The Breakfast Club - Jonathan Greenblatt On Combatting Anti-Semitism, Anti-Black Racism, Kanye West, Kyrie Irving + More

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Jonathan Greenblatt On Combatting Anti-Semitism, Anti-Black Racism, Kanye West, Kyrie Irving + MoreSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Mess with Sydney Washington and Marie Faustin on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy, Charlamagne Tha God. We are The Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. That's right. The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. Jonathan Greenblatt. Welcome. Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for having me. How are you, man? I'm well. How are you guys? I'm blessed black and highly favored. There you go. Well, let's start off. What is the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League? Well, what do I do? So the Anti-Defamation League, let's just step back. It's the oldest anti-hate organization in the United States. It was founded in 1913 after a Jewish man was lynched. He'd been falsely accused of a crime,

wrongly convicted, and ultimately the mob tore him from his jail and they hung him from a tree. And while the corpse was still hanging from the rope, they all gathered around, the town did, they had a barbecue underneath the body, they took pictures, and they turned the photographs into postcards. Sounds familiar. I was going to say, like, lynchings happen to young black men and black women very frequently in the South. This was the first high-profile lynching of a Jewish man, and a bunch of Jews said, we got to do something about this. And so they founded an organization they called the Anti-Defamation League, and they wrote

a mission statement that was pretty amazing, because 100 years ago, Jews did not have, you know, economic resources to speak of. They did not have much social capital. And the mission statement they wrote in 1913, we still use it today, was that the purpose is to, quote, stop the defamation of the Jewish people, then not stop the defamation of Jewish people, and maybe stop it and justice and fair treatment to all. Which, you know, we all talk about intersectionality today. We think struggles are connected today. But 110 years ago, when the Jewish community was vulnerable

and they were weak, and they didn't have any kind of power or influence or anything. The idea that they would fight for themselves made sense. They did. They would also fight for others. That was an audacious, outrageous idea, but it has animated this organization for well over a century. So whether it's, you know, this organization made the country safer for Jewish people and

safer for black people, safer for LGBTQ people, safer for immigrants. You know, my predecessors filed amicus briefs in Brown v. Board of Education, put people on the freedom on the buses for Freedom Summer, marched with Dr. King long before. I mean, today we talk about Dr. King. He's a hero. We got a holiday. he was a rabble rouser oh absolutely he was a risk taker and the yeah when when adl stood with him in the 1950s like it pushed a lot of people away but we thought it was the right thing to do and i'm blessed like really really blessed to stand on that legacy now listen let's go back to 1912 right because you know, you know, a Jewish man got lynched, but I'm sure plenty of black people got lynched prior to that. So, you know, why didn't, you know, people, Jewish people step up prior to say, hey, man, this is wrong that all these black people are getting. I'm sure Jewish people did, but the Jewish community didn't create an organization, you know, like ADL before that.

Yeah. So that doesn't mean that individuals didn't speak out. There are many Jews who were involved in the abolition movement. There are many Jews involved, you know, in all aspects of the civil rights movement over the decades. Because it makes me think about, you know, when you don't, how they say, you know, this happened to the Jews and I remain silent. Or this happened to this group and I remain silent. This happened to black people and I remain silent. And then eventually they came for us.

That's what it makes me think about. It is a lot like that. And, you know, like, look, ADL has not gotten it right every time over the last hundred years. That's for sure. But on some of the most big and important questions of our time, when it really was a risk, I feel proud to be part of this organization. And what does the CEO of the ADL do? So basically I do three things. So, number one, we protect the community.

We track anti-Semitic incidents. We help train law enforcement so they understand what hate crimes are and how to protect communities, black, brown, Jewish, gay, et cetera. And we monitor the extremists. So I got a team of analysts who 24-7 are tracking right-wing extremists, white nationalists, armed militia groups, hardcore anti-Zionists, radical eco-fascists, all these kinds of extremists. Like just two weeks ago, we had a situation in Penn Station, you may have seen, where the FBI and the NYPD apprehended two men with bulletproof vests,

guns, knives, swastika, armbands, and rounds of ammunition. That was based on a piece of intelligence that an analyst sitting at our center on extremism provided to the FBI. So last year we gave over 1300 tips again, like making sure that white supremacists and other kinds of sovereign citizens and radicals don't commit acts of violence. So number one, we track incidents and I'll come back to the incidents. Number two advocate so the short term. It's protecting the community the medium term It's about improving the climate and we lobby in Washington. We lobby in state capitals We litigate right now We're trying to bankrupt the proud boys and the Oath Keepers and we speak out in the court of public opinion, too

So advocacy is a big part of what I do and then thirdly we educate because you know You can't you sort of can't fight hate in the long run. If you don't win hearts and minds, you can't arrest your way out of hate. You can't litigate your way out of hate. So we are one of the largest providers in America of anti-bias, anti-hate content in schools. We reach three and a half to 4 million kids in schools, middle schools, high schools every year. And so what will happen is like a black high school player will be hazed on a football team, or an effeminate teenager will be bullied for being gay,

or a Jewish student will have her swastika carved in her locker, and a parent or a principal or whatever, they will bring in ADL, and our content is about fighting anti-black racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, all those kinds of things. Let me ask you a question. We're talking to Jonathan Greenblatt, for everybody just tuning in. One thing that I always have a problem with, with any group of people,

is a lot of times we don't have the conversation, so we don't know what hurts. We don't know what's bothersome. We don't know what to say, what we can't say, what's inappropriate, what's defamation and all that. Yeah. So the first thing I just want to talk is what are the terms that is shouldn't we say? What are the terms? I think you're saying what exactly is anti-Semitism? No, no, yes. Well, that's part of it, too.

So, like, you know, let's say Kanye says Jewish people have all the power. Let's not use him. I would rather use me as an example. Okay, well, let's say people say Jewish people have all the power or, you know, Jewish people run Hollywood or Jewish people run the music industry. These are the things that we've been hearing recently. Explain to us what those terms mean to you. And is it hurtful? Is it painful? Is it not? You know, like, what is it to you?

Like, if you ask me, you know, the N-word, how does that feel? And this to any of us, we can define that. But how does that feel to you? And what can we say? what can't we say, what is foul, what is not foul, you know? Look, DJ Envy, I'm really glad you asked the question. And, like, I'm just going to share, you know, Charlamagne and I have been talking for years now. And a lot of what we do is behind the scenes. And sometimes we do call things out, but I believe that you call people in before you call them out. Absolutely.

And I don't believe in cancel culture. I believe that you call people in before you call them out. Absolutely. And I don't believe in cancel culture. I believe in cancel culture. So I know by coming on this show, there are people in the Jewish community who are going to criticize me. But I think we've got to engage with each other. And vice versa. And learn. Our community is going to be like, why y'all got him on

the show? I'm sure you're going to hear it. There are a lot of people who don't like me. People on the far right, people on the far left, people in all kinds of communities. Because I think, you know, we call it out, whether it's Kanye West or Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene or sometimes Ilhan Omar, we will call it out. Or SNL or Amazon, we call it out. So that being said, what do we call out? So again, our core mission, if you will, is protect the Jewish people. That's our core purpose. So antisemitism is the threat. So antisemitism is kind of an irrational, let's say, hatred

of Jewish individuals or institutions because they are Jewish. And antisemitism is interesting if you think about it relative to other forms of prejudice because I think anti-Semitism, it's like a conspiracy theory. Like it's about the way the world works. So the Jews did this to me. The Jews have too much power. The Jews are the communists.

The Jews are the capitalists. The Jews control Congress. The Jews want to kill Christian people, Muslim people, black people, whatever. It's this warped kind of idea that shapeshifts relative to time and place. I mean, it's described as the oldest hatred. It's been around thousands of years. You know, after the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem by the Romans and like torn from their land and they lived in diaspora as a small community in Europe in the Middle East in parts of

Asia and these Jews continued speaking Hebrew they didn't assimilate into the mainstream population they continue their own religion they didn't adopt Christianity or Islam they continued their own dietary rules they didn't adopt what the mainstream. They continued their own dietary rules. They didn't adopt what the mainstream did. Jews don't believe in conversion or proselytization, so they stayed small. They didn't really grow. So the upshot of that is when the church, like in Europe, needed someone to blame, blame the Jews. When the kings needed someone to blame, blame those Jews.

When the caliphate needed someone to blame, blame those Jews. Because they were always there. They were always different. They were always living on the margins. So flash forward to today, anti-Semitism shows up in different ways, often characterized by a series of myths or tropes. So, for example, the Jews run Hollywood. Look, it is certainly true that there are a number of prominent Jewish people in Hollywood, in the entertainment industry. But the idea that the Jews run Hollywood is nuts.

There's no cabal of Jews who are manipulating things. But the idea that Jews and power shows up over history, right? Many people know about something called the Protocols of Zion, which was a forgery written over 100 years ago, that there was a group of Jews who were trying to run the world. Hitler used that to justify, you know, the genocide of 6 million Jews. And so when you say Jews run Hollywood, Jews run the music industry, Jews control Congress, or sometimes, by the way, it's the Jewish people. Sometimes it's the Jewish state. Israel controls Congress. Israel, you know, the Zionists run the media. It's the same stuff.

And why is it a problem? Like somebody said, well, I would love if people thought that my community ran Hollywood. But like this has led to harassment and violence. So earlier this year, we had the hostage taking in Colleyville, Texas. Do you gentlemen remember that? January, a guy from the UK, mentally disturbed, of South Asian descent, Muslim, had been radicalized by ISIS propaganda and came to the US because he wanted to free an ISIS terrorist who's being held in a prison in Texas. And thought the way he could free this woman was to go find a synagogue because the Jews control Congress. And he took four people, a rabbi and three people hostage in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. There was an 11 hour standoff, which I know

because as soon as I was at home, I had been to synagogue in the morning. I was at home and I got a call from my head of law enforcement who said, sit down. I hope you're sitting down. We just got word about a hostage taking at a synagogue outside of Dallas. And we knew we got the call because the FBI called us because we track extremists. And one of my analysts was on, I think, a signal, like in a signal chat that morning when someone said, turn on the live stream. Cause you could see it because the services were being live streamed. This crazy person thought somehow that Biden would listen to the Jews. Now, as it turns out,

after 11 hours, the hostage were able to free themselves. The FBI shot and killed this man cause he came out with his weapon. Um. But interestingly enough, the next day when the rabbi was on CBS and they asked him, what would you think? The first thing he said was, I just want to thank the FBI, law enforcement and the ADL for the training that I got that helped save my life. So we talk about what is anti-Semitism, it's a crazy ISIS-radicalized person coming from the UK, thinks the Jews have too much power. It's two white supremacists getting off a subway to train at Penn Station

because they've heard they wanted to go shoot up a synagogue. It's black Hebrew Israelites this weekend. Today's Monday? Tuesday. Tuesday. Wednesday. It's going to air on weekend what today's Monday Tuesday Wednesday was my arrow was Sorry, so it is over this past weekend in Staten Island on Sunday a Jewish man Who he must have been Orthodox because you could identify that he was Jewish and his son were shot By a young man with a pellet gun as they were came out of a gun that they see that

Yeah, and so when he was asked by the police were shot by a young man with a pellet gun as they came out of a... I did see that, yeah. And so when he was asked by the police, they said it was a hate crime, he said, how could it be a hate crime if I'm a Hebrew? This is the kind of fiction that black Hebrew Israelites say that white Jews, quote-unquote, aren't really Jews. So anti-Semitism can, if you will, show up as people thinking that white Jews aren't Jews. It can show up as white supremacists.

It can show up as people saying, like Kanye, by the way. Kanye got ejected by Elon Musk off of Twitter last week. And Elon says because he put an image up of a Jewish star of David with a swastika in it. I could tell you there are rallies, anti-Israel rallies every week where they say Zionism is Nazism, that Zionists are committing genocide. I've seen that image a million times. But these are all manifestations of what I will characterize as an irrational hatred of the Jewish people. And look, Jewish people are the most victimized religious minority

in the country. 60% of all the religious-based hate crimes target Jews, despite the fact that Jews are just 2% of the population. There are only 7 million Jews in a country of 350 million people, but they're the most targeted. And the antisemitism is up in 2000. We've been tracking antisemitic incidents at ADL for 45 years. 2021 was the highest total we've ever seen. It was a 34% increase over the year before. 2,717 incidents. Now, every one of those, my staff investigated and verified everything that we report. And so that is triple the number of incidents that we had in 2015. So think about that. Over 300% more. And I mean, if you guys go to church or your listeners go to church, you can ask yourselves, do you have armed guards in front of your church? No, we need to though. I felt that way ever since the incident happened in my hometown

of Charleston, South Carolina. So we should talk about that, about what ADL is doing about that. So let's come back to that. But literally every synagogue in the United States has an armed guard in it. Every synagogue in the United States knows how to do lockdown drills and, you know, live shooter drills. We are very used to our synagogues being firing ranges. And there's a lot of fear that comes from that. What's your name? The term Jews, right? Is that a term that can be said? Because at one time, at one time you couldn't say that. I thought you had to say Jewish people. Yeah. You can say Jew. Yeah. you know, it's interesting. Language evolves and changes relative like cultural norms. So I think of myself as an American Jew because my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor,

he was a Jew in Germany. The only country that he ever knew until one day, my great-grandfather fought in the first world war for Germany. The only country they ever knew until one day my great-grandfather fought in the first world war for germany the only country they ever knew until one day it turned on them destroyed everything they ever loved made them enemies of the state and it pretty much incinerated their whole family in auschwitz so that german jew came here never would have guessed by the way that when he was a young man that one day his grandsons like me and my brother and my cousins, would be born in America. My grandfather, never could have guessed that in his 20s. Flash forward, my wife is an Iranian Jew.

She came here as a political refugee in 1988. If you ask my father-in-law, I mean, they're very Iranian. They're Persian. They speak Persian. They eat Persian food. They work with other Persians. It's a whole different middle, very deeply Middle Eastern kind of culture. If you had asked my father-in-law when he was a young man, he would have guessed, of course, his grandchildren will be born in Iran. The only country they ever knew until after the Islamic

revolution, the Jews became enemies of the state. They destroyed everything they ever loved. And they forced, again, my in-laws and my sister-in-law and my wife to come here as refugees, which they did, like I told you. And so I don't take for granted, based on the experience of my Jewish grandfather from Germany or my Jewish father-in-law from Iran, that my grandchildren will be born here in America.

As a Jew, I can't afford that luxury. If I want them to be born here, and I desperately do, we've got to fight for what we have. So you can say Jew is what you say? So you can say Jew. Now, I'll also say that a lot of, when we talk about what language matters, it's all about context.

So when, you know, Nick Fuentes, you know, Donald Trump's dining companion uses the term Jew, he probably doesn't mean it in the way like when I say it. And it's like you mentioned the N word before, like when a black person says the black person has a very different meeting than when Nick Fuentes used at dinner with Donald Trump. So a lot of this is about context. If you call me Jewish, that's just fine with me. If you say Jonathan's an American Jew, that's just fine with me, too. So when we go back to the anti-Semitic conversation, because a lot of the things you named are blatant anti-Semitism. But I got labeled anti-Semitic because I said, you know, after the Nick Cannon situation, this shows that Jewish people have power. And I can't wait until black people have power because we can't even get the people who kill us fired in reference to the cops who at the time were still, who hadn't been charged for killing Breonna Taylor. So why is that considered anti-Semitic? Because that's coming

from a place of reverence. Yeah, I get that. And so I think that's some of the complexity of this. Now, number one, I tell you at ADL, like we are very, very, very hesitant to call someone anti-Semitic unless there is a pattern of behavior over time. You might say something that's anti-Semitic. You may say something that's offensive, intentionally or not. But it's up to us to explain why. Like I can't assume that you understand my pain. I got to explain it.

So I don't know the specifics of who said exactly that. But what I would say is. Oh, I said it. No, no, no but who who ascribed that to you and said charlotte i don't think that's right and i think you've shown a willingness to engage and to be open you're showing it with me and i appreciate that vulnerability and i hope i show it with you and with your listeners today now all that being said again the trope of jew and power, like simply when you say, I want to have that kind of power, you might not mean it in some conspiratorial way. That may be how some Jewish people heard it. Because even in hip-hop, right, it's always been, you know,

you've got to have Jewish people in your corner. You know, like, you know, remember 50 years ago? In a good way or a bad way? In a good way. In a good way. Like, you know, it's a thing to say, like, you know, I've got some very powerful Jewish people in my corner. I don't know if it good way. Like, you know, it's the thing to say, like, you know, I got some very powerful Jewish people in my corner. I don't know if it's, we're saying, you know, we're saying it because of the stereotype of Jews having power or just that they're powerful and happen to be Jewish.

See, this is what's tough about it. Context matters. Intent matters. You can, there can be an offense even accidentally, like Kyrie Irving, I don't think was trying to be. No, not at all. You know, I can be an offense even accidentally like Kyrie Irving, I don't think, was trying to be, you know, I think it was just ignorant. Now with the Kyrie Irving situation, right? You know, Kyrie Irving got suspended. He had, there was five things he had to do before he was playing basketball again. But I also ask about like Amazon for having that film on there. You know, I don't feel like Amazon got much of that fire. So I'm going to tell you, we are working on that. Because you're pointing something out, DJ Amby, that's incredibly important.

It's not just about what the people say, it's what the platform does. It's not just what Chappelle says, it's what SNL does, or NBC does. It's not just about what Kyrie tweets, it's about Amazon hosting it. So, look, we've launched a whole campaign against Amazon. We announced on Monday we're working with the German government because Holocaust denialism

and that movie is offensive in part because it says that white Jews invented the Holocaust, that it didn't really happen. That's not true. Let's just put that out there. I don't think I really should even need to. But Holocaust denialism is illegal in Germany. That movie is available on Amazon Germany. So we are now working with the German government

because Amazon is breaking the law. I also had, we worked with members of Congress, had about three dozen members of Congress write a letter to CEO Andy Jassy and to the chairman, Jeff Bezos. We're also, uh, worked with all these different groups in the Jewish community to write a letter. We've sent tens of thousands of emails. So I'm not going to let up on Amazon, not at all. And I was at a conference last week where Andy Jassy, the CEO said, you know what? It's a slippery slope if we take this down. I don't think so.

Or at a minimum, if he doesn't want to take it down, and I think he should, he should put a disclaimer on it to say the kind of things in here are not true. And here's why they're problematic. And like, look, I've talked to Andy. I've talked to their leadership. We will help them with that. Again, the goal here is not to cancel. It's to counsel. Now, you also mentioned Dave Chappelle, right?

Yeah. For years, comedians have made jokes about everything under the sun, right? If you watch it, live in color or whatever it may, it could be LGBTQ community, it could be black people, it could be white people, it's Asian people. When is a joke not funny anymore where it's a problem? Because some people find Dave Chappelle's jokes funny. I'm sure some Jewish people find Dave Chappelle's jokes funny. Yeah, the criticism was he normalized anti-Semitism.

As a person who doesn't always know what is considered anti-Semitic, I didn't know what he normalized. So let's talk about that. So first of all, I would say that I give, always as the head of ADL, a very wide berth when it comes to comedy. I mean, and Dave Chappelle is an equal opportunity offender, right? White people, trans people, black people, Jewish people. So there's a lot of Asian people for sure. And so is SNL. Like SNL is making fun of people all the time.

White people, Jewish people, black people. And I pretty much don't say boo. But what was problematic about what he said are a few things. So number one, keep in mind, as you probably know, because it's been reported, he did a different monologue in the rehearsal. I don't know if you know that or not. Yeah, I read that. He didn't do that.

So right there, that's a little bit of a tell because that's not what you are supposed to do. That's not why Lorne Michaels does the rehearsal. You're supposed to test it out. And I think he knew that it was going to be too hot or too controversial and then I tell him not to do it. So right there, number one. Number two, look, he literally said the problem wasn't what kanye said it said he said it out loud that's what he said and on the heels of the stuff that kanye was doing and on the heels of all the kind of animus around the kairi thing when he said that you know sometimes you don't know in comedy whether it's going to be a whether it's a punch or a punchline. This just felt like a punch.

He did that thing where he pulled out the piece of paper and read it at the beginning. You all saw the monologue. The apology. Yeah. He denounced his anti-Semitism. I did not. And he said it in a flat, like, you know, in a flat monotone. And he said, that's how you buy yourself some time.

So that was kind of funny but it wasn't when again it felt less like a punchline and more like a punch so by saying the problem was what kanye said just that he said it out loud that hit home again the fact that there are some jewish people who are hollywood executives doesn't mean the jews run hollywood and this myth of power has led to deep problems for Jews. But there was something else that he said that also really, I thought about our conversations that really hit me when he basically said, look, you know, Jewish people have suffered and he acknowledged that towards the end.

But he said, don't blame black people for your trauma. He said it kind of like that. I'm paraphrasing like no one was doing that. I mean, I've gone after Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, plenty of other people on the right who are white. I've gone after plenty of people on the left who are white. I've gone after I shouldn't say gone after even but called out people like Candace Owens and people like Kanye and people like and others. I mean, to say that we're blaming black people for the trauma really, really hurt because I think it was really, really wrong. Yeah, I think I think sometimes people feel like in regard to anti-Semitism, black people get labeled, but then suffer more consequences for it than other groups. You know what I mean? Nothing seems to happen to Donald Trump. Nothing seems to happen to Tucker Carlson. But other black people that get labeled anti-Semitic,

they lose things. Lose everything. I hear you. I mean, I think about Myers Leonard last year, two years ago. Myers Leonard, you know, he was a forward for the Heat who was caught, he was streaming on Steam, playing like, I can't remember what game he was playing.

He used a pretty offensive term toward Jews. A shooting game, I believe. I think it was a shooting game. I think so. I think it was like, yeah, like Call of Duty or something. Call of Duty, I think it was, yeah. And we called him out. The Heat dropped him.

He hasn't been picked up by another team. Right? So he pretty much got canceled. By the way, we've worked with Myers over the years. We worked with him right away after that. He's done some good stuff with us, calling out hate on video games since then. Is he black or white? He's white. He lost his whole career.

But let me ask you, when somebody does something like that and says something wrong and disrespectful and he loses everything, that's kind of like cancel culture. It is, which is why we called him out when he said it. Because it doesn't give you a chance to apologize and to make good of what you've done

because your life and career is done. Look, man, and what's really a shame about Myers, he's a good guy. He's a young guy who's tried really hard. And I look, I don't want to speak to his talent on the court. I don't know what the heat front office thinks, or the other teams, by the way. But it's sad that

he hasn't landed somewhere as far as I know. Again, we've worked with him. I think he's a genuine good guy. But sometimes people do get canceled, and I don't think it's right. Do you ever look at that and say, damn, we did that? Like, we took his career. Even though it's something that he said. Well, I was going to get to that because me and you had a conversation one time,

Jonathan, about Kyrie. And it was after the list of demands came up, which you said y'all didn't have anything to do with. Nothing to do with. And one thing you said in that conversation was you were going to call the Nets and tell them that they should let Kyrie back play. Which I did. So like, so jumping to Kyrie for a second. I mean, I'll just say the answer to your thing. But like, I think a lot about the

fact that ADL is a deeply respected organization. So when we say something, it has a kind of resonance and I take that responsibility really seriously. I do not do things lightly. I do not do things flippantly. Um, and again, I try to call people in before we call them out. Now, when there's something really public, like what Myers did, like that's just objectively wrong. But I'm proud of the fact that we've worked with him since then, featured him in programs, tried to lift him up. Now, so that's what we've tried to do. Because I do think a lot about what you said, DJ Envy, and it's real. Now, you were asking me about just now, I'm sorry, I lost my- Kyrie, we were talking, You said you called the next week.

Oh, yeah. So, again, I think when I saw that movie, Kyrie's not Myers Leonard. Kyrie's one of the most well-known players in the game. My boys have his jersey. They wear the Nikes. So he is like a cultural phenomenon. So when he did this and then didn't seem to show any contrition or any interest in any contrition, by the way, that's problematic. But we work with the Nets and his family and the Players Association and the league and his friends to try to work this out.

And then after he said he had another pretty terrible press conference and the net suspended him. They said, they said, this is what I got a call from that and said, this is, we're going to have, we're going to have to do a bunch of things. Would you be willing to meet with him? I said, of course I will. And I've said that by the way, since the very beginning, I still haven't met with him. Spoken to his, his dad, I've spoken to his step-mom, who's his agent. I've spoken to his friends. I haven't talked to him. But I would talk to him today if he wanted to have that conversation. Because I think he has since, the whole kind of debacle,

demonstrated again and again that he's really sincere. And when Josiah and Adam Silver say, we met with him, and the man has never expressed an anti-Semitic thought, and he really wants to learn. Like, I want to help him learn. Is there anybody that you wouldn't speak to? Well, Mel Gibson and I aren't exactly going to have coffee at any time soon. I mean, I think people who are unrepentant, people who show no willingness in a genuine way, that's a bridge that I won't necessarily cross. Now, did you see the article in Tablet where they said when it comes to Jewish people, the ADL does more harm than good?

What do you think of that? There are people in the Jewish community, like here's the ugly truth. There are people in the Jewish community, particularly those who I would characterize on the far right, who think ADL is too liberal. And then there are people in the Jewish community, what I'll call on the far left, who think we're too conservative. I get accused of being an apologist for Donald Trump. And I get accused of being like obsessed with Donald Trump. I just like, I've come to expect that. And so, you know, when you call people out and you do it consistently and clearly and you take no prisoners, but you do it in a way which is about how do we move forward,

people are going to hate on you. And like, I just think that's part of the job. If I listen to my critics, Charlemagne, like I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Yeah. They said they said the ADL is a partisan attack machine fueled by corporate cash and oblivious to any real suffering of Jewish people. That's great. I mean, look, tell that to the rabbi in Colleyville, Texas, who credits us with helping save his life.

Tell that to the millions of kids who we educate every year. Tell that to the thousands of people who we help after they've been victimized. I mean, I think that's baloney. But, you know, although I'm going to be honest. I mean, I think that's baloney, but you know, although I'm going to be honest with you, like I I'm accustomed to getting criticized. I take all the criticism seriously. I think very hard because like, I don't want to be on the right

or the left. I just want to do what's right. Not wrong. So I, I don't let these people distract me. I don't let them daunt me. me like I said never get out of bed in the morning But I always think there's room for improvement And I'm always trying to listen to people that I don't agree with so I can hear where they're coming from What is your thoughts on on private conversations sometimes right? every household to somebody's that's listening right now said something foul or racist or Something that they considered a joke might not have been funny, but it stayed in their household, right? Yeah, sure.

But sometimes those household situations get leaked and people lose everything over a household situation, especially over something that I know most of the people listening has said something or something funny that they thought was funny that might not have been funny. What is your thoughts on that? Because it's nothing that necessarily wanted to say that they wanted to get out, but it's something that could have been taken out of hand i think there was you have a specific like example in mind it was one situation i can't remember what it was because so don't call me i remember he was walking into his house and was on a neighbor's ring camera and it was released and

he just got everything he got was was taken from him but the individual i believe at the time was doing things for different communities but he just just said something. What is your thoughts on things like that? Because it's still cancel culture. I mean, yeah, that's, look, like I said before, I think you can offend people even if you don't intend to. But that's why you got to counsel, not counsel. That's why you got to bring people in rather than push them away. So there's been a lot of examples of this cancel culture where professors or business people have lost everything

because they made a comment or they maybe did something wrong, like legitimately wrong. But I just think, you know, in the Jewish tradition, we have this concept called Teshuvah, which is about repentance. And it acknowledges the fact that,

I mean, we're human. Like we may be made in the image of God, but we're not God. And so all of us sin, all of us err, and teshuva means we can all repent for what we get wrong. So that's pretty much where I'm, again, there are those, you asked me, who would I not talk to? There are the unrepentant, unwilling people, and I don't want to deal with them.

I just don't. But that is a very small fraction. Have you spoke to Kanye before? Was that out of a conversation? I was asked would I meet with him, and my answer was yes. Even now? Admittedly. That was before Mar-a-Lago and before Alex Jones.

He seems unwilling or uninterested in any kind of real sincere conversation. And by the way, you asked about private conversations. Like I've seen him post these text messages with his friends. So like that's kind of hard for me to reckon with. And so I think you look, I will say that I typically approach people like with the benefit of the doubt. I assume people have good intention, not ill intention. So it's hard to go talk to somebody like that when you know he has a pattern of behavior that demonstrates ill intention. And what about Elon Musk?

Now that he says that he's on Twitter, they're saying that hate speech is shot up 41% against Jewish people, 61% of it against African-American people. Does the ADL attack those him and his organization and things like that? And how successful are you guys with doing it? Elon Musk. Um, so let's step back. So I would tell you that we've been fighting hate for again, over almost 110 years. Facebook is the front line of fighting hate today. And social media is a super spreader of anti-black racism, anti-Jewish hate, anti-Asian hate, et cetera. So literally we opened a center in Silicon Valley back in 2017. And the woman who runs it, she's an ex-Facebook executive. I have software engineers and data scientists working at ADL. We're monitoring all this stuff. And we're working with all the platforms, by the way, Google and YouTube and Meta and Twitter and Reddit and Steam and Amazon, all these companies

from like Apple to zoom. We work with all of them. Okay. That's relevant because we've been working with Twitter now for real, since it was founded. We worked with the old regime, working with the new regime. I wasn't a big fan of the management at old Twitter. Like old Twitter has been like a hellscape for a long time. How about Jack Northey? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And we worked with his staff on almost a daily basis, certainly a weekly basis. And oftentimes there were a lot of issues. Now, Elon, I think, I think Elon is somebody who wants to do the right thing because he wants to make the business work. And if it remains a hellscape, the advertisers won't take part in it. They don't want their brands. I mean, brand safety is linked to user safety right so they don't want you know Procter and Gamble and McDonald's

they don't want their brands up against like white supremacist hate speech now all that being said so I have been critical of some of the things that Elon has done and at the same time like I'm talking to Elon and we're trying to work with them

I think I want him to look, I want him to get it right because whether we like it or not, Twitter is the public square. That might change at some point in time, but the public square cannot be again, a firing range where Jews and other minorities are targeted and victimized. To your question, DJ Envy, we have seen in the past few weeks, anti-Semitic hate speech has gone up. The number of takedowns has decreased as a percentage. We've seen some really awful people get back on the platform, like neo-Nazis and such. I'm hoping Twitter will take them down. We're, you know, we're working with them to try to get to that outcome. And I

hope that Elon will get it right. What's the difference between free speech and openly inciting hate and violence? Well, a lot. I mean, incitement and threat. I mean, freedom of speech isn't the freedom to slander people, right? Because he keeps saying free speech, free speech, but all I see is hate speech.

I mean, I think there's a lot of room for improvement. And even if hate speech is part of free speech to a degree, like you make decisions, right? Every day who you bring on this show, you do, you make a decision and you do that because you respect your audience. You've got an integrity to this program, right? And you don't want to give a platform to some of the worst elements. Like, Twitter can do a much better job. Make sure it doesn't platform the worst elements. Because I don't think we should confuse freedom of expression with the freedom to incite violence against, again, black people, Jewish people, or any other minority. You know, the ADL is an anti-hate group. It often feels like the ADL seems to have,

it doesn't have the same passion for anti-blackness as it does anti-Semitism. That's a fair question. I mean, we were created after this lynching to protect Jewish people. That's why we exist. And so at a time when anti-Semitism has reached literally an all-time high, it's fair. We're putting a lot of resources on that. We put a lot of resources into fighting extremists, right-wing extremists who want to kill black people and Jewish people. And this is something I think we should talk about because these right-wing extremists, they're the ones who

are rejoicing while they perceive black and Jewish people are fighting. They're the ones who want to see Kanye and the ADL or Charlemagne and whomever going at it because they deeply, passionately hate both of us. So I think there's a lot of shared values between the black and Jewish community. And by the way, just shared people. There are plenty of Jews of color. There are plenty of African American Jews that I know.

But in addition, I think we have shared values and unfortunately, we have common enemies. But let's come back to what you asked about. We do a lot with groups like the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Urban League, Color of Change, Lawyers Committee. At the national level, at the local local we have 25 offices across the country and all my offices were working with you know black-led organizations to fight anti-black racism to be a part of legislation to be a part of initiatives and when we launched our campaign against facebook a few years ago stop paid for profit i did it with derrick johnson the ceo of the naacp and rashad robinson from color of. But let's come back to, on this issue of are we doing

enough on anti-blackness? And what's your expertise and how are you helping our community? Because you said before, Charlemagne, you would like to see armed guards in black churches. And that's actually not a crazy idea. I don't think so. Not in this day and age. I feel like that about schools, too.

And we saw the shooting in Charleston, like you mentioned, 2015. We had a shooting in Buffalo earlier this year at the Top Supermarket. We've had arson attacks against black churches. Earlier this year we had bomb threats phoned into HBCUs. So this past September, it's only a couple

months ago, the ADL and the Urban League launched a new effort called the Solidarity and Safety Coalition. And we included that, like the national association of Baptists and a bunch and the United Negro college funded a bunch of other groups. ADL is going to share what we've learned about monitoring extremists and protecting houses of worship and faith-based institutions and kind of other

important kind of civic entities with the black community, the Asian community, LGBTQ community. We're going to share what we learned. We can do more to fight anti-black racism and hate. And this is one very direct way we can do that. I want to go back to something you just said. You said, you know, you acknowledge there are black Jews. There are African-American Jews. Some people think saying that, that they're labeled anti-Semitic. What is the difference between saying, hey, which is a fact there are black Jews and what y'all consider anti-Semitic. I mean, I think let's also acknowledge that Judaism is a wide spectrum, right? So you have Orthodox Jews who speak Yiddish, who, you know, eat strict kosher and observe the way they do. And then you have very reformed Jews who like me, like I'm not, I mean, I'm conservative Jewish. Actually, I have a kosher home. I go to synagogue on Saturday

mornings. I observe all the holidays. But I don't wear a kippah, for example. Then there are other Jews who say, I would never set foot in a synagogue. But they feel culturally Jewish. They identify as Jewish. Because it's also, it's complicated. It's a religion. It's an ethnicity.

It's a culture. It's just not something you can just say is about, you know, like showing up on a Saturday morning. So with all that said, there's a range of practice and observance. So there are plenty of black Jews who go to what you might call traditional Jewish synagogue. Then there are other communities like the black Hebrew Israelites. Now, there's a range of practice even among black Hebrew Israelites. You know, there's a large community of them in Israel who identify as Jewish in a traditional way. And then you have the guys in Times Square

who observe in a way that's not so traditional, I would say. They would say, y'all aren't Jews. They would say, white people are not the original Jews, basically. Correct. And look, they're entitled to their beliefs until that justifies shooting Jewish people with pellet guns on Staten Island. Or like, this is December.

Three years ago, December 2019, two black Hebrew Israelites went into a kosher supermarket in Jersey City and killed three people because they said they weren't real Jews. Wow. Shot them cold dead in a kosher supermarket. So again, you're entitled to believe whatever you want. I think we need to recognize that rhetoric can have real-world consequences. Can we talk about Hollywood again? Because it is true that Jewish people founded Hollywood.

But there's a reason for that. Some Jewish individuals, I call the Jewish entrepreneurs, who couldn't get, look, at the turn of the century, Jews couldn't get hired at law firms. Businesses wouldn't hire Jews. Jews couldn't buy homes in many places. You know, the reason why we have so many of these medical institutions like Mount Sinai or whatnot is Jewish people founded them because Jewish people couldn't get treated. Medical institutions or hospitals wouldn't treat Jews. So Jewish people had to create their own entities, their own subculture.

Again, there's a lot of commonalities with the black experience in this country in this regard. And so when they couldn't get jobs, entrepreneurial Jews went to the West Coast to build out this new industry that now we call Hollywood, the entertainment industry, the motion picture industry. And so as an industry,

they helped to, some Jewish people helped to create it They had some success with it, but at the risk of stating the obvious there are 10 zillion people in that industry who are not Jewish Mm-hmm. I mean the vast majority are not Jewish But they have had some great success there. What is the only a few more questions? What is the stereotype that Jewish people control media? Where does that come from? It comes from these old tropes about Jews in power. I could show you white supremacist literature. That's like 10, 20, 30, 40 years older from today. That says Jews control the media.

Now, are there some Jewish media executives? Sure, there are. Do Jews control the media? Not as far as I know. If they did, I think I'd get much better coverage. You know, I think I'd get much better coverage. You know, I mean, really, I mean, there is no cabal of Jews in an organized way. I mean, Jews can't even, we can't have a hard time running our own synagogues. I mean, there's no cabal of Jews

running anything. Now there may be Jewish people who have had some success, but Jews don't run Hollywood any more than like black. It's say Jews run Hollywood. It's like making some stereotype or some generalization about black people in sports or, you know, Latino people and something or other. I don't even know. It's just not it's not right. And it may sound like a compliment. But the reality is when you see Jewish people being taken hostage, Jewish people being shot and killed, it doesn't feel like such a compliment. What do you say to people who say that, you know, y'all are proving somebody like Kanye right?

Because Kanye says, hey, Jewish people have all the power and then he loses everything. Well, look, the insidious nature of anti-Semitism and these tropes about power is Kanye can say these things. Jews have all the power, the controlling everything. And if we don't get him, you know, if we don't deal with that, the myth spreads and it takes root. If we do address that and there are consequences, he says, aha, proves my point. So it's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. And we're kind of stuck. We can't ignore it because it has, again, consequences. And if it gets addressed, he says, see, proves my point.

But, I mean, that's just the insidious and ugly nature of anti-Semitism. How does the ADL handle anti-black racism from Jewish people? For example, if somebody in Brooklyn calls you and says, hey, I'm being discriminated against by my landlord and the landlord happens to be Jewish. How does the ADL handle that? Well, look, I mean, we address it head on. I think about a situation in Boston a couple of years ago where two young black girls had their hair in cornrows at a private school. The private school said, you're in violation of our dress code. And suspended them, expelled them. So those young black girls, their mom or one of the moms called the local ADL office.

So what do we do? We brought in the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. And together, we took on that school. We filed a lawsuit and we won. I was going to ask, you know, at one time, especially in Brooklyn, it was a lot of tension between Jewish people and black people. Definitely. Hasidic Jews at that, I believe. How have you guys calmed that down and created some type of peace in there? Because I don't hear about it like I used to when I was a kid.

I think there's still a lot of tensions there, to be honest, DJ Envy. I mean, the issues in Crown Heights, I think that's kind of what you're referring to. I mean, that way proceeds my time at ADL. I didn't even live in New York. It Heights, I think that's kind of what you're referring to. I mean, that way precedes my time at ADL. I didn't even live in New York. It was, I think, maybe 20, 30 years ago. But there's still a lot of tensions. And that often happens. I mean, Van Jones has talked about this.

I've heard him talk about this. A lot of times there's fighting and there's friction because we're together. And that's what happens. We have communities living in close quarters. That being said, you know, one of the things that I want to do and that the Nets announced was we're going to create community conversations coming off the Kyrie thing. So the Nets are going to sponsor, we're going to start in Brooklyn and bring together young black boys and girls and young Jewish boys and girls and get them talking to each other. I think so often our communities don't interact, don't engage,

don't hear one another, you know, and I think we can improve upon that. So these community conversations that we do, I'm hoping we're going to start in Brooklyn and then we'll expand other cities. Like there's some, again, our communities have such a deep history. I am proud. A lot more similarities than we do differences. Way more similarities. And there are those people who want to divide us. There are those people who want to tear us apart. There are those people who want to instrumentalize black people against Jews, Jews against black people. Like we cannot allow that to happen. Again, we have shared values and we got common enemies, but more than that, I think we have a legacy. Now look, Jews didn't come to this country on the halls of slave ships. Jews don't have the history of 300 years of enslavement, a hundred years of Jim Crow. We don't have that history of 300 years of enslavement, 100 years of Jim Crow.

We don't have that history in this country. Being a black man in America has a kind of cost that being Jewish doesn't have. And Jewish people have been able to assimilate in a lot of ways. Absolutely. I can walk down the street and you necessarily know that I'm Jewish, unless, on the other hand, I'm an Orthodox person. And then I am more likely to be assaulted just because you can see that I'm Jewish than any other white person. And Jews have our own trauma, which is different than American black trauma or black American trauma, but is real too. So I think there is so much that we've got in common.

And, you know, I'm proud of the fact that, again, my organization has a legacy. I'm proud of the fact that, in a lot of ways, black people have stood with Jewish people and they didn't have to. And so I think we've got to move forward and we've got to move forward together. What do you think about Jewish people who support Donald Trump? Hard to explain. I mean, it is certainly true that Donald Trump has a Jewish son-in-law and a Jewish daughter.

He has Jewish grandchildren. Like, he does. has a Jewish son-in-law and a Jewish daughter. He has Jewish grandchildren. Like, he does. I mean, he has a closer relationship to the Jewish people than any other president in the history of the United States of America. By the way, the Abraham Accords, bringing together Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, that was a great thing, not just for Israel, but for the whole region. And, you know, he called out anti-semitism

on college campuses that hadn't happened before those are good things and yet he brought white supremacists into the white house he trafficked in the kind of divisive language that not only alienated and terrified jews but lots of other minorities from the Muslim ban. So it's about Latinos. We said about black people, he, you know, from Charlottesville, when he said they were fine people on both sides to telling the proud boys to stand back and stand by to telling these, these individuals who rampage through the Capitol on January the 6th, wearing camp Auschwitz sweatshirts. Like some of them had shirts that said sixWME. Six million wasn't enough.

And he told them afterwards that he loved them, that they were great Americans. So how do you punish that level of white privilege? That's a different level. It's easy to punish like the comedian or the rapper, but how do you punish that level of privilege? I think the whole country's still trying to figure that out. Man. But, you know, I mean, I have not hesitated to call out Donald Trump. Oh, yeah. Y'all called for him to be removed from office.

We did. We called him to be removed from office. We called him out starting on the campaign. There's a reason why I never got invited to a White House Hanukkah party. You know, and Donald Trump was in office. I wasn't exactly getting Christmas cards. But you know what? I don't really care.

Like, my job is to speak truth to power regardless of who is in power. And by the way, that cost me friends. That cost me influence. You know, I'll tell you something else. You know, I work for President Obama. I spent three and a half years in the West Wing. And I feel blessed to have worked for president Obama. Um, and a lot of people to your question about the tablet article, they just write me off. They say I'm some democratic

operative because I worked for president Obama. I mean, entirely untrue, whatever, but I didn't agree with everything president Obama did. And I, you know, I didn't agree with the Iran deal that he was doing. And I called that out after I left the White House. And I lost friends in the Obama White House who said, why aren't you being loyal to us? And I lost friends because I called Donald Trump. Why aren't you being loyal to the Jewish people? I mean, my job is not to be loyal to this president or that president. My job is to protect the Jewish people.

It's to fight anti-Semitism, racism, and hate of all kinds. I got three more questions. I want to piggyback off that. How do you manage your own personal bias towards things as CEO of the ADL? What do you mean? Like, how do you, like, if you have like a personal bias towards something or a personal feeling about somebody, like, how do you manage that? Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I will be honest with you. Like I'm a human being and I get criticized a lot and I try again to learn from it, not to listen to it. That's my kind of my mantra. Um, but sometimes that can kind of get under your skin and you just try to work through it and deal with it. I also, again, I try to give everybody the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes that's hard.

But that's my general approach. But look, my wife and kids keep me honest. They often remind me of all the things I get wrong. So that helps me to mitigate my tendency to go this way or that way because they're constantly checking in with me. Can the ADL speak for a whole community? And is it fair to ask the ADL to speak for a whole community? I mean, all we can do is our job. And sometimes I think people think, you know, that we represent the entire Jewish community.

I'll tell you this. I do not feel like I represent. I mean, I don't feel like I really have the authority, the moral authority to represent the whole community. Look, I was in business for a long time. I was building brands. I was creating companies back in California. Then I went to work for the president and then I got recruited into this job. I'm not the most observant Jew. I'm not, I didn't go to Jewish day school. I'm not even a, we're civil rights,. I'm not even a lawyer. Like I'm an MBA who knows how to build things and ship software.

So I say that because I don't feel like I have the right to represent all the Jews. But what I would say is that, although I don't have the right, I don't think I have the, I don't know that I have the moral authority to represent all of our community. I work for our community.

And so it is my job to remember that I'm here, I work for our community. And so it is my job to remember that I'm here, even these people criticizing me, even these people who don't like me, if they are the victim of a hate crime, I'll be the first person to take their call. And you speak about the trauma that Jewish people have experienced, right? And I hear a lot of my Jewish friends, they talk about that PTSD, right? Do you really think another Holocaust could happen? Is that something that's in the back of your mind when you see the current climate? I'll tell you what, you know, I feel kind of badly.

I wrote a book that I should have brought copies of this today. It came out in January. It's my first book. It's called It Could Happen Here. It Could Happen Here. And I wrote that book. I started writing it after Pittsburgh because I never would have guessed. I mean, maybe I'm naive or I was naive. I never would have guessed that one day I was in synagogue when that happened. I was in synagogue in my community here in New York, and my phone was buzzing. And in the middle of the service on Saturday morning, and it kept buzzing.

And I don't look at my phone in service. And so my wife was like, God, something's going on. I was like, don't, I mean, I'm not against my phone. I'm in synagogue. But after the service was over, I went outside and I looked at my phone, and it was crazy.

And by the way, one of the first messages I had was from my friend who at the time was running NAACP Legal Defense Fund, like checking it. And it was a hard, hard day. And I went down to Pittsburgh and there were a lot of funerals and a lot of, it was pretty awful. So those situations really kind of humble you. And I started thinking about how am I going to deal with this? So I started writing this book and I started writing this book because I was saying before my German grandfather, my Iranian father-in-law, now me, like Jews have experienced trauma, not in the ancient past. Like it's affected my family, like again, the people that I know and love and cherish. So I don't think another Holocaust will happen where Jews will be systematically annihilated. But I do think there are a lot of warning signs that suggest that if we don't get our act together,

history might not exactly repeat itself, but it very well could rhyme. And so when I say that, I mean, if I had said to you, I'd tell you something else. So with my book, I do a lot of talks. And I'll go to a synagogue, or I'll go to a bookstore, or I'll go to some other place,

and I'll talk in front of a conference, large group of people, 300, 400, 500 people. People ask questions. Afterwards, I'll do a book signing. Well, they'll come up to the table, you know? And they'll come up to the table, and this happens. This didn't used to happen. This happens now every time.

Someone will come up. I can predict it and say to me, do you think, well, where else should we go? Do you think we should be thinking about leaving? Have you heard about this golden passport program or something like that in Portugal? Do you know what's required to immigrate to Israel? I get asked these questions every time. So why do I get asked these questions because Jews all over the country I think Jews because of our this kind of generational trauma I think and maybe as black folk you can you can relate this in some way we've had those same conversations about where would we go go to Africa if the

fascists take over so we think about that and And I think, again, maybe like you guys, I think Jews here are at a different wavelength. I think like ordinary people see what's going on and think, wow, that's pretty bad. Jews are like, we've seen this movie before. We kind of know how it ends. And so I don't think, again, the Holocaust, the systematic, scientific annihilation of Jews across Europe, the obliteration of their culture, the incineration of all these people, I don't think that quite is going to replicate itself. If Iran could do what it wanted to do to Israel, they would probably nuke the country, to be clear. But here in this country, I don't think that's going to replicate itself. If Iran could do what it wanted to do to Israel, they would probably nuke the country to be clear. But here in this country, I don't think that's going to happen.

But that doesn't mean if I had told you six, if someone had said to me in 2015, Barack Obama's in the white house, marriage equality has passed. We're feeling pretty good about 20 Democrats feeling pretty good about 2016. Democrats feeling pretty good about 2016. Country's moving forward. Someone said, let me tell you something. In six years, anti-Semitic incidents will have tripled. There'll be a series of mass shooting events at synagogues and kosher supermarkets around the country. Jews are going to be beaten up in broad daylight. There'll be Nazis on the biggest social media platforms. I would have said, you're crazy. It's never going to happen. I can't even imagine. That's inconceivable to me. So that was six years ago. So six years from now, if someone said to me,

anti-Semitic incidents will have tripled again. Synagogues will be shut down. Jewish day schools will be closed because of the threats. Jews will have left in large numbers. Tucker Carlson will be the nominee for the GOP and will say, we need to get all the globalists out of, there'll be no globalists in my administration.

That shouldn't sound so crazy. Yeah, yeah. My last question, what would be the best possible outcome of this present moment that we're all in? Cause we know fascism, bigotry, anti-black racism,

anti-Semitism, it don't benefit nobody in this room. So what's the best possible outcome of this current moment that we're in? I want your grandchildren and your grandchildren and my grandchildren to be born in this country to see each other as not just allies but like members of the same family and i want a country that treats all of its people, regardless of how they look or where they pray, with dignity and decency and respect. So your son isn't afraid to go to a black, you know, to go to NHBCU. So that my son isn't worried if he chooses to wear a kippah

and walk down the street. Like, I don't think it's too much to ask that our kids should be able to lead the lives they want to lead as black or as Jewish as they choose. And I hope to realize that future for your kids, for my kids, for our kids, that we'll work together to create that. And we won't let our enemies tear us apart. We won't let ignorance get in the way. And that we'll come out of this moment as painful as it's been, because it's painful. It's hard. That we'll come out of this moment together, stronger, and united in a way

that we haven't been in generations. All right. Well, Jonathan Greenblatt, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. And we got to practice what we preach because you know people are going to be watching, so we got to show up for each other. Like you said on CNN,

you said Jewish people have to show up for black people when there's anti-blackness and black people have to show up for Jewish people when there's anti-Semitism. You're here. Word. Absolutely. Well, it's The Breakfast Club. And don't be a stranger. Deal. All right.

Thank you for having me. And I'm glad that we have a line that we can call and ask questions and not afraid to ask questions. Anytime. All right. It's Jonathan Greenblatt. It's The Breakfast Club. Good morning. Hey, guys. Anytime. All right. It's Jonathan Greenblatt. It's The Breakfast Club. Good morning. Hey, guys.

I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going.

That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Had enough of this country? Ever dreamt about starting your own?

I planted the flag. This is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. Or maybe not. No country willingly gives up their territory. Oh my God.

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Alicia shares her wisdom on growth, gratitude, and the power of love. I forgive myself. It's okay. Have grace with yourself. You're trying your best. And you're going to figure out the rhythm of this thing. Alicia Keys, like you've never heard her before.

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, my undeadly darlings. It's Teresa, your resident ghost host. And do I have a treat for you. Haunting is crawling out from the shadows, and it's going to be devilishly good. We've got

chills, thrills, and stories that'll make you wish the lights stayed on. So join me, won't you? Let's dive into the eerie unknown together. Sleep tight, if you can. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Marie. And I'm Sydney. And we're Mess. Well, not a mess, but on our podcast called Mess, we celebrate all things messy. But the gag is not everything is a mess, but on our podcast called Mess, we celebrate all things messy.

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on iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts