All About Change - Abraham Hamra: A Syrian Jew Challenging Stereotypes

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Abraham Hamra knows the historic plight of the Jewish diaspora better than most. At six years old he was separated from much of his family, unsure if he’d ever see his grandparents again.  He was among the last Jews left in Syria, and just a year after announcing Jews could leave Syria for the US, the Assad regime reversed course, and said the remaining Jews were stuck. Abraham and his family were trapped. Eventually, the policy was reversed and Abraham was able to reconnect with his family in the US, and eventually with the rest of his extended family living in Israel. Now, alongside a successful career as a lawyer, Abraham advocates for Israel on social media and on the streets of New York. He speaks widely about not letting Jews get bullied anymore, and he lives what he preaches. It’s time to hear some motivation from one of the strongest — and loudest — Jewish voices in America. Abraham and Jay talk about how, in America, Abraham has grasped and now wields Jewish strength, how he teaches other Jews to do the same. Abraham shares about the support he has received from his professional colleagues, and the shocking lawsuit he has had to file to protect his reputation. Today's episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website Allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. Episode Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:19 How do Abraham’s colleagues feel about hist social media presence and activism? 3:31 Coming at anti-semitism from a Jewish-Arab POV 6:42 Abraham’s lawsuit against Al-Jazeera 13:47 Beit Debate 17:58 Goodbye and Outro For video episodes, watch on www.youtube.com/@therudermanfamilyfoundation Stay in touch: X: @JayRuderman | @RudermanFdn LinkedIn: Jay Ruderman | Ruderman Family Foundation Instagram: All About Change Podcast | Ruderman Family Foundation To learn more about the podcast, visit https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/ Jay’s brand new book, Find Your Fight, in which Jay teaches the next generation of activists and advocates how to step up and bring about lasting change. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy your books, and you can learn more about it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.jayruderman.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Welcome to All About Change. Now is a great time to check out my new book about activism. Find Your Fight. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy books, and you can learn more about it at jruderman.com. Abram Hamra knows the historic plight of the Jewish diaspora better than most. At six years old, he was separated from much of his family, unsure if he'd ever see his grandparents again.

He was among the last Jews left in Syria. And just a year after announcing Jews could leave Syria for the U.S., the Assad regime reversed course and said the remaining Jews were stuck. Abraham and his family were trapped. Eventually, the policy was reversed and Abraham was able to reconnect with his family in the U.S. and eventually with the rest of his extended family living in Israel. Now, alongside a successful career as a lawyer, Abraham advocates for Israel on social media and on the streets, of New York. He speaks wildly about not letting Jews get bullied anymore, and he lives what he preaches. It's time to hear some motivation from one of the strongest and loudest Jewish voices

in America. Abraham, welcome to All About Change. Abraham Hamrat, thank you so much for being my guests and All About Change. I'm really looking forward to this conversation today. Thank you for having me, and I'm looking forward for the conversation as well. I love your podcast. Thank you so much. Abraham, I think a lot of my guests worry about how their activism might impact their social and professional lives. How do your colleagues at your law firm feel about your social media presence and activism? At my firm, I've received nothing but love and support. And I actually had that fear because I started speaking out four or five years ago.

But after October 7th, everything got just heightened extremely. And within the first month after I started speaking out, after October 7th, I started losing a ton of business from my immigration base, which is a diverse base of clientele so you can understand. And I predicted a loss in business. I didn't predict it to me that much. I went to my partner's office. I wanted to have this conversation with her and just kind of apologize. I, you know, I knew it was because of me and because of my activism and that now it's affecting her. It's going to affect my associates. It's going to affect my paralegals. And I was honestly starting to panic. I went to my partner to apologize, sir, and she's like,

are you crazy? You're standing up for what you believe is right. You're defending yourself and you're defending us. Our Western values matter. Although I'm not Jewish, it matters to me to have the freedoms that we have in America. Keep fighting. Keep doing what you're doing. And as a matter of fact, look what our senior associate did. She created a, in a response to a loss of business, this is how my office rallied around me. She created a post that says, we stand with Israel against anti-Semitism, and it sat on the cover page of our website in response. I didn't ask for it. I would have never asked them to do that. And honestly, it was just so moving to know, you know, we do have allies. We do have friends. Now, I know this story isn't the same for everybody. I'm lucky, thank God,

that I own my own business, but I can tell you my office receives dozens of each. emails calling for people to, you know, people calling for me to be fired. But, you know, I'm, thank God, I'm privileged to be one of the owners. So they really can't do that today. So first of all, congratulations. And, you know, I think that you're working with some special people because maybe not everyone will, it would have that experience. But Abraham, I want to bring up, you know, an issue that you are sort of in a unique position in the Jewish community. I mean, there's this narrative out there that's all pervasive about Jews being white. And I think there's this narrative like, you know, Jews came, you know, they were kicked out of Europe.

We were, you know, exterminated in the Holocaust. We came to the land of Israel. I mean, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about Jewish connection to the land of Israel. But you are someone who was born and grew up in Syria in the Arab world. You speak Arabic. you understand that culture. What does that do for you in terms of your ability to speak out and sort of challenge the narrative of who Jews are? It gives me two advantages.

One, I just want to be very clear. I don't personally believe in white Jews, right? It's a, this racial construct may work in America and may work in different cultures. It doesn't work for us. Me and you are both the same. We both originate from Judea. We both have different diasparic experiences. So I'm not going to identify myself and my identity with the experience I received as a result of my persecution. Right. So this construct of white Jew is very convenient to fit in the language of the American Diction. But there is no such thing. To have this darker complexion, I don't need to have this debate. So my ability as a Jews, I say, no, absolutely. not. As a Jew from Syria, as a Jew from an Arab country, an Arabis country, I must say. I say absolutely not. We existed in this region. This entire region, whether it's Syria, Iraq, Jordan, they did not exist until the 1920s until after the Ottoman Empire fell. A million of us became

refugees. We always lived as Demy's in this area. We've always existed here since the beginning of Islam. Palestinians accepted us. The entire notion of the Palestinian ideology came from the Hajamin Hussein in the 1930s he was kicked out of Jerusalem by the British went and collaborated with the Nazis went over to Iraq started a coup, replaced the new

prime minister with a man named Rashid Ali it led to the Farhud and the explosion of 150,000 Iraqi Jews, most of which went to Israel in 1941. So as somebody from an Arab country, as a Jew from an Arab country that live, I didn't live. My ancestors lived before 1948 as Vimis, as third-class citizens subjected to paying jizias and taxes and having all these restrictions, even though this land we occupied prior to the Arab colonization of it, I say, fine, you believe Palestinians deserve a state. Everybody deserves a state. Syria deserves the state. Lebanon. What about the Jewish minority population of the Arab world? Did we not deserve a state?

Yeah, I think that there's so much to unpack of what you're saying. Your lives as a lawyer and social media activist seem to have collided recently with you filing a lawsuit against Al Jazeera for libel. In New York, a Jewish refugee from Syria is taking on Al Jazeera into federal court, accusing the Qatar-backed network of libel and anti-Semitism. You've spoken a lot about Jews need to stand up for ourselves, and here you're doing just that. How's the past month been for you since filing the lawsuit? Absolutely. My mother watches Al Jazeera and other Arabic news channels, right? At home, we speak Arabic.

We have Arabic TV. And so my mother, it was much older, obviously, when she came to this country. So ever since I started talking about, there's this inane fear that exists within her heart about, okay, what's going to happen to you? because if you would do this in Syria, this would happen and news article would be published, like my great uncle was in prison, right? In Syria for protesting the Assad regime in Syria, and they had to ship him out. So she always had this fear. And so I went to Israel.

I went to Italy. I promised my daughter a grandbatt mitzvah, and she turned 12 before I was able to gather enough money to throw her this grand bat mitzvah. So instead of doing that, I told her, let's take a family trip. We'll go to Italy for a few days and then we'll go to Israel for two weeks. So, you know, we'll see all these sites. We'll really visit our country and our homeland, Israel. And she was with it.

We took the trip. We went to the Amalfi Coast for a couple days. We went to Israel. We're vacationing, really. And I'm just showing my kids as sites. I took them to Stero. They took them to Nova, all on my dime. I paid through the nose for this stuff, like between Elal and hotels.

And all of a sudden, I had a meetup. I called for a meetup in Israel with all the content creators that I knew. They came through. We hung out by the taillelids. We're, you know, enjoying life, drinking, having fun. One of my friends said, would you like to get into Gaza? I said, absolutely. Like, what kind of question is?

I'm an activist. I'm speaking about this subject. Given the opportunity, I would love to get into Gaza. He said, let me see if I can. can try and help facilitate that. I said, thank you. Texted me, I can get you into Gaza. You need to get to this area and you're going to get in. I said, amazing. I took a cab, met, literally, I took a cab to the location that took us to the border and we went into Gaza. I filmed, I said the truth, I showed truthfully what was going on. And then me and Marwan, who was an Arab Druze influencer,

did a Arabic post from the food distribution site, from the food site, the storage site, showing the people, the Arab people, at least, there is no starvation. There's so much food here. This is a lack of management. This is a failure of bureaucracy, if anything. There's thousands of boxes filled to the ring with food, just sitting there under a hundred and, like, 10-degree sun. It was August in Israel in the south. And so we did this video before.

I know it, Al Jazeera is running a story, paid propagandists. Israel paid this individual, paid these people to, you know, if I'm remembering it correctly, I don't remember the exact quotes, but basically alluding to that Israel paid us to go into Gaza and push Israeli Zionist propaganda. When I saw that, I knew my mother's reaction, what it was going to be when she saw that, right? Like the fear in her heart as well is like, oh my God. Like, is this, is this real. Like, this Arab news channel just came back now attacking you here in America. I saw that and I was flabbergasted. I'm like, no, nobody paid me anything. I had to work my butt off to make this money and it cost me a lot. Like it wasn't a, oh, just let's go take a vacation. It was something I had to

work up for. I had to save. I've never, I didn't come from wealth. I'm everything, I build everything I do. I have to work very hard for. And to see this article. about me as this propaganda is, as this person that gets paid by a foreign government to go and push their propaganda, it pushed me over the edge. I said, look, if I could ignore, I can say, screw them, they're lying and make a video and ha ha, nice, but I'm like, absolutely not. I want to send a message that you cannot come back here and think you're going to run the same type of things you did to us in back in those countries, where they run a story and say, this businessman is doing this. And a mob comes and lynches this businessman or discriminates

against that community, or more danger exists. I said, in those countries, they're right. We didn't have the right. We couldn't fight back. The government had your side. We were dimmies. We were Sheph Fet Yehoun, which was the insult we received on the street, a piece of Jew. But not here, not in America.

It's not what my father and my mother came here with four children, restarted their entire life to give us an opportunity in a country that promises you equality, protections, and gets you the right to fight back. And so we're sitting in this precarious time, and I have this opportunity to not stay silent at the face of libel and slander against me. So, of course, I wasn't going to stay silent. I filed the lawsuit telling El Jazeera, you really think I'm a paid propagandist? You're a liar.

I'm going to prove that you're a liar, and you're going to have to pay those damages. And so that's really the inspiration to file the suit. I hope you're successful because I think that this is happening. to us over and over again, you know, there are lies that are perpetrated. There's no one's stopping it. Colica vote and congratulations for, you know, taking this step because I think a lot of people may be afraid to take that step. No, and I get it.

And honestly, and I spoke to an organization about this, I said, look, I'm funding this litigation, but forget a lot of people may not want to take this step. what if they can't afford it, right? Like, what, you know, litigation's expensive. It's not cheap. And I don't think we have built enough avenues in which people can come to a fund and say, hey, I have an anti-Semitic incident to happen to me, whether you want to assign it to your lawyers or not to handle, I want to file a lawsuit.

Is there a fund available that we could, that can cover costs of the attorneys, right? this is a practical step in actual fighting anti-semitism. I actually led me to shift a little bit of my focus from fighting the outside to try to fix what's wrong with us on the inside, which is the new initiative I've actually just launched last week. Can you talk a little bit about it? Yeah. I called a debate debate.

And what I realized is we are never going to, like we're playing this game of Wackamo with anti-Semites. anti-Semite comes out, 10 Jewish influencers make a video, organizations send the statement. It used to work five, six years ago. You know, it used to work when the ADL called you an anti-Semite. Oh, my God, you made the donation. You went to the Holocaust Museum. It affected people.

Today it doesn't work. They don't care. You're seeing they do not care. So it led me over Shabbat last week. I was just praying. I was in school. And I was thinking. And I'm like, we keep saying.

a unified nation, unity, unity, our unity is our strength. That's how we're going to fight back against, you know, anti-Semites. But I looked around, I said, what organization is focusing on the inside? What organization is truly focusing on fostering and creating a strong and connected Amiazai and a nation of Israel? How do we share this agreement so we can learn from one another, right? Like, I'm not reform and somebody may not be orthodox. But how am I going to know your perspective and how are you going to know my full perspective if we never have this dialogue? And so the whole idea of Bate Debate is really based after the Bait Midrash. It's a space for all types of Jews, Zionists, Ante Zayn, whatever they want to be. If you're Jewish,

you're welcome at Bade Debate. And we have debates. We have debates structured on a way of the ancient rules of the Gimara, where there's two debaters. One person, you know, you each person gives five minutes, whatever. There's a whole debate structure after the debate ends. It's a very Jewish structure of the debate. But after the debate end, you move on to breaking bread portion of the event where you cannot speak about the debate topic. But instead, you're going to have to start learning about each other's humanity, right?

Like, what's your name? What's your favorite color? Because I bet you, even the one that believes in their anti-Zionist cause, if they come to these events enough and they develop that human connection with a Zionist enough, they're going to think four times before they come up on a screen and misrepresent what Jews in totality or in majority actually believe, because now they have personal contacts that's going to call them out. Right now they live in their silo. They live in their bubble. They've been to their synagogues that tell them Tikun Olam is the way we fix the

world, and that is our commandment of being Jewish. Nobody has challenged that notion for them. They haven't heard a different perspective on that, right? And so all of a sudden, and the rabbi is like, ah, tecuna law means pushing the eye. We need to push inclusion. They're so worried about including Islamists that they're offending and hurting and whatever other word they want to use, the Jewish refugees of Arab countries. Are we not the same? Do you not have consideration for us? Do you not include us? And I've challenged many reformed synagogues on this. I'm like, where is your annual day of commemoration for the Jewish refugees of our countries? That's on November 1st. None of them have it. Then you can't expect

this poor, whatever person who grew up from a young age in the synagogue, learning about Tikuno Lama in a wrong way, and then being applied in a wrong way, not knowing our existence, and saying, you know what, I'm with the Palestinians. It's logical that she's going to go to that decision. If she has a heart, she'd go to that area. But we're not having these conversations, and I believe in having those conversations with people.

So that's really my new initiative. And after I announced it, hundreds, hundreds of people, stepped up and wanted a volunteer for the organization all over the world. Marnie Perlstein in Australia and Sydney wants to, we're discussing opening a chapter over there. I have people in the UK, in Ireland, and this is all grassroots. That's the initiative because I believe we need to put more focus. Not saying abandon the fight outside.

You should continue pushing back on anti-cellinth, but we need to start bringing it back in and seeing what is our community need. How do we help foster a strong, united, and growing Jewish community in America? Well, Abraham, first of all, I want to thank you for your insights and thank you for your activism. I think you play an important role in our country, in our community. And I'm going to wish you to go from strength to strength. Amen. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for this podcast and for the interview.

I really do appreciate it. Thank you for being part of the All About Change community. We aim to spark ideas for personal activism, helping you find your pathway to action beyond awareness. So thank you for investing your time with us, learning and thinking about how just one person can make the choice to build a community and improve our world. I believe in the empower of informed people like you to drive real change, and I know that what we explore today will be a tool for you in that effort. All right, I'll see you in two weeks for our next conversation. but just one small ask. Please hit subscribe and leave us a comment below. It lets us know that you value this content and it supports our mission to widely share these perspectives. If you're

looking for more inspiration, check out this next video. I chose it for you and I know you're going to enjoy it. I'm Jay Ruderman. Let's continue working towards meaningful change together.