Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Oct 7 Survivor Shye Klein: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1743

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

In this 1743rd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Shye Klein, a Toronto-born photographer who had just recently moved to Israel when he joined his cousin and a group of friends at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, the Waterfront BIA, Blue Sky Agency and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

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How you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. I really, every time I hear my name right out, I give it to, I give it to people. And because I have two last names, no one can never decide which last name gets used. and so everywhere I go, whether I'm speaking at a school or a community or a synagogue or I'm on a podcast or whether it's in news media, everybody uses a different last name and then people ask me, oh, are you shy? I'm like, yeah, I'm like, but your last name is different. I'm like, it's not, it's the same. It's just the one you know is one of the two. So I did, you know, I'm going to tell in a moment a story of how I came to learn about you and how we got connected. I'm going to tell a story in just a moment. But I saw like a global news article in which they called you shy Klein Weinstein. And I figured if the global news people have decided that's your name, that must be your name.

And that's okay, right? You're okay with shy Klein Weinstein. So I remember the global news guys, Sean, and they asked me like, hey, how do you want to be referred to? I'm like, listen, I have two last names. You can just like take your pick. I prefer Klein, not because I have any issue with my family on the other side or the last name. It's just, it's too long. And no one who isn't Jewish can pronounce it right, usually.

I always get Weinstein, Weinstein. That's because we had Irv Weinstein. Irv Weinstein was the news anchor for the Buffalo Station we would watch from Toronto. Like, I think that's where that comes from. I would say this. Here's my thoughts on this shy. I feel like it's your name. I'll call you whatever you want.

If you want to be Shy Klein, from now on, you're shy Klein. I prefer that because it matches Mandor. That reminds me of that scene in Back to the Future when Marty's mom thinks his name is Calvin. Remember this? I saw a clip of that recently too. It's funny. I just watched this great documentary on HBO called

Pee We as himself, and it was Paul Rubin's talking about Pee and Peewee's Big Adventure came out in 19... This is all way before your time. I remember Peewee's Big Adventure. I watched Peewee and Peewee Herman. So Peewee's Big Adventure came out in 1985, and I'm pretty sure that's also the year that gave us back to the future.

Like, what a year for movies? Wow. That's crazy. Crazy. So let me tell the exciting story of how we got connected and then we're going to find out more about you and I'm going to ask you about,

like, who were you and why were you in Israel on October 7th, 20203? And then if you're comfortable with me here, I would like to hear your accounts of that horrific day. I'm happy to share. Everything with you. I've been talking about it so long. I'm just sort of numb to it. And it's just a little boring for me. So you have to prompt if you want to know something specific. I'm not just going to volunteer it. Not because I don't want to, but for me, it's all the same. I'm a hell of a prompter, my friend. I'm going to prompt the crap out of you here. But first, let me just shout out your cousin, Joel Levy. Or is it Levy? Okay, thank you. Okay. So now you've got me, Weinstein, Weinstein. Unless I'm wrong. I hope I'm not wrong because he's my relative. You better not be wrong. That's your cousin. Is it like your first cousin? He is. Well, it's, I call him anybody who's not my immediate cousin, my cousin, because it's just too much to keep track of. He is the grandson of my mom's great

aunt. That's barely cousin. Are you sure you're, I, you know what? My grandmother, her sister, that's her grandson. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, I'm surprised you even know who the heck I'm talking about if you're going, you know, that far in the family tree. But okay, so he calls you his cousin. We're cousins. Joel Levy says, so here's the bizarre story of how I found myself in the same room as Joel. A guy I knew like 10 years ago when I was before, I mean longer than that.

Like I was barely a podcaster. I was like a blogger and I'd get invited to these influencer events. When I was in high school. When you were, I was surprised you're not in diapers. You're a young man there, but you were a younger guy. I knew your cousin, Joel.

And I got invited to this opera at the TD, music hall, which is like right by, really, it's part of Massey Hall, really. And it's like, we're going to have an opera to sell frozen pizza. And I said, this is so bizarre and surreal. I think I'm going to bike to the TD Music Hall at Massey Hall. And I'm going to watch this opera to sell frozen pizza. Like I said, I'm going to go. So I went.

Yeah, so I went. You were selling frozen pizza at an opera? No, but the frozen pizza makers were going to try to like get. They thought the people who, the audience of. people who see operas, that's who wants to buy frozen pizza. Yeah, like, it's just a marketing PR move, right? Like, it's like, okay, we're going to put on an opera. Apparently, the first opera ever at the TD Music Hall.

So it's like, we're going to put on a real opera with real opera singers, and it's going to be about frozen pizza, and then we're going to give people our frozen pizza. Then all the influencers... The opera was around about frozen pizza. Yeah, like, this was like an opera written about frozen pizza. Like, you had to be there, man. It's all surreal, but I go there, and I look around. Everyone's very young.

It's younger than you even, but, you know, you're a young man, but young people, and they're all dressed up like they're going to the opera. Okay, so I'm in my shorts and t-shirt, I biked over, because I'm like, this is like a, it's an opera, but it's a frozen pizza ad opera. I'm not dressing up for this,

but everybody was dressed up to the nines, like they were going to an opera, and then I look around, I go, well, this is a very young crowd, but then I saw a guy not as old as me, but at least he was within, like, striking distance, like maybe 10 years younger or something, and there's my old friend, Joel Levy,

and I went up and chatted him up. He's got a lot of cool stuff going on, And at some point in the conversation, he tells me about you, because you were at the NOVA music festival on October 7, the 2023. And I just said to Joel, do you think that shy would visit me and chat me up? And he said, like, probably let me introduce you. And here you are. Here you are. So one more question about people related to you.

But since Weinstein is one of your many surnames, but we won't use that one anymore because you'll just be known as Shy Klein. are you related at all to filmmaker Ali Weinstein or is it Weinstein? I'm so turned around on that pronunciation. But she directs movie. She directed a great documentary about Ontario Place and her aunt actually, Judith, was one of the people murdered by the terrorists

on October 7th here. Judy and Getty Weinstein. I don't believe we're related, but there's a lot of us, so I wouldn't be surprised. I'm just glad you didn't see Harvey. No, it wouldn't make that mistake. Don't worry. Wouldn't make that mistake. Although I was a big Pulp Fiction fan.

It's kind of disappointing. He was a... That's what it is. He wasn't in the movie, thank God. No, was it? No, thank goodness. All right, so let's talk about who you are and how you found yourself in Israel on October 7th, the 2023. I'm just a Canadian boy.

I'm just from Toronto. You know, I grew up in Etobico. I grew up right around here. You grew up near like Queensway and Royal York. in rural york right near tom's dairy freeze i grew up on 10 winslow street and you know i would go down to mr min's convenience store and buy my ugiocard and buy my polka cards and you know by my goodies when i was a little kid and this was early 2000s between 2001 2009 did tom's dairy freeze have the same kind of lineups in the summer that they do now i don't know it's unbelievable it's busy so i actually

recently. In my head, they closed down because, you know, it's awesome. It's not only there, during the summer anyways, I don't know what it does during the winter. I think it sells like Christmas trees or something, but... Hot chocolate. You know, that's not a bad idea. But I'm telling you, because I went to Mama Martinos recently with my kids, and Mama Martinos is right there, too. You might recall. And I was like, oh, that would be a good idea, the soft serve ice cream at Tom's dairy freeze. But it would have, the lineup looked like it was a two-hour lineup. Like I said, forget about this. But it's very... Yeah, I remember being very, very busy to the nines.

But it was like, when I lived there, it was a pretty rough place. Like, I remember, you know, dead police officers found in the snowbank in the middle of the winter. You know, people break into our house with brooms and shit try and rob us. Oh, my God. You know, there was this one time there was like a robbery or like a murder in the neighborhood. And the suspects ran through our backyard. And at the time, unfortunately for them, we had a 120-kilogram giant schnauzer. and he was outside

because we just let him go in and out whenever he wants and they ran through a backyard and unfortunately they met him and he stripped them of their clothes and because of that the police caught them and you know I don't have I only lived there until I was about 13

10, 13 so not too long I'm 28 now but I remember I enjoyed living there and it sounds wonderful but the way you describe it it's like oh my god are we talking about like South Atobico in the early 2000s or it was it was a rough place it was a rough place i could i could list to you maybe like a dozen different homicides and terrible events that went on there it was a rough place but you

know little 10 year old me still rode his tricycle down to harbys like 10 blocks away that harbys is still there yeah yeah they got a Costco down my friend he had a he's a greek guy at the time i don't know anymore his family had a burger joint where it used to be acme burger and i remember going down there all the time too was that at the corner of royal york and queen Guess what's opening? I think it opened last week because I do the Royal York bike lanes in the direction of the Cineplex.

Well, so at Royal York and Queensway literally opening last week is Acme Burger. Like it came back. Oh, another one. Like it's called Acme Burger. I biked by it yesterday and it just opened at Queensway

in Royal York. By the way, you're not far. I know you don't drink beer. That's why I didn't offer you. That's why you're not drinking a Great Lakes right now. But you're down the street from Great Lakes Brewery, which is like on Queen Elizabeth.

Beth Boulevard, you can see it. Yeah, I saw their logo. I recognized it. Yeah. So that's how, that's, that's the same hood we're in now. But what happened? You left Etobico. My family was done with all the murders, though. No, no, no. My family was done with the city. They're like, we need some quiet. Let's move up to where it's a little bit more peaceful, move to the nature. My family moved to Annisfill. Okay. From one non-Jewish neighborhood to another non-Jewish neighborhood. No, you laugh. I didn't. I laugh because I never really considered what South Etobico was, but I suppose it's not a Jewish neighborhood. No, it's like Ukrainian, Polish.

Russian, yeah, Russian and Polish. Some Reithodox too. So I didn't know any Jews who weren't related to me until I was like maybe 18, 19. And that was really crazy. Because for me, it's like I was raised by an Israeli mother and a Jewish Canadian father. And I knew I was Jewish. And I was raised, you know, with Hanukkah here and there and, you know, Shabbat dinner once. a month at my grandmother's house and that's about it you know watch some movies knew about the holocaust

knew about judaism and the culture and and the history of our people and that was about it you know it was never really anything special in my life you know i wouldn't say i'm vehemently jewish you know i'm not putting on philin i'm not going to synagogue i'm not going to shul i'm not you know going to sunday school i'm like uh every other canadian but i'm a jew i don't have a say in the matter And so, for me, the difference between being here in Canada and in Israel now, it's really crazy. Okay, well, tell me what you mean by that, but we're going to get you to Israel because you're so, how old are you when you move to Israel? And I have, like, I have some basic one-on questions like you're kind of billed as Canadian-Israeli photographer. So, like, at some point you get your citizenship.

Is that through your mom? So I was very lucky. My mom and her family are all Israeli. So when she made her immigration journey to Canada, and she had me around 25-ish years old, 25, 30 years old, she got me my Israeli citizenship and birth certificate right away. Okay. The minute I popped out, she got me that paperwork done,

and so I've had citizenship since day one, which made it very easy. And if, you know, honestly, she hates the fact that I live in Israel. I tell her, if you didn't do that, I probably wouldn't be in Israel. Yeah, it's her fault, really. What did you think was going to happen? It's always a possibility when you do that. So before we get you to Israel,

because you just teased us with the fact you live in Israel, where does your passion for photography come from? We're going to talk about your photography as well in this conversation. My mom is an artist. I grew up in a very artistic family. My mom's an artist, her brother, my uncle, he's now retired. He was a professor for motion graphics at SVA,

the School for Visual Arts, Pearson's a school for design or whatever it's called in New York. Really amazing motion graphics professor. And I can't draw. I'm very bad at drawing and I can't paint. And that applies to digital art too on the computer as well. So I thought, well, I can't draw. I can't paint.

Can't sing. Can't play the guitar. I tried. What else can I do? Can't do chalk art. Can't do Cirque de Soleil. So I thought, what else can I do? and then my grandma died my grandmother on my father's side she passed away and she left me a little bit of money

nothing crazy and i thought i'm gonna buy a camera yeah why not i'm gonna buy a camera i'm gonna use it i like concerts i don't like paying for them i don't want to pay for concerts if i bring a camera maybe they'll let me just see the concert for free if i give them the photos and so it just begun as a way for me to not pay for concerts not that i don't want to i just didn't want to no i get this so Honestly, so many times I had this idea, like, for Toronto Mike, these are, like, this podcast is media credentials to get into things. And then, right? So it's like, because tickets are so expensive these days.

Wow. I want to do it. I see Tyler the Creator. He's charging, like, $2,600. You know, that upsets me to hear because my daughter went to Montreal and just saw him. Last weekend, I think it was. Probably worth it. 100%.

But I didn't. Wow. Okay, my daughter is spending big bucks on these tickets. It's the most I've ever spent for it. What's the most you've ever spent for a concert ticket? $600 for the tragically hip spinal concert in Toronto. Oh my God. Thank God I was quick enough on the ticket master draw that I think I paid like $60 for that ticket.

I waited for like the clock to tick for the tickets to be available. And I bought, this is the only time I bought a ticket for a friend that was like over $100. Like you and I are going to see the hip, $600 tickets each. Boom, let's go. Wow. The best musical performance I've ever seen in my life. and I cried like a bitch So wait, so did you say you were at the Kingston show

Or was it in Toronto? Okay, which of the three? The ACC, it's the one when the whole city stopped To watch it live. Well, that, okay, but that's the Kingston show, right? So I think Kingston and Toronto No, so on that tour, yeah, they did three nights in Toronto Because I was in the middle night.

I went to the middle night. Which one did he wear the pink suit? Did he wear all three nights? Probably all three nights. But bottom line is, you got, because I went to the, middle show and then we did a family road trip out east and I remember this so vividly because the hip was like one of my favorite bands of all times

still is and uh I say they're like one of the greatest Canadian bands that I've ever lived okay well listen you're in the right place here uh Paul Languwa played this basement last year so cool so you're you're now in an esteemed in steam company there so so the most I've paid for a ticket is

$150 that's the highest that's the most that's the most of the most have ever paid for a concert ticket ever is $150 and it was because I wanted to see guns and roses with a slash on guitar so and this is going back before the pandemic so I'm happy to hear your big before the dark times

before the dark times so you love music you got a camera yeah and you combine these passions because you were able to get into concerts to photograph them and then I learned I actually enjoy doing it and I'm I'm pretty good at it. And so from 2016, 2015, when I first picked up a digital camera,

that was it, which is not that long ago, but it's like, it's over 10 years ago. And then I started photographing, you know, a bit of everything. I'd photograph Cirque de Soleil winter in town, Cirque de Soleil, Volta, and Cirque de Soleil, uh, Curio. Wow. They did something at the park lawn and, uh, lakeshore area of South Atobico. There was a big, tent there for a while doing something with Cirque de Soleil. I didn't know. Just throwing it out there. I know that you've seen the Lesleyville area.

Yeah. Well, I saw them at the Portland's once. And there's a new park of the portlands, by the way. Just shout out to the new park in the portlands. But, okay, so I'm just trying to come. So you realize you love photography and you're, you focused on photographing music, or do you go beyond that? It began as just music, and then it extended to people.

You know, emotionally people who wanted to get into modeling and acting, I would do their headshots. And then I thought, wow, it's really hard for me to find clients because I live in Innesville and I don't have a social life. So what am I going to do? Right. And I was very shy. Like, that's your first name. I am. It's still very shy.

But like, this isn't who I was 10 years ago. I was very shy and very reserved and very introverted and very quiet and soft spoken. And I didn't like to speak if I didn't, if I wasn't spoken to, I was still like that, but not as much. I choose one too. And then I thought to myself, it sucks not having very many friends or only having friends who like to mountain bike and ATV and go fishing and muddying,

which is like, eh. You know, I like museums and shit. Not my thing. And so I thought, how can I stop being shy? Because this is getting in my way of like progressing and just my social life. And then I thought, my dad suggested to me something years ago.

he's like, why don't you do background acting? He's like, just go do background acting. You can pay 50, 100 bucks for an agency, and they'll send you work, and you just give them commission. I'm like, that's not a bad idea. And so I just started in background acting, which I still do on and off, because it's like a nice fun side bit of money, cash here and there.

What's the biggest thing you've ever been in the background of? I was on the boys. Yeah, that's a big show. I was on the boys season four in the riot scene where a main character gets killed and seeing one of my favorite shows get produced in front of me, watching my favorite characters fly in and like do their thing wow it was so cool it was really awesome and then i learned one of my friends in israel actually teaches one of the main cast members

toomer capone moitai well that's a good interesting connection there too just random coincidence now when i you know do my homework as we build you up to uh who was shy by way i thought of you you know telling me a moment ago that you're shy when your name is shy oh you could have the handle shy shy. Yeah, I thought of having the handle of not shy. Well, that's going to confuse everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's funny because you know, you know, I'd spell it not shy. Like, you know, shy.

But back to the thing. You got a workshop that one. I did background acting for until present and that's it. I like force myself into awkward, uncomfortable situations dressed as somebody who I'm not, acting how I don't act in front of total strangers on a camera. And that like just forced it out of my skin and no, I'm not. You know, it's funny. Maybe because it's fresh of mind

and I thought it was so excellent. because I was, you know, we talked about Peewee's big adventure. I was a big fan, and I liked Pee Wee's Playhouse. A big that of Pee-wee is a persona. But this whole idea of, essentially, it was Paul Rubens, being uncomfortable showing the world who he really was, primarily because he was a gay man and felt that would destroy his career. I didn't know he was gay.

Yes. Well, no one did. I don't think he was out of the closet, but unless he amongst close friends. Very straight-looking gay guy. Well, then you realize, like, he has this persona Pee-wee, and he puts on the suit and he assumes this persona of Pee-Wee-Herman and it was a way to present to the world because, you know, Pee-wee was beloved.

I loved Pee-wee-Herman and it was sort of his way to kind of show this side of himself without, you know, showing, hey, I'm Paul Rubens and I am a proud gay man. Should I be looking at you or the camera? No, I don't care. Okay. You can look at me, the camera.

If there's people looking at the camera, they're going to see me across, I'd want an eye on the camera. You know what? If you can do that, like that, do it. Do it. There's a name I want to ask you about real quickly because it's in your bio, okay, so. Yes. Chris Hadfield. Oh, yeah.

So what's up with that? You're a shy guy, literally, and you're in Innisfil, and you're, what, you're shooting with your camera? One of the first people I photographed to any significance, but to me, there's lots of significance because he's like a Canadian icon and national hero. He's like, he's like the, when I think of famous camera, he's like, he's like the, when I think of famous Canadians he's like top five top three easily for me like can you name the other two gourdowny terry fox okay wow so this is a this is a big three okay absolutely chris headfield terry fox and gordon i don't know if that's like a bad three but only one's still with us uh shout out to radley funeral home but chris headfield's still looking great so i i i want

i've always wanted to photograph an astronaut i've always wanted to meet an astronaut and like and just so I'm looking at how can I do this and I thought who's Canadian oh Chris Hatfield he's like the astronaut he whenever people think of astronauts he's the guy or Buzz Aldrin or another one Neil Armstrong but Neil's no longer with us either no unfortunately that's recent right well recent like I feel like five years or something

yeah in the last five years it's all a blur post-pandemic but maybe it'd be three years ago but Buzz Aldrin's still with us right I think he punched a guy or something like five years ago. Somebody said that they staged the moon landing and I think he knocked him out. Yeah, that was it. That was it. I love that video. So I was saying, I found out, Chris has no good photos of himself online before this.

I'm looking him up online on Twitter and Facebook Instagram, whatever. What about the selfie he took with me at that food fest? That's not public. That's not public. And I'm looking online and I'm like, all this guy's photos are of him at gala's or events or news. news media or interviews or Zoom interviews or something else. And he's always dressed like pretty like casually in like a polo a t-shirt or his his work uniform, a space suit.

And so I thought, I wonder if he'll be open to like me doing a nice formal portrait of him. And so I just reached out to his team. I was able to find his contact info. And because he's Canadian, I thought I had a chance because I'm also Canadian. And I told him, hey, listen, I noticed online your presence is incredible. But whenever you're written about or people talk about you, they always defund. to using these lame action shots of you at an event where you're like a little sweaty or you're not dressed, you know, it formally, you're more casual or you're in a space suit.

You have nothing that's like formal to fill in that gap. Would you be open to working me and letting me do this for you? And he's like, yeah, his team reached out and not him directly, but his team. They said, yes, for sure, not a problem. We'll do this. And we organized it like less than two weeks. And I had my brother come as an assistant because I wanted him to me. him as a wall. That's cool. And this was right after COVID, like right in the middle of COVID,

like 2019, 2021, around there. And so we're in a studio near York University, and it's really early in the morning, and he comes from another shoot, and he's already, like, red and sweaty from his previous interview that he just did. And I felt really bad because it's the asshole of the morning, part of my language. And you can swear in the show. And he's here for this thing that I propose, so I'm like, and this is like my first celebrity, I'm Eric quoting, but he is a celebrity. And I want to make a good impression and I don't want to feel like he, make him feel like I'm not professional, but I'm so awestruck. I'm like all over myself and I have long hair. You don't understand. My hair was down past my shoulders. Why do you cut it? I was tired of choking

on it when I rollerblade and riding my bike. That's a good excuse. It goes in my face a lot. And so my hair was really long like shoulder length frizzy curly hair like a hippie and for like four four and a half hours we do these photos and my brother helping we're talking about space and his experience and his you know his son has a podcast and is a media producer of sorts as well and just talking about all of it and it was amazing it was incredible and i'm in love with the photos i did um and i probably look at them maybe once a day. Well, that's really cool, right? Because you made that happen.

Like, you took the initiative. You're like, no, I think this. And top three, like, we're not fooling around here. Okay, you're like, this is the top three. Because two have passed, fuck cancer. Two have passed away. Chris Hadfield is therefore, by your logic, the most famous living Canadian. Yeah.

Yeah. Look, I'm just doing the math here. So you got Chris Hadfield, former ISS commander, and you get to photograph him. You're on your way. Okay. So when do you have this? decision, shy, that you're going to leave the only country you've ever lived in, Canada, and move to Israel?

I didn't. It wasn't a decision. It wasn't a planned out thing. What were you? I don't understand. So like I said, my mom is Israeli. That extends to all of her family. And because my grandparents are living in Israel since forever, I had not had many

opportunities to see them throughout my life. Maybe I can count it on one hand. How many times I've seen them since the age of zero? to 2023. Okay. And so I thought, you know, I got my tax return back that year and it was pretty big. And I'm like, oh, that's nice. That's nice on money.

What can I do? How big was it? It was like $7,000, $8,000. It wasn't anything crazy. But like, for me, for me, for me, it was a lot of money. For me, for me, it was a lot of money. And I thought, what am I going to do? I'm going to go to Israel.

I'm going to visit my grandparents. I'm visit my family. And I'll sleep on my cousin's sofa until he's sick of me. And so I went to Israel, bought a ticket, April 27, 2023. Until the end of May. I wanted one month. I feel like that's enough time to be sick of the place. Right.

And then a week and a half in, I just say to myself mentally, this is like in bed one night. I'm not going to go home. I came to Israel with my camera gear, which is like the only stuff that I care about besides my dog. And clothes are clothes. You can buy clothes wherever you live. It's not really important. I had a suitcase with me and the nice clothes that I liked. And so I go to Israel a week and a half in, I'm like, I'm not going to leave.

and then two weeks in, I'm definitely not going to leave. And then a week before my flight, I just, I froze the ticket. I didn't cancel it because I'm cheap. I don't want to waste a ticket. You know, you can freeze tickets with Air Canada. And what that means is, if you freeze it, you have access to that ticket for one year. Okay. And you can pay.

I did not know about this. You can pay to access that ticket like $100 and fly back. Okay. It's awesome. So I said to myself, I'm going to stay. I'll freeze my ticket because if I do want to leave, then I have a lot of money. then I have a way home. Right.

And then I stayed. And I did sleep on my cousin's sofa for like a year. Okay, so let me, so just, so I get this right. So it's April 2023 that you go to Israel. You're sleeping on your, what, your cousin's sofa? Yeah. And of April 2023. End of April 2020.

So you love music. So I'm just curious, can you tell us maybe a little bit of why you attended the Supernova Music Festival and who you attended with? And maybe tell us how that was before. the horrific event happens. So my music taste in Canada is like indie rock, pop rock, alt rock, just any sort of guitar, really, guitar and drums and any sort of variation, I enjoy it. And hip hop and rap and I never went to bars, never went to clubs, never went to techno's or

raves or festivals or anything like that. Like, you know, I don't even drink alcohol. You need a guitar, you need a drummer, you want rock music. Some people with hair that covers their eyes. A dark room. Yeah. Yeah, I think we'd have a lot in common, actually, with our musical taste.

Okay, but you do like, you do enjoy hip hop. Yeah, I love hip hop. I listen to, I listen to Kendrick. I listen to Chance the Rapper. I listen to Charles Gambino, NWA. Everything made as you. Okay.

But I never really got into techno, trance, psychedelic, house, dubstep, EDM, anything like that. None of the electronic music, it was never my thing, not because I don't like them. Because I didn't know where to start. I didn't have friends who enjoyed it.

Right. Everybody in Israel loves electronic music, even my grandparents. Wow. I'm sure there's people who don't. I don't know any of them. And so, coming to Israel, day two, my cousin throws a party at his apartment. It was already planned. I was just in the way, so I'm already thrown into it, meet all of my friend group at

this one party my cousin host at his apartment, and now they're my friends still over two years later. Wow. And he introduces me to trance music, psychedelic trance music, which is, it's nuts. It's insane. It's like the sounds of the universe. That's the only way I can describe it. If you stuck your head in a black hole, I'm sure you'd hear artifacts or something. Is there any, like, thing I've heard that you could tell me compares to, I'm trying.

I actually don't really know the subgenre, like the psychedelic trance music. but is there like a famous piece of music that you can point out to me and then I can be like, oh, like that. Wow. Because I feel like, okay, so this happens to be the anniversary of Scott Turner's visit to Toronto Mike where he came by, I think five years ago,

and he gave me the history of Energy 108, which was a big station in Toronto that sort of was big on trance music. They had a DJ there named DJ Trans, actually. Cool. And they were hosting a lot of raves. Raves were a big deal back then in the 90s, as you probably know.

so I kind of feel like you get like a when I you know like a boom boom you know this this baseline or whatever but I'm psychedelic trance music like I feel I have to go to YouTube and dig up some examples here but this is the the big genre when you arrived in Israel there's only one artist I can think of who's like really known in regards to trance I'm ready maybe maybe Vinny Vici I don't even know if he counts if he's trans maybe he's like trance and like electronic it's still it's hard for me to recognize all this because it's all just electronic music to me. Another guy no longer with us, but I totally know a lot of a lot of his music and it's... Wait, Vinivici? Oh no, so I'm thinking of Avici. No, no, Avici, he passed away. He's the one who's no. He's European. No, no. Vinivichie is

an Israeli. Oh, it's a different guy. My apologies. No, no, it's all good. It's all good. But it's very popular music in Europe and in the Middle East, trans music. They just had huge festivals in Portugal and Hungary called Ozora and Boom festival, which are like 80,000 people festivals, whole cities. No, I hear this genre is massive.

Huge. Absolutely. Huge. Huge. And especially so in India and Southeast Asia, which is where a lot of Israelis travel to after the military and which is how the music was introduced to Israel in the first place. You know, when I was in the Nova, one of the people who I met, who unfortunately was

who didn't survive, who was murdered, he shared with us how he was like our age, partying at these parties in the woods in Goa, India, you know, and he's in his 20s. And he brings this stuff with his buddies back here to Israel to, like, introduce this psychedelic trance music to the culture. And it's just sort of took off. So paint a picture for me, Shai, of basically what was the Nova Music Festival that you attended? Like, who did you attend with? And just, I'm going to close my eyes and kind of imagine, because it sounds like it's going to be,

it sounds like it's going to be a great time with. friends to experience some great music. That was 100% the expectation, and it totally blew that expectation out of the water. We were supposed to be a group of 50 people, 5-0. We were supposed to take a bus together. And then just life happens, and as the day draws closer from us finding out in September and buying the tickets, people flake out and cancel and just life happens, you know? Sure.

From 50 people, we became eight. And we didn't take a bus. We took three different cars, which probably helped us survive. three different cars which we filled up with gas that night which is another really lucky thing and so my cousin at the time who I was staying with

his neighbor is one of the founders of the festival his neighbor at the time lived one floor above him so he comes downstairs to us in September and says guys we're hosting this party this festival it's going to be amazing it's not just us it's not just our Israeli team it's another team from Brazil

who is internationally known for these festival They throw yearly 30, 40,000 people parties in the jungle of Brazil. And it's crazy. And they're called Universal Parolello. And they're doing this in tandem with each other to host this festival. You know, it's a festival for everybody. It's not just for Israelis.

It's not just for Jews. You can't only come if you speak Hebrew and Habitat Zahoot. It's for anybody. You know, there was people there from Belgium. There's people there from Germany, from Portugal, from Israel, from France, from Canada, from the U.S., you know, everybody. It wasn't an off-limits party. It was legal. It was government was allowed.

And so it was crazy. You know, there's the audience there, everybody I speak to who was in the Nova. And we all say the same thing to each other. We all agree with each other. The people who were in the Nova are probably some of the best, the souls of these people are incredibly pure. I don't know how to describe it. Yeah, some people are dicks.

Everyone's a dick everywhere. But in the core of all these people, really well-intended, sweet, caring, amazing people. Even after the fact you saw people looking out for each other, helping each other in a bigillion different ways. You know, going through this didn't take away people's ability to look out for one another, which I feel is a very Israeli trait in general.

So before everything changes, you're basically you're you're having a great time everybody's happy everybody's laughing this sounds like just an amazing experience the nova music festival in october 7th in southern israel it was really amazing the environment you know it was from midnight until 430 in the afternoon saturday and you arrive to the festival and the first thing you see is this huge pain in the ass line to go through security but in this line you see everybody has put their stuff on the ground and they're talking to each other and they're having fun and they're smiling and they're laughing and people are dancing in the line before they even get in.

And you go in, you get your tickets checked, you get your wristband, you get your bags checked for guns or whatever. And then you go in and you go through this eucalyptus forest. It's not a huge forest, but there's 4,000 people there. 4,000 tickets sold. Doesn't mean 4,000 people go.

Thousands of people there, I'll say that. Thousands of people there. And you walk through this eucalyptus forest, these tall, skinny trees with wispy leaves, and throughout all the trees are yellow string lights like fairy lights and there's a walkway they made so you walk through the middle of this forest and then you make a left and on the left and the right of this pathway is the camping area so everyone has their tents and their yoga mats and their hammocks and their canopies set up and you walk through this campground and you have to look

at the faces and you have to see all these people having fun and smiling and laughing and joking and smoking and kissing and hugging and it's an amazing environment and you can feel it in the air even if you're blind you'd still know everyone is smiling you know what i mean yeah and we find our friends and we get settled in and we all take our drugs and then we make our way to the main festival ground okay by way you you do paint a good picture uh you would make a good photographer i feel you know you can capture the essence because i'm there man and it feels just it's peaceful it's fun, I'm feeling safe. What kind of drugs is, at the raves they always talked about

Molly or what is the drug of choice? Everybody who goes to these parties, I'm not going to say they do drugs because that's not true. There's 4,000 people there. Some festivals have 40,000 people. Not everybody does anything. You know, I have a friend who is with me, his name is Doraz. He was sober.

He took a nap. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. He's, you know, I don't really drink. I had a beer that I didn't finish and threw away. and then I smoked a joint and we all took half a pill of ecstasy and we take like a big two liter water bottle like one of these and we put in it about 75 milligrams of MDMA and we shake it up and then we pass it around for like an hour or two and for me that was it that was enough because that was my first time doing MDMA first time doing ecstasy and so for me it was like enough juice to

go through the whole night so I didn't have to keep doing any substances or or or whatever. Other people, I'm sure they did, but not everyone. You know, the oldest person who was there is 75 years old. You think of 75-year-old is dropping acid

and doing lines of Coke? I don't think so. Well, they were probably at Woodstock doing the same thing. For sure. Youngest person there was like a 16, 17-year-old volunteer. He's probably not doing something

either. I'm going to give him the benefit in the doubt, just in case the parents are listening. And, you know, lots of people, for them, music is a drug.

You know, positive energy is a drug. If you go someplace to a party and it's really good energy, You don't have to do anything. I felt this natural high from concerts. 100%. I went to my first Berlin-style techno in Tel Aviv, after the Nova.

Totally sober, because I just couldn't do drugs at the time if I wanted to. Totally sober. And I was worried because I was sober, I wouldn't have the energy to go all night. I danced from midnight until 7 a.m. without a problem, my heart rate was 1.30, and I was totally sober except water, you know? So you don't need substances to have a good time. It just makes it easier. Yeah, it's also part of the culture.

I mean, I watch 24-hour party people But that doesn't mean everybody who's there I'm not saying you're saying this It doesn't mean everyone who's there Are like drug addict losers You know, there are people there who are CEOs There were lawyers, there were doctors There were nurses, they were fucking

By the way, no judgments I'm just really trying to put myself at the concert And I'm related, some of them have that connotation You know, you don't have to be Some low life to do Molly You know I'm sure Bill Gates has done coke or something in his life You know, richest, most successful,

well put together people have partaken in these things. Right. Right. So, Shai, at what moment do you realize something's wrong? So I'm born and raised in Canada, but by an Israeli. So I've got a good mix of both. And so I moved to Israel April 2023, which means between April and October 2023, I did have time to experience rockets. And, you know, on a typical day before the war rockets would look like this you'd be sitting on the beach you'd hear the alarm that means you have about

three minutes to get to cover you look towards Gaza which is south and you see smoke in the sky which is the trail of the rockets from the iron dome the interceptors because you can't see the Hamas rockets because they're dumb rockets because they are fire and forget they're not guided

you know they have enough fuel to get into the air and that's it so you can't spot them you can spot the Iron Dome rockets and watch them as they travel to the intercept point. So it's one to three rockets, Iron Dome intercepts them, and you finish your coffee and go about your day. That's typically how it goes, which is like, as a Canadian who didn't grow up under that, it's nerve-wracking. But once you understand there's a bunker everywhere you go and you have a reasonable amount of time to get to safety, you become used to it, which is really weird to say because it's rockets. It was maybe desensitized Desensitized to it, yeah.

Familiar. And then October 7th, 6.30 in the morning, I'm looking for my friend, Ellie, because I'm walking around, taking photos at this festival because I was tired of dancing. And the rockets began. I didn't know it was rockets at first because I don't speak Hebrew and I'm not paying attention to the sky.

And then I hear people saying, you know, what was it? Seva adom which is red alert in Hebrew I'm like oh that's not good because we don't have a siren we're in the middle of nowhere there's no siren around us

there's no there's nothing to tell us there's rockets and we're close to Gaza we're like three miles from Gaza it's really close you can walk there you can bike there it's very close and so because we were so close the time to get to safety from rockets

is 60 seconds 60 to 90 seconds I think 60 seconds or even less 15 seconds really short time but you know we're next to Gaza no one's really worried

because they know there's nothing here they're not shooting rockets at a patch of dirt right next to them why would they it's a waste of rockets they're trying to cause damage they're not going to cause damage by shooting an orange field

you know or an empty field or some trees what's the point? No, they're shooting rockets at Tel Aviv, Starrot, Nativot, Herzliyah, Petachikva, cities in the middle of the country that are populated where everyone lives because that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to cause terror. That's why they're called terrorists.

So, this is hundreds of rockets. This isn't one to three. This is like, have you heard? Wow, I'm trying to describe the sound. It's like, you ever see a war movie and they're launching rockets? rockets from the jets. You hear that, of course. That incessantly, it's like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and then a minute pause. And then 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200. And it's like nonstop from six in the morning. Six in the morning. Most people are still in bed. Six in the morning. Hundreds of

rockets within the hour. And that's going for over 12 hours, over 18 hours, over a month, over two months. You know, it's crazy amount of rockets. My biggest concern wasn't that we'd be struck by rockets because I knew after speaking my friends that they wouldn't be shooting at us, but the interceptions are happening on top of us. They're happening over our heads. So the risk of 10 foot long chunks of metal crushing someone is very real. And that's what's scary because there's a lot of rockets and they're falling who knows where. And I could tell once the DJ stopped playing, the party wasn't going to continue, you know? I could just feel it. I didn't know why. I just felt it inside of me. I kept telling my friends, you know, even if the party could go on,

so many people left, they're not going to go on. You know, it's not worth it for them. And insurance, I'm sure, is not going to like it either. And so I find my friend Ellie in this crowd of the main stage as everyone's freaking out. And I grab her by the shoulders because, you know, people fight, flight, or freeze. And there's like, people who are in between freezing and flight are sort of in this slow motion limbo. Right. So my friend was in that place where you're deciding

whether you're going to run or freeze figuring out what's going on. So I grab her by the shoulders and I drag her to my friends and everybody around me is freaking out and screaming and ducking for cover and hiding under trees and hiding under tents

and hiding under their car because there's no shelter for us. Right. There's no bunker. You know, there's no iron dome next to us getting ready to protect us. There's none of that.

We have trees. We have the stage. We have our cars and the road out. That's it. and so I come back to my friends and I'm Canadian and I don't speak Hebrew so I have no idea what anybody's saying but I make sure I'm the loudest

and I tell them listen everyone I don't think the party is going to continue you can hear me saying this in my videos I don't think it's going to continue I want to go home like I want to leave let's go I'm the most sober I'm happy to drive you guys don't have to drive

like of the eight people there only two of us were comfortable enough to volunteer to drive and sober enough and so it still takes us like an hour to go because I spend like 15, 20 minutes of my cousin primarily my cousin because he organized us

discussing whether we're going to leave and being that, let's go, let's go, let's go that voice and they're in Israeli, they're like, you know, it's no big deal, they're not shooting at us, no worries, we'll wait for the traffic to clear up and then we'll leave, whatever. They're like, they grew up under this, so they're not taking it, they have no reason to think something else is going to happen.

In Shai, if you're kind of desensitized to the rockets, imagine them. A hundred percent. And they served in the army. My cousin, he used to work, I don't know what it was called because it's in Hebrew, but he used to work in a branch of the IDF where he would help the Palestinians in the West Bank. That was his job. You worked in a legal department, and they would help the Palestinians with legal matters and aid stuff, whatever, in the West Bank. That's what he did.

So he knew the area well, and he knew, he knows quite a bit. But eventually we agree, we'll go. And my cousin tells me, fine, we'll go. But we're going to take a time and pack up. I'm going to finish my beers. We're going to smoke another joint. And then we'll go. Typical, Israeli.

And so I tell them, fine, whatever. But at least we're going, yes? Okay, we agree. And at this point, there's still no sirens? There's no sirens because there is no siren physically in the area. There's no sirens to siren. No, exactly. There's only sirens in the kibbutzim, which are not close enough for us to hear.

Okay. And so the only sirens we have is like an app on our phone, which is like, screaming our faces but everyone gets such anxiety from that phone they turn it off right away and so I tell my cousin okay well you guys are going to pack up

eight of us seven of you you don't need me to pack up two tents some chairs and our drinks and snacks so you guys do that it'll take you 30 40 minutes regardless if I help or not and I'm going to walk around

and I'm going to keep taking photos and see if anybody else needs help putting up putting away their things because this is time I have anyways so I want to use these last two roles of film that I have and see if anyone else needs a hand. Most of the people I spoke to don't need help or don't want it.

Only one person accepted. I help them out. Ask to take their photo, take their photo, tell them, you know, hope you have a good rest of your day, get home safe, see you at the next party. And I'm walking around, just doing the same thing at everyone, but in a little bit more of a hurried manner, not so much focusing on, hey, who are you, where are you from,

give me your phone number like I was during the party. And then it's like 7, 7.30, 7.20-ish. And I run out of film. I go back to my friends because I want to load up my camera again. And I'm walking back and I hear off in the distance. Tuck, tak, tak, tak, tak. And I thought, why is someone lighting firecrackers? You know, like those Chinese firecrackers?

Like, why is someone letting firecrackers? It's stupid. And then I hear it again. Tack, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak. Like really fast. And if you know anything about the IDF, which I only do through like movies and TV and my friends, the IDF who they're trained with their M16s and their M4 rifles

and their Tivores, they're trained to fire semi-automatic. And if you don't know what semi-automatic is, it means one round at a time. And when they do fire in rapid succession, they fire in a rhythmic way. You know, like one-one-two, one-one-two, one-two or one-one-one. Some sort of pattern because it helps them identify who's shooting.

when you hear terrorist shoot it's just like a kid playing Grand Theft Auto you know it's just holding down the trigger until it clicks and then you put in more bullets and you do it again and you can hear that and you can hear the difference in an M16 and a Kalashnikov

you know a Kalashnikov sounds chunky it sounds meaty you know if the Kalashnikov were a character from pop fiction it would be a transformer because it sounds so meaty. You know, it sounds like just, I don't know, grunge.

And I hear the sound and the first thought I have in my head, coming from Canada who's only ever heard gunfire in Call of Duty movies, the first thought I have in my head is, that's a machine gun. That is somebody firing a lot of bullets really fast. And I keep this to myself because I'm still on the come down for my ecstasy in the MDMA. And I'm obviously panicked

And my heart It's very high And I'm sleep deprived And I'm like I don't want to say anything Because maybe if I'm wrong I don't want to cause panic So I come back to my friends

And I tell my cousin Because he's like He and I have a lot Very similar wavelength I don't know to describe it He gets me and I get him And I tell him Hey listen I heard machine gun fire

I want to go now And he tells me I don't know about that I heard something weird as well but I don't know what it was so he's not denying it but he doesn't know he a bunch

we were eight people five of us took acid he was one of those five so because of that I didn't you know what I mean and so another one of my friends chimes in and says you know don't worry about it

we're next to military bases they're conducting training or exercises or drills and that's what it is and I thought you're fucking dumb the idea if doesn't shoot fully automatic and that's like on some big FU machine gun, which is not what I was hearing. And, you know, it doesn't matter.

I'm not going to argue because our stuff is packed up and we're ready to go. So we say goodbye to the people around us. This one guy who is next to us. His name is Ran, Schaefer. And I have permission to talk about him. He is 48 from Kibbutzbury. And he was set up next to us. And like, he was in a hammock and he didn't get up from his hammock the entire time,

smiling and laughing and shooting the shit with us. And until I asked him to stand up. I could take his portrait, like formally, because I've been snapping his photo as we've been talking. And he stands up, I take his photo. And I thank him. And he gives us like an open invitation to dinner. Like, oh, come to my family for dinner. They live in Kibbutz, Bairi.

He's from Bairi with his family, his ex-wife and his two daughters. I'm like, okay. Sure, welcome. After the festival in, you know, day or two, welcome for Shibat or something like that. He gave us an open invitation. He had decided to come to the festival by himself, instead of joining his family for Shabbat dinner in a city nearby. Ashkelonar Shod, one of them. But because he came to the festival

and didn't join his family for that Shabbat dinner, they didn't drive home that night. They didn't drive back home to Beir-I. They stayed overnight at their families after Shabbat. So because he went to the Nova, they weren't in Beir-R-I when Hamas attacked. And that's insane.

That's like, not getting on the plane in 9-11 but the reverse hearing you tell the story it's all insane my story is like I'm not trying to downplay anything I've heard crazy shit

I met a guy I was a guy in Cyprus who killed a terrorist with a rock you know and these are all people that are like my age it's nuts one of my friends who was now my friend

who I photographed he saved five people from the Nova in his little Honda Civic. They just piled them in. You know, some people... You've heard the stories. I don't have to tell you. Well, but you were there.

So when you're hearing this gunfire, though, like, if you're close enough to hear the gunfire... They've already started. They've already entered the country. They're like, we're hearing this gunfire. They're within a kilometer of us, for sure. Bari is only like a five-minute drive from the Nova site.

All the kibbutz seem that were primarily attacked, they're all within like 20 minutes of each other driving really close and so we're in the parking lot we're loading up our car we decide in the parking lot I'll be the designated driver not before and you know the parking lot at this time

the back half is mostly empty like I said just because 4,000 people buy tickets to an event doesn't mean 4,000 people stay till the end right some people during these festivals especially the overnight parties that start at midnight and go until sunrise in the afternoon. Some people only like the sunrise sets. So they skip everything from

midnight until 5 a.m. And vice versa. Some people only stay for the nighttime portion. So when we were in the parking lot, half the parking lot was already empty. I don't know if that's because of what happened, the rockets, or because of just what it was. But it was very empty. A few people around us and we're all checking each other, making sure everyone has their stuff. Everybody's doing the same thing. Check on the guy over there and make sure he has his food, water, car, his friends knows where to go. And, like, everyone's, it's really crazy to see, like, people caring for each other in this situation, but people are. And this one guy comes up to us, his name is multi. He came on like a bus, driven by a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, a 21-year-old

kid. And I'll tell you his name after. I want to look it up because I want to talk about him. And he comes up to us and says, are you guys okay? Do you need food? Do you need water? Who's driving you? You have a sober driver. What do you guys take? And I tell him, you know, I'm I'll drive. I'm the most sober. No worries. We're good. Thank you very much. We appreciate your, you know, offering. We'll see you. And he goes off to his bus and he don't see him again. And then I'm taking photos still of multi of these people in the parking lot, my friends. And then this girl who's sitting on a wooden log in the parking lot, looking really defeated. Like she's really not handling the situation well. And you can see it on her face. And she looks at me and she stands up and she comes up to me. She starts screaming at me. because the sound of, I'm using a film camera from 1964. Many times you've talked about, you know, you're running out of film, and I'm thinking, it's 2023 shy. What are you doing with a film camera?

So I'm using a film camera from 1964 that I bought off Kajiji for like five bucks. And, you know, you make that sound to reload the film. And it's a really annoying camera when you think of it to hear it go off, especially when you're stressed. So we're dealing with rockets and there's screaming and there's panic. And there's maybe gunfire. and we're in the parking lot and then you hear my camera going off

so I get why she was easy to snap at me but she yelled at me in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew and I don't know who she is and I don't know her name I remember what she looks like but I don't know what happened to her I don't know she's alive

but like I felt bad because she's yelling at me for making this noise for irritating her and I just think I can't stop taking photos because I know something abnormal is going on I don't know what

but I have to keep taking photos and I'm so sorry that it's upsetting you, but I can't stop. And I didn't say this to her because she's not talking English. And I'm assuming if I spoke English, she wouldn't understand me because she's so overwhelmed. So I just said, Shthah, and excuse myself, and I continued away from her. And then Hamas arrived. And we were in the parking lot.

So we were lucky because they didn't come from the parking lot, because they didn't know we were there. If they knew we were there, they would have come at us straight from Gaza. which is the side facing the parking lot. But because they didn't know we were there, they came from the main roads, because their priority was the cities and the Qaeda would seem. That was their focus, and then to move to Tel Aviv.

But who knows why, or how they found us, maybe at 6 a.m., the Nukba warriors who flew into Israel to let the others in, with their paragliders, maybe they saw the party from above. But you know, the Nova happened one day after another equally massive party, back to back because they transferred the rights of the event to one another to make it easier to host it. So even if they didn't know we were there, they definitely heard that other party because sound travels far and there's nothing here and we are at a higher elevation than the Gaza border.

So even if they didn't see us, they totally heard us if they had guys by the fence preparing or something, you know? They totally heard it. And even if they didn't hear it, and even if they didn't see it from the sky, it only takes one terrorist to notice there's a bunch of traffic coming from this one area and to go check it out.

And so they came in from the main road, 232, and drove in through the festival from the main road, which is towards where the security was, where the VIP area was of the artists, where the main stage was, like the back end of the festival. And so we're in the parking lot

and all of a sudden we hear an eruption of machine and fire from the festival ground. but we don't see it because we have everything in between us and them but you don't need to hear you don't need to see guys

with Kalashnikovs to hear guys with Kalashnikovs you know we hear that rapid machine gun fire through like like the pinnacle

of an action movie you know the the climax is here this is it and everything kicks off and then people start screaming Pigua

people start screaming Mechablim which is terrorist Pegua is terrorist attack people are like losing their shit and it's really the energy just snaps really fast people like oh shit we have to go we throw the rest of our stuff in the car i'm in the driver's seat throw my camera bag whatever it in buckle in cousin gets in the passenger seat and i'm driving down this dirt path towards the exit 60 70 kilometers an hour swerving in the car honking my horn hitting my brakes trying not to kill people because everyone's doing the same thing you know if you've

ever left a concert with cars it sucks yeah exact same situation here except now if you take too long you're going to die and i get to the exit and when you leave the festival like when you enter from two through two you go up this shitty dirty bumpy road so when you're leaving you're looking down this hill so i get to the top of the hill and i'm seeing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cars as everybody is making a mad dash for this one way out, this one road 232, which goes in two directions. It goes north, and it goes south. South, further south, parallel to Gaza.

Further south, parallel to Gaza, towards Hamas, and north towards Tel Aviv, where most of these people came from. North, towards Tel Aviv, towards Bari, towards near Oz, towards Kfarazza, all these Kibu's. would seem that were attacked. And so people make it to the main road, and the road to the north is blocked by security and police. Because they knew that there was some sort of terrorist attack.

I don't know what they knew, because a lot of those officers in security died. But they knew Barry was not safe, and the main road to the north was not safe because there were terrorists and there was already murders occurring along that road. So they blocked the road trying to have. help people by directing them not to go there. What did they do? What was the solution they offered people who approached them, who wanted to go north? They offered people a few things, which contributed to the chaos, which contributed to the deaths, because they didn't know anything.

They told people one of the three things. They told people, drive south, go the other way, not knowing Hamas was there too. Sending people into Hamas. And there's like a bunch of officers, All giving different directions. Another officer says, drive your car into the fields. And another officer says, get out of your car and run into the fields. Yeah. And so I see this traffic jam. I'm at the very back of it.

And our little crappy Mitsubishi Lancer think like Honda Civic car. Or five people, me and my cousin, his girlfriend, and three friends are other three friends in their own vehicle somewhere else. And I tell my cousin, I'm not waiting for. these people. I don't know them. They're not my friends and they're not my responsibility because I'm driving this car with the five of us and this is the only thing I give a fuck about. Sorry, pardon me. I don't care about them. And I'm getting us out. And I'm sorry for your mom because this is her car. I'm going to fuck it up. And before he even has a chance to respond, I just drive off the road onto the shrubs, the dirt, the rocks, the trees, the whatever is in our way. I drive

around it or over it. And I push my way to the very front of this traffic jam like every other Israeli driver does when they're waiting in traffic, except I did it to the extreme. And I push my way in front of everybody not wanting to wait. I make it to the main road. And we're stuck. And there's like two cars in front of us. And then freedom. We can leave. And there's a white car in the very front. And there's a red car in front of us. And in this red car, I can see it's like a fiat or something. There's people inside of it freaking out. You can see their arms in the air and as they're moving around. You know the car is occupied, very obviously. And I'm looking around. And I'm looking around at cars around me

and I'm turning my head and I don't know how you drive but when I drive I put my eyeballs right up to the steering wheel because it makes me see better and as I'm doing this I look through the windshield of the car in front of us through this red car's windshield. I look at the rear lights of the car

in front of them because if they're waiting to go into the road their brake lights would be on because they're hitting the brakes but there was no brake lights and there was no one inside the car I was looking really hard. There was no motion in the car. And I drew the conclusion that there's no one in the car. It's empty. They fled the car. And a lot of people did this. In this traffic jam where people are running for

their lives, some people were so panicked and so out of it. They fled their cars and ran. And because they did this, other people who were sleep deprived, who were maybe drunk or under the influence of some substance, didn't realize they're sitting in traffic, honking their horn, and at a car that's empty. And this is not one instance, but like many. And so I tell my cousin, because he speaks Hebrew, his acid isn't fully there yet. And I'm counting the time in my head, because I know when he took his acid and I know when the peak hits.

So I tell him, please, while you're still capable, get out of the car, knock on the window. Tell them to drive around this white car in front of them because they have the space to and we don't. Drive around it because it's empty. Otherwise, we're stuck and we're waiting for this machine gun fire to get here. And he's, he, without a hesitation, he gets out of the car, bangs on the window, tells them the situation, points that way, they drive around and they go. Wow. Thank God. Now we can leave. We make your way to the main road. Like I said, police block in the road so we don't go north because we don't. Some people ignore the police and drive around them. Some worked out for. Some I didn't work out for. And I looked to my right. I see it's traffic. And I don't want to deal with the traffic. I didn't know. It was because there's Hamas murdering people in their cars. So, okay, road to my left is blocked by police.

This road to my right, okay, it's traffic. I don't want to deal with these. Maybe we'll just go into the field. You know, in Canada, here in Ontario, you go to any farm, you go to any field. If you walk in one direction long enough, you'll find a house or a road or a shed or a barn or something, you know. I figure that applied to Israel too.

I didn't know. I just guessed. And so we drive maybe 25, 30 feet into this field, and then we're shot at. Not like targeted. You know, there isn't some terrorists saying, I'm going to shoot those guys, and they're popping shots at our car. But wherever these terrorists were, behind us, so not within our line of sight, they're standing there, looking at this field full of hundreds of cars and hundreds of people, headless chickens running around, not sure where to go. And they're arbitrarily into this field.

It doesn't matter if you're on foot, if you're in a car, if you're Muslim, if you're Druze, if you're Arab, if you're Christian, if you're not Israeli, if you're Israeli, it doesn't matter. they're trying to kill everyone equally And so Okay, we're being shot at Fuck, we run out of the car My cousin's girlfriend screams We haul ass into this dirty dusty beige field With nothing in it except dust

Duck down to the ground Make herself small targets Me and my friend Ellie Holding onto each other I do like one of these And I put my back to the festival Where the gunfrags coming from And I put my friend in front of me

Because I'm like What else am I gonna do? I don't want to watch my friend get shot and I'm pretty useless right now because we're not in the car right now so I might as well put my body between them and the source of the gunfire. Luckily, nothing happened to us.

And so four of us who were in the car within a meter of each other, bucking down low in this dirt field, trying not to get shot, and we all look back to the car because we all noticed, where the fuck is my cousin Mordecai? And he goes, we turn around,

we see him, he runs back to the car, gets in the driver's seat, comes back to us. I try telling him, hey, let me drive now. Thanks for bringing back the car. You're in acid still. let me drive. He says, fuck you, no, get in the passenger seat. I'm like, okay, get in the

passenger seat. He says, navigate me. I'm like, okay, navigating him, have his phone in my lap, have my phone in my hand doing video, have my camera in my other hand, taking photos, me and his girlfriend helping navigate him through this dusty ass field. We're driving through fields for like 45 minutes. The whole drive from Tel Aviv to the festival that night, at like one, it only took us 55 minutes. So we've been driving for almost the same amount of time, just in these fields trying to find a road that goes back to Tel Aviv. And from this far

south, there's not many roads that go back to Tel Aviv. There's like three. There's not a lot. And so we make it to the city of Netivode when you start hitting checkpoints, not with idea of soldiers, but with police that are heavily armed. And all these

checkpoints, they ask us, are you Israeli, where are you going? They ask us where are you going? Because they want to hear how you pronounce the name of the city. Because Palestinians don't pronounce the names of cities in Israel the same way Israelis do

which I didn't know which is how military and police forces sort of tell where people are from by how they pronounce it you know if someone says Jaffo

they know where they're American right but if someone says Yafo they're probably Israeli and so all these checkpoints my cousin is getting more and more angry because they're pointing their guns

us and they're stopping us and they're not fighting these terrorists and they're not helping people they're wasting our time and keeping us from getting to safety so we just get more aggravated and the whole time from the field until we get home i'm telling my friends to keep their heads underneath the window line in case terrorists do see us they don't see who's in the car and maybe they won't shoot or if they do shoot we don't get shot in the heads you know And only once we get out of these fields and make it towards the city of Netivot, we're on the main road, which turns into Route 34. We pass along Nativot. We're seeing all the carnage.

The sirens ring out, rockets overhead, and we're seeing cars that are crashed, cars that are abandoned, cars that are riddled of bullets, police cars, civilian cars, mostly civilian cars. And we're seeing bodies, like everywhere. Bodies in pieces with holes in their faces, like clothes, sort of told. or you know partially on fire belonging you know bodies it's crazy the stuff that you think about and the conclusions you come to when you see bodies in certain positions you're like oh they were shot in the back running away you can tell that when you see somebody's body on the ground it's really surreal to think these things after seeing them and we come across two instances where there is IDF personnel telling us it's not safe

and to get out of the area because there are terrorists within maybe 50 meters of us and them who they can't find. And it's not safe. One of these instances, we even saw a few dead officers on the ground in between all the vehicles with other officers taking cover.

And this was like right in the way of us and home. They're like, oh, you guys have to leave. You have to turn around and go the other way. And my cousin was furious because this is already after an hour of driving. He says, in Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, he's like cursing them out, saying, we're going to Tel Aviv and you're about to send us back to these murderers. We're going to run you over and kill you if you don't let us through.

Basically, like, threatening them. If the terrorists don't get you, I will with the car. And they let us through. And it's like a white knuckle drive all the way to Tel Aviv. We're seeing huge black pillars of smoke all around us, to the right, to the left, in front of us, behind us. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm like a nerd. I'm like, oh, you know, some plants, when they're set on fire, they make a lot of black smoke.

Or maybe a rocket hit a gas station or a junkyard, and that's what all the black smoke is. You know, there's a lot of stuff that makes thick black smoke. I didn't realize it's people being burnt alive in their homes and their cars. People being tied up to one another and burnt in front of their families. That's what's happening. That's what's making the smoke. That thought is so extreme. It didn't even occur to me to think it.

And so we make it back home to my cousin's apartment in South Tel Aviv. 947 in the morning. Less than four hours after the attack began. I mean, shit. Hamas only arrived to the Nova at like 7.40. So 7.8, 9. That's less than three hours. Okay, Shai, that...

Firstly, that couldn't have been easy, but it sounds like you've told that story a few times, and now you might be desensitized to telling that story. And as I'm listening to that story, I'm thinking about the trauma you experienced that day. And what did you call that, four or five hours? And I don't even, I guess my first question is, you were a party of eight at this. Are all eight of you alive today? Yeah, thank God.

Very, very lucky. There's a lot of people who can't say the same, unfortunately. One of my friends who I made friends with at Lenova, were very close. us now. He lost 60 friends that day. He had to, he found himself at periods over the next three months where he had to decide if he's going to go to one

funeral or another. Because they were happening at the same time and the same day. You know. How many, just from the Nova Festival that you attended, you mentioned, okay, so they sold 4,000 tickets, maybe there were 3,000 there, whatever, but how many people were killed from the festival?

So there was 411 people officially murdered, where they think 44 kidnapped, 44-55 kidnapped, roughly. I don't know exactly, but around there. That 411 murdered is updated as well, to include hostages. And listen, if somebody who was in the Nova kills himself until 10 years, God forbid, they were still killed by October 7th. They still count towards that casualty list, just like how people who die of cancer

from 9-11 count towards the victims of 9-11. Or victims of war who die from, you know, the 10th. toxic chemicals from serving in the war, they still count as victims of that war. You survived the largest terror attack in Israel's history. Yeah, that's crazy. And I came from Atopico. We're a long way from Tom's dairy freeze, my friend. And I make some obvious dumb questions, but I'm listening to tell that story.

But, okay, so are you talking to somebody? Talk about trauma. Yeah, wow. My therapist is amazing. She really is awesome. She's on vacation now, but she'll be back soon. She's a killer. Well, thank. I'm glad you're talking to somebody. So, like, right away for like that, so you get yourself back home, I guess you kiss the ground and say, oh, my God, I made it? So we came back home, and we have two of our closest friends there already awaiting us because they knew all our friends knew where we were. So right away, everyone's scrambling. Like, we don't know it, but everybody's getting together, I'm getting food and getting stuff, and getting... one of my friends, her mom is a therapist. She's like, mom, come here. Now.

So we have therapy from, like, day one. I even went as far as calling my family doctor and saying, prescribe me antipsychotic medication because we were just shot at while my friends were on acid. I don't know if their brains are going to break. So I want this as just like an aunt just in case. She's like, okay, here. Didn't have to use it. But we come back.

My cousin and his and my other friends who took acid took a, it's called a colon. it's like an anti-anxiety medication it's like a cheat code for when you want to end a bad trip you know if you want to if you're on mushrooms or you're in acid and you're having a bad time you take a sleeping pill or anti-anxiety medication because it affects the same part of the brain as the substance so they went to sleep right away to get it out of their systems and then my cousin wakes up and he's really angry he's just like screaming and cursing and just letting it out of the system and my thought is like we don't know where other friends are for like 10 hours. Five of us in the apartment, three friends, who knows where, we're all calling them incessantly, texting them, not realizing we almost got them killed

by doing so because they're hiding in a bush for seven hours, listening to the sounds of murder and rape for seven hours, and we're blowing up their phones. But after seven and a half hours, they get a phone call from the cousin of one of them. They survived. They were rescued by the Galani, who are soldiers based in the north, who aren't even supposed to be in the South, but that's who saved them. And that was around 1.30, I think. A long time. So the things that had to, it's going to sound terrible in trite in hindsight, but the things that had to go right for you to be here today, like from having the full tank of gas. Yeah, we filled up, we filled up gas that night at the Kfaraza gas station, like right

before arriving. And having the wherewithal to, like these series of decisions along the way where if you make the wrong one at any of these points, you're amongst the 1,000 or whatever casualties. And you can't talk to people who made the other decision because they didn't survive. You know, like any research that comes

from this, it's only coming from survivors. It's only coming from people who it worked out for. You can't study what happened to people it didn't work out for because they died. You know, you can't ask people who are on acid who died how it affected them

or people who had affected negatively and they passed away you know you can't get that information you can't get that data so we've established that the eight of you survived but was any do you know of anyone that you met that day or knew

that was killed or seriously injured on October 7th? So I brought this little booklet here with all the photos I took from the Nova because I think we mentioned it so let me find both of them them. Okay. So the first person who passed away who was murdered by Hamas is this fellow here.

His name is Dor Avitan, who is at the time the same age as me. He was 26. And he was working at the festival at a booth with his friend, Ador Malka. And they were selling clothing and accessories and jewelry from Southeast Asia. And I saw the video of his murder before I knew it was him. Because, you know, I was on telegram trying to make sure I didn't recognize people. And I saw what happened to him before. I had a friend to tell me who was him. And this is Rand Schaefer, who is 48 from Kibbutz Berri. That's him in the hammock.

It just seemed like such a peaceful festival. And these are such like just calm, peaceful. Everybody there was super nice. Like everyone there, you sit with them. They're happy to smoke with you, drink with you, share their food, you know, accommodate you. invite you everyone's super welcoming so the photos are in chronological order

from right to left right now you're okay if I yeah go for it so all the photos during the daytime are taken during the attack and besides those two men Doravitin and Ren Schaefer the other 52 people I photographed

out of 54 survived like I can see here everybody's happy this is during the attack there's people being murdered and Kibbutz seem less than two miles away that's the desensate We talked about.

Yeah, you're from South at Tobolco, my friend. Did you wonder, like, hey, why aren't we taking this more seriously? Like, at the beginning when everybody seems to be. Yeah, for me, it was like, okay, once you hear gunfire, you should get the fuck out, drop, like, I'm of the mind of abandon your stuff and come get it the next day, you know? We're abandoning tents and hammocks here. We're not leaving back our MacBook pros.

Well, here's photos of the Rockets. Yeah, those are the rockets. overnight to vote. That's the field we were in right after we got back in the car. My God. Yeah, this is... It's total chaos. You know, when you described, you know, I'm sorry, I have to take pictures. I was thinking, like, sometimes in times of trauma, the advice is to do something that you go on autopilot to do, sort of like, go brush your teeth or something. I was totally on autopilot. Yeah. I wasn't, you know, I'm shooting on a film camera, so it's not automatically doing shit for me. I have to load the film. I have to choose my settings. I have to adjust

the focus and the fact that I did this while we're driving and escaping terrorists and over and around dead bodies is crazy because I don't remember it shy my goodness uh I have an important question though from Alan Gold who I was promoting you were coming on and Alan is actually on the live stream a hello to Alan he says do you suffer from survivors guilt at all I I do a little bit I did a lot in the beginning because for me I had to find the families

of these two guys this young man Doravitin and Rand Schaefer who was 26 and 48 and I had to find their families and then I had to tell them hey I was there I took the last photo

of them smiling ever here you go and that was very hard for me because like I don't want to give these people a photo like I'd rather be able to give them their loved one. Of course.

Or say, hey, I saved your son. I saved him. I brought them with us. Here you go. You know, we couldn't do that. You know, and I told my friends, oh, if I knew, you know, oh, if I knew. You know, you said a lot. Oh, if I knew.

If I could have. If, if. So that was really hard. And I cried a lot. I cried when I found their families. I had their photos printed and framed really nice. And I gave them the file and like crazy high. quality and I even told them like listen you lose the file you lose the photo in 10 years whatever

find me contact me I'll give you new one that sort of thing and and then I met the family of door for the first time as his mother and that was very difficult because she also talks about her son she talks about her son to different communities and how she's been dealing with the grief and and dealing with raising her other son and she's crazy strong and in Hebrew say strong like Khazak. She's like hardcore. Really sweet woman. The other,

the family of Rann Schaefer, don't have a home anymore. They can't live in their home because it was the site of a massacre. You know, most of the kibbutz didn't survive. So now they're living, I think, in a hotel in Tel Aviv. I have to get back to that point here. But so the survivor's guilt, Do you have any of that?

I do, but it's not as bad now as it was before because I've been seeing therapy. I've done lots of therapy with a psychiatrist, a therapist. I've done MDMA assisted therapy. I've done mushroom assisted therapy. I've done therapy with both. I've done hyperbaric chamber therapy. I've done group therapy.

I've done a wellness retreat in Cyprus. I've really made sure I take advantage of whatever is offered to me because I don't want to be at a point where I'm just like incoherent, crying, and useless. you know because then I can't help people if I'm unable to do anything myself how am I going to do anything for others right well on that note you could hearing you tell the story in my opinion you helped save four lives in addition to your own you're you're a big reason why the car load of five people arrived I think if it wasn't for me on the ass of all my

friends insisting we leave and if it wasn't for my cousin's quick thinking to turn around and not be standing like an idiot in this field and that was Mordecai yeah and get back in this car if he didn't do that and if I didn't do what I did I it I it's totally possible we wouldn't have made it back or even to go as far as saying if I didn't make Aliyah my friends would have died you know because maybe if I wasn't there to insist we leave they would have taken another 30 minutes or they would have left sooner and gone a different way who knows you know a couple more questions from Alan I think these are good questions one is Alan says do people in Israel feel the support he put that in quotes okay so feel the support

that is outpouring from Jews in the diaspora how do you say that word that's the second time Dasper. Yeah, Diaspora. Sometimes when you read a word, you get disengaged from the actual word you've heard. So that's a very hard question to answer because it's like a pie chart. Victims of October 7th is a pie chart. You know, you have all of Israel.

Everybody in Israel is a victim of October 7th. You don't have to have been shot at. You live there. You're a victim. And you have all of Israel because, listen, when 3,000 people are at a place and, you know, half of them don't make it back home, That is one mom, one dad, one brother, one sister, one grandma, grandbrough, cousin, aunts, uncles, friends, teachers. You know, it's not just the lives that were taken. It's lives that are shattered.

Everyone who they knew, everyone who they touched. You know, if a teacher is murdered, all their students get fucked up. You know, if it's an athlete who's murdered, their whole team has to deal with their death. And that has an impact, you know. So there is the people who are direct victims. who were in the kibbutzim and the Nova and the parties. There was another party, SIDOC, which no one even heard about.

Like, did you know about it? I don't think I've heard that word. So it was an underground party happening maybe like a kilometer from the Nova, 200 people. They were also attacked in the same way by Hamas and they don't have a foundation looking after them. You know, they don't have events to raise money for them.

They don't have merch that goes towards their care or whatever. like they don't have the same it's not the same and it's really terrible because they went through the same thing as we did and then you have the soldiers you have two types of soldiers you have the soldiers who went to reserves to fight in gaza and then you have the soldiers who survived in the kibbutz and the nova and then went to fight in gaza and that's fucking crazy like this guy let's see here these people there my friend. I saw him for the first time after the Nova before I came here randomly on the streets. So this is my friend, Idan, or Eden, and this is his friend. I'm not going to say his name. And his friend went into Gaza after the Nova and stayed there for like

several hundred days. And you know, many people who went to fight after surviving the Nova or the kibbutzim suffer a much greater mental toll than people who just survived the nova and went home. Because they have to deal with going to the nova, not receiving care for it, going to kill the terrorists who did this, watching their friends die in Gaza next to them again as they're fighting, and then come back to home in Israel and Tel Aviv four, six months later, when it's quiet and be like, the fuck am I. going to do now there's no one shooting at me you know so to say like is is it felt in israel it really depends who you ask because everybody receives a different level of care and acknowledgement from the greater jewish community abroad i bet you 100 bucks if you go to

any UJA hosted event in any city across North America and you ask them if they know about SIDOC, most people will tell you no. You know? Or if they know how many soldiers went from Nova to Gaza, they'll probably tell you they have no idea how many. You know?

Or how many Nova survivors have kids who have to deal with the fact that maybe they can't work now and have to care for a kid? You know, they require a different level of care than people who are just, you know, I just had a job in an apartment and I was enjoying my life, you know. Or there's people who are pregnant in the Nova

who now have a kid, like my cousin. They weren't pregnant in the Nova after the fact, but now they have a kid. Right. And it's just like, like I said, it's a pie chart of different varying degrees of levels of care. And so when people in Jews in the diaspora are donating to all these different initiatives,

or whatever. It's not always reaching everyone. And for example, I'm talking primarily from novice survivors. To receive any government benefits, we have to fill out a fuck you ton of paperwork, which is, by the way, no accommodations for any of this, for anybody who doesn't speak Hebrew. So if you survive the Nova and you lost your leg

and all your friends are dead. And you don't speak Hebrew? There is no accommodations for you for any of these initiatives or programs out there to help victims of October 7th. Whether it's English or French or Spanish or Portuguese or Italian or Thai, unless you speak Hebrew, Russian, or Arabic,

good luck. You know? And then it comes to, okay, you did this paperwork now what? Government gives you some money. and then you have to sit in front of a committee of doctors for doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, whatever and basically prove to them you have PTSD and they'll give you a percent

between 10 and let's say 70 nobody really gets over 50 percent disability unless you were shot and all your friends are dead and you're missing a limb or something like that people like me, most of us have between like 10 and 30%, which equates to about less, I need to do the conversion because I don't know the math. I have 20% and I get 2,000, 1,700 shekels a month,

which is $680 Canadian or $490 US. So for me, after I moved to Israel, like I said, I didn't speak Hebrew. and learning Hebrew normally in a normal state of mind with a normal life in a normal environment around you is challenging but it's doable so I'm just moved to Israel like four months before the Nova didn't learn Hebrew yet because I was working in getting employment

and getting a stable place to live so I could focus on learning Hebrew and then I go to the Nova and you know my main job because I don't speak Hebrew that was available to me is working in, like, food in a kitchen, in a restaurant, which I enjoy doing. I enjoy cooking. And also, like, I photograph parties and raves and concerts and events and weddings, but I don't really do that now unless it's like a friend's wedding or something like that because of what happened, you know?

Like, if I go to a restaurant, I try and not go to restaurants that are crazy busy because it's too overwhelming. Or if I do go to a place or I go out to eat, my back is to the wall so I can love. look at the entrance or so I or I know where the nearest bunker is but I just typically avoid it and working in a restaurant is very challenging for me mentally just do the environment the intensity of it like if it was quiet I could probably do it you know or if it was loud but low intensity makes it more manageable but that's not the case it's allowed and it's a high intensity. So my employment is shit. And that goes for a lot of people. Like, let's say you were in

the Nova and you're an athlete and you get shot in the leg. Well, now you're no longer an athlete and you've got to figure out a new career and sucks for you because maybe the government only gives you 2,000 juggles a month. You know? And like, it's hard. It's hard. Like there's resources for employment, but like it's only so far and a lot of it is like superficial, like, oh, we'll help you find a retail job, you know? I haven't seen any resources for people who need to shift their whole career or find a new place to live or pay rent. There's a few organizations that are awesome, like one in Israel called SELAH. First meeting I met with them, gave me 2,000 shekels to help me pay my rent because I couldn't. Amazing people. They do awesome stuff and nobody

outside Israel knows who they are. Wow. Because it's not the UJA. No offense to the UJA. I love them. They do great stuff. This is not me talking shit. It's just there's stuff people need help

with inside Israel that they don't offer, which is fine. It's not their job to. Shy, is it even triggering, what if you come across in the wild you come across music that you might have heard

that night? I still listen to it. It's fucking good music. I just wondered if at all that brings you back. There's one track that I remember playing, that I remember that was,

uh going right before everything happened and it was wow wait can i play like a video yeah it's okay see how the audio is you can play something let's see if this is and I really enjoy listening to it. I don't know what the track is called. I think it's Alien, something by Art Effects. Whatever it's called, I really love it. That's interesting. And like, if I'm driving, I'll listen to,

not specifically, I'm not going to seek it out, but it's in my playlist. If it comes on, I'm not going to skip it. I'll listen to it. You know, I've seen the DJ perform a few times. Like one of the DJs who was in the Nova. He plays that track because people enjoy it because it's an awesome track.

I don't get triggered by the music. Too much. What triggers me is when you go to the Nova exhibition, which is an amazing thing, there is the final room where you see projected onto like streamers, videos of people in the Nova having a good time.

I don't know if I could say that's a trigger, but seeing the videos of everybody enjoying themselves, that's what gets me the most. And that's what really like breaks through my numbness. You know, is remembering and seeing how amazing it was and remembering how positive it was and seeing, remembering how much fun it was. Hearing the music, it's enjoyable, but it doesn't remind me of that.

But seeing it and seeing the videos, which I see often, just because of what happened, that gets to me. Or hearing spoken anything about people who were murdered or of the families of the hostages. you know, that's very hard to handle with good reason. One more question from Alan, who by the way, on the live stream, he left a comment. He said, very thoughtful answers from Shai, thank you so much for sharing your story. And I also echo those sentiments in that. I really appreciate this.

You made a long drive to be here and, well, I'm not letting you quite yet because... No, no, I appreciate it. I make sure to answer to, like, the best of my abilities. Because, like, you know, 4,000 people there, let's say there's 2,000 who were there when Hamas attacked. How many of them are, like, native English speakers? You know, and of them, let's say, not even native, let's say fluent. And of them, how many even want to talk about it? Let's say they're all able to.

Let's say everyone's mentally capable of doing it. How many even want to? They don't have to. It's fine. There's no expectation for me or anyone. else I think to talk about it like really none but you know being able to is like a privilege you know I remember when I was in high school hearing about Holocaust survivor coming and visiting I wasn't excited but like I was really interested in hearing and learning about what

they went through and it's fucking insane that we have to do this again that I have to be the Holocaust survivor who visits high school kids or university students to talk about how jihadist terrorists couldn't kill me my friends like why i make a joke to friends of mine sometimes if people like jews we would have so many worse movies in tv and pop culture and media because we wouldn't have the need to be so out there and really grab hold of things if people liked us. Because it's only because people don't like us. We have all these amazing things in our lives because it forced Jews to be ingenuative and to be creative.

Last question from Alan. And then I have a couple of my own. But Alan asks, what are your thoughts on the anti-Israel protests throughout the world since October 7th? Fuck, I love them. I love watching stupid people tell the world they're stupid or ignorant people share with the world that they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Like, it's fine to not like the Israeli government. I don't know if any of these people have met in Israeli.

but, like, most Israelis don't like the government. I don't know if you know this. For like the next week, every day, there's 100,000 people protests in Tel Aviv against the government against the war. Because everybody's just sick of it. Hundreds of thousands of people. Now, I know Americans aren't too used to getting out there

and fighting for the rights in a way that doesn't end with cars burning on the streets. But in Israel, in a lot of other parts of the world, it's pretty common. Yeah, we'll go in the aisle on, and they'll burn a sofa or garbage can. But these protests are different. You go there and you'll see people from the right and from the left and the ultra-Orthodox and the secular, all in the same protest. Protesting.

And yeah, you have people who are against it who see the protests purely as, oh, we're against war and oh were against the government and all of it in general. And that's not the case. You know, a lot of these protests are because the people don't believe the government is doing the best they can in regards to prioritizing the hostages. My own personal belief, I'm going to get a little political here, my own personal belief is we only have all these nations globally saying they'll recognize a Palestinian state, which, by the way, for me, is inevitable. in reality. It's inevitable. It'll happen no matter what. It's just the timing of things. Only because Bebe and his government are conducting the war, the way they've been conducting it,

do we have nations like Canada and France recognizing a Palestinian state. If they went about conducting the war in a different way, or even attempted to have a more fully encompassing deal in the beginning to end things. Maybe we wouldn't have Canada saying we'll recognize a Palestinian state. Because now what's happening, Hamas sees how Bibi's conducting the war. And then they see the world where it's now hundreds of nations.

It's not just Canada. It's hundreds of nations, over 100 countries, recognizing a Palestinian state, and they say to themselves, why would we accept a deal? why would we work with you towards a deal when we can just let you keep doing what you're doing and we'll get a state through waiting patiently Hamas leaders aren't even in Gaza

they don't care they don't care how many Palestinians die and like for them that's how they secure their investment you know how do they make sure they keep getting money make sure the Palestinians suffer because if the Palestinians don't suffer then the international community

won't keep donating to them and won't keep sending them aid and won't keep funding whatever they're doing allowing the Hamas leaders to steal this money because if the Palestinians did well for themselves then they wouldn't be able to take advantage of them maybe they wouldn't be incentivized to blow

themselves up on a bus if they had a wife and kids in a house with a lawn, you know? But because they're like in this perpetual state of suffering, they're always left with like that, that we have no choice. We'll kill someone. So my question was going to be, and you've touched on it right there, but how do you shy personally feel about Netanyahu's response? I think he only cares about keeping his coalition alive. They basically said, listen, we're going to move on with the war. If we find the hostages, great. We'll find them.

That's great. But that's not our priority. And in my opinion, none of the hostages are even BB's voter base. He doesn't give a fuck about people who don't vote for him. And anybody who says otherwise, I think, is mistaken. Like, we've killed an equal amount of hostages as we rescued through military force. We killed three. We rescued three.

We've gotten out over a hundred through deals. I don't know about you, but that math makes sense to me, which one works and which one doesn't. And financially speaking, occupying Gaza City like they want to, it's going to fuck everybody my age from the next 50 years on in Israel, not to mention the fact that it's going to come with a recession after. And also, to occupy Gaza City,

would mean less military personnel on other borders with countries that have real militaries so we will be less secure in some places because of this unnecessary bullshit military force that doesn't need to be in Gaza. Like, be real, we've like obliterated Hamas. They don't even have a cave left to hide in. They cannot do another October 7th for another, maybe 60, 70 years, unless they get some serious funding and Chinese bulldozers behind them. What happened

happened, but I don't think it'll happen again for a long time, if it, God forbid, does. We don't need to have the whole army there still. As recently as yesterday, there was news that Al Jazeera journalists were targeted by Netanyahu's government because they were believed to be on side with Hamas. I actually have saved on my phone

a document that shows the name of Al Jazeera a journalist on a list of Hamas operatives and he's like he was with the Nukba warriors as a like a rocketeer or something you know and he has selfies with the Hamas leaders Sinwar and Hania like I know journalists and I've seen them photographing you know Gaddafi and shit they weren't taking selfies with the guy they were photographing him from like hundreds of meters away that's not a journalist that's a that's a buddy of a terrorist that's a terrorist You know, and I've heard from other people who, like, told me on October 7th, they saw terrorists wearing IDF uniforms, Russian uniforms, American uniforms from Iraq and Afghanistan,

Chinese uniforms, like, whatever they can get their hands on. And we heard firsthand testimonies from hostages that they were held by journalists and doctors. and these people have nothing to gain by lying about it. It's not like they're going to get paid $5 billion for saying that it was a terrorist instead of a doctor or a doctor terrorist, you know. I know, you know, spouses and people who are formerly hostage and they're not living it up by talking about this

or their experience. You know, I just saw Aviva and Keith Cee's, speaking about their captivity and you know it's crazy and they're there they're they're not paid for by the government to parrot some opinion and these people were victims and hostages of Hamas and you know what Keith Siegel and Aviva both still believe the only way to get the hostages out is through a comprehensive deal because they told us how they would hear the bombing from in their captivity and how they were afraid for their lives. And many of the other hostages the same.

Like we saw the video of that hostage who's all skin and bones and emaciated, very clearly starved. For real. Not like these fat-ass journalists in Gaza who look like they've been eating jach noon every day. But actually starved. And like, he's no longer physically safe as an individual. if God forbid his tunnel collapses from a rocket

he can't save himself because he's too physically weak and it's not like I don't know I don't think our government cares if they cared they would have all been home a year ago it's what two months two and a half months till we're two years

two years and there's still 50 hostages that's unacceptable And I'm sorry, but this is a controversial opinion. If you are Zionist and you only care about the country and not the people, you're not Zionist. Israel would be a shithole if the only people who were left in the country were the Benavirs and the smelterges. It wouldn't be a place worth living if all the good-hearted people left. what do you think should become of Gaza I think it should have nothing to do with Israel

I think some coalition of foreign bodies led by the UAE or some shit should be in charge of it with Israel as like an advisory member I don't think Israel should have any hand in actually what goes on or say or if they do have say

it should be like with an asterisk I think it should be led by like I don't know the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, be the UK, France, I don't know, should not have anything to do with Israel. This conversation, and again, I'm so appreciative you not only took the time to visit, it was a long drive for you, but how open and honest you are about your story, like sharing your story. So I really, really appreciate this, and I thank you for sharing this story here.

But I've had, even earlier today, I was recording something with my friend, Avi Fedder Green, and we were chatting about all of this. And what I think is important, because my final question for you, it still will be, and I'll ask it right now, but since October 7th, have you noticed any increase in anti-Semitism?

Because this is how I want to leave it, but on our way there, this conversation where some idiots seem to equate Judaism with Israeli. When I have long talked on this program about conversations I had with my dear friend, Ralph Ben Murgi. I produce his show, which is called Not That Kind of Rabbi, and how much he despises Netanyahu

and the policies of his administration in Israeli. And Ralph, of course, a proud Jewish person. And these are not equal. You're here now. Have you experienced an uptick and anti-Semitism since October 7th? Personally, like towards me, no. Have I witnessed it? Yes.

towards others, for sure. I have seen many protests. Like, I make it, I purposefully seek out to attend pro-Palestine demonstrations because I want to, on one-on-one, talk to these people and understand why. Because genuinely, a lot of them are just misunderstood.

You know, many of them have never been to Israel. Many of them don't even have passports. Many of them have never left the country or their city. Never met a Jew. Don't know where the fuck Israel is. don't know which river, don't know which sea. And so, you know, I tell them, okay, why don't you like Israel? They say, oh, it's an ethno state.

I showed them my ID card, my two dad Zahoot. If you know what a two dad Zahoot is, it's an Israeli ID, any citizen has. And on it is Arabic and Hebrew. Ethno states don't accommodate the other who is there. You know, they don't accommodate the people who they're trying to separate, you know. Our bus stops wouldn't be in Hebrew and Arabic if we were trying to be an ethno state. Ireland is more of an ethno state. Japan is more of an ethno state.

Korea is more of an ethno state because ethno state is only one ethnicity. You know, you get Israel, you're going to find Jews, you're going to find Eritans, you're going to find Haitians, you're going to find Palestinians living in Israel for various reasons. people don't know this, even now, even up to right now, organizations within and outside Israel and the Israeli government brings out of Gaza people who are considered at risk, especially the LGBTQ plus community. I just heard about recently a 20-year-old Gazan who got accepted to a school in the U.S. doesn't like Hamas, doesn't like the war, wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge, and an organization

I'm not going to name or anything got them out this was recently like in the last few months got them out helped them get their papers and now they're now in the US happily

and this is done by Israelis this isn't Christians organizing this this isn't Buddhist organizing this this isn't you know Korean Americans organizing this

this is Jewish Israelis who are helping these gazans even now you know Israel aid was just awarded like over million dollars by the U.J.A. Israel aid is like a disaster relief organization. They were awarded over a million dollars by the UJA to facilitate aid to the Gazans because they know even if, even if all the Gazans agreed with Hamas, it is not a reason for anybody to suffer

unnecessarily. And even if you hate Hamas, you cannot ignore the fact that there is unnecessary suffering in Gaza. With eyes, you see it. It doesn't matter that people aren't skin and bones like our hostages. One person starving is still a person starving. People suffering is people suffering. The people in Ukraine are suffering at the hands of Russia. Just like Israel was suffering at the hands of Hamas on October 7th.

What Hamas did on October 7th is what Russia has been successfully doing to Ukraine. For what, five years now? Is that how long it's been? So Hamas attempted to do what Russia successfully did. Hamas failed. And now they're facing the repercussions of their actions, and their people are suffering for it. But the difference between Hamas and the people of Gaza

is the people of Gaza are not Hamas. Even, hypothetically, if 99.9% of them supported Hamas, they're not Hamas. Even if 7,000 civilians did cross into Israel on October 7th to loot and steal, there's 2.1 million people in Gaza it's not the whole population and you can care about people suffering and still support bringing the hostages back

and support the war effort to secure Israel you can agree with all these things and still say I don't want to see people suffer and they're not mutually exclusive doesn't mean I hate Israel it doesn't mean I'm anti-Zionist doesn't mean I'm pro-Palestinian it means I give a fuck about people

end of story when we scheduled this visit well we schedule it for Friday and then you had a very good excuse to push it to Monday and again glad you're here you said you had just come back from DC

so can you give us a sense of like where can we, for example can we see these photos and these videos that you took online oh yeah like tell us where we could see this Oh, D.C. was amazing. I spoke.

Yeah, yeah. Tell us what you were doing in D.C. I was in D.C. speaking at a conference to about 700 students from across the United States. Jewish young leaders in university from Columbia, NYU, Hofstra, Ithaca, Cornell, and UCLA, everything, everywhere. Really amazing kids. Like, I say kids, but they're like five, six years younger than me. Kids. So I shared with my experience about the Nova for a little bit. to them and got to engage with the students.

And there was a protest outside the hotel, actually, some pro-palis. And it was really silly. It was like two old people in this young hippie, and they had a little baby microphone. And I told them, if you cared, you would have bought a bigger microphone. Take your message across, because nobody can hear you. And, you know, hearing from these students about the anti-Semitism they face on campus,

it's way worse than whatever you hear on TV and news. Like I've students came up to me They told me shy You know you're hearing from you give me strength Because you know The anti-Semitism on this campus is so bad You know I've been spit on I've been sucker punched in the face

I heard the same yeah You know They vandalized my car They threaten my family They it's like crazy stuff And even to extremes like Oh even my professors Don't even talk to me because of my belief

Extreme shit Crazy stuff And you know It just made me sad because we had experienced the same in Canada, our students. But the difference between students in the U.S. and students in Canada, in the U.S., they have a lot more. In the U.S., they have a lot more programming and organizations and initiatives

to help support them in being Jews in general than we do have here in Canada. Like, we have Hillel. but it's not the same. It's totally a population thing as well. Canada's got like 46 million people. U.S. has like 335 million. So it's definitely a population thing, but like it's very noticeable to me. I've been to over 239 cities across the U.S. in Canada,

and I visited a lot of campuses. And it's very clear to me how little we have as Jews here in Canada in regards to support for us. You know, if you live, look at the UJA, no offense to the UJA again, if you look at the UJA in L.A. in New York, and then in Toronto, or even more so, Vancouver, if they even exist in Vancouver, it's night and day difference. It's like a bear and a raccoon. It's a really big difference.

And it's especially felt on campuses. You should see the hill all they have in South Florida. It's like a whole building. It's not a room out of the way with one working. light like you have in York University or whatever it is. They have a whole building with a movie theater and fucking every gaming console and different programming for our students and, you know, weekly Shabbat dinners and like a lot. And the staff really support them.

And you know what? We don't have that in Canada. We have HILO. We have SSI. We have AVI. They're not backed the same. No offense to Canadian Jewry. I don't think Canadians really,

Canadian Jews really see the value in these things in supporting them. And you're staying in Israel? Are you ever coming back here? Where do you live right now? My current residence is in Israel, but when I decided to stay there, it wasn't with the thought,

I'm staying here forever. It was, I'm staying here until I'm sick of it. I'm not quite there yet. Okay, but you're here visiting family? Yeah, I'm here visiting my mom, my brother, my father, my dogs, some friends, my cousin Joel. I just saw him actually last week before we went to Carabana, me and my mom. He's got yurts, you know, like he's got, you can go to come back.

I also didn't know he was 40. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. In my head, he was like 30, 35. You know, maybe I'm aging him. I should be careful. I just look at him and I think, oh, there's a guy 10 years younger than me. That's how I see him. He's got, yeah, he's got yurts in like rural Quebec.

It's really cool. It's really nice. I told him I want to go because I feel like I need it. Well, I'll join you there, man. I'll join you there. This was incredible. And, you know, here, and I can see why you're doing so many speaking engagements because you're a compelling speaker.

I cling on every word. I think this might be the Toronto Mic episode with the least Toronto mic. And I think that's not. I'm so sorry for talking over you. I feel like I really. Nobody tuned in to hear my story. You know, I am actually. a curious cat who wanted to hear about what it was like to be there that horrific day and

what it's like today. And I think you painted a brilliant portrait. And I feel like I understand things better. Now, there is initials you were using as if we should all know what these initials mean. And I wasn't sure, but UJ.A. Am I right? What does that mean exactly? Oh, it's like the Jewish Federation.

Yeah, I guess I should know that. I don't know. I just think if I don't know, maybe someone else listening. I'm wrong because all these Jewish orgs have the same acronyms because you can only make so many acronyms with Israel and Jewish in Canada and America and variations of that. One last thing on a way out though is can you tell us where, like what website to go to to take in your photos and video and everything. For sure. So two things. You can view everything on my Instagram, which is just my name, Shai Klein, S-H-Y-E-K-L-E-I-N. and if you add dot com that's my website which has all my photos and soon on my instagram i'm actually working on a project i'm working on a project now where i intend to photograph everybody who survived the nova who wants to participate i want to have an exhibition

with an overwhelming amount of faces of people who survived something that's positive to take away from all the depressing conversation we're having right now amazing i'll be checking that out and i just want to Tell my Gentile friends that it's complete bullshit to, at any way, to put the actions of an Israeli government, to put that on. Or the words of an official. Right. But I'm like a proud Jewish person, you know, who's living their best life in South of Tobacco. Or Thorn Hill or Lysleyville.

They got nothing to do with Israel. Leave them a fuck alone. This whole equation to me is so stupid and ignorant and it makes me feel nauseous. anti-semitism sucks and it's like people who protest global warming by protesting the government

and not the corporations who cause the global warming you know what I mean shy thanks for being here man if I could redo the intro I would just call you Shy Klein but we're going to call you shy shy but you didn't seem you know what once you warmed up there

I got to tell you I didn't there's no shyness from you man you just held court I appreciate it thank you for having me Can I give you a lasagna on your way out? Can I give you a lasagna? Would you take a lasagna from Palma Pasta? I love a lasagna. Because I know you don't drink the beer.

Shai's getting a lasagna. Yeah, take care of yourself, but don't hit your head on his head. And we have to take our photo outside here. I'm just going to tell... I appreciate it very much. The listenership, those magic words. And that brings us to the end of our 1,7433rd. show. Is that the right number?

Shai? Yes, it is. 1743. That's a lot. How many years of podcasting is that? 13. This month, actually, 13th a year this month. How many hours of podcast do you have? Do you have it all saved? Yeah, it's all in the feed. Yeah, Toronto. It's all saved. It's all live to tape, right? So, like, we're not editing this.

This will be in the, I have a, I pay an invoice for a company in Guel. I'm going to ask. I don't see any hard drives. stacked around. It's in the cloud. So it's going to sit here till five minutes after your photo with me at Toronto Tree. And then it's going to leave my laptop and go to the cloud. And I actually have a couple of, I have a backup too in case that's... I need to get it out storage. Well, you got lose the film camera, get it digitized and put it in the cloud there. Well, I know the film is hard because now I've got a box of film photos. I don't know what the fuck to do. Well, you're going to digitize that, my friend. Much love to all who made this possible.

So that is Great Lakes Brewery. Palm a pasta. Shai is getting a lasagna. Toronto's waterfront BIA. Taiwan Fest is coming up August 22 to 24. Check out Taiwan Fest on the waterfront. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball.

Playoffs are coming. We still have one more Saturday night game. But that's at Christy Pitts. That's a free event. I was at the game Saturday night. It was amazing. Recyclemyelectronics.ca. That's where you go, Shai.

If you have old electronics, you go to Recyclemyelectronics. drop them off to be properly recycled. Blue Sky Agency, welcome aboard Blue Sky Agency, and Ridley Funeral Home. We're recording a new episode of Life's Undertaking with Brad Jones this week. See you all Wednesday

when my special guest is country singer Bree Taylor and then Damien Cox Thursday and Tom Brown Friday. See you all then. Sweet. Thank you.