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Full Interview With Yossi Gestetner Of OJPAC On Politics, Covid, Anti-Semitism & more
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Full Interview With Yossi Gestetner Of OJPAC, on Politics, Covid, Anti-Semitism & more. Visit The Jewish Platform https://thejewishplatform.com/ Produced by Moshe Grunfeld Follow, The Yiddishe Vinkel platform YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/YiddisheVinkel Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/YiddisheVinkel Telegram: T.me/YiddisheVinkel Twitter: https://twitter.com/YiddisherVinkel WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/3rkdzfK Website: https://YiddisheVinkel.com
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Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
welcome to another thursday night live
here with the jewish platform
tonight we have the privilege of having
one of the most influential people in
the froome
media circle he's a business strategist
he's a current events commentator and
he's the co-founder of ojpak
an organization that goes out there you
know something
why don't we hear a little bit more
about it from the co-founder everybody
let's welcome
the one and only yossi gestatna yossi
how are you doing
i'm doing very well thanks for having me
um
nice introduction so as you started out
i'm a
business strategist that's my uh main
occupation
uh as a side job if you will i'm a
commentator and a columnist on current
events u.s current events especially
with a focus on politics and economics
and then i also co-founded oj the
orthodox jewish public affairs council
whose mission is to fight bigotry
against orthodox jews and also to
advocate for
civil rights and civil liberties well so
money you don't make from being a
current events commentator well maybe
you do
some paid gigs and from a non-profit
organization
definitely don't make a lot of money um
the business strategist
is where you make the money and the
others i'm assuming you do has a passion
so why don't we back up what you see
what did you go to
i attended uh multiple yeshivas okay
like like yeah i started out in visions
muncie
i was in touch for a while uh then
my main exchanges were in williamsburg
brooklyn obviously
and then when i left she achieved i took
a ged
high school diploma at a later time i
took
a bachelor's degree in business
administration with a focus
uh in marketing i think anyone who wants
to
run any department within a business
needs to have
the overall understanding of how
business runs business administration
and then you can focus
on a specific area that you like most
so for example the people who would take
a a
business administration with a focus and
let's say production if they want to run
a
not a warehouse but let's say a company
that puts together cabinets and so forth
and you need to
run an assembly line that's uh
totally different information at least
once you pass a certain level than
someone who wants to focus on
marketing which is more about the public
image of the company the customer
service
um marketing in our circles
is governorship coil as they would say
for anyone who does graphic design
graphic design is not marketing graphic
design is a function
within marketing a good marketer
will have will have an understanding of
the strategy of the business
the funding of the business the profit
margins of the business and i like to
focus a lot on
on the money part as part of the
marketing review
um a market would even help
help you figure out what to charge for
something
because that's part of the marketing um
[Music]
but that's that's that's an important
part of the business but i think every
every function in the business is good i
think
if if someone has a large business
and doesn't have an outside perspective
from someone who has an understanding
about human resources
hr they will probably be spending too
much money on employees potentially have
too many employees
on board it's not about
cutting corners it's about having the
right mahalak
how many employees they have but
obviously marketing is one of the
early things in a business because
if your business doesn't stand out um
essentially if you don't know what you
want then nobody else will have a clue
and frankly if you look at many ads
sometimes you open it and you have no
idea
what the person wants and just because
uh you know
before you have the
from the apple nobody's gonna remember
you because everyone does it
um mostly that's why we're gonna do it
right
that's why we didn't do it the first
time right so no it's not it's not a
problem it's not a problem
to have an ad before a holiday season
but
just to have another one of them will
add
is a waste of your money by the way for
my clients
i always encourage them not to run ads
in these
uh pisces editions and the sickest
editions we always place the ads right
after yamthev and everyone else is out
of money nobody's advertising
the publications are very thin then your
ad your ad stands apart
right and then at that point people are
probably bored
you know after the pisces from before
peter and bismuth price it's a little
bit hectic
uh except if you sell a price of product
so you know
marketing isn't about this this type of
graphics that type of graphics it's
understanding uh what it is you serve
whom you serve
what's your specialty how you stand
apart and
to get that message across i understand
so you you you call yourself
a business strategist more than someone
that does marketing by the way
nine out of my 10 friends probably do
marketing or are
in the marketing industry so you're
saying that there's
marketing and then there's more i'm not
i'm not i'm not trying to
to bash anyone or there's a closing from
anyone who is in a specific industry
but um you know
a lot of times when when people have a
meeting with a marketer
put it this way the villain finish from
the meeting because they think it's
gonna cost a lot of money
but sometimes a marketing conversation a
marketing strategy session is not about
going out there and spending a lot of
money on ads it's
about having a better understanding
what it is you sell so that your sales
team
has the right text when they pick up a
phone
and what exactly is that that's a
process of working out the messaging
it doesn't involve any money it doesn't
involve any money if which size so
so it's it's it's possible that you have
a lot of people in your circles who do
marketing just as somebody who isn't
leasing will think that everyone isn't
leasing
uh the reason why i call it as business
strategist is
in order to get to a marketing
phase of the business you need to have a
better understanding of the business
before that i think that you need to
have
a bigger strategy and besides because
i'm a marketer
and i focus on messaging if i would call
myself a business consultant
come about a business consultant you're
just a clown no business strategist
sells better sounds better and that's a
and that's a marketing line and and i
admit it i don't i don't
i don't hide it um and this is this is
exactly what i'm saying in terms of
marketing your messaging
your messaging needs to be well you need
to uh you know a lot of times people
reach out to me and they want to set up
a meeting in four weeks
what are me four weeks like i'm
available tomorrow available tomorrow
are you available tomorrow because i
don't have five meetings a day it's
impossible to process
five meetings a day i have a lot of
office work so if you want to have a
meeting tomorrow two o'clock
most of the time can be available i'll
do i'll do i'll move around my work
and that's where i try to stand apart
from other marketers
is to have this quick turnaround time
for a meeting
is to look at the business in general
without necessarily
uh going to a place where you need to
spend money on production
and ads not productionism this thing
it's nice yeah but let me ask you like
this
i understand you're a business
strategist
but how you're you're famous
not for being a business strategist
you're famous for your current events
commentary
and more so uh
off from oj pack the organizational work
yeah
right the pr so so here's my question
how did
a booklet from vishnuts and tush and i'm
not sure what you see
you were williamsburg how did a booker
from over there become passionate about
current events okay today's days
everybody is passionate in politics
but how did you become passionate and
and
defending the from oil how does
a bucher from a real hasidah yeshiva
go into politics current events and
something like ojpac
so it's a it's a combination of its
combination of a few things
first of all uh both my parents
were interested in politics it wasn't
necessarily conversation
um in all of himself
but they were interested in politics
especially my father
um secondly my upbringing wasn't
so rosy i'm not saying that everyone has
an easy offering i had a very difficult
upbringing in some ways
especially where i felt that i don't
have a goyle adam
again my parents did the best that they
you know were able to do at the time
but when you come from a large family a
poor background and
parents who were divorced when i was
very young i thought i was very young
i was you know on defense a lot
so therefore i needed to stick up for
myself in order to get through the day
again possible many other people had the
same challenge or even worse challenges
so i i grew up in having these two
things a father
very interested in us politics uh
mother very interested in talk show
hosts like bob grant
going way back and then just having the
difficulty of
feeling that i'm a mystical narrative
and i had a
great friendships and hider
they were all very nice to me but that's
it's still a factor
so you know those those two things i
think
have put me on a track of being you know
so opinionated
interested in politics and being on
offense
when someone wants to attack your way of
life
um my mother leia which passed
you know she passed a couple years ago
she also liked numbers a lot
she'd like mom and and i'm known as
someone who likes numbers a lot
um and again going back to the marketing
one of the things that we always pull up
there needs to be calculated at the
table and i can show you a book i should
have brought it it's all about the
numbers
what's the earnings how are things
better how are things different where
did you spend the money what's your
profit margin
if you are the distributor that needs to
distribute money the the
company that produces the product how
much money they're putting in
to the marketing what's their profit
margin if you don't have the money how
you how are you going to pay for it
um what does it take for you as a
company
to be seen let's say you have a product
that you're selling in the monthly money
area what does it take to be seen
and to be seen on a steady basis so you
give the person a number and stop
flipping out oh what i'm going to spend
now let's say 12 1500 2 000
a week for a half year here oh it's a
lot of money it's a lot of money okay
let's stop
let's reverse engineer it how many
families orthodox families live in
rockland county
fourteen thousand how do you live in
kitties europe more than five thousand
what's the average family size in the
city community five and a half people
okay so how many items do you need to
sell per week
in order just to break even after
production cost this amount that amount
so i'm asking you if you were to have an
ad and one of you in the community
connections
and two ads in monroe and you don't need
to change your ad every other week
because we go through the process on
on messaging that the the ad can run
continuously without needing to change
it because if it was good this week is
going to be good in six weeks from now
if it's not gonna be good in six weeks
it doesn't work now either
so the person then sees the number says
you know what even if everything if all
else fails
i would it's reasonable to to expect
that among 19 000
households let's say a thousand
households a week would buy this
uh would generate this amount of money
this amount of
uh you know gross profit
so all right so then spending thousand
twelve fifteen hundred two thousand a
week doesn't sound so scary
um so that's that's basically the the
where y'all see statement came about
right because i know that in
all the times that you're trying to
defend our community it's always
a game about numbers you bring up x
amount of
covet cases or x amount of anti-semitic
cases and stuff like that i see that a
lot with you
but let's back up just a little bit so
you came out of yeshiva you got your ged
you went for a bachelor's degree you
started i'm i'm assuming you started
marketing right away at what
point did you there's a big difference
between
current events commentator i'm saying in
a class of 30 boys you can have 25 of
them that are current events
commentators
um but when did ojpac
start okay so the so the sequence of
events are as follows
i'm british i'm now 35 years old it
started basically 20 years ago
uh f-15 yes it was
at the 2000 election the fight bush
between bush and gore and florida
okay i was so raw in politics that i
thought a day
after the president wins the election he
goes into the white house
and that was me at age 15 i didn't have
a clue
but we started having an interest in
politics at the time
so that's where my interest in politics
beyond what i saw at home
started
a short while later i started sending
letters to the editor
in yiddish publications english even
non-jewish and most of the time it would
be published
regardless of the hunt it would be
published
[Music]
um
and and at a passion sticking up for the
underdog no no no
at that time at that time it was only
about politics it was only about
bias in the media it was about politics
currently there was bias in the media
back
all the time it's very simple it's
because people are
people have a bias in themselves it's
not always a hateful bias people have a
perspective
you have a perspective about me which is
a bias maybe it's a good bias
but it's a bias you're not a robot so
i would send letters to the editor it
would it would be published it would get
published
um a while later
uh i submitted the article for
publication on one of the initial
publications about the beast
the beast is the presidential limo and
it was a cover story
and this was before zman was out yes
right this is
the state it was it was understandable
it was understandable it was on the
cover of the state
the the owner at the time was
shimonitsky and
he he was a close friend with one of my
family members
and the family member told them justin
knows how to write he's going to write
up something for you take it he took it
obviously he needed to do a lot of work
but
that's where it started a while later
started the writing for that let me cut
you off for one second
you were a booker the internet was just
starting i'm saying google is 20 years
old right yeah
so 20 years ago or
whatever amount of years this wasn't 20
years ago this was last but okay 2004 or
five but
where did you get all of that
information on the beast and and
everything else you were picking up how
do you get that uh it depends it depends
which time first of all i used to
used to read a lot of newspapers
not just around at the time
so i i would i would read i would read
newspapers
um we would have books at home
uh i did have access to the internet
controlled access to the internet when i
wanted to follow
follow up in the news after 9 11. so
you know the internet uh 15 20 years ago
what
was quite accessible uh so the first
article
was to write the article about the beast
for the stan and then a while later
started
writing for the blood um
again a current events article and this
is basically where things
took off at the time uh going back 15
years or so there were elections in
rockland county
in muncie and word got out to people who
are busy with elections that this
this yossi kid this gestating kid
in the hunt he knows how to make good
arguments about current events
you know he should be he should be uh
approached to to
to write some stuff so i would sit in
that meetings and come out
how old were you then i was at that
point i was 20 because it was 2005.
so at that point i would sit i would sit
in meetings and come up with talking
points
which people oh it's talking points yeah
it's a point that you you you know i
actually changed it i coined it uh fact
points
because talking points as a negative
connotation i called it uh
talking points uh points see i'm so
busy spinning it i don't even know where
i am
um my friend started calling me dr spin
forget it but anyway
um so i basically started
writing fact points and
uh for four campaigns over time
now now those fact points were for
certain candidates that you were trying
to push
or those fact points were for no again
it wasn't it wasn't people the question
no no you you it was just about is there
there's elections going on
uh in the town of ramapo in the village
of spring valley
and points need to get across in
pamphlets and articles and ads
oh again all of that when you want to
write
a website a pamphlet a mailer you want
to produce a video
everything needs to be rooted in a core
message right you then
funnel everything in the right direction
the right wording but you need to have a
core messaging what points are you going
to use
today to get people animated about the
election and a lot of
a lot of things that are used in
elections throughout new york the
haimish oil now
as a default are stuff that i was i was
among those who created
those those uh
you know to get people to get people to
vote so and over time i
writing those stuff moved also into
writing for again companies lines
and while i did that i was still a
columnist
so i started having a steady
platform to write to write current
events on the blood on a weekly basis
um and i also started having business as
a content writer about michigan guns
mcgillis
it's about you know someone makes a
point
to hit back and to frame it in the right
direction um
which is 2005 six seven and eight in
late 07 i started talking on comabasa
the political section of conversation
and the business actually come with us
or something that
continues until today right and i think
i did some research
i think you're the most i think that
you're the
or one of the most listened to shows on
common assad according to the research
that i did
i appreciate hearing that because again
it's good to know numbers i'm not aware
of that but
i'm i'm essentially a daily commentator
for 30 years already right 30 years
is a monumental thing it's not it's not
just a weekly columnist
it's almost daily reporting political
news and then having
a separate section where you give
monologues
about current events that builds a base
which is another important thing
about marketing it's about the
steadiness of something
if you do something continuously and
steady if you will make sure
uh moisture here too if you will make
sure to have
live events every thursday no matter
what
winter zimmer reagan schneider busy
season slow season
mama is there's no such a thing i'm busy
now you're busy now
have someone else take care of the
cameras uh fire you know you should get
fired or have someone else on your
advice
was there needs to be a continuous thing
if you would do that continuously not a
week two week or
a couple of months at a minimum over
time people will start saying you know
what
i need to go to the jewish platform live
thursday maybe i'm going to see it
thursday night
friday in the summer in the summer
shabusam or the mata chavez
is the steadiness and most people do not
have patience
for the steadiness that you know
that uh you know overnight success
usually has 15 years of work behind it
right okay um i am blessed berkshire
to go to events to speak at events and
i i ask to get paid a reasonable amount
some people need to work a whole week to
get paid what i charge for speaking at
event a live auction
or a fundraiser event but it's not the
two hours
that it takes me not to go to the event
and speak it's the 15 years of work in
the seattle district
of being continuous continuously focused
um where you start schneiderlin patters
most people don't have patience for it
and that certainly doesn't work i have
to see what to do next week because
next week i am going to be on a ski trip
in colorado
so we're going to figure something out
for now okay good so so you can go live
in colorado
no there's there are many things you can
do you can try to pre-record something a
few days earlier
okay that's that's one thing you can try
to have some sort of a hookup
interview with someone in the interview
can be shorter
it can be shorter or again just or
he should have someone else much to have
someone else do the interview i think
that we should poll our audiences
and ask them do they want to live i'm
not going with my family i'm going there
oh my shiva
so we could either do a live with the
yeshiva
or we could have moisture bring in a
different guest and i'm assuming that
we're going to hear from the audience
what they would prefer so now
so so let me let's so we are continuing
so
um you were saying so
so at this point 7 8 9 10
i had a steady column in the blood um i
had a steady audience
on conversation on a daily and a weekly
basis
um in private practice i was focused
in the wording but i used to get i
started getting involved more and more
in the bigger picture of marketing so
instead of just focusing on writing i
i started getting pulled in more and
more one of the areas where i was pulled
in
to is because i followed the news so
much is
reading uh you know what people would
call
mainstream publications right so
when i would see an article there where
i thought you know it's unfair to
orthodox jews i would reach out to the
editor to pick up the phone
call and say i don't understand it
doesn't make sense it does and a lot of
editors would actually be engaging
i remember in 2009 there was a big bust
i think like 43 people were arrested
and cbs news at the time reported that
43 people were arrested including 15
rabbis abs
in the pa on the palisades four or three
or five or three in the afternoon
when they went over to the local news 15
rappers were arrested what are they
talking about
um so i called the station
called the station it was a 2009
blackberry times i was able to pull up
the number
and the news desks hi my name is josie
stepney just reported the story that 15
rappers were arrested it's not just
there is no such a thing just because
someone has orthodox and has a beard
doesn't make them a rabbi
okay but that's not enough i sent a text
to people
asking them to reach out to the station
respectfully and express your
displeasure
a friend of mine made a call and he told
me that the others said yeah
yeah we know about it we're going to
change it and at the next report
there's no there was no mention about
rabbis or jews how is it even relevant
how is it how is the ethnicity of
someone relevant to such a new story
that's precisely what racism is that's
that's that's bigotry racism is
is against a specific race bigotry is
just hitting a specific group of people
so at the time in nine and ten and so
forth
i used to do it you know on the on the
fly
but then when i started seeing that it's
not just
okay it's someone covers something
kester fragrance who cares
who cares how someone in the media would
cover you the answer is very simple
when people are dehumanized when people
are delegitimized it causes a lot of
problems first of all you have the
hashem but if you want to say hashem
doesn't bother you
there's also the chances of
anti-semitism whether it's attacks in
the street
whether it's abuses by local governments
regarding yeshiva's
parks uh the idev um
zoning and people can also face
bigotry in business where people would
not service you well where people
wouldn't want to meet you
where people would cancel and this
happened during the second surge in
october october 2020
where people had medical appointments
cancelled by providers because they were
from the
supposed red zones that como created so
bigotry in rhetoric isn't just okay who
cares
it actually has consequences and this is
exactly why
all ethnic communities in all large
racial communities african-american
latinos and
muslims have these organizations it's
not about yelling at everyone yet the
semi-racism bigot
this isn't the point it's about getting
information
facts and statistics out there for the
reporters and editors who want to have
an honest and balanced report and it's
also at times to hold
people accountable for how they cover
things and how they speak about things
and the fact of the matter is that in
the past
uh it used to be very normal every time
if a sitting person was arrested
it had the connotation rabbi uh now
hashem is a situation
where a lot of times uh people who are
orthodox or hasidis
and their ethnicity isn't even mentioned
so that's
so in 2009 10 11 you know i used i did
this all
on the fly here and there but in early
uh we start we we incorporate it as an
organization oj pack the orthodox jewish
public affairs council
which is ojpac.org and i guess now we'll
take a break that's what moshi
signaled well she keeps on signaling yes
we're gonna take a
quick commercial break and we are going
to be back to hear
a lot more about erc oj pack and
everything else that elsie does i'll see
you in a minute hello
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
is
[Music]
and i guess
we're having a great conversation over
here
you're smiling we're having a good time
now generally
when we pull up a picture of you it'll
look something like this
or something like this and when we pull
up videos they usually look a little bit
like
this scientifically that where we stand
now is
oh so bad infectious but right down
there
is perfect it doesn't even make sense or
like this
talking about jews and you want to talk
about money that's a nasty way of
talking
or like that number two don't show up
after the attack
you can stay home and send out your part
of the statement as they would call it
which is not meat and not there it's
somewhere in the middle you can keep
you know you can tweet that statement
but yeah round when you run around all
to these sweet cure events
i want to see you in this community now
hashem
we are having a very nice civil
conversation over here
you're extremely passionate about
defending the friend oil
and it's beautiful the question that
many people
have is does it help we know the famous
media is so what are you trying to do
over here you're going to scream
anti-semites
the are always going to hate us
tell me
about that a little bit does it help
does it not help
kill hashem do we care they're supposed
to hate us anyway
let's go into that area a little bit um
i think there's a lot to unpack first of
all most of the time
when i speak to the media it's usually
during some sort of a crisis
right whether it's after the stabbing in
muncie
after jersey city a couple of weeks
earlier a
anti-semitic attack a government
official just popping
off and creating controversy so
people you know
a point that you made at the beginning
of the of the conversation that people
don't know me
as a business strategist yeah that's by
design
that my public persona and public image
and public focus
is as a commentator and as an advocate
for
the orthodox jewish community um
and that's why this is this has become
my brand
now within the brand
i speak during times of crisis most of
the time
so it's a it's a you know it becomes a
serious situation
also a lot of times reporters reporters
argue with me
so the the environment becomes heated
and a lot of times they do it because
they want to trigger me for the perfect
sound bite which is fine a reporter told
me a couple of months ago your soundbite
machine
you know which is which is fine i don't
um so that's
an example example of what why why why
when when somebody would trigger you and
why they would want to trigger you for a
sound night
is because if if if my response is
is like calm and fascilo it sometimes
does not
underscore the seriousness of the
situation right
so so if they can get me going
um i get more animated and sometimes i
can like
unload six points in 20 seconds and they
will run with that
because i get my point across and it's
passionate about it it's despicable for
the county executive to
you know uh to speak this way a lot of
times we do we do um
we need to redo it so it's not
i didn't realize that on live news you
have that option no it's not always live
most of the time it's recorded and at
this
point a lot of reporters in the in the
new york regional market
we have a mutually respectful
relationship they don't try to trip me
up
but they try sometimes to you know be
the devil's advocate
and uh so they want to get a certain
perspective
right your typical reporter is not
within the orthodox community
and a lot of them have a generally
different perspective on things
so it's a stressful situation
usually when i would speak to them it's
not stressful to me it's just
i would be naturally worked up because
it's it's
i mean back in october
every day governor connor of new york
made coronavirus about orthodox jews
right it's it's absolutely insane the
numbers were not there to back it
he carved out blocks here and there to
generate a higher infection number
than had he looked at a whole neighbor
of the whole zip code
and then kept on pointing fingers at
jews
so i was i was animated on a steady
basis
so why do you think he did that it's
what i said at the time
i think he he released the book
mid-october
the leadership in corona virus whatever
the name is
and the second wave was around the
corner
the second wave was going to hit
everywhere and everyone
so he was trying to deflect from the
problem so it's
easy to take a couple of communities and
make them
make them the problem rather than to
face the fact that this
is coming back and what happened was
before rosh hashanah
a lot of people within this community
started testing because they wanted to
know if they could go to school
for a social name so now so when more
people test you know what happens
more cases emerge and who went to test
you didn't have some sort of
standardized computerized system to test
every you know
10 out of 100 people who who who went to
test people who had symptoms
right so obviously you would have more
cases and you would have
a higher percentage a higher infection
rate so i was out there making this
argument
and he didn't want to listen and you
think he picked the jewish community
because they're an easy target
i think many people do that absolutely
absolutely
the governor cuomo i don't think him as
a hater i think if you take his whole
10 years in office i think he has been
great uh and de blasio too
but i do think that it's an easy target
it's easy for the governor to yell at
orthodox jews
in ways why
why easier than the latino community or
the african-american community because
because i think
most other uh minority communities have
long established
entities who take care of these things
if you dare to speak a certain way
a ton of bricks will head your way
figuratively speaking
okay and my smile disappeared and now
i'm getting animated and worked up
that's exactly
what i tried to trigger you know so
that's good doing a good job
um and then also there are people within
the jewish community
that anti-orthodox bigotry is somehow
okay
so anti-semitism some abstract
anti-semitism from
unknown troll somewhere in the southern
states that's the end of the world
but picking an orthodox jews yeah it's
their own fault if you're
ultra orthodox or you're a holy city oh
so that's oh so that's so that's
not at the same time that's it's not
that's even that's another level of
hootsburgh where
many people outside the jewish community
have figured this out
they figured out that if they can drive
a divide drive a wedge
between the jewish community overall
versus the orthodox community and within
the orthodox community the observant
jewish community versus the
ultra orthodox which i understand what i
mean ultra what's ultra orthodox is
orthodox jews
if someone is less orthodox in practice
than haseedam or you and moishi
i guess you can call them manual attacks
what's this term ultra orthodox like
hardliners in israel it's all negative
connotations
to legitimize um negative coverage
to legitimize uneven uh enforcement from
the government
yeah i saw i saw lots of that and i
continued seeing
it's it's not the jews it's the hasidim
it's it's not the orthodoxy so
so going back so it was a it was a
stressful time
and obviously we were busy looking up
the numbers and
the fact is that many zip codes you had
many counties in upstate
whole counties having worse infection
rates than these carved out
uh neighborhoods within the jewish
community um
and the government was basically trying
to deflect from a problem
and we kept them because he needed us he
needed a deflection
you know they to say oh it's only a
local issue and we could be saying no
it's not a local issue look at
look at western new york which uh
borders pennsylvania rates were going up
because
pennsylvania was going to hell basically
at the time
um so stop focusing because you're just
painting a target on the backs of
orthodox jews
and you are giving people of new york a
false hope
that it's only problem of those jews and
as the weeks went by cases started
rising everywhere infection rates
started going up and
all all of the united states is in bad
shape all over the world
all over the world and the the second
wave was a predictable thing
they were saying multiple times that in
october and november there will be a
second wave
so rather than taking the early days of
the second wave
and reinforcing whatever measures you
think work
he lost a couple of weeks by focusing on
orthodox jews and that's
despicable and that's the reason why uh
i appear so you know so often angry and
animated because these things
literally bother me maybe i need therapy
i don't know
no that's that's a great thing now back
to the original question
do you think it works
you're repeating a line european on the
line that
that uh basically a non-jew by default
hates a jew
it's not so clear-cut as you as you put
it
it's not a default situation where where
every non-jew or even most andrews go
around the hating jews
um it's
it's a it's it's a line
it's a line that can be uh described at
the time
between yankev and isaf without
necessarily
uh having a full meaning in today's
generation or later generations
um i think it's more a general a general
reflection of how humans are
humans in general people may want to
pretend otherwise but humans in general
are more known and more comfortable or
are more comfortable within
a community that they know and if it's
the other
people start having uh conspiracies
doubts concerns and this happened in
every generation in the united states
um the irish had this issue 100 years
ago
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today there are people who live in the
united states for multiple generations
and they have
opinions about the newcomers about the
others
it's just humans are predispositioned to
have a bias
towards or against different things
that's how humans are predispo
predispositions now
is that an educational issue is that a
comfort is it the unknown
is it it can be many things but that's
one of the reasons why there needs to be
reasonable coverage about a community
because
if uh every problem
in a lot in in in ocean county in
rockland county in brooklyn and sullivan
is is blamed on orthodox jews
and everything about orthodox jews is
generalized and generalized as a
negativity it only increases the
natural instincts for people to have
biases one way or the other only gets
inflamed
and when that gets inflamed it leads to
action whether it's
anti-semitic attacks whether it's people
abusing the power and private business
or in government
and therefore the work needs to need to
be done and it's not about yelling at
people at the summit
if at a person that's a semi
if you were to uh check the twitter
account of order pack i don't think we
ever called someone antisemite
we would use the term it's bigoted
rather than calling the person a bigot
so not only do we try to avoid
antisemite we have to go to use the term
bigotry and rather than saying the
person you are you are a bigot that
sometimes you would do that
it's bigoted i don't like to i don't
like to
you know write off people and there are
people who in the past were
very unfair to orthodox jewish people
and government who have come around
because again i think a lot of their own
upbringing and their own
uh misunderstanding about orthodox jews
have led them to get their biases
inflamed
right so we have people that have never
seen a jew before
yeah it's not it's not it's not just
people it's not it's not
the typical old-school anti-semitism
it's a lot of bigotry against orthodox
jews
because at the end of the day uh
orthodox jews
are dressed differently than people in
the rest of society orthodox jews stand
out it's a fact
it's not either mysterious it's not a
whole conversation
it's not i don't i don't buy that
promise it's not it's not
uh how how are african-americans or
latinos more or less mysterious than
orthodox jews there are just more
they're just more latinos out there
african-americans so maybe more people
interact
whereas orthodox drugs we keep to
ourselves
very much so that again that's another
line that we keep to ourselves like 95
people in the united states marry uh
within
their own ethnic group i lived on a
block where there were a couple of
churches african-american church and
latino church
why not mix it up because the fact is
people
tend to gravitate towards people who
have been brought up
and the same thinking it's not about
hating someone else it's about that's
that's a certain way of life a certain
custom certain uh you know heritage that
people want to preserve
and if and and if you bring in someone
from the outside so to speak
you need to start it anew so right
but here's the thing orthodox jews are
seen in the tri-state area
right and we are seeing much more than
we are communicated to or that we
communicate
to others so if you were to stop at a
gas station the palisades
you would probably find the orthodox jew
or you know any time you go there
now how many people who passed the
palisades at the same time stop
actually have some sort of communication
i don't know they see people walking in
long long suits that's nothing black
coats no it's not a black coat
it's a suit it's a long suit okay so
it's a jacket that you know if you want
to say it's a jacket it's a long jacket
it's not a black coat this isn't black
and it isn't the coat
so but they do see people with beds
pious the sidewalks
head covering uh okay they look so when
there's a story
about those people that they have seen
at a gas station haven't communicated
people are gonna read it you know people
people will be jumping to it
and that's the danger by not holding
people and media accountable or not
being available for comment and not
getting the information out there
it takes the the you know you use the
line you use the line isis
right a generalization that a non-jew
would tend to hate a jew which again as
i said before that line
isn't so clear-cut as you know eye for
eye people say well i mean
i for i is an eye for i in the in the
literal term
but even if it is the level of hate
can go up and down based on factors how
people
how people uh act on the hate can go up
or down based on factors
and by the way what did yankee do to
isil
deuteronomy he prayed
he tried outreach being nice and he was
ready to land a punch if needed
the line is basically an analysis of the
situation
it's not a checkmate
uh it happens i'm not i'm not smiling
anymore right yeah
what you were saying is very true i live
i'm the only unit on my block i live in
holland new jersey
with my neighbors i get along extremely
well
extremely well we schmooze all the time
and we really really get along very well
when we had a kid last year we had a
baby
all of my neighbors came over to bring
gifts it's the people
two blocks away the other ones are the
jewish family over here
so that's very interesting now so that's
so that's what i'm saying
people have an internal
bias it's how far the bias goes and how
dangerous it becomes
that needs to be addressed and people
need to continuously work to understand
and feel and know the neighbor next door
perfect
now the big question does it help
of course the work that you do it's
sometimes it works
sometimes it doesn't work sometimes it
works it helps sooner sometimes later
sometimes at a larger scale sometimes at
a smaller scale
um there have been for example
if you go to a couple years ago
a couple years ago you had first of all
the the the
example that i gave you before it used
to be very normal that anytime a civic
person was on the news it was
with the title rabbi those days are
essentially gone
many reporters have grown up and have
come to understand that this is a crazy
way
to covering people many reporters
wouldn't even mention the ethnicity
of orthodox jews in the headline some
still do it
but many don't do it so there
so many media reports today especially
tv in the new york new jersey area
would not air if they haven't first
gone out there to get a statement from
someone in the in the community
is that so absolutely if you channel two
cbs
nbc 4 fox 5 abc 7 uh channel 12
in new jersey all the time they would
reach out to myself
to other people to institutional people
give me a perspective
give me some give me something a comment
and by by you being on camera for 20
seconds
it hap it helps a couple of a couple of
ways first of all you speak with the
reporter before that so the reporter
gets a different perspective or
a a bird's-eye view if you will of the
situation
and then every second that you that they
give you on camera to give your
perspective
or the fact or to express your outrage
is another second less for someone else
to make accusations against you
well now i had that in the beginning of
covet i put out a video yeah i saw that
at lakewood
and i had many tv channels called me up
if they could hear that video and of
course i gave permission but
more than that the local newspaper the
app
they were always very anti and i became
friendly with reporter because of that
story the one that reached after me
he came down to my house a number of
times to interview me
and he went down to other he said
exactly so that's what i'm saying so the
asbury park press used to be much worse
we took them to town a couple of times
and we reached out to shareholders
especially park press is owned by
gannett
we got all the way to shareholders to to
to to executives we didn't fool around
but just you know calling and you want
to correct
one two or three at some point at some
point you just you need to stop
right and i always tell the reporter you
know they tell me well it's a story
involving the orthodox
said it's fine you need to have yourself
test you know the stuff that
self-test is if this were not orthodox
jews if this were muslims how would you
cover it
if this were african-americans latinos
you make your decision
i'm not gonna i'm not gonna hold the bad
for you and i'm gonna be
calling you you know expressing
frustration you ask yourself
how would you cover it when when it is
someone from any other community
wow and i'm assuming both through your
own amazing work and through ojpac
you've somehow both with the with the
authorities
local police departments i know that
you're involved and
with press and with many other people
buddha hashem you managed to get a
foothold in where i don't know if you
have a say i don't know
how how far your influence reaches but
at least when it comes to
publicizing things about the firm
community
people definitely think twice largely
yeah correct so so so this this goes
back to your question
if it helped there are monumental
changes now compared to five and ten
years ago
and a lot of times these things
because they are handled well because so
many editors and reporters reach out to
get a full picture
sometimes stories don't run because oh
okay so those are the facts can you
prove it yeah
okay so you know we're not even
bothering well because they
literally would think one way about a
story because someone tried to
animate them into something you know to
into doing something now in terms of
policy
myself and people involved in ocean pack
we have uh what they would call a you
know generation ago
rolodex of people in multiple levels of
government
who we reach out to and one of the
the malice that i have belo hashem which
some people hate but many people like is
they know where they stand with me i
would reach out
i wouldn't beat around the bush i would
pick up a phone i'd send email this is a
problem
this is not fair this is biased this is
not even handed
this will be taken to court this will be
taken to
a department above you that can
investigate it it needs to be fair
and people are communicative or can
communicate
most people in government most people in
law enforcement most people in media
don't wake up every day
how can i go out there and punch a jew
that's not how they get up
but a lot of times it becomes easy to
pick on someone
like what como did
or as it was a situation a couple years
ago um
during purim two children dressed
in two hasidic children dressed in
blackface
dressing in black face is very incense
it's it's it's it shouldn't happen
but when it does happen how does that
suddenly become a story for a regional
tv channel do they have a story every
time when it comes to
halloween every crazy way someone
dresses
and would say you know here you have two
white kids dressing dead it's crazy
in other words even if even if it is a
bad situation such as hair
not everything needs to become a story
and it wouldn't become a story
if it were two white kids living a half
a mile up
and doing it in a different holiday and
and i remember i remember a reporter
reached out to me because someone took a
photo
of two children dressing this way it
wasn't even a current
photo it was an old photo regurgitated
every program tried to
smear orthodox juice and i wrote to the
reporter let's do some math
in the new york and new jersey area
there are a million people at least
celebrating purim
so i'm asking you are you going now to
torpedo
this holiday for a million people who
celebrate this because two children did
something insensitive or wrong tell me
the reporter wrote to me you're right
i'll take a pass
and to be honest the the kids themselves
probably wouldn't know
what's wrong with that it's not this is
this isn't the point because
you know a lot of times people come with
this argument
a lot of times people come with this
argument uh you know
don't they have a point so
the answer is no people do not have a
point to pick
on a whole community because of the
wrongdoing or something of someone
or a few people why because then you're
creating a situation or a standard where
100 of the people
100 of the time need to behave 100
perfect
or else all hell breaks loose that's a
crazy standard
how do you know it's a crazy standard
because if 100 people 100
of the time behave 100 perfect you
wouldn't need prisons or prosecutors or
investigators
or or or or police officers and i don't
think they all
i don't think all of them in the
tri-state area are out there to take
care of those
badly behaved orthodox jews so so humans
do not but
you can't doesn't matter the amount of
education the amount of warning the
amount of
restraints you want there's always some
reason why someone does something crazy
or insensitive and if you want to
generalize it
on a whole way of life when uh
it's not rooted in the way of life it's
unfair and dangerous
and i i at times i also see this
i don't know if within the community or
people slightly outside of the community
if loyolani there's an overdose
or a suicide these things are extremely
weird
and extremely rare and i happen to work
in the field so
i know the numbers but as soon as
something like that happens
right away the whole community and the
truth is the whole community is
responsible but all of a sudden this
system is wrong it's terrible there
isn't enough outreach there's
enough in reach there aren't enough
programs so so
here's the thing um
in sullivan county there's a facebook
page a large facebook page where they're
on a daily basis busy about those
ascetics
you have people dying you have people in
sullivan without a job
okay uh children dying
from overdoses things are very bad in
many portions of sullivan
yet the main main problem is when casida
move
upstate for the summer when
so many people living in sullivan would
tell you privately
that they cover their builds year-round
because those ascetics
show up for three months yet they're
busy a lot of people
not they everyone living there people
around the group busy you can see them
this
hasidic's that it's amazing
one day a woman wrote an article a post
saying
you know i was given a job to go to a
private school to ishida
i was i was given a job i was given a
job to go to private school to ishida
to take them on a trip and i was very
concerned
you know reading up she's new to
sullivan and she's every morning
sits probably with a mug of coffee and
you know
getting worked up about those jews no
not jews i'm not anti-semite just the
prosthetics
right right and she was very nervous
she writes they showed up
they greeted her they behaved orderly on
the bus and didn't leave
didn't leave any dirt and therefore
she's asking the other members of the
group
to stop bashing or attack jews because
many of you have it wrong
you know what the first comment was
people in cults are known to behave
perfect because they're very constrained
are you kidding me are you kidding me
if hasidim behave bad those hasidan
behave bad
if hasidan behave well
yeah of course they're not called
there's a strict environment
so sad the point is what i said before
it's not about
the action it's not because then
you're setting up a standard where 100
of people 100 of the time need to be 100
perfect
and that's a messaging thing like 100
three times right going back to
messaging
and that's that's an impossible standard
not the rule of thirds
the rule of repetition no something with
three
not the rule of thirds the rule of
thirds is in camera angles but
i don't know we need it so it's not
about it's not about
it's not about it it's not about if
someone did something it didn't do
because
if you come from a position where you
want to attack and you want to
generalize you want to blame
then anything less than 100 perfection
will be used
as a reason to attack right so so i
don't even get involved in the detail of
the argument
it's not about the argument it's about
the argument behind the argument like i
tell people
i don't like politics i like the
politics of it
no science of politics i like the
politics of politics like
like you know if if someone is going to
make an argument let's say
do we need to build a wall not to build
a wall i'm not coming from a position
yes we need the wall
i'm going to take your argument and hold
you i'm going to take your logic and try
to turn it on its head
if you're going to build the wall or not
i don't know you know
right um we're going to do a quick
commercial break
and then there are two more topics
that i want to hear from you that are
extremely important
we're going to be back in one second
right after this commercial break hello
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[Applause]
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foreign
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england
something originally i wasn't going to
ask you this
but i believe that you're the right
person that i could ask this to
we're almost the year at the co-vet the
car bonus from claudius roll were huge i
know my grandfather passed away
right after pesach
we thought now of course
we thought we have organizations we
thought that we have
um a schooner we thought that we have
people
in hospitals but the fact is that a
everything shut down i mean we couldn't
speak to my grandfather
or anything for three weeks before he
passed away and he was conscious most of
the time
um the second thing is there was a huge
amount of gross negligence
we believe at least that there was huge
amount of gross negligence
in the hospitals but more than that
there was
definitely huge bias against the from
community
in hospitals and it didn't cause
inconveniences it caused
i don't have the numbers but of course
many many many deaths
knew why did that happen how did that
happen and what could we do
the hospital such as things shouldn't
recur
um
all the commercials no no no i'm i'm i'm
actually i'm actually glad that you
brought this up
because it's very painful to me
um you know nobody close to me as an
immediate family member passed from
from coronavirus but
i can't describe to you
the amount of pain and frustration
that came in my direction of people at a
loss
of family members in the hospital
being neglected either out of neglect or
out of panic
and you know literally there's no one to
talk to
um the the
the reason being you know you ask the
question there's so many organizations
and so many things you know why didn't
certain things happen
and the answer is during
at a time of crisis everything gets
messed up so so many of the things that
you have lined up
that work in shulem's heart and freedom
touch
just won't work you need to
you need to have
let's say from zero to 100 you need to
you need to run at 100
the cylinders need to run at 100 in
order to generate
as if you're at level 20.
so that's that's the first thing the
other thing is
a liaison to a hospital works for the
hospital
it's a community relations job for the
hospital
i'm not suggesting at all that any
liaison to the hospital
put the interest or the public image of
the hospital
second to the care of orthodox jews i
think
during the height of the crisis the
first time around
between hatsula heavy condition the next
the third pillar
were the people in the hospital
but many of them are just volunteers
for the hospital others get paid
something
from the hospital when a hospital ceo
says
no and it's not going to happen or
then what he goes to bed he can try but
he
is wired he's held back he's on a leash
when i picked up a phone to certain
ceos of hospitals the phone picks up
yeah y'all see what can i do for you
i don't run any type of organization
that i need anything from the hospital
that i'm going to think i'm not going to
say it
i'm not going to push so expressing it
you're going to talk to me with me
because i'm trying to bring to you
concerns of a community
in pain
most institutions so first of all the
liaison
the hands are tight or it's impossible
for them to process so many concerns
then you need during each mohamed you
know
you need to have such level of power to
have this level of influence
the third thing is most institutions
not most many institutions within the
community are very
interconnected with government
again not as a conspiracy not bad
because it's you
and your brother and your family that
are benefiting
but if you run an organization which
you're running a local
social services organization and you
need to make sure that you get the
grants
not because you're going to get an extra
10 000 because you really want to help
your community
how are you going to take bill de blasio
to task for something
or como you can't do it
there's one entity that can do it it's
oj
our effort moved from just fighting
bigotry to advocating for civil rights
and civil liberties our mission
has officially changed because we notice
certainly wow
there's there is a gap where there's
there is no
institution out there that can pick up a
call ahead of me let me tell you
something what happened with the
hospitals
the hospitals were closed in new york
and people reached out continuously to
government commerce office
nothing moved literally nothing moved
and i reached out to donors and told him
listen
the way government works is with
public communication you need to get
your message
out there it's not because government
tries to hide from something
again it's not a conspiracy it just
takes someone like governor cuomo he
runs
a state 20 million people
things are turned upside down there's so
many regions and businesses and
interests and concerns
being pushed to his office things will
start
falling off you know things won't even
get to his third
circle of people certainly not the
second certainly not his direct aids
you need to break that through how do
you do that
you do that the way chamber of commerce
is do it
unions do it you know what that is
it's the public noise you need to get
your story into the media
you need to get your story an ad on tv
we raise money tens of tens of thousands
of dollars
we created we created a tv ad
which we cut it for tv it ran in
specific
media markets you know what happened
this issue was suddenly elevated
to the top of the agenda in the
governor's office
because again it's not some sort of a
secret plan not everything
that people have as a government is just
how it functions so so much
noise so much noise they can't hear
everything you need to say somebody
somebody has this complaint
yeah if you are asking that has a speed
dial that and that person
you know what
there are many other people who have
that it's like
people want to do email marketing even
marketing is easy everyone can do it
how about sending out a mailer a print
made at all that costs more money
how about getting on the phone to
potential clients or all clients once in
six to 12 weeks
that takes more effort same thing when
it comes to policy if you want policy to
change
you need outreach the lobbying and the
advocacy is just one leg
you need to get the petitions going you
need to get the media stories you need
to get a tv ads
and we did that and you know what
happened
it hastened the announcement of the
governor
to have a pilot program where there will
be visits in 14 hospitals but the pilot
program was only for two weeks and then
it went to sleep
you know what we did we created a new ad
thanking the governor for his work but
asking for more
i was informed that this ad
was seen by relevant people and that
they're aware that it's a concern
that they're aware it's a concern and
visitation to all hospitals were open
was oj pack the only entity
to to to do work no and
and i'll admit to you our media and ads
efforts without the personal outreach of
all those kunam
wouldn't have made it made it happen the
outreach efforts by olas kundan without
those ads
didn't make it up in other words they
didn't
so it's therefore important to have
to have an institution that
is not involved in in arranging grants
or funds not because it's about those
organizations doing a bad thing
it's a different function you need
someone no holds barred no strings
attached they can
push an important civil rights civil
liberties issue
he's not afraid of burning a bridge yeah
and again i don't go around burning
bridges
i'm gonna brush it but you know what i
have a reputation
literally in in from trenton
to albany to city hall all over the
place yossi
is gonna tell you whatever he thinks is
the situation he's not not going to tell
you something
because tomorrow he needs something else
tomorrow i'll worry about and it's not
just wow oh you're so righteous he's so
amazing no it's about
filling a specific gap in advocacy in
our schoolness that this community
has been missing and you know the
hospital thing helped everyone it wasn't
it wasn't about helping the judiciary it
wasn't jewish
uh you know i've seen as you've seen
from both ads as doesn't mention jewish
the only thing is our
at the end we needed to put our
disclaimer that we are running it as a
nonprofit
well so for the future i mean
hopefully my show is going to come real
soon and hopefully we should never have
anything like this again
but for the future when
the fruit community could be the entire
world
we all felt completely powerless and all
those channels that were used to going
down
they were completely shut down and
people that really did have power
in hospitals we know many stories i'm
not going to mention any specifically
some of them are personal some of them
that we know people that were really
powerful within
hospitals or within certain influential
places
that were just thrown out like dogs
so for the future i'll call it
i'll call uh listen
and have flashlights in case the lights
go out you know
but um
what covert has shown everyone is
that ashas mohammed things get bad and
there's no way to prepare
but it has also shown that you need to
operate on level 100
i have relationships with what people
would call
union bosses the big union bosses here
in new york a lot of them
know me on a first name cell phone basis
it's not about all i know it's about
when there's an issue comes up
such as in hospitals nurses have
concerns
hospital associations have concerns
how many people do you know who spend
time and resources to build those
relationships
to keep those lines open not many i'm
not
blaming anyone i'm just saying every
every effective policy organization for
a specific industry group a trade group
will have these breakfasts and these
dinners and these lunch and these
pamphlets and these mailers
all these things year round
and why because when when the moment
hits they are running at 100 and they
can therefore produce for the members of
25.
generally speaking we are operating at
25. and the problem is
again not to blame i'm bringing to the
forefront
at issue a lot of people
a lot of people when they spend money
they want to spend a dollar they want to
get three in return
a lot of people don't understand the
value of
go out there go to a political
fundraiser go to a press conference
go to a rally uh host the breakfast
why people should know you you should
know people
and and a lot of people i don't
understand well there isn't a crisis now
nabeed if the crisis hit it's too late
it's too late
well we had a policy conference last
february because february is the
anniversary even when we were founded
and
we wanted to have one this year but with
these coverage restrictions it's not
going to happen
we had a policy conference where
we brought together donors to
organizations people
in jewish community media and
movers and shakers within the community
why is that
it's because those three pillars
make all japan stronger and when it
makes ultra back stronger
it helps the community is when an issue
comes up and we need to reach out to
people
in jewish community press immediately
they're going to listen because
you have spoken them face to face they
they they built
it's a good great networking event
donors want to be there
because they want to see you know how
their money makes things happen
people who are in relevant and
influential
uh community organizations in new york
new jersey hasidic orthodox or otherwise
they wanna they wanna they wanna meet
donors they wanna be people who are
businessmen they wanna meet people who
have
influence through the channels of media
and and and those type of events cost a
lot of money
and people don't see the relevance of it
right away
and let me let me finish with this after
the stabbing in in rockland county
in in muncie
we kept on pushing continuously the
problem that having a couple of police
officers
to go around the block two times is not
enough that needs to be done more you
know what happened
one of the senators
offices here in new york new york state
reached out to us
that there are non-profit security
grants sitting on the sidelines
that fema didn't put out yet please get
the word out in your community this is
how they can apply
and we will push fema to release more
funds and they released a million
dollars more
in grants that can be used to reinforce
doors cameras
and securities these things work you
know what's that
many times i don't know why you're
jumping but many times it takes time to
work our niche
arbiters
but still bread let me ask you is that
why i see i have two phones over here
can the camera even see them
um is the flip phone over here that
that's
the direct line to all the movies and
shakers that you know or
nothing so let me let me let me let me
just uh
let me just show you something i thought
you were going to call home on it no no
i'm not calling i'm not i'm not calling
i just want to tell you repo i used to
write reporter this and that but decided
instead of putting in
every name reporter i just put a repo
you can count you want to count
well stop no no i'm going to press okay
one two one two three four
five six seven eight nine ten eleven
twelve thirteen fourteen fifty six and
seventeen eighty nine two twenty three
one two three
twenty five three six and seven twenty
we're at
wow i have on this phone sell numbers to
70 reporters
some of them probably out of the
business you're talking about obviously
i saw abc
faxes i saw big of course yeah not the
bloody
which no that's in a different category
that's on the news
because the reporter is for the
non-jewish that's
those and then i have also a whole list
of ike ike as an editor-in-chief for
this editing for that
it's about having the and
respecting people and people respecting
you and
working on these these networking and
the same thing going back to business
you know a lot of times people ask me oh
see i see these ads for these networking
events do you think do you think those
those uh networking events are good
depends what you do there
if you go there without uh you know go
there to eat
regular i don't think it's going to be
productive if you go to eat regular but
you have palm cards
you're on to something if you go there
you have pump cards but the messaging is
a mess
it's not so good as if the messaging is
good if you go there with a good pump
card with the messaging or good
and you hand it out to people then
you're a step ahead
after handing it out and you don't take
hearts from people you're losing out
if you take the cards and just have a
nice bundle on your desk without picking
up a phone in the following weeks
you're losing out again so our
networking event good
events good depends what you do but i
know that networking itself
to keep up with everybody and everything
that itself was really difficult and i'm
assuming that is why
buddha hashem you are so successful at
what you do with ojpac it's it listen
the the policy event and the policy
event that we had
last year it's not a cheap thing we
wanted to do one this year we'll see if
we'll need to skip it all together or a
couple of months down the line we'll see
how things work out
we actually want to expand uh the next
policy event where people of all levels
in government
can show up and mingle with
relevant people of this organization of
this community
um because those relationships
are good those relationships are
important um
it's an investment and i and i wish you
know more people saw the value in it
um again i'm having not blaming anyone
for anything you know it kind of keep me
and saliva does as i feel you know
there's so many
charitable causes in the community you
know some
a donor a very very wealthy donor
told me you'll see
your organization is a is a level b you
know i have people
who i need to help them with surgeries
that's a level a
his name is joey do you understand that
we helped open hospitals for thousands
of people
do you understand how many hoiland we
helped helped oh i didn't know that
i can't blame him so i need to do more i
didn't know that before of course not so
i need to so i need to do more on the pr
too
so for that you need more funds and more
time we haven't spent yet money on pr
we never put out an ad you can see a lot
of organizations have ads to explain
what they do
we haven't done that we haven't done
that in the eight years that we're
around but it's something that
we need to do not to promote ourselves
it's to strengthen
the organization to generate more
contacts relationships relevance
and funds to be more effective but i
believe that your face
is one of the most common in media
and people know you for ojpac and i'm
assuming that by the way uh lou young
from cbs wrote in 2011 on twitter
and we're going to pull it off 2011 2011
almost
10 years ago you have you have uh the
best groom payers
to ever appear on tv could you see that
tweet yeah where should you put it on
please
see here you have it in 2011 you have
the best groomed payout
see read it i love this i love this
and i'm assuming that oj pack is
completely funded by donations
yeah it's a nonprofit it's a 51c3 it's a
nonprofit
we have we have done a lot of work
through volunteers
uh uh people who helped the organization
but at some point you you hit a limit so
we started pushing for
more funds in in 2020 and that that will
appear in our public filings
later in 2021. well now we ran at a time
we thought it was going to be a short
one
we ran out of time we only have two
questions that i was able to take from
our instagram thank you everybody that
um sent them in
moochie managed to slip them to me in
the middle of the um
so we have two questions all right one's
a little bit deeper and one is a little
bit more
fast kashmic the one that's a little bit
deeper is
i'm going to put into my own words over
here
we just switched over administrations
from trump the right-wing administration
to the biden administration i'm not
going to ask you totally about
the question over here is which
administration do you think was easier
to work with
but i want to know i'm going to take
this question i'm going to take it a
step deeper
from what side do you find more
hostility
towards the from world is it the right
wing
the trump style administration or is it
the left wing
so so the the to have this question the
context of an administration i think
is is not the right way another right
way to look at it because i think
joe biden as a senator had a very
friendly relationship with people in the
orthodox community but here's a fact
the agitation against um religion and
orthodox jews or jews in general over
israel on the right side will be from
the french
whereas on the left it will be much more
institutional
it's a big difference i'm not saying
which is better or worse it's just a
different type of animal
the sad fact is that some people in the
you know anti-bigotry movement and
minority rights movement some people
in those movements hold bigoted views
about
jews and about israel so much so that
some of them have been driven from their
positions i don't want to mention
any specific institution any specific
organization so in a nutshell
the bigotry from the right would be more
from the
fringe which is not mainstream so which
is a really big note
but the problem is that in order to own
trump so many people in institutional
media elevated those irrelevant
small-time
clown voices and made them much more
relevant and brought so many
uh bad voices out of the backwaters from
america into the mainstream which is a
problem
and then the left side there are more
people within institutions
that would tweet nasty stuff will even
tell you in your face nasty stuff
where if you were to flip the script and
use it against any
other minority community they would they
would go ballistic
so that's that's a fact but now in terms
of to work with this administration
or that demonstration um
i think the the biden the biden the
biden administration is going to be much
more of a machine
long time washington hands it has ups
and down sides but that's a whole
conversation with a different day
and our next question from instagram is
here
as a private person over here living in
rockland
what could i do to improve
relationships and and i'm assuming this
is this is
um a question that every person could
have
a lot of person can privately do the
couple to improve relationships with the
ui
it's very simple if you're on social
media follow our accounts and share our
articles
um which is ojpac or jpac
on social media or so it's on twitter on
twitter and facebook and youtube
we also started recently instagram we
didn't post yet anything there
um if you have some fun to send our way
we can use that too and then on a
day-to-day basis
just think of yourself as a ups driver
a ups driver on the job knows that he
wears a uniform where he stands out
now it would be unfair for him to be
looked at a certain negative way because
a different ups driver
did something crazy but you try not to
be that different ups driver that did
something crazy
that can be used and exploited by bigots
to paint all of ups is
know bad be aware that you stand
out due to your way of life standing out
doesn't mean it's a path for people to
hate you and pick on you
and to generalize it's just you go out
there on the highway on your way
home or middle of the day start noticing
how
white pickup trucks drive erratic
and if you go down that track every
you're gonna start seeing pickup trucks
everywhere and all of them driving like
crazy
and just your buyers playing true though
it's true exactly it's just your bias
playing at you
but it doesn't mean that you can't have
that you can't have a tempered moment
it doesn't mean it doesn't mean uh you
know
you're gonna give her you know uh you
know courteous right away to everyone
because you wouldn't get home
you know at some point you just need to
continue driving and let someone else do
that charity
now if someone's going to oh he didn't
stop for me
sir i stopped already for three
different people you want me to stop
forever
to give everyone the courtesy whole time
it's never ending
so you know i i was once at a local
utility company and there was a
long line i was in the back of the line
someone was the second of the line
and a person walked in and he
he invited the person to stand in front
of him
between the first ones he gave he didn't
give him his space he didn't say you
know what take my place i'm going to the
back of the line
he put him he put him on the front i was
thinking to myself
what on who's on who's does he do that
but i mean
he wants to do something nice i did my
charity ready in the morning
i was i was a little post office i did
you know i helped someone there
so what i'm trying to say is don't be
hard on yourself if you have a difficult
day
and you're doing something that any
human being can do don't think you need
to be at the level 100 people 100
percent of the time behave 100 perfect
or else all bigotry are true but try to
be
mindful that as an orthodox jewish
person as a person with a couple
with a bed or pires you stand out
putting on a yankee cat doesn't doesn't
help right
it depends perfect so first of all thank
you so much yasi i really appreciate it
i
i'm sure that our audience really really
liked it really enjoyed it also
um elsie himself has 39
something thousand followers on twitter
that's only after the mass exodus i was
going to ask you
why you don't leave twitter but okay i'm
not going to
if you have time but we can discuss that
too we're ready
um quite a bit over time i want to give
you a huge thank you let's thank our
producer moishe groomfeld so dedicated
nothing here would happen with adam
thank you so much moishim
mazel tov on your new house moishe just
bought a new house this week
i know i know this program is successful
i know it
maybe we should bring you one as our
business strategist
all right if you can afford it no
problem we'll talk after the cameras off
um and of course
i bought my house already three and a
half years ago um
and a huge thank you once again to
shulam badanski
for hosting our event over here on
pearlman square
now one more time you can follow us on
instagram
the jewish platform you could follow our
telegram
the jewish platform and very soon
to tjp on telegram telegram
tjp telegram is our telegram channel
and we are going to start with the
whatsapp statuses
which is probably the most common very
shortly
thank you all so much for tuning in
you