Bonus Episode: Noa Tishby and Emmanuel Acho
Since October 7th, many of us have had uncomfortable conversations we could never have imagined having. October 7th sparked debates and discussions that got very awkward very quickly.
But what’s unique about our guests today is that they were having these conversations prior to October 7th. Not only were they having these conversations, they were working on a book that chronicled these difficult conversations. Their book is called “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew”. It’s by Noa Tishby and Emmanuel Acho.
Emmanuel is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and the host and producer of an online series called "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man". Emmanuel was nominated for an emmy award for this series. He’s also a 2021 Sports Emmy winner, a Fox Sports Analyst. And, perhaps most importantly, Emmanuel is a former NFL linebacker.
Noa Tishby is the New York Times bestselling author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. A native of Tel Aviv, she served in the Israeli army before moving to Los Angeles and launching a career in the entertainment industry. An award-winning producer, Tishby made history with the sale of In Treatment to HBO, the first Israeli television show to become an American series. She has had an extraordinary career in Israeli television and film.
To order their book:
Amazon - https://tinyurl.com/4k3uv8av
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NT: As soon as you change the rules of the game to judging every person by - are you an oppressor? Are you oppressed? And how tanned are you? The Jewish community just doesn't fit.
EA: America was the place where Jewish people came to escape their suffering. America was a place where Black people came to begin their suffering. And as a result, that tension between the relationship that Black people have with America and Jewish people have with America leads to a tension between the Black people and Jewish community.
DS: It's 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 27th in New York City. It's 4:00 a.m. on Friday, June 28th in Israel. Since October 7th, many of us have had uncomfortable conversations, sometimes surprisingly and quite depressingly uncomfortable conversations that we actually could never have imagined having to have with friends or colleagues or with people we've worked on various causes with over the years outside the Jewish community. And then October 7th sparked debates and very tense discussions over here, in the west, in the diaspora that got very awkward very quickly. But what's unique about my guests today is that they were actually having these awkward conversations prior to October 7th. Not only were they having these conversations, they were working on a book that chronicled these difficult conversations between a prominent figure from the Jewish community and a prominent figure from the Black community. It's almost like they had anticipated the therapy we would all need. Their book is called ‘Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew.’ It's by NoaTishby and Emmanuel Acho, who are our guests today. Emmanuel is a number one New York Times best selling author and the host and producer of an online series called ‘Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man’, which was first released in the summer of 2020. We all remember that summer. Emmanuel was nominated for an Emmy Award for this series. It's had something close to a hundred million views online and he's also a 2021 Sports Emmy winner, and he is a Fox Sports Analyst. And perhaps most importantly, Emmanuel is a former NFL linebacker, which gives me huge credibility in our home with my sons for having finally a former NFL player on this podcast, albeit he never played for the Jets. NoaTishby is the New York Times best selling author of ‘Israel. A simple guide to the most misunderstood country on earth.’ A native of Tel Aviv, Noa served in the Israeli army before she relocated to Los Angeles and launched a career in the entertainment industry. She's an award winning producer. She made history with the sale of the Israeli television show ‘In Treatment’ to HBO, many years ago. It was the first israeli television show to become an american series. She's had an extraordinary career in israeli television and film. We have a whole chapter in our book ‘The Genius of Israel’ about how the israeli television scene has taken off over the last couple decades and Noa really was present at the creation of that boom. Noa Tishby and Emmanuel Acho; This is Call Me Back. I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time Noa Tishby and Emannuel Acho. Welcome to the pod guys.
NT: Thank you. Glad to be here.
EA: Glad to be here.
DS: It is great to have you guys. There's a lot I want to cover. So I'm just going to jump right into it. You guys have been on a whirlwind, which has been very impressive to watch a real tour de force. You wrote this book, which I talked about in the introduction, and I'm just going to like cut to it because it's all everyone is talking about, which is, or at least everyone in our world and my world, which is this shocking rise, and brazen expression of antisemitism in America and in the West. And we're trying to understand what shape it has taken, how it has evolved over the years, how this all happened. Did it come out of nowhere? Has it been building for a while? And one of the ways to look at this issue, not the only way, but one lens to look at this issue, is the one that you guys decided to spend a lot of time wrestling with, arguing about, according to your book, and ultimately unpacking, which is looking at through the lens of the history of the relations between the black community and the Jewish community in the United States and how it's transformed over the past half a century, from a place of solidarity, perhaps best expressed by signs outside beaches and restaurants that one said, no blacks or no Jews allowed. So they were put in the same category, if you will. In fact, maybe we can even play the clip of Martin Luther King's last speech, 24 hours before he was assassinated, in which he talked about, he used the language of The Promised Land. And, you know, he made all these very explicit connections to the story of Moses and the Passover story. And let's just play that clip real quick. “All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper. Well I don’t know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. I've seen The Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know the night that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” So Martin Luther King talked very passionately and marched very publicly with Jewish leaders. So there was this incredible sense during the civil rights era. The fight for civil rights for African Americans. So there was this incredible solidarity between the Jewish community and the black community in the United States. And then it feels that we entered some period where there was this openly hostile to varying degrees relationship between the two communities, where we see many in the Black community, not all, but many, expressing solidarity with the pro Gaza, pro Hamas, whatever you want to call them, protests. And comparing what Israel's doing to apartheid and genocide. And then you two, as I said, decide, hey, as though this topic isn't difficult enough, we're going to write a book about it together. And you just went there. And you charted some pretty,
NT: Hahaha.
DS: You know, to borrow your word, uncomfortable territories in your book. So, first of all, I gotta ask, how on earth did this project come about? Like, how and when did you two connect to write this book and actually think, Oh, yeah, this is a good idea. Not a horrendous idea.
EA: That's a great question. I'll start off, I'll be quick and concise. I wrote ‘Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man’ in 2020. That was the first book of the series. And by the grace of God, it was a New York Times bestseller. Then I wrote ‘Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy,’t was a number one New York Times bestseller. And then I realized, you know what, Emanuel, step outside your own shoes. It's not just about you and your life experience. What are other oppressed groups? What are other groups that are currently under attack? And I realized that the Jewish community was imminently under attack. Obviously, the Jewish community has long been under attack, but in around 2022, it was imminently under attack, and it was under attack by several individuals that were entertainers and black men. Kanye West; I don't have to restate his comments. NBA superstar, Kyrie Irving. He had made some antisemitic comments, sharing a link to a video that said the Holocaust didn't really happen amongst other things. Um, Dave Chappelle, he had a Saturday night live skit in which he said some things that were deemed offensive. And so I, I read the room and said, there's so much rampant ignorance around antisemitism. There needs to be questions that are answered. And there was no more brilliant voice, which we have all come to know thoroughly. And then the voice of Noa Tishby. And so when I reached out to Noa, really read chapter one of the book to find the details of how we actually got connected, reached out to Noa and Noa, I'll let you take it from here.
NT: And I said, yes, as fast as I possibly could. And I just want to pause on that for a second because Emmanuel is saying it as if it's something that is very common and acceptable, but it is very unique that Emmanuel Acho, a successful black man, noticed the rise in antisemitism among black men. And he didn't just notice it. He actually. about it and put himself on the line of fire. So he called me up about a year and a half before October 7th and said, listen, I'm noticing this thing. I want to reach out to your community. He literally said, I want you community to know that relief is on the way, which floored me. And he asked me to write this book with him, which obviously, as I said, I said, yes, as fast as I possibly could. And we started working on it.
DS: So when is this? When are you working on it?
NT: I think by October 7th, we were about. Halfway through.
DS: Wow.
NT: And then October 7th happened so we had the deal, we wrote the book proposal, we got the deal, we, we started writing the book we were sitting down, we were having all these uncomfortable conversations that then became a whole lot more uncomfortable and then October 7th happened and it changed everything and it made me all the points that we were discussing, all the questions that I was answering, so much more potent and had real life examples. So when I was talking before about Zionism, we started talking about Zionism before and it was uncomfortable even before October 7th. After October 8th. Everything became very clear about what Zionism is now perceived to be and where, you know, this new face of antisemitism has taken us. So Emmanuel did the most extraordinary thing by reaching out to me. I feel like reaching out to us.
DS: Emmanuel, picking up from that, so October 7th happens, picking up from what Noa just said, October 7th happens. I will tell you, I naively, and Noa, I wonder if you felt this way too, I naively felt After October 7th, that the world was actually going to sympathize with the Jews. Immediately after October 7th. Again, I was naive to think that. But I just thought that the outrage of the world would be directed at those massacring Jews. Not directed at Jews for objecting to being massacred. And when you saw this playing out, the backlash against Jews, did you think, wait, it's way worse than I thought it was? Or did you think, hey, like Noa and I were really onto something like we saw this coming and then you had this like trigger that unleashed something that clearly had been simmering beneath the surface. Were you shocked? I guess is my question. Were you shocked or did it validate what you were thinking when you first reached out to Noa?
EA: Great question. I was not shocked, but I wasn't shocked because I don't live in the Jewish community at the same potency that you Dan or Noa do. And so I'll paint the picture for you. The reason I wasn't shocked was because after October 7th. I sat down with Noa on Instagram live. I believe Noa and I went on Instagram live October 7th at like 11:00 PM, Noa?
NT: Something like that on the day, the same date.
EA: The same date, 8:00 PM. I get done with work. I work on sports television. I'm on Fox sports. I finished hosting a show. I see that Noa's distraught. I shoot her a text. Hey, can we get on Instagram live? At that point in time, Noa's platform has obviously grown exponentially, but at that point in time, I was like, okay, I got about a million followers. Let me lend my platform to Noa so she can just share with a million people what in the world is going on. So I asked Noa one simple question. I say, Noa, what can we do to support the Jewish community? Right. And Noa simply says like, hey, check in on your friends, check in on your Jewish friends, stand with your Jewish friends. I was like, that's a beautiful message. I post it, Dan. The next day watching all of the NFL games, thinking nothing. I checked my Instagram. This is a true story. I have a direct message from a black friend of mine, a dear, dear friend of mine. And it says, I can't believe you, Emmanuel. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, what? You can't believe what? Your last Instagram post disgust me. Now I'm freaking out. I'm like, what did I accidentally post from like my photo gallery that has uploaded onto my Instagram? Like, what could I have done? That's so vile. I checked my Instagram, Dan, and it's my last post with Noa. So then I rewatched it. I said, I must have clipped off the wrong portion of that soundbite because what could have been said that was so disgusting. I rewatch it. So what should I do? Noa, how can I support you in this time? Emanuel, please just check on your Jewish friends. I just hope that everybody checks on their Jewish friends. So now I'm like, wait, what the hell? What's disgusting here. And so my friend was like, you only listening to one side of the story and one side of this and one side of that, this war didn't start in October 7th. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So at that point in time, Dan, I realized, Oh, the reaction to what just occurred, it is about to be volatile and it is about to be split. It is not going to be unanimous. And so I was not shocked because I simultaneously live in a non Jewish community, though I have a lot of proximity to the Jewish community. So I wasn't shocked. And lastly, I did realize at that moment in time, this book is as urgent as any book that will be written all year and probably the rest of the decade, I don't know if there will be a more timely book for a moment.
NT: 100%. And I got to tap onto what you just asked, Dan, in terms of the shock. I wasn't surprised at all. We were a close group of people, a smaller, relatively small group of people within the Jewish community that have tried to warn that this is about to happen. I have seen this as an Israeli American. I came here and I saw this bias and this disproportionate obsession towards Israel and Israelis. And this what's been going on in the past 30 years is really dehumanizing, demonizing Israelis, Zionists, and the IDF, such that Israel became so toxic that when October 7th happened, the immediate response of the majority of people that have been groomed to think that was, well, they had it coming. And we knew that this was happening. So that was what was going on. A lot of people brushed it off, said, Oh, it's just on college campuses. They grow out of it. They'll grow out of it. They'll understand. It's freedom of speech, freedom of religion. When you allow on college campuses for decades, apartheid wall and apartheid week and globalize the intifada and all these, all these movements that are not about freedom or progressiveness or liberation of anything, they are about taking down a country. And they don't hide it. And when you allow that under the guise of freedom of speech, you create an environment in which Israel, Israelis, Jews, the IDF are toxic and deserving of October 7th. Hence “resistance is justified when people are occupied.” So this, we, we saw this, the writing was on the wall for a very long time, and it just brought out from underneath the surface what existed there in a very long time.
DS: So I want to go back to see, better understand how the relationship between our, with the three people in this conversation, our two communities fractured over a long period of time. Again, this doesn't apply to everyone in black community in terms of attitude, so I want to be careful not to overly generalize, but obviously some very prominent voices, not the least of which, Emmanuel, the ones you, you cited earlier where Jewish whiteness, if you will, became the biggest point of contention or a big point of contention between blacks and Jews. And of course. You know, the irony is glaring because, I mean, if I go back to the Shoah, to the Holocaust, Jews faced extermination for, or subjected to extermination in part because they were quote, unquote, contaminating the white race. And so suddenly Jews were, were white. I guess we're now credentialed as having been white, but there's been this gradual breakdown in American civic discourse, which is like, there was the debate between right and wrong. And then it became white versus right, which is like whites were wrong and everyone else was right. And then it became, you know, might versus wrong. So it wasn't just white, it was white and might. Meaning it was whites and whites were strong and they were the bad guys. And then somehow Jews became all of those things. Jews became white. And they became synonymous with might, with strong. And there's so many contradictions and paradoxes in this because Jews today is certainly in the West and in Israel are, are both strong, obviously. Israel has one of the strongest militaries in the world. It's a technological superpower globally, it's an economic superpower regionally. So on the one hand, Israel is strong, and yet, Israel's vulnerable. And, as we saw on October 7th, and it's surrounded by enemies, and it's been in a state of war with many countries in the region since its founding. And Jews in, you know, on the one hand, 16 percent of the New York City population, where I live, is Jewish. And yet when I have conversations with Jews today, they've never felt more vulnerable. So on the other one hand, we have this massive population and Jews hold all these prominent positions of influence and yet feel vulnerable. So there's these paradoxes tha one tries to make sense of. But the fracture is at the core of the tension between these two communities is what to me is inexplicable, given where it was. Like, how did this happen? And I know it's a big question for a short conversation, but just, I'll throw it to either of you, like, how did this fracture happen?
EA: Let me start if that's okay. I've committed a lot of energy, time and effort into researching the specific answer to this question. I believe there is no greater tell of how this happened than listening to one of the greatest authors in my mind of all time in James Baldwin. And he wrote a 1968 piece of which I've reread in excess of probably 10 times, and it's titled, quote, “Negroes Are Anti Semitic Because They're Anti-white”. I suggest every listener to read this piece. There are some excerpts that I will quote or paraphrase. Um, I believe this happened in large part because we, we took the Jewish bucket, and we threw the Jewish bucket into the white bucket. That's the simplest answer. Dan, you alluded to it earlier, Noa, you've talked about it at length. It used to be no blacks, no Jews allowed. Well, once Jews were able to, as we wrote in the book, accept a white card so to speak, and be viewed in America as white, well now, It's no blacks allowed, and it was no longer no Jews allowed. So though Jewish people still consider themselves Jewish, black people don't necessarily look at Jewish people as Jewish. Black people, and again, I'm generalizing, but black people, as author James Baldwin puts it, look at Jewish people as white. And in America, the tension between the black community and the white community is an, is at a videographed and telegraphed and photographed all time high. And so because black people perceive the Jewish community to be white, and there is tension between the black community and the white community, there is tension between the black community and the Jewish community. I think that in the most fascinating part, one of the most fascinating parts of the book is understanding how Jewish people perceive themselves and how non Jewish people and black people may perceive Jewish people. And there is a disconnect there. Jewish people have historically suffered, the Holocaust. Black people have historically suffered slavery. But as James Baldwin puts it, black people and Jewish people have a much different relationship to America. And I will end it here. So often America was the place where Jewish people came to escape their suffering. America was a place where black people came to begin their suffering. And as a result, that tension between the relationship that Black people have with America and Jewish people have with America leads to a tension between the Black people and Jewish community. So, so, so, so, so much more I could say there, but trying to simplify it for the sake of the list and for the sake of time.
NT: To what Emmanuel said, the goal post moved. So whereas before people were judged by the content of their character, by even class, education, money, whatever, we put people in kind of like buckets. It changed to the Marxist concept of oppressor and oppressed, the proletarian and who isn't that, and melanin in the skin. So as soon as you change the rules of the game to judging every person, but are you an oppressor? Are you oppressed? And what kind of, how tanned are you? The Jewish community just doesn't fit these parameters. And that's one of the main reasons that it's happening today. And it's such a source of confusion and lack of historical context of all these young people that are demonstrating and even Jews that are describing themselves as white. We're not, we're an entirely different ethnic group. We're Jewish. It was one of the most interesting conversations that Emmanuel and I had, are Jews white? And I think a lot within our community don't know how to answer that. So I felt like this was one of the most intense conversations that we had, which is very critical to the cultural moment that we're at today.
DS: Noa, you, having lived most of your life, or a big part of your life in Israel, you're Israeli. This is something I often try to get people to understand who've never been to Israel. When you walk the streets of Israel, you will encounter more people who are not white, the way we talk about people who are white in the United States, than you will who are, to use that category, white. Meaning, being a person of color is more common in Israel than not being a person of color. You know, this is why I try to tell people there's over 70 nationalities represented in Israel. There are people from, you know, all over North Africa, you know, all over Latin America.
NT: Yes. The answer is yes. So first of all, the conversation, the concept of Israel being the white country that's oppressing the brown is literally on its face wrong because first of all, only about 31 percent of Israelis define themselves as of Eastern European descent. All the rest are indigenous to the land in terms of coming from the Middle East, either Arab Israelis or Israel or Jews of Arab descent or again, Latin American, whatever. I won't say who that was, but it's a very close friend of mine who's black, who went to Israel for the first time, I think in January or February, she calls me up after 48 hours. She's like, Dude, it's not even a white country. It's like, I'm walking around, it's not even white. I'm like, I know. So again, when you think of antisemitism in a wide spectrum, when you zoom out and look at antisemitism of the last thousands of years, it's a shape shifting conspiracy theory. And what it shifted into today is this demonization, dehumanization, and delegitimization of the Israel, Israelis, the IDF, Zionists, and it's sad to say, but Israel became the Jew of the world. That's where we're at right now. And every parameter in which, by which you judge this is wrong.
DS: Dan, let me chime in because I believe everything Noa's saying is correct. And I also want to remind people, at least the train of thought I have is so much of this is predicated and ignorance. Um, the friend that Noawas talking about, it's not like she intentionally was ignorant, but we are all to some degree born ignorant. We do not know what we do not know. It is not a crime to be ignorant. I believe the crime is in staying ignorant. I, up until what, two years ago, didn't know what Ashkenazi and Sephardic was. I still can't really spell them. I can tell you what they mean though, at least. And like, it's not a crime. I'm not Jewish. Now, because I'm the son of a pastor, I have a little bit more familiarity with what Sephardic means. I have a little bit more familiarity with the name and the term Zion. I have a little bit more familiarity with the Old Testament than most and with Passover and with, you know, Pharaoh and with the Israelites and with Moses and with all of these things. But so many people are ignorant. If you are in America and you haven't left America, then your relationship to Jewish people is primarily Eastern European Jews. So you have no freaking idea that the majority of Jewish people are not of Eastern European descent. I remember when I was in middle school, I went to this private school, primarily white. It was an all boys school. We wore uniform and people would come up to me like, oh Acho, you're African. Like start doing like noise, click sounds to talk to me as though like that is how everyone in Africa may communicate. Now, obviously it was insensitive. Obviously it was ignorant. Obviously it was to a large degree xenophobic, but they also just see a TV show and they think that everybody in Africa may speak Swahili. The only relationship they have to Africa is coming to America. And I'm like, with all due respect, everybody's not like Eddie Murphy. And so I just want to remind people, that's why the book was so important because there are so many things of which I am foremost guilty that people are ignorant about. And it's just a matter of don't stay ignorant, like educate yourself, because once you have the education, now I can hold you responsible. Once you know, now I'm holding you responsible. And if you're choosing not to know, I too can hold you responsible.
NT: I just want to add as well that it was such a delight to be working with Emanuel and being a son of a pastor and having that historical context, because most of these kids on the encampments right now are trying to tell us that there is no Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel, which is, it's a crazy concept, but they were able to actually convince people. So at least with people that know the scriptures and people that know history, that's very clear. Don't try to tell me that the Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel. That's just crazy on every parameter.
DS: I think a lot of Jews, when they have to like fill out these forms and check off
NT: Ethnicity.
DS: Exactly.
NT: Yeah. I write other. Other.
DS: You write other.
NT: Absolutely.
DS: And is that what you advise Jews to do? Is write other? Don't check off white?
NT: Yes. You're not white. You're white passing.
DS: Because Jewish is not an option.
NT: Jewish is not an option. You're not white. You're white passing. You look, some of us look white. When you look at Seinfeld, he certainly looks white. But, you know, that's not all Jews. And we are an indigenous people. Our religion is inseparable from a land. Our history is inseparable from a place. We're an indigenous tribe. That's who we are. So the white card that Emmanuel was talking about is, you know, you know, yeah, we were given a white card because some of the rules of the game, but they would, the white card was not given to my black Jewish friends or to my Moroccan Jewish friends. They're still considered brown. So it's not a parameter. I think looking at the world through the lenses of oppressor oppressed and melanin in the skin is reductive and unuseful.
DS: I want to get both of your reactions to events that have taken place. One, a protest outside the Nova Festival exhibition in New York City, where a massive sign was carried at the front saying, “October 7th lives.” And then, an event that got a lot of attention, that was recorded on an iPhone, that took place in the New York City subway the other day. The video has gone viral, but let's play the audio here. So our listeners can know exactly what we're talking about. [...] Okay. So here we are, as I said earlier, so a bunch of Pro Hamas protesters board a train wearing keffiyehs, you know, faces covered, and they declare on the train, if you are a Zionist, if there's a Zionist on this train, raise your hand.
NT: Get off the train.
DS: Get, get off the train. This is your last chance.
NT: We've heard that before.
DS: Exactly. So, what was your, I mean, I've been shocked by a lot since October 7th. This one, uh, was a whole other level, actually, for the allusion you're making right there, Noa. And, I was freaked out by it for two reasons. One, on the face of it, I was freaked out by it, but I was also freaked out by it, by just, when I looked at the video, I look at all these people on the train, who probably aren't Jewish, who are just keeping their heads down. That really scared me. I was like, why is this okay? Like, everyone just wants to stay out of trouble. They don't want a controversy. They don't want to get in anyone's face. They just, they just want to mind their own business, which is like a metaphor for how, in many parts of the world, through much of history, almost every century for that matter, Jews have often lived among their neighbors, when things got bad a lot of people, non Jews, just kept their heads down.
NT: It's bad. And it's bad because antisemitism shifted to, it's okay to be against Zionists. It's okay to be against Israel. It's okay to be against the IDF. A lot of Jews are trying to say, separate themselves. Like, well, I don't really, I don't support Bibi, therefore maybe I'm also not a Zionist. I called it in my book, ‘The Antisemitism Layer Cake’, and I described how every few years antisemitism shifts to something different. And it started out with people related antisemitism. So peoplehood, right? So it was like, who is this weird people? And then it shifted into, who is this weird? Christian religious based antisemitism with the death of Christ, so the Jews killed, you know, and they are now, the Jews killed Jesus, and therefore they use the blood of Christian children to make their matzahs. Then it shifted to racial antisemitism, because out of Christian antisemitism, religious antisemitism, you can convert out of it, but you can't convert out of racial antisemitism and political antisemitism, which the Nazis have based their entire holocaust on. And then now it shifted to something new. It shifted into anti-Zionism. So in terms of those people, right, they believe that the IDF is indiscriminatorily murdering Palestinian children in exactly the same way that in the 1500 people were thinking that the Jews are indiscriminatorily murdering Christian babies to use their blood for matzahs. It's the same thing. They literally have been brainwashed to think that the IDF and Israelis and Zionists are this mythological evil creature that shouldn't be trusted, that is blood thirsty. It's exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing. And I think the faster we understand this as a Jewish community, the better we can get out of it and acknowledge that this is what's happening. No other way about it. Here's the thing. When I moved here as an Israeli, as a young Israeli, I noticed that right away. Right away! Because I am coming from a progressive family and a liberal family, and I'm a successful, you know, actor. I'm like looking around going, Why are you talking about Israel as if it's the demon of all demons? And granted, Israel is not perfect. No country is perfect, but the obsession that people have about it is something else. That something else is a deep rooted, embedded, kind of mythological Jew hatred and suspicion. That's why we see so “any Zionists on the train, get out of here.” That's why we see the, the demonstrations outside of the Nova festival. That's why, and that's what this is. We have to understand that this is it and act against it as fast as we can.
DS: Emmanuel, you mentioned you got a lot of flack when you posted that Instagram message with Noa after October 7th. Well, let's just say since then and since this book has come out, you're way more out there than you were in those immediate days after October 7th in that post with Noa. You're really, really, really out there. By the way, as a Jew, I will tell you, and as a Jewish parent, I'm grateful for you being out there the way you have. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that. But what has it meant for you in your community? And has the flack you took in those initial days exponentially grown? Or do you think you're persuading people?
EA: I'll do two things. I'll share a story that I don't share often, and it's tangential to what Noa just said in response to Zionists. Dan, I was leaving dinner. It was in Northern Hollywood. I was at a restaurant called Leona's. I just finished having sushi. I'm walking out of this restaurant by myself. That is an important detail to the story. As I'm walking out of the restaurant by myself, I hear murmurs to my left. Is this someone who was speaking to me? I try not to be rude. If somebody's speaking to me, it might be a sports fan. For those that do not know, I'm a sports TV host in my free time outside of writing the book. So I turn, assuming they might say like, hey, the Cowboys suck or they might say like, hey, love what you do, whatever the case may be. Dan, as I turned to my left to engage this person, she looks at me in her eyes, try to pierce mine. And she says, I hope they pay you well. Now, Dan, at first I'm shocked because I'm like, wait a second. But now I realize, okay, if you stop me, we'll go there. I look at her back in her eyes. I'm standing 6’2” 240 lbs, former NFL athlete. I look at her in her eyes and I say, who is they? She looks back at me. You know who they are. I look at her again. I say, No, who is they? She looks back at me and she goes, Zionists, I say, excuse me. I say, my goal is for peace. My goal is for unity. My goal is to continue to spread just awareness around ignorance in order to diffuse the situation, Dan, and the next thing I said to her, it was very, very, very pivotal because the conversation it would swing based upon her response to this. I look at her and I say, What's your name? Cause if you can get somebody's name, you can bridge a connection. So I look at her and I say, what's your name? She was at a table with four other women. She looks at me and she says, you don't deserve my name. I said, okay, well, God bless you. Y'all enjoy your dinner. And I walked away. What was so frustrating about that instance. And I share that story in large part because of the conversation we just had, is if anybody's read the book, you realize that all I do is push back on Noa during the course of the conversations around Zionism. That's literally all I do. My objective is to push back on Noa so that I can continue to learn more and learn more and learn more. I played professional football. A coach would say, you don't truly know something until you can explain it. So my objective in dialogue with Noa was no, no, I'm going to make you continue to explain and explain and explain and explain so that the reader knows all there is to know. One of my previous Instagram posts before the, that woman accosted me, if you will, verbally, one of my previous Instagram posts, but was an excerpt from the book when I said, Noa, Zionism, it sounds great to the Jewish individual, but what about the individual who had to relocate their home and this and that? Like. It's me not just placating to this notion. It's me really walking with Noa in a tense fashion. Yet this woman knew nothing besides I was friends with Noa. So I must be being paid. And, and I must be some like evil person.
DS: And that's what the Jews do. They pay. I mean, that is also, that is the trope.
NT: Exactly. That's the trope. Exactly that. So first of all, until Emanuel told me that, I didn't know that you can actually can be antisemitically harassed if you're not Jewish. So welcome to the club. And second, I was like, do you see that? She made immediate connection that even the mere fact that you just support Israel's right to exist, you must be getting paid because the Jews, they get paid the thing that's basically Shylock. That's what it is.
EA: And so in closing, I would say that I had to be very diligent. I said this yesterday, I was speaking to the Jewish Federation of Rochester in New York yesterday, and someone asked me a question about, hey Emmanuel, how's it been for you? And I said, well, you know, I've had to be diligent because for Noa, speaking about this, she would primarily receive love from her community. But me speaking about this, I would be told I was a sellout. I would be told I was a coon. I would be told I was dancing for the man, by my community. So our communities would have vastly different responses to trying to continue to explore and educate surrounding antisemitism. So Dan, it hasn't been easy. But I do believe that it's been worth it. And Neil deGrasse Tyson, he said, If you have the ability to do something for the better good of humanity, and you can do it better than those around you, you would be morally irresponsible not to do it. And I do believe I have the ability to help co author conversations, um, better than most people around me and it's for the greater good of humanity. And so that's kind of why Noa and I and I personally have accepted the challenge.
DS: I'll just say in closing to you both i'm asked all the time, you you said you were just speaking before the federation, i'm doing a lot of, I know you guys are out there, Noa and I have done a speaking event together I get asked all these questions all the time, like what's the grand plan? How do we solve all these problems that the Jewish people are facing? The crisis of Jewish life in the West, in the diaspora. How does Israel better tell its story? How do the Jewish people better tell their story? And everyone wants a grand strategy. They want the playbook. And the reality is, I don't have one. I don't. This whole thing is so jarring. And the story I tell, which, and I'll do it succinctly, we went, my wife and I and our kids went to Israel over, over Passover a couple months ago. It was my third trip to Israel since October 7th. It was my wife's second trip. It was my kids first trip. And last summer we were in Eastern Europe because my mother is a Holocaust survivor. And we went to her hometown. We went to Auschwitz where her father was killed. And when we were with our kids in Israel, over Passover, I was asking them, we went down to the Gaza Envelope, we went to the Kibbutzim, where Jews were slaughtered, we went to Kibbutz Nir Oz, which, Noa, you know, and where one out of every four residents was killed or taken hostage on October 7th, and I asked my kids, what was your reaction to today, and my 16 year old son said, today, I can't believe I'm saying this, today was harder for me than visiting Auschwitz, because Auschwitz as awful as it was, felt like it happened in a lifetime that he couldn't relate to. And this was happening now. Like, he couldn't believe that this had just happened a few months ago. The ghoulishness, the unfathomable nature of what had happened. And, I don't have an answer to that. I don't have a playbook for Jews on how to, what we do in this moment. Except, what you choose to do in your own lives. And how you model for the people in your world, in your respective communities. That's all you can control. The only thing you control is how you choose to live your life, and I will say, I'm very, like, kind of in awe of what you guys have done, because you're doing what you know how to do, which is have uncomfortable conversations, you wrote a book about it, you're out there speaking, and in so doing, you're modeling, for a lot of people, in both communities, something that is more, impactful at a practical level and a real time level than like all the right white papers and op eds and grand plans that people could come up with. So I just, I want to thank you both for what you're doing, for this book you've written and this uncomfortable journey you're taking us all on. NT: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's all Emmanuel. It's his bravery and his entrepreneurship and his willingness to be hated on social media and in restaurants in Hollywood.
DS: Yeah, but I will note, Emmanuel, and I love that your story in the restaurant was you thought they were going to say the cowboys sucked. As a New York Jets fan, I was waiting for a New York Jets dig, so I'm grateful that the cowboys What you were imagining was cowboy hatred. That is a very high note for me to end on.
EA: Amazing.
DS: All right, Emanuel and Noa, will link to the book in the show notes, and I encourage readers to buy it, to read it, to share it, to give it to kids. I've been giving the book to a lot of my friends' kids, because it's not just important for adults to read it, but teenagers should read it too. Thank you both.
NT: Thank you so much for having us.
EA: Thank you.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Noa Tishby, you can find her on X and on Instagram, @NoaTishby. And to keep up with Emanuel Acho, you can find him on X and Instagram, @EmanuelAcho. You should also order their book. We'll post a link to it in the show notes. It is already a New York Times bestseller, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.