and they would talk about one day we'll go to Jerusalem, the city of gold. And then they got here and there's no city of gold, where's the gold? So it's kind of like that. People around the world have their ideas about Israel because of the way they read the Bible and they imagine in their head, they don't have a real connection to what things are today. So in any case, all of that led them to starting drug and alcohol rehab in Haifa. And friends of friends knew my family, knew that basically my father had become an alcoholic. My mom was in and out of the mental institution. And so it was a very unstable home reality. And at this time, I was 13 years old. My brother was 11. And they suggested that we would go to the husband and wife that started this rehab, that maybe they could help us, even though the parents weren't going to go and get help, like my dad, for example, to get rehabbed himself. But maybe you can do something with the kids because it's a sticky situation. And so that's what ended up happening. And we went there. And like I said, I kind of fast forward there. And essentially that led me to also wanting to study theology, went to Bible school in America, came back, started doing my military service. And essentially that was the next pivotal point for myself and my wife. I was married for three years at this time. My mom had just passed away shortly before that, which was part of the reason why I also went to the U.S. So I could be with my father and honor him for his last years. So I actually suspended my military service instead of going in in 99, which was my original call-up date. I ended up joining in 2003, four years later. So I was much older than the rest of the guys, married for three years, had already been to college. And so I basically came in there with a totally different kind of mindset than most of the young guys there. And essentially, that was another turning point for my wife and me, because besides learning how to be a warrior, learning how to be a fighter in the IDF and fight in Gaza because my unit fought in Gaza. We also ended up with a spiritual journey, which led us to eventually become Jewish. My wife and I ended up converting through a program that we started, or I started by myself, because it's a military program called Nativ. And that's essentially a course for non-Jews, but also kids who are Jewish but grew up abroad. It's a program to essentially, it's kind of like Taglit. They show you the country. It's like a touristy-style course in the first phase, but they also teach Judaism and they teach it to you from a multi-spectrum perspective. But at the end of the day, you have to realize you're going to go through the final conversion process, which is going to be through the Orthodoxy. So that's what you need to aim toward in your studies. But they still gave us lectures from different parts of the spectrum. And it was very interesting. And it changed my worldview, of course. It really challenged what I'd already learned in Bible school and what I just learned growing up. And I guess also being that weird kid who grew up in a Christian home but went to synagogue because of my neighbors in Kiryat Shmona and had a Moroccan, Middle Eastern flavor of Judaism in my upbringing and in the customs and in the holidays and so on. And that really fit my worldview and where I reached in my spiritual journey at the time. And that's why eventually my wife and I decided that we wanted to continue, not just enjoy this wonderful course that the military offered for me, but really to continue on and finish. And so the rest is history after that and I ended up again in that new phase in my life, ended up working in security and defense for Israel. And that's essentially what kind of pointed me in the direction of what I've been doing for nearly 20 years now.

Lio: Wow. I thought I was a cosmopolitan Jew.

Lio: You're putting me to shame. You got Catholicism, Protestantism, Jews, drug and alcohol. Wow.

Lio: Yeah.

Lio: That's a crazy story, man. Yeah. And you live in Beit Shemesh, right?

Doron: We had a bunch of guests. Yes, sir.

Lio: Yeah, in the mountains of Beit Shemesh.

Doron: I never tell anybody where I actually live, but yes, it's in the mountains.

Lio: You don't have to.

Doron: Well, the work that I do kind of puts a target on you. But we live in the beautiful mountains of Jerusalem here, overlooking where David fought Goliath, just all of the biblical history surrounding you. So it really puts things in perspective that every time I drive to Gaza to go fight the modern-day Philistines, so to speak, it's just kind of fun. You feel like you're taking part in history, just like when you read about David and you read about the wars of Israel with Joshua leading the children of Israel fighting against these mega battles in all these areas. It's like, okay, so we're doing that today. It's just another chapter in the Jewish people's history, which is just amazing to be a part of.

Lio: So this is really amazing because it seems like you grew up more steeped in Bible stories and biblical history than even an average kid. When I grew up, I went to school. It wasn't today's progressive craziness. It was, you had Bible classes every year and you had to take the SATs at the end and all that. But it seemed like something that just happened back then. That's kind of best case scenario. Worst case scenario is some made-up fairy tale that we're still holding on to. That's how I grew up thinking about the Bible. But for you, it seems like it's almost a direct extension. You grow up in it, you're surrounded by the stories, then you're transported to the Holy Land almost through an unimaginable chain of, one would say, coincidences. There are no coincidences, but then you find yourself now in the middle of the, how does that feel? I mean, how do you see the Bible? I guess maybe that's the question that I'm leading towards. What's your relationship to that book? Because we have a really very special point of view on it, but I want to hear you first.

Doron: The Bible is both a historic record, and it's also real; it's also true, for me. There are a lot of things in there that people are like, come on, the Red Sea being split, or Jesus walking on water, come on. And I get it. I get that there are parts of the Bible, both in the New Testament and Old Testament, that people are always going to criticize and have issues with. But it's never been an issue for me. I've always grown up believing these stories to be true, first of all, but also going to Bible school, you learn how to look at the Bible and prove to yourself, well, why is this true? You dissect it. They give you tools on how to dissect scripture and theology or ideas that we believe. Well, why do we believe that? Does it really say that? And then I had a really good professor that really got your thinking going of, well, why do we believe that, common Christian ideas that most Christians all agree on across the board, so to speak. But then he would start to prove the opposite and he'd give you scripture to do that. And we all just sat there confused, like these young, confused kids, so to speak. I mean, not all of us were kids, but at that time I was in my twenties, and I was just kind of like, oh my God, he just crushed everything I thought was true by proving it to not be true in a few sentences. And he's like, you see how easy it is if you don't know what you believe, and you have to really know that you know, not because I said so, because Professor So-and-so said so, but you need to prove it to yourself. So that challenged me to really dive deep into scripture. And it's essentially also why it led me to the path that I took in my life and choosing the Jewish faith, just because I questioned things. And I never felt easy with just an answer. I wanted to get to the root of it. Well, what's the truth? And so I've always been like that. I want to get to the truth of the matter. I want to get to the heart of a matter, not just take it at face value, so to speak. And when it comes to my relationship to the Bible, it's also something that, in a way, I've always had as a young man, also as a teenager. I remember my—like you just talked about—that's exactly what I had. I studied arts at WIZO in Haifa for my high school. And so it was a very progressive school, if you like, when it comes to religion. And the Bible class, my teacher was very, how would you say, she was very much about trying to prove how the Bible isn't unique and the Jewish people's story isn't, like the flood, or whatever.

Lio: She's like, oh, here's another story. Yeah, it was a common myth. Everybody shares those myths.

Doron: Yeah, and it really bothered me. I was like, hey. I remember raising my hand and saying, is this Bible class, or is this the class of mythology in other religions, just so we get this clear? Oh, no, it's Bible. I said, well, what you just said is not true then. What do you mean? Well, you can't. Either it is what it says it is, or you want to say it's relating to something else. But it can't be and/or. You don't do that. And so she actually got really mad with me, and when I had my tests, she asked my foster mom to come in and did a review with me and said, your kid here, he's stubborn. He won't answer the answers on my tests. And I'm asking, what are you asking? Well, the story about whatever, I forget, but a biblical story. And okay, so he gave his answer of how he knows the story. He knows the Bible really well. You know, our family in our home, we read the Bible. My husband is a very learned man. He was a professor. I mean, on very big levels, he has read and memorized whole volumes of some of the greatest philosophical thinkers of history, right. And he's like, but this is what we teach him at home, that the Bible is true. And they were not dumb people. And so she's like, well, if he can put my answer, which is basically talk about mythology and prove her ideas that she taught us, and then put his answer on the side, then that's okay. And I remember I looked at my foster mom. She's like, well, it's a compromise. I looked at her and I was like, you know what, just because I don't want to embarrass her in front of the teacher, I'll be like, okay, sure. Let's just get this over with. And then when we left, I said, I am not answering anything like that on her test. If I get a zero, I get a zero. I said, but the Bible is true and it is what it is. If she doesn't like it and she wants to teach something else, then don't call it Bible. She's the one who's lying, not me. And it was just like that.

Lio: Nice.

Doron: And so that's kind of, in a way, that's kind of been an anchor in my life, I guess, that if you want to seek out, we're talking about religion and who is God and what's the truth and what Bible to believe, what scripture, what prophet, however you want to look at it, you go on your spiritual journey and you follow that truth that leads you. And you also make enemies along the way because if you're a person like me, you're just not going to swallow the collective, this is what we all believe. Because just because I've converted to Judaism doesn't mean that I swallow the collective whole of, this is what we believe. I still question things, and I'll also disagree with maybe mainstream ideas and opinions. And I mostly keep it to myself because I know that people get offended by, I guess, more of an academic, historical digging into the truth of the matters of things, especially when it comes to religion. It's a touchy area.

Lio: We like to touch it. It's good. It's okay.

Doron: But I just said, if with some people you try to have that conversation, they just get lit up, because you're touching holy cows, and it's okay.

Lio: We love cows.

Doron: The point is the

Lio: The point is, for me, it's funny—I'll just share this because I also grew up in a very logical house. My dad's a physicist, my mom's an architect, so there's arts, there's science, there's all those things. Yes, there's the Bible, there's tradition, those things—but it's a book on the shelf somewhere. There were certain customs we followed and that's about it. There was no real digging. The Bible was back then, 2,000 years ago, and now we have what we have now. You can look at the correlations, and that's fine. Nobody was taking it too seriously. Also, Ashkenazi secular Jews try not to make a big fuss about anything. It was just whatever.

Lio: But then I started—I left Israel, actually, to find answers. I swore that, for me, not religion. I didn't want anything to do with religion. I grew up in the 80s, when the Orthodox community here grew stronger. They got into politics. People were burning bus stops with ladies in bikinis on them. They were torching those. So to me it was like, oh, some weird fanatic old-world relics—not where I will find my answers.

Lio: But after going around and around, at some point I started to find Kabbalistic texts, and they were saying two things that really got to me. One was that, if we can write better stories than the Bible—maybe Harry Potter is, like, why that particular story is the story that's been attached to us and to our people, following us throughout history. It was the first book ever printed. Everybody knows it. It's had such an influence on the world, and you can make up better fairy tales, so why that story? Why this particular strange collection of stories? That was a good point. Why not make Harry Potter the Bible? It's crazy enough, it has all kinds of craziness and magic and all that. No—it's that story.

Lio: And then the other thing that I heard that got to me was that all the things that holy texts are talking about—the Bible, the Talmud—actually speak first and foremost of internal qualities. Everything is happening inside of a person. “A man is a small world,” as the saying goes, and it's not a euphemism. It's all happening inside your desire, as they say. All the push and pull, all those forces, they're forces inside of a person. They talk about the movement of desires inside of a person into Egypt—into the seat of the will to receive, the seat of egoism, if you will—and then coming out of Egypt, coming out of that by uniting the desires and reaching a state called Arvut and reaching a state called “as one man in one heart” around Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is from the word sin'ah (hate). It's a mountain of hate. You gather all the hate and friction and contradictions between people, and you cover all of that with love, with an aspiration for something higher. I was like, oh, that's actually a very interesting way to look at it.

Lio: You can start to feel a totally new feeling toward all those different stories, whether you also want to relate to them as historical events that did happen at some point in time—or something of those happened. But there was an internal quality, and I really searched for that. That really appealed to me. And so I'm wondering, I'm asking.

Lio: We also brought people here on the show, and people talk about how the Bible is really a never-ending thing. That's why you don't need to continue to write the Bible. It's done. It speaks of this transition from these disparate desires all uniting into one, reaching a connection with the upper force. That's the goal of the whole craziness. And that's why every Passover you have to talk about the Exodus. Why? It's out. We're out of Egypt. Why do we have to go back to it? Because you're still in Egypt, my friend. You're still stuck in the grips of your egoism. You're still thinking about yourself first and foremost. And we're trying to free ourselves from that. People were saying that you can read the Bible today and it will apply to you—what's happening today. I just saw someone quoted—again, you could say coincidence—that the story of Purim, the fall of the Persian king, was like this Thursday, right?

Lio: Yes, that's right.

Lio: Yeah, so, coincidence. But it's just interesting that we're living in this big play that's playing out. For you, what are you doing with it? So my question to you is, what are you doing with all of that—with all of that knowledge, all this questioning, and all the following in the footsteps of the Bible? What are you making of it for today, for right now? And when you answer it, tie it a little bit, if you can—just to make it more complex for you—tie it to this pressure that we're feeling on the Jewish people, this pressure we haven't felt the likes of since, really, the Holocaust: that kind of almost global pressure on the Jews to do for something. We'll talk about that—what's that thing—but just talk about that. How do you see that playing out today, and the Bible and its role in your life today?

Doron: Yeah. Well, I think you made really good points about how the Bible essentially is cyclical, right? It's always relevant almost every time when you're reading, especially when you're reading through the weekly Torah portion. It just seems like this portion is so relevant for now. And why? Why do we feel that? First of all, let's just ask that question. For every Jewish person that is following the weekly Torah portion—readings, stories—relevance to your life, ask yourself, why is it relevant to me as I'm reading this? I'm going, oh, yes. And it's the power of storytelling.

Doron: That's something about the Bible that I think is so powerful: it tells the story of humanity through a people—through Israel. I mean, it does single out a people, but it is the story of the world as well. It's the story of humanity. And every person on planet Earth, in my opinion and also my experience—because I have friends from all over the world, many Christians from around the world globally who read the Bible—and they have that same experience. They have that same exact testimony, if you like. They can testify and say, oh, yeah, that's me too. Me too, right? I just read this today, and it's so relevant for right now. And they'll share that with me. I just think it's the power of God's word that is so powerful that it supersedes time, I guess is the word. I'm hard with English. But it surpasses time and everything. Whereas, you know, Shakespeare wouldn't have been relevant in Abraham's day, honestly, I don't think. It wouldn't have been relevant in the time of Bavel.

Lio: Not only that, you can't talk to Shakespeare, but you could talk to Abraham probably. You could probably get along with Abraham pretty well.

Lio: The same language, right?

Doron: Exactly, right? But things that are a big hit now to us in our generation and our lifespan now—what we consider to be great works of poetry or film—like, that film is so relevant. But 30 years from now, it's not going to be relevant. Or let's say 100 years from now, it's not going to be relevant. There's going to be different circumstances, different realities. The Terminator is not going to be an issue because a hundred years from now, oh, we solved that problem with AI and the machine that's going to kill us, for example—for all the film nerds out there. So I'm just saying, depending on the time and season you're in—or take the Terminator and again bring it back to the time of Abraham and those guys. They're like, what are you talking about? The machine's going to—what machine? What are you talking about?

Doron: But the Bible—that was literally being lived out by the patriarchs and then the prophets and so on later, and then writing those writings down and then them getting canonized into scripture. Whatever was canonized and collected—because there's plenty that wasn't, by the way, for anybody who cares and wants to do a deep dive. There's plenty of little books and prophets and whatever that just weren't added, and you can read what they have to say as well. A lot of Christians like the Book of Enoch, for example, etc. All that to say that, to me, it is something that you just have to accept. Okay, this is a force of nature that you can't stop. You can't prevent it. It is what it is, and it will impact you. It will affect you, and it does affect us. Just recently, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, wrote a powerful message to Trump, right? And what do you think impacted that powerful— I mean, to me, it was such a—I was like, wow.

Lio: That was a strong statement. You're talking about a mensch.

Doron: This guy is a mensch. And I've had the privilege of being involved in some of the people around him and also help—any case, I can't go into details. But the point is, these are people who live their lives as devout Christians who read the Bible, and that affects them—their policymaking as the person of today. If I were the Haman of today, right? If I were the Mordecai of today, what would I do? If I were in their shoes—that is playing out in their minds because that story is playing out in their minds of whatever they have read in the Bible. And they're living out that reality through themselves and saying, well, if I'm put in this position, then I must X, Y, Z. And so it impacts the way you live your life.

Doron: For me, for example, when it comes to—like you talked about—Mount Zion, or technically, Sinai. But what becomes the place of pilgrimage to Sinai? It's not Sinai. Sinai gets left behind in the narrative, in the Jewish story. It's the tabernacle that carries the glory of God from Sinai, and all that revelation and all that amazingness that happened to the people of Israel and everything they witnessed. It literally leaves the locale of Mount Sinai, and nobody goes back there except, I think, Elijah, when he's running away from Ahab and so on. And then again, God's kind of like, what are you doing? Where are you going? Get your butt back over here. You're going nowhere. That road doesn't lead you anywhere. You need to go back to where the story continues. It takes you to Israel. They pass Gilgal. They go to Eval, and they build—probably, according to the experts—the first altar, known as Joshua's altar today. And then they go to Shiloh. Right, 369 years the tabernacle is there, which is, for people to understand, this is the revelation of—

Lio: God. This is God's very special place, by the way. Yes. My friend was just there a few weeks ago before the start of the war. He was a filmmaker who was on a shoot. They get to the place, and they've got all the gear, they have batteries, everything. They get to the place, all the batteries drain. Nothing works. What's happening here? They're not mystic people, but it's like something is up—really powerful. It's unusual. It's unusual.

Doron: Exactly. It's unusual. We filmed—so anybody who goes to watch I Am Israel: The Mountain of the King, we film a sequence there. And all these places I'm mentioning, by the way, those are all in the film. And why are we telling that? Because people need to understand—our film is directed towards Christians, of course, but again, anybody who cares about the Bible—you need to understand that these are real, powerful stories, not just for back then, but for today. And God is trying to speak to us, I believe, to the world, but most specifically to Israel, because Israel has a responsibility, I believe, to be a nation of priests, as it says, or, in other words, to be a reflection of that revelation of God that was given to Moshe, given to the Levites and the priests and so on, and for us to live out as examples of what's the

Lio: Right way to be as human beings. Okay, hold on. Let me stop you here. This is really at the heart of everything we're saying. It only took us 15, what, 20 minutes to get. So this is good. The thing is, I'm sure you noticed that when you talk to people, there are people for whom it's very easy to lean in that direction. They're either, by the way they were raised or what they study or the way they're open a certain way, and they will, yes, of course, it feels right. And then there are those who are like, no, that's crazy talk. Forget about God; we can't even speak of all that stuff. And why single out the Jews, and why call attention to the Jews, and why? No, we're just like everyone. I imagine—this goes without saying—listening to you, that you feel that specialty, that uniqueness. And it's not uniqueness that positions you in a position of superiority, but rather a position of service, of responsibility, because there's a real understanding of that position in humanity. If humanity needs to rise to a certain place and someone's got to show the way, it's just natural. And there happens to be this group. Why this group? Well, someone had to be picked to do it. It's this group, right? So through all these incarnations from Babylon and Abraham all the way to where we are, it's that group. And people were added to this group and people left and people joined, but eventually it's that core group that hasn't grown much in numbers. By the way, you know, the Chinese mushroomed quite nicely, but not the Jews; we stayed a small number of people. So how do you find, you know, how are you able to communicate those ideas to people who think that this is craziness, that this is wrong, that this is actually working against us? How do you do that? Because I think that's a really important point, because we're trying to talk to people about those things. And this is one of our main challenges—to even open up to that. Forget God—you know, maybe you're a great religion and all, whatever baggage you have with it—but there's something big happening here. We're part of something epic. How do you get people to join the production?

Doron: Yeah. It's a good question because I find religion and what religion has done to the world—if it be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other religions—you end up with wars. You end up with, like you talked about, you gave an example of the ladies in a bikini at a bus stop and then having firebombs thrown at them by ultra-Orthodox that are like, hey, we don't accept that here, and that was their way of showing it. In other words, people who are religious, people who represent a religion, have acted in horrible ways. And unfortunately, it puts a very bad name on either their faith and/or their God that they so-called represent. And so you have baggage, like you said, you have a baggage that comes along with, I believe this, right? So when I say I'm a Jew, the type of antisemitic slurs that I've gotten that—if anybody's watched interviews with Dan Bilzerian, for example, I think he's one of the best examples because he throws out there a long list of all of these falsities of the Jewish people as fact. Oh, and that's a fact. And that's a fact. And in their Talmud—you know, not their Talmud, in their Talmud—you know, they talk like they know what they're talking. They can't even say, or you know what I mean? They can't have any case. And that's kind of the symptom of those who are against. And I think my goal isn't to win people like that over and get them to recognize, hey, God's awesome, and look what He's done, and look at the miracles, because they're not going to see it. No, no, no.

Lio: I'll narrow it down for you a little bit. What I'm really talking about, the subtext, is our own brothers and sisters. Jews.

Doron: Sure, sure. It goes.

Lio: I want to start with that because I can't change the rest of the world.

Doron: I can't.

Lio: It's not the rest of the world.

Doron: But what I'm saying is there's the criticisms of the rest of the world towards the Jewish people. And because of those pressures, we don't want to be seen as a symptom. We want to hide from that because we don't want that negative energy. And so a lot of Jews are either going to be silent. They're going to be quiet and hide and just kind of be the gray man, so to speak. And then there are some people that will just leave their faith. I have a guy that I just had a conversation with; he said he used to be religious. He isn't anymore. And I go, okay, interesting. And then one of the other guys in the conversation says, well, you know, Doron wants to have prayer on the Temple Mount. What do you think about that? And then he made a kind of a nasty comment about it, because it's his knee-jerk reaction of anti-religion attitude. And so I was like, okay, well, why do you feel that way? Why is it you feel that way? I'm curious. I said, I get it. To you, God is something you've left behind. But why? And then he gave all of those examples that the nations also will repeat. You know, we're this, we're that, and blah, blah, all the anti-Godders, if you like. And I'm like, all right, got you. And so I think the thing is, to help those people that have a bad taste in their mouth for religion, is that if you represent a faith—and if we're specifically talking about the Jewish people—if you're representing Judaism as a Jew and say that you're religious, then I encourage every one of us, because I also consider myself religious, to live to a higher standard. And that higher standard is how you treat your fellow man. You can be a religious zealot, if you like, and put on tefillin and the prayers. You're that guy. But if you're crooked in your business dealings, if you're treating others disrespectfully, you cut in line, and you just act like a total turd, you're putting a bad taste in other people's mouths and making them feel, well, that's what religion is. And so my goal, and I feel my responsibility as representing the religious amongst the community, is to represent it in a way that is honorable. To the point where I've had people say—like one of the guys came up to me—because he saw me take off my tzitzit from my uniform. And mind you, we sleep together in the same room and everything. He goes, wait, you wear tzitzit? Like, you're religious? Because he's one of the newer guys, to be fair. And I go, yeah. And he's like, wow, I didn't realize that. And I went, perfect, because I don't want you to have to realize it because you're always seeing me do the religious things. I'm in your face with my prayer book, right? I'm in your face with doing the mitzvah of praying before I put something in my mouth, like, in your face, so to speak. You get what I mean. And anybody who's religious gets what I mean, I hope. But for those who are non-religious, you don't really understand, but there's a way of religiosity that's out there, and there's a way of being faithful that doesn't have to be shining and the look-at-me kind of deal. And I'm not saying the people that do that, that's what they're trying to do, but it's a fine balance. And how do you do that? It's a fine balance, because that's my goal. It's not to make people feel that, oh, because we got the religious guy, and because it's Shabbat now, okay, we can't do this, can't do that. I'm like, guys, you do whatever you want. I'm not going to be that guy that's going to make you feel bad because you're not keeping Shabbat and whatever. You want to turn on the lights, you want to play music, play music. I don't care. You live the way that you're comfortable. That's good for you, but this is who I am. And it's not going to be in your face. Hopefully that's a good way to explain it. I don't know.

Lio: No, no. First of all, it's such a humble attitude. I love it. And I think it's a very good way of relating what it is and what we're trying to do. Because—and now I'm going to challenge you some more—when you bring in, let's now, okay, so we talked a little bit about other Jews, we'll get back to them in a second because this is where it's at, but I want to talk for a second about antisemitism. Obviously, I think anyone who's around today now understands, sees, feels this attitude coming from everywhere. Ten years ago, you go to an Israeli and say antisemitism, they're like, what? You go to someone in America, they say, oh, it's a golden medina, they love us here, we're the bee's knees. It's like, what are you talking about? But then these things start to happen, and now, after October 7th and everything that's happening, all the changes in the world, it's clear that there's an issue. Something is up. People have a certain attitude toward the Jews. Even those who are not rabid antisemites, even those who are not going to go to demonstrations and protests, even those who are not the great ideologues who write books, but just everyday people, have a certain feeling about Jews. You say Jew; it's not, you know—you say Jew, and you say, I don't know, Romanian, whatever—it's not the same. There's a reaction. And what we're trying to ask people—we have an explanation, but I'd love to hear your experience with it and your take on it—is that if Jews are meant to be such a great example, and there were times when Jews were that example—actually, there were a few hundred years where Jews were the prime example for that—from all over the old world people flocked to Israel, to Jerusalem. That's how Greek philosophy was born. They came here. They interacted with Jews—what we call today you could call them Kabbalists—but the people who held the inner core of the wisdom, and they shared it with them. They taught them. They took it back. They called it philosophy. We have philosophers explaining that. Johann Reuchlin talks about his teacher, and Plato, and all these guys who took all their stuff from the Jews. So it's there. The question is then—and then, obviously, fast-forward to modern times and all the great additions Jews brought to humanity in morals and ethics and thought and technology and you name it—why are people not liking the Jews? What's the deal with that? Why do people hate Jews? Tell us. Yeah. Go on. You know. What's your version of it, at least? Yeah.

Doron: Yeah, exactly. Obviously, I've heard all the proper terms and explanations and many angles of it. Because it's something I've studied for many years as one who is challenged constantly with the nations in the work that I do. A lot of it is geared towards the Christian world, but also the nations in general. They don't believe per se in God, but defend Israel on a diplomatic level, on whatever level. And just challenging them and their diplomacy toward our nation, be it from a Christian-rooted nation or a non-Christian nation. Because that, of course, is going to change how their attitude toward you is going to be. And there's something very powerful that one of the main—what do you call them—apostles to the non-Jewish world said. When Christianity started, it was mostly Jews, or not—they were all Jews. It was all Jews. I was going to say mostly. They were all Jews. They had maybe some Gentiles in the mix. But essentially what happened is Paul is basically the Chabad of the old world that advertises Judaism, but in contrast to Chabad, it's not to Jews, it's to the nations, the Gentiles. And he said something very powerful to the Gentiles. He says to them, listen, now that you've been part of our faith and you're taking part within us, he warns them. He says, don't be arrogant. Don't be arrogant and think for a minute that you are going to supersede the Jews, that you're going to take their place. And he says, remember that the root bears you and not the other way around. In other words, the root is Israel. You're a branch, a foreign one at that. And he uses agriculture to explain the idea. He says, you're a foreign branch grafted into a good cultivated olive tree. You're grafted in. Remember, if that branch doesn't bear fruit, meaning you, the Gentile, aren't aligning with the Jewish world and our customs and the way we do things. Well, God is just going to cut you off and throw you into the fire just as easily as he'll do it with his own people, his chosen people who are living unfaithful to the Torah is essentially the point he's making. In other words, don't be arrogant. It's amazing he warned them, and I think also Peter, who's the head of the early church in Jerusalem, also warns the Gentiles. I've always thought about that—why would they have ever said that? Because there wasn't antisemitism back then like it is today. The irony is that, out of the fruit of that—the Gentiles grasping onto this Jewish faith but then making it their own completely and developing Catholicism out of it, etc.—and then the history of Christianity and what it becomes, it became anti-Jewish. It became a competition with the Jewish faith in many ways, even. And I always thought to myself, if I were those guys and I'm reading Paul and I'm reading Peter's warnings, what on earth? Are you stupid? How could I say that the Jewish people are no longer relevant and I take their place, which is what's known as replacement theology, etc. And I'm like, are they just dense? Don't they see the warning? And I think it's just human nature. It's human nature because before the church, you had Haman, you had, all throughout history, those who challenged the Jews. Pharaoh—hello. Throughout all of our history, there's always been a conflict between the people who received the revelation of God, of the one true God, and everyone else that's, wait, you're better than us? Wait, you mean your God says you can't do this and this? And ever since Abraham, there's always been conflict with the other—and also within ourselves, ironically. That's also an interesting side effect of antisemitism: self-hating Jews on top of that, which is totally bizarre to me as well. It's like, this is crazy. And so the simple answer is, it's a spiritual reality that exists and it will continue to exist until Mashiach comes, I believe, and basically sorts things out. I don't think humanity is able to supersede it; it's like gravity. You can't fight it. It's there. Antisemitism is there. But what you can do, and this is my answer to the Gentile, the non-Jew, take Paul's warning and Peter's warning and all of these guys' warnings. Don't be arrogant. You in France, Macron, you arrogant world leader. Do you not see your arrogance?

Lio: Well, he's French.

Doron: It doesn't matter who you are. Khomeini right now, it doesn't matter. Your arrogance—people are arrogant. Quit trying to fight God's choice. This is God's choosing. You either accept it and you follow his plan or you resist it and you will be crushed.

Lio: So, this solution, I mean, this approach is actually very good because it's very clean. You know, there's a story, there's the Bible, there's this God, this force at the very top of it. We subscribe to it. If you follow that, it's very clear. Don't be arrogant. Don't go against it. Be a good example. It's actually pretty organized. It's well organized. I haven't even asked you, by the way, how would you define a Jew to an alien? This is our favorite question. We'll think about that for a second. What I do want to ask you is something else. If you, especially people outside of Israel, you know, they're looking through the news and everything. I mean, before the war, before the seventh even, a lot of the friction that was happening here in this country between these two sides, not even left and right, as we discussed it many times. It's a small minority and a larger majority. A lot of the stuff that was thrown against the majority was like, oh, you're going to create this messianic state. You're going to create this regional war, this Armageddon. People are afraid of those things. This scares people. Correct. I mean, it's fear messaging. Even though I have to say it's exciting, when you compare a reality show to that, I was like, you know, that's cool. That's cool. You know, Armageddon, my lifetime. That's cool. You know, to see God coming down, you know, everybody, they're all converging around this one spot in the north of Israel. I get front-row ticket. You know, no, I mean, it's interesting. It's cool. You know, like, what do you have to do? You have to read your paper and go to the beach on Saturday. That's your biggest alternative. And I'm exaggerating because I know I grew up in a house also that was kind of like afraid of this religious, you know, they're going to coerce us, imposing on us all kinds of customs we don't want to do. I don't want to bless before I eat the food. Like you said, I don't want to do this and I don't want to do that. I want to just live my life. You know, that was the, you know, people who came from totalitarian countries in Europe and from the war. I just want to be a free spirit, even though that's an illusion. We know there's no such thing. You're not really free. You're a slave to something. You're always working under some kind of force that's on top of you. And you can decide, I want to work for the biggest force. I'm going to go work for the big boss. And that's fine. I mean, that's a calculation. That's a process that people are going through for their entire lives—lifetimes sometimes. But right now, if you talk to people, when you put things on the table with such clarity and conviction, the average person, the non-religious, and definitely people who are not Jews, it can be stressful. It can sound a little like, I don't want that. It's too much. It's too much on my nervous system. I didn't sign up for this big clash between Judaism, Christianity, Islam and whoever else. I don't want it.

Doron: Yeah. Yeah. It's like Star Wars. I don't want Darth Vader. Give me this happy fairy tale, nice, easygoing story. Why do I have to be that dude that has to go and fight this big, scary dude that can crush me?

Lio: Yeah.

Doron: Give me Harry Potter. Harry Potter's nice. Yeah, it's nice.

Lio: And what people are not realizing is that the Jew, the real human, we talk about human Adam, the word Adam from the word Dome, to resemble the upper one. That is the real destiny of humanity. We want to rise from this level of existence and we can. And it's nature's plan that it's pushing everybody in that direction, whether you like it or not. How do you help someone enlist into this worldview? Because, again, to me, even though you and I, we may have slightly different language in some areas and your very unique background and my unique background and what is unique, really. But I feel you 100%. And if you were to bring me on your podcast and we would talk about really the Kabbalistic and everything and how it's, you know, I would tell you, yes, these wars have to be fought. They don't have to be fought outside on the battlefield. They can be fought inside you if you want to be up to the challenge. But that's what it's about. You have to fight it one way or another. If you're not going to fight it inside, you're going to have to fight it on the outside. But you have to be part of this light versus darkness type of thing that's unfolding here. How do we enlist people to that big campaign? What do we do?

Doron: Well, first of all, I just also want to go back on the last thing I was saying. The arrogance of the Gentiles—it's not just the Gentiles that have that problem. It's also the Jewish people. There's an arrogance of, we are different, and they notice, and they see it, and I get that challenge, like, oh, you guys think you're better than us. I don't, but I know some Jews do. They do speak in such a way that they get this idea that somehow, yeah, they're better than everyone else because of blah, blah, blah. And so the knife cuts both ways. That warning that Paul gives to the Gentile is also pointing back at you as a Jew, who's the one who's supposed to be that light to the Gentiles, that, yeah, well then you should live up to that standard that I, the Gentile, should copy. And so ultimately I would say back now to this question you're asking, it all plays into that. It's like either you can be—either you can go, I don't know, worship some rock, and there's people around the world. That's what they do. I've been to Asia and I've seen people that are empty. They don't have life in them and they're searching for meaning. They're searching for something to worship. And, like you said, you're going to be a slave to someone. You kind of were wording it. And that's a good point. You're going to be a slave to something. You're either going to be a slave to your job. You're going to be a slave to your passion of creating music or movies or whatever it is. Something is going to be your master, so to speak, that you're going to feel.

Lio: You're going to serve. Yeah, you're going to have to serve.

Doron: And the way I look at it is this. My life without God, which was a very short period of my life, but it was the fruit of abuse and just horrible upbringing. Horrible, but a certain part of it got really bad. And I was a very angry, bitter kid that had a lot of darkness over me. But when I got God in my life, it changed me as a human being. It made me a better person. And as I continued that trajectory of searching and seeking God. And you know what? When you're honest with yourself, as you were also saying, you just have to be honest with yourself and realize, like it or not, it's going to be an external battle or an internal battle. And I think the more aggressive we are with ourselves and with challenging the ma'ut of the ben adam, the ma'ut sheli—what is my purpose? Why am I here? Why is everything? The questioning, right? What scientists do. And that's what I love about science, by the way. Some religious people are terrified of science. I love science. Science is strengthening my faith even more so.

Lio: In any case, it's like... Rav Kook said science and religion are not at odds. They're simply two points of view of the same thing.

Doron: Yeah, and that's the beauty of it, because to me, scientists, religious people, philosophers—when you're seeking truth and you're on that trajectory, it's going to make you a better person. More so if you also apply those truths to your life and your actions; it's going to create a better world atmosphere. If you want to be a bitter grinch who says there's no God and that all those religious people are the reason for all the bad in this world, but you're not looking at the ones that you've never heard, that you've never seen, that are quiet, beautiful human beings that you and I will probably never know their names. But to me, those are going to be the so-called saints in the world to come that Hashem is going to say, everybody, da-da. You're like, well, what about Rav Kook? What about Rabbi Akiva? What about this guy, this lady over here? It's going to be people that you've never heard their name. And the reason why they're great is not because they so-called impacted humanity in a way, because we all have different callings, I guess you can call it, or different giftings. Not everybody's supposed to be a front-man person, with all the attention, and they kind of lead or whatever. They're just quiet people who do amazing mitzvot and good deeds, however you want to say it in English, and you'll never hear of those people. I'll give you an example: the other day, just recently, my friends and I were eating out in Beersheba, and we were done with our meal and we came to pay, and they said the person who was a guest here had paid for your meal. And we said, I want to thank him. Oh, they've already gone. But just so you know, your meal is taken care of. That was a quiet good deed, not looking for a thank you. I mean, it was the ultimate way of tzedakah, what is known as the highest form of tzedakah. I mean, there are lots of ways, in other words, to just be a better person. And to me, faith, God, having a framework, helps me be that. If I were to live my life without knowing the Bible, without learning the sages’ teachings, without getting—like you were talking about—perspective on things that you think you understand by just reading the Bible at face value, but then hearing the sages talk about these deep secrets, so to speak, of what meaning is in there. And then also you're going to get that. The more you dive into God's word, the more you seek God, I believe, the more revelation you get as a person. Again, on your bandwidth, if you like—you might not be a Rav Kook—but for me, it's going to be this little skinny cable, this little guy, that's my bandwidth, and great are the sages. But this is what I'll be getting. And I'm happy with that because that's what God created me to be: a conduit to heaven, to earth, to humanity. And the better we are at just doing that and seeking that, you're going to be a better human being. You're going to love your life more. You're going to find meaning. And I've met a lot of people who are, I would say, without God, and their lives feel very much without meaning. And I think that's exactly why God chose Israel—not because we were better than anyone else—but He had to choose someone. And it's an ambassador, if you like, right? So He chose an ambassador, and He gave that ambassador the revelation of how to be better human beings. And it's to be an or la-goyim. In other words, it's for humanity. It's not just for them; it's for all of humanity. And we can all benefit from that. But if we are anti that, for different reasons—everybody's got a reason why not—these are the reasons why, yes. For me, it's that simple.

Lio: So back to that question, with everything you've said, all these great examples, how would you define a Jew to an alien who came here and saw this tiny group that draws so much attention and has so much influence?

Doron: Who are those people? What is it? That's a very hard question to answer, honestly, because hindsight is 20/20. When we talk about prophecy, for example, when you live out the prophecy, you go, oh yeah, of course. But for those who were before it, you're like, how is that going to pan out, so to speak? In the same way, because of the lack of context, I can talk to you or even to non-Jews and tell them what a Jew is, and they get it because there's a certain context stored in their psyche. How do I explain that to someone that has nothing, like there's no context to glean from? Wow. Right. That's the challenge. And I would say, look, this is the human species. It was created by a higher being that created this species and other species. They got split into languages, peoples, cultures. And then the one, out of the species, left the rest because they got a revelation of that higher being, and they got the calling to be that set-apart representative of that higher being. And their children and their families after them had to follow suit with that, right? Because that one head of that being made a covenant. And so they all agreed, and they were bound to that agreement, and it continued. It worked, because the next person in line could have said, heck no, that's stupid, let's go back to making idols. Grandpa was rich, we're dirt poor, forget that nonsense, following this God in the wilderness. But no, they continued, and it was like this magical thing that happened, and you can't really explain why the next one said yes, and then the one after that said yes to this calling of a chosen people. And more than that, the collective whole of the rest of this humanity that was created constantly turned on these people and treated them badly and did horrible things to them. And yet they still believed in this higher being for some reason. And then, by miracle—we can't explain it—no matter how big and strong these other beings were, they couldn't crush these little nobodies. They just couldn't do it. And even though they wouldn't believe that they have a higher being that could protect them or do special things for them—no, no, no, that can't be, that's just nonsense—but we can't defeat them. And we keep falling, and an empire after empire falls, and these people keep continuing throughout history. So they're very, very unique, and you almost can't explain it. It almost doesn't make sense. There's no logic behind what happened, but they're still there. Oh, and by the way, they're still living and thriving, and they're still somehow back in their land, somehow speaking their original language. Somehow we can't explain it. And everyone who came before and tried to destroy them—those people don't exist anymore. But there are newer empires, and they still think that they can destroy these nobodies. So yeah, these are very interesting people. And hopefully you understood my explanation, oh weird being from another planet.

Lio: This is great. We need a lot of footnotes for that explanation—for the higher being. But no, I got everything. I got all the references. This is good. No, I think at the end of the day, people—we're lazy people. We just want, show me where do I have to sign, and what do I get, and just leave me be. But being a Jew is a bit of hard work. You always feel like you're hanging between heaven and earth, and the weight of the world is on your shoulders a little bit, and it's on the roof—right? I mean literally that, or A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers, whichever your generation is. But if it was a little easier, I think even Jews in Israel and around the world would be more willing to participate, but it does seem like it requires a lot of a person to constantly be walking this very, very thin line, always between these two awful options, and somehow the way out is only this tiny eye of a needle at the end, and constantly having to reconcile oppositions in you. Oh, this is great, and we just buried my best friend, but this is amazing. This constant—yeah, it puts a lot of strain on a person.

Doron: 100%.

Lio: I wouldn't want to be the other—I'll put it that way, because—

Doron: I've seen enough of the world, I've seen enough of humanity, that I see a lot of emptiness in this world. I wouldn't want to be those people without purpose, because I've seen so many people—they're so clueless. Oh, they're wealthy. In my security work, I worked for literally some of the wealthiest people in the world. But a lot of these people, I've noticed that without God, they're nothing. They're very powerful, they're very wealthy, but you can tell there's not real true joy, happiness, and very few. And there are some—very few—you can tell that they have, at least I've noticed, a God-centric base. They're not super ultra-religious, but you can tell they have that as a base, that there's a certain morality. There are certain lines they won't cross. They won't go to the bar with other guys and go hit on women, even though they're married and he's married. Very rarely you'll see those people, and you're like, okay. And you can tell they're happier than their counterparts. They're equally powerful, equally rich, equally all that, but you can tell there's a joy and a happiness in that person, or purpose. And they act like actual real mensches of human beings. They don't treat other people—you see how they treat other people—they treat other people like human beings.

Lio: And you're like, wow, this is because they have that connection to—and again—

Doron: That's my personal observation. I could be wrong, but that's what I've—

Lio: Witnessed. Oh no, you can't be wrong. Don't—where do you—and that's the last question I'll bug you with, but it seems like we can hang for much longer—where do you take the strength to juggle, to go through this, to wake up every day with everything corporeally, spiritually, and mentally, whatever?

Doron: Yeah, for me it's God, first and foremost. Without my faith, without my family that helps me with that structure—my wife, she's constantly challenging me—

Lio: To be a better man, to be a better leader. Wives do that—they do. Good wives. And so—

Doron: Exactly. So I've had an amazing ezer k'negdo that has been a real rock. And I think when you find that, you find real joy in your life and purpose and ability to be challenged and to do a lot more than you really think you could do beforehand. I think we all have our limits in our minds. Something that I learned a long time ago in the military is that there's nothing that you cannot achieve. It's all in your mind. And if you can break through mentally, for whatever that wall is that you see as your present wall—in some cases, it was an actual literal wall in a physical test that you couldn't scale—but then eventually you figure it out. You persevered. And so that is where I get it. It's not because I'm special in any way at all. I'm just allowing myself to be open to God and to be used by Him and to be willing to do things that are outside my comfort zone. I'll put it that way. Because I think that's the easiest thing. As you said, we're lazy people, myself included. We are all lazy. Nobody wants to get up and do PT and work out and pray and read the Bible or anything like that. It's not something that comes naturally to you, but especially to me. I didn't grow up doing tefillin. So it's not a routine like brushing your teeth that's so easy. It's something that I have to actively remind myself, okay, tefillin time. And I think that's just what it is. It's “embrace the suck.” It's not going to be easy, but when you embrace the suck, so to speak, and you embrace the challenges of life and the fruit that comes out of it, I'll end with this. One of these Christian guys taught me this, and I love this—what's the word—parable? He was learning about agriculture in Israel and why it is that the fruit in Israel—for example, the cherry tomato—has such a more powerful flavor than the ones in Europe or America. And the farmer explained, because this was down in the south of Israel in the Negev, and they were growing these fruits and vegetables with amazing flavors. And so the guy explains; he says the reason why there's such a focus of flavor in that fruit you just ate is because that fruit had to overcome the challenges of this desert climate. Yeah. The extreme heat in the day and the extreme cold at night. And it's constantly fighting these massive opposites. And it's much more challenged, in other words, than a plant up on the Golan Heights or in the Shfela of Israel. And you can Google that if you don't know what I'm talking about, these geographical areas. And so they were explaining. So these right here are actually unique to Israel's agriculture because of that, because they're fighting against the elements. And I took what he was saying and thought, that's exactly our faith walk. If you're willing to be the guy who's going to go through the challenges of the desert versus the one that's in the nice—I don't know—somewhere in Italy where the climate is, or Hawaii where the climate is perfect year-round—no challenges at all, man. Easy-going. Yeah, man. Yeah, that life is something that we all want to fairytale imagine as the perfect life. But in reality, it's a good place to vacation. And in reality, the challenges of your life at work or your relationship with your wife and kids, etc., in our reality, that's again the desert: it's war, it's friends that were lost, it's the tragedies of October 7th and the aftermath of that, and the tragedies of late of—was it over 20 people now that have been murdered by these ballistic attacks. Those challenges are what make us if, and there's a big if, if you allow God to use those to chisel you as a human being, so to speak, and try to search and say, God, why? And ask Him, ask Him why. It's not all roses, roses, roses, roses. I don't know how you say it, but it's not all. It's not all perfect because you're a person who embraces God in your life and, oh, it's all going to go great. Quite the contrary. I've learned at least that you're going to make a lot of enemies and from places you've never expected, but your life is better when, again, you embrace all those challenges and make the best of it and let God work through that in your life and in your character and make you a better human being. And you'll be shocked with the results if you do that. But I think most people, they run away from the challenge. They immediately give up when the weight of life just presses in on you too much. And you just let that weight drop and say, hey, forget it. I'm done with this. I don't need this bodybuilding nonsense. Leave that to

Lio: Schwarzenegger. And that's how we live our lives. We're back to the Terminator.

Doron: Yeah, exactly. And so that, I think, right there, is where it all boils down to, really.

Lio: Wow. Brilliant, Doron. This was a heart-opening. What do you want to say? Just two words about I Am Israel, where people can watch it. Just a couple of words on that, because I know this project is near and dear to you. So plug that in.

Doron: Yeah. Well, I'm just very excited actually about I Am Israel, The Mountain, The King. David Kern is an incredible human being. He's a Christian from Tennessee who came and visited Israel as a filmmaker. And he was like, Why have I never seen any Christian films about Judea and Samaria, about the Jewish people and these stories of people he was interacting with that were really blowing his mind, as in I've never heard this story told to us, to my community. And so he made I Am Israel the first film to do just that for the Christian audience, for his people, if you like. And then I met him actually through friends of friends. He showed us the trailer and I lit up. I said, Man, I am looking for a director to film a film about the Temple Mount, what I'm into, that feels like this and has messaging like this that's positive. It doesn't talk about the negative Gog and Magog, the wars, the Muslims, the this, that, none of the negativity, but I want people to see the Temple Mount the way God sees the Temple Mount. When you read scripture, He doesn't talk about the challenges of You shall make Me a house and I shall dwell in it. He doesn't talk about the challenge of doing it. He just says, do it. He talks about Jerusalem being the navel of the earth, being the glory with which God will bless the earth. That's the way God sees it. Can I make a film and find a director that can highlight it and show it that way? And so when I saw that positive vibe that he had in his first film, I made that stupid comment because I was just so excited. And he just looked at me like, okay, bro, like, who is this guy? But then we started to become friends. And then about a year later, he says, Doron, he calls me up. He says, Doron, guess what? I'm making a sequel. I said, that's awesome, brother. And he says, guess what? You're going to be in it. And I started laughing. And I said, come on, seriously. He says, no, seriously, you're going to be one of the main characters. And guess what else? It's going to be on the Temple Mount. I said, come on, you're kidding. He said, no, I'm not. And that gave birth to I Am Israel, The Mountain, The King that essentially highlights the importance and beauty of the gift that God gave Israel, which is the Temple Mount. And we just talk about that genesis from Sinai. And I mentioned here on this interview a little bit about that journey that we take people on. And it's just a beautiful film that really, really will, again, even if you don't even care about these subject matters on a faith-based issue, just the fact that it shows you Israel like never before in a cinematic way that is just gorgeous, which also is part of our passion, was to just highlight the beauty of Israel. People even visit Israel, and then they'll say, that's not Israel. And I've had those reactions from pre-screenings. And it's so wonderful to watch people and Israelis tell me, that's not Israel. I'm like, bro, that's in Israel. And I tell them where. And they're like, no way. So where can they watch it? You Google IamIsraelFilm.com or just IamIsraelFilm. I'm not sure if it's the whole website.

Lio: We'll find it. We'll put it in the description.

Doron: And then, yeah, and then you just go into movie, sequel, and you'll find I Am Israel, The Mountain, The King. And you can get the digital download if you want to watch it instantly or Blu-ray and DVD options that we have just gotten in recently. So it's a pretty awesome project. It took us almost five years to produce. Yeah, yeah.

Lio: Because of COVID, because of wars.

Doron: So production got a little stymied, but the end result is really amazing, and I'm very excited.

Lio: That's awesome. That's awesome. We may have to have a conversation about the Temple Mount, but we'll save that for another time. Doron, before we close, what we do always on The Jew Function is we invite a guest to read a short passage from the sources. In this case, I chose something for you from the book of Zohar, from Tetzaveh, and “In the Desert Where You Saw.” That's the section. Please give it a read. I think it's very apropos to what we talked about today. All right, here we go.

Doron: And this is the English translation of it.

Lio: That is, of course, the English.

Lio: Right?

Doron: There is no light except for that which comes out of that darkness. This is so because when that side surrenders, the Creator rises above and His glory grows. Also, the work of the Creator is only out of darkness. There is no good except from within the bad. And when one enters a bad way and leaves it, the Creator rises in His glory. Hence, the perfection of everything is good and bad together and to later depart to the good. And there is no good except for that which comes out of the bad. And in that good, the glory of the Creator increases, and this is complete work. I have dyslexia and a few other issues. So thank you to those of you bearing with us on that reading.

Lio: Any Iranian missiles and sleepless nights?

Doron: Yeah, yeah.

Lio: Brilliant. Doron, thank you so much. I think it captures beautifully a lot of what we talked about. And man, it was great to meet you, especially under the circumstances. And we pushed back this talk a couple of times and then the missiles and then this and that. But I'm happy it happened. I'm happy you're in our circle. I got your number. You got mine. Let's be good examples to the world. It's not the easiest job in the world, but it's probably the best. So I invite everyone to follow The Jew Function everywhere. Like, comment, subscribe, of course, here on Spotify. Leave a little review. It always helps. And just spread this conversation because more people need to hear it. And I think it's bringing a bit more light to the world. So thank you, Doron. Thank you, everyone. And we'll see you next time. This is The Jew Function.