Ep. 22 // "How Far Can Video Take Us?" w/ Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin

00:00 Speaker 1 And I'll often ask them, "Do-- Is there a Seder in yeshiva where you guys are watching videos?" And they're like, "Yeah, out of Seder or the Mashpi'im will give us maybe off the night Seder." And to me, it's like, okay, I feel like the Anhalo in that yeshiva might not fully understand what it means to grow up in a world that these bochurim are growing up in, and that they should be making it more central.

00:26 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-four. My name is Benzi Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm here with, uh, Rabbi Connor Schmotkin, the executive director of JEM. And most of the people listening to this podcast will know exactly what JEM is, what it stands for, Jewish ed- Jewish Educational Media. Um, I think a lot of people at least think they know a lot about JEM. Um, they certainly have seen a lot f- from JEM, myself included, of course. Um, so I think I wanna start off with something less obvious, and that is your personal history and how you came into this. I also think I'd like to explore a little bit the, the, the thought process behind JEM as it evolved and as it-- especially with your experience. I think a lot of us, especially my age and younger, uh, take it for granted as part of the landscape. It's just there, you know. It's part of, you know, you grow up in yeshiva, and there are videos every Motzei Shabbos or whatever, or Fabringens throughout the year. Uh, we just, we just take it for granted, and I'm sure it wasn't so simple. So, um, I actually remember you from quite a whiles ago. I was in Parkesville in Tofshin Nun Hey, nineteen ninety-five. I was even on your Color War team, the losing Color War team, I have to, I have to

02:14 Speaker 2 add. Uh, I think it was Acharias, was it? I don't know if you remember. Uh, Levi Wolf won. Anyway, uh, shout out to Levi Wolf. But so I, I rem- I remember that. Of course, I was much, much younger, but my guess is that was before your days in JEM. And that was a very different time in Lubavitch, of course. And so I, I think I'd like to start the story from around then. Where were you at? What was your bochur sheyarim like, and what were, like, the formative years before you got into JEM?

02:50 Speaker 1 Okay. There's a lot in there. Um, I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My parents are shluchim there. They were sent by the Rebbe, um, in the late nineteen sixties, I believe, to Milwaukee. That's where I grew up at ten years old. So I, uh, learned in, uh, Lubavitch Nursery School, then Hill Academy, which was a, uh, community day school. Uh, half day Jewish studies, half day secular studies, uh, mixed, uh, till I was 10 years old. At that point, I went away to cheder in Detroit, um, and then went through, I think, what most-- many of the locations that most Lubavitcher, um, graduates would, would recognize. Breuach, Morristown. Um, I was in- on shlichus in Peterburg in Russia for one year. We like to say we were such a good kvutza that it was one and out. We, uh, we were such a good kvutza they never needed another kvutza after us-

03:50 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

03:50 Speaker 1 ...in Peterburg, but that was actually a, a, a really important year, I think, in Peterburg, which is why I'm mentioning it.

03:56 Speaker 2 Which year was that?

03:57 Speaker 1 That would be Taf Shin Nun Gimel.

04:00 Speaker 2 Taf Shin Nun Gimel.

04:01 Speaker 1 This is the year between nineteen ninety-two when the Rebbe had the first stroke, Chabad Zein Other, and nineteen ninety-four, Gimel Tammuz, the Rebbe's passing.

04:10 Speaker 2 So you were-- Where were you during Chabad Zein Other?

04:12 Speaker 1 I was in Morristown.

04:13 Speaker 2 Morristown.

04:14 Speaker 1 Shir Baz, if I recall correctly. And I remember getting the news that night, hearing the Rebbe fell, and having that same type of, "What does that mean, the Rebbe fell?" Um, and just finding the first ride going to New York, and life-

04:30 Speaker 2 Mm

04:30 Speaker 1 ...was forever changed after that. Um, and then eventually, about a year later, going to, uh, St. Petersburg on shlichus, and then second Chabad Zein Other when the Rebbe had the second stroke, um, just getting on a plane, coming back, taking a train to Finland, to Helsinki, because it was... If I recall correctly, it was a Thursday, and I wanted to get to New York before Shabbos, and, uh, taking a train to Helsinki, flying to New York, going straight before Shabbos to the hospital, and that was it with Peterburg for me.

05:05 Speaker 2 The second Chabad Zein Other was Taf Shin Nun Gimel?

05:08 Speaker 1 Uh, it was Taf Shin Nun Daled, two years later.

05:11 Speaker 2 So you were in Peterburg for two years?

05:13 Speaker 1 No, I went to Peterburg, it would've been at the beginning of Taf Shin Nun Daled.

05:18 Speaker 2 I see. Okay.

05:19 Speaker 1 I guess, or the end of Nun Gimel.

05:20 Speaker 2 I see. I see. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a very-- that's obviously a very pivotal time in Lubavitch history, probably under discussed if, uh, if you ask me. I'm not sure I want this p- this particular podcast to be about that. I'm not sure that's what you signed up for either. But, you know, bringing it back to the topic that, that we, that we will be talking about, you know, I wonder if you could talk about what, what did-- what was the role of video at that time? What, what, what, what place did it have in the collective Lubavitch imagination?

06:02 Speaker 1 Video of the Rebbe-

06:03 Speaker 2 Yeah, video of the Rebbe

06:03 Speaker 1 ... in particular?

06:04 Speaker 2 Video of the Rebbe, yes.

06:05 Speaker 1 I think it was very minimal.

06:08 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

06:09 Speaker 1 There was W- WLCC. Well, first of all, there was JEM.

06:12 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

06:13 Speaker 1 JEM, at that time, was an organization that had been broadcasting the Rebbe's Farbrengens live via satellite. That was about live broadcast.

06:21 Speaker 2 Right.

06:21 Speaker 1 JEM also had VHS copies of those Farbrengens available, but they were minimal. There was WLCC, which was much more kind of consumer level, not, uh, you know, high-level production. But there was Ktiyim-

06:38 Speaker 2 Right

06:38 Speaker 1 ... there was Pininim, which were selected, um, outs, selected highlights of videos of the Rebbe that there was a relatively small segment of Lubavitch would buy them, watch them, have their children watch them. But because the Rebbe was, uh, c- continuously, uh, producing new material-

06:59 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

06:59 Speaker 1 ... and there was always something new coming out of 770, there was always the news of this Shabbos, of this week, I think that the-- or I know that the role of video was far, far less, uh, central, obviously, than it is now. Or if somebody went by the Rebbe for dollars, they could go into WLCC and find that video of their, of their exchange with the Rebbe. But it was-

07:21 Speaker 2 Right

07:21 Speaker 1 ... it was, you know, kind of ancillary compared to the living, breathing relationship with the Rebbe, and what did the Rebbe say this week, and what's the newest thing, and what's the newest answer. So it was there, and thank God it was there because that's why we have those recordings. But it wasn't central to our relationship with Rebbe as it is now.

07:39 Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it- it's, it's inter- the reason I ask, I, I mean, it, it's not surprising to me that it had less of a role back then than it, than it does now. But, you know, like, you know, you wonder, living in the late, the late mems, let's say, or, you know, the early nuns, certainly after Chazai Another. Um, but even the late mems, like the, those long weekday Farbrengens had ended. I don't, I don't remember when the last Farbrengen of Purim, let's say, was, but it didn't go all the way to the end, right? It was only Shabbos Farbrengens. You know, so you wonder if, if people saw the value in video then as, as they did now. And you're saying that, that they were so engrossed in the present or, or so maybe even overwhelmed with kind of the, the incoming that was, that was happening in the present that the p- the videos of the past just didn't have the same value or same, uh, purchase as, as it would now.

08:46 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

08:47 Speaker 2 Yeah.

08:47 Speaker 1 In fact, even after Gimel Tammuz, it took quite a while for everybody to catch on and to, to recognize, certainly the older people, to recognize that this is a bonafide method of learning from, being inspired by, and connecting with the Rebbe. I think it actually continues to pick up speed to this day.

09:08 Speaker 2 Hmm, really?

09:09 Speaker 1 Uh, but certainly in the early days after Gimel Tammuz, it's not like everybody was like, "Let's go to the videotape," you know, instantly. It took a little while. There were those who-

09:19 Speaker 2 Hmm

09:19 Speaker 1 ... you know, had a quicker and deeper understanding, or the people were bewildered. What happens now? Where are we going? How is this gonna continue? When-- You know, Mashiach's gotta be coming any second now, and it just... And it took a little while, I think. And I-- That's, that's normal, as normal as the circumstance was. Yeah.

09:40 Speaker 2 When did you realize?

09:43 Speaker 1 Um, to be honest, I think pretty early.

09:45 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

09:46 Speaker 1 Um, y- I, I don't-- It's hard for me to, to re- to quote the dates, but as soon as I was able to get access to the videos. Disclaimer, I'm a second cousin of Dovid Krinsky, who was the founder of JEM. Um, so perhaps I was able to get access, you know, more quickly or more directly than other people would have been, but still it was an issue. It's, it's a, it was a collection of, uh, videos that were in boxes in his basement, or some of it was in 770, some of it was in his basement. And kind of this idea of let's figure out what's going on, that this is a source of connection and inspiration, and we need to utilize this, um, I think it was pretty early. Like, I always had a thing for video.

10:36 Speaker 2 Oh, really?

10:37 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, I can't remember the year, but, you know, whether it's producing a, uh, helping the staff in Gan Yisroel Milwaukee to, in the day camp to edit their end-of-camp video, you know, the highlights for the last day of camp or whatever it was, or including videos of the Rebbe. I mean, I was, you know, I was only a teenager then, but helping out with Hanukkah Live, the live broadcast at the time or whatever it was. It was al- I always had a thing for it.

11:03 Speaker 2 Hmm. But what, what, what it sounds like is that at the time it was maybe difficult to, to access it, but that's mainly because people hadn't really paid attention to it. Like, it wasn't available to access. But it wasn't like there was a line clamoring for it. Um, people, people didn't-- It took, it took effort to, to make, to make it apparent to other people that there was value here.

11:29 Speaker 1 Yeah, it took effort on the production side. The minute it was made available, people were able to see it and to recognize it.

11:37 Speaker 2 Ah.

11:38 Speaker 1 And that's actually something that we often talk about with the team today when we talk about an upcoming project or a switch to an existing project, and people are saying, "Well, nobody's asking for it," or, "If we ask people, they don't necessarily want it." I'm often in the position of saying, "Well, the reason they don't know they want it is because we haven't yet-

11:59 Speaker 2 Hmm

11:59 Speaker 1 ... brought it to them. We haven't yet presented it that way. We haven't yet brought the idea out to the public. So it's very normal. It's human, it's human nature. You know, whatever, the famous H- Henry Ford quote.

12:08 Speaker 2 Right.

12:09 Speaker 1 Uh, you know, if you ask people what they want, they'll say they want faster horses.

12:12 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.

12:13 Speaker 1 That's-- I mean,

12:13 Speaker 2 People don't know what they want. People don't know what they want until they see it or until they have it.

12:18 Speaker 1 So people, but just in this case, people want connection with the Rebbe. People want to continue to learn from the Rebbe. They want to be inspired by the Rebbe. You know, if they're people who have seen the Rebbe already before, certainly in that case, they want to continue the connection. People who have ne- not yet seen the Rebbe want to build that connection from scratch. There's sichas, there's ma'amarim, there are letters, there are speeches that your shliach makes in shul, there are things that your mashpia tells you at farbrengen, there are videos.

12:47 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

12:47 Speaker 1 Now, if those videos are forever locked up in a box, people might say, "Hey, that should be a n- that would be a nice thing." But unless, until you show it to them and you sh- and they experience it, that's when they begin to say, "Whoa, okay, this is something I, I want more of."

13:05 Speaker 2 Was there any, was there any pushback, initial pushback or hesitation from, I don't know if your colleagues or maybe older Chassidim or, I don't know, anybody that felt like, you know, maybe a Rebbe video is not the proper way, you know, the... Uh, was there, was there any kind of hesitation? I'm sure a lot of people that watch a Rebbe video like you described for the first time, they pr- that was maybe one of the first times they watched any video, I imagine, at the time. I mean, it's also hard to imagine, but in the nineties, which is, is when you started, the l- the late nineties, mid, mid to late nineties-

13:42 Speaker 1 Right

13:42 Speaker 2 ... I mean, video was still a relatively young, uh, thing, especially in Chassidic circles. Was there any, like, pushback that this isn't the way to do it?

13:52 Speaker 1 I can't think of any pushback per se.

13:56 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

13:57 Speaker 1 I can say that I perceive still in certain, I would say yeshivas in particular-

14:02 Speaker 2 Hmm

14:02 Speaker 1 ... let's say we get Israeli bachurim coming over and we host them for Rosh Hashanah or the first days of Sukkot or something, and I, from the, from the Israeli yeshivas, and I'll often ask them, "Do you, is there a Seder in yeshiva where you guys are watching videos?" And they're like, "Yeah, uh, sometimes, some yeshivas out of Seder or the mashpiyim will give us maybe off the night Seder, um, to watch the beginning of a farbrengen." I don't know how many bachurim are there. Some yeshivas say more, it's packed. Some say only half the bachurim. And to me it's like, okay, I feel like the anhala in that yeshiva might not fully understand what it means to grow up in a world that these bachurim are growing up in, and that they should be making it more central to the experience of being a bachur, not to, oh, video of the Rebbe, that's on your own time. How central it is that they only perceive a world where they already experienced the Rebbe, so a video is just a, maybe a replay of that-

14:56 Speaker 2 Hmm

14:56 Speaker 1 ... or it's just emphasizing what you learned in the Seder, where I think it should, should be more central. But pushback, per se, I don't, I can't think of any place where we really got it, like serious pushback.

15:08 Speaker 2 Is it... It, y- I... I mean, you just said it's, it's central to... It, it, it's, it's more central than many people understand. Uh, clearly, you know, you put your money where your mouth is. That's, that's, that's what you're doing here. You believe that the, the video of the Rebbe is very, very central. How much of that is because today everything seems to be moving to video and e- so much information in general, and may- maybe all information is consumed via video at this point. Um, is it, is it because of that, that people see everything through video, so they need to see this through video too? Or is it that video would be important and would be central in any time in history if they had the, the, the, the opportunity? For example, do you think the Chassidim of the Friediker Rebbe who were in Russia, you know, and left behind or vice versa, uh, would have, you know, needed video the way that bachurim today need video?

16:09 Speaker 1 Let's put aside need for a second-

16:11 Speaker 2 Okay

16:11 Speaker 1 ... if I may. But the medium of video-- First of all, I'm not saying that video is here to the exclusion of anything else. We need to be learning sichas and ma'amarim, and really understanding the Rebbe's Torah and reading the Rebbe's letters and discussing-

16:27 Speaker 2 Hmm

16:27 Speaker 1 ... and, uh, you know, our connection with the Rebbe and what the Rebbe teaches us beyond video. You know, if I think of how many hours a week I spend learning from a book versus watching a video, I learn Chassidus every morning.

16:41 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

16:41 Speaker 1 Probably spend more hours every week, not probably, definitely, uh, w- than watching videos of the Rebbe as a Chassid, and, and that's perhaps as it should be. Um, but if you think of what inspired, let's take for example, a, a group of people, the early shluchim, your grandfather, my father, the whole earlier generations, the first-

17:03 Speaker 2 Hmm

17:03 Speaker 1 ... hundred shluchim that went out, or two hundred or three hundred even, what inspired them to do what they did? Well, they learned at the Rebbe's feet. They obviously learned the Rebbe's sichas and ma'amarim. Some of them, the early ones never even met the Rebbe in person. But for the most part, what so connected them and inspired them to go out and do these things that the Rebbe inspired them to do was the fact that they literally learned at the Rebbe's feet. They observed him, they heard from him, they experienced the Rebbe's emotions as he spoke about what he spoke about. Never mind they were with him by davening and watched him w- walking in and out, and everything else that the Rebbe did, and that had a huge impact on who they were, who they are. So the w- the, the medium that can come closest to that is video.

17:48 Speaker 2 Hmm.

17:48 Speaker 1 Obviously, there's the, the raw teachings, which is in all the Sefarim, and like I said, those are important. Video is the closest to having the experience of learning directly, and in fact, that's what's so unique about this time in history. It's the first time in history, in Jewish history or in the history of the world, Jewish or not Jewish, that you can continue to learn from the Tzadik, the Nasi, the Rebbe, directly from him- Even after his passing.

18:15 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

18:15 Speaker 1 So imagine if we'd have a, a video of Moshe Rabbeinu or Rashi or the Baal Shem Tov or whomever it is, I think in any time, people would be... would take to that in a huge way. For whatever reason, Hashem set things up just so that the Rebbe is the first-

18:31 Speaker 2 Mm

18:32 Speaker 1 ... Jewish leader with whom that's possible. And thank God we do have so many recordings of him. So it's, it's, uh, much... in many ways, it's a much deeper and more meaningful way of learning from the Rebbe because it's not only that you're feeling like you're... as though you're learning directly from him, you really are learning directly from him, as he's delivering it.

18:52 Speaker 2 Mm.

18:53 Speaker 1 The same way whoever made that hanaha of that sicha heard it and then wrote it down.

18:57 Speaker 2 Mm.

18:57 Speaker 1 Well, you're hearing it, you're learning it directly from the Rebbe.

19:00 Speaker 2 That's... it's, it's, it's so interesting. Um, you know, even, even just the, the, the na- the analogy, analogy you just brought of, of Moshe Rabbeinu and the Rambam and, and these, these kind of figures. You know, I don't know if I'm playing devil's advocate here, but like, I wonder if, if I saw Moshe Rabbeinu on a video camera, like a, some kind of recording, I wonder if I would be more, like, impressed or less impressed. I don't know. I mean, it... in a way almost like video, video, it, like, gives the, the feeling that, that, that you see the person directly, but it's... it, it is ultimately an illusion because, you know, it's, it's, it's not the same thing as real life, obviously. And, you know, like, in a way, when you have to imagine the person that you don't see, it's this big thing that can't be put in a frame, right? Um, I don't think there was a choice with the Rebbe one way or another. There was video of him, so it wasn't like you could put the videos away and say, "Let's make believe like we're..." You know, but I just... it's, it's interesting. Um, it's interesting. It's an interesting thing to think about, um, because in a way, what... I guess what I'm saying is that what you mentioned earlier about how even when the Rebbe stopped for praying during the week or even after Chabad when the Rebbe stops for praying at all, it wasn't like the video se-

20:42 Speaker 2 the video didn't yet seem like something that could kind of fill the void or, you know, take over. Why? 'Cause people were so engrossed in the present, right? You know, you wonder if by, by getting over, um... When the video takes up too much space, does that come at the expense of the present? Does that come at the expense of the imagination? Like, are we getting lost in nostalgia, you know? That I think, I think... I wonder, I wonder if there's some risk there. Uh, something... I don't know if that's something you've thought about, you've considered.

21:17 Speaker 1 So do you, do you think that the video has taken an outsized role? Do you see people who are just, their entire day is filled with watching videos of the Rebbe to exclusion of, of other things?

21:28 Speaker 2 No, I don't think so. I, I... No, no. So let me clarify. I, I'm, I'm not at all trying to put you on the spot that JEM is doing anything wrong. I... that's absolutely not my point, and like I said earlier, I, I, I consider myself a beneficiary of JEM, right? Uh, there's so many things that I saw, and like I said, I took for granted, that I probably didn't even pay attention to how much I absorbed via things that took a lot of effort. You know, later on in life, I started making videos myself, and I realized how much work can go into something that looks very, very simple. And so, you know, I don't minimize the effort, God forbid, and I, and I, and I think, you know, it's, it's obviously a net good. Um, I just... you know, as someone who makes video also, you know, th-there's, there's... you know, there's always a question in my head like, you know, you, you, you can get fix- the video can fixate someone, right? And I wouldn't say that people are getting oversaturated with video. Uh, yeah, I think you're right. Like, you're gonna find someone. Is there one guy who watches too much video of the Rebbe? Okay, maybe. But as a rule, no, I don't think so. But I do think that sometimes people have a conception of the Rebbe that is overly 1990s, like overly nostalgic. They're maybe not watching too much of the video, but their idea of the Rebbe

22:48 Speaker 2 is, "Okay, I live in a, in 2024. In, in my space, the Rebbe's passed away. It's kind of empty. If I go back via video to 1990 or to 1970, there I can connect to the Rebbe." So they're not being oversaturated with video, they're being maybe oversaturated with nostalgia. I don't think that's your fault. I don't think you have to defend yourself.

23:12 Speaker 1 No, I, I don't-

23:13 Speaker 2 I, I would agree.

23:13 Speaker 1 I don't feel defensive at all.

23:14 Speaker 2 Okay.

23:14 Speaker 1 I don't feel that you put me on the spot in any way. So there's two, two things there that I'd love to, um, let-let's, let's explore together. One is my great hope, and in the way that we internally in JEM talk about the videos and think about them when we produce them, and even the wording and the translations and everything like that, we're very conscious to make sure, uh, to express... First of all, we're, we're here to present it as it is and not to put any slant or spin on it, and that takes work. When we go through with our senior leaders as we've been going through cer-certain processes as a growing organization, what are the values we look for in our team? One of them is, uh, authenticity and, uh, uh, humility is another one, meaning to not put our own spin on things.

24:01 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

24:01 Speaker 1 And, and really that's something that, you know, when I go to the aisle and, and, and I... we make sure to emphasize this to all of our people here, to make sure that we're not putting our own stamp or our own flavor or color, whatever you call it, on what the Rebbe is saying, and make sure it's just we're just the pass-through. Uh, which as somebody who makes video, I'm sure you can attest that that in itself could be a harder challenge than the opposite way. But-

24:26 Speaker 2 It's the hardest thing.

24:27 Speaker 1 It's the hardest thing, yeah. Uh, to make sure that it's coming through. But the bottom line is you are producing it. You do have to make those choices of which clips are in and which aren't, and by virtue of doing that, you're making a choice.

24:38 Speaker 2 Sure.

24:38 Speaker 1 So you have to be willing, in fact, until you hit publish to say, "Hey, maybe I got this wrong and I have to change it all up 'cause I misunderstood what the Rebbe was really trying to say, and I'm not just fix..." Anyway, that's a separate thing. Um, but if watching the videos turns into an exercise in nostalgia, then we've done something wrong.

24:57 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

24:57 Speaker 1 Meaning the Rebbe is relevant and current, and his solutions for life are in the present.

25:06 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

25:06 Speaker 1 And if we're just watching videos to go back to some nostalgic thing, then I don't know if I would take the blame on us who's producing it. Again, hopefully, we're not getting in the way and we're just giving you unfiltered what the Rebbe has to say, then the viewer might be viewing it through the what wrong lens. Because what the Rebbe's saying is the way God gave Torah at Sinai.

25:27 Speaker 2 Right.

25:27 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe considers himself a pass-through, and he's just bringing timeless truths, applying it to that day, but to our day as well.

25:36 Speaker 2 Mm.

25:36 Speaker 1 And hopefully, uh, the viewer can see that and understand that. Um, that there were two points that-

25:44 Speaker 2 Sure.

25:45 Speaker 1 No, that was one. I'm, I'm trying to remember what the other one was, but I'm sure we'll come back to it 'cause it was... Yeah.

25:49 Speaker 2 There was another, there was another point? No, I think that was my point is, is addressing like the, do we get oversaturated with nostalgia? Um, I think that is in a way the, if I would think, like that is something that's unique to video because if I have to imagine Moshiach Rabeinu, if I have to imagine the Rebbe, let's say, um, the act of imagining is, is what makes it present, right? Because I'm here, and I have to imagine the Rebbe over there, that's what makes it present. Whereas a video is this kind of time capsule that gets delivered from the past and, you know, it's fascinating. Like in any documentary video making, the second that you have archival footage, and it could be the most random archival footage that like on its own it's like, what's the big deal here? The, the grandfather's playing with the kid with a toy car, like who cares? But the fact that it's archival transports you to this other space that people just seem to love, right? And so like the video is, is in that time, it brings you back there. That's to me, that's to me the risk. But at the same time, I mean, obviously I, I, I'm not suggesting there shouldn't be video. I, I, I, I don't know. I don't like I, I'm not suggesting anything really, but I, I'm, I'm, I'm probing a little bit. I'm probing a little bit like what the video, you know, the video, the video has to

27:14 Speaker 2 be there. The video is there. It's going to be used. People are gonna wanna see it, and there's definitely value in it. But is there a, is there a risk? And how, how is that risk mitigated? That's what I, that's what I missed.

27:25 Speaker 1 There are risks in everything. Yeah. The, yes.

27:27 Speaker 2 Well the-

27:27 Speaker 1 The other point, uh, which is why, why do we need a Rebbe in the first place?

27:31 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

27:32 Speaker 1 What did God set up this whole concept of giving the Jewish people a leader who's an intermediary, somebody to look up to, somebody who teaches us? Rebbe means teacher. What did, what did Hashem create the entire existence of a Rebbe for in the first place? And that is, one of the par- parts of it is that you're talking about a person of flesh and blood who is closer to Hashem than we are.

28:03 Speaker 2 Mm.

28:03 Speaker 1 Who can, who's smarter than we are, who understands Torah and is a, a, a, you know, a holier person than us, but who we can relate to as a human being, otherwise just relate to Hashem.

28:15 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

28:16 Speaker 1 What do you need a Rebbe for? The Rebbe as, as a human being, as an individual who's not just words on a paper, but who has a, a life and who walks and talks amongst the rest of us, or did so physically until 1994, um, and fr- fr- from whom we can learn and whom we can try to emulate, that is what a Rebbe is.

28:41 Speaker 2 Mm.

28:42 Speaker 1 So the difference between the Rebbe as words on a paper that whom, you know, that I can read and learn and understand and hopefully connect with versus the Rebbe as a human being, uh, is a huge difference. That in fact is the role of the Rebbe. So videos plays, play a part in that. Photos play a part in that. I would say stories of the Rebbe play a huge part in that. This whole-

29:05 Speaker 2 Mm

29:05 Speaker 1 ... idea of stories that was, uh, whatever, that was a whole big area that, that, uh, you know, Jem took a big role in developing, and in the beginning people were like, many, I would say most people are like, "What in the world are you doing?" There, there was pushback.

29:18 Speaker 2 My Encounters.

29:19 Speaker 1 The My Encounters with the Rebbe project.

29:20 Speaker 2 There was pushback.

29:20 Speaker 1 Lots of pushback. Like, "What are you doing? You guys used to be pure. You just pushed out videos of the Rebbe or audio of the Rebbe. What are you starting with people's stories?" That's a whole world on its own, but, and we didn't even realize at the time how powerful stories are.

29:33 Speaker 2 Mm.

29:34 Speaker 1 Um, we just were doing it because, you know, what I was saying was, "Look, there's a group of people who are devoted to publishing the Rebbe's teachings. There's a group of people who are publishing the letters and the, the sichas, and we're doing, we're, we're in the midst of a massive project to gather, restore, and preserve the audio and the video and the photos, and ultimately to, uh, publish them all in, uh, you know, in, uh, full-length format. But the way that the Rebbe impacted the world, so much of it was through one-on-one interactions which-

30:04 Speaker 2 Right

30:04 Speaker 1 ... people were taking to the, to the grave with them.

30:07 Speaker 2 Right.

30:07 Speaker 1 It was just in people's hearts and minds, and so we started that just as a recording project. Then after a few years we said, "Hey, let's start putting some of these into Living Torah and then the films." But many people, they were just like, "What are you doing? People have, you know, say stupid things, and their memory's bad, and then people don't like other people's stories," and whatever. That, thank God, I think that's behind us 'cause people see the value of it. But my point is-

30:30 Speaker 2 Mm

30:30 Speaker 1 ... in many ways, people are inspired by the Rebbe's teachings and connect with the Rebbe much more through the stories, which are not even in the Rebbe's own voice, than through many of the sichas and the letters.

30:44 Speaker 2 Right.

30:44 Speaker 1 And again, I'm not saying that that's a medium of connection and that should be used to the exclusion of the others. I'm saying there's, there are many of them.

30:51 Speaker 2 Right.

30:51 Speaker 1 And each one plays a role-

30:53 Speaker 2 Right

30:53 Speaker 1 ... in the human experience.

30:55 Speaker 2 Right.

30:55 Speaker 1 Video, um, you know, I can tell you many stories. One that comes to mind is it was actually a few weeks after Gemilut Chassadim. There was a dinner or a- actually it was a concert in Milwaukee, a fundraising concert that my father used to do every year, the Lubavitch of Wisconsin. Um, and it was literally, I think it was in Shiver or it was in Schleim. I remember that we left during the singing part of it. And my father asked, I guess it was right after Gemal Thomas and I was involved in that, I'm remembering now, in finding that clip of the Rebbe talking about Jewish unity. Beautiful sicha from Chaf Av Tav Shemem Beis. The Rebbe talks about how we're two parts, you know, it's like a hand and another hand in the same body. It's a beautiful sicha about Jewish unity. And this donor, like a really close balebus of ours who since passed away, said to my father, "Wow, you know, the Rebbe, what the Rebbe said about Jewish unity was so powerful." And my father's like, "I've been telling you this for," whatever it was at the time, "25 years." He's like, "No, no, the Rebbe really meant it."

31:54 Speaker 2 Hmm.

31:54 Speaker 1 It was just-- Now, my father told him over this sicha, I'm sure many times, and spoke to him about the concept of how Chabad looks at two Jews, looks at Jewish unity, but the experience of hearing it directly from the Rebbe was entirely different. There's a similar story with Rebbe Shemtov, Rebbi Shemtov, uh, in camp.

32:12 Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

32:12 Speaker 1 That a kid came to, to his father and said that, "We heard about Mashiach. The Rebbe came to camp, and he spoke about Mashiach, and wow, it was so amazing." The father was like, "I told you about Mashiach so many times." He said the same thing, the Re- I believe, the same words: "The Rebbe really meant it." The experience of hearing and learning directly from the Rebbe is incredible, and if you talk about our own children, by the way, that's-- there's the idea of, of having videos and watching videos, but think of the experience of a child having that satisfaction and that connection, "I learned directly from the Rebbe, not something in a sefer that my teacher taught me the meaning of these words or even words that the Rebbe said. I was able to understand something in a rally that the Rebbe said to children directly to me."

32:56 Speaker 2 So it's-

32:56 Speaker 1 That's, that's something very special.

32:57 Speaker 2 I wanna unpack a little bit that word, directly. So you mean by directly-- Do you mean by directly that it's-- 'cause it's still through a screen, right? So what you mean-- Do you mean that it's, that, like, the, the, the person watching is convinced that there's nothing in between him and the Rebbe? Like, the Rebbe's talking, I, you know, I don't have any reason to believe that it's manipulated digitally. And so, like, what's the difference the Rebbe talking on a video directly or audio directly?

33:29 Speaker 1 Video is just engaging more of your senses.

33:31 Speaker 2 Okay, so-

33:32 Speaker 1 We're human beings, so when we're more engaged-

33:34 Speaker 2 Okay

33:35 Speaker 1 ... it has a, you know, more meaning to us.

33:36 Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I'm asking. Uh, what-- Because, I mean, I, I think a little bit w-what I'm asking is from per- is a little bit from personal experience. I grew up, I was born before Gemal Thomas, but I was-- First, I grew up, I lived on the other side of the world, and, uh, I, I was six when the Rebbe passed away. So I never went to Farbrengen. I certainly never was old enough to understand anything the Rebbe was saying before. You know, so, like, it, in a way, when I see, when I see the video, it's not, it's, it's, it's not, it, it's, there, there's this kind of thing, there's this tension that, that, that I would experience where on one hand, like you said, it's directly, you're engaged with all your senses, but on the other hand, it's just a video. Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I-

34:31 Speaker 1 Listen, I'm not saying that it's great, that it's good, God forbid, that we're-

34:34 Speaker 2 No, no, no

34:35 Speaker 1 ... asking Gemal Thomas. This is the, these are the facts God gave us.

34:38 Speaker 2 No, no, I, I-

34:38 Speaker 1 This is the situation. Like-

34:39 Speaker 2 I, I understand. I, I'm, what I'm trying, what I'm trying to get, what I'm trying to get to is that it seems to me, it seems to me that, that, like, we are in a very new space. Obviously, we're in a very new space, and, like, what you've been talking about all this time is how video is a tool of connection, which I, I, I don't think is disputable, and why should one dispute it? Um, but, you know, how does one, how does one, how does one manage that? How does one-- I, I think I am going a little bit back to the oversaturated part. Is it, do you think that the video can be the starting point of-- For y- Do you think the video can be the starting point of one's connection to the Rebbe today around which one builds with the things that he learns and the, and the, and the stories that he hears and so on? Or does one have to start somewhere else and then bring video into that? Th-Is that, is that a fair question? 'Cause I feel that would be the difference between you and me. 'Cause you were already a bachur before Chabad. You had a starting point. The video is a tool in that. Uh, for me and people, I guess, my age, sometimes the video feels like the starting point, and in that, in that sense, I feel like sometimes, especially as I get older, it begins to feel like I don't want to

36:14 Speaker 2 live in the past. And so does it, is that a fair question in your view?

36:21 Speaker 1 Let's put one thing down. People have to have healthy relationships with the Rebbe.

36:25 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

36:26 Speaker 1 If it's possible to have an unhealthy relationship with the Rebbe, absolutely.

36:29 Speaker 2 Right.

36:30 Speaker 1 There are many people, or some people who I think do have unhealthy relationships with the Rebbe. They don't know, understand how to balance, how to relate to the Rebbe as a human being and to understand who the Rebbe is. There's l- there's a lot of that, or maybe not so much of it, but many people who have-- Each person has their experience and their journey, and, and they need to get to a place where their relationship with the Rebbe is healthy, and, uh, they've nurtured it, and they know how to relate to the Rebbe in a healthy way. For some people, the starting point could be a story.

37:02 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

37:03 Speaker 1 In fact, the Rebbe writes in the letter, very famous letter, very important letter, I should say, to Shlome Chaim Keselman on Chamishas BeShvat Taf Shin Tes, which is a year before the previous Rebbe's passing, about his kasherut, and he says how you introduce New people to the Rebbe who might not be connected or n- might not know that they're connected before. And then he s- I believe if I, if I recall correctly, the starting point there is to start with a story.

37:30 Speaker 2 Hmm.

37:31 Speaker 1 And then-

37:31 Speaker 2 A story of the Rebbe.

37:32 Speaker 1 A story of the Rebbe, if I recall correctly, and then a teaching, and then if they need a bracha, help them write in, and then, and then, and then, and then they become s- and then they give money to „ma'amad". It, it, it was what the Rebbe was writing a- about at the time. For some people, the starting point is gonna be coming across a video of the Rebbe on YouTube.

37:49 Speaker 2 Right.

37:49 Speaker 1 And the, it's not only that it's going to be, this has happened.

37:52 Speaker 2 Sure.

37:52 Speaker 1 For some people, it's going to be picking up a "Here's my story." For some, many people, it's going to be hearing from their shliach how they were inspired by the Rebbe or, or a personal experience with the Rebbe. The endpoints could be one of many, and I, I don't know if there's any one that's right or wrong.

38:06 Speaker 2 Right.

38:06 Speaker 1 Um, I think it's a different question of if there are people who are off balance or have a funny perception or, you know, or, or not a complete or clear perception of, of the relationship between the Rebbe and Hasid, the Rebbe and member of Klal Yisrael. That's a different question, I think. I don't know if that's, that has to do with video per se.

38:27 Speaker 2 No, I'm, I'm understanding my own question better now as we-

38:29 Speaker 1 Oh, I think I might have to make a correction. I'm very embarrassed to say I simply don't remember what year Chof Zayin Adar the second time happened. It might have been Nun Gimel. Anyway, I'm just-

38:38 Speaker 2 I always, I always-

38:39 Speaker 1 I, I'm blanking

38:39 Speaker 2 ... thought it was Daled, like you said.

38:40 Speaker 1 I thought it was Daled. Okay, fine.

38:41 Speaker 2 But I w- No, no, no, I wasn't there. I mean, I was-

38:43 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

38:43 Speaker 2 ... I was two years old, but that's-

38:44 Speaker 1 I think it's Daled, but I-

38:45 Speaker 2 Yeah. That's-

38:45 Speaker 1 ... I don't know why it just hit me.

38:46 Speaker 2 Sure.

38:46 Speaker 1 I might have gotten it wrong. Sorry.

38:49 Speaker 2 Yeah, no problem. Um, no, I, I'm understanding my question better as you're, as you're answering my not very well-formulated question. I, I suppose what it is, the nub of it to me is that in many ways, and I think this may have changed, and you'll tell me what you think about this proposition. I think in the years right after Gemat Tammuz, and I kind of started surfacing, like in terms of understanding a little what was going on, probably around 10 years after Gemat Tammuz, and before that, around then, it seemed that there was a lot of effort to kind of, kind of fill the void. Like, how do we re- how do we replace what we lost kind of thing. And I feel like that's where I worry about video kind of getting distorted because I guess what I've been pushing a few times is, or pushing at in this conversation, is that I feel there, there are limitations to video, which is, which you acknowledge, obviously, right? But as time has evolved, it would seem to me that people are now thinking of it's not about trying to get back to the past, right? It's like there's a whole new generation of kids that are being born, growing up now that, you know, it's not like a bridge anymore to the past. How do we live in the present, right? And if we're gonna be honest, brutally honest, you know, like we, we have to live with, with, with the reality that we're in,

40:19 Speaker 2 that we're in. And, and so then, you know, the video is not just a bridge to something else, it is its own thing. And, you know, I, I don't think anybody would argue that like th- there could be a digital Rebbe, right? Like I remember someone even like kind of saying once to me, and I don't know how serious he was about it and how much he had thought about it, but it was at the time when all the rage was in the, what are they called? The, those projections on the screen. You know what I'm talking about, where the-

40:48 Speaker 1 3D, uh-

40:49 Speaker 2 Where like someone appears on the screen as if they're there-

40:51 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

40:51 Speaker 2 ... and it, it's all composed, um, digitally, and like he's like, "Wouldn't it be cool if they like created a farbrengen where they like programmed-"

41:00 Speaker 1 We get these all the time. People come to us with that. Um-

41:03 Speaker 2 Yeah

41:03 Speaker 1 ... "I know somebody, this person wants to do it. I wanna do it. What do you think?"

41:06 Speaker 2 Right. Right. Exactly, right. And, and that's where, that's where I, you know, that's where I feel like there's a very interesting question about, you know, a digital Rebbe is not, is not what a Rebbe is, right? And I... What, why not? Because I feel that, that like you were saying earlier, a Rebbe is all about the flesh and blood. It's all about the f- the, the real life, um, relationship, the real life story, the real life presence with all the complications and all the... everything that comes with that. And digital is pretty much the opposite of that. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a compelling but very false copy of that, and that's, that's what, that's what I'm pr- that's what I'm, that's what I'm probing at now, right? And-

41:57 Speaker 1 First of all, I, are you referring to a hologram?

41:59 Speaker 2 A hologram, correct.

42:00 Speaker 1 Yeah. So we get this all the time. We've been getting it for years.

42:02 Speaker 2 Make a Rebbe hologram.

42:03 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, and the first response is, "Let's, we've, you know, we have to be legitimate and genuine and authentic." And the second thought is, "Okay, look, we've done many things already, which maybe in the days after Gemat Tammuz we would not have done, but technology is going there, and we have to make sure it's done responsibly, and does this fit into something that we consider responsible and not creating something, you know, from scratch that's inappropriate?" And we're, we're always asking those questions with whatever technology is. You know, to have a 30-second TikTok video of the Rebbe saying-

42:37 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

42:37 Speaker 1 ... a little soundbite, I'm guessing that any Hasid who would see that on Dalet Tammuz, "You chopped a 30-second..." And for good reason. But things evolve. Technology is a... The viewing habits and the sophistication of the viewer has changed-

42:52 Speaker 2 Right

42:53 Speaker 1 ... uh, such that they understand that this is 30 seconds out of what might have been something much like... Whatever it is, things, things evolve and they change, and we have to always have that balance of being authentic, um, but using the, the medium in a way that people connect to it, et cetera. You know, there's a beautiful shalah that I learned last week. It, it's in a sicha from last week's parasha. Um, It's beautiful, and, and if you read the Shalah, it looks like it's ca- taken out of, you know, a new age Chumash, that if I would read it or see it as a meme, I would say, "Okay, some guy wrote that up," 'cause it's, like, so, um, you know, emotional or whatever.

43:31 Speaker 2 Should note that new age isn't so new.

43:34 Speaker 1 The Shalah writes, the Frieda Rebbe brings it, and the Rebbe quotes it in the Sichah, When Hashem is my God-

43:40 Speaker 2 Mm.

43:41 Speaker 1 Um, and I, uh, what's the word? Extol him, uh, uh, glorify him, um, then it's in one word.

43:51 Speaker 2 Mm. Mm-hmm.

43:52 Speaker 1 When I truly understand Hashem, when I connect with him emotionally, and I do my best to really get a grasp on Hashem, then it's a It's a personal relationship to the extent that we're in one word,

44:08 Speaker 2 Mm.

44:09 Speaker 1 When it's the Kabbalah soil, uh, I, I have Emunah, and I need to have Emunah and, and all that, and Emunah's a great thing. Then I hold him high. I, uh, am trying to remember the word. I, I exalt him. Right? So, uh, he's distant from me.

44:27 Speaker 2 Mm.

44:28 Speaker 1 And there's actually... If I can grab this right here.

44:30 Speaker 2 Yeah, just watch the headphones.

44:31 Speaker 1 Yeah. It's too good, it's too good not to, not to read it for you, 'cause the Rebbe actually translates it to, to, to Yiddish. Uh, if I may.

44:44 Speaker 2 You won't be the first one.

44:45 Speaker 1 What? To give you some Yiddish here?

44:47 Speaker 2 No, to, to pull out a

44:49 Speaker 1 Oh. No, but it's really, really beautiful. That says, as in to Emunah, in addition to Emunah, which is, you know, Avi, passed down from my parents, Through Emunah, Hashem is distant-

45:08 Speaker 2 Mm

45:08 Speaker 1 ... to a degree from mention. When the, the mention is is, Matzpon is, is conscious in, conscience in modern Hebrew, but it basically, uh, emotionally distant.

45:21 Speaker 2 Right.

45:22 Speaker 1 But when I create a when I really understand, uh, and comprehend the to the, to the extent that I can,

45:37 Speaker 2 Mm.

45:37 Speaker 1 Um, and it's, it's a very beautiful Shalah that Rebbe brings it. S- um, but anyway, translating this to our relation- This is talking about God.

45:46 Speaker 2 So do you, do you see yourself... I know you mentioned the TikTok, the 30 seconds, and, like, that to me is a lot more about format, and has a lot more to do with how thoughts are reaching the world out there. Do you yourself, uh, personally, uh, uh, or within the Lubavitch context internally, do you see a shift in the mission of, of jem over the past 30 years? I mean, it doesn't have to be exactly as I described, maybe it could be completely different. But, I mean, first of all, do you agree that something has shifted in that way, from trying to hold onto the past, kind of like stop time from moving, to trying to figure out how to live in the present? And do you... Do ha... If, if, if you do at all agree with that, has that affected the way you see your work?

46:32 Speaker 1 I don't think there's been a shift in the mission. I think there's been a shift in the output, and it's gonna continue to shift.

46:38 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

46:38 Speaker 1 And we have aspirations that are way beyond, you know-

46:42 Speaker 2 Mm

46:42 Speaker 1 ... what we're doing today. And as we're able, as we have the means and the capacity to achieve them, we're gonna keep evolving. And also, the world continues to change, so what we do needs to evolve as well. I don't think the mission has changed. Um, I have to, like, close my eyes and think back to what my state of mind was when I first got involved, but I don't think so.

47:03 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

47:03 Speaker 1 In other words, the, there was a huge mission to start with, and there's a lot to do. And as we achieved certain things, we kept and we keep moving forward. Um, and we're gonna keep doing that, God willing, but I don't think the mission changed. I, I don't know that at the beginning it was about grabbing on... May- maybe it was to an extent. I'm, I'm trying to, I'm, I'm trying to... Like, I should probably take three days to think about frame of mind then, or even look up old emails and documents about what the goal of this project or that project is. Um, but I don't think so.

47:37 Speaker 2 Hmm.

47:38 Speaker 1 I mean, I can remember, for example, I think when we started Living Torah, we had five bullet points of what we're trying to achieve. Um, there's a ton of stuff in the archive. We want a platform to give it out because just we didn't have a format or how to do it. It was before the internet was a thing-

47:52 Speaker 2 Sure

47:52 Speaker 1 ... where you just dump stuff on the internet. Uh, and one of them was we want people to get a drip, drip, drip, you know, weekly dose of the Rebbe to be able to begin thinking like the Rebbe.

48:02 Speaker 2 Mm.

48:03 Speaker 1 Um, so that's very current and today-

48:06 Speaker 2 Right

48:06 Speaker 1 ... and, and forward-facing rather than nostalgic. I don't think nosta- nostalgia for me was ever a motivation. Listen, there was always... You mentioned Gan Israel, uh, Gan Israel in New York. I think it was that first year, maybe second year, that I had already gotten, uh, from ABC News the clip of Menachem Begin coming to the Rebbe. Okay, so that's seeing a beautiful old clip, and I can't claim that that was about motivating the children, the campers going forward. So it's like, "Oh, look at this really neat, cool, fun, interesting thing."

48:32 Speaker 2 Mm.

48:33 Speaker 1 The prime minister's visiting, visiting the Rebbe, and we got it from the news, and there's a news anchor talking about it. Um, but I don't think w- to my, the best of my recollection, I don't think we've ever been about nostalgia. And by the way, that's a challenge because, you know, if you watch Living Torah every week, there's a lot of old footage in it, and, you know, sometimes we have these conversations where I just this morning was writing an email about some other video that we're working on, uh, not Living Torah, and we were talking about how do we do a certain scene or bring out a certain audio Sicha, and I was saying, "It's a challenge. Let's do it in some fresh way." But we need to be very... The, the, the challenge is not to make it feel like nostalgia.

49:11 Speaker 2 Mm.

49:11 Speaker 1 But the Rebbe delivered the Sicha 50 years ago, and all the pictures are gonna be old.

49:16 Speaker 2 Mm.

49:16 Speaker 1 But still, I want to at least do our best to make sure it doesn't feel like we're just taking you back to something that happened 1,000 years ago. Uh, that's, that's, that is a challenge, but I think it, in fact, I always do my best to articulate here and to remind everybody, and I think it's not like... I mean, many of the staff, many of the team are very good with it, to do our best not to make it into nostalgia, but into something-

49:39 Speaker 2 Mm

49:40 Speaker 1 ... that speaks to today.

49:42 Speaker 2 So interesting. It's all-

49:43 Speaker 1 While being authentic to what actually happened.

49:44 Speaker 2 I mean, that, that's such... I, I don't know if people listening to this who don't do this for a living can, can understand that challenge. Um, I'm not even sure that I fully comprehend the challenge.

49:54 Speaker 1 By the way, I'm not saying we do phenomenal with it.

49:56 Speaker 2 That's not the point. It's-

49:57 Speaker 1 It's a challenge that we're conscious of. It's not always easy. Like, what do you do? It's an old picture of the Rebbe.

50:00 Speaker 2 It's-

50:00 Speaker 1 It's an old video. It's-

50:01 Speaker 2 To me, that's not the point even if you succeed or not. The fact that you're willing to take on that kind of challenge because it's the tension between the form and the, and the content, right? The form of video basically takes you back to 1970. Like, that's just what it is. It's a video camera pointed at a space and time, and it's very obvious usually where it's from and when it's from, and you're trying to focus on the content of, like, the message of the Rebbe, right? But if you don't wanna separate it, that's the whole point. The whole point is you don't wanna separate the two. You don't want some modern thing of taking the content and, like, re- repurposing it. You want it to come in the form, but that form is... Yeah, it's a fascinating challenge.

50:45 Speaker 1 I, I don't want my 16-year-old daughter or the h- any high school girl or anybody to be watching and saying, "Oh, that's whatever. That's the old stuff," and they-

50:52 Speaker 2 Right

50:52 Speaker 1 ... "Okay, now we're gonna-- We're about to see the footage of, the black and white footage of cars driving through Times Square 'cause, you know, that's when the story happened," which is the easiest go-to-

51:00 Speaker 2 Right

51:00 Speaker 1 ... when you're retelling an old story or even playing an old sikkah from that era.

51:05 Speaker 2 I mean, I think in a way, I think in a way, to me, it's beginning to kind of, um, pieces are beginning to fit together here. Like, in a way, it seems to me that your, th- your shift or your... Well, you didn't shift the whole thing. You're bringing in storytelling of people telling stories, you know, even against, um, you know, peop- other people's hesitation of, like, you know, how do you kind of bring stories that are... You know, the Rebbe never s- the, the Rebbe placed a premium on a story coming from a Rebbe, not from out- elsewhere. Like, how do you bring these stories into the canon, so to speak? Um, you know, that is what, that is what makes it, that's, that is what makes it current in a way, right? Because, because you... Like, if you watch a film, let's say, where, where there's archival footage, but that archival footage is linked to footage of today, it begins to... You have a foothold in the present, right? Whereas, whereas if you'd, if you just have archival footage, it's like I have, I'm not, I don't have anything to hold onto unless I'm transported back in time. And I think that, I mean, I'm beginning to understand a little bit the pieces that you're, that you're moving around here better, and I'm also, I, I, I'm-

52:25 Speaker 1 The, the problem is that the s-stories are also nostalgia in a way. I just wanna tell you-

52:31 Speaker 2 It's a step in the right direction

52:32 Speaker 1 ... from a, from a filmmaking-

52:33 Speaker 2 Right

52:34 Speaker 1 ... perspective, the stories make it harder with the nostalgia as I see it, rather than easier, because the Rebbe is clean. He's saying a message.

52:40 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

52:41 Speaker 1 And you can say, "Put that with modern footage." That's fine because you can just translate it into something today.

52:45 Speaker 2 Interesting.

52:46 Speaker 1 When you have somebody telling a story, watch "Living Torah" any week, you know, and it's-

52:49 Speaker 2 Right

52:49 Speaker 1 ... an ongoing conversation within Gem. You know, how, how do you do this? Usually, you'll be telling a story from the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, whatever it is. It's at a very set time and space. The message that the Rebbe is saying is often usually timeless.

53:04 Speaker 2 Ah.

53:04 Speaker 1 The Rebbe's teaching us something.

53:05 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

53:05 Speaker 1 You can take that and put it to modern footage. That's a different whole challenge of how do you put it to modern footage and not come across as tacky or whatever, or as too, you know, on the nose. Okay, now they're trying to literally tell me, you know, what I should do.

53:18 Speaker 2 Right, right.

53:19 Speaker 1 Whatever. Anyway, it's, it's int-

53:21 Speaker 2 Ah, it's interesting

53:21 Speaker 1 ... it's interest-- It's, it's all, it's all an interesting challenge.

53:23 Speaker 2 I mean, I, I, I, obviously, everything has its limitation. I guess my point was that when you see some, when you watch a video of someone that was recorded recently who's talking years later and remembering back, you know, okay, at least, at least there's a person here who-

53:37 Speaker 1 Yeah

53:37 Speaker 2 ... who lives now, and that connects me to the story back.

53:40 Speaker 1 Connects you, yeah.

53:41 Speaker 2 I, look, I don't... It c- uh, not necessarily is, is it your job to make that final link for everybody watching it either, you know? Maybe it's on them, um, to figure out how they connect to it. But it, you know, like, what is the answer to not having a digital Rebbe? Well, the answer is that you ha- that you, you-

53:59 Speaker 1 That you have a living Rebbe.

54:00 Speaker 2 Exactly. That's the answer, right? It's, it's not that, like, to stop watching a video, right? The answer is that you have a, you have a living Rebbe. You figure out where, where you connect in a real way, and then you bring k- you bring the other things into that kind of ecosystem. But, um, yeah, it, it's... Yeah, I, I, I think I probably belabored the point a little bit. Um, it, to me, it's a very... To me, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very, uh, very important subject, something that I've wrestled with a lot. I don't know if people older than me could, you know, understand w-what, what, what I'm, what I'm talking about. But yeah, I think, I think, I think it's, I think, I think, I think it's important. Um, let's... So, so let's go back to your story. Let's go back to your story. You have, you have, you have this idea of Gem. You unearth these videos. Um, we already talked about getting access to them, then coming up with Living Torah, um, which, which has been going on for how many years now?

55:01 Speaker 1 Living Torah, uh, easiest way to remember is as we were mastering the first video, we watched the Twin Towers fall out our window. So September-

55:10 Speaker 2 So almost 25 years.

55:12 Speaker 1 Yeah.

55:12 Speaker 2 Almost 25 years.

55:13 Speaker 1 Every single week.

55:14 Speaker 2 Did you-- Uh, it's cra- I mean, I put out a podcast for 20 weeks, and I've already taken a break. It's exhausting.

55:19 Speaker 1 Oh, you did this weekly?

55:21 Speaker 2 I did it for 20 weeks weekly. I took a break. Re- um-

55:23 Speaker 1 Good for you. Yeah, it's not, it's not easy.

55:25 Speaker 2 Um, it, it's exhausting. So I, 25 years is a whole different, uh, whole different thing. Did you at the beginning see, like, did you... Nobody thinks 25 years ahead, but did you, did you, did you realize that this was something that could, could really explode the way it did?

55:42 Speaker 1 First of all, when I got involved, it, it wasn't about Living Torah per se. It was, I got involved the sixth year, five years before that.

55:49 Speaker 2 No, I know, but I'm talking about Living Torah specifically.

55:52 Speaker 1 Um, yeah. I think it needs to be a lot bigger. I th- I really see the Rebbe as the Nassi of every single Jew.

56:02 Speaker 2 Mm.

56:02 Speaker 1 And I'm actually quite frustrated, to be honest, uh, that we don't have a wider viewership, and I, I don't put that on the people out there. I put that on me and on us. But-

56:14 Speaker 2 You're saying outside Lubavitch, within Lubavitch?

56:16 Speaker 1 Every Jew.

56:17 Speaker 2 Every Jew.

56:17 Speaker 1 Every Rebbe, every Jew.

56:18 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

56:19 Speaker 1 You, you get up in a room, you go s- somewhere in New York, and you say the words of the Lubavitch Rebbe, how many people will come over to you and say, "I was... Oh, I got a dollar," or, "My grandmother was, was a, you know, didn't have any children. This, this, this happened, that happened"? Um, those are people who had a direct connection to the Rebbe and who, uh, you know, physically had some interaction or someone in their family did. But the, the world is thirsty for leadership, for real, you know, godliness. The Rebbe gives that. The Rebbe's authentic Yiddishkeit 101, um, and the- I believe that the Rebbe's the, the Nasi of every Jew. Um-

56:56 Speaker 2 When did you, when did you realize that with just video you could reach someone that didn't have any other starting point? 'Cause if you're putting it on yourself, right, you, you make videos. You're not out in the field, and you're saying that you have to reach all these people that haven't been reached yet. Clearly, you, you know, you think a video can do that. When did you realize and how did you realize a video on its own could be that kind of connection?

57:23 Speaker 1 Hard for me to say an exact date and time, but-

57:26 Speaker 2 Was there a story that stands out where, like, someone sends you a message and you're like, "Oh my goodness"?

57:33 Speaker 1 Nothing that, nothing I can point my finger to in particular. Um, you know, the fact that, I guess when I started, YouTube wasn't a thing-

57:42 Speaker 2 Right

57:42 Speaker 1 ... or whatever, but I still even then realized that videos of the Rebbe can and should be consumed far more, by a fi- far more, far wider audience than they were at the time. Um, and I still think they could be, and it's, it's on us in that I think we need to exude excitement to schluchim, to Anash, to those who would be the ones to be proud and comfortable to share it forward, rather than it being a very, you know, Lubavitcher experience, and that's been happening slowly but surely.

58:17 Speaker 2 Hmm.

58:17 Speaker 1 And especially now in the situation with Israel, which is a, an area I'd love to get into when we get a chance.

58:23 Speaker 2 Yeah. No, let's get into it.

58:25 Speaker 1 Um, but, uh, yeah, I... So it's a problem. It might be a self-esteem issue or whatever that I always blame it back on us or on me.

58:33 Speaker 2 Mm.

58:34 Speaker 1 Um, but I think that if we would successfully... I mean, there's two things. There's producing it in a way that it's interesting to everybody, spoon-feeding it in a way that's meaningful and relevant to everyone, not assuming that all the entire potential audience is one and the same.

58:54 Speaker 2 Mm.

58:54 Speaker 1 Like I've said, we can do a whole gem at our current size of over 40 people full-time, et cetera, just for non-Jews. It's just about taking the same material and producing it with the audience in mind, especially the gem febrengens, as they're called, the broadcast febrengens Rebbe spoke a lot, a, every single one, almost, I think, without exception, uh, on the broadcast febrengens Rebbe spoke for non-Jews.

59:19 Speaker 2 But-

59:19 Speaker 1 At least the sicha, right? But it needs to be curated for them.

59:23 Speaker 2 Right.

59:24 Speaker 1 Same material, but just, you know, with that audience in mind. Now, l'havdil, coming back to the Jewish people, uh, and we're doing more and more with them.

59:31 Speaker 2 But would you, would you be as concerned with non-Jewish people to hold on to the form of, you know, this is a video of the Rebbe as opposed to just a message? 'Cause it seems like with Lubavitchers, it's very m- very important that they hear from the Rebbe, that they see the Rebbe, right?

59:51 Speaker 1 Well, that is our mission. There are many people out there who have m- who have big platforms-

59:55 Speaker 2 Mm

59:55 Speaker 1 ... a YouTube rabbi, and, and there are many Lubavitchers who do great on social media and have very huge followings, and they do that, and that's phenomenal. Our unique niche is the Rebbe himself.

1:00:09 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:00:09 Speaker 1 We believe deeply, as I was telling you before, about the value of learning from the Rebbe himself, and, like, very often people bring us projects or ideas, "Oh, why don't you do this?" And they're great ideas, but we s- you know, w- early on, maybe I, I went down some of those rabbit holes, but that's, that's what we're unique with, and that's what we believe in. That's what we get up for every morning. Um, so we usually don't go too far. Um-

1:00:33 Speaker 2 So that's a core mission.

1:00:34 Speaker 1 And, and, and, and on the other hand, we do some projects outside of video-

1:00:38 Speaker 2 Mm

1:00:38 Speaker 1 ... if we feel that they are bringing the Rebbe to an audience in a way that we can uniquely. So we're not locked exclusively to video, although video is our main, you know, video, audio, photos. Um, but we've gone, you know, early years is a great example and, and there are other books that we've been involved in, and frankly, we get involved in many of other people's projects or other organizations' projects where we feel we can, we can help, even if it's not gonna result in anything with a gem logo, with a ge- you know, as a gem product.

1:01:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:01:07 Speaker 1 But if we feel that this is going to help, even if it's outside video.

1:01:11 Speaker 2 Okay, so interesting. I mean, that to me, that to me, I didn't even think of asking that before I came here, but it's so interesting because that is another place where you see the tension between the form and the content, right? Because if your mission was to get the Rebbe's message to as many people as possible, you would say, "Okay, in this case, maybe them hearing it from a rabbi with a white beard in Yiddish," which the tr- the, the language is probably the hardest kind of divider 'cause a lot of people don't wanna watch things with subtitles, right? Then right away they kind of say, "It's not for me 'cause I don't understand it." That's my guess. You would say, "Okay, you know, our goal is to hit as many people as possible. We have to change it." But you're not ready to give... Like, that, that isn't your goal, right? Your goal is to get as many people as possible in the original form. I mean, that's, that's fascinating. Are there any, like, is there any other similar kind of organization in the world that has that kind of like, um- Like, uh, dedication or adherence that like it's-- 'Cause there are some places where they, they don't care about getting the message out. Like, they're kinda like these old school m-museums that make it as hard as possible to, like, get access to the message. They're very into authenticity, and, you know, we're all like they, they're in their own world of

1:02:21 Speaker 2 holding the pure message. And then on the flip side, there are many people who are, you know, proselytizing, but at, at any means available. Are there any people that you know in any... Like, is it, is there any, is there any, like, model out there that's... Or is it a completely unique-

1:02:38 Speaker 1 Has there any been, has there ever been an individual like the Rebbe?

1:02:42 Speaker 2 Well, you're-

1:02:43 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:02:43 Speaker 2 Well-

1:02:43 Speaker 1 Anyway, I, I don't know about other-

1:02:44 Speaker 2 I'm not asking you to justify

1:02:46 Speaker 1 ...people, I just-

1:02:46 Speaker 2 I'm just saying, like, is there-

1:02:47 Speaker 1 I'm thinking about it

1:02:48 Speaker 2 ...it's so, it's, it's so, it's so uni-- It, it, it's very unique. I think it's very unique. So you, you don't, you don't, you don't know.

1:02:56 Speaker 1 I, I can't think. I don't know of others. Listen, uh, there are various presidential libraries that I see that put out, you know, footage of their subject on video. Um, but, um-

1:03:08 Speaker 2 But their goal isn't so much to get the name out there. I mean, I've, I've worked with them.

1:03:12 Speaker 1 Our goal isn't to get the name out there either. It's to get the-

1:03:14 Speaker 2 The message out there

1:03:14 Speaker 1 ...the message out there.

1:03:14 Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm saying that their goal isn't-- They're not, they're not waking up in the morning to do that, right?

1:03:21 Speaker 1 No, and by the way, one of the interesting things is, you know, the-- especially ag-going again with this Israel thing, it's, it's a, it's an interesting thing. You know, we put-- There are certain videos that we put out that became huge in Israel during the war at certain pivotal points where the Rebbe said some message. On our YouTube channel of, I don't know, three, four thousand hits. We know that it's been ripped and put into a whole bunch of Telegram channels, quoted by people in the Pri-Prime Minister's office, by military experts on TV. It's, it's made a huge difference, uh, you know, a couple specific clips, but there's no way that it was... So there's two ways you can look at it. You can say, "Hey, you ripped, you know, our clip. Let's get it down from wherever we can."

1:04:04 Speaker 2 Right.

1:04:04 Speaker 1 You know, IP violation or versus, "Look, the Rebbe's message is getting out." And, and that is an issue because you do have to keep an eye on that and, you know, kind of keep mowing the lawn to make sure it doesn't get out of control. But in certain situations, especially, you say, "Great, the Rebbe's message is getting out," and even better in his own voice because it's so much more impactful.

1:04:28 Speaker 2 So but, but that's, uh, that, that, then again, it comes up. Like, it seems like you are very focused, and I know you wanna talk about Israel, and I think-- and I'm also interested to hear about it. When it comes to Israel, it seems again that you are very interested that people hear the Rebbe's message in his voice, even if there's a way to get-- You could make the message reach further not in his voice. Is that because of just, you know, fidelity to the Rebbe's voice is not something we're going to negotiate, or is it because you believe that that is the only way to-

1:05:02 Speaker 1 So in the Israel thing in particular, we're actually doing quite a bit not in the Rebbe's voice-

1:05:05 Speaker 2 Okay

1:05:05 Speaker 1 ...believe it or not. So let me let tell you what we're, what, what's been going on with Israel. So on-- I was at the oil on Shmini Atzeret Simchat Torah with my family, and as the news started trickling in of what was happening, um, first of all, it, it was interesting that there were thirty-six hours from we, when we start, approximately from when we started hearing about it-

1:05:26 Speaker 2 Right

1:05:26 Speaker 1 ...until the end of Yom Tovs. So I actually had the chance to think. But it was, it, you know, like everybody, it was very jarring and all that. Um, and before long, there was a trickle of young men that started coming through, non-observant young men coming through to the oil test for the Rebbe's brocha on the way to JFK as they were getting called up to go to the, to go to the-

1:05:49 Speaker 2 Oh. Oh, wow

1:05:49 Speaker 1 ...on Yom Tov still.

1:05:50 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:51 Speaker 1 Um, so that was, you know, an experience. But, um, a couple things. First of all, my, my first thought was, for many years, I've been making videos of the Rebbe on Israel, and I've been researching it, and it's always been an area of interest and fascination. Um, but that now people are finally going to be able to hear. There was something about the tone that the Rebbe uses in tho-many of those sichas that made it very difficult to publicize in a way that people don't say, like, "He's yelling. Is he always yelling?"

1:06:20 Speaker 2 Why is he so upset?

1:06:21 Speaker 1 "Is he angry? Like, what's going on?" You turn on one of those sichas now, any one of them, people are like, "Oh, yeah, the Rebbe's talking tzum zach," and people can hear it. I'm saying I, I'm, I'm-

1:06:32 Speaker 2 Which sichas are you referring to? The sichas about the wars?

1:06:34 Speaker 1 The sichas about Israel's security.

1:06:35 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:06:35 Speaker 1 Where the Rebbe's warning Israel that they're making mistakes or, or certain decision makers in Israel-

1:06:40 Speaker 2 Right

1:06:40 Speaker 1 ...that they're making mistakes 'cause it's gonna have catastrophic results.

1:06:43 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:43 Speaker 1 Um, put that aside for a minute. After, a short time after, uh, Simchat Torah, I gathered a group of young, smart shluchim who I know are into the Rebbe's talks on Israel's security and created a think tank of sorts, is the way I like to call it in retrospect. And I said to them, "Please don't send me another link to a video or a audio clip of the Rebbe saying, screaming, 'Af shaal, don't give away another inch.' I know in general what the Rebbe says. I'm overwhelmed with information." I, I'm saying I, I, I, but I'm just ki- I'm, I'm speaking figurative. That is what I said, but I was trying to speak on behalf of whoever the potential viewer is. "And let's-- I want to understand in a deeper way what the fundamentals are of the Rebbe's approach to Israel's security."

1:07:39 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:07:39 Speaker 1 "What the pillars are. Why shouldn't I give away af shaal?" In other words, if you speak to many people in the right wing in Israel or outside of Israel, whether it's, you know, Smotrich or Ben-Gvir or Ben Shapiro here in the United States or another thousand people, what they're saying today is very similar to what the Rebbe says. And maybe even for some of them, they've always said things that are very similar to what the Rebbe says. But what the Rebbe's saying is unique, and there's something about it that the others are not saying. Um, proof being there were many people in the wi- on the right wing Who said things similar to the Rebbe through the years, and those are the very people who made the gravest mistakes for which we're paying now, and which we paid for on Simchat Torah. So I kind of condensed a PhD's worth of study into about eight or 10 weeks. Basically, I personally dropped almost everything in Jem to the chagrin of most of our team and whatever, and I really wanted to study this in a deeper way, and came up with an understanding, uh, which is a roadmap for Israel's security, a national security plan for Israel. Beyond just don't give away land, uh, when I say just, I mean beyond only those things, but it's more the deeper thinking. In the weeks after, uh, Simchat Torah, we got many, many calls, and this continues to this day, but now it's tapered off a little

1:09:06 Speaker 1 bit, where somebody would say, "I'm going into a meeting with Bibi," or, "I'm going into a meeting with, with Gantz. What does Rebbe have to say about hostages? What does Rebbe have to say about, you know, we're s- uh, laying siege to a city? How do we handle it? There are terrorists inside. What does Rebbe say about hostages in tunnels in a city that's in a si-siege?" You know, et cetera, et cetera. And each time we did our bis-best to answer based on the information we have. But what I said to them each time was, "Let me try and teach you the fundamentals."

1:09:35 Speaker 2 Sure.

1:09:35 Speaker 1 "And then you'll know what to do in every situation."

1:09:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:37 Speaker 1 And it really, really works that way.

1:09:39 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:40 Speaker 1 And I think this also answers, uh, kind of an elephant in the room question about the Rebbe's approach to security, which is, if you have interviews with 200, uh, military, security, political leader, government leaders in Israel talking about how amazing the Rebbe is and how the Rebbe was so brilliant with Israel's security, and they all waited in his waiting room at two o'clock in the morning and later told you about it so proudly on an interview, why, for the most part, didn't they listen? I mean, I'm generalizing now.

1:10:11 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:11 Speaker 1 But how, how does that work? And the answer is, the Rebbe's perspective and the Rebbe's solutions are very, very fundamental. They go to the core of what Israel is, who we are-

1:10:26 Speaker 2 Right

1:10:26 Speaker 1 ... and how we need to approach our security. But once you understand those, you have a decision-making proc-process, how to handle risk when it comes up, how to handle individual situations, what-- how to communicate it outwards, how to talk with the UN, how to talk with the United States, eight rules for how Israel should handle its relationship with its great partner, the United States, um, how to handle the, the Arab population in Israel, everything. As long... But you have to first get the fundamentals. So it's not a short form thing. It's not a 30-second TikTok video. Now, there are many videos that are very popular and that are very meaningful in the moment. If the night before Blinken comes to Israel, we publish a video about the Rebbe guiding an Israeli, um, Israel's, uh, you know, uh, prime minister or secretary of state on how to handle their upcoming meeting with the American secretary of state and president, and the Rebbe gives them some rules for how to handle the Americans, that's very, very relevant. Or many other things that we put out individual clips, and we keep hearing, "Whoa, that's amazing. Keep putting them out." And that's great. But right now, all of Israel, from the top to the bottom, from the right to the left, are looking for solutions. Even the people who are advocating very strongly to do this or to that, when you talk to them, people are confused, they're scared. There's no one speaking out with a clear, clean perspective

1:11:51 Speaker 1 on what we can do and why we should do it. We know, okay, d-d-don't give in, you know, don't give them humanitarian aid, and it's true, and most of these things are correct.

1:11:59 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:59 Speaker 1 But what do we do? What are we gonna do in a year from now, two years from now?

1:12:02 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:02 Speaker 1 How are we gonna prevent this from happening again? And why are you so sure that my way is gonna work over your way?

1:12:07 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:07 Speaker 1 There's a lot of that. Um, and the good news is everybody, everybody is ready to listen. When you walk into a room today, I'm talking about the decision makers at the top, the right wing, even the left wing, but certainly huge segments of Israeli society, journalists, the whole command of level of the IDF and, you know, never mi-mind the datilu me world w- who want to hear and know Torah's perspective and what the Rebbe has to say on any morning, um, people, there's a very willing audience. This is something that is beyond anything I've ever experienced in-

1:12:43 Speaker 2 Hmm

1:12:43 Speaker 1 ... since my involvement in Jem. So even though, so kind of what I chanced upon or stumbled upon, um, doesn't let me sleep and, and to say, "Oh, okay, let's just put out some videos." So I got into this mode of, of teaching. I've had hundreds of shluchim on Zoom calls because I think shluchim are the, the teachers and the leaders of Klal Yisroel, and they're predisposed. They, they want to know what the Rebbe has to say.

1:13:05 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:06 Speaker 1 Um, so we've been doing a lot of that. If people line up meetings, you know, with Israel's leadership, so, you know, we, we go and do that. Um, and my goal is to be involved with it for just another couple of months until the ball is rolling without me, to be able to turn the whole thing into a very basic talking point that any Lubavitcher bocher who's going to host a barbecue for Israeli soldiers can understand and know clearly what to say. Um, you know, push out a couple of videos, gotta get a book started, some articles, um, and then hopefully, you know, can go back to regular programming.

1:13:42 Speaker 2 I'm going to venture a guess that you're never gonna go back to regular programming. That was probably chutzpadik of me to say, but I, I, I don't know how you go back after, after that. Because what, what I would say is from what you're telling me is it's really fascinating because you ma- you made the comment of the fundamentals over kind of the direct answers, specific answers, specific kind of, you do this for this, you do this for this situation, this, you know, this Heichi Timtsa, this exact Heichi Timtsa, and you go to the fundamentals. I, I remember hearing a story, I don't know if it's true, that, that a shliach once asked for eitzah of how to deal with certain things, and the Rebbe told him to learn a blad Gemara every morning, and that that already give him the right frame of mind to, to answer the question appropriately. And it... Wh-how does the blad Gemara have to do with, you know, um, which, which mechanic to use or whatever, um, or which property or, you know, these kind of questions that the Gemara is not gonna talk about. It's because you're going to the fundamentals of how to think. And like, again, it seems to me like there's a, a, a tension here where, you know, people come to you to Jem, came to you with like, "What are the answers?" And you're telling them, "Wait a second, you need to understand the questions better." Right? "I can't give you answers if

1:15:03 Speaker 2 we don't have a deeper conversation about the questions." And so, and then you, you're talking about kind of developing a think tank model in Jem where there's, you know- Right

1:15:15 Speaker 1 Yeah, but, uh, listen, a lot of... Sorry, go ahead.

1:15:17 Speaker 2 No, no. I mean, that just sounds, that just s-

1:15:18 Speaker 1 So a lot-

1:15:19 Speaker 2 That just seems like-

1:15:20 Speaker 1 ... of the output is video as well. In other words, the Rebbe, making those key points on video is part of... Listen, this isn't the first time we've done this. The-- We have a video, a series called Jem Presents, and it's very bare bones.

1:15:31 Speaker 2 Right

1:15:31 Speaker 1 It's me standing in front of a back- a black or, or, or this, you know, scene right over here.

1:15:35 Speaker 2 This place, right. I think I've seen it.

1:15:36 Speaker 1 This scene here.

1:15:36 Speaker 2 I think I've seen it, yeah.

1:15:37 Speaker 1 But it was never intended to... We, we weren't expecting and not even intending to get hundreds of thousands or millions of views. The goal was, let's educate „Shluchim“, Lubavitch, Anash as to this complex topic, what the Rebbe's thoughts are on, on it. You know, and we use a couple of videos the Rebbe, but the, I think the more unique part is what I say in between because we studied a topic and we're serving it to them-

1:15:59 Speaker 2 Right

1:15:59 Speaker 1 ... on a silver platter, and that forever changed the perception or understanding of the Rebbe on antisemitism. We keep getting feedback about that. Chabad.org developed it into an article.

1:16:09 Speaker 2 Yeah. Lovely.

1:16:09 Speaker 1 Uh, Moment of Silence. So it's a, it's a complex topic that the Rebbe talks about a lot. Let me, let me tell you this. The Rebbe, uh, as you know, the Rebbe had a unique approach to Rashi al Hatorah, right?

1:16:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:21 Speaker 1 Which is, oh, the Rebbe invented it essentially or rolled it out. There are 200 rules, klalim, for Rashi al Hatorah. The Rebbe never came out and said, "Here are my 200 rules for Rashi al Hatorah."

1:16:32 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:32 Speaker 1 There's 650 or whatever the number is, sichas on Rashi.

1:16:35 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:16:35 Speaker 1 Amongst them, the Rebbe has 200 rules. Somebody came, gathered those together-

1:16:39 Speaker 2 Kol Rashi

1:16:40 Speaker 1 ... published them in a book.

1:16:41 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:41 Speaker 1 The Rebbe was thrilled. But for whatever reason, the Rebbe didn't teach in that way. The-

1:16:45 Speaker 2 Oh, this, that book was published before Gematras?

1:16:47 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:16:48 Speaker 2 Oh.

1:16:48 Speaker 1 And there are other, you know, if you look-

1:16:49 Speaker 2 Kol, Kol, Kol Rashi you're talking about.

1:16:51 Speaker 1 Kol Rashi.

1:16:51 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:16:51 Speaker 1 There's, you know, another thing that comes to mind is Vimainei Yeshua, which goes through each of the ushpizin, the nights. It was made by Val HaNachas Blaha. The Rebbe was thrilled with that sefer they took, and they essentially put together all of the Rebbe's sichas on this ushpizin, on this night, and what the meaning of it is and, and all that, and they made it into one unit.

1:17:11 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:17:12 Speaker 1 So they synthesized together the Rebbe's thinking on this thing. The Rebbe did not present it that way, but the Rebbe was-- There's, there are beautiful answers from the Rebbe about that safer, et cetera. For whatever reason, that's not the way the Rebbe presented, laid out his Torah. But same thing, by the way, in the area-

1:17:29 Speaker 2 Oh, sorry. That's-

1:17:30 Speaker 1 ... of Israel security

1:17:30 Speaker 2 Oh, sorry. In general

1:17:31 Speaker 1 ... there's a sefer called Das Torah.

1:17:32 Speaker 2 Right.

1:17:32 Speaker 1 Which was made by, uh, Schonberg Walpo.

1:17:35 Speaker 2 Right.

1:17:36 Speaker 1 Uh, the Rebbe referred people to it. He took, and for that day, did an amazing job consolidating in real time the Rebbe's thoughts on Israel security and made chapters out of it, et cetera. So-

1:17:46 Speaker 2 That's what the sichas, the same thing. I mean, there's-

1:17:48 Speaker 1 But sichas is, is in a smaller way, 'cause usually they're focusing on an individual sicha, and they rewrote it. Sometimes it'll be two or three sichas-

1:17:53 Speaker 2 Right

1:17:54 Speaker 1 ... put together.

1:17:54 Speaker 2 But it was just, uh, it's written in not necessarily the way the Rebbe delivered the sicha, right?

1:17:58 Speaker 1 Right.

1:17:58 Speaker 2 And-

1:17:58 Speaker 1 Correct. So this is the same thing. Like if you hear our presentation on Israel security, you probably won't hear any words that are new, but it's in just an entirely different way of presenting it. Um, and, you know-

1:18:12 Speaker 2 But it does seem, it does seem fundamentally new in the sense that, you know, at least in terms of Jem or, or in general like Lubavitch, um, try... There was always a thing where if you have a question, I think someone's, someone said it to me the other day, like back in the day they didn't know what to do. They waited for the Rebbe talk in Farbrengen, and then they know what to do, right? And the person coming to you today asking you like, "What would the Rebbe say in this very specific case?" has that same mindset. There has to be an answer somewhere out there that like I just don't know of that gives me marching orders. And you're telling them that no, like you have to think deeper. A, 'cause not necessarily is there always a specific answer to that case, and B, because if you don't understand the fundamentals, you're gonna be another guy who hears an answer, but when push comes to shove is gonna fall, fall under pressure, right?

1:19:05 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:19:06 Speaker 2 So isn't that like a, isn't that a new thing for, for, for Jem or in general for Lubavitchers to, to start to, to say we can't just rely on answers, we have to like learn how to think?

1:19:19 Speaker 1 I hope it's not new. I hope people have been thinking. I, I've been taught to think. You know, it's the, the, the-

1:19:24 Speaker 2 Okay. So I... No, no. So may, so may-

1:19:25 Speaker 1 ... the difference between opening an igrus... So this might offend some of your audience, I don't know, but it's the difference between just opening an igrus random or using mafteach in the back of the igrus. Um-

1:19:33 Speaker 2 No, it's deeper than that. It's deeper than that. Okay. I, I know the-

1:19:35 Speaker 1 Let's not go down that rabbit trail.

1:19:36 Speaker 2 I know. I'm just, I just understand, I just understand-- I know. I'm understanding now the way I said it may have, may have come across condescending. I'm not, God forbid, saying that nobody was thinking the past 30 years. I'm certainly not saying that I'm the first person to think. Um, that's not my point. Uh, and I certainly, I, I hope it didn't come across that way. What, what I, what I, what I'm suggesting is it sounds like even here where you, you had a very strict kind of mandate that you gave yourself, it, it seems you, you said that like you, you've changed course almost for the past three months for this, for this, for this scenario where, where, where you realized you had to go deeper, and y-you said it was mind-opening. I, I find it hard to believe that you can put that genie back in the bottle. Like, don't, doesn't that go not just for Israel and not just for Miyuhudi, but what it means to be a Hasid-

1:20:27 Speaker 1 Well, well-

1:20:27 Speaker 2 ... what it means Shalom Bayis and all these things we have to go deeper, no?

1:20:32 Speaker 1 Yeah. But to, uh, that's not new to me.

1:20:34 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:20:34 Speaker 1 In other words, the, the other topics-

1:20:36 Speaker 2 It sound, it sounded-

1:20:37 Speaker 1 The other topics were simpler. If you talk about antisemitism-

1:20:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

1:20:40 Speaker 1 ... you talk about, uh, Shevu- uh, uh, Moment of Silence, those are simpler topics. With Israel, the, the difference is that there's the urgency-

1:20:49 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

1:20:49 Speaker 1 ... of getting it out quickly and people actually begging to know what it is, and kind of me being able to see that and, you know, wanting to just get the ball rolling. But I'm gonna have to go back to the regular programming, just like the Rebbe had to go back to the regular programming on a regular basis. Hopefully, we'll have better results if it's, if, you know, if one can believe that we could have better results than the Rebbe, but it's the Rebbe who's getting the results. But the point is, the idea is to present it in a way that people can hear and understand and- It can begin to, you know, germinate within each person and grow, and they'll, they'll see it and understand it and be able to run with it. We're not going to become, you know, Shleimus Ha'aretz Central, just like, you know, when we do a video on a certain topic and people say, "Oh, you did a, uh, on Hareinu Mikabel and Ach Tzadikkim, you did a, you did a thing. There are no stickers available. You guys should go print stickers." I'm like, "Whoa."

1:21:43 Speaker 2 It's like a job.

1:21:44 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem.

1:21:44 Speaker 2 Right.

1:21:44 Speaker 1 It's their job. Or we, you know, we're doing now something on Bitachon and-

1:21:47 Speaker 2 Oh, so you feel this Israel thing is really outside your wheelhouse, just like you have no, like there's no one else doing it, you have to do it?

1:21:53 Speaker 1 Well, the Israel thing does connect very de- very strongly to video.

1:21:58 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:21:58 Speaker 1 And we do have a lot of centralized information in all the interviews we've done, all the research we've done, all the sichas that we have, et cetera, but it's also way beyond video.

1:22:08 Speaker 2 I see.

1:22:09 Speaker 1 And I think it's much, like I said, uh, honestly, it's to this date, I haven't done a good enough job getting the rest of JEM, you know, the, the structure and the people of JEM, uh, swept along with me. So it's kind of I'm going solo with one other person, Levik Korff. But I-- whatever. The other people in JEM are helping quite a bit, but it's not like the whole organization has been swept away with it, and maybe I can, I can make that happen so I can, we can go back to regular programming more quickly.

1:22:36 Speaker 2 I see.

1:22:37 Speaker 1 But I don't know. I just feel that it's, it's like it's needed. I don't see anyone else doing it, so it's like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And, you know, there were people who helped support us to say, "Okay, keep doing this for another little bit, but then we're gonna have to come back to regular programming."

1:22:50 Speaker 2 Have you seen, have, have you seen any difference in how Lubavitchers respond to content that has more of this, what you, what you talk, what you, what you refer to as like thinking in fundamentals? Have you-- I, I understand that people that are, you know, um, dealing with it or, you know, ask on him, they would appreciate it more. But have you seen, you know, typical Lubavitchers, let's say, you know, beginning to realize that, wait a second, I can really understand the philosophy here as opposed to just marching orders?

1:23:26 Speaker 1 You're talking on, on the Israel topic?

1:23:28 Speaker 2 Well, yeah, because you happen to-

1:23:29 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:23:29 Speaker 2 ... stumble into it. Have you seen-

1:23:30 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

1:23:31 Speaker 2 Right.

1:23:31 Speaker 1 So first of all, you didn't ask this, but it's on a related note. Whenever I start one of these projects, I'm very, very self-conscious. Who am I? Your job is to publish The Rebbe's words. Like, what are you, you know, maybe you should get someone else to be on camera also, it's also part of it, like. Um, but the bottom line is I'm becoming more and more, uh, comfortable, and there are others who, you know, speak into my ears about this, like, "Stop it. Stop worrying so much. You're just transmitting it." And I guess my telling myself that I'm not doing something for the mass public, I'm just doing it to teach Anash and Shluchim, and they can take it further, each one in their format. All of those people who are big on social media who, you know, who I was referring to before, each one will do it in their own way. I just need to teach them what I've learned and let them obviously hear The Rebbe himself saying the key points. Um, and, you know, I don't expect or need to be the, the one whose video goes-

1:24:31 Speaker 2 Right

1:24:31 Speaker 1 ... to everybody. I don't need people to know me specifically. But anyway, so, um, I, so I'm always very, very self-conscious, and then I'm usually surprised pleasantly, pleasantly surprised by how little pushback there is. And I, of course, I'm very self-conscious. I ask around, nobody minded, there's not telling me about it, whatever. Meanwhile, thank God, you know, it's been, it's been, uh, it's been just fine, and quite the contrary. I had one call, uh, one Zoom that we did, like, for senior Shluchim, heads of countries and states, and, you know, I don't know if they signed up for me to say their names, but it was really people, people far more senior than me. And I'll, I'll just name one person, Rav Zvi Grunblatt was on there, and he's a choizer. Like, I'm gonna teach him sichas.

1:25:16 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:25:17 Speaker 1 Um, but the feedback that I got from that one was, was, was, was nice. And, and what they said was what I, what I appreciated most was that the other groups that I did, for the most part, many of them, including the ones with our, with, with our donors, I did one for, with kind of some of our key donors, was, "You gotta get this to the top. How are we getting you into the Prime Minister's office?" Which was not a bad reaction, and in the end we did. But their reaction was h- "Get us these materials so we can use them," for the most part. I'm, I'm generalizing. Um, because they-- And I was thrilled with that because my goal was to, that every Shliach, once every Shliach knows and understands this, they, like how it works, what The Rebbe's approach is, they'll see that it's not that far off thing called Shleimus Ha'aretz that, you know, it was anxiety-inducing 'cause The Rebbe's screaming, and that's not my shlichus. But so much of it is just Yiddishkeit 101, that if you're aware of it, you can project it outwards as appropriate for your particular shlichus.

1:26:17 Speaker 2 Hmm. Yeah, it's re- it's, it's, it's, it's really interesting because this is something that I actually started thinking about on the podcast with, um, I think it was Rabbi New, or maybe it's a different episode. You know, in, in Chassidus there's always this mashal that's brought. It's, uh, I think it's even a, a Ma'amar Chazal, that it takes 40 years, habon shinan ad koma d'aita d'Rabi. That, you know, there's-- That's brought as more as a mashal of the, the, the merkav between a Rav and a Talmud, but I think in the Gemara it's meant for something more literal. That there's, you know, there's a lag. Like, the idea that the Rav says something and the Talmud just goes with it. You know, as a soldier, you're expected to follow marching orders instantly, and that's a matter of life and death. But as a Talmud, it could take 40 years to actually internalize what was told to you in the first place. And, and maybe that's another way to kind of reconcile this tension of past and present, where, you know, if, if I'm looking at a video 40 years ago to try to feel like I'm living 40 years ago, yeah, that one has a problem, a dislocation almost of identity, where like, am I here or am I there? But if I'm looking at that video or learning that sicha or learning this topic, because it may have taken forty years to internalize what it meant, and we're just beginning to figure out what

1:27:41 Speaker 2 the Rebbe was thinking back then, maybe we believed that he was right back then, but very few of us saw in concrete what it would, you know, how it would translate. It's become much more real. In Israel, I think it's a lot more t- like this subject's a lot more tangible this, but it's everything really, right? Um, Moshiach is probably the, the most obvious one where I, I don't, I don't believe anybody really understands yet what the Rebbe meant with, with the Kohen Moshiach. I think it's something that's gonna take time. I think it's taking time. Uh, that's just my, my personal, uh, feeling. But it seems to me like that's something that you're talking about here too, where, you know, video is a remarkable way to preserve a message, to give us the opportunity to, to have that time to figure it out, which maybe wasn't, wouldn't have been available otherwise.

1:28:34 Speaker 1 With Israel, going back to Israel, part of what I think we did that's unique, and I don't think it, it's genius, but it's just unique. Maybe it's based on where I come from and what my, the way I look at the world is there's Oisias Hataira, there's Oisias Harav, there's the way the Rebbe taught things, and there's Olam Hazeh. And there's no question, like I don't need to be the one to come along and say it, that there was, there's a gap going on. So people would, could ask, "How could it be that what the Rebbe said that like how does it relate to what's going on?" In fact, though, remember, one of the triggers for me to really, really jump in is I, I spoke to a very senior defense department person in Israel. He's like at the top levels of the defense department for many, many decades. It was the night before Blinken came, and he was just ois mensch. You know, "You have no idea what's going on here, and you have no... Like this is the, the, the what's going, the pressure on us and the..." And I saw how just totally... And I reminded him, "The Rebbe told you A, B, C, D in a sim, you know, somewhat similar scenario before." The bottom line is certainly people who did not sit in Yechidus with the Rebbe, the Rebbe's speaking a sicha and, and, and there a person can ask, "So how does this connect to what's going on?" But

1:29:51 Speaker 1 there's a direct connection, and the Rebbe's actually speak, what he's saying is very relevant today. It's not an old message. It's not something that he said that went nowhere at the time, so it's a waste, God forbid, or all that. It's how do we take this and put this into words that people can hear and see as something that's uplifting and positive and actionable, and frankly, the only answer, uh, to what's going on. So that bridging that gap, yeah, maybe it's taken unfortunately thirty years and, uh, and what happens in Chassidus for, for this, that, for, you know, for this to come together. I'm hoping that this will be, you know, enough, whatever we do, that Hashem will bless the work of not just my hands, but of all Chassidim and all Jews and Klal Yisrael, that now we could listen to the Torah's approach, um, without any further pain, God forbid. Um, but that gap is definitely something that is on all of us to close. So the same way the Rebbe sends a Shliach to Timbuktu, and their job is to really befriend and become a part of the life of the Jews of their city, Shliach and Shlucha, um, and bring Torah's message to them in a way that they will internalize, that the Rebbe himself can't do.

1:31:09 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:31:10 Speaker 1 You know, just by-

1:31:11 Speaker 2 Right

1:31:11 Speaker 1 ... broadcasting to them. By sending them tapes of the Rebbe's sichas, you know, you're not gonna do it. You need it to be brought to Olam Hazeh. That's our job. That's the job of, you know, each of us, uh-

1:31:23 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, on a happy note, I mean, I, I, I kinda, I know the, the Israel is, you know, uh, it's not a happy, it's not a happy story, but there is so- there is, uh, I don't know if the word is silver lining on what you're saying, but there is something hopeful there, where a message that was perhaps dormant or felt inaccessible for so many years, um, did in fact ring true at some point. Uh, it, it, you know, time is sometimes a blessing in that sense, where a message can become more internalized, and I think that's a hopeful idea, right? Where it's not just that there's this idea that we're holding onto and trying to kind of grab onto as it slips through our fingers, but to the contrary, with time, perhaps the idea becomes more real and more tangible and, and more, and more true, uh, to us. And, um, I... To me, that's, to me, that's something hopeful. And I, I, you know, it sounds like that's what guides, uh, that's what wakes you up in the morning.

1:32:29 Speaker 1 It does.

1:32:30 Speaker 2 Uh, and that's-

1:32:30 Speaker 1 It's not just me. It's a big team of people, thank God.

1:32:33 Speaker 2 Right.

1:32:33 Speaker 1 Who I believe-

1:32:34 Speaker 2 Right

1:32:34 Speaker 1 ... share my, uh, drive.

1:32:35 Speaker 2 Right. But, but you're, but you're the one here on Sunday afternoon.

1:32:39 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:32:39 Speaker 2 Right? Is that a fair-

1:32:40 Speaker 1 There are others here too.

1:32:41 Speaker 2 There's hay, there was hay.

1:32:42 Speaker 1 Or, or others that were here.

1:32:42 Speaker 2 I, I did not, I did not mean that, God forbid, an exclusion of anybody else. But, um, you know, it's, it's, I think it's a, I think there's a, a wonderful, um, hopeful message in that. And, um, you know, and I know you're busy. You're talking about being very involved with, uh, with Israel. You're here on Sunday afternoon. You must be here for other things, so I appreciate your time. Um, this has been a wonderful conversation. And, uh, yeah.

1:33:08 Speaker 1 Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me.

1:33:09 Speaker 2 And I, yeah.

1:33:10 Speaker 1 That was an hour and a half already?

1:33:11 Speaker 2 It's an h- hour and a half. I mean, we can go further, but I don't wanna, I don't, I don't want to-

1:33:14 Speaker 1 I wanted to share with you maybe one point on Israel, if you're good with that.

1:33:17 Speaker 2 I'm good with it. Sure.

1:33:18 Speaker 1 Okay. Um, one of the key pillars, uh, of anyone who's listened to the Rebbe speaking about Israel's security is a law in the laws of Shabbos- Uh, Chapter 329, it's in Shem Chaf Tes, about if there's an invasion in a border city and you have, uh, a raiding party coming across the border and raiding, let's say, a warehouse of kash v'tevel. Let's say in the modern equivalent, toilet paper and tissues, something of very little value. Even if we know that they are not coming to hurt anyone, to kill, and they actually plan on going back, and I'm far away on Shabbos, there's no risk to anyone's life. So typically, if there's a fire in my warehouse, if there's somebody stealing from my warehouse on Shabbos, I can't go anywhere near them, let the fire burn it down. If it is a border city, you must go, pick yourself up from your Shabbos meal, gather an army or a, you know, a party to fight, to fight them off and take up weapons on Shabbos, risk your own life to fight with them, even though you know that they're not coming to fight, they're coming just to steal. Why is that? She'eeti pasecha aretz lifneim, because by allowing them this advantage of it being open before them without being challenged, you're giving them, in our words, a strategic advantage.

1:34:48 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:34:49 Speaker 1 And that strategic advantage, Torah tells us you need to risk your life to fight that strategic advantage. Remember, no one's life is even at threat, at, at risk now. And the Rebbe talks about this halacha a lot. Once you understand this halacha well, you understand Torah is doing you a favor, and it's telling you that if-- you need to stand up right here before things get out of control, and if you don't stop it here, it's going to become something that is life and death.

1:35:18 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:35:18 Speaker 1 And that guides the Rebbe's entire, uh, the, the Jewish d-- uh, policy of self, self-defense. If you do anything that's going to give the enemy a strategic advantage, land, obviously, oil, anything at all that's going to give them a strategic advantage over you that, that, that they can then, the land will be open before them to, to conquer, that you need to fight to-- including risking your life even before they're threatening your life. And from here, we derive a whole set of rules.

1:35:54 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:35:54 Speaker 1 Um, there's what we call the physics of pressure. Pressure only, you know, continues to become worse and worse, uh, on the person who gives into the pressure. You may as well draw the line right there. And the Rebbe gives you the tools, and he teaches you how, based on this halacha, you communicate that to your allies, to your citizens, to yourself. The minute you know that something, even though it's not a, it's not a, a threat to life today, but this is something that halacha tells you, tells you, you must stand up against, even risking your own life for it, you begin to perceive every question that comes to you in that way. And if you truly draw the line there, then the pressure's not going to get worse and worse and worse on things that truly are pikua nefesh, life and death at the time. And the Rebbe advocates strongly that you need to first understand it yourself and then communicate that outwards and never budge from that. Because the minute you communicate it outwards, if you then budge from it, A, your allies or your citizens or your fellow people in the government or whatever it is, will say, "Hey, that person's a liar."

1:37:00 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:37:00 Speaker 1 And they, they don't mean it seriously. It's not truly a threat to life, and that's how you'll end up in a terrible place. Uh, Yitzhak Shamir, of blessed memory, is the one who started the process. At the time it was Madri, ended up in granting autonomy to the Palestinians. And he said, "All I want to do is we're going to talk. I'm agreeing to talk." I remember this. I'm not all that old, but I remember how heavy the pressure was then from Bush the First and Baker.

1:37:31 Speaker 2 And Baker.

1:37:31 Speaker 1 And there were loan guarantees, and Israel needed those loan guarantees. They said, "All we want you to do is talk." And Shamir said, "Fine." The Rebbe said he was even tougher than Begin, who was a very strong, staunch hawk, right-winger.

1:37:43 Speaker 2 Who was it? Yitzhak Shamir?

1:37:45 Speaker 1 Shamir.

1:37:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:37:46 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe said, "Don't talk. If you go to these talks giving them the understanding that you might be willing to-

1:37:53 Speaker 2 Right.

1:37:53 Speaker 1 "Bend, you're going to allow something to begin that you're not gonna be able to stop." And in fact, there's a, there's a clip by Dollars of Eliyahu Rubinstein, who was his secretary of state, Shamir's secretary of state. Five and a half minutes, I believe it is. It's on YouTube. And he's talking to the Rebbe that, you know, "We're trying to explain to them that what for them is just foreign policy, for us is life and death." And the Rebbe, I, I don't think I've ever seen the Rebbe so impatient. The Rebbe touches him a few times while he's talking to him, and he's trying to explain to him. He says, "You keep saying that, but then a minute later, whatever it is you're arguing about, you give it away or you back down from, so they don't-- You're not showing that you mean it. If it's truly life and death, so stop it. Don't continue. Stop now." I mean, this is-- Israel's made the same mistakes again and again and again. Um, but all the rules, there's a set of rules. I think it's eight rules that come out of this, uh, Shem Chaf Tes, and there's another eight rules for how to handle, for Israel to handle its relationship with the United States that are based on that. But once you understand the fundamentals-

1:38:56 Speaker 2 The rules come from where? You, you've codified-

1:38:58 Speaker 1 Shem Chaf Tes.

1:38:59 Speaker 2 No, I'm saying who's codified these eight rules?

1:39:01 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:39:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm saying-- Okay.

1:39:03 Speaker 1 And you could say seven, you could say nine, but it's like, here's what it means-

1:39:06 Speaker 2 Right, right, right.

1:39:07 Speaker 1 When you understand Shem Chaf Tes. Um, and the same thing with, you know, what always seems to be a headline, uh, how to handle the Americans. It's pressure. They're not gonna provide arms. What it's gonna be? Um, you know, I'll just tell you one, like one example of that is the Rebbe explains that the Americans have to say what they have to say. Their job is not to protect Israeli citizens. That-that's one thing, a-and what Israel's job is is another thing. But, like one of them is that there are times when the United States says things that they don't really even mean it. What does it even mean that the United States says something? It's a certain president at a certain time and place who's in a certain political situation. Let's look at today. You know, there's a president who needs to be reelected or has pressure on him from this or that. So what does it even mean that America pressures? Okay, wait it out, you know, until, until the next administration, until they get distracted by something else. But this particular rule that I just wanna mention now is that they don't even always mean what they're saying. Rebbe talks about a specific example, nineteen fifty-six. Uh, Israel, the UK, and France went to war against Egypt, pushed them out of the Sinai because they were threatening, you know, traffic in the Suez Canal. And they won. It was a tremendous victory, and came along the United States a short time later and

1:40:28 Speaker 1 pressured them, "How did you do that?" And pressured Israel to move away, to move all the way back and give back the Sinai and get off the banks of-- bank of the Suez Canal. Three years later, an Israeli diplomat-- a-an American diplomat said to an Israeli diplomat, "Why did you guys pull away from the Suez Canal?" He was like, "What do you mean? You threatened an embargo. You weren't going to sell arms to us. That whole, you know, whole big deal." I said, "We said it 'cause we had to say it. But you guys, you're like the guy who lit his house on fire and then went to the insurance salesman and said, 'My house burned down.'" He said, "How could you do that?" We said it, we didn't really mean it. Um, I'm saying that's a specific example that the Rebbe gives. There are seven or eight examples. There are examples for when the pressure is very hard, what do you do? How do you handle it? And the Rebbe says it is possible that they will stop the provision of arms, but it won't be for long because they need you as a partner. Right. And America needs Israel in certain times more than Israel needs America, if Israel is strong. If Israel is wea-weak, then Israel-- the, uh, the United States does not need Israel. Anyway, there's, there's a whole list of how to handle the relationship, how to manage the relationship, but it all comes really from Shinuf test. The minute

1:41:40 Speaker 1 you understand, you truly understand that crossing this line is something I cannot do, your posture toward the United States is entirely different. It's, "I'm sorry, we're great friends. This is something we just can't do it." Right. We wanna live. Um, and when they see that you mean it over a sustained period of time, they'll work with you. Right. When Israel is all over the place, it's not gonna work. Anyway, I'm trying to condense like seven or eight different things into one, and these are individual separate bullet points- Right ...that are very understandable, learnable, uh, and they're gonna work. When they're used, they work. There are many examples from the Rebbe in real-time of things that were going on where they worked, and where-- when they weren't used- Right ...it didn't work. Right. But, yeah, that's very interesting. But, but i-in the, in the context of this conversation, what I would say is, is that for, you know, the, the It's, it was, it was very, um, it was, uh, gratifying, if that's the word. It w- it was very nice that there were a couple points in the current conflict where I turned to members of this think tank, and I said to them... A-and it was not something that there's a source for directly in the What do you think the correct course of action? Take it or leave-- in other words, do this or do that, at this or that crossroads.

1:46:16 Speaker 3 They ask you?

1:46:17 Speaker 1 No, I ask the group.

1:46:18 Speaker 3 Hmm.

1:46:18 Speaker 1 I had a certain inkling-

1:46:19 Speaker 3 Oh, oh, you, you, you-

1:46:20 Speaker 1 My, my little group

1:46:21 Speaker 3 ... your shul, you think. I thought you were talking about-

1:46:22 Speaker 1 My think tank of, of, of-

1:46:24 Speaker 3 Ah

1:46:24 Speaker 1 ... shulhim, who by the way, are an amazing group of guys, um, who like really know these s-well, and, and we-- and letters and things, and we argue, and we talk about it. Just today, we had a breakthrough of, you know, something, uh, kind of where we said, "Hey, we might have gotten the Rebbe's thinking wrong in this particular situation 'cause there's no source for it. We just all assumed A or B or C." Um, so then I said to them, "What do you think the Rebbe would say?" And every single one of them said the same thing, which means that the fundamentals, at least as it applied for these seven people in the group, they all, uh, you know, were ready to make the same decision as if anyone asked us what decision to make. But it was nice to see, and the same thing goes in many additional areas. So if you understand the fundamentals well, I would think that many of those arguments that you're talking about, uh, what is there to hold or what's the right thing to do, many of them go away. Um, and I have to tell you, I do see many Lubavitchers or shulhim or whatever it is, making mistakes probably, which is very-- it's painful to me to see, but I don't blame them because no one's ever taught them or they never were able to understand or to know the Rebbe's approach in a deeper way. You know, is it our job to be out

1:47:34 Speaker 1 there on social media proving to everyone that they really did, Rachmanu Li'tzlan, do what they did, you know, on the-- I, I hate to call it on Simchat Torah, but on, on that day. And there are people who are out there and fighting, you know, "Look, here's the proof, and here's the pictorial." And like, is that the job? First of all, are you gonna help anything with that?

1:47:52 Speaker 3 Well, it's apologizing already. It's a form of apologizing.

1:47:55 Speaker 1 And second of all, if you understand the, the first pillar, which is our ownership of Israel-

1:47:59 Speaker 3 Yeah, you don't do that

1:47:59 Speaker 1 ... and you realize that it's actually hurtful, what you need to be doing is saying why we belong here, and this belongs to us, and you are our, our, our guest. Um, but you spoke about the bringing together-- You mentioned about the, you know, the bringing together of, of practicality. At least that's the way I heard what you said. I forgot the exact words that you said. But, you know, the Rebbe's approach, Torah, and I think that's what the Rebbe did in his Torah in general and taught us, tried to teach us, hopefully succeeded, um, about the Olam Hazeh, this world, and Torah, and the Rebbe, and the things that are going on in current events. The Rebbe says this about his own style of teaching. He speaks about the

1:52:10 Speaker 3 Right. In many ways, it's, it's not just that it happened to be that there's tech- there was technology and there was life kind of didn't exist before. It's almost, it's apropos to how the Rebbe saw these things, that there's no, there's no, there's no part, there's no, there's no space where like this, this isn't included in Torah as well, right? Torah has something to say about this too. And, and so, like I find myself looking back at some of the questions I asked you earlier, and like the answer to those questions seems to be that if you look at, if you look at it from a place of like, uh, you know, a dichotomy that there's technology and there's like, th- there's a video and there's a book, there's a past and there's a present, all these kind of dichotomies that are true dichotomies, right? But if you get caught up in the dichotomy, then you start, you start wrestling with certain tensions, and some of them could become problematic. Whereas ultimately the, the goal, I suppose from the Rebbe's standpoint, is to see things from a place of unity, a place much, much deeper where everything's expressing, where everything's expressing Torah, everything's expressing the Hamster's will, right? And so that's, like when I asked earlier, where's the starting point w- that starts the ecosystem around which the rest of the ecosystem revolves, it seems to me that that's, that's the answer. The deeper you go, the more all this kind of fits in and

1:53:36 Speaker 3 makes sense. Does that, does that make sense?

1:53:39 Speaker 1 Makes sense to me.

1:53:40 Speaker 3 Makes sense. Wonderful.

1:53:42 Speaker 1 Can I finish with a concept then that I think follows from what you were saying?

1:53:45 Speaker 3 Of course.

1:53:47 Speaker 1 It's, it can be seen as unrelated, but as you said, if you just go a little deeper, it's all related. Uh, Moshe Rabbeinu says about a Nasi, really he's saying it about himself, but when, when he's asking Hashem to find a new Nasi for the Jewish people, he says, "Isher sh'ruach bo." And how she-- saying, "Sheyakhol lalech, uh, k'neged ruchei sh'kol achad ve'echad." He's able to connect with each person in their own way. You know, and I see so many people who are sidium of the Rebbe who have very, very different personalities and who recognize their relationship with the Rebbe or the Rebbetzin, and they were super close in their mind, maybe they were, and they cannot comprehend how that other person who has a very different personality, who comes from a totally different place-

1:54:41 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm

1:54:43 Speaker 1 ... had any relationship whatsoever. And yet, if you'll talk to them and their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren will say, "My grandmother, my grandfather was super close to the Rebbe or the Rebbetzin or whatever it is." Um, and I think it says the Rebbe was a... First of all, the Rebbe was able, as a Nasi, he was able to do that in a, you know, a way that no one else can because he's a Nasi of every Jew, including those people. So, you know, as their Nasi, he was able to connect with them. But he was able to deal with the character of each one of them, and he saw their midas. And I, I see this as a deficiency amongst many Lubavitchers. Maybe it's in the world as a whole, maybe it's not unique to Lubavitch, but I... And it's something that hurts me a lot to see. Um, whether it's, you know, in the meistus or whatever it is, that people are very, um, black and white, and it's like that person is bad, that person is good. My grandfather is good, so he doesn't have any hesronus. That person did something bad, uh, so he doesn't have any midas, doesn't have any, you know. Um, or that people evolve. Maybe that person was good, and then toward the end of his life, he did, he took a misstep, he did something wrong or vice versa. That person did something very negative at some point in his life, and then he became somebody

1:56:09 Speaker 1 very good or some mix of that. And I would love, I, I know you, this can sound like I'm coming from left field because how did that come from the conversation we're just coming from? But it just kind of, uh, triggered this thought by me, um, 'cause I do see a connection with it. If we could learn from the Rebbe in that way as well, where yes, each of these people did have a relationship with the Rebbe, and the Rebbe was able to be close with this one and that one who had total opposite personalities and are coming from different perspectives and that kind of thing. Um, and, uh, and that's the real beauty, just like the beauty of the Rebbe bringing together Limchaza and Torah and all these different things, um, to be able to see one another as the Rebbe does. And, uh, when we're able to do that, if nothing else, we're gonna get a lot more done. Just a thought.

1:57:03 Speaker 3 Uh, this-

1:57:03 Speaker 1 Does that, does that make any-- Did that connect at all to what we were talking about in your mind or do I need to figure out how to, how to-

1:57:08 Speaker 3 No, no, no

1:57:09 Speaker 1 ... how to make that connection?

1:57:10 Speaker 3 No, it, it fit, it, it fits, it fits in very well, but it's, uh, it, it kind of, kind of makes it difficult to end on that note, but I don't think we have a choice.

1:57:17 Speaker 1 I was trying to... I thought that was positive. I said-

1:57:19 Speaker 3 No, no

1:57:19 Speaker 1 ... we're gonna be able to get a lot more done.

1:57:21 Speaker 3 No, no. No, no. It, it's, it's very positive, but it's like, it's like-

1:57:25 Speaker 1 It's a world.

1:57:26 Speaker 3 Yeah. It's like, yeah. Um, absolutely. It does make a lot of sense. Anyway, I appreciate, I appreciate the time. I appreciate, uh, I appreciate a lot of things that we spoke about. It's been a wonderful conversation.

1:57:38 Speaker 1 Thanks for having me.

1:57:39 Speaker 3 Thank you for, thank you for doing it. Hatzlacha rabah. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bachar, and is used with their permission.