>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour will be made this coming Monday when a couple of important events are happening.

The first is the arrival of the Mobile Museum of Tolerance that will be rolling into Rochester for Monday and Tuesday, but it's really just a taste of what is to come.

Starting over the winter, especially for students.

It's a chance to really immerse in technology and exhibits to help students and the community confront hate and the impacts of hate.

You might have seen it in other communities, and it's been written about in a lot of places.

So it arrives on on Monday and so does a full survey about hate in our community.

And we're going to be talking about some of the results of that survey this hour.

But the team behind that comes from the Levine Center to End Hate.

And they've been working on this for a long time.

This is kind of the confluence of a number of conversations that we've been meaning to have here, because when we heard about the the Mobile Museum of Tolerance, we wanted to talk about that.

We wanted to know about the survey.

I've been in touch with a number of people locally about concerns that we have about some of the well, as the Atlantic Monthly has been writing about the rehab of Adolf Hitler's reputation among some parts of the internet.

So there's a lot of things to kind of all intersect here.

And we're going to talk about what is coming up here next week.

And I want to thank Monica Gebell for coming in here.

The executive director of the Levine Center to End Hate on short notice.

Thank you for making it work.

And it's nice to see you back here in person.

>> Thanks, Kevin.

Thanks for having me.

>> And our thanks as well to Rabbi Peter Stein, senior rabbi at Temple B'rith Kodesh.

Welcome back to the program to you, Rabbi.

>> Thank you very much, Evan.

>> So, first of all, let's start with Monday's big day for you guys.

>> Oh my gosh, Monday's a huge day.

>> And some people might have seen the Mobile Museum of Tolerance in other places.

But for those who don't, what's the purpose and what's the mission here?

>> So the Mobile Museum of Tolerance, they call it the MMO.

It really comes out of the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in L.A., and it's a way to engage students in an innovative way.

with, with programs about civil rights and frank about.

And it's called the traveling classroom or the field trip on wheels.

It comes to each district in every school.

So a teacher can take a class of up to 30 kids on this, or not supposed to call it a bus, but it is.

It's enormous, and it's fully accessible.

and the programs are about 40 minutes long.

It comes with its own educator, its own curriculum, materials, and Levine Center is there before and afterwards to help those teachers with any other, resources they may need.

>> So this Monday and Tuesday it's just kind of a little taste for the community here.

>> Exactly.

>> But can people see it before it's gone?

>> Oh, gosh.

Well, you know, it'll be back in January.

>> Coming back in January.

>> So if people are interested in bringing it to their organizations or their schools or wherever, they should get in touch with us so that we can hook them up with the right people, make it happen.

>> At the living center.

Yeah.

and then you're also releasing and I've got some of the numbers here.

We're going to talk about the survey, but this is not the first time you've had a survey like this.

Tell the community the purpose of this kind of survey.

>> So the state of hate in Rochester survey was initiated in 2021.

I believe the results came out in 22.

And it really is to get a finger on the pulse of perceptions about hate in Rochester.

you know, we're not we're not looking at the data behind hate crimes.

That's much more of like what the FBI would do.

but really, it helps us get a hold of how hate shows up locally.

>> And so that goes across a number of different categories.

And of course, the Levine Center's work goes across different categories.

we're going to talk in a moment about very specifically about anti-Semitism.

But that's not the only purpose here, right?

>> No.

In fact, when we recalibrated and said we really need to do another survey, just a few months ago, we weren't thinking about how anti-Semitism was going to show up.

We were really interested in perceptions that people have around racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti LGBTQ, et cetera.

so we really wanted to see how a community feels about what's going on locally.

>> And so part of the survey, if you both don't mind me reading a little bit here the the biggest number right off the top is do you feel that the following groups or people are increasing or decreasing discrimination in the greater Rochester area, so increasing or decreasing discrimination in our area?

National political leaders, 66% increasing discrimination 6%.

Decreasing discrimination for a net of plus 60 to 61, increasing discrimination.

>> Right.

>> I mean, an incredibly concerning number.

I would think.

>> Absolutely that 66% of the surveyed adults believe that our national political leaders are increasing discrimination.

That's it really is shocking.

>> I will say this question was asked about local law enforcement, the legal and justice system in the courts, local political leaders, health care, faith communities, friends, family.

The only category that was more than 50% about decreasing discrimination was me.

And I don't mean me Evan Dawson.

I mean when people are asked about are you decreasing discrimination?

People would say, well, yes, I am.

I certainly am, but nobody else around me is.

I mean, like it's it's kind of dark.

>> Times when you look at it that way.

>> Right.

And it's not to say that we're giving ourselves too much credit.

I think people really have internalized that change begins with the self.

We're all maybe on this path or that that 54% are on a path of trying to change what's around them.

So that's positive.

>> Okay.

ultimately, when the community grapples with some of these numbers, what do you realistically think can happen?

>> Monica I think people are going to be looking for solutions, and I think one of the things that the survey touched on was how people feel about not only the federal institutions, but our local institutions.

So, you know, Rochester is called the land of nonprofits will be looking to.

Okay, so which nonprofits are really helping to mitigate hate?

how do we support them?

Who do we partner with?

What are we going to do?

How do we help?

people who may not necessarily be of our echo chamber?

How do we get them to the table, and how do we listen to them and learn from them and, and educate?

>> let me go ahead and read the rest of the results here, and then I'm going to ask Rabbi Stein to if any of this surprises him.

So I mentioned national political leaders, 66% of people surveyed said they think national leaders are increasing discrimination.

Only 6% said they think national leaders are decreasing discrimination, 66 to 6.

Local law enforcement.

It's 4313.

So 43% increasing discrimination.

Only 13% decreasing discrimination.

The local legal and justice system in the courts 38 to 12.

So 38% increasing discrimination.

Only 12% decreasing discrimination.

Local political leaders.

It's 3419 local employers and companies 2216.

And here's where we get the shift.

Local health 21 to 22.

So more people think local health care is decreasing discrimination as opposed to increasing local educational leaders, schools and colleges 26 to 31.

So a five point gap there.

So more think that they are decreasing discrimination.

Local faith communities 19 to 33.

So 19% say local faith communities are increasing discrimination 33% say decreasing local teachers and local college professors, 22 to 36. and then you have my friends and family, 8 to 41 is the spread local nonprofits pretty popular?

Only 11% say local nonprofits are making discrimination worse, 46% say local nonprofits are making discrimination better.

But I'll go back, Rabbi Stein, to that top number.

National political leaders at 66 six, that that's a gut punch for an evaluation of leadership, I think.

What do you think.

>> It is very sad.

And I would even say scary to see that number, which is not at all surprising to me.

It is such a reflection of the times in which we're living, where things, things have shifted to become normal, that not all that long ago were considered outrageously wrong.

Things that are said, things that are done.

And I think that's where the opportunity is for us to respond, that we have the ability to act as individuals or through the different affiliations and Connections we have.

It's not just those who are occupying high office in our country.

>> This is the part of the survey and the moment in this country that really feels different to me.

I had reached out to Rabbi Stein privately.

I hope you don't mind me saying so a few weeks ago.

A number of weeks ago, when I was reading pieces of analysis by journalist named Rosenberg, who was writing about the ongoing rehabilitation of Hitler's image of Nazism, of what World War II was about, and not about who the villains were and who the heroes were.

And I paused because I, you know, I'm, I try to be careful about like, what gets heard on certain platforms and quote, unquote who do you platform, who do you mainstream?

I also I also think it is undeniable now that there is a you can't just wish away the the the power of for some reason, the power of this kind of movement or idea.

And I'll give you two examples.

We're going to listen to two clips.

These are people who have humongous followings.

I mean, if you've never heard of Darryl Cooper, he fancies himself as a historian.

And Tucker Carlson introduced him as the most honest and important historian in America today when he was on Tucker Carlson's program.

So we're going to listen to a short clip of Darryl Cooper with Tucker Carlson.

Cooper has done a lot of work on World War II.

He has a new book coming out, and he makes the case that the real villain was Churchill, wasn't Hitler, and that that the success of Hitler's actions were so fast and overwhelming that a lot of people ended up dead.

But maybe that wasn't the intention.

And let's listen to this clip.

>> Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War.

You know, Germany.

Look, they they put themselves into a into a position.

They launched a war where they were unprepared and they just threw these people into camps.

And millions of people ended up dead there.

And they're writing back to Berlin saying, we can't feed these people rather than wait for them all to slowly starve, wouldn't it be more humane to just finish them off quickly?

Now?

>> It's the first time I've heard the murder of millions of people described as a humane act by a regime that just had more success than it could deal with.

That's an amazing rewriting of history, and I am not a historian.

The second clip I want to listen to is someone who Tucker Carlson had on his show.

This week, and this is not somebody I ever thought would be getting this kind of traction.

But at around 30 years old, Nick Fuentes has a huge following.

And on Tucker Carlson, he tried to claim that he's not about violence, but he has called for violence against Jews.

And he has had this to say about Hitler.

>> Hitler was a pedophile and kind of a pagan.

It's like, well, he was also really cool.

So, you know, time to grow up.

We're not we're not children anymore, am I right?

Am I right, am I right, boys?

Am I right?

Let's go.

He was also really cool.

And.

And any boy knows that anybody that watches these videos where he's rolling down the street and stuff, it's like this guy's.

This guy's awesome.

This guy's cool.

>> That's Nick Fuentes.

And we had to bleep out some of the profanity.

But really cool.

He's really cool.

He's awesome.

He loves the imagery.

He said you can't deny that he had drip that he had style, that he is a figure to be admired.

by the way, Fuentes also told Tucker Carlson he really admires Joseph Stalin and marks his birthday every year.

He has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers, and I don't get it.

But I don't have to get it.

I, I have to understand that it is real, and I am deeply alarmed.

And I want to start with Rabbi Stein.

When you hear these clips, what goes through your mind?

>> It is outrageous.

It's almost hard to come up with words that talk about how outrageous and scary this kind of rhetoric is.

And I think the approach that is really best taken is not to sit and look at the end result of the Holocaust, to look at the the massive numbers.

By 1945, but it's to look back into the 1920s into the 1930s and the approaches that were taken, the strategies that were taken, which were hundreds and hundreds of small incremental change that led to the devastation and the horrific killing during the time of the Holocaust.

So if we look back at the beginning, it wasn't that one day everybody was happy and getting along, and the next day 6 million Jews and millions of others were gone.

It was all of the small, small changes that built and built and built.

And I hate to say it, but we I think we're seeing some of the same in our political environment today where things have shifted more and more to become normal, that are not and need to be addressed and need to be called out for what they are, which is is hatred and breeding and building hatred and violence.

>> Yeah.

And when I say that what feels different now is when you look at the survey, the survey asks about who is increasing or decreasing discrimination.

And there is an implication in that question who is causing harm and who is repairing?

The difference now is if you are an adherent of Nick Fuentes or Darrell Cooper, you might view increasing discrimination as a good outcome.

That's the difference.

I think.

Now, I don't think that's the majority of society.

Happily, but I am especially worried about where young men are on this.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, you.

>> Want to say something about that.

>> I mean, just as Rabbi Stein was saying about normalization, I think the the more we see attitudes toward Nazism and Hitler positive images of the concepts behind Nazism.

increase.

And the more we know about the isolation of young men which is a health epidemic, frankly, I think it is something to be incredibly alarmed about.

and I think we're going to have to start focusing on our young men a little bit more to make sure that we're aware of not only the messaging that's out there, but what they're listening to.

and how it makes them feel.

Ultimately, I think this all comes back to a question of ego.

and I think that's true of Nick Fuentes.

I, I've been reading this, this book that I brought with me by Tony McAleer, who's a former neo-Nazi, a white supremacist who.

Do you mind if I read a little bit?

>> Yeah, please.

>> Yeah.

he was a Holocaust denier and had a very active role in the sect of neo-Nazism.

Skinhead ism.

He was a part of and he says, I remember going to a Holocaust Remembrance Day education session in British Columbia at the age of 17 and having nothing but contempt and derision for the survivors and their day of quote, unquote brainwashing with my ego and intellect hand in hand, I listened to every word, every story, like a lion on the savannah, waiting for its prey for the slightest inconsistency or contradiction to prove and validate my belief at the time that the history of the Holocaust was steeped in lies.

And he goes on to say, you see, my ego was okay denying the suffering of so many.

If it could find some inconsistency, inconsistency to justify it.

Such is the nature of the ego, especially when it is divorced from the heart, like mine was.

So I think we're we're looking at the psychology behind people like Nick Fuentes.

And while we can't really get into his mind, nor do we want to we certainly can do that with the youth that we have access to.

>> I think for a number of years there's been this idea that well, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be denying the Holocaust, but most other people would not.

And now it's less about, well, don't label me a Holocaust denier now it's more about the people who might have cheered it.

and might want to see future violence.

That's another shift.

That, and Rosenberg writes about that in The Atlantic.

This idea that some people are winking at it and some people are explicit, but they're gaining big followings.

And can I ask both of you about a really, really hard question?

I'm not sure anybody has a perfect answer for this, but time was that young men might listen to their rabbi, their priest.

a football coach, someone in their community, and I would hope that they would listen to a Monica, a Peter, a people in their lives.

your point about isolation and being almost a health epidemic is really important.

And there's more and more research on this.

That's over my out of my pay grade.

But very smart people are trying to solve this problem.

But but embedded in this is the question of how you would change it and who would people would look up to and listen to.

So you want them to listen to the Levine Center.

You want them to go to these these mobile museums.

You want them to listen to Rabbi Stein, you want them to be in touch with people in real life, not just these online portals.

How do you do it?

I feel it's almost an intractable problem.

>> You know we had a a rekindle program last year.

Rekindle is our program that brings together members from the black community and the Jewish community to have some very difficult conversations.

And I distinctly remember one of our black participants saying, the church has really become noncentral in people's lives.

It's no longer the center that holds everybody together.

And we we sort of looked at that.

We we analyzed, is that really true?

And, and came to the conclusion that that may be happening across religions, across cultures, that there's while there may be cultural centers and churches and temples and synagogues our attitudes toward whether or not they should be central, our attitudes toward faith and the role that faith in our lives plays has changed dramatically.

I don't know why exactly, but we have different priorities nowadays, and it would be really interesting to see what would happen if there were a shift back to.

And I'm not saying organized religion, but a community center where people are cared for.

They're fed, they're listened to, their fears are recognized and they're not alone.

>> Well, we've talked on this program about there've been a lot of headlines about the decline in church attendance.

I presume religious institutional attendance is down in there's true and true in your faith.

>> Yes.

There's no doubt that those kinds of trends are across religious lines, Jewish community, Christian community and so on.

And there's this broader idea that this, this epidemic of of loneliness and isolation, that I certainly believe faith communities have a role to play.

But I think it is broader than that.

It is some of what you mentioned already.

It's not only faith leaders, it's sports teams, it's community groups.

It's Monica earlier used the term upstander as opposed to being a bystander.

And I think that's a part of it is seeing ourselves as role models, seeing ourselves as those who can, influence and encourage others not to live in isolation, not to live with their single point of view, and to combat the dangers of of silence.

So many of the survivors of the Holocaust, what they talk about is the danger that came from people who were silent, not just from the villains themselves, but from people who stood by and didn't speak up and didn't take action.

And there are some really, really important writers coming out of that era who talk about the danger of, of silence and the danger of isolation.

One of the very prominent examples was a rabbi named Joachim Prinz, who was rabbi in Nazi Germany and then survived and escaped to the United States.

He became very active in the civil rights movement, as did a number of other survivors.

Abraham Joshua Heschel and others.

But Rabbi Prinz had the great honor of speaking just before Dr.

King at the March on Washington.

So just before Dr.

King said, I have a dream, was this Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who talked about being an American Jew, talked about having the memories of what he saw in Nazi Germany.

And he was very, very pointed in a really eloquent way in saying that the greatest thing to be concerned about is silence is those who don't step up and speak out.

And that is not just when there's something huge and outrageous going on, but it is really taking action to be mentors, role models encouraging positive behavior, minimizing the isolation.

>> I, I want to see more role models in the spaces where young men are going.

And I'm not I don't mean to make this only a young men problem, but that's the vast majority of followers of some of the people who are really spreading the most hateful and frankly, the kinds of ideas I thought never would gain any currency again.

and there's such a naivete, I think, that I probably am guilty of, of thinking, well, this is a bridge too far.

I wonder if the the longer you go throughout history, the further you are away from a crisis event.

I mean, we've talked about this with vaccination and polio and things like that.

We've talked to polio, we talked to polio survivor on this program yesterday.

Who said, you know, he's living testament but lost his mother and didn't think we'd be in a position where people are claiming that, well, vaccines didn't really matter and polio wasn't that bad.

You know, kids weren't swimming in swimming pools in the summer because people were worried about getting polio.

The further you get away from major, major events, the more it might be just a human nature.

Easy to think that it wasn't that big of a deal.

Or maybe it's misreported.

Or maybe there's a different story.

I don't know.

I'm trying to understand the psychology of it because that's like the generous definition of what's going on.

The other definitions are darker, like, how are we raising kids to grow up and be adults who believe this stuff?

Right.

So do you have a any more to add.

>> On sort of the epistemology.

>> A little bit about how we were getting farther and farther away from witness testimony, especially as our survivors are passing away.

Right.

yeah.

I think we're getting farther and farther away from facts.

We're also getting farther and farther away from reading, unfortunately.

>> Yeah.

>> That's right.

And getting our information from various sources that may not be reliable.

So yeah, I think it's a it's a very concerning time.

>> So are there antidotes that you see that we are not taking advantage of?

Rabbi.

>> I don't know if it's an antidote.

Exactly.

But I think the more we can encourage people to, to read and to listen directly to people who had an experience because the phenomenon of the technology is that it's so easy to get misinformation, to get distorted pictures, to get things that are outright false, and that just accelerates and accelerates as the technology continues to grow.

If we learn from the history, I'm very mindful of the statement that then general Eisenhower made when he went to the camps at the end of the Holocaust, and he went and he was quoted as saying, I came here so I could see with my own eyes in case there comes a time where somebody denies that this happened, I'll be able to say, I saw this with my own eyes, and I think, as Monica said from the Jewish community's perspective, there is something that is really urgent, really critical, which is we are now so many years beyond the end of the Holocaust that the opportunities to learn directly from survivors is every day growing harder to do.

We, all of us right now need to take advantage of that, talk to them directly, hear the books, the Holocaust center that the Jewish community maintains, maintains has a wonderful wealth of recorded material.

So it's not just sitting face to face, although I would encourage anybody who wants to, to try and make those kinds of arrangements.

A few months ago, I was speaking to someone in public life who had had a little bit of an ethical misstep, and so they were receiving some counsel from me.

And one of the things that I encouraged them to do was to meet with a survivor.

And it wasn't because what they said had anything directly to do with that.

But it was a lesson that really needs to be taught over and over and over again.

>> Well, I think some of the state of hate survey reveals the ongoing lack of trust in institutions that we know is a problem in this country.

And so that's not what the entire survey is about.

But I see that reflected.

So when people have a negative view of everything from national political leaders to employers, companies, the legal system, courts it's not all the same numbers, but there's a lack of trust in institutions.

It's a pretty good set of numbers for faith communities.

I'll say in your survey.

>> Yes.

>> You know, that's one of the positive notes, I think.

>> And educators.

>> And educators.

So that and that may be surprise me a little bit, but the lack of of trust in in institutions is higher on the male side.

So both kids and adults, teenagers and adults if you ask boys and men and girls and women, men are trusting institutions less right now.

I think pandemic has something to do with it.

I think there's a lot of things that that go in.

It's not just one thing, but when when institutional trust drops, well, then people want to say, well, I don't trust where they're telling me this story of history, but I don't trust them and I don't trust them for XYZ reasons.

But I don't have to listen to their story of this war.

This conflict, the Holocaust, this, that, and the other.

I, I can find alternative sources.

I can quote, do my own research and it feels kind of empowering, I think, to to people, often young men, to say, well, I'm going to do that and I'm going to be the smartest person in the room.

I don't think it's very humble, but I think it's human.

And I think that when you don't to Monica's point, have the same kind of community institutions where people are attending, whether it's your church, your temple, your mosque, PTA, when things are not as attended and people don't feel as connected in person, you will find communities online, right?

But they're not the same kinds of communities that some of what Jonathan Haidt and other research is telling us.

They're very different kinds of communities than they they teach us different kinds of lessons.

And so.

>> And you can be anonymous.

>> And you can be anonymous and you can say things that you you would probably never say in person, although maybe even that is changing.

I just don't think it's the wrong set of lessons, but I'm trying to find ways to undo it.

So that's why we're having this conversation.

And when we come back from our break of the hour, we're going to have we'll make sure Monica gets you up to date on what's happening next week, but also what what the Levine Center is all about.

So we're talking about the state of hate.

We're talking about the Mobile Museum of Tolerance, and some of these really tough issues with Monica Gebell.

The executive director of the Levine Center to End Hate and the senior rabbi of Temple Kodesh, that's Rabbi Peter Stein.

We'll come right back.

>> I'm Evan Dawson Friday on the next Connections in our first hour, we talked to one of the leaders of local young Republicans.

We get his thoughts on the recent racist text change that were revealed by Politico and downplayed by the Vice President.

We'll find out what local leaders say about what was in those text chains.

And then in our second hour, what is going on with the payment system?

And the problem that Rochester teachers are having, some can't pay their rent.

We'll talk about it.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola, center, proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson.

Believing an informed and engaged community is a connected one.

Mary Cariola.

>> Just thinking during our brief break, more about Jonathan Heights new book and also some of his recent research.

and that's somebody who we've never had Jonathan Haidt on this program that's like, that's high on the list.

very busy guy, I get it.

But very smart person who is he's one of the reasons that we're seeing schools take cell phones out of schools and bell to bell bands.

but he's also wrote a really interesting piece recently about where we regulate and monitor kids behavior and where we don't, and what kids will tell you is they want freedom.

They want freedom from adults.

They want some autonomy.

You know, they want to make the rules, and we're giving it to them less in the physical spaces.

So kids can barely play in the front yard without being micromanaged.

And they don't like that.

And where we give very little supervision is online.

So where they need it, they don't get it.

And where we should probably be a little more hands off.

They're overregulated.

And Hite is saying, we got to flip this because when they're in these online spaces, if you are not in touch with what they're doing and a lot of parents aren't, they are encountering the Daryl Coopers and the Nick Fuentes, and it kind of looks cool to a lot of kids.

So is there a responsibility that families that parents or guardians have here with our kids, our teenagers, and, you know, where do we come into.

>> Play there?

>> I mean, guilty, I, I have kids who do online gaming.

And when they.

tell me what they're playing, I have first of all, I have very little interest in spending my free time that way.

But also, do I really want to see what they're doing?

I, I should I, I want to say, as every parent does, oh, my kid would never get sucked into that dark underworld.

But I think those on the other side who are part of that underbelly that's seething, dark netherworld of negativity know exactly how to frame, how to how to reach out, how to find the kids who feel like they're alone in every other physical space.

They know just what to say to hook a kid.

And that's what we really need to, to take a look at what our kids are doing online.

>> But when the kids say, you know, mom, I don't want you to know what?

Like, give me my privacy stuff.

>> I mean, a parent is still a parent.

We're not necessarily the best friend, right?

Not until a lot later.

We set the boundaries.

We make the rules.

We also sometimes pay for the phones and the, you know, the charges, et cetera.

so I think there are boundaries that we can make and rules to enforce.

And I happen to agree with you know, the, the taking of cell phones during the school day, I.

>> I do to.

>> My kids are a little more locked in.

I love it.

>> So I, I don't know if I've heard anybody who's like, this was a mistake.

I think everybody said, why didn't we do this before?

I will also say I have a 13-year-old.

He knows who Andrew Tate is, who Nick Fuentes is, because I have told him.

>> Okay.

>> I said, I want you to know about these figures.

I don't want you to encounter them in the wild.

And I want to talk about it.

>> And I think that that's that that's such a smart approach, which is to communicate as openly and honestly and robustly as as possible.

There are two images that that come to mind that in different ways, I think are instructive.

One, I've spent a lot of time through the years.

In the summer camp world and summer camps often use the description of the bubble.

So the idea of the bubble is that when they go through the camp gates, they have an incredible sense of freedom, an incredible sense of being away and on their own feeling really independent, which is a very special thing.

We as adults know, of course, that we've built up a structure around them.

We've built up the bubble so that kids can celebrate the fact that they have this independence.

But kids aren't thinking about, you know, things like insurance and health codes and training for the counselors and so on.

So it's that image of the bubble, which is if you if you're the parent of teens, as both of you are, it's imagining that bubble around your house, which is you're giving them independence, you're giving them freedom, letting them explore and figure out who they are as an individual.

But you're creating a sort of layer around it, which means you're having those hard conversations and so on.

The other image which comes to mind, without delving too much into the theology, is a theology that comes up from a dilemma, from a question that's asked, which is essentially, if God is all powerful, then how do we have the ability to act on our own?

Or how do we have the ability to choose?

And the concept that develops the Hebrew word is tzimtzum, which means contraction, which essentially means God steps back and makes space for people to make those choices.

So it doesn't deny God's power.

But it means that we do have free will would be the common way to describe it.

And so I wouldn't necessarily previously have thought of this theological writing in this context, but I think it really is in a way instructive, which is we can empower our kids in all sorts of ways, and it's important that we do so as they grow from stage to stage, empowering them doesn't mean that we are casting them away without any kind of of guardrails or or presence.

Even more so when you get beyond the pre-teen years, teen years into the young adult years where my personal experience and experience of others is parents are still very much needed and very much present.

It just means something different when they're young adults living independently.

>> I a lot of wisdom there.

You can see why we wanted Rabbi Stein on.

>> The program.

>> I'll also say.

>> I mean, I hope nobody listening thinks like that.

I think I've got parenting figured out.

It is just so hard.

>> It's.

>> We were just saying.

>> That.

>> It's so hard, and it really is.

I just just want to show as much grace as possible.

while just offering thoughts about what's happening with kids, especially boys.

So it is really hard.

There's no perfect answer for this.

and there's going to be a push and pull with privacy, with autonomy, with the bubble.

but I do think just wishing it away is not going to work.

I think because kids, they find stuff, they hear it.

And here's an example Roger writes in to say those clips you played Evan.

Wow, they are an eye opener.

I'm 71 years old.

I'm starting to feel like I'm in a different country than the one I grew up in.

I do love your show, but sometimes the hard facts hurt.

I appreciate that the email Roger and I, I think years ago I wouldn't have played those clips and I'm not going to play a lot of those clips, but I don't want to act like this stuff isn't out there because it's very compelling for young people.

It's really powerful, and I wish it weren't.

But the more we understand that, the better, I think.

And then the more you understand the resources, because not everybody has a community where they can just ask Rabbi Stein what to do.

they they may need you at the living center.

So tell people again why we're here.

What's coming up on Monday?

>> Monica.

>> So Monday is we've got a whole bunch of things starting with 9 a.m.

We're having a closed meeting for superintendents and school administrators to talk a little bit about the state of hate survey and what it says about education.

but also to just talk about what the needs of Jewish staff and students are at this moment in time.

that's going to be followed by a press conference with the State of hate.

Survey results, followed by a panel discussion about how to utilize the Mobile Museum of hate, of hate, of tolerance.

We don't want it of hate.

The Mobile Museum is going to be on site that day for anybody who who comes to those meetings.

And then on the fourth, the mobile museum, open house is happening.

And that's really for the entire community to just get a little taste of what the programs are, what it looks like, what it can do, why we want it in Rochester.

and again, that's because it will come back in January and February.

This will be the time for educators to sign up to bring the Mobile museum to their schools, to their districts.

and we now have people signing up not only all over Monroe County.

We've seen people signing up from Genesee and Ontario and Livingston County.

So really getting some great messaging out.

>> And I want to mention he couldn't be on today, but Todd Butler and the team from Causeway.

have worked with you.

Todd's a great guy and we always appreciate the conversation.

they do a lot of hard work and they wanted to have a really good representative set of data for the community here.

So thanks to Todd for that.

where can people find you online if they want to learn more?

>> That's w-w-w.

>> And Greg writes in to ask, is hate the natural state of the human heart?

>> Gosh, no.

>> You don't think so?

>> No.

Hate is.

I think we've talked about this before.

I think hate is learned.

Hate is learned.

It's its default.

Hate comes from fear.

hate comes from anger, which comes from fear, I think.

No, I think love and acceptance.

I mean, if you look at kids, they're not born hating.

They're.

>> And I think also with kids, I absolutely agree.

And also we can learn from kids.

They don't see the differences.

the identity differences that we sometimes focus on as adults.

So they, they see what they have in common, whatever passion they have, whatever they love to do, that's what's binding them together.

What what fuels hate is when we live in isolated and homogenous kinds of ways that we're not exposed to people who are who are different than us.

you know, before we came on, Monica and I were joking about the different baseball teams and the passions you can have.

And sometimes within our own families, we have people who cheer for the wrong team.

But at least then we are being exposed to people with different different identities.

>> Right?

So I.

>> Amen.

>> I'm going to read a note from Joel who wanted me to, to share part of this article.

and it comes from TRT world on the subject of American museums and what the president said, I want to say.

I'm not trying to make this a political conversation.

I understand that some feel like you cannot separate politics from anything right now.

I get it.

And it's not a fun time in that regard, but Joel points us to this piece titled cool with Holocaust Museum outrageous.

Trump slams other U.S.

museums for focusing on how bad slavery was, and the quotes from the president was include the following.

The Smithsonian is out of control, where everything the Smithsonian discusses is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.

Nothing about our success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future.

The museums throughout Washington but all over the country are essentially the last remaining segment of woke.

And he said that the obsession with slavery has become a real problem for the country.

That's the president's view.

So again, I'm not going to ask our guests to kind of endorse political figures.

I will say that I don't know how you teach history without teaching everything in history.

I also think you're going to hear listeners are going to hear on this program next month.

We're going to see if we can get Ken Burns on, because Ken Burns has a new series on the he's been on before.

It's been a little while.

He's got a new series on the American Revolution, and I, I really appreciated what he said recently about American exceptionalism.

He said that he does think the idea of this country is exceptional.

He said 1776.

His words are there's something new in the world.

This idea that you don't just have to be ruled by an authoritarian, that the British thought it was mob rule, but we thought it was democracy, and it was very threatening to people in power.

People thought it wouldn't work.

They said, you got to listen to all these people barely educated.

You're going to let them vote.

And Ken Burns said that was exceptional.

That's an exceptional idea.

It does not mean that this country has done everything exceptionally.

It does not mean that we've upheld our own ideals always or perfectly, but it does mean the ideas are exceptional and that that's okay to say that that's Ken Burns, who is will tell you he's on the political left if you ask him his politics.

So I'm curious to know, Monica.

You know, Joel's concerned about this idea that we're teaching slavery too much, and we need to focus and spend more time spent most of the time on the good.

>> What do you see?

>> Well, the survey actually points to the majority of adults say that teaching about our history, teaching that the structures of inequity, of racism, that they persist is a good thing.

So there's a positive, Joel, you know, that most people feel like it is the schools and the educators job to make sure our kids know about our past is that's a great thing.

so, you know, whatever happens to our museums and their funding it would be so just be so sad to to lose an institution like the Smithsonian.

Of course.

What?

I think we can take comfort in is knowing that we have dedicated teachers in Rochester.

We also have something like CSI and our shared history that is doing such an incredible job in changing the way we look at teaching that history.

It's immersive and it's interesting to kids, and it's now geared for different ages.

And New York State has absorbed it into the state curriculum.

Like fascinating.

so locally we are we're going to do our part to make sure that we do pay attention to the lessons of history.

>> And you want to add there, Rabbi.

>> you mentioned the museums in DC, and I've brought a number of classes there through the years, and certainly, you know, part of the focus has always been on places like the Holocaust Museum and some of the other Jewish sites of interest.

Two of the most important places that I've ever brought students in DC are the Native American Museum and the African American Museum, because they were telling the history of another identity group that, honestly, I didn't know very much about.

And so it was so incredibly powerful and important to learn that history directly from people telling their own story.

That's a really important thing for us to do, is to not just tell one version of the story, but to tell multiple versions of the story.

talking about raising children.

And you move from one state in the country to another, and you get very different.

things that that are taught in the schools.

when we moved, this was already a long time ago.

But when we moved from Rhode Island.

My kids do an awful lot about Roger Williams.

And I will tell you that as good as our schools are here in Rochester, they're not teaching very much about Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island.

>> I thought you say he was a basketball player.

No, no, that's an important point.

>> But you know what I love.

about places like the Smithsonian and what's so incredible to watch about kids moving through those spaces is when you can see them looking at other people whose experiences are mirrored in those museums, when they can see their own family histories mirrored, and you see a a child who's maybe who doesn't know about the African American experience in the United States and its history when they see a black family moving through that same museum and pointing out what's incredibly meaningful to them, that is just as much a teachable moment, isn't it?

>> Yeah.

>> let me get back to some of your feedback.

Robert and Fairport on the phone.

Hey, Robert, go ahead.

>> Yeah, I'm looking at the survey.

It seems like it's kind of self-selecting to some degree.

When you go to the link to actually answer the survey, it says you know, we want to hear from you.

The Levine Center to End Hate, et cetera., et cetera.

That would seem to kind of attract people that have a certain strong view about this.

And I just, I think that if the survey was not branded like this, it would get probably a different response than to kind of come in.

Because if it's being done by a center to end hate, it's going to be attracting certain people to answer it.

>> You're hired.

>> Okay.

So so a. fair idea.

Yeah.

>> I mean, a a totally sort of unlabeled new set of data and a survey would, I'm sure would be welcome.

Robert.

I don't think, though, that that invalidates the survey at all.

I mean, I really don't, Robert.

I wouldn't want to talk about it on this program if I thought that invalidated it because, first of all, the Federation, there's a wide range of politics, right?

The members wide range of politics, people with different views on the world.

We've kind of talked about that here before.

So I don't think it's purely narrow.

but there's probably no perfect survey out there.

I'm just would say that I don't think that invalidates the results here.

>> Right.

And we did get plenty of people responding who were looking at the the name of our organization with, you know, a guffaw.

I even encountered a group of gentlemen at a cafe and asked them if they were interested in taking the survey, and one responded with hate.

How are you going to do that?

How are you going to end hate?

And the other said, I hate surveys.

Hahaha.

And you know, they took it anyway, which was really nice.

but yeah, I think it may be that you know, we are reaching a particular demographic there, and I appreciate that insight.

>> All right, a couple more points here.

Joel followed up to say, I think we need to focus on compassion, not empathy.

Empathy is too much and too draining and leads to empathy, burnout or fatigue.

To truly walk in someone's shoes can trigger a stress response, whereas the act of being kind and sharing passions can be a more lasting emotional response.

That's from Joel, and another listener, says Hannah Arendt's seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, argued that anti-Semitism as a foundation of authoritarianism.

it was a foundation of authoritarianism in the 1930s.

History is repeating itself.

This is nothing new.

Oof!

I mean, that's the concern that Rabbi Stein expressed earlier, that you feel the echoes of history in some ways.

So.

So let's try to end not just for the sake of it, but on a truly positive note here.

What when you feel that concern, what is the anchor for you that gives you some hope that we will not necessarily repeat all of history.?

>> It is hard to be hopeful.

I will admit that.

I think for me, I find hope in that we still have the fundamental structures and guardrails of our democracy.

We still have the ability to vote as we will this coming week on Election Day.

We have the ability to go into the streets or go into the halls of Congress and advocate and protest and raise our voices.

I think things went from bad to worse, where those kinds of rights were, were taken away with.

That said, every one of those rights is being threatened.

So part of what we are needing to do is make sure that those protections and those democratic structures still stay in place.

>> Final thoughts from you, Monica?

>> Yeah, I'm just looking at some of my notes.

what makes me hopeful, especially given the survey, is that we found a growing public determination, especially among our youth.

18 plus two want to confront hate through education and empathy and civic action.

And we can prevent some empathy burnout by immersing ourselves in other places.

Just getting out of your comfort zone once in a while.

We're not saying do it every day.

It doesn't have to be that hard.

Maybe widen your scope for information sources.

read a different book, maybe listen to.

I'm not saying don't listen to Connections.

I'm saying widen.

Your sources of information.

>> Broaden of information is good for everybody.

>> And get yourself to a good festival.

There's so many here.

Just do something different.

>> I'm glad to hear that young people were expressing a real desire in that direction.

So a lot more information coming your way from the living center next week.

They've got a lot going on.

and I know a lot of people starting in January are going to see the Mobile Museum of Tolerance.

I know you're looking forward to that.

Thank you for making time for.

>> The program.

>> Thank you so much, Evan.

>> Thank you.

And Rabbi Stein on short notice.

Thank you.

Thanks for having these hard conversations.

And you know, you're one of the best at doing it.

We appreciate it.

>> Thank you so much, Evan.

And thank you, Monica.

>> Thanks.

>> Rabbi.

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