Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 85: How knowing your story makes you invincible, with Noam Weissman

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

In these strange times, it is easier than ever for a Jew to learn -- and easier than ever to remain ignorant. We sit down with Dr. Noam Weissman, executive vice president of the educational nonprofit OpenDor Media, to tackle a looming crisis: a generation of Jews who no longer know their own story. From Harvard Law students paralyzed by campus slogans to the staggering reality that 62% of Jewish day school students cannot define Zionism, this episode exposes the "malpractice" of outdated advocacy and offers a better blueprint for the future. What would a better Israel education look like? Haviv and Noam explore how history and identity can transform a vulnerable community into an invincible one—shifting the next generation from passive spectators in the stands to active players in the Jewish game.--This episode is sponsored by Max and Susan Reichenthal in honor of Friends of the IDF (FIDF), which works to ensure that the soldiers of the IDF have the support they need during their service. Max and Susan asked to dedicate the episode to the IDF soldiers who put their lives on the line to protect the people of Israel.We thank them for their continued support.--If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There 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.

Welcome to a new episode of Ask Aviv Anything. Today we're going to dive into what I think is probably one of the most important issues facing Jews at this moment. And it's not necessarily an issue that everybody is putting at the front of the agenda at the top of the agenda. But I certainly have over the last two years. It's the question of teaching the next generation of Jews, their story, who they are, where they come from, and where therefore they are going and what's happening to them. And to do that in a time of great confusion and great fear and great anxiety is really, really important. Dr. Noam Weissman is here with me, and we're going to dive into it in just a moment.

This, I think, over the long term, this is going to be the question on which the American Jewish future depends, on which diaspora Jewish future generally depends. Before I introduce Noam and his amazing, amazing work and his amazing project, I just want to tell you really quick. We have a sponsors today who have sponsored multiple episodes. We're extremely grateful. Max and Susan Reichenthal have sponsored this episode. in honor and dedicated to friends of the IDF, the FIDF, an organization that works to ensure that the soldiers of the IDF are supported while they serve in all the different ways that they need to be supported while they serve.

Thank you so much to Max and Susan for that support. I also want to invite everyone to join our Patreon. If you want to ask the questions that guide the podcast, what questions we tackle, where we go with this podcast, the Patreon is the place to do it. We have a great discussion for them over there. where people bring in tons of resources, talk about issues of the day. I'm there. My wife, Chet is there. It's an interesting place to be. And we have a monthly live stream where I answer all

your questions. Join us at patreon.com slash ask chaviv anything. I hope to see you there. Let me introduce our guest, Dr. Noam Weissman, Dr. Weissman, or as I know him, Noam, I'm just bragging there, Noam, is an educator with a microphone. He is that is a great definition in as much as we can define ourselves. He's the executive vice president of Open Door Media, the parent company of Unpacked. A lot of the people listening to this podcast, not all of them, but a lot of them will know the unpacked brand on YouTube, tremendous videos, educational videos on history, on Jewish thought, on multiple podcasts, including too that, including unpacking Israeli history that

Noam himself hosts and that has had me on and many, many others over the last couple of years. They get something like three to four million views a month. They have a team of producers and educators. They build out these remarkable videos. It is astonishing to me as I began to understand the scale of the problem. Frankly, American jury not knowing its own story and how much that affects the capacity of American Jews to respond to the very difficult

times that they now find themselves in with real brutal anti-Semitic violence at quite a large scale. Go to the FBI hate crime statistics. You'll discover that American Jews are at the front of the victims, of the numbers, of the violence of those crimes. We've seen shootings against Jewish communities all over the world, but also in the United States, of course. And just the intense campaign against the Jewish story, Jewish history, the history of Israel, something called Zionism, which in that. anti-Zionist imagination is something rather different from what Zionism is in the imagination and the understanding of people who are actually Zionists or the millions who were saved by Zionism.

In this world of American Jewish, frankly, ignorance facing these real problems, there is one organization that is doing the work that has come forward with a solution. These videos have reached millions of Jews and non-Jews every single year, every single month, including on social media. The YouTube channel of Unpack talks about the history of Israel. It talks about Zionism, anti-Semitism. It is critical. It has space in it for Palestinian narratives and Palestinian experiences.

Noam earned his doctoral degree in educational psychology from the University of Southern California, specializing in curriculum design. So we have with us a consummate educator. Noam, I don't think I've ever presented anybody quite that long. I apologize. How are you? It's awesome to be on this show. Really, I just, I'm an admirer of yours. So it's a mutual,

mutual thing we got going on here. My experience over the last two years has been this astonishing encounter with American Jewish ignorance. Now, the smartest American Jews, the most knowledgeable, the ones penetrating deepest into the secrets of the universe in the physics departments of the finest universities. That's who I'm calling ignorant, the great lawyers of the American Jewish community, the great scholars. many ways of the American Jewish community on a thousand issues. And the story I like to tell was me going once to give a talk at Harvard Law. And one of the students comes up to me after the talk, and the student explains to me that they're genuinely terrified on campus. They're not quite,

they're not scared that people will attack them. It's a lot more interesting than that. This Harvard Law student comes to me and says, I can't cross the lawn or Harvard Yard. I think it was, wherever the encampment was. I think it was Harvard Yard. Without them yelling at me, Zionism is colonialism. This kid looks Jewish. Where's a Kippa? And I said to him, this was, you know, the spring of 2024. So early in this whole two-year period, I said to him, well, that really, you know, I'm sorry to hear that.

That really sucks. Like, that's unpleasant. And he said, no, you don't understand. It really hurts. And I did not take this kid seriously because at the time I had people I knew. who were hostages held by Chalmas in Gaza. At the time, I had family members who were soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon on the Lebanese border facing Fisbalah. At the time, I did not have a lot of patience for the suffering of Harvard kids, even Jewish Harvard kids who come to my talks.

And I said to him, okay, you know, it hurts. Israelis your age are in a war. You know, you can handle this. Like take an example from people who are really struggling with larger problems. and he said to me in response, and I never forgot this, he said to me, no, what hurts is that I don't know the answer. They're saying, now this is, that's it for him, now it's me, they were saying to him, Zionism is colonialism, Zionism is fundamentally illegitimate, Zionism is a distillation of the great evils of history. And this kid who is Jewishly affiliated, Jewish-believing,

you know, connected Harvard law, the term de la Crem of the, of what every Jewish mother hopes their kid will be. But nevertheless, this kid didn't, you know, didn't know whether Zionism really is evil or not. And I got a little angry at him. And I said to him, you don't know if Zionism is colonialism? You, really? This is what troubles you? I mean, the Jews of Israel are 90% refugees. Like they're the grandchildren of almost entirely of refugees. They were kicked out of the Arab world more completely than they were kicked out of post-Holocast Eastern Europe. They, three continents emptied of Jews.

Three continents, by the way, emptied of many minorities. The Roma probably also experienced something quite akin to the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. They don't, people don't talk about their genocide, but it was similar in so many ways. But the Jews experienced this total inability to actually live in the Arab world. Jews can't live in Iraq. They were all refugees and no colonialist project in history. ever founded by refugees. Some of them absorbed refugees. None of them were founded by desperate people. The Jews had nowhere else to go. They couldn't get into America. America had the emergency quota laws.

They couldn't get into Canada or Britain or Brazil. They literally had no, a Britain, imperial Britain, didn't even let the Jews escape Europe to India, never mind to Palestine where there's a whole problem with the Arabs. India, they literally closed India to the Jews as trying to escape the Nazis. And so the Jews with literally nowhere to go, who are all refugees. And, By the way, the Jews have an ancient tradition of belonging to this place. Every synagogue on earth for 2,000 years, praise to Jerusalem. No church in France ever prayed to Algeria when the French started colonizing Algeria or the British in Kenya or any other colonialist project. These are unique features of Zionist colonialism. And they don't have a single mother country, right? Colonialism is a description of a power structure in which a powerful country arrives at a place, usually to exploit its resources or its people. and then takes advantage. And when you bomb them, as the FLN did in Algeria or the Malma rebellion in Kenya or some other places, they go back to their mother country. Well, the Jews had no mother country.

So other than the fact that they have no mother country, an ancient tradition of belonging, where desperate refugees with no other. Other than that, yeah, sure, colonialism. End my rant. The kid takes a step back. He's embarrassed for me. He has this embarrassed smile in his face. he looks at me and he says to me, holy shit, I'm invincible. And he walks out.

That was it. That's what he needed. He did not know the most basic outline of the most basic ideas of the Jewish experience enough to just counter that simple scream on a college campus. And so my question to you is, how big is this problem? What do the polls tell us? How bad is it? Is he representative?

is this Jewish generation capable of facing this moment? Or what actually are America's young Jews, the young generation of the American Jewish community actually experiencing now? Javiv, I think your rant is spot on. I've had many similar experiences. I want to be a little bit bookish, if that's okay initially, to kind of present, share with you some of the history, some of the challenges of what we're seeing,

how we got here to answer whether or not, you know, this is as big of a problem. as you're suggesting, and also what we could look at moving forward. So let's go to your specific example. Your specific example is this young student has no idea how to deal with the question, Zionism is colonialism. So there's an idea in from the Mishnah. I want to go all the way back to the Mishnah that says Da Mala'uashif Lapikaris, know what to

respond to the heretic. Now, I want to use that as an example because it's not that you have to be able to respond to the heretic, whoever, in whatever context it is, and by the way, we're all heretics in different ways. But the concept of Da'amala Hashivla Apikaraas know what to respond, there was a great rabbi who said, it's not that you need to know what to respond in order to respond,

but if somebody on the other side of something that is antagonistic towards your sense of self, his name is the Tifari Israel, he says if someone else has the ability and knows so much more about your own story, story than you, then you have a problem. So the concept is, da, know enough in order to respond. Not that you have to respond, but you got to know your story.

So here's what we know and how we got here as a Jewish day school system and well beyond the Jewish day school world. So from surveys that we've seen from our friends at Boundless, we know that 34% of the general population say they are familiar with the term Zionism. 14% could directly define the term, define the term Zionism. if you say that's the general population, what about the Jewish population? If you're between the ages of 18 to 40 years old, around 42% could define the term Zionism. And if you don't know what Zionism is, and if you don't know what colonialism is,

then it's going to be very hard to be confident in your skin. That's from general data. But there's a lot more than that. When we surveyed students, we surveyed many middle school students and Jewish day schools, Jewish Day Schools, 62% of those that went to Jewish Day School could not define what Zionism was. Simply could not define it. I remember in 2022 when Abu Mazen was being interviewed and he was talking about the Munich Massacre 50 years prior. And he talked about Holocaust.

You want to talk about Holocaust? How about the Holocaust committed against the Palestinian people and Der Yassin and Kibya and Kibya and Kvakasim? and I would show that clip to students across the world in Australia, in the UK, Canada, the U.S., wherever they were. And I said, how awful it is what Abu Mazen just said, that, like, comparing the Holocaust to what it's going on in Israel. They're like, yeah, horrible. And then I said to them, how many of you have heard of Der Yassin?

How many of you have heard of Kvarkasim? How many of you have heard of Kibya? All the hands go down. I went to the top, one of the top high schools in the country after the 7th of October, and the principal shared with me confidentially, so I won't share the name of this school, but one of the top Jewish schools in the country,

after the 7th of October, he gave a map to his students and said, where is Gaza? Most of them could not identify it. Just to clarify, these are Jewish-Da-School students. Everything you've just described. Jewish private schools where people pay through the nose

for young Jews to learn the Jewish story. And I want to get into why I think this is, because there's also good. There's also good. Like, I want to be very clear. There are many Jewish schools that are doing incredible work. But this is an issue that doesn't just revolve around Jewish day schools at all. There is

a deep irony here. And the deep irony is that Jewish civilization has always treated education as sacred. The Talmud talks about that a city, a world exists because of the breadth of school children and a city without Jewish education is not a functioning Jewish community. My monadies codifies this. And in the United States of America, or let me say it much better, over a hundred years preceding the existence of the United States of America, Jewish education emerges in the Americas. As early as 1655, congregation Sharith Israel emerges in New York. But what happened was, and this is from my professor, Mosheu Sakhalau, who taught me in grad school, he said that a Jewish child in New York City almost invariably was educated by the Jewish community.

What that meant is that all non-Jewish schools in New York at this time were denominational, which meant that Jews could not have attended them. So the whole Jewish day school system, I want to go through the history of it because it's totally modern. Between 1880 to World War I, that's where you had the appearance of the Yeshiva Day School. By 1924, you had restrictive quotas that were adopted,

but there were around 2 million Jews that fled pogroms, like you mentioned, and other oppressive conditions in Russia, Poland, and Romania, and then they settled in the U.S. And in 1886, the first modern American day school was established on the lower east side of New York.

It had the name Yisivat Eitschahim. There were also other schools called Yisivat Yitzhak al-Khanan that was created in 1897. Then there was RJJ, which was created in 1900. And here was the purpose of their education. They actually write it out very clearly. The goal was to study the Jewish religion, which meant the Talmud, the Bible,

and the code of law, which referred to the Shulhan Aruch. They learned a little bit of Lashonakodesh, as I called it, which was Hebrew. And they learned jargon, was Yiddish. And then the Jewish day school world moves on. And between the two wars, you had three major schools emerge. Flappush in 1927, Ramaz, where my wife went in 1937, and Maimonides School also in 1937, which was established by Rabbi Joseph Beresolovecic, who was one of the leading rabbis of the 20th century. In the United States of America,

since then, I want to go through day school enrollment. You had a 19th, 1844, around 7,030s, 1946, it rose to 14,095s. In 2000, there were 670 schools, Jewish day schools, with a student population of around 185,000. By 2018, 192,192, 172 students in these schools. That's a lot of students, but it's also represents only around 10% of the Jewish world at this age, maybe. in Canada, the numbers are two to three times the amount in Jewish day school. In Australia, it's around 50%. But here's a number that's absolutely staggering.

There are a total of 5,000 non-Orthodox Jewish high school age kids who go to Jewish high school in the United States of America. A total of 5,000. That is nobody. So almost the entire phenomenon, it's born as a religious education, and almost the entire phenomenon today is orthodox. Yes, there are, I spoke to one of the heads of the conservative movement just a couple days ago. They said there's probably maybe 12 to 15 conservative high schools left.

And by the way, people can fact check these numbers. I'm off by a little bit. If I'm off by anything, by a little bit. But there are a total of 5,000 non-Orthodox Jewish high school age kids who go to Jewish high school in the United States of America. And that is between, we have roughly between 5.7 to 7 million Jews in America. Now, there's the Jewish-Days school world. And then there's the. outside of Jewish day school world.

And the question is, where does Israel education fit in to all of this? Meaning you spoke about Zionism is colonialism and dealing with that challenge. Where does Israel education fit into this? Please. So what happened was, I gave you what a general curriculum looked like, and that was on purpose. It included the code of Jewish law. It included the Talmud. It included the Bible.

Very often Talmud became the sacred cow. The sacred cow. Like you spend most of your time learning the Talmud in a Jewish high school, specifically if the number is around 80. I'm putting aside Hasidish schools and Qarady schools in the United States of America. Let's just talk about modern Orthodox conservative reform, though we should talk about that another time, the Qaradi schools. At least 80% of these high schools are modern orthodox. And for modern orthodoxy, Talmud is often the sacred cow. Understanding how to study Talmud, understand Talmud.

it's core to identity. What happened was in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s and 80s, let's say the 50s to 80s, what Israel education was actually called Zionism education. It wasn't Israel education as we have it today. What that meant is there was Hebrew culture as a focus, Zionism as a focus. I go back to my parent yearbook from camp. They went to an amazing camp called Camp Masad. And in 1977, I saw their yearbook from from 1977.

And in their yearbook, in a sleepaway summer camp, Chaviv, in a sleepaway summer camp, they had a yearbook that had be ad or negad, for or against, recognizing the PLO. In Hebrew, in Hebrew, in an American camp, in Hebrew, this is their yearbook, education, Hebrew culture, Zionism, that was core to the identity. The point was to take Zionism's argument that there's a distinct Jewish Hebrew culture and instill that in the kids. What would explain to me the difference between Israel education and Zionist education over the course of those 40 years. So there was no such thing as Israel education yet. That is a field that emerged 15 years ago, 10 to 15 years ago. This was called Zionism education.

That was 50s to the 80s. And that meant inculcating into Zionist culture, feeling like you're part of this. this revolution that took place. It was sexy. It was cool. It was like physically dirty. Like you fingernail, Zionism. Like you were part of something.

You're part of the new Jew. Not like the Shepsalah, like bent over Jew. You were studying to be part of that. Now, what was interesting in scholars point this out, like Bethlehawrowitz, that people didn't actually know so much about Israel, but they were like sideline cheerleaders of it. And they liked it.

It was something that they appreciated because they saw it. But they weren't very familiar with all the aspects of Israeli society. And then the 1990s, there was a focus. And throughout this also, there was a focus on Aliya. I remember in fourth grade. And it's hard to imagine schools that this would take place. I had someone come visit from Israel. I remember this vividly.

And she told us we were all evil for living in the United States of America. And if you were a real Jew, you should be in Israel. And I remember even then as a nine-year-old thinking that maybe she's right, but I don't know if that's the right message for us. Like, I don't know that that's the right. But that was kind of the focus of the education. I went to a sleepaway camp in which in the, in the Ramkel, the microphone, they would say, make Alia, make Alia.

Like that was the focus. Israel. Just to cover it, you grew up in the community in Baltimore. This is the Orthodox community and very much the, you know, Ravlovich-Gyashiv-Jewi University, very Zionists. And I went to a community high school. I did not go to Mont-Orthodox high school. I went to community high school.

And there is where I want to get into what then happened in the world of Israel education. And I apologize that this is bookish, but like people really have to understand this because it allows us to understand how we got to this Zionism, it's colonialism and not knowing how to deal with the problem. In my 11th grade, we had a, you know, a lovely teacher, good guy. Israel education was malpractice. And what I mean by malpractice is it wasn't his fault. This is what Israel education was then.

It was actually just Hazvara, it was Israel advocacy. When they say this, nasty thing, you have to say that. when they say something negative about Israel, you say something positive. When they say occupied territories, you say disputed. When they say Der Yassini, you say never happened. And the second Intifada is what changed everything. There were two things that emerged right around the time of the second Intifada. First of all, birthright in 1999, right before the second Intifada.

That's when birthright launched and then got all of its push at the time of the second and the Vada and beyond, because the focus was Jewish continuity. And the other thing was Israel advocacy, Hasbara for Israel. And there were all of these different organizations that emerged between 2001 and 2004, 12 new organizations, 11 of the 12 new organizations, myths and facts, stand with us, Hasbara, fellowships, feel for truth. All of these organizations were focused on advocacy. They were focused on Hasbara.

and in the 2010s, that's when things shifted. People started to see that that approach to connecting to Israel in many ways was failing the American Jewish community, many ways failing the community, because what it did is it said, here's what's going on, and it's your job across the pond to defend everything. But that's not really educational.

that's not an actual education. That's being taught how to respond to an issue. And there are four different types of how you talk about Israel that the scholars have then noticed. Number one is called Israel Advocacy, which is training and defending. That is the most primary one. Number two is Israel Studies. That's when you analyze. That's the verb there.

Number three is Israel branding. That's when you sell something like Israel's branding would be, I don't know, cherry tomatoes, ways, check out how amazing Israel is. And then there's the fourth one, which is called Israel education, with a capital bolded, underlined E. And that is cultivating your Jewish identity with the history of Israel, with the politics and civic society of Israel. But the idea is it's your identity and how you see Israel into that story. And what's now happened in the last 10 years, let's say 2015, 2016 to 2025, 2025, 2026, is that this has now become, come the main way to teach about Israel.

And I believe if we, as a Jewish world, commit to teaching about Israel seriously, not to defend, but to think, not to have talking points, but to have frameworks, then our young people will be in a much better position because they're not fearful of losing debates. they're fearful of losing confidence. Noam, you're saying really important things for me because I have heard again and again and again young Jews who are saying things like, I was always taught that Israel was perfect.

And it has been a terrible shock to me to discover that Israel might be bad. And I'll say, and I will have just given a talk and I will have said something like we actually have to remove Hamas from Gaza, And then I will deeply, deeply criticize angrily the Israeli government, the Bengvir and Smaltrich wing, but also Netanyahu himself. I have a deeply, deeply, deeply pro-Israel position, but I am totally aware and say out loud that my country sometimes makes terrible mistakes. Obviously, it's a country.

And then a kid will come up to me afterwards and say, I was taught that Israel's perfect. And even the kind of talk you just gave was not a talk I ever heard growing up. And my response to these kids has been in my head, even if I didn't say it out loud, grow the hell up. first of all, I don't believe you that the Jewish community taught you that Israel's perfect and your only job is to Ra Ra Israel. Second, like, no Israeli kid grows up like that. Like, what are you

talking about? Like, we're constantly talking about the problems in our history. Like, you tell an Israeli kid, Israel's perfect. Yeah, but, Khabib, I think that you're actually I think you're actually wrong about that from at least 10 years ago. Meaning the way, 10 years ago and prior to that, it was

a very unique school that was willing to actually explore the story of Israel as opposed to defend the story of Israel. Tell me more about that because I did not respect and until 20 minutes ago did not respect the young American Jew who said they told me everything was perfect and it's a terrible shock to discover. It's not perfect. They're right 10 years ago.

I think often right now that is not accurate, but it is accurate in many institutions. And I could go through this. Like if you and I were to talk about, you and I have gotten in funny, funny conversation on unpacking Israeli history that I've always enjoyed about. like what is Zionism? And you always make fun of me because you're like, no, Zionism was a rescue project. That's what it is.

That's what it's always been. And then I'd quote like Mikhail Josep Breda Chesvsky or Rabbi Cook or other people who have more. And then I say, there's some like flowery understandings of Zionism. I think that, I actually think that one of the challenges is that people don't actually understand what Zionism is. But if your education is saying to young people, guys,

they're going to teach you that Israel's an apartheid state. here's the response. They're going to teach you, even Zionism is colonialism, here's the response. They're going to teach you that Israel was born in sin. Here's the response.

What that does is it, you know, and by the way, people listening, I'd be like, are probably like, yeah, what's the response to all of that? Like, come on, no, I'm giving me.

And I would say, like, we have to stop Amazoning Judaism and Amazoning Jewish and Israel education. It's not snap of a finger. Here's the response. Here's the response.

You actually have to explore, Now, these issues you might say, don't explore them. There are people who are of the persuasion that say, hey, listen, you don't respond to a blood liable. So why would you respond to this sort of thing? I think that that's the wrong approach as well, because you could actually, it's such a great educational opportunity. What is Zionism and learn what Zionism is? What is colonialism? Learn what colonialism is.

And where do you, as if we're doing capital E, bolded E, underlined E, where do you see yourself as a Jew within this story. How do you make sense of it? So what Israel education is, and there's a great book called Teaching Israel, which I love, and everyone should read it. But it describes Israel education, capital E, bolded E, Anderlindy as a mirror, as a mirror that you see Israel, if you're Jewish, you see Israel as part of your story. And when you do that, Kaviv, what you see is, you know, I think I'm like, I don't know, I'm like a B minus looking guy. I'm like not horrible. not great, like find somewhere in there. But you know what?

I see warts and I see beauty. It's a mirror. That's what it is. That's what Israel education is. If the Jewish state, Chaviv, you're talking about within Israel, it's different than in America. But within Israel, you're able to say, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly, as I see it. And then there's, that's Israel education. Israel studies, which is what the academy should be, is not Israel as a mirror as the analog,

but Israel as a window to look into something objectively. what do you see out there? What is out there? What's happening on the streets? And what we've done in the Jewish educational world is some schools are doing this really well. Like Jewish educational institutions are doing this really well, really well.

And I would break those into probably, I think in terms of categories, three different categories. There's schools who strike while the iron is hot. And what they say is, you know what, after the seventh of October, let's actually teach about Israel. Let's actually do this, Noam.

And they'll bring us in. They'll bring Chaviv in. They'll bring unpack for educators in. And yes, we work with 13,000 plus educators. But after the, after, you know, after a year of the 7th of October, back to Gamara, back to Halachah, back to Tanakh. They only strike while the iron is hot. That is one, that is one segment of the population. I would argue it's a meaningful segment of the population.

And then there's another segment of the population, which I described as strike while the iron is cold, which is, you know what, maybe the topic of Israel is not so sexy anymore. Maybe it's not the type of topic that's, you know, going to get you millions of viewers or listeners anymore because it's not the front news anymore. But you know what?

It's part of our identity. If you're a Jewish school, it's part of our identity. And if we want young Jews to go, out there representing Zionism, then damn it, they have to know what Zionism represents. That's what they have to do. Whether or not, whether or not it is hot right now. And so there are schools who are doing that. The 7th of October sparked within them this need to do serious Israel education, which

means making a decision, and the word decision comes from the root desi, which means to cut off, to decide means to say, I am doing this, I am not doing that. And they are responding to the moment by striking while the iron is cold and integrating it into their curriculum 9th through 12th grade or 6th through 8th grade. And then there's the other schools, I would say even beyond that, our schools have been doing this for a long time, put aside the 7th of October. They just know that this is the future. They know that if you want to have a healthy Jewish identity, then it has to be sacred. It has to be central. It has to be part of this, put aside any external factors.

So to answer your question, if we actually want to solve this problem, this is the crazy thing, it's solvable. It's actually solvable that young Jewish kids graduating Jewish middle school or Jewish high school, graduating from BBIO or graduating from Nifty or graduating from NCSY or any other Jewish club, it's actually possible to make sure that as a result of their engaging with you, they're able to go into university and beyond into their professional sector and say, I have a clear Jewish identity. I know my story. I could figure out what my story actually means, what it actually looks like. That is really, really powerful. Routlessness leads to disengagement, and disengagement leads to attrition.

And this is how identity erodes, quills. quietly, not through hostility alone, but through uncertainty. And that uncertainty is something that we could prevent. My feeling, and I think it's bolstered by everything you're saying, is that history education is everything. History education is who we are where we come from. History education grounds you. I am more comfortable in a pro-Israel American Jewish crowd. I'm one of the most comfortable people in the room saying Israel did something wrong. because I'm totally Israeli and that can't be taken away from me. And if the affiliation has to be strengthened, has to be held on to,

is slightly more abstract. Now, these are people, I think, who will, you know, lay their physical bodies on the tracks for the Jewish people and for Israel, but they don't actually have to. And so it hasn't, it's not something they've actually experienced. And so it's easier for an Israeli to be critical of Israel. Plus, you know a lot. So it's like, it's harder not to be critical of a real,

human society, right, because you see its flaws. And the being critical is easy because my grounding in history means that I can't take my people's story to ridiculous, ahistorical places. I can't reach the point where an anti-Zionist Jew out there in, you know, in America, and I've met a few, and they've approached me and been angry. Sometimes I'll talk to their parents and the 21-year-old back from college on vacation will want to have a conversation. conversation or parents have sat me down with their kids. I was giving a talk at their house or at their synagogue and they brought the kids along and then dropped me afterwards. And the kid, you know, will not know the most basic things. So they'll allow themselves to say things like they'll say

they're anti-Zionist and I'll say, well, where should the Jews have gone? And they'll say, that wasn't an option. The Americans get a say on whether the Jews can go to America. And then they'll say, okay, fine, well, somewhere else, you know, and I'm like, where? And they're like, France. And I'm like, you'll never guess what happened to the Jews of France. There's a reason 90% of French Jews did her a Sephardi. And then they'll say, ah, Australia. And they'll just keep saying, and I'll keep, and then I'll be like, so where actually? And they'll be like, well, I didn't realize those things. I literally had a kid come up to me after a talk and say to me, I just want you to know, I agree with what you said. The Jews had no other option. Okay, fine. No, Israel had

to be founded. I'm still an anti-Zionist. And I'll explain why I'm an anti-Zionist. This Israeli government is unconscionably callous and cruel. And I cannot support that. So I'm still an anti-Zion. I want you to know that. But I accept the historical point you're making that Israel had to be founded. I'm standing there with a kid who just said to me, I'm a Zionist. I just deeply disliked BB. I don't know what to tell him. I have Israeli polling that says that he's with 40% of the Israeli public. How do you tell somebody? He needs to hold on to anti-Zionists for what?

Social cachet in his social circles. This is a college-age kid. I don't know. But when you're grounded in that basic story, you don't have to be right and you don't have to be left and you don't support the war in Gaza. You don't have to do anything. You can have radical politics.

You can have silly politics. You can go anywhere you want. But you can't be anti-Zionist because all the other Jews in the Eastern Hemisphere are dead. Outside the English-speaking world, statistically, I know, apologies to French jury, et cetera. They're dead. And so it's just not a thing.

It's a historical make-belief. And so how do, I always thought this is the answer. This is the solution. And then we'll have a new generation of young Jews who know who they are because they learn their history. That's the core. They learn their history. By the way, if the Jews are learning good Jewish history, they're also learning

Jewish ritual, Jewish religion, Jewish beliefs, Jewish languages, the Jewish books, right? That's the answer. And that's the only answer. There is no other answer. This is my belief. But now I'm thinking, everything you just told us was about day schools. And day schools are only 10% of the kids. And the kids I'm meeting out there, some of them went to day schools, a lot of them didn't.

A lot of them actually come to my talks in a campus on a JCC, wherever I give a talk. They'll come to my talks and they'll come up to me afterwards and they'll say to me, I got nobody. I only discovered I'm a Jew because being a Jew suddenly became dangerous. They're watching people like Ben Shapiro, all Ben Shapiro. all Ben Shapiro wants to do with his life is fight progressives. But he can't fight progressives. He's too busy fighting rabid literal Nazi anti-Semitism rising within the Republican movement.

And so they're watching that and they're saying, wait a second, now I suddenly have to be a Jew again. I don't know what that means. Let's expand beyond day schools. How do we reach all those kids? There is a real hunger. Every Shabad will tell you on campus. Every Hillel director will tell you. and has told you, and I've heard you talk about it also, on campuses, that they're flooded with people.

They've grown and grown and grown. Jewish kids are looking for other Jewish kids. Is history as core as I personally think it is? It happens to be my obsession. Maybe I'm blinded here to what other things are core. Is history fundamental to building that Jewish future, that next Jewish generation that will take on the fights, shoulder those burdens, and win the culture wars? The Jews have to win in America to be safe in America. And two, how do we reach everybody who's not in the 10% that has the ability to be in a day school?

Let me just say about the Jewish day school situation. It's unnerving to me because it is eminently solvable. It's, again, if Jewish day schools want to prioritize this and want to say, here's the canon of Israel education, here are the 50 names, the 50 ideas, the 25 skills, the different ways to actually analyze it. shoes, Jewish day schools, middle schools, and high schools could do this. They just have to centralize it a bit more. And it's possible. Like I mentioned, like with unpacked for educators, it's beyond possible and other places, but like it's beyond possible. But let's go beyond possible. Here's what we know just in general. Eight in 10, meaning 80 percent did some math for you there, U.S. Jews say that caring about Israel is an essential, important part of what being

Jewish means to them. Lovely. But we also, know that half of Jewish Americans between the age of 18 to 34 thought that Israel committed genocide and 18 to 29 year old, you know, are the only group of Jews who are more sympathetic to Palestinians than they are to Israelis. That is what we know. How do you square those two? What does this really mean? Can I ask you? I'm sorry, I want to ask this because I want to understand. Are they sympathetic to Palestinians believe Israel is committed a correct? in Gaza, like that the war is unjustified and therefore the dead are just, just, but also feel connected to Israel?

No, it's, there's nothing preventing an anti-Fietnam war protester from being a patriotic American who says America shouldn't be doing that. Or is this a turning on Israel? Is this anti-Zionism among the young people? Or just the Gaza war was wrong? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I think to your story earlier, people don't know what Zionism is and don't know what anti-Zionism is and therefore.

say that they are anti-Zionist if they believe either of those two things I just stated. Because again, I strongly, strongly do not agree with the association of Israel committing genocide and saying that over the last couple of years. And I also believe that you are not necessarily anti-Zionists if you believe that Israel did things that you think are heinous. Because we could just do that all the time throughout history. Israel, to believe that a country does not commit atrocities is to live in a land. of fantasy, period.

It's complicated because of the amount of libels that the non-Jewish people throughout history have committed and accused the Jews of. That's what complicates it. But from an identity perspective, one could absolutely, absolutely love their Jewish identity, love Zionism, want to cultivate Zionism, and think that Israel does things that it abhors. Like, of course that's true. Israelis, like you said, think that, right?

But I want to talk about like how do you actually, what do we do outside of the Jewish Day School world? Well, again, let's increase the numbers. Sleepaway camp. Just I think that the immersion is remarkable, that being away from parents is, you know, a tremendous experience. Being away from phones, being away from phones is just like you have this opportunity to be seven, eight weeks, whatever it is, something like that. in this immersive experience, where you have fun, where you are with people

who are 17 and 18 years old and you're only 14 or 13 years old and you look up to them. Just imagine this experience. We cannot squander that either. It cannot just be fun in ATVs and, you know, you know, basketball and, like,

those things are great. They're great. They're awesome. But you have the seven, eight week immersion experience, and sleepaway camps have the opportunity to also do this immersive experience like I was talking about from Massad from 1977. That's not happening on many, many, many, many sleepaway camps.

It's not happening and it can happen. Let me just say this. Youth groups, they do, you know, they'll bring in Tiffany Haddish and she's cool, she's really cool, and Tiffany Haddish will come and do something fun with a youth group. And that's great that they do that. And they should continue doing that. But now they have to level up. If you have all of these young people surrounding you and they're in this one place,

I believe that it's time to level up and actually get a literacy. They're with you. They're there. And it's possible to do that. And then the last way, so you have the youth groups, you have the sleepaway camps, you have the Jewish day schools. The last group is the biggest group. They're the group that are on their phones all the time.

They don't have the luxury of going to Jewish day school or synagogue school or camps or youth groups or trip providers. They're not part of it. And I don't know what that number is. Let's say it's 50% of the American Jewish young world. Let's say it's something like that. Okay. Maybe it's a little bit more. They're on their phones.

There are ways to reach young people on their phones. And to your point about unpacked, our target demo is secular and Jewish and non-Jewish people. who are between the ages of 18 to 34. And right now, what we're seeing is that 72% of our audience is either millennials or Gen Z, 51% of the audience is not Jewish, or 51% of the audience is Jewish, sorry. I think 45% is non-Jewish and 4% is ill-defined or undefined, but that's what we know right now. And it is possible. And my argument is if it's possible to teach all young Jewish, their story, it's not anything other than necessary.

If it's possible, it's our responsibility. That's where I am right now. There are solutions to this. And we have to figure out how to leverage these opportunities through curriculum and schools, through areas of focus in schools, with sleepway camps ensuring that it is part of the immersive experience and saying, yes, fun is great, but fun is not enough. It's not enough. youth groups, same thing.

It's not enough. And they're doing great things in all these youth groups. They're doing amazing things. But they could level up. They could level up. And I think now is the time. And if we really believe

that we want young people to represent Zionism, then they have to know what Zionism represents, like I said. And that's a decision for all of us. My last question. So how do we do this? Camp's great. But what unpack does online

is a fantastic model. The hunger is there. What else should happen? And not just what else should happen. Who else is there? The American Jewish organized world, I don't want to come at institutions complaining, okay? The federations, the local communal federations, run sometimes some of the biggest charities in town wherever they happen to be. They have so many responsibilities.

They do so much. But they're these vast defense organizations. There are so many academic institutions that are not taking part. How many Jewish funders paid for Israel institutes at American universities? Some of those Israel institutes have scholars I've talked to, I've learned from, I love, I respect, fine. A lot of them have just gone silent over the course of the center, or they're not studying Israel, they're critiquing Israel and validating the critique of Israel,

not critique in the academic sense, but critique in the activist sense. And so all of that Jewish money that went into, let's, you know, if they won't study Israel honestly in the Middle East studies institutes, Because people, you know, mainline professors at Columbia will now side with the Ayatollah just because they hate Israel. That kind of activist academia becomes the monolith of academia. And so they'll found Israel Studies Institute separate from the Middle East Studies Institutes. And the Israel Studies Institutes will then get captured because a single ideology is permitted on campus. Where have they been?

And so we have this real question. Okay. This is, to me, this feels like a desperate moment, not a desperate moment in the sense of danger. but a desperate sense of a moment of decision. We're reaching a fork in the road. American jury has to decide what its future is. We can reach the kids on TikTok, but we're not doing it in a serious way.

American jury isn't getting up and doing it in a serious way. How does American jury get up at a large level and essentially do what unpacked is doing? But 10x at, 20X it, 50XA, yeah. Just 20X unpacked. Yeah. Why isn't that? I mean, listen, the budgets are so big.

But like, the concern is real. Yeah, I think that, you know, if you look at how much money cutter spends in shaping ideas for the world, they don't, they don't dip their toes in, right? It's not like here's a few hundred thousand. Let's see what you do with it. That's, that's not the way they think about it. It's, I think they have a billion dollars a year on on that sort of education as they see it. And they create these YouTube channels. And then they create these news channels. And then they create these news channels. And then. they create these, they create the professorships. They have, they have all of that. The Jewish world, we are doing a lot of it. I do want to give credit in the last, I know, Javiv, this is a little bit new for you. In the last couple of years, it is so much better than what it was seven, ten years ago.

Like, I think the Jewish world is eons, eons ahead of where it was. Eons. Tell us about that. Well, they're, like, listen, I don't want to give too much credit. But the ecosystem was a lot of organizations just separately working on by themselves. Now I could tell you there are organizations that come together and they say, let's solve these problems together. And we have conferences where we talk about solving these problems together. Birthright that has sent, I don't know, 800, 900,000 young participants to Israel.

Now partners with people like us to say, hey, we have the participants. You have the content. Let's figure out how to get this going together. You have Route 1 an organization that brings, you know, thousands of young Jews to Israel when they're 16 years old. A lot of people don't know about this. When they're 16 years old, prior to, like, meaning before birthright age, one of the cornerstones of Route 1 is they partner with other organizations to ensure that these students, participants, know the story of Israel a bit more. They have courses before and then they do interventions again afterwards. So these are things that are actually happening on the ground.

and it was not happening to the same extent at all seven to ten years ago. And on top of that, the how has changed. It is malpractice to do Israel advocacy, Hasbara, in an educational setting now. And when people are behaving well, they know that. They know that you can't do Israel advocacy and Hasbara anymore. They know you have to do serious education, good, bad, and ugly, and how you see yourself in it. And the vast majority of Jewish educational institutions are doing that now. as well. Now, funders sometimes don't recognize that that's necessary because they're not the

professionals. They're there to like kind of defend Israel, like whatever you can do to defend Israel. And the funders that are, I would say, behaving well understand that, no, it's not just about defending Israel. It's about ensuring that the story of Israel is actually understood by this generation. And the number one thing that young Jewish people demand is transparency and honesty. That's clear. They don't have transparency and honesty. Then they are out. And so we're seeing positivity on that front as well. There is a good element. The terms, I could just tell you some of the academic terms from the late 2000s,

there were authors that were talking about committing and critiquing that that should be the focus of Israel education or wrestling and hugging or there was connect and expose. What I like to talk about is goosebumps with complexity. Like that's my framing of Israel education. There should be goosebumps. You should feel something. She feels like you're part of something. I mean, you saw my kids in Israel and my son's bar mitzvah. You came and celebrated with us.

There's goosebumps. There's like emotional vitality to it. Like this is part of our story. And there's complexity. There's complexity like with that. There's like, okay, but I'm not just going to show you the saccharine aspects of Israel, the sweet, the juicy. I should also show you that.

But there are also different elements of Israeli society. And what that does is that shows young people respect. And if we could show young people respect at scale with podcasts, with videos, I would love for Jewish federations of North America, this, the most overarching group of Jewish institutional life to come together and say, let's create this. Let's figure out what 20x, like you said, Javiv looks like. If you have, you know, 478,000 subscribers are already there, how do we get to 4.8 million in the next three years? and it's not just Israel education. I do want to say this because I haven't said this yet. It's also Jewish identity. If young Jews don't know their story, yes, Jewish history, yes, Israeli history. But if they don't know the value and the knowledge of Judaism, and now I'm talking outside

of the Jewish Day School world, but also within the Jewish day school world, if they can't articulate what it means to be Jewish, if I said to you, what is Judaism and all you could tell me was, you know, the rituals and didn't know about the peoplehood, or if I asked you what is Judaism and all you knew about was peoplehood, meaning family and didn't know about the rituals, I would say that you don't have a healthy diet of a Jewish education. We could provide that at scale now. It's there. It's doable, not just through unpacked, but through other content creators. Like we created this division, Chaviv, I don't know if you know about it, called Amplified, where we are amplified different Jewish content creators, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. And we are providing

them with community. We are providing them with editing of their content. And we're trying to say what we've done unpacked, let's do that to 10x, 20x, 30x with different Jewish content creators and Christian creators and Muslim creators. So I think that there's an excitement about finding the new thing to do and it's happening. It's happening. We just like, I wonder what's holding us back from just 20xing it and saying game on. And let's like really, it's such a fun problem to solve, by the way, isn't it fun to scale Jewish education? And the reason I love that even more, instead of fighting anti-Semitism, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight anti-Semitism, fight anti-Semitism, fight it. Let's our friend, I believe she's our mutual friend, but maybe just my friend, I don't know, Sarah Hurwitz, who said it's better than anyone.

Stop trying to sweep away the floods and start building an arc on these floods. And it's an arc of Jewish education, an arc of Jewish identity, and there are different planks. You got to know current events. You got to know the history of Israel and you got to know Judaism. If you have those three things, like a good man named Kaviv Retagore once said, if you know your story, you are invincible. You, nobody could do anything to you. Because if you know your story, it's the same idea of Dam al-Hashiv-il-Lapikaris,

you don't have to respond to that person. You don't have to do that. No problem. But if you know your story, like when I know my story, Kaviv, and if Israel does bad things, it doesn't do anything to me. my goosebumps with complexity because I know my story and I'm part of my family and I view them as my family. And if I have that, then I don't have to defend everything Israel does to ensure I have a good identity because that makes no sense. It's my story. It's my people.

It's my family. And sometimes my family does weird things and bad things. But there's still my family. So people have to feel like it's their family. We could do it. Norm, that was amazing and wonderful because all of the, all of the infrastructures and methodologies in this new age of TikTok that's, that's dissolving the old ways of doing things. Our kids are off somewhere where we don't understand. All of that problem is also the solution. Yep. And, and, and, and that's what I hear from everything you're saying. And, um, and, and people should check out on Pact. It is a content platform. Just go there. Just you'll watch fun, exciting, interesting movies. There's cool stuff there about the Mossad. Like if I haven't gotten you on learn your Jewish history, go for the

Mossad, stay for the Jewish history. Thank you so much. It's time to stand up in 20x at all, and we already know how to do it. Can I give you one closing story? I just want a closing story that you could either edit out or include. I just think this story, I say the story all the time, because this is the story I want the American Jewish world to be thinking about. It's from the late Labavituribi, Rabbi Menachamendel Schneerson. And he had a student who had a friend whose son was about to become a bar mitzvah. The friend wanted his son to meet this great Rebbe, and they entered his study, and the Rebbe, greeted them with his, like, such warm handshake and his piercing eyes, and he asked the bar mitzvah boy, who wasn't religious at all as far as my understanding, he said, are you a baseball

fan? He was trying to make a connection. The bar mitzah boy replied he was. The Rebbe asked Yankees or Dodgers, so he knew what was going on. And the boy replied, Dodgers. Then so the reba said, does your father have the same feeling for the Dodgers as you have? And the boy said, no, does he take you out to games? The Rebbe really wanted to know. He wanted to connect with him. The boy said, well, every once in a while, my father actually does take me to a game. It's amazing. We were at a game a month ago.

The Reba said, how was it? 13-year-old confesses, it was disappointing. By the sixth inning, the Dodgers were losing 9 to 2, so we decided to leave. The Reba looked at him. Did the players also leave the game when you left? The barminsal boy stared back at the reba. She was shocked. He said, rabbi, the players can't leave in the middle of the game.

Why not ask the rabbi? Explain to me how this works. So the boy launched into this full explanation. There are players and there are fans. The fans can leave when they like. They're not part of the game. Even if they leave, the game continues without them. But the players can't do that.

It's their job to stay and try to win until the game is over. The rabbi looked at the boy, this barmitsa boy, and he said, now you understand Judaism. Either you could be an observer of the history. You could be observer of the story. You could be in the stands. And you could leave whenever you want. You can leave whenever you want. But if you have a stake in it, if you're writing the story, then ultimately you're not leaving ever.

This is your game. And my message to your audience, to my audience, to anyone listening is be in the game. Be in the game. And we need education. We need to know our history. We need to know our story. And if we know our story, we have to bear our story, which is to actually live it. And if we bear our story, B-E-A-R, we also have to bear our story, B-A-R-E, tell our story.

We have the ability to do it, but we have to be in the game. So, Javiv, thank you so much for having me and letting me share some insights that I hope we're helpful for your audience. Dr. Noam Weissman, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.