The Eric Metaxas Show - Ruth Wisse

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Ruth Wisse shares her fascinating life story which she's compiled in her new book, "Free As A Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation."

The following program is pre-recorded. The Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Metaxus. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. I'll be playing the role of Eric Mataxis if you don't mind. If you do mind, unfortunately, I'll still be playing the role of Eric Mataxis. And there's nothing that you can do. Nothing.

Do you understand nothing? I want to remind you, the world is going insane. Wherever you look, you can see it. Bonhoeffer talked about this in the middle of World War II. Things seemed to be going insane. Evil seemed to be winning. And what he said was it's a good thing. It's a clarifying moment because this is the way things always are.

It's just that certain times we get clarification that apart from God we're in big trouble. Things aren't wonderful in this veil of tears. We need to focus on what is true in the midst of the madness. And we need to focus on what can I do today? And I thought, as you know this month, we're doing a fundraiser with Food for the Poor, one of those great organizations that we partner with because we have vetted them. They do amazing work. They stretch American dollars so far that it's astonishing. And right now we are going to have on – actually, Paul Jacobs is on right now.

He's with media relations with Food for the Poor. Paul, welcome. Great to be here with the Eric. Thank you. We are, I mean, I don't know if you know this or not, Paul, but we are way behind, comparatively speaking, with our fundraiser. So I thought we want to get you on to help encourage people. I know that there's some big givers out there who normally give. Maybe they didn't give this time.

I want to encourage people. There are a number of ways we're going to thank them, not to get you to give, but just because we want to thank you folks for partnering with us in doing good things. Paul Jacobs with Food for the Poor. Tell us what is going on right now. Do you want to talk about Haiti? I think that's been our focus. Yeah, because, you know, just two weeks this Saturday, two weeks ago this Saturday. Everyone woke up on a normal Saturday morning, August 14th. I just come from prayer. We have an intercessory prayer first thing on Saturday morning. I was going to spend the rest of the day with dad. I have sisters who were getting ready to go school shopping. Many of you were probably sipping that first cup of coffee, reading the paper, and just thinking about a very busy weekend or maybe the end of a fun summer.

And then the news came that at 830, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, stronger than the one that devastated Porter Prince in 2010 that took the lives of close to 200,000 Haitians, rocked the southwestern peninsula of Haiti. There are families that are still digging out of the rubble. communities like Jeremy were completely upended and a city. I'm not talking about a community. I'm not talking about a few houses or a development. I'm talking about an entire city of Lakai reduced to rubble. And that meant that these families were literally left without anything. And their families still right now that are in need of your help.

Well, I always have to say this to my audience because most of us are so blessed, even with our problems. the idea that you could be living in a place of tremendous poverty where we're already doing a fundraiser with food for the poor to raise money to feed kids. This is under the best circumstances they need our help. So I'm saying to people under normal circumstances, we need you to go to our website metaxis talk.com click on the banner to help these kids. But in the midst of this month where we're trying to raise money for starving kids, what Paul just said, there's an earthquake, tremendous earthquake, 100,000 homes flattened. It's very hard for us to imagine this. I mean, honestly, Paul, it's very hard for us to imagine this.

The news doesn't cover it. Basically, we know that this storm also made things worse. So these people are suffering horribly. But I just want to say, praise the Lord, folks, because God has his people doing good things. Food for the poor is there, and everybody listening right now, you can be a part of doing a good thing. In the midst of the madness in the world, in the midst of the evil in the world, you can do a good thing. Not much is required of you because Food for the Poor stretches American dollars so far. Paul, talk about that because I got to tell you, that's one of the reasons we work with Food for the Poor,

because how far they take our dollars. It's not a lot of overhead. They basically deliver on their promise to help these. people. It's not just some organization. So talk about what money is doing in Haiti right now. Well, let me just first say, food for the poor is not going into this area to help in Haiti. We have been there for more than 35 years. And what we have done over those 35 years is work hand in hand with the local church. In fact, our own Bishop OJ. Bevoir, which is our executive director, our Haiti office, he has often said that the church is the backbone of our work in Haiti.

So there is the first point of being efficient and effective with the dollars that you give that you're so generous with. Then it's, of course, food for the poor has money donated goods. So all we simply have to do is ship into country. And then, of course, there are literally community leaders and partners around the country. We have more than a dozen food centers run by community leaders across the country that are helping food for the poor get into a far-reaching area so that when you give right now, by going to Metaxistalkystalk.com, and you click that Help Haiti banner. Your gift is going into the hands and resourcing pastors and local ministries, community partners that have been vetted for 35 years that are going to do the best work and have the most impact. I want to give out the phone number

because not everybody wants to go to metaxis talk.com, although I'd love you to go to metaxistalk.com and click on the banner. It's easy. You can give monthly for a lot of people that's easier. and I actually recommend that because it's just much less, obviously, and it enables you to give over a period of time. But if you don't want to go to metaxis talk.com or if you don't want to go to my website, Ericmetaxis.com, how about the phone number? Here we go. Some of you will dial this today. God bless you.

844-863 Hope. 844-863 Hope. Let me spell it out. 844-863 Hope, H-O-P-E, 844-863 Hope. I know that Food for the Poor Paul Jacobs has been there for all this time, but talk about that because this is an astonishing thing to me that, you know, we're in politically divided times, but I just don't know anybody who disagrees with this idea that if we want to serve God, we have to help our brothers and sisters who are suffering.

And in a place like Haiti, there's just something more clear that these people are suffering. It's not their fault. This is such a simple, easy thing for us. And sometimes I think we need things that are simple to say, I just know I can do good. And that if I don't do it, you know, who's going to do it? So $37 feeds a kid for six months. I mean, that to me is astonishing. How is it that food for the poor leverages American dollars that far?

Because that's pretty amazing. Well, we have donated goods. We have goods that are shipped in country without tariffs and taxes. Because we're a nonprofit organization, we do not have any of those fees that normal organizations have to pay going in. And then, of course, as I said, it's the pastors and it's the vetted partners for more than 35 years that are our distribution points. Food for the Poor has 400 employees in our Port of Prince office. But a country close to the size of Tennessee, we could not, with 400 employees, distribute all the way you do without having partnerships on the ground.

And that's how what you give is being so efficiently and effectively used to help us many people. As a matter of fact, just to give you one statistic. And statistics don't move you to get, but I want you to see the impact of your generosity. In this region, just this region alone, where they basically call them departments, and what we call states, these three departments in Haiti where this earthquake struck and has had the greatest damage, food for the poor has impacted close to 700,000 Haitians. Why? Because of you, because of your generosity. Whether you give $150, whether you give $1,000, or you give, like Eric said, a $37 gift. The point is, we must respond. Politics aside, we must respond to these families who need our help.

Well, I mean, it's a beautiful thing that we can put our politics aside. We're living in a very divided time. But it really doesn't matter what you think about anything. I think you know that helping the poor who have been devastated by malnutrition, by poverty, and then on top of it, who've been hit with a horrific earthquake, have lost their homes. There's just, there's nothing complicated about this, folks. This is, you've been teed up. They're such a reputable organization. you don't have to worry about it. Please go to our website, metaxis talk.com. God bless you as you give. If you want to call 844-863-hope, 8-4-8-6-3-hope. Paul Jacobs of Food for the Poor. Thank you. And God bless you.

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Relieffactor.com, 800, 500, 8384. I use it. It works. Check it out. Hey, their friends, Eric Metaxis here. Joe Biden and the Democrats have laid out the most socialist agenda our country has ever seen. Instead of following President Trump's blueprint that had the economy, booming, the Dems are going to raise taxes, increase regulations, and skyrocket an already outrageous national debt. If your retirement is in traditional investments, it is in jeopardy. Americans should be diversifying their investments with gold and precious metals. Gold gives you control over your

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and others. Today, I have a funny feeling. I'm going to have a lot of fun. I have, sitting with me here in the studio, the author of a book, funny title, it's Free as a Jew, a personal memoir of National Self-Liberation. Ruth Weiss, welcome to this program. Thank you. I really can't just start talking to you because I have to let people know with whom I'm seated and who is the author of this book. You have an extraordinary life. We're going to talk about your life. But you won the National Humanities Medal, which is an extraordinary honor. You taught Yiddish literature at Harvard for a couple of decades. And now, as you approach your 86th birthday, I too am approaching my 86th birthday, but I can't

I can't see it as clearly as you can. But you've decided to write a book, which is a memoir, but it's called Free as a Jew. We should start there. Why is it called that? And then I want to get into your story. I should have a sound bite answer for it, but I haven't yet. Maybe this will get me there. I love freedom.

It's a very great value of mine. and I love being a Jew. And the two things are very much connected in my mind. I think there's an idea of freedom that comes with being a Jew. And, you know, this is not a moment when the Jews are particularly popular, not an American culture, as they used to be once. And so I wanted to lead with that. And it's also because writing the memoir,

I didn't myself know what emerges being the most important theme or the most important connective through it. So free as a Jew, it begins, for me, you know, in childhood with the most important part of our Jewish year, and that is the celebration of Passover and the reading of the Passover Hagata every year. Now, I didn't grow up in a very religious family, but somehow my parents kept the Passover whole. holiday and the way that some people latch on to one thing in their religious lives or in their

national lives that is so strong that it almost makes up for everything else. And the Passover holiday was like that, and it's all about freedom, the idea of freedom, and what you do during the Passover two evenings of the Seder when the family is gathered together is you actually re-experience the exodus from Easter. Egypt. And that whole concept of what it is to be free as a Jew, that is to say you experience the joy of just breaking out from slavery, but mostly it's you experience that freedom only comes when you really begin to assume the responsibility that goes with it. Aha. The responsibility you say? Like just freedom meant I could do what I want.

I guess that was wrong. Well, look, there's so much to talk about. This is a personal memoir. Now, a personal memoir, aren't memoirs all personally, personal? It's true. It may be saying repetition needless. That's redundant. So I want to talk to the editor.

We just get rid of that right there. So we have a memoir of national self-liberation. There's a lot in that title. But let's go back just to get your, the, the details. Where were you born? Well, I was born in a city called Chernovitz, which is now Chernivtsi, I believe. It was then in Romania. It is today in Ukraine. The borders shifted. The city is probably still the same, but I left it when I was four years old. My parents were there, had just been there for another four years previous to my birth. They came from Poland.

My father came there as a young engineer, his boss who ran a rubber factory in Poland, decided that since Romania had decided not to import its rubber products anymore, he decided, well, then there's an opportunity for building the first rubber factory in northern Romania. So he sent my father in his late 20s to build a huge rubber factory in Cherniv, And so this is in the 30s? In 1933. Wow. Obviously, for people familiar with that period, Hitler had just come to power in Germany at the beginning of 33.

So you're born in Europe as a Jew at a time just beginning to be about as troubling as times can be to be a Jew. So did your family escape from a Jew? Romania? I don't remember the disposition of Romania during the war. Well, Romania was at that point experiencing itself as a rather nationalistic and xenophobic and increasingly anti-Semitic society, all on its own. Without Hitler's help, thank you very much. Well, but the interesting thing is that that is exactly the conclusion that most people would come to if you say that you were born in Romania in 1930s.

and that you left in 1940, everyone would think that you were escaping the Germans. That's not our case. We fled the Russians. We fled the Soviets. Because my father, as I write in the memoir, understood that you can have more than one enemy. And he knew, having been associated with the left

as a young man himself, he knew that if the Soviets ever entered Romania, he as a factory owner would be one of the first to go. So the day the Russians, the Soviets, crossed the northern border into Romania. And when was that? What year? 1940, the June of 1940. That's when we left.

The war was already on, of course. Of course, yeah. But so when the Soviets attacked Romania, we fled Chernivitz on that day. Wow. Where did you go from Romania? Well, my father was already in Bucharest. We went down to Athens and then across to Lisbon, and we were extraordinary fortunate. It's a long story.

Well, it's an amazing thing to think that, you know, you're leaving Romania, okay, but it's 1940. Right. And practically anywhere you go in Europe, your life is in danger. So what part of 1940 was it? Because the Greeks had not yet declared war with Germany until October. Well, it was the summer. It was from June to September 1940. And of course, everybody was fleeing to Lisbon. When we got to Lisbon, the city was flooded with refugees. And we had during the course of fleeing my father's brothers, who were already in Canada at the time, had just arrived in Canada in 1939, managed to get us entry. papers to Canada. And in all that extraordinary, I mean, everybody who is alive, who was born in East Central Europe in 1936 as a Jew, and who then lived to tell you about it, has some kind of

miracle tale to tell. Mine is not the most extraordinary of them. But it was extraordinary that we made it to Canada because, interestingly enough, it wasn't just getting there. It's that Canada, at that point, had the worst record, if you might call it, in the so-called civilized world. The people who wrote a book about Canadian immigration policy in 1940 and in the years immediately preceding and following, you know what they called their book? None is too many because that was the policy of Canada. Wow. None is too many.

Right. Huh. I wonder if negative one is still too many. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, so I want to tell my audience because I always do that your name is not just Ruth Wise, but it's spelled W-I-S-E, Weiss. W-I-S-E, Ruth Wise. The book is free as a Jew, personal memoir on National Self-Liberation.

So do you remember the tumult of those years going to Lisbon and then going to... I remember. No. I'm very fortunate, I think, that I have no memory. And I don't know how deeply you want to get into this, but it is a curiosity. One of the reasons I think I have no memory is because I was German speaking for the first four years of my life. I had a German governess who raised me from birth to the time that we left, and I spoke flawless German. Now, my parents spoke Yiddish at home. My older brother was already learning Romanian in school.

Nobody except the governess and everyone else around spoke German. But I was raised to speak as they thought they would be living in Chernivz. And the language of high society in Chernivis was German. I didn't know that. Wow. So I spoke German. And then during this flight, you see, there was nobody speaking German to me, except they would put me in front when we get to borders.

Because here's this blonde, cute kid who speaks fluent German. It's kind of a good advertisement for who you are. In those years, it could be beneficial. Okay, we're talking, folks, to the author of Free as a Jew. Ruth Weiss. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to the author of Free As a Jew, Ruth Weiss.

Ruth, there's so much to talk about with you, which is the joy of it. So you're telling us, this is the story of your life in this book, and you call it a personal memoir of national self-liberation. So you're playing with their heads there right in the beginning. You're saying it's a personal memoir, but it's about national liberation, but national self-liberation.

So you deal with the idea of freedom, obviously, in the title, but freedom on a personal level and on a national level, I guess. That's what it sounds like. Exactly. Maybe I try to stuff too much. to that. And the paradoxes of it really do work sort of against each other, but I hope in some kind of synergy with each other as well. You see, telling that story, as I was just writing it, I realized that it basically follows along the same path as the story of the Jews in the middle

of the 20th century. And one of the things that bothers me so much about the way that people tell that story is that I think that there's too much emphasis that is placed on what is called the Holocaust. That event is so cataclysmic and it's so beyond belief that for many reasons it has become prominent and there are many people who believe that somehow this story, the telling of it, is redemptive. Now, I don't know how you feel about it. that I think that the idea that something like that can be redemptive must come from Christianity. That if Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus is redemptive, then how can the crucifixion of an entire people not be redemptive? Now here's the whole Jewish people kind of on the cross or worse.

Maybe we can use that as a redemptive story. And somehow Holocaust education is meant to suggest that by telling now I'm not saying anything about of course the story of Jesus is completely different but you see the analogy here being that the story of this horrific in a sense evil right telling it can somehow keep others from going that path now I've never been a believer in that now that's obviously different from being redemptive but it's you it could be used In other words, that that's, of course, the whole idea, at least in my lifetime. You know, never forget, never forget. We have to remember, and that's why we'll tell the story over and over and over and over and over.

You're somehow saying that it's not redemptive, but it's also maybe not so helpful. There's an aspect of it that you are pushing against. And what is that? And here we come to exactly what I began with, that the idea of freedom is really the paramount idea, even of those years, because if I were telling the story, and I do tell the story that way, of the 1940s, think of it. I think of it as the greatest national miracle,

if there are miracles in life. It is. How can a people, six million of whose members, were not just murdered, but in the most humiliating and unbelievable way, this brilliant so-called people, this people that is touted for being so intelligent,

wiped off the map of Europe in just a question of five years, you'd think no one would ever recover from that. But here is the thing. Within that same decade, Jews recovered their sovereignty in the land of Israel that had been under foreign domination for two millennia. So that's the story in a way. And here I am. I mean, it never occurred to me when I was growing up that there was anything like this. but when I began to write about myself, I realized that that's how I felt my life. And that is really how I feel Jewish national life to be. That the real story that we should be, I mean, sharing, not necessarily teaching or asking anyone else to become excited about.

But if we are going to tell the story of what happened under Hitler and under Stalin, then you have to tell the most important. part of that story is the self-liberation. How did this people, how did this people already have the infrastructure? How did they already have the energy? How did they, how could they pick themselves up so quickly? Well, you know, you are making it sound like a redemptive story, though, the way you're telling it. Of a different kind. Of a different kind. Exactly. So it's, it's redemptive if you get to the, get to the good part, so to speak. Exactly. Thank you. Well, I mean, and if you don't emphasize the, the murderous part being redemptive.

if you don't remember the killing part being redemptive. If the Holocaust Museum, for example, were to be the way it is in Jerusalem, you see, in Jerusalem you also have a Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. But the idea there is you go through it. It's the same horrors. But you come out in Jerusalem. That's the story. If only they could do that in Washington, D.C., where you come out in Jerusalem.

But geographically, that's very tough to pull off. So you don't have to do it that way, but you do have to tell the story differently from the way in which the Holocaust Museum was conceived. Do you see what I mean? Oh, certainly I do. But I don't think, well, you've got, I mean, this is very interesting because you're an expert on this stuff. And, of course, you were, for many years, professor of Yiddish literature and comparative literature. And so you're familiar with the concept of narrative arc. And so obviously it's kind of in human nature to look for redemption,

not necessarily on a spiritual or religious level, but you're always looking for the story. And the story is the more that you suffer, the greater is the other side, the thesis, the antithesis. You're disagreeing. I am. You are. Tell me.

What do you know? No, come on. I want to hear this. Tell me, tell me. No, I know. Oh, wait, we're going to a break? Oh, so you don't get to make your point. We'll be right back with Ruth Weiss.

Folks, I'm talking to the author of Free as a Jew. Her name is Ruth Weiss. Ruth Weiss, no relation to Eric Weiss, who we know as Houdini. No. No? You're sure. I think pretty sure. Because I've noticed you're trying to wriggle out of my question here.

My question to you is, no, you weren't. You're answering it straight on. I was saying that you're having a problem with it. The Holocaust is presented with you. without the good news on the other side, which is the founding, the miraculous, after two millennia, a founding of Israel. It's an astonishing thing, however you look at it. But the story, I mean, look, this goes back to Aristotle when you're talking about plot or anything, that you know, that the worse something is, it makes the story better. And you have nothing worse, really, in history than the Holocaust.

And so, but are you saying that it's just that people only focus on that and that they don't come out on the other side to the founding of National Israel? Well, yes. In essence, that is where, you know, my father used to joke always, don't put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. And, you know, this we say ourselves to, this is what it is. It's, the emphasis was wrong from America's perspective. Here are the Jews telling, they have one shot at the mall in Washington. They're not going to give us another museum. We're not going to tell a story of the Jewish people.

And I'm thinking of kids, you know, who come from, I don't know, anywhere. Denver, they come from Indiana. They come to the center of this magnificent country where you have the Air and Space Museum and when you have the National Gallery and where you have the Lincoln. I don't have to tell you how splendid Washington should be to people, what it should resonate. And what do the Jewish people decide to place there a Holocaust Museum? We should have put up the Bible Museum, if we're going to put up a Bible Museum.

But we put up the Holocaust Museum. Now, I can understand, let me just say, I understand, I knew Elie Wiesel very well, and I know almost everyone I grew up with was a survivor of one kind or not. I understand the impulse of it. Jews have to carry this and have to mourn this and have to be with it forever. But if one was going to bring a story to the world, then the story should not be of the Nazi victory, which is really, I would say that part of that is the triumph of anti-Semitism. I mean, that's what the Holocaust Museum displays, the triumph of anti-Semitism. What else is it? to rid Europe of the Jews in such a short period of time,

to actually make that your program and to get it done so neatly, so efficiently. Okay, now the reason, I'm just guessing here, but it strikes me that when was the Holocaust Museum created? I don't know. In the under, actually, it was created in the 90s. It was opened in the 90s, yes. It was open. It strikes me that the larger cultural and historical narrative, since the 60s have been negative.

In other words, we have prized the idea of the victim. And so we almost like to wallow in the worst sins of humanity, whether it's regard to what we've done to Native Americans or to black Americans, that there's something about wallowing, and it's maudlin, and it doesn't really get past that. And it sounds like what the Holocaust Museum can be. Well, that's what I mean.

In other words, it doesn't get past that to the other side. Well, they say that it does because they say that by exposing people to that, presumably what these people who've never heard anything like this and who don't know, by the way, who don't know anything about the Jews and who encounter them first in this particular way, they think that this might mean that you then become kinder to others, that you say never again, this is not going to happen again. But, you know, as a teacher in general, I don't think that that's how education works.

And, you know, I've tried to write about the dark side of Holocaust education, warning against stopping the story too early. The story, yes, the background is to say we were slaves in the world, the land of Egypt and never to short sighted that. You know, when you tell that part of the story, you really eat the bread of slavery. You eat, the kids never want to eat the

maror, which is the bitterness where you're supposed to eat that horseradish that really stings. You're not supposed to elide the experience of slavery. No, you're supposed to say that's the way it was. Not revel in it. But just know it, know it. In order to know how to get beyond it, through what means do you get beyond it? But you're bringing some ideas to the table here.

And as I was suggesting earlier, I think in the latter part of the 20th century and certainly where we are now, the cultural mandarins are in love with sorrow, negativity, victimhood. They wallow in it. They don't believe, you know, when you think of, I guess they almost think like, well, the world's so horrible. You know, this is the narrative, right? How could you bring a kid into it? Everything's going to hell. They don't even like the idea of joy or getting through to the other side because they seem to have a predisposition to focus on the negative.

And that's what it sounds like you have with the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Well, but you see you, if I may put it this way, are in the business of changing people's minds slightly, of not letting them wallow in that. And so the question really is, how do you move people from that phase of their thinking to the new phase of recognizing that one of the reasons that one doesn't want to pass through the second phase to say, look what this people did. how in the world did it manage to create this remarkable country and to never having been able to defend themselves? I mean, the one thing that we know about the Jews is that they had to depend on others for whatever defense they were going to get.

That's one of the reasons that the Holocaust could happen the way it did, right? Suddenly, what you've never been able to do before, you become masters at self-defense. You build a self-defense unit which can really defend the country against the longest war, by the way, the war that is being waged against the Jewish people started in 1945, and despite the Abraham Accords, it's still ongoing, right? It's the most lopsided war ever fought, much more lopsided than the war in Europe. This is, the Arab war against. Forgive me, we're going to go to another break.

Do not go away. Why would you go away? I'm talking to Ruth Weiss. The book is free as a Jew. Hey, folks, this is a reminder. While we're doing this program, talking to different guests and all that kind of thing, I want to remind you, the world's going crazy. We're seeing evil things happening.

So here's what we do. We trust God. Now, if you don't trust God, you've got big problems. I can't get into that right now. But the fact is that God is God. That doesn't change. Circumstances change. Another good thing you can do is ignore the chaos and do something good for someone.

We always want to provide opportunities for you to do that. So Albin and I and a lot of people at the Salem News Network, we go to Food for the Poor, because they are an organization we've worked with for a long time. Right now, we've got what? This is the last week, basically. So we have days left to raise funds for kids and families in Haiti. I want to say it again that this is a nonprofit relief organization, Food for the Poor, who deliver emergency food and medicine in Haiti.

They're trying to get emergency help to parts of the country. They now need help from the U.S. military. Okay, there's a Pentagon spokesman John Kirby talking about what's happening in Haiti right now. And by the way, I want to be clear, we are feeding kids who are malnourished and some of them starving. So we want you to go to our website, metaxis talk.com. This is a good thing that you can do today in the midst of all the chaos in the world. So we're asking you to do that. Let's play the John Kirby clip.

We know there is much more work to do in Haiti to help the Haitian people. And we're committed to being there and to doing that for as long as possible. We're very proud of all the men and women of the department that are assisting in this effort and truly making a difference on the ground. Well, I also want to say things are so bad there that you've got all kinds of people. Even, I mean, if you can believe it, Sean Penn, you can believe it because he's a person with a big heart. I don't agree with him politically. But when it comes to suffering kids, sometimes you've got to get politics out of it. So Sean Penn, the actor, was in Haiti.

Let's play the Sean Penn clip. We have been from day one with heavy equipment crews still finding bodies. It's really awful. The circumstances there, it's very complicated. Medical teams are treating hundreds of people, both from very traumatic injuries to now increasingly gastrointestinal issues due to the rains and so on, you know, from infants to elderly. Well, anyway, I just want to say everybody is in agreement. They need our help. And this is a good thing that we can do.

And again, I want to say that sometimes you have to get your focus away from the news and think about what can I do today. Turn off the radio, turn off the whatever, just say, what can I do? Well, helping these kids and families in Haiti is something you can do. It is an unmitigated good in the midst of the madness. So we're asking you partner with us. We partner with Food for the Poor. Go to our website.

I'll give you the phone number in a minute. But we have $37, $37 American dollars, if you give that amount, feeds a kid for six months. Amazing as that is, that is true. That's how far food for the poor stretches your dollars. And obviously, things are so bad because of the earthquake recently, the storm. So please go to Metaxus talk.com. Give what you can. There's all kinds of stuff there.

If you want to give, by the way, monthly, that's tremendous. tremendously helpful. It's very little per month, and it really adds up. But we've only got days left in this campaign. So I just want to urge you if you haven't done it. Thanks to those of you have done it. Here's a phone number. If you prefer to call 844-863 Hope, 844-8663 hope. This is a good thing you can do today, folks. 844-863 Hope. You're literally saving lives in Haiti. Think about that for a second in the midst of the craziness in the news. 844-863 hope or go to metaxis talk.com. Many of you have already given.

I want to say thank you. And God bless you, folks. And God bless America.