Ask Haviv Anything - 140: Van Jones returns - The hard questions of Black-Jewish relations

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).--Van Jones came on the podcast a few months ago and said some things that lit up our inbox. A lot of praise, a lot of pushback.So he came back to answer your questions.Why did progressives spend twenty years building hierarchies of oppression and leave Jews off the list? Why do Black students on campus struggle to see Jewish vulnerability? What do you do with a community that hears "we're like you, we're Jewish," and thinks: do you want to trade spots?Van doesn't dodge. He also pushes back on how Jews frame the conversation. It's an honest conversation about campuses, Farrakhan and Black antisemitism, the NAACP voting to disarm Israel, and why the Jewish world "feels like David, but looks like Goliath" to outsiders. Van gives ground where he thinks the critics are right and takes it back where he thinks Jews are getting the Black community badly wrong.It’s a conversation that doesn't happen enough, and which Van is committed to advancing. That's why he founded the EXODUS Leadership Forum that brings together Jewish, Black and Jewish-Black leaders and activists. You can find out more about their work, including the 70 dinners Van discusses on the podcast, here: https://gather.exodusdinner.org .--Today’s episode is sponsored by SAPIR, the quarterly journal edited by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. SAPIR’s tagline is, “Ideas for a Thriving Jewish Future,” which is one reason the journal has devoted time and space to the future of Black-Jewish relations, one of the most powerful -- and imperiled -- political alliances in American history. The relationship is important to the thriving of both communities, SAPIR editors believe. I highly recommend Dana White’s article from a couple years ago on the role historically Black colleges and universities once played in building the relationship between Black and Jewish Americans.SAPIR is, unbelievably, free. Yes, you can receive this beautiful and enriching publication at your door four times a year at no cost. Subscribe today at http://sapirjournal.org/Haviv -- and your subscription will begin with the next issue on the theme of Influence. They won’t even ask you for credit card information. That’s http://sapirjournal.org/Haviv, or click the link in the episode show notes.--If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Haviv Anything. A few months ago, we interviewed Van Jones. That's episode 110 for those who want to find it easily. And it created a lot of conversation here in our community. There was a lot of praise. Truly, Van is a very welcome figure in this community. And there was criticism.

There were some specific claims that were made about Jewish allyship is easy. Allyship of the black community is fairly easy. It's fairly low cost, whereas black allyship at this moment could be more difficult and costly to the black community. But nevertheless, it is there. The DEI seems to pit Jews and other minorities against each other, including the black Americans. It fails to protect Jews, but it also hasn't actually helped blacks either, so both sides are aggrieved. That claim was challenged. And also that anti-Semitism, was ultimately a marginal phenomenon in the black community, that Farrakhan is not representative, certainly of the new generation of the black community. All of these questions faced pushback.

We passed on many of these comments, many of these questions, many of these challenges. And I really want to clarify, most of the feedback was positive. But some of these comments and questions and challenges we thought were really very substantive. And Van thought so as well. And And he was actually surprised by some of the reactions. And also, I have to tell you, we talked about this at length, excited to get feedback, excited to get real conversation and real responses. And he agreed to come back on the podcast to answer, to have this discussion, to have a conversation between Jewish Americans and Black American, mostly by bringing your questions, the questions of American Jews, to someone who, for me, has been. a spokesman of the black community and also an ally and a defender of Jews since October 7. Van Jones is an American media personality, entrepreneur, world-class changemaker.

I'm going to tell you a couple of things that he did and you'll understand why that is an accurate assessment. He has a track record of bringing people together to do very hard things in clean energy and criminal justice, racial inclusion in the tax sector. For example, in 2007, Van was the primary champion of the Green Jobs Act, signed into law by George W. Bush in 2009. He was in the Obama White House, a special advisor for green jobs. In 2018, he held past the First Step Act, which was signed into law by Donald Trump. And the New York Times called that piece of legislation, the most substantial breakthrough in criminal justice in a generation. Americans don't need to be introduced to Van Jones. He's the first recipient in 2021 of Jeff Bezos's Courage and Civility Award.

He founded Dream Machine Innovation Lab. He launched Rappore.com. He is a graduate of Yale Law. He is a CNN host. He is an Emmy Award-winning producer. He's a three-time New York Times bestselling author, and he's the creator of the excellent Van Jones substack. So I am thrilled that he has come back

and that he is going to tackle some of your questions. And folks, you know, that was not the end of a conversation that last episode. It was the beginning. This is going to be another step in this really critical conversation. Before we get into it, I want to tell you, the sponsor of today's episode is Sapir, the quarterly journal edited by New York Times columnist Brett Stevens. Sapir's tagline is Ideas for a Thriving Jewish Future. It has tackled the future of Black Jewish relations as well. And it has discussed it as one of the most powerful political alliances in history and an alliance that is in peril.

Sapir has published a lot on this topic because of how important they consider it to be for the thriving of both communities. I highly recommend Dana White's article from a couple of years ago on the role that historically black colleges and universities once played in building the relationship between black and Jewish Americans. Sapir is unbelievably free. You can receive this publication, which is beautiful. It's physically beautiful. It's rich. It's well edited at your door four times a year at no cost. subscribe today at Sapirjournal.org. That's S-A-P-I-R-Journal.org slash

Chaviv. And your subscription will begin with the next issue whose theme is influence. They're not even going to ask you for credit card information. Finally, I want to invite everyone to join our Patreon, subscribe to our Substack. If you're interested in asking the questions that guide the topics we talk about, including very much this episode, that's where it happens at the Patreon at the Substack. You also get to take part of monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. that's at patreon.com slash ask chaviv-anything or

chavidbore.com. Those links are in the show notes. Hi, Van. Thanks so much for coming back. How are you? Hey, I'm good. I'm good. I'm so glad to get a chance to keep talking about this stuff and I appreciate you being interested in it. Before we get into the reader's questions, I just want to add one more time. There was lots of appreciation. Let's get into the questions. You ready? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And look, here's the thing.

you know, black folks and Jewish folks in the United States have been working together since, you know, 1909 when we started the NWACP together. And there's been ups and downs and there's been misunderstandings. And we are differently situated peoples. And so it's perfectly understandable that there would be disagreements, conflicts, misunderstandings, and even some antipathy because we are differently situated. And so, but I think the key is to being dialogue. to be in conversation so we can at least narrow the areas of disagreement and misunderstanding so that there's still room for cooperation where we can. And I think the problem has been, you know, just increasingly lack of conversation without groups, for everybody. If you're a left-handed

lesbian who likes horse riding, your algorithm is just about that. And you may not know, see very much on any given day about other groups. And so I just think what we're doing is really important and I'm not perfect and my understanding is evolving, but I do think I have something to share, especially because of the, you know, we've done the Exodus leadership form. Now it's done about 70 black Jewish dinners across the country and seeing those gaps and those misunderstandings and the heartbreaks and then the breakthroughs has given me, I think, a perspective I'm happy to share. I'm excited about this and thank you for doing this and taking these questions seriously.

there is no other kind of dialogue. I mean, this is the thing itself. David, he is a student. He's the president of the Hillel chapter on his campus. He asks the following question, even before October 7, the black student union on my campus tried to get Hillel, which is the main Jewish student union, banned from the multicultural student center for being Zionist or for supporting Israel. Hillel, by the way, very, very liberal, very progressive. Different campuses are slightly different cultures, obviously, but very much, you know, on the inclusivity sort of end of the Jewish political spectrum. And so David writes, all the while radical black writers like Ibram Kendi have tried to redefine the word racism, that it would be impossible for black people

to be racist. Why is it so hard for especially younger, more progressive black Americans to accept that they could have some bigotry in their community, too? Why do so many college-age Black Americans, as David sees it, seem to think that everyone has to do the work to learn their story, but are completely uninterested in doing the work to learn someone else's story. Well, first, I just want to say it's a crappy situation for David to be in. You know, the idea that, you know, the Hillel would be targeted for anything, you know, is, you know, it's just a horrible thing. So just the premise. even get into the question, the premise, it requires some response. And there are strains in the

black community that have last done to this idea that Zionism is racism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Look, I think that I've noticed, and noticed soon after October 7th, this resistance that he's talking about in the black community, that they're not uniformly, but there are are pockets of folks who, you know, feel very strongly that you have to have a certain amount of power in order to be racist because racism isn't just thinking negative thoughts, is being able to actually inflict harm. And so that exempts most black people. So if a black person says, I can't stand white people, that's a very different thing than if a white person says, I can't stand black people. They're trying to manage that difference, that power difference.

and so impossibly, and if a black student group says, I just need to be with only black students for a while. That's very different than if a white student says, I just want to be with only white student for a while. There is a historic difference, a power difference, a situational difference there. So people are trying to account for that.

But I think that's blown up in our faces here recently because, as we may have talked about, before for the past, you know, call it 10, 20 years, there's been a big push about diversity, a big push about sharing narratives, et cetera. But progressive like myself made sure everybody understood that if you were, if you had white skin, you might have a certain kind of advantage. If you were male, you might have a certain kind of advantage or privilege was a term. Or if you were straight, you might have a certain kind of advantage or privilege. If you have money, you might have a certain kind of advantage or privilege.

And we stopped there. And by not including 3,000 years of bigotry and violence against the Jewish world, that whole dialogue had left Jewish people at risk. Because you could be white skin, you could be male, you could be straight, you could even have money. and if you were a Jewish man for 3,000 years, you could be profoundly unsafe, murdered, killed, chased out of countries,

pogroms, you know, put into Hitler's ovens. And we left that out. Progressives have to take responsibility. We left that out. Not just black progressives, all progressives, left that out for 20 years, which set the Jewish community up

to then when this hate wave against Jews comes, there's not the vocabulary, there's not the respect, there's not the muscular sure for people to fight back unless it comes from the right wing. If the right wing person is anti-Jewish, we know what to do. But when left-wing forms of anti-Semitism have shown up, various forms of anti-Zionism, which are almost at this point indistinguishable from anti-Semitism, there's no antibodies. Now, so David is suffering from that. He's at the effect of a a 20-year failure on the part of progressives to include anti-Semitism, to include racism against Jewish people as a part of this narrative.

And so part of the reason I'm so aggressive as a progressive in trying to correct this is because I see it now. Now, it's not that I was something of anti-Jewish bigot. It's just by the time you get through the whole long list of stuff that progressives have been worried about all the way down to transgender causes and veganism. there's, you know, you have a lot of these issues and there's really no excuse for, uh, racism against Jews for being left, uh, being left out, except that you also, you know, to be, you know, fair, even progressive Jewish people weren't fighting to include that until very recently.

It was all kind of like, well, you need to know about the Holocaust. You need to know that's out there as a potential, you know, threat, but it's not something we're going to put a lot of energy into. And so now students, like David are in this weird position where they've had to be in 97 workshops about anti-black racism. And if they raise their hand about anti-Jewish stuff, they get, you know, shoved off to the side. And so if I had to explain how it happened, I may not have a full narrative, but I do know that he's pointing something that's very real. I have to say, you know, part of this seems to me a campus thing, because if you were to talk about the deep inequality

in sentencing and mass incarceration for black men, then I feel, and I think I feel this because I've read a lot of American Jewish writings on these questions. Yeah, we need to talk about how racism is also about power. Like, you can't. Like, it's like a black man standing in a courtroom for a crime X is far less safe,

far less able to get justice and equality than someone coded white or someone white or someone who thinks they're white or maybe doesn't think they're right, but other things, I don't know, but then someone else in that system, and that's what the data says. On campus, especially on like a modern American elite campus, I don't think David, I'm speaking for David, I apologize, David, I haven't asked you. I don't think David feels like the black student is at a disadvantage in any way, if anything, he might feel there's an advantage there. And so for him to, for you, you're saying this about,

about, you know, a very general principle, I think on specifically, in specifically the campus context, David very much feels like he's the one unwanted for who he is in various spaces. And so it's a weird refer. Now, obviously, mass incarceration is much more real life than the campus. But the campus is producing a lot of this conversation, a lot of this discourse, and a lot of this weird, you know, more violent activism. Is there some of that happening? Look, I think so, though. I do think that in the Jewish imagination, it's a lot easier to be black everywhere than it is in the black imagination. In other words, I do think that Jewish students, especially since October 7th. And, you know, this was growing before then. You know, there were forms of anti-Zionism that were, you know, gaining strength, gaining momentum before October 7. And certainly after October 7, I think, you know, campuses have become profoundly unsafe, especially for Jewish students who identify strongly with their Jewish roots and who support Israel. It's right to be a polity on the planet. But, you know, I do think it kind of sits poorly

in the mouth of black folks when people imagine that being black is like a, you know, confers this incredible advantages because of all this empathy and sympathy for black people and DEI, etc. That's not really our experience. Our experience is, you know, quite the opposite that being called the DEI higher is just another way, it's kind of another version of the N-Worge for us, and that there's still quite a lot of, what happens to black students, not just in, even in progressive spaces, even on campus. Yes, because what happens for black students, and this starts in elementary school, I've got four black kids, is the way that it was. works is that there's an overreaction. So, and it's weird, Aviv, it's like, if you have a black child

and the child says two plus two is four, oh my God, this child is a genius. I can't believe in. Like, no, that's just, that's not, yes, my children can count and read. That's not anything to get that excited about. So it's an overreaction to anything positive, which actually winds up lowering expectations. You don't have to be as good. You don't have to start a billion dollar company for people to think your black child is a genius. Well, that's not that helpful. But then the other thing is, if your child throws an eraser, your child's a thug and a threat. Whereas if Timmy or Jimmy throws an eraser, he's maybe being remunctious or mischievous. So this constant sort of managing the overreaction of thinking we're too good for doing too little and thinking we're too bad for

doing too little. And so that's kind of the thing. And so, um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And look, you know, we've put up a ferocious fight on these campuses to try to get some of the anti-black bias out of the curriculum and to stigmatize that bias. Now, you can come in at this point and say, well, there's some success there, so therefore everything's great. But in our mind, these are a hard-fought clawing, you know, trying to get to a certain place. where just blatanty-black bias wasn't allowed. I remember being in law school, again, 93, an African-American classmate named Ahmad White, Ahmed White.

He's just a pure genius, like a ridiculous, like, frightening levels of genius, even in a school like Yale. He got very excited in one class and went and did an almost doctoral dissertation in response to a relatively minor assignment. But he was just that kind of guy. And the professor refused to believe he had done it himself. He's in 1993. And literally reported him and it just crushed him.

He was able to recover, but for a whole semester, he was just depressed because he finally made it out of Louisiana to a place where being smart is celebrated. His brother actually had been a student, ahead of him at Yale. So it's a family of striving people coming out of the rural South and got literally turned in for plagiarism for an original work.

So I'm just saying that these fights for, you know, for us, for fresh in memory, whatever games feel very recent. And now the anti-DIE backlash, the post-George Floyd anti-Black Lives Matter backlash for us is just smashing us in the face. I was just in Martha's Vineyard and where a lot of black people with wealth go to summer,

I was there to moderate some panels. And, you know, 13% of the black, of the workforce in the United States, 13% is black lemon. 53% of all the layoffs in the past three years are black women. So for us to hear, oh, it's so easy to be black and it's like, yes, we made some gains. They feel hard won, recent, and fragile.

And what's happening to the Jewish community is an exponential curve of violence, an exponential curve of bigotry and shocking levels and a shocking rate. So both of these two things can exist side by side. And I think that's part of the reason for the dialogue. When we do these dialogues, people are always surprised to hear how hard black people are experiencing this,

you know, especially post-Trump moment. And black people also shocked to hear how much actual violence, not rhetoric, violence is being directed at Jewish people on a daily basis. Part of David's question was, do you think that the black community has the ability, the wherewithal, to deal with bigotry in the black community? And I want to, you talked about how, you know, it doesn't feel like racism if you don't have the power to act on it. But I want to talk about the opinions themselves. Because we know, you could, you know, you poll this.

We know that there is unfavorable views of Jews among some significant section of the black community. They're not the worst, but they are nevertheless, also not the best. Where, what do you think about that? Is that a conversation of the black community knows how to have, is having, are we missing it? No, look, I think that, I think this is a real issue. I think it's a real challenge. I can walk you through the mindset. This is by way of explanation, not excuse,

but I can walk you through the mindset that we encounter when we do the dinners. I think for a lot of black folks, we feel that we've been at the back of the line being mistreated for several centuries. And what is our dilemma? What is our dilemma? Everybody sees a world through their own perspective. What is our perspective? Well, our perspective is very tough to be black in America for a couple of reasons. One, you can see

us coming in a thousand yards. Like, we can't, like, it's very obvious that I'm black. And so that kind of, that skin color is stigmatizes it is, as it is in most places, that puts us in a real disadvantage. Number one, so we can't hide. Number two, our economic situation, despite the sacrifices and the advances in the great moments of Barack Obama or Dr. King, we're still in very bad neighborhoods too often, very bad schools too often, very bad circumstances too often, and we can't seem to get out of it. Good government programs, bad government programs, no government programs, incredible entrepreneurial drive. The most likely person that started new business in the United States is a black woman, but the least likely person to get capital to scale it is a black woman.

So we feel very, very stuck. And we don't have a lot of time. You know, we're farther down on the hierarchy of needs. And so, you know, trying to learn and study about other groups feels like a luxury. And we also don't have much capacity to help anybody in the way. And so from that mind frame, as you look across the Jewish world, certainly before October 7, they're like, well, I don't understand why they feel bad. I don't understand why they feel this precarity. A lot of them have white skin.

A lot of them live in good neighborhoods. Their kids are likely to go to college. Very few of their kids go to prison. If you go to a funeral in a Jewish community is usually an old person in the casket and the young people are sitting in the pews. That's not always the case of the black community. Sometimes you go and there's a young person in the casket

and old people in the pews. They seem to, you know, they seem to be doing well. And frankly, they seem to be doing a lot better than us. And so what are they talking about? And so then when we try to have a conversation, they say, well, yeah, we understand you because we're Jewish. If you're a black person, just a regular white person, that just seems like a strange thing to say.

Like, we're not alike at all. Like, do you want to trade spots? Like, like, even like, I, like, I, I don't, we did, so you're starting with a profound lack of empathy, a profound lack of, um, just what are they talking about? And so that's a whole, uh, and that's before you even get you the people who have actual anti-Jewish animus. That's a whole other thing. I just mean just the, just a regular, everyday, like walking down the street, black person is not primarily thinking about Jewish

precarity. That's just, it's just not a thing. Um, And so, um, so you would literally have to show it to them, not just in the data, but also in specific events caught on video, for it to make any sense because it's not their experience. And then,

and also, I mean, the strength of the strength of Israel also, look, I think the Jewish dilemma is the Jewish world feels like David, but looks like Eliath. If I was going to describe it, the Jewish limit is like,

Jewish people are the tiniest little microscopic minority in the world. and feel besieged on all sides and are dealing with a hate wave here in the United States and real threats in Israel, the homeland, and feel very much like David. But if you just pick up your phone and look as a normal person, Israel looks very strong, very powerful. And then the Jewish world here seems very strong

and very powerful. their allied with the Trump administration often. They have the ability to spend money in elections and a very large amount. And so this creates this kind of, I think, dilemma on the Jewish side, which is, well, excuse me, we're not spending the most money in elections. You know, China spends way more. Literally, what are you guys talking about? But this is a very effective device.

and so it takes a lot of communication. Now, what I will say is, it doesn't take a lot in the right setting. When we do these dinners, and people began to just talk about, my daughter had to change her name in her Uber app from Goldstein to Jordan because she was afraid

that she was either going to be harassed by an Uber driver or worse, and she's not the only one. You said to a black person, I didn't know that. Wow. Okay. My synagogue has to spend umpty-up million dollars a year just to make it safe for us to go and worship and for the kids get dropped off at the JCC because we have to have literally swat teams outside so we can pray. Well, shit, I don't know that.

So once you start having the conversation, people very quickly move. Same in the Jewish world. like, oh, I didn't know that was happening in the black community. I didn't know black women were involved. But what's happening is there's very little dialogue, and our phones are not our friends. And so, but the one thing I will say, and I know you have other questions as well,

is that asking us to look in the mirror across a range of things, whether it's what's happening to the Jewish community, whether it's what's happening to gay and lesbian of people within our own community, whether it's looking at any number of things, looking at the amount of violence that we inflict on each other,

the lack of cooperation we sometimes show for each other. These are very difficult, very delicate conversations. And they require a certain level of trust and a certain level of facilitative genius that I sometimes lack to get a community that feels so wounded, so besieged, frankly so betrayed by the Latin community that we stood with and then voted in large numbers for Trump, the Jewish community that we feel like we used to our relationship with, but now they're anti-D-EI,

which strikes us as being anti-opportunity for us. Trying to get this community that's in a lot of pain to do the type of soul searching and broad-minded kind of work that we used to be very good at, right now feels tough. Which is not to say, and we'll get to it, there's not a lot of it. going on. And I think, you know, we don't get the credit for the, um, you know, heroic world, the congressional black caucus is playing. We'll get into all that stuff. But I just want to say, yeah, look, man, we're going through a lot. And sometimes when people are hurting and uncertain, they're not as generous and they're not as kind to each other, um, let alone to other folks. And that's just something we're going through. So Dave was not,

David is not wrong to call that out. I mean, part of the thing that I think is painful for the black community, if I're going to speak broadly, is so much of the conversation when it comes to black Jewish stuff is a conversation about black pathology versus Jewish generosity and righteousness. But this is the sort of the fundamental framework is the Jewish community is good, the Jewish community is kind, the Jewish community is generous, in the black community is inexplicably hateful and ungrateful. So you hear the narratives the Jews from the Jewish time.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's the way that's the way that the conversation often seems to be framed. Why are these good Jews being mistreated by these bad blacks? And various forms and shades of that, but that's the final framework. And I think that just sits poorly because any conversation that says this group is good and this group is bad, this group is righteous and this group is not, this. group is good and this group needs to kind of get back together is just kind of piss off black people because I'll just point out a few things. Number one, there were no encampments on any black campus during the wave of encampments on white campuses, not a single encampment in our 50-plus

black colleges. We get no credit for that. The Congressional Black Caucus in 2024, when it was time to vote for more money, more aid to Israel, four-fits of elected black congresspeople voted for more aid. This is the middle of all the genocide, this, that, and everything else that's going on. All over social media, very, very tough conversation. Still, four-fits standing with, we don't get credit for that. Why? Why do you think the Jewish community really feels let down by the black? community, when you can list, I don't, I, I truly don't know enough of the day. I suspect that I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a echo chamber myself, but you can list all kinds of ways in which, you know, the Jews and the blacks are not each other's enemies, right? So why does it feel that? Is it social media? Is that that powerful that we just, I just, the one march of some black group in New York screaming anti-Jewish things is, you know, sets on fire the all Jewish social media, right? And, and, and, and,

And I think it goes in both directions. This is one of the reasons why our relationship is so important and why having these kind of tough, honest conversation is so important, is that same thing happens on the black side. Like, I could, look, I mean, I have to have tough conversations on both sides. And I try to point out the Jewish community, there's a lot of good in the black community, a lot of goodwill in the black community that just goes completely ignored.

And yet, you know, any nut that says anything crazy gets a lot of attention. And then the same, I can say to black people about the Jewish community. Yeah, you can point out, you know, a bad business deal or, you know, something that happened with regard to, you know, in the music industry, this Jewish lawyer beat out this black artist. And you can have that whole conversation. And if you stop there, I'm going to fight you because, yes, there are Jewish people who have done bad things to black people. But the majority of our interactions of the Jewish world have been positive. Look at every black college. Uh, and who's donating there. Look at black candidates. Who's the first home, non-black home, most black candidates, when they're running for office, the first fundraiser is going to usually be in a Jewish home.

Black causes, look who's on the boards of black causes. Look at who are serving as public defenders on the front lines trying to help our community from this mass incarceration you were talking about, just proportionally Jewish people. So the vast majority of our interactions with Jewish people are positive. They're so positive.

that there's a reason for the heartbreak that Jewish people feel when it doesn't feel or separated. And yet, yes, there are, we've had bad experiences with landlords. All that's true, but why is that the main thing you focus on? I'm very suspicious of you if the main thing you focus on the Jewish community is this set of bad things and you know all the good. I say the same thing by my Jewish friends. Yes, you can point out some nuts and some bad stuff

and also some polling data that would make you very alarmed. But by the way, we never poll to test anti-black sentiment in the Jewish community. We will poll to test anti-Jewish sentiment in the black community and talk about it and talk about a blue in the face. But nobody's ever done a poll to figure out how much anti-black sentiment is in the Jewish. I bet it would be surprising as well.

But when that poll came out, I wouldn't make that the central mileage of the Jewish world because I know there's more. And I'd say the same thing on the black side. Yes. You know, I disagree that, you know, with people in the Jewish world, who feel that Farrakhan is this major force, that I said before.

What I will say is, we don't need, for the things that people in the black world are angry about, which mainly have to do with, I'll put it this way. Why does a nation of Islam focus on Jews? What, what, get in their brain.

Why do black nationalist organizations, some, focus on Jews? Jews because their interests is in convincing people in the black community, you are on your own. No one's come and help you. It's black people against the world. Black people have to help. Black people help black people. If you trust anyone else, you're a sellout and you're putting us in danger. Well, okay, that's your rhetoric. I get it. But who are the white people who are always in the black community anyway? As public defenders, they're just a lot. They're just just worsening Jewish people.

You have to bump the Jews off down a peg if you're going to make that case. So this is, so you have to understand the political agenda inside the black community. If you are a moderate or just a normal liberal or conservative, you're, you're naturally going to look for allies within and without. You have no, there's no barrier to that. And so you'll, you'll figure out who outside the community can you work with. You'll find some Latin folks. You might find some Arab folks.

You're going to find a lot of Jews to work with because Jews are open disproportionately to working with black people always have that part of their culture. Well, shit, that's a problem. That's a problem for you if you're the nation of Islam. Right. So you're going to train an awful lot of fire trying to create that separation. And so, and there's ammo because you can say, look, this landlord, this business deal, this rapper, this. because we do so much commerce together, you're going to be able to find those bad examples. And the Jewish world has elevated beyond us economically from the old days.

There has been this ability of the Jewish world to climb economically that we've not been able to match. And so there's a lot of ammo there. But don't be fooled that this isn't a part of a political agenda that, a faction or a set of factions is trying to run. And that faction gets a lot of attention in the Jewish world, but that faction is not a, look, Hakeem Jeffreys, who is going to be the Speaker of the House, is one of the most passionate defenders of Israel, one of the most passionate denouncers of anti-Semitism always has been.

He's got to manage some crap in his party that's going to make that tough for him. But, I mean, a Hakeem Jeffries, a Raphael Warnock, a Corey Booker. I mean, I can go through name after name after name of major black leaders who are close to the Jewish community, who stand up for the Jewish community, but who get very little, Richard Torres, you know, get very little of the conversational mind share in the Jewish world because people still want to talk about Farrakhan. And I will continue to say, yes, it's a problem. anti-semitism in the black community is a problem, but it feels weird that we never talk about anti-black sentiment in the Jewish community or not the same. And so that doesn't feel fair.

If you're going to be, the Jews are good, the blacks are bad, why can't the blacks be better? But if somebody came along and said, the blacks are good, the Jews are bad, why can the Jews be better? If you wouldn't want to be in that conversation, you shouldn't want to be in this conversation. We got bad people in both groups.

We got good people in both groups. I'm more interested in moralizing the bad people and lifting up the good people in both groups. So we have answered very richly, question number two from E.N., which was related to your comment the last interview that anti-Semitism, or at least Farrakhan style,

anti-Semitism is a marginal phenomenon of the black community. And E.M. asked, and I would just want to summarize a little bit, also include this question. Coleman Hughes has discussed the outsized influence that Lewis Farrakhan and the nation of Islam

have had on black views. of Jews through hip-hop, through popular culture. It's where Kanye West arguably got a lot of that. Coleman Hughes argued. It's where he got a lot of that rhetoric about Jews. So even though the nation of Islam was always very small, it had this cultural resonance. And E.M. asked if you could reflect on that history. And there's a piece to it that I still want to get at, which is some of these anti-Semitic ideas in the black community that's what our topic is today. You said, you know, we also have to have other conversations.

I agree, but let's see. We apply through these. I don't mind. The, they feel normalized. I want that pull on the Jewish community. I suspect that in some parts of the Jewish community that I think I can already guess a little bit about. There will be negative views of black Americans.

But in the black community, it feels to EM and to other listeners to the podcast that these views aren't just present, but they are sort of normalized. Is it easy to say or feel or believe bad things about Jews? You've touched on it a lot, but just to sort of wrap this in a little bow in the black community, do you think it's less than it looks? Do you think it's common? Black people honestly just don't spend a lot of time talking about Jewish people. Black people spend as much time talking about Jewish people as Jewish people spend talking about, I don't know, Cherokees or Irish people. Like, it's just not a, I think sometimes lands badly the Jewish people.

We have so many of our own problems and so much. It's just not the most important conversation that we have. and if it comes up, I think probably, like most of America, there are people who believe a lot of stereotypes about Jewish people. And the black community,

often believing those stereotypes as a weird way, as a positive. So it's almost like, and I hear this a lot, like Jewish people work together, they help each other, they help their children advance, and black people,

people don't do that, and we should do that. Now, if a white person says Jewish people are cooperating with each other, they mean there's some global cabal that's trying to, like, take over the world and whatever they're trying to do. When black people have these context of conversation, that's why the polling data always looks terrible from us. There's an admiration for what the Jews have been able to endure and overcome and build. And there's resentment because some of that is because a lot of them have white skin, they've been able to kind of play the game. There's also admiration because there's a sense that there's a cultural component here that, you know, the Jews weren't torn away from their religion, the way that we

were when we were stolen here from Africa. They were somehow able to, even in the whispers to their babies, to keep a certain type of cultural framework together that when you combine that cultural framework that they have and, frankly, some white-skinned advantages that they have, they've been able to do well. And so what you hear from a lot of black people is, you know what? The Jewish community, they help each other, they associate with each other, they trade with each other, they give each other business to each other. Why don't we do that? Why do we, why can't we accomplish that? And now, if you hear a black person say that and your Jewish person, the hairs in your arm should start raising because that's usually the precursor to a prognant, but in the black

community, it's a form of praise. Now, I have to point out to black people, guys, yes, there's some Jewish people who are doing well. There are Holocaust survivors who are living in abject poverty. There are Jewish people who are working as school teachers making nothing and giving their, you know, sending their money on pencils for our kids. So the idea that all Jewish people are rich and successful is not true. Now, on the app, they're more successful than we are. But, you know, so I have to have these conversations and stuff. But I do think that yes. Are there stereotypes that black people have against Jewish people? Yes. Is there resentment in antipathy? I'll say how the resentment shows. up. I hear a lot of times people in Jewish world say that we're conditionally white, that Jews are

white until we're not, right, that we're accepted as white, we're seen as white until suddenly we're not. So we're not, we're conditionally white. What you hear from black people on the side is the reverse. You see some black people say, no, they're conditionally Jewish. that they, on a good day, they're white, but then they will claim to be Jewish when something bad is going on. And so black people are looking at the same phenomenon of conditionality and feeling like,

well, hold on a second. Like, most of the time, if you're a Jewish person, if you're white, you won't even know that you're Jewish. And so you're able to kind of slip and imbob and weave and kind of be able to navigate the system in a way that I'm not able to. And so I think that this, this, how the how the how whiteness plays into all of this adds to black resentment how whiteness plays into

all this adds to black suspicion and so and it's just a complicated mess because jewish people are white sometimes and they're Jewish sometimes and also some Jews some Jews are not even white and so it's a complicated mess and black people frankly are just not putting a lot of mind shirt toward this problem and so so there's a lot of um you know this is this is this is my observation. Other people may see it differently. I know from the statistics of the Jewish charity world that something like 20% of American Jews are either below the federal poverty line, near the federal, there's this 150% of FPL, which is poor, but not technically the federal poverty line. Give or take 20% of American Jews need help because of how poor they are.

And so that is better than some other minorities, but it is not small. It is a normative experience of Jews. There's no synagogue without poor Jews in it. There's no community without poor, except maybe Martha's Vineyard, but everywhere else, there are poor Jews all over the American Jew. And they have every kind of experience of America, etc. Okay. Farbra. As a lifelong dem, I feel politically homeless and increasingly anxious. Michigan only heightened my stress, as well as friends who keep telling me what a great job Mamdani is doing as mayor. What do you see that's hopeful in the Democratic Party? Who will call out the anti-Jewish hatred

that's burgeoning, developing, percolating over there? Look, I mean, we're going through a real convulsion in this party. And there's four things happening at the same time. One, there's just a backlash against Donald Trump. In a sense, Donald Trump has gone so far in one direction, it doesn't matter how far we're going the other direction. Don't talk to me. Look how far he went in that direction.

So you have kind of a backerner. backlash moment against Trump. And that makes it very hard to hold on to anything in this party. Can we just be rational and sane and kind and compassionate and constructive? No, fuck you. Look at what's happening in the White House. I don't want to hear you lecturing me about anything. We're just going to go, whatever we want to do, you can't lecture me.

So that's one thing. And then there's three other things that are happening underneath that. There's a generation gap where you just have young versus old. And you have 78-year-old, 82-year-old people in Congress running for re-election. So you just also just have a youth rebellion of just, can you get out of here?

So the generation gap. Then there is this ideological gap where, you know, the younger people are much further left than, you know, people in my age cohort in general. And also, I would say, more progressive and also more regressive, just more open to idea

that are just foolish, like no cops, no borders, no prisons, can't deport anybody, even if they raped somebody, Israel shouldn't exist. And these are regressive ideas. If these ideas were put in place, society would move backwards dramatically. So there is this sort of ideological gap. But the main thing is that there's an innovation gap in communication and vote mobilization. That's the main thing you're seeing, is that the establishment Democrats have a machine to get attention for, for their candidates. It is big donors, big consultants who then take 15 to 30% of your money, and then big ad buys, digital, television, radio, and mailers.

That's our machine. That's what the Democratic Party is. Big donors, big consultants, big ad buys mainly. And these young people are coming and saying, screw all that. TikTok grassroots. We don't need any of that. We're going to disintermediate that entire system, and we're going to go TikTok for it for,

for information, so we, for information and attention, we don't need your donors, your consultants, or your big media buys. And then we're going to drive that into a grassroots machine that's also TikTokgenic, and we're just going to build a whole thing off of that. And so the party is just, this is before you get into the substance of any of it,

the anti-Jewish stuff, the anti-Israel stuff, just some of these insane ideas, just substantively this party is being convulsed by this generational revolt, this ideological, you know, extremism, and then this innovation gap between the establishment and the insurgents. And a lot of the rebellion is justified.

Before you get into all that stuff, it's just you do have a generation of young Americans who are graduating off of a cliff into massive student debt and three gig jobs. and they're working as baristas with BAs and Bs and Bsas from great schools and two gig jobs. And their near-do-well cousin has the same barista job

who didn't do anything but smoked pot all in the past four years. So they're upset and medical care costs way too much. I mean, everything costs way too much. And so there is a reason for this rebellion. That problem is some of the people with the worst ideas in the world have attached themselves to this thing and are helping to drive this thing. And just from a purely, from a foreign policy perspective,

these people are incredibly dangerous. Abdul, who, you know, I work with the CNN, I know Abdul, his positions on Israel in foreign policy are insane. They're not reasonable reactions to anything. Look, some Democrats are going to say that we should condition military aid that, you know, Israel's gone too far in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon. We're going to put some conditions on you. I think that's a defensible position if you're a Democrat.

That's not a dual position. There are people who say we shouldn't be paying for any of the military. we shouldn't be in giving military A. Now, I think that's understandable, but I think indefensible because it's not charity. We're building a strong defense sector here, and Israel is projecting a lot of Western interests in that region. But I can get why you would say,

no more A, they got to pay their own way. That's not Abdul's position. Abdul's position is a total and complete arms embargo against the state of Israel, including dissents of weapons. That's an insane position. That says if Israel wants to pay for interceptors to stop a rocket coming from Iran

or coming from Hezbollah or coming from Los, an interceptor, we should deny them the right to buy the interceptors to knock down rockets going at Israeli children, women, men, babies. That's an insane position. And by the way, it offends me because that's, you know, Barack Obama was a part of creating that iron dome. A huge part of creating those interceptors.

Barack Obama thought that the Israeli people were in such a tough neighborhood. They needed to be able to knock down rockets. So you're telling me you're smarter than Barack Obama. You have better ideas about foreign policy than Barack Obama. And you want to de-plug and defund and take away. Israel is half the world's Jews' ability to defend themselves. That's an insane position. And so the fact that people are having a hard time figuring out what to do about it,

I find alarmation. And every time I go in CNN, I say exactly the same thing about Abdul's position, because this is not acceptable. And... But, Van, this is the fundamental question. Yes. The young people are living in a completely different universe. to the old people.

And those are the different information environments. It's all algorithmic, so it's more echo chamber than it ever has been in the past. And most parents have no idea what their college age kids are even seeing, learning, thinking about. It's all happening. I don't, it is possible that in the history of humanity, there has never been such a cultural rift, literally of basic assumptions about reality between parents and children at a mass societal level. And that's what we're living through. And nobody knows what to do about it.

Do you think the Democrats are going to figure out what to do? I mean, the Democratic Party is massively incentivized to figure out what to do about it because they've got to win elections, and they can have a hard time winning elections, a generational split like that. I mean, eventually the young people take over, but it's a 40-year arc before, you know, is that something we can solve? How do we... By the way, this is happening in Israeli politics, too.

People won't be shocked. There's the same kind of radicalization among young people, and it's happening in France and it's happening in Britain. Yeah. Look, I don't have a great answer. I'm working with people who are trying to come up with good answers. Everybody's having the same conversation. The problem is that right now, you either have a broken status quo that is not delivered,

first it stopped delivering for working class white guys in the industrial heartland, and their rebellion gave you Trump. Now the system's not working for a whole generation of young Americans. because their rebellion is giving you Mambani and Abdul and others. So you have a MAGA reaction, you have a DSA reaction, but what you don't have is people like me in the middle who are fixing the problems that are causing these reactions in the first place. You know, look, it's not unreasonable for young people to feel

that if they stay out of trouble, by the way, when I was coming up, I spent all my time worrying about the young people who were doing the wrong things, who were taking drugs, who were getting pregnant, who were being violent. Those are the young people I spent my time in the Oakland in the 90s or the 2000s worrying about the kids who were not doing the right thing. Now you have to worry about the kids who do the right things,

who are not doing drugs, who are not getting pregnant, who are not being violent, who are going to school, who are getting good grades, who are graduating and still can't make it. That's your new problem. And with AI coming,

that problem gets worse before it gets better. Now, I can only lecture that generation so much about their exorcises, given how far left I was when I was their age, without also presenting real workable alternatives. You've got to be able to tell this young generation, get away from these haters, get away from these people who are using, pimping your pain to strip support from half the world's Jews. stop that and come over here with me because I have a way to get you a job, to get you a scholarship, to get you capital, to get you safety, to get you rent, to get you a house.

If you can't say the second part, which I cannot say right now, my first part is weak. And so the center has to, and by the way, if you're a Democrat, we've been now out-innovated three times. Charlie Kirk with a turning point Outinnovated Democrats when it came to college campuses The MAGAverse, the Magasphere outinnovated us in 2004 When the streamers and the podcasters just whoop Kamala You know 12 ways of Sunday with no response And now we're being outinnovated on the left by the DSA

Guys, I'm sorry We got beaten out three times in a row with no response No, I can only only be able lecture the Trump voters and DSA voters so much with no actual answer to the pain that you decide to responding to. So that's my, that's my cruise leadership failure. And that's what I'm trying to work on. Okay, two questions and then we're done. Thank you so much for your time. Coming back to the question of Jewish block relations, Jeff expresses a frustration. We heard quite a bit. And I'm just going to say it the way he said it. It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a tough

question, which is great. When the NAACP and the Baptist Conference of Black Churches officially passed resolutions to disarm Israel during the existential war Israel's engaged in, that is not a question of attitude. It is action. And it has consequences. And it encourages black antagonism and support among Democrats to vote on other Israel bashing. resolutions and ultimately, I think he's saying it moves the needle in the Democratic Party more broadly on questions of Israel's safety. These resolutions single out Israel, a strategic ally for demonization and false accusations of genocide. How would Van feel if Jewish establishment organizations would pass resolutions, for example, to strip African Americans of the right to bear arms as the only

American citizens who are demonized and abused, and that would be seen as our moral obligation? Jeff is upset and he's not pulling punches and he thinks that the NAACP, people claiming to speak for the black community in many cases have just joined the anti-Israel chorus in public explicit ways.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, I appreciate the question and I love the analogy that he closes on it's not something I thought about before. Look, a couple things. One, I do want to point out that black elected officials have not followed the NACP's guidance in large part.

And by the way, like, you know, just remember, remember this. Memphis, which is a black city, which my father grew up then, elected for 20 years, Representative Cohen, a Jewish person, a white Jewish person to represent us for two generations. And so, you know, yes, the NWACP did that. And other groups have done that. I think it's a mark against black Jewish unity. But he's used a term that I think is important.

I think it shows a certain difference. He says there's an existential threat, an existential war that the Israelis are fighting and these black rich are saying disarm them. That narrative is not a narrative that exists in a strong way in the black community. I don't think that the average black person walking down the street, looking at their phone, you know, trying to, you know, buy groceries, thinks that Israel is in an existential peril. I think if they have an opinion, they think Israel is strong. as fuck and is crushing and smashing everything in reach and it's hard for people to understand

again this idea of Jewish precarity is hard for people that process it like yes October 7th happened it was a terrible thing and and almost every black leader denounced it and continues to but you know what you hear in quiet rooms is black people saying October 7th was a charitable day for the Israelis. And then very soon the Palestinians had a bad day and another bad day and another bad day, another bad day and another bad day and another bad day and another bad day. Like at what point are we going to call it even? And so if you don't understand all the geopolitics and Iran's doing the proxies and

that's a lot of mindshare to try to figure out that Iran is actually the bad guy here. They have these different proxies. One's called the Hoochies. One calls to Osboa. One's called to them. Moss, they're doing, there have been fire rockets into Israel for 10 years. Obama had to put a defensive shield up. They tried to live with it. Then they, that's a lot of minds here to try to figure out if you're a black person with a bunch of other problems. So the idea that

the Jewish state is an existential peril is not something I think most black people even understand that Jewish people are feeling, not agree, disagree. But don't even understand that Jewish will feel that way. And so it's a mystery. Why are all these bombs going off? Why is Lebanon getting pushed this way? Why? Why? It just must be that they're just being mean, that they're just being too aggressive, that they must be overreaching. And so then if you're from a black perspective, you say, well, stop the overreaching. Now, there may be some other, you know, darker, you know, Israel shouldn't exist. I don't hear that from black people. I don't hear, I mean, I don't talk to black people under the age of 25 except for my kids, so I could be missing a bunch of it.

But as far as 40s, 50, 60s, white people like myself, that age group, nobody's saying Israel shouldn't exist. Nobody's saying anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic violence is a good thing. They may think things that are anti-Semitic and not know it stereotypes. They just think that there's just too much bloodshed happening to Palestinians. And so that's really where I think people are coming from. You have to look, I've had to work very hard to understand. understand all this stuff. Like, I feel like I can do a decent job of explaining some of the Jewish

perspective to black people, but I've put in a lot of work. I mean, I put a lot of mind shear into it. I still don't say it right and make mistakes and you know what I mean. So, I mean, get a bunch of Jews coming in demanding things and asking questions. Yeah. Yeah. Which I, which by the way, this I love that like trying, like, I mean, honestly, we've done 70 dinners. Like, I like trying to figure this stuff out. But look, I just think that his analogy on the back end is brilliant. I think that's exactly a very good way to express

the way that the Jewish world may be experiencing this. But his assumption that people understand this existential peril that every Jewish person is feeling, that misses the mark. Okay, final question. Thank you so much for your time. Andrew asks, The Civil Rights-era Coalition

is usually remembered as a moral partnership. Heschel, marching at Selma, alongside King, Goodman and Schwerner in Mississippi. It also seems to have relied on a shared sense of being outsiders to American power. Today, a lot of younger activists

sort the world by oppressor and oppressed, and in that frame, Jews get filed under white and powerful. Was the alliance really about shared values, or was it about shared aspirations, shared vulnerabilities, that shared sense of being outside together and needing the system to work better for them? If it was the second one that they were both outsiders, is there anything left to rebuild? Does a coalition need a common threat to exist? Can you, just I'm going to add, can you build a coalition if the Jewish and

black situation is so different? It was arguably much closer in the 50s and 60s, the condition of Jews and blacks than arguably it is today. Your thoughts on that. And you know what? Let's finish with this. Also, what does it take to build a coalition again? To build a coalition that you said in the last podcast was the great driver of so much of the good change that has happened in America in the last 60 years. Look, I think Andrews put his finger on something very, very important. For the leadership's morals and values often are enough. You know, like, I believe in this, this is the right thing to do.

But for the followerships, practical interests tend to predominate. And so, you know, we have separated, at least economically. I mean, the Jewish community, you have to remember the 60s. The Jewish community was 20 years

that passed the Holocaust. I mean, you got to remember the 60s are a long time ago. It was just those kids, including my godmother, Dodd Gleuze Loner, who got those buses in 64 and drove south, and the two young men you mentioned were murdered and never came back. That was 20 years after the Holocaust.

So, you know, the Jewish world was really just coming out of, you know, probably the worst crime against humanity, at least in a six-year period. and the black world was still trying to shake off segregation. So we were very similar in that regard and maybe less so now. However, today black people need more friends and fewer enemies. And today, Jewish people need more friends and fewer enemies. And black Jews need both sides of their family to stop fighting.

So I don't believe that the sheer work is done. The sheer work of combating hatred, the shared work of perfecting democracy, the sheer work of elevating what human potential is. I don't think it's done. And it's always been a small number anyway. It was a very small number of Jews that got on those buses. It's a very small number of black people who were willing to raise their hand in Marshall Dr. King.

Most Jewish people sat out the civil. rights movement because it was too dangerous, and most black people sat out the civil rights movement because it was too dangerous. So there'd be small numbers on both sides that did all that word. And so we're not going to get everybody. We never had everybody, even at the height, but we should get the best people back together. That's all I'm trying to do, is the best people on both sides should not be this much of a mystery to each other. I shouldn't be governed by this much mistrust and understanding and algorithmically induced, you know, delusions about each other. And And what I've seen over and over again is when you put people in a room and you go through a process,

you know, just say, well, what do you think about Gaza? What do you think about DEI? But you say, how did you grow up? Tell me about your mom. Tell me about the first time you realize that you were Jewish and that it may be a problem. Tell me about the first time you realize you were black and it may be a problem. Tell me about a time in the last three to five years where you felt abandoned personally or betrayed or let down as a Jewish person. or you as a black person,

and you start getting people talking, it's amazing how quickly that goodwill comes pouring back in and how much people, it's almost like, you know, sometimes you get so thirsty, you forget you need to drink water. When people start drinking the water of just mutual recognition, it starts feeling good again.

Be like, well, maybe this is why we, like, fought through all this shit for 100 years together. Being people start realizing, like, this feels pretty good. And so I think a world where hate is winning is bad for blacks and bad for Jews. I think a world where people can't even decode hate. They can't decode the hate against black people that is smuggled into the anti-D-EI movement. There's anti-D-EI stuff that is rational because, you know, it didn't protect Jews.

But there's some people in there who have a more sinister agenda that they don't want black opportunity in the first place and it's something they can jump on. If you can't decode the two, that's not good. There's a legitimate concern about what's happening in Gaza, and what's happening to the settler, I mean, in the West Bank with the settlers. There people want to jump on that. They have a much more sinister agenda. They're not really that concern.

They're trying to get rid of Israel. And if you can't decouple those two, then that's very, very dangerous. So everybody's got to kind of upgrade their leadership. People got to find ways to work together. And that's really where I'm committed to you. Then let me head off the next 100 email and just say it ahead of time,

what should people actually do? What do you want the listeners to this podcast to do? Practically, okay, they want this. They hunger for it. You sold it. It's incredible. What should they do? Well, look, I think Exodus Leadership Forum.org is our emails.

I mean, our website, don't check that. But you can definitely go to our website and sign up, and we're looking for people who want to do dinners. We've got a pretty good system for getting these dinners to happen now. We want to do several hundred of them around the world. We think we've got a good formula. And then, you know, I wish I had a better answer. I will be making some announcements later this year about things that I want to launch

to try to help these conversations happen more in a public way, but we're not ready for that announcement yet. And the main thing I would say is take care of yourself and don't give up hope. you have to remember that your algorithm is showing you, if you're black, your algorithm is showing you horrific stuff against black people every day. A black baby was just shot by a cop of one-year-old killed. It's not made the news anywhere, but it's all in our seats.

There's a black girl that was punched in the head by a cop while she was crying for her mother, all in our feeds, and no real coverage elsewhere. So you said, well, everybody's abandoned us. No, but people aren't even seeing it. and say the thing in the Jewish world. And so, um,

I would just say, be very patient with everybody. I mean, I'd just buy people and do, like, be very patient with people. People are on a hair trigger. People,

these things are not our friends. Um, if you were a Martian, you came down, you saw people just like looking at something like this all the time, just being in their, their bio-reactivity just going up all time. You say,

something's wrong. the society. And I'll have more to invite people into. But we don't have to live this way. Way more good than bad in both groups. We have to want to talk to each other again. But when we do, we'll unlock what we need

to start moving things in a better direction. I'm convinced to that. Then, thank you so much for joining me. It's an honor to have you and to hear your wisdom. And we're going to put that link in the show notes. Thanks for coming on.