Ari Shafir & Howie Mandel argue about antisemitism | Rabbi Shais Taub reacts

It's statistically irrelevant. I owe all over the country I have never seen any anti-Semitism. So that's Jewish comedian Ari Shaffir giving pushback against another Jewish comedian Howie Mandel who asked him about the uptick in anti-Semitism. Ari says he doesn't see it. I'm going to show you the full clip and afterwards I'm going to tell you what might shock you is that I think Ari, although he's a contrarian, has a very very important point. They both have points, but I want to tell you why Ari's point is one that we need to take seriously. Let's watch the whole clip. It's horrible. It's not horrible. It doesn't happen. It's statistically irrelevant. It should be illegal it is too much. None of it's really happening. Are you over the country I've seen I've seen no actual anti-Semitism. Have you? You look Jewish. You walked around people yell Jew at you or something? I don't go out. Yeah, good point. I don't go out. I yelled Jew at him this morning. Yeah. No, no, no, no, I think it's real. No, no, no. we got to take it seriously. I think what you're saying is wrong. No, it's it's being on the news it's Are you familiar with the What's that app? app that shows you all the robberies in your neighborhood? Citizen. Citizen app. Yeah. So before this app everyone was having a great time in the neighborhood and then suddenly all these housewives like there's a robbery every 20 minutes. I can't believe everything going on. They're just aware of it suddenly. The small percentages it's a a little bit in colleges you don't go to. It's not It's not there. It's statistically irrelevant. I owe all over the country I have never seen any anti-Semitism. Are you on a college campus? No, I'm not. I went over to USC today. I'm not on a college campus. Nobody I know is. Still you saw one. They're just dumb. No, you're wrong. Oh, you're really wrong. You're really wrong. Bro, if you shut the laptop you'll never see it. You'll never know it exists. Oh, I believe that you can hide from it. I believe that you can be out in the world never seeing a single thing. It's just a citizen app. It's just another citizen app thing. I want to explain where I think they're both making sense, but like I said, I think Ari's point is one that we need to actually highlight because it's counterintuitive and I think it's really essential for our day and age. Okay. So first of all, Howie's point, as far as an uptick in anti-Semitism, I'm a content creator. I'm on YouTube where where where you're watching me now as well as many other platforms and I definitely see it. On the other hand, exactly like Ari's saying, where am I seeing it? Online. That's why I say they both have a point. In other words, is there an uptick in anti-Semitism? Yeah, but first of all, how much of it is bots and trolls? How much of it is 15-year-olds? Now, that doesn't make it unimportant. It doesn't make it insignificant. I think Ari's wrong to speak so dismissively of it because obviously we know that media is powerful, that the images and the ideas that are out there in the so-called collective consciousness does shape the way that ultimately people behave in real life. So I don't think it's fair to call it insignificant, but I think it's an incredibly important distinction that Ari is making. I also think uh for whatever it's worth that this is to some extent a generational difference. What do I mean by that? Ari is 50, which is exactly this the same age as I am. I'm turning 50 next month. So we are squarely in the middle of Generation X. We're 70s babies. Howie is a baby boomer. Okay. And I think that that's a big difference between boomers and Generation X and if you talk about millennials and Gen Z, I think it's even more so that baby boomers tend to conflate online reality with real reality. They're not used to drawing that distinction, putting up that wall, understanding how much of what goes on online is just totally not anyone's real life, right? How much of the stuff that's out there really is misinformation, disinformation. Uh that's why unfortunately there's a huge problem with baby boomers being very gullible when it comes to like let's say Facebook is notorious for this where they can't distinguish between something that is satire, farce, disinformation and something that's legitimate. And I'm not saying that that's true for all boomers. I'm saying that there's a high incidence of that among that demographic which sort of underlines a general, let's say, unfamiliarity with technology and a relative inability to distinguish between what's going on behind the keyboard and what's going on in people's real lives. Whereas Ari is saying, "Hey, this is another citizen app. This is just a bunch of stuff that you're not going to see if you get out from behind the laptop." And he's making a very strong case. He's saying, "Look, I'm traveling comedy club circuit. I'm on the road. I'm dealing with real people." Okay. So here's what I want to say about Ari's take that I think is really really super important and that is that it is so essential that we get out and we interact with human beings. Personally, I've experienced anti-Semitism in real life. Um but I would say probably a handful of times. Now, how many times did somebody dislike me for being Jewish and I didn't know it because they didn't say it explicitly? I don't know. I have no way of estimating. I can't read minds. I can't guess. But by the same token, how many times was somebody nice to me because they like Jews. So I would assume that if there's this unspoken uh feelings that they it sort of it's a wash. It evens out. But I'm speaking about explicitly where somebody says a real hateful slur or you know, they make it clear that what they're what their feelings are about Jews. I I would say that's happened to me where it's clear and undeniable less than 10 times in my life. Now, online? I mean, it it's ridiculous. If you're a Jew and you're visible and you're out on any of these platforms creating content, yeah, it's just it's constant. But here's the thing. When I interact with human beings, my track record, my experience is that 99.9% of interactions with real life interactions with human beings of all races, ages, religions, nationalities are positive interactions. So I think that's just an important thing to remember in general whether we're talking about anti-Semitism or any other type of hateful ideology that the internet is an easy place for that stuff to fester. You know, people like to talk big when they don't have the risk of actual real life ramifications when they're hiding behind an avatar, behind a username. So yeah, a lot of that garbage comes out online, but I'm saying when you deal with people in real life, the vast vast vast majority of human beings want to get along with each other. And in fact, I'll tell you my experiences have been even with people who I know have ideological differences with me, um but on a one-to-one basis, they want the interaction to be pleasant. And I think that if you're experiencing a lot of stress from hate, whether it's anti-Semitism or any other type of remedy really is like Ari was saying, he's actually 100% right about this, get out from behind the keyboard. Like what do they say? Go touch grass, right? Go in to go interact with some real life people, have some real life experiences. You're going to see that the vast majority of human interactions in this world are positive. And I think that's also a very important thing because from a Jewish perspective, when I when I say Jewish perspective, I mean a true Torah perspective, our view of humanity is eminently hopeful. We believe that ultimately there will be safety and peace and prosperity and security for all nations. That's what our prophets foretold. So the Messianic era that the Jewish prophets spoke about, that the Jewish people have believed in for thousands of years, it's not just a Jewish heyday. It's a heyday for the entire world and it comes in a in an era of peace for the entire world. So we believe this that there is a positive resolution, that wars do come to an end, that human conflict comes to an end, that it's not only attainable, that is the end of the story. The end of history isn't some cataclysm. It's not some disaster. Jewish belief teaches us we are heading to an era of peace here in this world. Not just an afterlife, a paradise in heaven, but peace in this world. And we can already see that that's potentially there because when you interact with the vast majority of people in this day and age, they want to get along. They want to have a pleasant interaction. So yeah, get out from behind that keyboard, go interact with another human being.