CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #194 Dan Rosen & Aaron Herman - Combating Antisemitism

The world has already changed in the past tense and the conversation is happening on social media. And if we want to have a voice to affect that conversation, it's on social media. In the past, someone could go to the public square and say rah rah rah or something and they can have their voice heard. Young people especially, not just young people, but especially young people. They're getting their information from social media. And if we don't have a voice there, then we're leaving that void open to others. We need to work together. We need to work in a coordinated way. We need to amplify our voices. And by doing that we can have a real impact on this generation on the next generation and on the next generation. Taking the Khazak model of spreading the light and love of Judaism Yiddish kite the importance of that. If we can take that and and and empower those people to then fight back and to also be empowered themselves say I'm doing something that's [Music] something and welcome to Torah Talks Kazak's program with special guests. We have with us our dear friends Dan Rosen and Aaron Herman. Welcome. So, so good to see you once again at the Kazak headquarters and we're going to be speaking about a topic that I don't think Kazak Torah talks have ever had yet and that is combating anti-semitism anti-semitism as we all know it's unfortunately wearing its ugly head and uh it's been growing and growing uh especially after massacre in October 7th anti-semitism is is is it's terrible we're going to be discussing it and what can be done about it and but before we do that topic a little background from Dan Rosen. We'll start with All right. Well, first of all, I want to thank you, Rabbi, for for for having us and also being one of the first people to recognize how important the mission that we're on uh is. And so, you're a visionary for that. And we really appreciate it. I appreciate it as well. And uh very important, 100%. Why not? Thank you. So, a little bit about me. Basically, I'll start back my college days. I went to NYU between 1998 and 2002. And during that time I was very involved with um promoting Israel and combating anti-semitism at that time. During that time was the second inifat as some of you might remember and all kinds of terrorism and things of that nature. And we were very involved and we did protests and rallies and all kinds of um letterw writing campaigns and we were very effective at that time. So much so that we had the uh the head of Hill International uh invited us to to to to to speak to them to ask you know what are you guys doing differently because some of the other campuses sort of uh you know weren't weren't responding in the same way. So we were effective and then basically after uh you know I graduated in 2002 I went into the private sector and um I moved on with my life and um up until recently up until October 7th and it's interesting because uh many of the people we were engaged against never stopped act being active and they've been working from that time until now and we saw after October 7th how organized they were how effective they were both online and offline and I sort of got reccalibrated and decided I had to jump back into the fight. And so that's what we've been doing since October 7th. Got back into it. So that's a little bit background on Amazing. And Aaron, so um you know, social media is a complicated place. I was actually an early adopter to social media. Uh I started actually in like 2000 uh when it was the birth of like the dot age and I I on college I helped bring Hill to Bingington University. I was the the PR director for Hilll and just learned learned how to tell like you know the importance of stories like how do how can you tell uh stories in an effective way for for organizational life and and uh I've had the pleasure to uh work in in large organizations uh like GFNA and APAC um and birth user foundation and uh understanding how organizations work is really important and then also the art of storytelling and being able to bring things to the forefront and October 7th um change all of our lives in so many different ways. uh like you we were in shul when we were just hearing maybe dips and jabs and um something happened you know something happened to all of us you know we call like a great recalibration and um for me you know because I' I've been involved in the Jewish communal world for a number of years I understood the important of activism and also the importance of of of digital media and and engagement and uh it it it became clear to me that we were outgunned and being able to activate our communities was so important. And uh you know, lucky enough, my good friend Dan Rosen uh who is an incredible leader and friend um he called me on I think it was October 9th or 10th uh with the big idea, right? and him and his wife Laya Laya Rosen had a simplistic but effective idea social media warriors right now for me when I heard that it wasn't anything like new right but I knew that something had to be done and so began Dan and I's journey to see what we can do in in in explaining how can we activate communities because communities sometimes get lost in in the fray Like you have amazing organizations like the ADL's of the world, AGC's of the world, they do incredible work. But in the community world, on your world, the Kazak world, you do incredible work. Now, if we can empower people like yourself and your community to to harness that that that power, we can do something incredible. And that's that's been our journey uh thus far. And I again, thank you. like when we first, you know, we sat down in the conference room and I said, "Damn, you have to we have to be the rabbi. I have to introduce you to the rabbi." Right? Because there are few people that I've come ac across in different different uh experiences that you get it once you hear it. Right? And he said, "I'm in." Right? And Dan likes to say, say it, I'm all in. I'm all we like to hear. So, so, so what I like about Dan and Aaron is that they're doers. They're making things happen. And uh it's very important in today's day and age. You have so many people just sitting back and just saying whatever it's it's not mine, it's not this. Every single person could do something. There's a famous quote, no one could do everything, but everybody could do something. And that's the concept of emissary which you've you founded and uh I want you to tell me more about it and why it's uh why it's very much needed. Okay. So sometimes when we think about uh the world we talk about in terms of the world is changing and I would uh submit to you all that you know the world has already changed in the past tense and the conversation as it's defined today is happening on social media and if we want to have a voice to affect that conversation if we want to have input where people are being informed it's on social media. In the past, someone could go to the public square and say rah rah rah or something and they can have their voice heard. Well, young people especially, not just young people, but especially young people that they're getting their their information from social media. And if we don't have a voice there, then we're leaving that void open to others. And so what we're trying to accomplish is to make people understand that we need to work together. We need to work in a coordinated way. We need to amplify our voices. And by doing that, we can have a real impact on this generation, on the next generation, and on the next generation. 100%. And and I think that's a one really important part of all this. It's about empowerment, right? And you can't take lightly of what one person can do, even one, right? So, you have a network. You know, your organization has a network. And we just signed up, was it 350 or four people right here in the office. And in the conversation Dan was having with one of your staff members, they said they had like a thousand people on WhatsApp. A thousand. Right now, picture this. We get all these what we call communities. And how we define communities is like houses of worship and schools in camps, influencers, um individuals, organizations. Um if we can take in schools uh all these like communities and put them on one network the power of that. Um I I last week I saw uh the film October 8th um very powerful film and it was explaining how this all how how our enemies we call them our enemies like how they how they operate. they they create this network, right? It's sort of like this incredible network that they've built for 25 years, right? We understand as Jews, we understand networks. We understand communities, right? But we didn't understand the power of doing that in a digital way on uh on a piece of technology. And that's what we're that's what we're beginning to do now. Taking the Khazak model of of spreading the light and love of Judaism, Yiddish kite, and the importance of that. And if we can take that and and and empower those people to then fight back and to also be empowered themselves say I'm doing something that's something right it's a it's a very it's a very powerful moment I always speak about the importance of accumulation uh one plus one plus one it adds up and it adds up and adds up and uh that's the importance of everyone getting involved. Now I I I already know what some people are thinking when they're listening to this. Uh social media, we don't have it. Facebook, Twitter, all this stuff. Uh what is it? How does it work? On a personal level, I don't have it as well, but I want everyone to understand the importance of getting involved. You might not have it, but others have it. And if they have it for business meeting, for whatever reason, they should use it for good things. And then besides for that, there's sending out emails. There's making phone calls uh to your local elected officials. uh all the major organizations in Kali all the raanu all the everyone say the importance of getting involved so so I want to say one thing yes sure and it's really important is that for for emissary you actually don't need to have social media of course it's very helpful but one of the great things so the founders of of emissary are uh David Crystal and David Burton and is a lead emissary named Ken Greer and this technology was built for people who wanted to again going back to empower empowerment, right? To be able to go on a piece of technology and let's say they don't have social media, learn, right? Be able to like information to like so if they let's say they don't have social media like learn what's out there so they can they can they can do and Daniel will go through the I was going to ask you what could people specifically do to fight against anti-semitism. So before this uh taping I showed you the different things you can do and there are three parts to emissary which we'll maybe get into now. Right. So, Emissary, it offers a suite of three different things. Uh, the first is called Ask Emissary. It's an AI chat which was actually taught specifically to combat anti-semitism unlike chat GBT or Claude where you don't know what the inputs were. The inputs here were specifically designed to combat anti-semitism. So, you don't need to be on social media to even use this. And we and we and we and we saw it before where you can ask it any question something you might have heard in the world. You know, you could you maybe heard it from a professor. You saw something on television. You saw something on social media that you didn't necessarily agree with, but you also didn't feel strong about the answer. You type it in. An example could be uh do Jewish people control the media? Something like that. Something like, you know, something you know isn't true, but like how do you respond? You type it in and it spits out a beautiful answer which you can then use with your with students, uh with your friends, with your colleagues, even at the dinner table. That's something that you in the workplace in the workplace I have a lot of people telling me oh my workplace they have this discussion about Israel about this about that. I want to show you a personal story how I use this. Okay. So I live in Westchester and my son who's 12 who I love with all my heart is wearing his yam all the time and he was with my parents at this place called Rock and Jump in Westchester and uh he was with with my with my parents. He got separated. He was doing whatever and he got surrounded by these high school kids, right? And I said, "Are you pro Palestine or are you pro- Israel?" Right? And he did the right thing and he walked away. But it's my 12-year-old, right? I sheltered him my entire life when he went to day school, Jewish camp. And as he's walking away, it went Zionist, Zionist, Zionist. My 12-year-old, right? He came home and he was shook, right? And he told me what happened. and I kind of knew what to say, right? Um, but I took out my my emissary app and I plugged into the Ask Emissary and I and I gave a situation and it gave me a bunch of things and I went a little deeper with it and it very powerful and you're not going to get this from a chat GPT or a Claude which is another AI. You know what it said? said, "Tell your son to keep on wearing his yarmaka. Be a proud Jew." And it was just like right now that's that's what separates this from every other tool out there. And we need new tools, right? It understands it was trained to to I had a personal incident as well. I'm sure uh people I I gave this drussia over on Tishaba, I believe it was. Yeah. And basically what happened was there was a friend of mine that had a friend coming in from Israel. He does real estate over there. He needed a shaw to use to uh you know make a small presentation to some of his potential buyers. They asked if they could use my shaw in my place. I'm always looking to make things happen and I'm very active place. I said yeah why not? So he has a date. he has a, you know, a time and the next thing you know, this uh information went to the wrong side and they went out and they put up a flyer protest rally against the sale of stolen land and uh all of a sudden I get phone calls from all these big elected officials and rabbis and people in the community, what's happening? I'm like, I don't know. And the next thing you know there was hundreds upon hundreds of of of uh anti- arisra Israel protesters uh outside of my in the hundreds right and uh it really awakened my uh it really opened my eyes to see the amount of hate the amount that they spewed against uh Jews and it was it was terrible and and and it really uh you know told me that we have to be a little more active. So I get a whole class about PSA, not public service announcement, but B is the passion of to be passionate about our Judaism. You know, they were so passionate free. They're screaming their heads off even though they got paid for it by the way. And then S was the importance they came to visit a synagogue of Shu. So S is shul synagogue that we should be continuing going to shul. Some people were worried. Oh, should we still go to the shoo? I'm like nothing to be worried about. Just the opposite. You should be coming and coming more often. And that's what happened. Much more people started coming. Then a was a or all. What's it all is that we saw the amount of hatred they had towards us. Crazy the things they said the signs they had uh you know inif killed they they didn't finish you off in your Hitler. So we have so much hatred people hating us from the outside. There shouldn't be any hatred within. We should have we should love one of all. That's where the mdash was destroyed, right? So the work that you're doing and trying to get it out there to the world is so important that every single person whatever way that he can't has to heal you have to make your efforts to do something and to stop this. By the way, you just expressed a manifestation of their connectivity of their organization. They heard about something. They already had the networks built. They're able to act quickly and effectively. And they've done that repeatedly in place after place after place. And so as much David did it in Bar Park Visa. They've done it all over the place. They can rinse and repeat. And as much as we don't like them and as much as we don't appreciate them, we have to be smart enough to understand they're doing they're being very effective. And we too need to become effective. We too need to become organized. And essentially what we're trying to do is we're trying to organize people by ideology, not by geography. And the technologies is what allows us to do this. And one of the beauties of this is that it's a suite of tools, right? So some people are going to use this we talked about the ask emissary part. Um and then there's actually uh three other parts. So two two of them is uh um that we call like the social aggregation is a local um sort of social aggregation uh that happens of different types of things that are happening let's say in Queens or or in White Plains uh that are sort of to your to your area and then another section is the emissary social which is also an aggregation of different types of incredible social posts to talk about like the prosemitism right the the powerful things of working together and to do some incredible things and Dan will talk a little bit about the next piece. So he me so mentioned uh emissary social which we have a professional staff currently that uploads content twice a day great pro-semitic things promoting pro-Israel and pro-Semitic things and also uh um identifying anti-semitic events and you can upload that to your own socials to your own Facebook to your own u um ex Instagram and essentially if we all do this uh at the same time we can have a tremendous impact we can have millions or even billions of impress depressions. Um, the other day it was 5:00 in the morning and I was at the gym and I was exercising and um, and I could have watched the television right on the treadmill or I could have, you know, listened to a podcast. What I decided to do was to upload seven different things. It took me 10 minutes and in seven minutes I in 10 minutes I uploaded seven different things and guess what? A I had done something but B I felt like somehow a sense of control of power whereas as opposed to just it's all incoming. I'm absorbing all the negativity. What am I doing proactively? This is a manifestation of me and my life making things happen. Exactly. And so for us to do something more than nothing is very powerful for ourselves and for our community. So we mentioned emissary social. The third part is actually the most exciting part in my view which is uh um it's called emissary connect and it's being built as we speak and god willing it'll be ready by the end of May and what this piece of technology does is it allows people to work in a coordinated way on social media. So let me give an example. Let's say God forbid something happened on 108th Street. A negative uh what you described in your shaw, right? A ne anti-semitic event occurred. We want to bring attention to that event. What we could have done once this was built. What we could have done is we could have sent a ping out to tens of thousands of Jewish people and non-Jewish people because it's important to have both Jewish and non-Jewish within Queens and say, "Hey, this event occurred. We want to bring attention to it. We're having a rally at this moment at this time." we could get thousands of people to show up to that event and then we can create a digital campaign across the country with hundreds of thousands of people bringing attention to the event that happened in Queens and we can do this concurrently and we can do it again and again and again. So I said the phrase before about uh organizing. We want to organize people and individuals, young people, medium-aged people, older people to work in a coordinated way on social media. And maybe I'll give one more example how this works in real life. Does anybody here do you remember Rabbi when um CNN came out and said Israel bombed Shifa Hospital? It happened maybe eight months ago. I remember rumors. Yeah. What it was is it was Islamic jihad who had done that but the lie was out and we had no comeback. And so if you fake news is the fake news. Exactly. And what we saw on all the pages and all the social media and even on CNN, it said Palestine, Palestine, Palestine, Palestine, Israel, Palestine, Palestine, Israel. Well, imagine if we have this built, and we're going to have it built soon. We have thousands of people that we can direct to the CNN pages, to the comment section, to the Facebook page, and say, "Hey, that's not true. It was Islamic jihad who did that." And what we would have seen is we would have seen something closer to Palestine, Palestine, Israel, Israel, Palestine, Israel. And we begin to even out the conversation. And that's the power of collective action. And that's called emissary connect. And it'll be ready at the end of May. And one of the great things about this is that like Kazak would have access to this like you have this incredible event that's happening on Wednesday, right? And you want we have events all the time. All the time. But all the time. We should come to that. But let's talk about the like the event that you're having on Wednesday, right? You're going to have a really incredible crowd uh and and speaker. And so, you know, you can c once this is built, right? You're going to come to us and say, "We have this event. We want to we want to get out to as many people as possible, but you have what we call battle tested technology." right now. Emissary is built on this incredible technology that like that it just not only it not only empowers the user, but it's it's it's built on this this um incredible tech that's meant for social engagement, right? That a lot of companies use. And so that's our backbone, right, which is really important to understand. And uh we're fortunate enough uh we actually got a major uh grant from U.J. Federation of New York. Now, U.J. Federation New York is the largest federation in the federation system. They told us this, you are the only ones that are focused on this, right? And they loved the fact that we can go large and that we what what MSR wants to do is we want to plug in want to work with larger organizations like from federations to JCRC's to you know Kazak um and also we want to work on the grassroots level right and it's really important to understand that now if we just work on on the on the on the larger organizations and yes they're incredibly important and they'll help us scale but I call like Khazak the spark right and you know what what what Jews do when they got the Torah? What they say? We will do and we will listen. We will be. And this is what's so important is that we live in an age where people want something. They want something to do. I feel every day I get punched in the gut of all the all the anti-semitism and hate. And you know what? It's like it's enough is enough. I want to do something. Like what Dan said, like he was at the gym, right? and he took that five 10 minutes and he and he was able to to find the the social post that spoke to him and he and he shared it. Right now said like you don't if you don't have social media just take it all in and learn and be able to interact. Um I had a friend of mine who wanted to respond to something on Twitter, right? And he's like I don't know what to say exactly and he and he he put it into Ask Emissary, right? He said like this is the situation on of the post and then he's like wow. It was like that it was really fast. It created it for him. For him and literally less created the post for him, you can use it and then you can put it in, right? So, so it's it's and and this also goes like, you know, when you're when you find that social post that speaks to you, maybe you don't know exactly what to say. You can literally press a button says AI, right? Press that button and then literally in less than 3 seconds you have this is what you can say and you can alter it but like you have it, right? And so the whole again goes back to empowerment. Um, and it goes back to connectivity and mobilization, right? And you know, and I go back to the nasa, right? And it's it's one of those things where like the Torah was written for all time, right? And so we want to take the values and then we take the technology and we merge it and that's what we're going to do and that's we're going to scale. and the fact that you know like day one you saw you saw this value um and you know we want to be able to use this community because we know this community is so powerful. We know this community wants something and if we do this the right way we can show everyone like this is actually how you do it and that's why we want to beta like this kind of like this grassroots engagement with Kazak because we we know this community is so strong and it's a beautiful community. Thank you. We appreciate it and listen this is uh this is work that that that is is needed. Yes, we know there's always going to be hatred but to limit it and to explain and to to give the the right perspective to the world is very important. So we have a a minag custom on kazak to talk which is the final message for our broad audience. So my message is this that it seems, thank God, that the war in Gaza might be winding down. It seems like Israel has defeated their enemies with Hezbollah in the north. The Syrian army, Syrian government is is, you know, imploded. Iran is defanged. And we might have the feeling that, okay, the war is over. And what I will say to everyone to you and to everyone else listening is that the war has just begun. And and the war for the minds and hearts of the average American is continuing on. And it's important for us to recognize that and to uh and continue our um our engagement. And when the last bullet is fired in Gaza, our it becomes even more important that we continue because there's going to be the next event. We don't know what the next event is going to be, but I can guarantee you it's going to be there. And our enemies are not stopping. They haven't stopped for 30. I graduated college in 2002. They didn't stop from that day till today. They didn't stop trying to influence people. And so when things were quiet and good enough, they continued. And so too must we continue. And what I can say is like everyone asked like what can I do? What can I do right now? Guess what? You can go to your the app store and go to Google Play or to Apple and type in emissary and number four all and download it. It's a free app. And this is a time to come together as a community again that empowerment that learning and that and that mobilization emissary number for all. And we can do something together. That's the beauty of it, right? Like when we think about like community organizing. I mean that's you know that's that's that's what you're doing. You're you're all these like kids who are not let's say not in day school or have no idea about like Yishkai. You're empowering them. You want to give them that opportunity. right now. If we can give tools to help in your mission, this is this is how this is how it works, right? Where what do most kids are on now? They're on their phones, right? And how do you get to people go to where they are? And we believe that through our our our suite of tools, we can help, you know, the work that you're doing. Um because emissaries mission really is to um to bring together different types of people, different types of communities. um to make that that part and you know so when you when you when you download the app it's important to register also that's how you sort of get the full experience of the of of of emissary um again it's just emissary number four all all one word on on Apple and and Google play and we look forward to like continuing this conversation and we truly appreciate this opportunity thank you for joining us we should only hear about only good news we should have the complete redemption that way all this stuff is not going to be needed. We're going to have the all be together. Want to thank once again our dear friend Dan Rosen and Aaron Herman combating anti-semitism Torah talks Tuesday nights at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.orglive. chazaq.org/live. A special thank you to the various different platforms that host Kazak Torah Talks with an emphasis to our friends at Torah Anytime. Also a special shout out and thank you to our friends at Daily Giving. A dollar a day goes very far away. Uh dailygiving.org. org and we shall only hear Mr. Good news and thank you so much. Thank you so much. [Music]