Mainstage Afternoon Session | Never Is Now 2024

and that you are feeling energized and informed that you had a nsh that we are focused um there was so many experts so many powerful insights on how to make an impact how to use advertising in social media and even the courts to fight hate we also learned more about how to make our communi safer this is very personal for all of us these days my synagogue has been swatted more than once for example and ogu and Jewish centers from coast to coast now have trained professional guards many many of us

have children on campuses where Jews have been vilified or ostracized simply for being Jewish suddenly we have all been asked to reckon with how publicly outspoken we want to be but these two days will remind us all that we are not alone today's sessions and many of the ones to come highlight the diversity all around us whether we face challenges as marginalized communities of many faiths as Orthodox Jews as women as Jews of color or as any part of the Rich and varied parts of the Jewish tapest

ry in the United States there are experts and allies and tactics here to learn from I encourage you to take what you are learning home with you we can all start by posting a photo I know it's cheesy but it's impactful especially with all the photos that at least are coming in mind My Stream it'd be nice to post some of our own and sharing some of the insights today with our friends who are not here who are unable to attend it's a strong and easy way to make sure that what happens at the Javits d

oesn't just stay at the Javits I'd encourage you to take a moment after this session of course you don't have to peek at your phones right now to share one photo one quote one impression using hashtag never is now oh I'm still talking I had lunch too uh both Juju and I have kids on campus and it is truly painful that we are at an inflection point at our universities where students need to think about how and if to be publicly Jewish and you can speak now Juju well thank you uh it's true ab and I

talk about this all the time just to be clear my kids identify as 50% Korean and 100% Jewish um and we routin talk about incidents as as recently as yesterday on their campuses and we know it personally we know it through research in fact the ADL and Hillel found that 73% of Jewish college students have experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism and less than half of Jewish students reported feeling physically safe on their campuses and this plays out in so many different ways that I'm sure you've

heard about do the students in your life feel safe to go to rallies about freeing the hostages or do to speak up in class when a professor or classmate says something hateful or even to wear a star of David on a necklace I tried to start that conversation with my son and got slammed shut the door before I could finish my sentence there are similar concerns coming up for Jewish high school students as well and I can't keep myself from worrying and I'm sure that this hits home for so many of the p

arents in this room right now who are friends of students or in the case of many of our never is now attendees this year are actual students facing hostility in the classroom on the quad or even online so it is also vital that we ready these Jewish students to engage with their young peers who perhaps have never had focused on Israel in the Middle East before now and are developing opinions that may linger so coming up next is a panel hosted by adl's senior director of government relations advoc

acy and Community engagement Shara Goodman who will host a conversation with Eden Weissberg a founding member of the vocal and extremely effective Mothers Against College anti-Semitism group also adl's inaugural Rabbi fellow David woy and Kaylee Warner yes you may applaud he's a rockstar Rabbi um and they'll be joined by Kaylee Warner who is a junior at Indiana University and the chair of anti-Semitism prevention Task Force at IU and they together are going to discuss how to navigate the landsca

pe of anti-Semitism on campus so please welcome to the stage Shir Eden Rabbi wpy and [Applause] [Music] Kaylee thank you Abby and JuJu for that kind introduction as a parent of a college student myself and and through my work at ADL I'm really excited about this conversation and one thing I want to really dig into is how the audiences that our guests represent are interacting and hearing from each other and whether what they're hearing matches and what we can learn from each other and how the ad

vocacy that they're doing together can make a real impact on our campuses so let's dig right in Kaylee welcome thank for being here in the middle of the semester can you talk about what it's been like for you on campus and highlight the big changes since October 7th yeah than thank you Shar and there's nowhere I'd rather be for spring break so anyways um campus has changed a lot and I bet that any of you who've talked to college students would understand that um the big difference that we've see

n at my campus however was that before October 7th anti-Semitism was really easy to point out it was people ripping Maas off of doorframes and burning them it was people chalking swastikas around campus uh since October 7th we've seen it turn completely to a type of anti-Semitism where students can't figure out whether it's them being uncomfortable or it's anti-Semitism and it doesn't matter whether they're uncomfortable or it truly is anti-Semitism it's important that they come use our task for

ce reach out to people get the support that they need because even if it's just making them uncomfortable we don't want any of that on our campus Eden thanks Kaye um and as know Kaylee for some of you who have already visited our activation Hub Kaylee is featured in the not on my campus video so thanks for using our hashtag um Eden as a parent as an educator as somebody who is a founder of a big online community of mothers and fathers and others who are concerned what is the community and the pa

rents you know what are you most worried about what are you most focused on right now uh thank you Shar there are uh several different areas that we're focused on both uh proactive and reactive Ive we're seeing a lot of parents with uh we know that deadlines are coming now children have to be making decisions for next year and people are looking for which campus is safe which campus is my child going to feel most comfortable at and then we're also seeing a lot of parents saying my child has expe

rience this what should I do who do I go to um those are the two most prevalent questions right now so I'm going to let Rabbi walpy answer them but I will tell you and I'll remind folks that you may have seen Ed and Jonathan online highlighting our new activation Hub which is at no tolerance for anti-semitism. adl.org that's no tolerance for anti-semitism. adl.org it has resources for parents students and alumni to engage we have a new section which is I know something that you've asked about ab

out Israel parthe week and we'll talk about that and we'll also talk about some other resources about how to make those decisions but Rabbi walie what what do you say to the parents that you're talking to the questions that I get most often apart from is my child safe at college and the answer to that generally is is my child physically safe for the most part yes there are very rare instances where that's not so but that has always been the case in almost any area not only at College where peopl

e gather but in terms of should we still be going to these colleges and is there psychological safety and can you learn in an atmosphere where you feel that you are part of a group that people detest despise disregard um that's a much tougher question and my own answer at this point which is subject to change is I don't want to abandon all the traditional institutions of Higher Learning in America wholesale I think institutions are really hard to build and they're very easy to destroy so I don't

say to a child you should to a parent you should never never send your kid to Harvard or to Penn or to Colombia but you have to be aware of what you will face and you have to be sure that as a student you're prepared to face that in one way or another and the only other thing that I would say is it is also time for the Jewish Community to start thinking about giving their resources and their time and their children to colleges that want them and that will Court them and so I would say I mean I

could name a couple of colleges here but I don't want to name this college and not that one but there are colleges that are actively trying to recruit Jews and we should not only go there but also it's time for us to consider as is happening creating new institutions because as you know a lot of what made these colleges great I'm not ashamed to say this was the Jewish community and the Jewish presence and we can make other colleges great too thank you so so let's get into it um Kaye you are uniq

uely positioned not talking about your own experience but you have a younger twin brother and sister who are seniors in high school right now yeah so would you change anything about your process if you were as you're advising them for what to look for yeah well well I can tell you exactly what I've told them and that's go to hillo go to kabad ask the people the questions that you have but don't be scared to go to college because college now is in my opinion still incredibly safe for Jewish stude

nts 99% of the time being Jewish on campus is awesome and I love wearing a necklace that shares my identity with everyone and I love going to basketball games where one of our Wom basketball players is an Israeli and everyone's waving Israeli flags and cheering in Hebrew and for most people on most campuses that's what they see and unless you actively getting involved in these hard conversations and fighting this fight every day like I encourage students to do you you can get away with not seein

g most of it on campus and so I don't want students to feel discouraged from going to school and I don't want them to feel discouraged going to their dream school because of what they're seeing so Eden is that surprising for you from what you're hearing from your community um it's somewhat surprising I think that from a parents perspective and this is something that when when parents come to us we actually reflect back on them what we see as parents parents and Jewish moms we want to step in in

front and protect our children but what we experience may not be what they're experiencing on campus so it is a little bit surprising um in a very positive way and I think that it it speaks to addressing some of the parental fears and really trusting our children children to let them lead if we remember back when we were in college most of us didn't have our moms fighting our battles for us and you know our recommendation is as much as we want to step in front I mean you look at Kaye and she doe

sn't need her mom in front of her so but I'm lucky to have her yeah that's and and your Bubby and my bubby right um so two resources that that we'll just preview we are about to put up on the activation Hub a resource for the questions to ask and where to get the information about college Climate about college policies and also some of you may have heard that ADL will be releasing in April at the first ever kind of report card to gauge what is happening on college campuses and how colleges are r

esponding so please stay tuned for that and Rabbi walpi you're being asked you're on a lot of campuses right you're advising people on and off what is your advice to do exactly what you said to make sure these campuses want our students there first of all there is an enormous failure of leadership on college campuses and and I want to explain where Mo sure you can you can applaud a lack of leadership go right ahead um but no I I understood but I want to explain to you part of the reason that tha

t's so out of my experience as a synagogue Rabbi you hire synagogue rabbis you know there are like five or six major personality traits you hire synagogue rabbis for likeability if they don't have likability you don't want them to be your Rabbi and then you ask them to take stands that are unlikable it's true and every Rabbi faces this you say Rabbi we like you so much but you shouldn't say this and if you do then don't like you so much and so it's a real conflict in personality most college pre

sidents reach the presidency for the same reason people like them and they don't then want to risk all that liability by taking stands that will make students and faculty and parents dislike them what they haven't realized until this point is they manage that by inaction as opposed to managing it by action But realize that leading a college campus right now is really difficult and we're asking people to make hard choices and they have to do it but we should at least know that to say we're going

to kick these kids off of Campus because of what they're doing is not easy for any college President so we have to basically keep the pressure on and let them know that it just won't fly to ignore what is happening on campuses which is exactly what has been happening if I can take one more second the reason that I I left the Harvard anti-Semitism committee and the reason that other people I won't speak for them have had similar reactions is not because there wasn't some willingness at Harvard to

like they don't want anti-Semitism there either but they and other places don't want to do the very difficult and decisive things that are required because one of the major emotional components of life that we are lacking uh in a lot of leadership positions is courage so Eden what do you need from what do parents need to hear from their students what do you need to hear from people like Rabbi walpi what resources do you need for parents to maybe take a deep breath to realize the kids are all ri

ght um and to and to guide your students I think that parents need to hear what's real from their kids parents don't want to feel like their students or their children are Sheltering them like we we want you to tell us what's going on um and tell it all so parents know if if you're sharing that you know most of the time you can go to a a game and people are wearing Israeli flags and parents hear that that's very comforting um what what Rabbi waly said is you know very much what we see it's it's

a lack of a lack of courage and to have leaders speak out like you do um is is again comforting to parents and I will say that the tools I know when I sat down with Jonathan and he started showing the report cards so people have the accuracy of what is going on on campus and I know it's both it's data driven subjective and objective as an educator that really appealed to me um and also your resources about apartheid week and what kids are currently going to currently experiencing and will be loo

king looking at so both the students input and the leadership and the tools that we get are really what parents need great uh Kaye what do you want parents to know what do you need from them yeah that's a big question because we do get a lot of parents that ask the task force that exactly and um the truth is there's a lot that we need that I can't sum it up by just telling you but the biggest overwhelming thing is we need people to tell us what support they can provide for us if you have funding

or you have a speaker or you have this type of resource no matter what it is you tell us and we'll put it on our list and the second we need you the second we you can be of support to us you'll be our first call we've seen that over and over again in the success that's had just by being able to take everything that we have and figure out when we need it and when we're going to Target certain things and so I think for all parents to reach out to their local Hillel or habad or whatever organizati

on is taking place on that campus that's really standing up for this movement and just saying we're here to support the kids with this and we'll know to come to you as soon as we need it Rabbi wal be advice for both audiences parents students um so I have two pieces of advice one is that it's much more helpful in general for people who are in trouble to offer them something than to say what can I do what can I do puts the burden on the other person saying can I do this is much better and then th

e other thing which we had talked about before is a couple weeks ago I was at the bbyo convention with all these teens and someone said to me like well gives you hope and I wanted to say all these teens but I was the third one on the panel so someone already said that and I had to come up with something else other than all these teens and I all of a sudden literally had like flashed in my mind a conversation that I could have with my great great great great grandfather and I could just imagine s

aying to him you know what we Jews are having a terrible time at Harvard and he would say there are Jews at Harvard and I would say say yes but but they're really attacking Israel and he would say there's an Israel and I would say yeah but but right now the the support of America for Israel is a little bit less than it was he was like and America supports it and if you think about that as much as we talk about the situation that we are in our ancestors would look at us and think we are the lucki

est Jewish community that has ever existed since the beginning of time and then I'm sure that my great great great great grandfather would say so use your voice and your resources to make sure that your grandchildren will be able to say the same thing so in our last minute or so Eden and Kate then Kaye what gives you hope and I'm going to give a little call to action so Eden you first what gives me hope as a parent um and I will share my my eldest is about to go to grad school and I'm in the sam

e boat as as so many of these parents trying to figure out where I'm comfortable with him going and the reality being he's an adult he's making his own decisions but what gives me hope is is students like Kaye and we're seeing it across we're seeing it across the country we're seeing uh young people stand up and speak articulately and bravely and proudly and the first time I connected with Kaye I was like okay I'm going to stop worrying about my little ones because they've got it and that's what

gives me hope Kaye I I'll keep it quick but the one big thing that gives me so much hope is seeing everybody expressing their Jewish Pride all over campus still there's no need to I mean there can be a need to hide it over sometimes but for the most part being able to express our Judaism to wear our Hebrew names around our neck and to sing Hebrew songs and be able to share an outside Shabbat where anybody can drive by and see it that that's what gives me hope so two things you all can do before

you leave uh if you go into your Nevers Now app during the break there is a tab that says surveys and there's a two-part survey about campus climate and what's important to you in improving it so we'd love for you to take it and then please visit the activation the Advocacy Center you can visit the new hub no tolerance for anti-semitism. adl.org to see all these resources thank you Kaye will be and Eden thank you you thank [Applause] you please welcome back Jonathan [Music] greenblat as we just

heard Jewish students are experiencing literally one of the most urgent challenges we face today so I want to thank my friend Rabbi David walpy Eden and all of our friends at Mothers Against campus anti-Semitism and Kaye for joining us to share more about the work they're doing every day in their communities offline and online to address these challenges so let's thank them one more time they also highlighted through their testimony yadl has doubled down on our work on campus in recent years pa

rticularly after 107 we've tracked more than 500 anti-semitic incidents in just the first three months after the massacre that's a 900% plus increase over the prior year for that same period of time just imagine if any other community in our country had an increase of 900% year over-year harassment and vandalism and violence but that's what we're facing along with these crazy lights but you know it takes a village to make life on campus safe for Jewish students and for all students that's why AD

L has established Partnerships with leading campus organizations like Hillel International AI Jewish on campus olami AEI the Jewish agency and other representatives and we've got folks from these organizations who are here with us this week both in our main conference and part of the campus track but I'm pleased to welcome today Rabbi AI Weinstein president of kabad on campus International up to the stage because we are also joined today by dozens of kabad on campus or emissaries and more than a

hundred students involved with them and they're here today because and I got to tell you I've been waiting several years to share this news it's taken a ton of work but together we are proud to announce that ADL and kabad on campus International are partnering and launching a joint initiative to create safer environments for Jewish students at universities and colleges across the country thank you Rabbi Weinstein [Music] thank you so much Jonathan good afternoon friends and to all the college s

tudents in the room I want to say one thing to you we love you we love all of you and it's really an honor to be here at the start of this new collaboration between kabad on campus International and the ADL as you all know over the last few months our students on campus have faced unprecedented anti-Semitism but we have noticed another remarkable change our kabat houses are flooded with students yearning to connect this is a testament to the power of the indomitable Jewish spirit which only gets

stronger in the face of challenge we saw this in the wake of October 7th where we am isal and our friends United to defeat a vicious enemy we see this every day with our dear soldiers who are bravely risking their lives to defend the people of Israel whose heart isn't warmed by seeing our soldiers singing and dancing on their way into battle with the world with the words on their [Music] lips and we see this in our students who in a hostile environment stand strong and proud of who they are unw

avering in their commitment to Judaism to Israel to the Jewish people and to the betterment of human kind the teaches that the Jewish people are like an olive when compressed the finest oil is extracted this oil refers to the inner resolve of the Jewish soul that emerges in times of challenge we have witnessed this firsthand on campus and we couldn't be prouder to support our amazing students for every hostile protest on campus there's a kabat house with a warm delicious homemade shabat meal rea

dy for every anti-semitic slur we respond with joyous prayer and song and love and for every poster that's ripped down we will respond with hundreds [Music] more working together with ADL will allow us to provide new resources that Empower and protect students we are extremely grateful to the ADL for working together to fight Darkness with light and to keep the Jewish Spirit strong on campus together kabat on campus and the ADL will protect students rights to live freely and safely inspiring the

m to to be proud Advocates while fulfilling our important mission of elevating this world and making it a Kinder place a better place and a Holier place I'm is Kai thank [Applause] [Music] you thank you for the honor of being able to address the anti-deformation league tonight it's been a great and necessary Organization for a long time and I consider it one of the perks of my job that I get to feel a small part of what people like you do from time to time obviously Israel is on our minds quite

a lot right now and almost equally disturbing the reaction from the not Bill Maher um hopefully we'll get him back but I'm going to say thank you Bill on my teleprompter um because he did Spotlight and hopefully you'll hear the concerns about anti-jewish and anti-israel tensions that are welling up on campus and the extreme fringes and next we're so proud to be joined by another hero of mine Dara horn yes the award-winning author of the book people love dead Jews which was Dara's third book to b

e honored with a national Jewish book award her influential essay in the Atlantic she's had many but you if you haven't read the February 15th you have to rush and do that after the conference required reading it's called why the most educated people in America fall for anti-semitic lies and it eloquently skewers the train wreck that was the Congressional hearing featuring the presidents of Harvard Penn and MIT discussing how they would respond to calls for the genocide of Jews as horn said in h

er peace The Fallout from the hearings brought down two of those University presidents and spawned a thousand op-eds about diversity free speech and criticism of Israel that have extravagantly missed the point Dara is again a voice that I turn to when I am feeling at Sea and it's such an honor to welcome her to this stage now [Applause] I'm really honored to be with all of you this afternoon and especially honored to be following my dear friend Rabbi David walpy with whom I share the dubious dis

tinction of having served on Harvard's anti-Semitism advisory committee Harvard did not take our advice so I'm especially honored that all of you actually want to listen to what we have to say so thank you for being here today while we were on that committee at Harvard Rabbi waly and I discovered that the problem at Harvard and elsewhere is not that Jewish students don't want to hear criticism of Israel instead Jewish students don't want people vandalizing their dorm rooms or urinating on the Hi

llel building they don't want people tearing down their muas or throwing eggs at their fraternity house they don't want their professors spouting anti-semitic lies they don't want to be kicked out of class for being Israeli they don't want people punching them in the face or beating them with a flag pole or threatening them with death for being Jewish at worldclass American universities all of this has happened and more as you heard I recently wrote an article for the Atlantic about all of this

as I put it this train wreck and I will tell you that as disturbing as it was to hear Jewish students horror stories what was actually more disturbing was to go back to those Jewish students with the Magazine's fact Checkers and to discover just how terrified they were of going public even anonymously and they were right to be terrified because there are real consequences but today I want to talk about the consequences of not speaking out about what we are all up against and what we are called u

pon to do in this moment the through line of anti-Semitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of life lies these lies range in scope from conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to the blood liable to the currently popular claims that Zionism is racism that Jews are settler colonialists and that Jewish civilization is somehow magically not indigenous to the land of Israel these lies are all part of the foundational big lie and that foundational big lie is that

anti-Semitism itself is a righteous Act of resistance against evil because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist this story that we are all trapped in this Doom scrolling through horror it is very very old but what is new is that all of you are are here you are all brave enough not to hide you all reject this delusional Nightmare and those of you from Beyond the Jewish Community are standing beside us to say that you reject the world's oldest form of hatred and that you stand wit

h the Jewish people in this moment I want to be clear with all of you that that is who we are the Jewish people when I speak on college campuses I am often asked are Jews a religion are Jews a race are Jews a nationality and the answer is that Jews predate all of those categories Jews predate the modern concept of race Jews predate the modern concept of nationality Jews predate the concept of religion every non-jewish society has tried to fit Jews into whatever identity boxes it knows best but J

ews predate the Box Jews are actually a type of group that was common in the ancient near East and very uncommon in the west today a joinable tribal group with a shared history Homeland and culture what I just said was like a paragraph in English but in Hebrew it is one word that's two letters long om we are am Israel the people of Israel the hatred that we are facing right now is very very old and its consistent through line is denial this is the denial of our reality in order to destroy us peo

ple have been trying this for thousands of years and it has yet to succeed I'm Dara hord author of a book called people love dead Jews and I still cannot believe that my publisher let me keep that title it's actually even worse than that I also have a spin-off podcast called adventures with dead Jews and the production team and I were always joking about how we wanted to make merch like coffee mugs tote bags beach towels as my sister Jordan who's here with us today pointed out no one's going to

take your seat at the pool if you have a people love dead Jew's beach towel if this title makes you uncomfortable what's inside the book is going to make you a lot more uncomfortable one thing that I have learned in my 20 years as a writer is that the uncomfortable moments are often where the story is my goal is to make you uncomfortable today I want to guide you through some of that discomfort which I am confident that every person in this room has been feeling and show you how facing that unco

mfortable reality can Empower all of us people love dead Jews is a book about the role that dead Jews play in a non-jewish society the premise is that non-jewish societies often only respect Jews when Jews are powerless whether that means politically impotent or dead in the book I talk about two different types of anti-Semitism that have plagued the Jews throughout history and I name them after the Jewish holidays that celebrate triumphs over them porum and kukah porum which of course we'll be c

elebrating soon is based on the biblical Book of Esther and it is the straightforward story of anti-Semitism there's a big bad guy who wants to kill all the Jews but in the Hanukah story no one ever says let's kill all the Jews doesn't come up the goal is still to destroy Jewish civilization but the way to do that is by making Jews not be Jewish the kekah story is about a helenistic Empire EMP that takes over ancient Judea and at first it's a soft persuasion where this Empire says we have this a

wesome Greek culture that's way better than your pathetic Jewish culture and at first the Jews go along with this and one thing they do is they build a gymnasium in Jerusalem for the Greek games they then had to recruit teenage Jewish boys to participate in these games now if you have ever been to an art museum perhaps you remember that Greek Athletics were played in the nude these teenage Jewish boys then had their circumcisions reversed so they could participate in these Greek games I don't ev

en want to know how that's possible medically but what's interesting here is that no one at that point in the history is making them do this that was simply what you need needed to do to be a person who mattered in that society and it was only 5 years later that the regime outlawed circumcision so that's a really really graphic example of Jewish self eraser but I'm going to give you an example that's a little closer to home last summer I was talking to a group of Jewish teenagers who had been on

a teen tour in Israel and a teenager from that group told me about the other Jewish kids who were on this tour with her she told me these are kids who don't eat breakfast without posting it on Tik Tok but we're on a six week trip to Israel and they are not posting that they're in Israel I'm going to give you another historical example of this self eraser that's going to also feel familiar in 1918 in what waiter became the so what was in the process of becoming the Soviet Union the biks were wag

ing Civil War and in what was the former Russian Empire and they want the 2 million Jews who live there to be on their side in the Civil War so they created what were called the Y sexia these were the Jewish sections of the Communist party and the purpose of these yav sexia were to spread Marxist propaganda among the Jewish masses and their slogan in 1918 was we are not anti-Semitic medic we are just [Applause] anti-zionists did you notice that this is in 1918 30 years before the creation of the

state of Israel it's probably not about Netanyahu so we're not anti-semitic we're just anti-zionist oh and by the way we're marxists so we're also anti-religious so we love Jews you just can't practice Judaism support support Zionism or study Hebrew but we love you we love Jews and in the process of not being anti-semitic and just being anti-zionist of course the Soviet Union managed to persecute imprison torture and murder tens of thousands of Jews and then later they exported these slogans to

their client states in the developing world and later to Progressive circles in the United States which is how it happened that three weeks ago anti-semitic cartoons directly from KGB propaganda were posted on Instagram by faculty at Harvard all of this is just this broader idea of the broader non-jewish Society editing how Jews are allowed to be Jewish by forcing Jews to fit into a box and to be just like everyone else or else I think this Dynamic exposes a massive flaw in the way we think abo

ut diversity often when we teach people not to be bigoted we encourage them to see minority groups as though those minority groups are just like everybody else and this is like you shouldn't hate this group of people because they're just like you and me they're just like everybody else the problem is that Jews spent 3,000 years not being like everybody else un coolness is judaism's brand and this goes back to the ancient near East when everyone else was worshiping a Marvel Cinematic Universe of

sexy deities and the Jews are like the losers in the school cafeteria sitting in the corner with their bossy and unsexy invisible God Jews have never been cool and that requirement that Jews have to be just like everybody else in order to not be hated is the Fatal flaw that exposes the limits of a society's diversity since I published this book I have been inundated with Jewish readers telling me their private horror stories their experiences with anti-Semitism usually these readers write someth

ing that says I never told anyone this before but if you're that person tell someone report it to the ADL thank you so they're sharing these stories with me they say I never told anyone this before but then they say thanks for writing your book and then sometimes they say can you help my other sister Ariel when I shared this with her told me darra you've become the anti-Semitism Lorax and the problem is I'm about as effective as the warx was but there's been another surprise for me from my the i

n terms of responses to my book which is the responses I have gotten from non-jewish readers I have discovered that there are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of Goodwill people who want to be in today's language good allies and really just don't know how I have even heard from readers who have said to me I'm a recovering anti-semite my non-jewish readers keep asking me how can I help this is an opportunity this was my first non-fiction book that I ever wrote after publishing five novels b

efore that and I was very dumb because I didn't realize that when you write a non-fiction book describing a problem people expect you to solve the problem at the end of the book my readers now of all different backgrounds have all asked me so what's your solution to this problem to which my completely tasteless reply is did you really want me to give you the final solution to the Jewish question because I am really not prepared to give that to you but I have now been asked this question over and

over including by the White House task force to combat anti-Semitism and I now have realized just how much opportunity we have my major recommendation to the White House task force on combating anti-Semitism was that Americans need to learn who Jews are to learn the content of Jewish civilization instead of erasing Jewish life there is no way to unlearn anti-Semitism with its denial of Jewish identity and reality there is no way to debunk these lies without actually investing in teaching people

the truth I think that everyone whether they are Jewish or not needs a basic Jewish Education it is essential to teach this to everyone not only to enhance the Jewish future but to enhance the American future and I'm going to give you one example that illustrates Ates this the foundation of Jewish civilization is Torah the idea of monotheism the belief in one God and the resistance to idolatry now I know half of you just tuned out completely because you think I'm talking about what our neighbor

s call religion but remember Jews predate the concept of religion what I am calling Torah is a radical idea about freedom and responsibility that applies to all of us I want okay I want you to consider closely for one moment the idea of resistance to idolatry today we think idolatry means praying to a statue that's not what idolatry is or ever was in the ancient near East societies had many gods and one of those Gods was the dictator in ancient Egypt the Pharaoh was one of the Gods so when the J

ews said that they do not bow to Idols what they actually meant was that they do not bow to tyrants people have often wondered how the Jews have survived for so many thousands of years and one answer is the refusal to bow to tyrants this moment that we are in is going to require us to stop bowing down before whatever is popular and to tell the truth to ourselves and to everyone else about who we are and about who we always have been which is Amel we are going to have to educate our friends and n

eighbors instead of being trapped in the boxes they have put us in we are going to have to explain to them that you cannot put anti-Semitism in the cute little religious bigotry box that box is not big enough for the lies that Jews are facing down today you cannot erase Jews from history classes and diversity trainings and then claim that you care about fighting anti-Semitism you cannot say that you are not anti-Semitic because you only want to eliminate half the world's Jews the non-jewish worl

d does not get to decide how Jews are allowed to exist that is the tyranny of the majority that is the tyranny of the majority and Jews do not bow to tyrants when so many people around us are lying about who we are and who we have always been telling the truth is going to require courage at one college where I spoke recently a Jewish student told me how one of her classmates was making anti-semitic comments in class this Jewish student told me that she decided not to say anything because she kne

w that if she did say something she would wind up ostracized on campus or cancelled or doxed online she was absolutely right but then she told me I wish I had said something I wish I had said something by not saying anything she seated that room to people who hate her she gave up one more place where she is allowed to exist as a Jew it's true that if she had spoken up she would have had to live with the consequences for the rest of her college career but while those people would have been in her

life for a few more months or a few more years the person that she is going to have to spend the rest of her life with is herself and now she will never know how many people were actually on her side I know this fear even though I am personally the anti-em ISM Lorax every time I write about this I am still absolutely terrified but I've also discovered a secret which is the astonishing empowerment that comes from saying what everyone else is afraid to say in that moment when you finally choose t

ruth and freedom and courage you don't just discover Your Own Strength you also discover the thousands of grateful people who it turns out were all waiting for you to say it who are all waiting for you to lead them I spoke earlier about Hanukah anti-Semitism but in a few weeks we're going to be celebrating porum and the porum story now feels in many ways eily familiar like many American Jews today day the Jews of the ancient Persian Empire were blessed with prosperity status and power one of the

m changed her name to something less Jewish sounding and then became the Empire's Queen but when the Persian Empire announced a decree calling for the genocide of Jews the story tells us that the Jews of Persia were just confused confounded they were probably asking themselves the way so many of us are asking ourselves today what the hell is happening here those people can't possibly mean what they're saying right sure it sounds bad to call for the genocide of Jews but maybe it depends on the co

ntext but Queen Esther had a cousin named Mori who didn't want to wait for the context he was a person who didn't like to bow to tyrants morai told Esther that she had to go had to go to the king to defend her people and at first in this story Queen Esther is like that college student who's afraid to say anything and rightly so if she goes to the king without being invited she could be killed and maybe even cancelled and doxed but morai tells her perhaps this is the reason that you have become Q

ueen so you can use your power in this moment Queen Esther gathers her courage goes to the king and to her surprise the king is on her side she only needed to R to the occasion we American Jews have reached our Queen Esther moment we no longer have the luxury of not rising to the occasion our enemies have already discovered that it only takes a few loud voices to pass a resolution at a school board meeting or shout someone down in a city council or slander someone online many many of you are in

positions of leadership and all of you have the power of your voices now is the time to spend your Social Capital each of us has our own spheres of influence our social and professional circles and of course also our local and state and federal Representatives their doors are open this is our Queen Esther moment it is time to go to the King on that horrific weekend in October all of us were Doom scrolling but many of us were Doom scrolling through the original Doom scroll the Torah and when we g

ot to the end of the Torah we Doom scrolled to the sequel the ha Tor where God God says to Joshua the famous Hebrew words kakat be strong and courageous today I offer you the words of the god of our ancestors which all of us need as we meet this moment kakat be strong and courageous kazak Vats be strong and courageous enough to know what is worth defending be strong and courageous enough that when you that you know when to enter that uncomfortable place be strong and courageous when you say what

no one else has the guts to say when you refuse to bow to tyrants be strong and courageous as you carry forth with you this ancient tradition that insists on the most uncomfortable truths and that carries with it the antidote to tyranny kazak veats because of your courage the people of Israel live I'm Israel [Applause] Kai please welcome president pres of the Moss group Richard [Music] Moss wow um going off script here but we're going to have another um panel on courageousness and good afternoo

n I'm honored on behalf of my family to present the ADL Daniel Pearl award to Nasir Yasin in a few moments Iman Abdullah and tley will formally introduce our Honore but before he does I'd like to make a few remarks about my friend Dany and the purpose of this award Danny and I attended the same elementary and middle schools we spent a lot of time together both in class and after school I still fondly remember all the goofy innocent kid things that we did like our messy wonky candl making project

and trust me you would not want to buy those candles Dany had a gentle manner he was super smart but was low-key about it he was funny and had an infectious laugh it seemed like he always had a smile on his face although Danny and I went to different high schools and universities I'm glad to say that we remain friends and kept TS on each other over the years especially through shared friends when Danny's journalism took him abroad after Danny's untimely and brutal death well murder my family es

tablished the award to honor the memory of my childhood friend more importantly we established the award to Foster encourage and recognize efforts to promote Mutual understanding appreciation and respect in Islamic and Jewish communities for each other's shared values and differences in keeping with dany's journalistic Mission we resolv to honor those individuals and organizations who find the courage to cross parochial and cultural divides to report on often misperceived and sometimes completel

y unknown communities in the effort to explain and demystify Jews to Muslims and vice versa for us my my family the ADL was the natural and only possible home for the award at its core the ADL stands for securing Justice and fair treatment for Jews and all citizens alike the ADL values human rights and dignity it uses truth to advance these values and to expose those bigots and Fanatics of all Stripes who oppose them promoting these values in pursuing truth was dany's life mission as a journalis

t he was driven to tell the stories of the neglected and the Misunderstood Danny did this so successfully and was so widely admired by his peers and readers because of his essential gentleness intelligence and curiosity and because of his love for others these qualities were in Danny's DNA shaped no doubt by his Jewish upbringing and they were present when I first met him in grade school these qualities made Dany what he was a humanist and now I'd like to call upon Imam Abdullah anley to present

the ADL Daniel Pearl [Applause] [Music] award good afternoon everyone salamu alaykum oh somebody's teaching Arabic here it is a distinct pleasure and honor to be here as the recipient of the Daniel Pearl award last year to introduce my now friend nus Yasin who will be receiving this award and uh I think the the word and the joke in the street is ADL gave the award to me last year so they can lower the bar and give it to give it to NAS daily but I think even if ADL didn't lower the bar Nas New Y

asin is welld deserving of this incredible award n Israeli Palestinian Israeli American recipient of the Daniel Pearl award Rose to Fame by doing the crazy insane task of making a thousand videos in 1,000 days now he is focused on building Nas company the community company they make video content craft incredible experiences and build powerful technology tools for Community Builders around the world by reaching over 300 million people every month he has transformed the way people connect both on

line and offline and if you haven't read his statement his hyphenated multiple identities as Israeli Arab Israeli Palestinian in response to the heinous barbaric October 7 act I highly encourage you to Google and read that statement it's an act of courage and act of moral courage enage for him to speak in that level of moral Clarity indeed he deserves those applauses and what he does by reaching out to 300 million people is quite remarkable when many of us including myself in such intellectually

lazy fashion complain about the harms and and damages of online social media this and that when we are complaining about the Darkness this incredibly young man and Brilliant mind he is lighting a candle by teaching us how to use these online tools social media tools by focusing and zooming onto differences around the world and turning these differences as sources of inspiration Enlightenment and learning Now ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming n Yin Nas daily to receive this [Appla

use] award [Music] much all right seven assassinations seven assassinations in the Middle East Seven leaders Prime Ministers and presidents were assassinated since 1948 did you know that my whole life I thought leaders were killed because they wanted War War because they wanted destruction because they wanted chaos oh I was so wrong I did more research and this is a true story and I found out that six out of the seven leaders were assassinated because they wanted peace six out of seven because t

hey wanted to end war three in Lebanon one in Egypt one in Jordan one in is Israel my whole life I thought peace coexistence and tolerance is the popular thing it's the right thing it's the easy thing but I was so wrong it's not popular to want peace in fact it's very risky in the Middle East the first person to die is the person that wants us Jews and Muslims to live together in peace and the first person to be glorified is the one that wants revenge Justice and War this is not just my opinion

this is data from the last 75 years when I discovered this honestly I was depressed what happened to coexistence and what do we do now that's why today I came all the way here here to New York not to address you the 3,000 Americans who are sitting in front of me today no you guys are great I came here to address the person watching this on the internet the person in their bed on YouTube late at night alone watching this in Sudan in Pakistan in Ukraine Russia Israel and Palestine I am dedicating

this speech to them I call them the peacemakers the peacemakers the ones who are fighting for tolerance for coexistence for longterm peace if my data is right and if my hunch is right and it is right then these peacemakers are now feeling a lot of stuff they're feeling sadness despair but most likely they are feeling lonely why wouldn't they be they're surrounded by War and people who are calling for death especially in the last five months Whenever there is conflict peace makers feel lonely I k

now this feeling because I felt it too I want to share with you my story how lonely I felt and I want to share with you what keeps me going I hope it helps my name is no Yasin I was born and raised in Israel as a Palestinian this is a background I do not recommend on my worst enemy Israeli citizen but Palestinian origin you are born a controversy part of me wishes I was born in Denmark instead with blonde hair and blue eyes like you and you but I wasn't I was born in Northern Israel with this fa

ce and ever since I was a kid in the village I was confronted since day one with conflict and hatred everyone around me who spoke Hebrew hated the Arabs everyone who spoke Arabic hated the Jews but that did not make sense I never believed in hate I always believed in peace tolerance and coexistence even as a child I think I got these crazy controversial ideas from my dad so thank you [Applause] Dad 15 years later I came to the United States with the same ideas and started Nas daily one of the la

rgest social media companies with tens of millions of followers and a strong team of a 100 I ran it for eight years under one Mission bring people together that's it after all Nas in the beautiful Arabic language means people everything we do touch or say must bring people together that is our only rule from content to education to technology we only bring people together and then October 7th happened the world changed everything became upside down bring people together get out of here it's time

to get Justice it's time to kill or be killed it's not the time for together it's time to destroy the other especially if they're Jewish or Palestinian so I did what we always do remind people that coexistence is the only solution my Jewish partner Alex and I created a video to promote Jewish and Muslim tolerance and coexistence to call for two states for two people for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians who are equally indigenous who are both here to stay but that message that exa

ct message is is not popular remember the number I shared above six assassinations it is not popular to call for peace whether you're a leader or a follower or a silly YouTuber especially at times of war and I felt I felt that on my own skin immediately after our message I lost a million doll deal I lost 10 friends and created 10 million haters that was the price I paid and I was willing to pay it and I'm not the only one I'm not the only one paying the price to the person watching this on the i

nternet through these cameras the peacemakers the ones who feel lonely today you can relate because you pay a price too every time you speak up someone tells you you to shut up every time you think we shouldn't fight someone tells you that we should that's why there are so few of us but something inside of you tells you to keep going something inside of me tells me to do that too what is that thing why do we keep going when this stuff is so hard why don't we just chill at a beach in Mexico and d

o makeup videos and drink cocktails well I think I found the answer I think I know why I've been studying the top six religions over the last few months and this is a true story and I think I found the answer in a religion I recently studied it's all the way in India in Hinduism hear me out in Hinduism they believe in the concept of Dharma they believe each one of us is born with a responsibility a duty an obligation to this world if you are alive on this planet you have a responsibility to do w

hat you are born to do no matter what my Dharma is to bring people together the doctor's Dharma is to heal people your Dharma The Peacemaker your Dharma is to bring peace and work towards peace this obligation is so important because you cannot avoid it no matter how hard it gets here is an example there was a Hindu priest sitting by the river he saw a scorpion drown a scorpion drown he picked it up he picked it up in order to save it but then it stung him so he dropped it back in the water the

Scorpion started drowning again so he picked it up again and it stung him again and again and he kept doing this again and again and again someone watching this from the sidelines said priest what the hell are you doing why do you keep saving the Scorpion when it will only sting you the priest smiled and said the Scorpion's Dharma is to sting that's what it's born to do but my tarma as a human is to save this is what I will continue to do do you get it it's beautiful as peac makers our Dharma is

to promote coexistence fight anti-Semitism fight hatred wherever we see it even if we get stung even if we get push back even if we lose a Million Dollar Deals we must continue our work because that is our Dharma that is our obligation in this world I'm not Hindu but I believe in Dharma and I know Daniel Pearl did that too the biggest example of this the guy whose name is on this award his obligation in this world was to bring people together it was to tell the story of the other in Far Away la

nds it was to unite and humanize he went where many of us us are scared to go to war zones unfortunately he paid the ultimate price for his work and I'm here today because of him to continue his Dharma and mine dear peacemakers we all pay a price for speaking up but if you notice we have no option but to speak up it doesn't mean we're not afraid I am super afraid to this very moment right now I am afraid every time I say the I word or the p word Israel or Palestine I get afraid courage does not

mean you're not scared or afraid courage means you are scared you know the price you're going to pay you know the con consequences of what you're going to do but you're willing to do it anyway you're willing to pay the price that's the definition of courage to the peacemakers whether in Ukraine and Russia Israel or Palestine remember that the world is divided into two two worlds shortterm World long-term world in the short term the world will make you pay a heavy price and feel lonely but in the

long term the world world will bend towards you it will bend towards coexistence I believe in that over the last five months we've noticed a sharp rise in hate across the aisle that five months that is the short term that is when we all feel lonely but I'm still so optimistic that things will get better coexistence is inevitable because I am Israeli and Palestinian I saw a glimpse of the future I saw coexistence and lived it I saw my Palestinian mother and father who hosted 30 Jewish people in

their home like they are one big family I saw my Jewish American friends in Ohio that Jacob's family who hosted me in their home 15 years ago and because of them I got into Harvard and came to America that's the future future I want to work towards in the long term we will wake up and thank the peacemakers the ones watching this on their phone right now late at night the ones feeling lonely today your work will pay off in the long term that coexistence dinner you hosted it will pay off that peac

e Camp you advocate for it will pay off that rational post you made on Twitter uh I'm not sure anyone saw that because it's Twitter so maybe that will not pay off but I am confident that in the long term our actions will pay off we will have a lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world we may feel lonely today but tomorrow we will not there are millions like us 3,000 in this room 30 million around the world this is not the time to take a break the time to act is now when you feel feel

the loneliest most scared most depressed when you feel like you're about to break down that's when you break through a moment of breakdown is an opportunity for a breakthrough so go on host another dinner give another speech make another friend post another tweet sorry I'm screaming for those that are still not convinced I want to leave you with one last story also a true story this time not from India but from Japan I went to Japan specifically to visit two cities the only two cities in the wo

rld where nuclear weapons were used hirosima and Nagasaki the US dropped two nuclear weapons in 1945 and just like that more than than 200,000 people vanished the two cities were wiped out when I landed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I immediately started crying the history is too heavy the suffering is too great that's why I expected to see a lot of angry Japanese people people angry at America angry at War people who want revenge and Justice it only makes sense if I was Japanese and I'm being very

honest I may feel angry too but here is what surprised me I went around Hiroshima and Nagasaki looking for people who hate America and I could not find any even nuclear attack survivors don't hate America they don't hate because according to them peace does not flow from hate and peace is what they want 77 years later today hirosima and Nagasaki are fully rebuilt they have skyscrapers public transportation world class infrastructure Japan is the third largest economy in the world with so many Am

erican businesses like Starbucks and McDonald's opening stores in hirosima I saw young kids learning English at school with no hate for America or the past and in those two cities there is a museum to remember the past you would expect the museum to be called the war museum the tragedy Museum the anger Museum but you know what they called it instead the Hiroshima Peace Museum we can't forget our past but we can choose not to continue the past the hate and the anger if you still doubt peacemakers

then look at the US and Japan look at Israel and Germany look at how far Nations can come in just one generation today we still don't have peace between Ukraine and Russia Israel and Palestine Jews and Muslims India and Pakistan today is the short run but remember if we continue our work the long run is different in the short run we lose we die we get assassinated we get lonely and afraid but in the long run I am convinced we win we can end conflicts we can end hate and we can bring peace peace

to this world after all this is what we are born to do thank you appreciate it I can tell by the fact that you're on your feet that you're feeling as I am which is full of gratitude so I just want to take a moment to have a gratitude exercise one of which is to be grateful to nir for his optimism his Dharma and his Clarion call to peacemakers I also still feel incredibly grateful for Dara horn for making us feel uncomfortable in this moment and helping us recognize this Queen Esther [Applause]

moment and I also want to be grateful for my friend Daniel Pearl and in a moment of personal privilege uh I was thanking Richard Moss backstage who was his childhood friend I knew Daniel in college we were uh at Stanford together and W I'm getting emotional um he was exactly that softspoken young man he trained me to be a journalist he trained me to be the news director at the radio station he loved music he was a wonderful spirit and I know that the legacy of that award is such an important par

t of his memory and it helps Lift us up every year here at never is now it helps shine a light on people like nir who we all find profoundly gratifying up next we'll all wipe away my tears and I want to introduce Mark Rowan Mark is the CEO of Apollo Global Management who was a leader in the early days after October 7th modeling a strong response to the concerns about anti-Semitism on campus at the University of Pennsylvania columnist and host of call me back podcast Dan cenor will be talking wit

h Mark about the challenges of public courage and how the response he helped spark at Penn has played out over time I think about that moment I'm sure we all do and about how on many campuses there was a shock of silence and that for some that silence keeps reverberating so it's important When leaders like Mark speak up so please welcome at this moment Mark Rowan and Dan [Applause] cenor good afternoon Mark good to be with you Dan as well um Mark Juju said that what was most noteworthy to many w

as your very public engagement on a whole range of ISS issues that are important to this community after October 7th but I do not want to start with October 7th I want to start with a few years before October 7th when you and I first got to know each other when you were working on a separate issue although it's connected which is the issue of anti-Semitism how one defines anti-Semitism the IH definition of anti-semitism and all your work on that front so let's start with that and then we're goin

g to get to where we are now but why were you involved with that issue um you know it seemed to me that having a definition of anti-Semitism was the thing we needed to do to start to combat anti-Semitism because I thought we were mostly in denial as a community about where anti-Semitism came from it was always clear to me that there was anti-Semitism on the right it was obvious it was violent it was also predictable and we had lots of allies what I struggled with and what I think our community s

truggled with was acknowledging the anti-Semitism on the left and part of it was the couching of anti-Semitism and anti-zionism and caught up in in particular the university culture and when I went to go visit politicians and when I went to go visit University administrators everyone kept saying well we have no standard well guess what we now have a standard and I worked hard for that standard and I I do think that is part of the basis uh that we need to combat on a go forward basis so fast forw

ard again before I I I I want to Anchor this pre October 7th because you were zering in a number of these issues before October 7th about six months ago so it was around uh yum kipur uh you had focused in on issues related to some very hostile to Israel hostile to the Jewish Community efforts going on on campuses and I want to talk about that experience but were you just identifying General um or I guess were you generally conc concerned about the stifling of viewpoint diversity generally at our

Elite cultural institutions which is an issue that affects Jews but it doesn't only affect Jews look I think we can say that we I'll talk about Penn specifically which I know we can say that we have an anti-Semitism problem and I do think there is anti-Semitism but I don't think that is the totality of the problem because if it is anti-Semitism we're fighting that battle mostly by ourselves we're 2% of the population I think we're actually fighting a slight different battle we're fighting a bat

tle against illiberalism we're fighting a battle against the lack of Merit we're fighting the battle against the oppressor versus oppressed powerful versus powerless and we find ourselves as Jews caught up in a bigger Trend that is not just about us when I see the kids out protesting on college campuses from The River To The Sea what river what sea who lives between the river and the Sea how did they get there no one knows and I actually find that as hopeful and optimistic I believe that what we

're watching in part not in total and I don't want to be polanish about this this is where the cool kids are there is a progressive narrative A Narrative of oppressor oppressed powerful that has taken over our college campuses it rejects truth it rejects facts it evaluates everything in the context of victimhood and so if we don't call the problem if we don't actually call out the problem by its name we're unlikely to correct it okay so then I want to fast forward to October 7th you had been a t

rustee of a university for a number of years you've been involved with you mentioned pen you've been involved with pen for a number of years but you you and your peer group had also been involved in a whole range of academic and and I'd say very elite cultural institutions October 7th I'm I'm sad to say shocked me not only because of the of the barbarism that we watched Unleashed on Israel on October 7th but it also shocked me because I actually believed that it was so ghoulish and and brutal an

d and grotesque that finally the world would see finally you know the the outrage would be directed at those massacring Jews and instead what we saw at many Elite institutions in the west is the outrage actually wasn't directed at those who unleashed the massacre on the Jews the outrage was directed at Jews for objecting to being massacred 100 100% that's that's exactly what we saw but if you had spent your entire life as a university administrator with a world view that was couched in this oppr

essor oppressed powerful ful powerless narrative how this you have one thing it's inconsistent with everything you've done for 20 years are you going to re-evaluate or are you going to double down and what we saw was a doubling down and I think it's it was so outrageous and it so shocked the community our community that we finally got action and it's not you know I think my Dharma unfortunately is to tell the truth for better or worse and n that's all I can say but I have to be honest like 27,00

0 University of Pennsylvania Alum stepped forward and said that they were not going to fund the university so long as the current president and current chair were in office we and by the way I went on TV and I actually publicly called for the resignation of the president and for the chair and everyone kept saying oh my God that took so courage I have to be honest with you telling the truth feels great and you should all try it it's really good and unlike nir who suffers from this I know we're in

the right place now I walk on the street and yes there are people who protest but the vast majority of people just hug me and say thank you and that's what you should all expect we are fighting a fight where we're telling the truth we're fighting against something that is absolutely and completely illogical which does not mean it will not persist for a period of time but we also have lots of allies that's what this pen process has taught me yes 27,000 Alum stood forward but the professors the d

epartment heads the administrators they step forward too they are living in a culture where the leadership of these universities has determined a dominant narrative the Administration has carried out that dominant narrative but faculty is not monolithic if I just take pen as an example if you were a Wharton Professor you're interested in Merit academic excellence and research if you are an engineering Professor Merit academic excellence and research if you're in the med school 70% of the profess

ors at Penn are actually doctors in the hospital academic Excellence Merit and research if you're in the School of Arts and Sciences liberal arts and not so much but my point of this is if you think back to what's happened on these campuses um Larry Summers was fired essentially for pissing off the faculty that taught a group of University administrators presidents you can't piss off your faculty guess what we now have two presidents who have been forced to resign primarily as a result of their

alumni it is up to all of us to decide that we want to tell the truth we want to get involved we want to use the positions that we have to make our voices heard and not call for special treatment to call for truth to call for fairness to call for no double standards to call back for the role of Merit and we have lots of allies we have to make them comfortable stepping forward and that's what we've been doing so the the I think there are a number of people who believe after that Congressional hea

ring that we all watched that many of us were shall we say underwhelmed by in some of the responses by various University presidents and then since then two University presidents have have stepped down and there's a sense like okay so there's change happening at the top we're winning do you think we're winning I I think it's totally uncertain I think we have a chance and I think we have a chance now to reverse the tide but it will take a long time we've watched this happen and I do mean we mysel

f included we watch this happen for 20 years it is not going to turn around in a year but we have a chance for it to start University presidents University administrators are on notice that alumni care about these issues and they are not where these universities are from a narrative point of view okay but you but it does require moving down into the organization it's not just about the senior levels I mean there's there are cultural issues that go deep in the bureaucracies and the various levels

of Academia in these institutions I just I that's my point I just don't think you I I have a slightly different observation all right I believe that most of these in the in Academia I believe most people are cowards they want their job they want their research dollars they want their tenure track and if the dominant narrative from the top changes there will always be hardcore people who disagree but I think it's okay for everyone not to agree it's okay to have Viewpoint diversity it's okay to h

ave this fight on campus what's not okay is to have 99% in One Direction you come as a Jewish student you come as a merit oriented student to these campuses and if 99% of the faculty believes one thing and does not support you it's hard to have right view points diversity it's hard to feel comfortable saying what you will but we are in a we're not going to get everyone to agree nor do I think we should this is not about the elimination of opposing viewpoints this is about rebalancing what has be

come an extreme Viewpoint since October 7th and I'm sure you've experienced this I know I I'm sure most people in this room have you find yourself in a bunch of new WhatsApp groups everyone's in these WhatsApp groups right and the WhatsApp group groups have kind of devolved into people just circulating in the WhatsApp group the latest outrage of the day can you believe what the New York Times said about this can you believe what happened at MIT last week can you believe the protest I call it the

can you believe WhatsApp groups everyone has them right raise your hand if you right raise your hand come clean there we go see you see that's right my name's Dan I'm in a can you believe WhatsApp group this is like you've got a so if if you could access every one of those can you believe WhatsApp groups and tell these people instead of just being outraged about the latest annoying article or incident that you read about you would tell them to do what I tell them to get involved I mean we we do

n't yet understand our power as a community we've been in denial particularly with the anti-Semitism of the left the anti-Semitism we see on our college campuses we have been reluctant to call it out we have yet to even turn our attention to fighting it imagine if we turned our attention to fighting it I was at a dinner last night and I was reminded of the the boards of the cultural institutions and some of our major cities it's all us well that's how we decided to spend our time over the past 2

0 years it's time for us to spend our time on other things why would we support institutions that don't fundamentally have a Viewpoint that is consistent with our own Viewpoint why would we be silent there is so much for this community to do we have tolerated anti-Semitism like I think of Apollo we would not hire someone who was anti-black anti-gay anti-woman anti- anything why would we hire someone who's anti-semitic now multiply that by by every Law Firm every consulting firm every Bank every

responsible institution who wants to hire racist we have not as a community made it expensive to be an anti-semite I think we need to make it expensive to be an anti-semite and I don't mean in terms of money we have tolerated it we don't want to offend right we don't want to make a wave okay those days are over so everyone in their outrage of the day WhatsApp Group whatever activity you're involved in whatever board you're on whatever School District you're involved in just don't take it anymore

have your say we are really powerful as a community we have lots of allies we have yet to get started and I'm fundamentally like this year incredibly optimistic okay everyone is off the sidelines October 7th if nothing else it's a awoken the community everyone wants to do something now let's channel the energy productively two recent essays one in the Atlantic by Franklin 4 that just came out called the end of a Jewish Golden Age John portz had an excellent essay in commentary called they're co

ming after us both these essays and others like it Dar had a fantastic piece in the Atlantic a month ago really chronicling how we got here but it's this end this notion of the end of a Jewish golden age that we in America have lived a golden flourishing Charmed Life and what we've witnessed in the last four to five months is a book end the other end of the book end that's over Jews are not going to have the Charmed Life that we have had in America I just think this was the wakeup call this is n

ot like I'll give you a pen I don't know exactly where it started but um from the time I was looking at it uh Penn at one point was between 25 and 30% Jewish now the best guess is it is sub 10% did we get stupider I don't think we did so we've been on this slippery slope for a long time and we've done it in the name of diversity in the name of other people having opportunity who doesn't want other people to have opportunity of course we do but what we've allowed to happen is actually racism in R

everse we've allowed the judging of groups and so October 7th just made it visible to everyone where we stood I think this was evident beforehand I think this has been a slippery slope and I think there's no more sitting on the sidelines we're all on notice this is our time okay Mark I want to talk about how you organize your life okay you're not you're on the couch here all right so not I'll have to figuratively and literally right I want to I want to organize I want to talk about how you mark

Rowan organize your life because you are running one of of the largest Asset Management firms in the world something something like $650 billion uh in assets with thousands of employees with offices all over the world you it's pretty demanding job you have 200 plus Partners not to mention all the employees then side Hobbies you own restaurants I have a few things going on you got stuff going on and therefore whenever someone has a few things going on they have a lot of constituencies right they

have a lot of different people and points of view that they have to manage and be responsive to I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this question but I'm as we're talking I'm just genuinely curious when you spoke up like you did in the fall and then especially after October 7th and you went on television to make the statement that you did and you catalyzed this effort that had extraordinary results in any of these range of constituencies because I think there's a lot of people in this audie

nce and who are watching this who aspire to be Mark Rowan who aspire to have the kind of career trajectory that you have had and they worry like am I sticking my neck out am I are people going to tell me hey just get back in your corner hey I'm going to jump ahead because I I'm watching our clock and I know they're going to yell at us or CL whatever we can you know look uh this is all good I have to be honest with you I had no idea that this was going to be positive this could have gone in any d

irection from an Apollo employee point of you agree with me don't agree with me I have to say they are proud that I took the stand up did I have a number of Apollo Partners here today and not everyone agrees with everything I say but by the way that's true everywhere the notion that we took a moral stand and stood up and just told the truth really resonated I have lots of us Pension funds lots of teachers Pension funds lots of government employee Pension funds we think of those entities as being

associated with the progressive left the notion that we took a moral stand has really resonated with these investors our largest investors are in the Middle East I think of likess here the friends I have in the Middle East you know you think of the risk to these kingdoms the risk is extremism the risk is political Islam there's no love lost they know what it's like to live in the neighborhood I'll be candid there's been no blowback from doing this it's been fine and I really as I I'll come back

to what I said like telling the truth is actually quite fun you don't have you don't have to be North of 60 to do it either because you just just assume I'm old so that's it but no it actually has G it's liberating it's very it's very liberating to do we're not saying anything illogical we're interested in Merit we're interested in truth we're interested in facts we're not interested in a dialogue that views actions not in the context of right and wrong not in the context of moral or immoral bu

t in the context of whether it's good for some group or the other group that's not the America we lived in the people we're fighting they're the same people who are fighting 1619 vers 1776 they're fighting against having tests in schools they're fighting against Merit they're fighting against anything that approaches facts or that would interfere with their narrative The Narrative at these institutions exists at the top why don't we find why don't we ask who are the 20 worst or which are the 20

worst universities which are the 20 worst Civic organizations which are the 20 worst philanthropies which students participated and led SJP LED in marches calling for the destruction of the Jewish people there has been no price for being an anti-semite there should be a price for being an anti-semite the way there is a price for being racist okay so I just want to wrap in saying I if there are many things you could have taken away from this brief conversation but I hope two will be everybody has

busy lives Mark certainly has a very busy life and has managed to fit in some extraordinary and high impact activism and Leadership into his life on behal of this cause at a very important time and secondly his experience I think is a case study in cause and effect that you can do something and stuff will happen it won't always happen but it will happen and it will be and it will be high impact and it will have cascading effects and um it's a case study that we should all aspire to and it feels

great and it feels great thanks thank you Mark Rowan thank you to Mark and Dan and I know you're sick of me I'm sick of me this is the last you'll see of me today but I am going to wrap up um with our last speaker and I hope you'll sit tight uh we have one final person today you've seen him before um and he's wonderful David walpi uh Juju and I had to do rock paper scissors to see who got to introduce him so we could thank him for all that Rabbi wpe has done not just over his long career but es

pecially in the last four months we are both among his biggest fans and we encourage you all to sign up to receive his weekly words of wisdom uh called Impressions I look forward to that ADL email every Thursday and it really is um food for spirituality and fortitude Rabbi walpy will take us over the Finish Line in just a moment and he's just going to speak for about three minutes but first I know that during day one ADL and doz and dozens of renowned experts and inspirational leaders have given

you a lot to think about and I want to thank everyone who in joined us in person and online today give yourselves Applause I'm applauding you um just a reminder that by being here you have truly shown that you are a leader in fighting anti-Semitism and hate so I'm going to nudge you just one last time to share with your network on social media or via an email or text group of yours even just one idea or takeaway from the things that you're learning and never is now you will be showing leadershi

p just by saying I was here and this matters to me and you know what why don't we all take action right now I'm putting you on the spot I'm not asking you to post or anything from the conference but just to text our legislators to Signal our support for what we talked about earlier with Deborah lipat the national strategy to counter anti-Semitism this very simple act can be one more way that we're making a difference and never is now today I know most of you have been very good about putting awa

y your phone and focusing on the speakers but now let's just do the opposite for one second please take out your phone and text plan that's p n to this number 725 72 by doing that you are going to join the ADL in calling on your members of Congress to fully implement the national strategy counter anti-Semitism I will say it one more time so we're a little sleepy plan you're going to text plan p l an to this number 72 572 you will get a link so you can fill it out and you can be connected directl

y to your Congress people it takes literally just a minute I'm going to pause briefly so you can act this is like silent prayer I also want to say uh unfortunately we just had a technical glitch today so you didn't hear from Bill Maher uh or secretary Hillary Clinton both of them will be uh aired tomorrow I hope some of you are coming back all of you are coming back I will be back in a new outfit and fortified but it's an amazing day tomorrow this the lineup from speakers are just extraordinary

and make sure um you check that out in summer surprises after we hear from Rabbi walpy it's not to check too late to check in at the Advocacy Center to find more ways to connect with your members of Congress and to explore the Israeli art installation and ADL history display and as I mentioned tomorrow morning there is there are breakout sessions at 8:30 a.m. there is coffee and delicious breakfast in our main hall starting at 7:30 a.m. so you can see each other in shoza network um and to get yo

u started and you certainly won't want to miss the closing main stage session at 11:30 it has more inspiring leaders in the fight against anti- anti-Semitism and hate Juju and I look forward to seeing you all then thank you and now drum roll Rabbi David wpy thank [Music] you I want to make one quick plea and tell you one story The Plea is I was the rabbi of a politically divided congregation and it was not easy and the way we stayed together was by recognizing that we had certain crucial interes

ts in common and that we were all Jews I understand that in a big organization like the ADL there are going to be political differences don't lose the narrative Stay Together remember that fighting anti-Semitism is the job of every Jew and we cannot afford to lose one of you and now I want to close with the story that I've told many times after October 7th and probably will tell many times more as many of you know the Jewish tradition does not talk a lot about the afterlife but we do have a word

for hell and it is geham what you may not know is that geham is a real place it is the valley of hom outside the walls of Jerusalem where in ancient times Canaanites would sacrifice children and that was so awful to the ancient Israelites that they called it geham was hell about 50 or 60 years ago some archaeologists were Excavating in geham and there they found the oldest bit of Torah that exists in the world more than 5 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls from 586 BCE from the destruction o

f the first temple to rolled up silver amulets that you can still see in the Israel Museum in Israel when they finally succeeded in unrolling the amulets there was the oldest bit of Torah that we still have and it read shom may God bless you and keep you may God's countenance shine upon you and be gracious to you may God be with you and give you peace in other words my friends the oldest bit of Torah that we have in the world is a blessing of peace that was snatched from hell that is what we hav

e done for thousands of years may we and Israel continue to do so forever more thank [Applause] [Music] you