Israel Uncensored: Building Bridges Between Fellow Jews

josh haston here israel uncensored on the land of israel network at the land of israel.com it is monday july 27 2020 the sixth of ap5780 hope you're doing well in your part of the world uh coming to you this morning from jerusalem israel the undivided capital of the state of israel and the jewish people hope you're doing okay you can always get in touch with me during the week josh at the landows.com on facebook joshuahastin on twitter even though right now we're in the midst of this 48 hour uh twitter uh sign off i think if you will against anti-semitism um and we are now on facebook live as well for those who are listening to the first part of the show this first part we are going live on facebook as well my guest for this segment of the show is none other than jj sussman the international director of gesher gesher works to bring a cohesive israeli society that emphasizes to build rather a cohesive israeli society that emphasizes and embraces the vibrancy diversity and shared heritage of the jewish people in other words gesher brings together all different types of jews religious non-religious black white green yellow whatever it is brings everyone together and it's especially relevant here during this time period during the nine days as we mourn the destruction of both temples in jerusalem the second temple in jerusalem of course of course our sages teach us destroyed because of sinatrina because of baseless hatred gesher tries to do what they can to get rid of the basil's hatred and bring about unconditional love between our fellow jews here in israel and around the world jj welcome to the show i think you've been on the show before but it's been a while my man how you doing i'm good thanks for having me josh and uh and your description was uh was exactly correct i mean one of our advisors is rabbi lord rabbi jonathan sex and one of his great lines is that i don't need you to agree with me but i need you to love me i think that's what it's all about especially in these times that there's so many disagreements out there like you said whether between kharidim and hiloni we're returning right and left and i think the key is to always keep our head on the always keep our head on uh on the long game which is that we're all uh one nation together and even when we have disagreements we need to respect one another yeah you know what and it's it's easier said than done i know with uh all the uh different opinions out there uh if you take for example the left versus right debate you know even myself who goes on twitter and tweets regularly trying to express my political positions and one thing i think we have to remember as jews and we are forbidden from hating other jews you may disagree with somebody's position you may say i hate your position on x y and z i do not like your position but that being said it is uh forbidden friend maybe you know the sources on this jj it is forbidden from the torah to hate your fellow jew yeah so you're right but i think instead of focusing on the uh on the negative i think it's you know it's it's crucial that we focus on the positive we have a commandment to love love our neighbors like we love uh like we love ourselves i think that's uh that's the key and we see it i'm blessed and uh to work in this uh field where i get to see the really optimistic sides of things and when we bring the different sectors together and when they meet one another which becomes even harder in this kind of times of corona where meeting is oftentimes not not allowed but we find other ways to do it whether like this virtually or other ways that's when you see the barriers break down and the stereotypes fall when people get to know one another as people and then when you have disagreements you really still see the person on the other side of the disagreement yeah talk more if you can about that about the situation now under under corona where your organization is essentially built to physically bring people together and now you have this pandemic now you have this coronavirus and you can't do that i know if i'm not mistaken i think gesher has usually has uh programming where people come together on tisha b'av year in and year out from all the different segments of israeli society so what is what is your plan for this year uh for example during the nine days during tisha b'av in order to bring people together as one so so it's exactly like you said i think once look once corona hit you know let's say early march it affected everybody uh most by the way both financially uh it affected everybody but programmatically it affected organizations like ours and it forced us to think uh very creatively and out of the box how do we still uh continue on our mission to bring the jewish people together to bring the different sectors of the jewish people together while we don't have the the number one tool that we've been using all these years of of a physical meeting and whereas in the past for those of you who don't know gesture for years for decades has been bringing religious and secular schools together for seminars we worked with the idf in there in badajad where all the officers training program happens one week of officers training for years was dedicated to uh gesture seminars where we're bringing together religious and secular people oftentimes for the first time and facilitating discussion about the hot issues but again in a sense of respect and tolerance one for the other and all of a sudden now uh we can't do that so what do we do so we huddled together and one of the first uh ideas we came up with was to uh what opportunities does does this provide of course there's downsides to this whole situation but they're also opportunities and we said let's use this tool zoom and for the first time we can bring not just high school kids together not just officers or the same age together but real families we can you know everyone's stuck at home we can take a secular family and a haredi family put them together with a guest or facilitator and let's have a session and let's see how we can break down these barriers one by one but in the session together with the parents and the kids in the same session and that was new for us and and we started doing that as a pilot and very quickly we were approached by some uh nasim by some uh community centers to do it in their communities because they saw that the tensions in the communities if you recall in the beginning of corona even now there were some you know all the stereotypes came out and people were looking how to defuse those situations and they called upon us to come in and run these sessions over zoom between families and once you see these 12 year old kids talking about there was one session in particular i remember which even steven rahmanier talked about on uh on her news broadcast where he had the question the facilitator posed was what's the most important thing to you in your app in your home and the 12 year old karate kid comes back the girl with her mother's candlesticks that she likes every shabbat every friday night before shabbat and spoke about how important shabbat is to them and then the secular kid came back the 12 year old and takes down the picture of his deceased grandmother and said how that's so important to all the kids in the house they miss her terribly and they were having this incredibly pure conversation about the values and each one can see that the other has values oftentimes we forget when we're in these debates we think the other people have no values but they do and we just need to talk to one another to figure them out you know i i saw something and i don't know if gesture had any part in this uh which i thought was pretty inspiring and moving you had you had the the singer i don't know if you saw this it was a couple weeks ago maybe a couple months ago aviv geffen yeah viv geffen who uh did one of these performances without an audience and uh he he said something to the effect of we should not be you know he was he was he was he grew up essentially being taught that the altar orthodox were basically the enemy that's what he was taught and then he did this show and he dedicated it to the people of benebrach who were under a uh quarantine basically the whole city was under quarantine and uh he dedicated it to them and then afterwards he got i think 400 messages on his phone somehow they got his phone number thanking him for standing up for him and he went on the news and he was visibly moved and i don't know if gesher had a role in that but i think that that is just a good example of what happens when you open up your mind a little bit and take the opportunity to really you know get to know people from other populations or at least try to understand where they're coming from maybe you tell me i mean you were about you you were mentioning geffen maybe you guys had something to do with that or just right similar stories like that right so viv geffen in particular we've met with subsequent to uh to his uh coming out if you will uh and i'm realizing that harinamar are people too which is incredible i mean to have a celebrity of that stature come out and basically say you know what happened to my entire uh conception that that these people are are like you said the enemy and all of a sudden he realizes and got emotional about it and said we're all we're all in this together and there are countless stories like that we had one of the other programs that we've run now over these last few months is um uh our online conferences we've run three online conferences that we entitled uh a guest share to tomorrow gesture of course means bridge to talk about what we can learn about from this situation that we're all stuck in our homes and how we can take the lessons that we're learning now the positive ones and maintain them with us even once corona is behind us if we can envision that that far out uh and we had a corrine guidon who's another uh celebrity if you will who's a famous uh tv uh moderator and and and other stuff and she married a guy uh who grew up in a haredi home and i don't know if you saw there was a documentary of her going through her whole wedding and meeting the kharidi family and her family meeting the family another incredible story and there are a lot of stories like these some of which we're involved with directly and some of which uh not so but i think the question we need to ask is of course we're excited when when people see the light if you will and and recognize that we're all people but how do we get to this situation and what can we do to not make that the north not make what aviv geffen lived his life before he recognized the right number of people the norm and and that's where we are trying to really focus our efforts we're working with the ministry of education we have programs with the informal education and the formal education which are now two separate industries in this uh government but that's a separate story and we're running programs and we're taking the leaders who are influencers uh who are writing the curriculum or implementing the curriculum and running them through courses where we're trying to get them to understand like you said we're trying to build a cohesive society and if they can take what they've gained through our courses and promote that message further and pay it forward if you will to their students and to the youth groups i think that gives us a chance to really uh recognize that uh that we are all in this together and we're all in this country uh as one as one nation yeah that we certainly are and we and you wouldn't know there actually is probably i would say a lot more uh togetherness and cohesion than you would uh believe if you always watch the news and always saw these negative images but i know there's still a long way to go and that's where you guys step in and and for what i understand you actually have a uh because it's the nine days because we're leaning to bob you guys have a campaign that you're running uh specifically for this week i want you to tell people about this campaign how and how uh let people know how they can get involved to help you guys continue the important work that you're doing great so thanks for that josh i appreciate it the campaign is actually launching uh in in 10 minutes at 10 am but you can go on already now to uh charity.com backslash guesser that's c-h-a-r-i-d-y dot com backslash g-e-s-h-e-r and and like you said the campaign if you look at what's happening with corona everyone recognizes there's a tremendous health crisis everyone's recognizing the unemployment crisis and the financial crisis but very few are talking about the societal crisis that's happening right now i have friends uh in the heritage world who go to the supermarket and have experienced literally people running away from them because they think that they're lepers and obviously that's not true yes there is uh percentage-wise more cases of corona perhaps in uh in the kharidi communities right now and maybe there are some reasons for that even objective reasons right they're living uh large families in smaller and smaller homes and then this disease unfortunately strikes exactly in that kind of place but let's not forget again that we are all one nation and let's not take that and let it bring out our stereotypes and let's create the cure to that ill of baseless hatred uh by enabling us yeshua to run more programs organization organizations like us we have the programs to run right now like i said in the beginning at the start we're financially challenged right now like everybody else but if you ask me i think our services and the types of type of work that we do at this time is needed even more than in regular times to try to make sure that those societal rifts don't take hold and don't last and that we can really break them apart and bring one another together so give us that link one more time jj it's charity.com backslash gescher c-h-a-r-i-d-y dot com backslash g-e-s-h-e-r and if anyone uh needs to get in touch with me personally i'm really happy to talk to anybody my email is jj the two letters jj at guess share g-e-s-h-e-r dot c-o-d-i-l jj guess here that's theo that i own and if anybody out there missed any of that i'm happy to put you in touch uh with jj so you can always get in touch with me and i will connect you jj sussman from the gesh organization he is the international director doing such important work jj which one of us um has more gray hair uh this year it seems like we're we're getting older and older and every time we come on um especially now during the nine days you can see that you know we're both getting pretty excited we're talking about our hair over here but take off and take off that cold fat let's see if we've got more hair no i'm not going to do that the whole set stays on during the nine days that's just the way it is i want to thank you for your time uh congratulations to all the important work you're doing and good luck with the campaign and uh let's talk again soon hopefully during non-corona times when things are i won't say going back to the way they were i would say let's learn from it let's move forward and uh let's hope for the best here in the near future thank you josh and thanks for the opportunity i think uh you know we're on the land of israel network dot com and i think it's really important and crucial to understand the only thing that's ever torn us apart as a nation and kicked us out of the land of israel has been our internal divisions and our internal strike so especially now during the nine days when we remember the importance of that let's build it together let's bring us together as one and move forward thank you josh i'm in amen and uh we're gonna turn off the facebook live now thanks so much jj for those of you listening to the podcast now we're gonna take a short break and be right back with all the news here from israel my name is josh haston this is israel uncensored on the land of israel network at the land of israel.com you can always get in touch with me josh at the land of israel.com on facebook at uh it's joshua hasten on twitter josh haston and on instagram now as well take a short break and come right back with all the news from another beautiful day here in jerusalem i mean it is pretty hot there is a heatwave here there is coronavirus it is the nine days all that's going on we're gonna try to keep it positive and bring you some good news stories as well we'll take a short break and be right back [Music] this week on the land of the israel network fellowship what does it mean to walk in the path of god we're literally walking with god but what does that mean this is such a deeply rooted idea in the jewish mind that the torah law is the same word as to walk i mean which means the torah law is the same word as halach which means to walk join us every sunday for a live interactive zoom session with jeremy gimpel and arya bromowitz for more information visit the land of israel.com fellowship [Music] and we are back josh houston here israel uncensored on the land of israel network at the land of israel.com it is the 27th of july 2020. the sixth of ob 5780 hope you're doing well in your part of the world as we get ready for tisha b'av the saddest day on the jewish calendar many calamities throughout jewish history occurred the destruction of both temples the expulsion of the jews from spain the sin of the spies and many other horrible horrible events throughout jewish history it begins this wednesday night it is a 25-hour fast ends on thursday night let's hope that instead of fasting we will turn the holiday into a joyous celebration as predicted by our sages hopefully it will come this year moving on to the news idf chief of staff lieutenant general aviv kochavi toured the northern border on saturday less than a day after the military upped its alert in the northern command out of concern of an attack by hezbollah following threats by the terrorist group over the death of one of its fighters this according to the jerusalem post defense minister and alternate prime minister benny gonz also took part in the situation assessment instructed the idf to continue to increase readiness in the north and to use the necessary measures in order to prevent any violation of israeli sovereignty so tension on the northern border in israel israel waiting perhaps for a response from hezbollah because apparently we killed one of the bad guys one of the hezbollah terrorists i believe in syria and now israel awaits a response i know that the iron dome is up there in the north you're getting ready with the iron dome and taking other preparations in case hezbollah decides to respond turning to corona right now the national death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 470 on sunday evening as the health ministry announced six more deaths since its update earlier in the day reported here by times of israel 303 israeli patients in serious condition 97 on ventilators further 172 in modern condition the remainder had mild symptoms or were asymptomatic so right now in israel you have over 34 000 active cases of the coronavirus we wish everybody a speedy recovery and hopefully the government will get the situation under control as soon as possible a new study here published by the times of israel says that vitamin d helps the body fight coronavirus this according to a major israeli study the so-called sunshine vitamin is like a steroid according to a researcher urging the public to head outdoors and get as much sun as possible another scientist urges caution saying other factors might be at play but according to this study we need to be outside so it looks like we have to keep the uh the beaches open and the parks open or at least get outside and take a short walk spend some time in the outdoors i know it's it's difficult now because it's really really hot outside we're in the midst of a heat wave it's like it's all coming together this week here in israel there's a heat wave we're in the midst of the nine days leading up to tish above and we have the coronavirus so not overall i'd like to stay positive but overall it's been a difficult week so far here in israel with all these three factors it seems like people are going a little bit crazy here's some positive news 34 nurses who recently moved to israel have passed their examinations received certification and will immediately join the fight against coronavirus according to the aliyah and integration ministry they made a statement on sunday the immigrant nurses will help fill us a shortage at hospitals and health clinics in israel as part of a program co-sponsored by the health education in aliyah and integration ministries and the jewish agency this is amazing zionism these people are literally just getting off the plane just getting off the boat if you will coming to israel and immediately going to work in their pro profession these 34 nurses helping the fight against coronavirus here in israel amazing zionism this year reported by the jerusalem post turning to politics now um believe it or not there is talk of a fourth election in israel that would be unbelievable if israel had to go back to elections in november it all has to do with the state budget if the budget is not passed a two-year budget if it is not passed then by august 25th that's the deadline then that will lead to the automatic dissolution dissolution of the knesset and new elections reported by the jerusalem post the coalition agreement between blue and white and likud states explicitly that a two-year budget must be passed but prime minister netanyahu is insisting on passing just a one-year budget passing a one-year budget would give netanyahu his last opportunity to topple the government without passing the premiership over to benigns something which might happen if a budget for 2021 is not passed by the end of march so if we don't have the passing of the budget that two-year budget and there's only a one-year budget passed it's pretty complicated i know then on one hand you have netanyahu preventing pentagons from becoming prime minister because the uh the knesset would would dissolve if they can't get this thing together they can't get a two-year budget together this could be another brilliant political move whether you like him or not by the prime minister to hold on uh to power or at least go to another election even with all his legal troubles in order to try to get the the people of the state of israel to once again back him perhaps uh this time he won't need the blue and white since blue and white is doing terribly in the polls perhaps the prime minister if likud gets enough seats and the coup is also down by the way but not as far down as blue and white perhaps he'll be able to form a new coalition with other parties and maintain his seat maintain his position as prime minister of israel again this that would be unbelievable but the prime minister whether again whether you like him or not is a master politician and if anybody could pull this off it would be him that being said the israeli people i believe certainly do not want a fourth election when the within the period of what a year and a half two years we don't want elections again so we'll see what ha what happens here whether or not the state budget is passed a two-year state budget budget that is or whether whether netanyahu will get what he wants pass a one-year budget and then perhaps go to elections communications minister joaz hendell and his party colleague mk sv hauser intend to submit legislation to the knesset this week this is from today's j post that will postpone the deadline that august 25th deadline for approval of the state budget as we mentioned the budget must be approved at this point by the knesset by that date the 25th with failure to do so leading to the automatic dissolution of the knesset and new elections that would be insane that would be crazy if we went to new elections but you have a lot of people who you have these protesters who have are going absolutely berserk there against prime minister netanyahu maybe you saw some of the images it looks like that the protests um over corona and the way the government's handling the corona looks like they have been hijacked by a bunch of extremists if you see some of the images some of some radicals especially from the left unfortunately i mean it started out looking like a legitimate protest people are upset a lot of people are out of work because of the coronavirus people want to find want the government to help find solutions for them financially but it looks like those protests over the last couple days have been hijacked with a radical left agenda how unfortunate uh at the same time people who are attending the protests potentially putting themselves in harm's way not keeping social distance and whatnot so there has been some craziness in front of the prime minister's prime minister's residence over the last several nights people protesting and just complete i mean it looks like just just insanity and anarchy and really a hijacking of of perhaps legitimate protests in favor of this madness and you can go and uh and have a look at some of the desecration of jewish symbols being uh going on there during the protests and uh it does not look to me in my opinion does not look like these are legitimate protests any longer uh our weekly focus on the democratic party in the u.s uh once again this uh this report came out uh this week it's and it's been a weekly report on this show the democratic party this week released a draft of its platform ahead of a final vote which is expected with the foreign policy chapter calling to return to mutual compliance with the 2015 iran nuclear deal and opposed regime change within the islamic republic in other words they want things to remain status quo the democrats want status quo in iran they do not want to topple the mullahs this is a an endorsement of a terror regime this is a slap in the face to those protesters in iran who do not have the freedoms they deserve talking about the iranian people so the democrats have decided that they really don't care about the average iranian who has to live in fear under this tyrannical maniacal terror state just horrible regime it's it's really a slap in the face to those suffering under the iranian mullahs the democratic party platform according to this report out of the j post democrats believe the us should not impose regime change on other countries and reject reject that as the goal of the u.s policy towards iran at the same time the draft also mentions the party believes that the jcpoa agreement remains the best means to cut off all of iran's pathways to a nuclear bomb that's absolutely wrong as well even if the iranians keep the keep that agreement the letter of the letter of the agreement that still helps pave the way towards a nuclear iran even if they're keeping the agreement and prime minister netanyahu has explained this time and time again that it's a bad deal uh it's helping iran move forward at least it has been helping iran move forward uh i'm sure that the u.s backing out of that bad iran deal has put a a damper on their plans towards nuclear weapons and of course we've had all these mysterious explosions over the last couple of weeks but nevertheless the democratic party wants to stick to the jcpoa that bad iranian nuclear deal they also want to stick um to allowing the mullahs to remain in control there in iran which is terrible for the iranian people and of course at the same time this document talks about israel and the so-called palestinians the arabs living under the pa warning israel uh actually both sides not to take unilateral steps we've talked about this before they are against what they call annexation or the application of sovereignty by israel over judea and samaria they're still going down this path of two-state solution they have no problem when israel carries out unilateral pull-outs unilateral withdrawals that they have no problem with but but when it comes to unilateral application of sovereignty that they have a problem with still going down the same path uh or perhaps even worse now than before because of all the radicals within the democratic party applying pressure on israel to [Music] keep up the insanity trying the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results i'm talking about the two-state solution um but uh this is what they're sticking to that's part of the dnc draft platform keeping iran in power going down the path of a two-state solution so think of think about that very hard i'm not going to tell you who to vote for in the upcoming election but think about those policies very hard when you are voting this november if you're deciding between a republican or a democrat if israel is important to you okay this is there this is the democratic official party stance have that in mind when you are voting this november in the u.s i'm not going to tell you what to do i think you can figure it out for yourselves and that's really going to do for today's show again i mentioned before tisha b'av is on the way and we usually end the show with something positive and we're going to continue to end something with something positive at this point as i mentioned tisha b'av the saddest date on the jewish calendar historically the saddest date for the last 2000 plus years but rabbi akiva rebbi akiva had had a vision when he saw the destruction of the the second temple if you heard this famous story of rabbi akiva laughing upon seeing foxes running through the remains of the second temple after it was destroyed rabbi kiba laughing and the other rabbi is asking him why are you laughing how can you be laughing the temple was destroyed and rabbi kiva spinning it into something positive turning it into something positive saying that uh what we're seeing here gives me hope gives me optimism because the destruction of this temple following the destruction of this temple i know that one day jerusalem will once again be rebuilt and let's be positive let's keep that in mind let's keep doing um let's keep helping our fellow man as we say in hebrew unconditional love towards our fellow man we know that the second temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred let's turn that into unconditional love and keep doing good things helping people out especially now especially during the nine days especially during corona especially as we're heading towards rosh hashanah which is only seven weeks away can you believe it time is flying anyway so that will be a positive note as i mentioned before when tisha b'av the saddest day of the year turns into the happiest day of the year with the rebuilding of the temple and uh and the meshiach and the messiah and all jews coming home to israel please god that should happen soon everyone should come home before by the way let's make note of it unfortunately right now as a result of corona it's hard to get here for people who don't have citizenship but jews need to find a way home to israel as soon as possible and that will help i believe that will help bring upon the messianic times i think we're almost there we're getting there but we have uh we have some work to do until that point anyway thanks to binyaminbreski engineer extraordinaire tab at the epstein for everything she does behind the scenes my name is josh haston this has been another edition of israel uncensored on the land of israel network at the land of israel.com for monday july 27th the 6th of 5780 everyone out there who's fasting wednesday or wednesday and thursday rather have a meaningful fast and everyone out there with a wonderful world of hours be safe shalom shalom from jerusalem the eternal capital of the jewish people [Music] the land of israel network is your connection to israel and the jewish world listen to our show hosts arya brahmowitz jeremy gimpel eve harrow josh haston shromo cats mike foyer ishai fleischer and more keeping you up to date on news politics and spirituality that's the land of israel network at the land of israel.com broadcasting the truth and beauty of is