Hello everyone, and welcome back to People Juwan and O Podcast.
If you are watching this and wondering where I am, I'm at my
parents house. I'm visiting them right now so
that's why the. Background looks different.
Today's conversation is with Moshe Davis and we got to record
in the Very Fancy Theorist podcast studios.
I consider Moshe a friend as a result of the podcast, and he
encompasses to me exactly a people Jew want to know.
You may recognize Moshe because he previously served as the
senior Jewish liaison to Mayor Eric Adams.
Truthfully, I had no idea we even had a Jewish liaison in New
York City until I saw a Free Press conversation a mere few
days after Mondani was in office, where Moshe discussed
with Olivia Rheingold how he was unceremoniously let go.
Here's a bit more about Moshe. He also served as the founding
executive Director of New York City's Mayor's Office to Combat
anti-Semitism, also known as MOCHA, the nation's first
municipal office dedicated to confronting anti-Semitism
through policy enforcement and education.
During his tenure, Moshe built a citywide operating model to
fight anti Jewish hate. He led an interagency task force
spanning dozens of agencies advanced for mayoral executive
orders and developed legislative frameworks to codify
anti-Semitism protections. He also authored New York City's
inaugural anti-Semitism Report, an 80 page strategic blueprint
now serving as a national model for how cities can combat
anti-Semitism through actionable policy tools.
Again, to be clear, MOCHA is the first of its kind.
No other city in America has such an office, and it was
created as a result of the severe anti-Semitism New York
City saw after October 7th. In his role as Senior Jewish
liaison to Mayor Eric Adams, Moshe also launched the New York
City Israel Economic Council, which is a government to
government partnership to strengthen innovation ties and
create jobs. He founded New York Jews in
Politics, a network of 500 plus Jewish professionals in public
service and advocacy, and today Moshe lives with his wife and
two children in New York City. While the MOCHA concept is the
first of its kind, based on the research I've done, the concept
of a Jewish liaison is very common, especially in cities
where there are large Jewish populations including LA,
Chicago, Miami, etcetera. Moshe's episode was one of my
favorite episodes I've ever recorded.
We've. Really get the insider look of
what the last two years were like for Moshe and the mayor's
office. Where things went.
South and what the future holds for New York.
I asked pretty much all of the heavy hitters, the things that I
know I've personally wanted to get an answer on for a long
time. You'll also hear Moshe talk
about how he started his career at Manhattan Jewish Experience
MJE before he went into politics.
For those who are fans of Rabbi Wilde's episode, there are so
many things about Moshe that remind me of Rabbi Wilde's, and
I think he would just be so proud of him.
This is really just the beginning for Moshe.
I think we're going to see a lot more from him.
He's smart, he's a highly effective communicator.
He's strategic. And hardworking.
I'm grateful to know him and I hope you enjoy this episode.
Hey Moshe, welcome to people. Do you want to know podcast?
It's great to be on here. What a fancy studio we're in.
This is really a treat. Quite a nice spot.
OK, please tell us about yourself.
What do you do and how did you get there?
I grew up in Brooklyn. Monty Shiva went to high school
in Queens, eventually went to Israel to study and get some
Mika there, came back to New York, got married and started
working at my Jewish experience on the Upper West Side.
I have two lovely kids. We live on the Upper West Side.
And while I was working there, I was approached to by a friend of
mine asking me, would you be interested in politics?
Is that a family bar mitzvah? And he asked, you know, would
you be interested in doing something because Eric Adams
team looking for people. And I figured, yeah, this is
definitely interesting to me. And before I know it, I was the
Jewish liaison for Mayor Eric Adams.
And from there, start of the mayor's office comments and
sematism did cool things like the New York City, Israel, the
Comic Council, and, you know, trying to do the good things for
the Jews. When you interviewed for that
role, did they ask you like, why do you want the job?
What? What did you say?
I don't remember. They asked me why I want the
job. I think they asked me, do you
know the Jewish community in New York?
And I said, yeah, you know, I grew up here, part of it.
And he asked, well, do you know the difference between, you
know, like the various classic groups?
I'm like, I know there are differences.
I don't know if I could tell you all the differences.
And, you know, do you understand the communities across
Manhattan, Bronx? And now I'm like, yeah, this is,
you know, my people. And yeah, that's how I started.
Always wanted to be able to use my abilities and talents to be
able to, you know, do good things.
And I think the political world is always somewhere where I felt
that you have so much more impact than almost any other
place you do. And you know, we could talk more
about that as well. Yeah, I'm curious to know.
So obviously with the start of Mondani's administration, you
were unceremoniously asked to leave, I guess, or your role was
replaced and it was done in a it wasn't done in a very graceful
way. And I know that you were able to
speak to the Free Press about it and talk about your experience
before we get there. Can you?
For those people who are not familiar, what does a Jewish
liaison do day-to-day? It's usually liaison takes care
of like garbage pickup and health certificates for schools,
but also making sure the mayor gets to the various synagogues
across the city. Jewish events.
I'm very involved in the Israel Day parade on 5th Ave. every
year, making sure that the needs and concerns of the Jewish
community are handled in City Hall.
So therefore, you know, New York City is a massive place with
almost a million Jewish New Yorkers.
The great responsibility to making sure that they're, you
know, concerns, issues are addressed in the highest level
of city government. And they're just, they're very
nitty gritty of daily life of what I mean in the Jewish
community. Sometimes it's security.
And especially, you know, as things progressed in my time in
the mayor's office, how that became more and more important
of a role I was playing, connecting local synagogues with
their precincts, making sure that Jewish community groups are
funded for their security purposes.
And that was a big part of it. But I always said, I came to
City Hall. I'm there to uplift Jewish life.
I'm here to make sure that people could be living as proud
Jews in New York City. That's my job, That's my role.
And then eventually it turned into putting out these fires of
like Jew hatred current in our city agencies, current on the
streets, wherever we've got went.
And that's when really I had to shift focus to say, OK, what can
we do to make sure that the Jewish community is safe,
literally just safe. And started working on some of
those projects. Eventually I put together the
proposal for the mayor's office, common anti-Semitism.
And the idea for that office was we could take municipal
government, our levers of power in the city, whether it's our
through our agencies, through our Police Department, through
our relationships across the city, and we could make
municipal change here in the city.
We can't eliminate centuries old hatred.
We can't change people's minds and hearts by, you know, just
forcing things down their throats from a government
perspective. And that's not how I think, you
know, think that won't actually make you safer.
But we could do is making sure that places in the city which
need security bollards so that driver a car can't just drive up
and kill people coming out of synagogue.
I think that's something that we could do in the city.
Or we can make sure that, you know, our city agencies are
doing everything that their role, whatever where they are,
they are interacting with the Jewish community.
They're doing their job. And that's the reason why we set
up this office. And that was our interesting
task force we set up. And then we have created
policies, legislation, we created proposals of making sure
that people shouldn't be able to protest wearing a mask.
People shouldn't be able to protest outside houses of
worship city should not be able to engage in PDS boycotting in
Israel through their contracting, through their
pensions. And that was the work that we
did in the office and very proud of the work we did.
Some of it is continuing on through the next administration
through the first couple weeks into 2026, which I was there and
then continuing on after me. And some of those things were
revoked on the first day, and I was in office.
But I hope that they actually, you know, focus on what it
doesn't mean to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe, understand what
the concerns in the community are and actually address them.
How did this whole thing play out?
Like everything started out fine, then things got
progressively worse in terms of anti-Semitism.
The scope of your role is changing.
You're kind of putting out these different fires.
How did it come to an end? I mean, come to an end, I mean,
Jew hatred, I don't think it's coming to an end.
I think it's been around as long as, you know, we've ever been in
diaspora. People all have targeted Jewish
community in different ways. You know, look at the long arc
of Jewish history is not something, you know, foreign to
us. But we saw that starting after
October 7th. You know, there's semitism
existed before that, but all of a sudden this propaganda to
demonize, legitimize Jewish people on the relationship with
ancient homeland Israel was being used to target Jewish
people, was being used to. I mean, the people were
assaulted in streets. Teachers were teaching all sorts
of crazy things in schools, college campuses.
We saw what happened there as well, which got a lot of
attention. And we realized that, you know,
we need to be coordinated on our efforts.
And I was working in city government at the time.
So therefore we were able to use, you know, what city
government could do. And I think that, you know, at
the same time, much of the other Jewish community is realizing,
OK, this is a effort to demonize and generalize Jewish people.
We have to stand up and making sure that our communities are
safe. We have to make sure that we
could live our lives freely and that, you know, to me that that
should be the bottom line. I don't know if we have to, we
could get into the arguments about, you know, Zionism and
anti Zionism and Israel. But if you're not making sure
that the Jewish community is safe, then you know there's no,
no point of anything else you're going to be doing.
So part of my role in the mayor's office was coming up
those proposals, ideas of what should be done from the
government perspective. And some of those were able to
actually implement through our agencies and get things done.
But the end of the year, what I did was I actually put together
the mayor's office to comment anti-Semitism report of 2025.
The idea was that we're limited here in our government and what
we can do, but we actually got to show people what we have
done. We got to make sure that there's
accountability for a future administration that's going to
come in and a model for others, other cities, other
municipalities nationwide that they could actually see, hey,
this is what we did in New York City.
Eric Adams has been of the best friends the Jewish community has
in terms of safety and security and making sure to stand up for
Israel. And we created this basic model
for what a city should do with the greatest city in New York
City, and other people should be able to replicate it.
And the future administration should be held accountable of
what was done. So I put this together really
last weeks of 2025. And just to give you
perspective, most of the people I've been working with already
left like they went to other other roles.
Yeah, they knew. They knew every this was the end
of 2225 election was over already.
We knew this was coming to an end.
A lot of people actually got noticed from the transition team
that you know, your role won't be continued.
You're, you know, would be out on the first day.
I didn't get such a notice, but other people on my team did.
Other people I was working with on, but I said, look, if I'm
doing anything, I got to put out this report.
So this is late December. I just stay up to 3-4 AM
literally just writing this report and making sure that this
is a city government document showing what could be done, what
has been done and what should be done for the coming year as
well. And I put that out literally in
the last of the year. Then the new registration
starts. I am there handing out my report
on the first day, making sure that people understand, you
know, this is this is my role, this is my job.
Something that the new mayor has talked about that he said he's
going to make sure the Jewish community is safe and cherished
in the city is the one that he used.
So this is how to do it. At the beginning, my responses
were great, very nice. Oh, there's a blueprint for
20260. How great, amazing, very sweet,
very friendly until my meetings weren't responded to my follow
up. I'm like, hey, let's have this
proposal like this should be the 100 day plan.
And they asked me, oh, what would be your budget request for
the year? What would be your, your, what
things would you want to have announced within the 1st 100
days? And eventually it was like, and
then I heard, you know, they're interviewing for my role and
eventually they actually just announced a replacement without
letting me know. I saw a tweet, got a text from a
friend, and then sure enough, chief of staff came in like,
yeah, we're looking to go in a new direction.
And that point I understood that, you know, they might have
understood that the way to protect you New Yorkers is might
be right in front of them written out and what could be
done in New York City. But they're saying they have a
new a new political era that they're trying to create New
York. Yeah.
To your knowledge, do you think that they used anything that you
had proposed or they're just going to start from scratch?
So, I mean, what we did in New York, creating the iteration
task force that's still running, one of the big proposals that I
was looking to do for this specific year was actually to
create those Ballers. I was talking about those for
security. So we actually, you know, we
helped streamline the process while still in city government,
but we actually want to work on a capital project for the
purpose in terms of a budget to be able to do this.
And not just at synagogues, but any vulnerable houses of
worship. We had NYPD put together those,
those lists of like where, where, what, what would be
vulnerable in the city? How could we make sure to
protect them? And I think that's actually a
project that is still being worked on.
From my understanding. Last week, there was a City
Council hearing on the matter. And the office did say that, you
know, this is something, this is a project that's a great
concern. And it's to me, it's something
that I've been very passionate about after seeing what happened
in Michigan where a car, you know, came to drive up, right,
almost got into the synagogue there where preschool is
happening. And then we've seen other cases,
you know, by 770 a couple months ago, other, you know, attacks
that were thwarted often included a vehicle which was
coming to attack a synagogue. So therefore, I think that's
going to be something that should be absolute priority for
the next administration, for this administration that's here
there now so that they could make sure that just Jews are
safe like that. Again, the bottom line.
Once this kind of hit the press that you were asked to leave,
one of the like recurring pieces of hate or like feedback I saw
from the Jewish community towards the Mayor Eric Adams
administration was no matter how awesome he was and you know, how
many Jewish events he attended or galas and how fun he was,
like anti-Semitism progressively continued to get worse and worse
for New Yorkers under his administration.
So it was almost kind of like a rebuttal of like, well, we
shouldn't, you know, be so concerned about Mandani's
appointment or whatever because things weren't good anyway.
Like how much worse could it be? Maybe a change is necessary.
I think what people fail to understand when they make that
argument is oftentimes you, your task force and your role is
cleaning up the mess of things you did not cause.
And so you are really, you're not combating anti-Semitism,
you're combating what you would refer to as effects of
anti-Semitism. And oftentimes, you cannot solve
anti-Semitism through the actions that you are allowed to
take within your role. And they're also not something
that, like the mayor can solve. anti-Semitism is far more of a
systemic issue that's, you know, created by media cultural
sentiment, like the fact that somebody in an appointment of a
mayor or within a task force can do something so profound to
change it. It's like an unreasonable claim.
What do you think in your time went really well and what do you
think needed improvement? So key pieces of things that we
worked on that I would love to see do better where our
legislative proposals while we were in city government, you
know, we had a City Council who could have worked on.
We had a friendly mayor who would have cared about, you
know, protecting New Yorkers in general, not just Jewish New
Yorkers from violent protests, making sure that anti-Semitism
is defined by the city, by legislatively.
We thought that, you know, there's good proposals we put
together, protect houses of worship included last year.
And it would've been really amazing if the City Council
actually would have followed up with some of that because if
they did, you wouldn't have a scenario in which the mayor
vetoing those proposals. Meaning right now you have a
City Council which is interested in doing some of this work and
you know that a speaker who's very passionate about it and
they've passed a few pieces of legislation.
However, the mayor just this past week videoed one of those.
So I would, I was, you know, there was something I was
passionate about. I thought we would have some
friends in the council who would be interested and unfortunately,
leadership there were just not interested in doing this.
And that's something that I was very disappointed about.
But I think that we did well, I think are the ones that created
that systemic change like when, you know, Brad Lander was
exposed for engaging in on BDS with divesting from visual bonds
and we expose that. And we, you know, demanded those
records of like, how did you just do something which for last
70 plus years the city has been invested in is a bonds.
We have been a, you know, key partner of our city and you're
doing it for political reasons. This is not helpful for the
employees and the retirees in New York City.
And that's something that has been part of the conversation
since then. And thank God we have a new
Comptroller who's going to, you know, reinvest in Israel.
And you know, there's just one aspect.
But those conversations which we started House of worship, one,
we brought the executive order, we wrote the proposals didn't
work last round, but now this is a national conversation.
There is council bills that has been passed, 1 is going to go
into effect now. And then we also have state
legislation on topic and national legislation on topic
right now. So these were things which we
did as part of our job and city government.
We know part of understanding elected officials role is you're
there for a couple years, you're not there for forever.
You're able to get do things which are in your power to do.
You get them done. You make your case and hopefully
things will continue afterwards. And I'm really, you know, be
able to work with Eric Adams, who's naturally had this like
instinct of just caring about the Jewish community.
And that's all point out like the relationship with Israel.
He at the Western Wall. We went to Israel at the end of
the term December and he gave this speech at the Western Wall,
which went viral for all the wrong reasons because all like
gripers were promoting it. And but if you watch a video,
great little speech Mary gives. He decided he wanted to go to
the Western Wall late at night instead of doing like a whole,
you know, entourage mill of the day.
But he's going to go in the evening was late.
I think it was like past 11:00 and we go to the Western Wall.
He prays, turns around, there's a crowd forming behind him.
And he says, no, you've been here for me, I've been here for
you, Thank you, Israel. And people looked at that and
said, what do you mean? Thank you as well.
You've been like, you know, is he subjected, is he to foreign
government to, you know, what they wanted?
And that's why he was doing as mayor.
And to him it was. And to anyone who was watching
it, I think from Jewish community understood it
instinctively, as I know he was saying thank you to the Jewish
community for standing with him, for being there as part of him,
and he's been there as a friend to the Jewish community.
And also as the nation of Israel, he refers to us as a
nation of Israel because he intuitively understands this,
whereas, you know, other people, especially politicians, don't
understand this. Right, and to him it was it was
a given. I mean, go back also to his most
famous speech. We are not all right that he
gave after October 7th amazing speech he gives that really
reverberate across the world. We're not all right.
That's what, you know, most people took that phrase and from
IDF soldiers fighting in Gaza to, you know, hostage families,
they took a lot of comfort from that speech where he stood there
as their chief executive and as called a brother.
I'm gonna stood there with the Jewish community and off again
there he ended off that speech, you know, thank you, Israel.
This is who the Jewish people are.
This is who we are as a people. This is our nation, and we have
this ancient relationship with our homeland, where people that
are bound by our faith, but also by our.
Families bound by our. Nationality.
Yeah, this is who we are. This is you can't bifurcate, you
can't dis act. And he he took that as a given.
So it was really amazing to be able to work with him.
As you know, we went to synagogues, he went to events
and also working on issues. When we worked on stuff, it was
like, OK, yeah, this is going to be this is important for the
Jewish community. This is going to protect the
safety. We see the propaganda and the
craziness that's coming from the outside pushing on some and
therefore we want to do something on it.
And you know, I thank God I had that experience and something
that's always going to sit with me.
This is the moment I want you to talk about Israel Bond's way.
We are here very closely and I want you to tell that story
because I want people to understand kind of like the
day-to-day that you operated in and like the ridiculous, almost
whack A mole ish job that you had.
Right. Part of the role of our
Integration City task force was not just working on like the
long term policy things, which is what I, you know, like to do.
And think of how, you know, we could do things in the long
term. But sometimes there were just
incidents that happened within city government that just has to
be responded to. And you know, one of the things
that you know, came up was the Israel bond sign right here
around the corner on 52nd St. Was he faced someone wrote
Israel bombs instead of Israel bonds and.
That you have to give credit for creativity.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, this is what they
want to be busy their time with. They want to climb up on signs
and write bombs at a bombs. I'm just picturing you like
showing up to work and the NYPD is like, hey, so like, you know
that sign in midtown Israel bonds way.
So now Israel bombs way. Yeah.
And I got that alert and we reach out to.
So part of the role of the industry task force is that each
agency had their representative. So the Department of
Transportation had representative on the task force
reach out to them. And we've regularly had to deal
with them because there was highway signs that were defaced.
There were banners brought up on top of like overpass street
signs were vandalized, and there's one of them.
And so they made a new sign. Let's make a brand new sign and
they put it back up there within a few hours.
Yeah, I was going to say it was definitely same day.
Yeah, they, they, they moved fast and they understood that.
And that was the reason of creating a mayor's office.
You know, it wasn't to create extra layers of bureaucracy.
The mayor's office wasn't to be this like a public facing like
we're going to end that exam with this in here.
Our point of our office was that we have a role in city
government to making sure that we're doing our part and an
agency that is overseen by the city like department
transportation, their properties they faced.
We have to do something about it.
Another example on the parks want to park a playground with
you face with swastikas. We work in the Parks Department
not just to clean up the vandalism, but also to think
about OK, who are the children that come here regularly?
What could we do to maybe put up cameras we could do to make sure
the park is closed when it's not supposed to be open making sure
that if there's a school nearby that we could work with the
park. Maybe that's where the children
are coming from or vandalizing the park.
There's like more like bigger ideas that you do that are all
in your control in government. And if you have a priority, say,
hey, we don't want Jewish people to be unsafe in our city.
We want to make sure the city is safe for all.
Then you want to make sure to use that office for its goals.
I want to ask you now that the dust has settled on Mamdani's
administration a little bit, obviously things related to
Jewish life in Manhattan, they're going to take time to
kind of unfold in front of us. Things happen gradually.
It's like 1 veto here, you know, 1 rejection there, changing the
definition of anti-Semitism. These are going to be changes
that we feel the effects of somewhat gradually while the
continuous like anti-Semitic incidents persist, right?
They've persisted for years now. If two Jewish New Yorkers, how
do you think we should be acting during this time?
How are we positioning ourselves?
What do you recommend? You've seen it from the inside.
Now, what do you recommend to the average Jewish New Yorker
civilian? I was on the train this morning,
bumped into a friend of mine by 72nd St.
Station, and I see he was wearing a baseball cap and not
someone who always wears a baseball cap, definitely not on
shul. He doesn't wear a baseball cap
and he's wearing 1. And I said, what are you
wearing? He's like, you know, I just on
the train, I was like, really, if we can't walk with our
Yamakas and our proud Jewish symbols publicly in New York
City, then we have a problem. And we have to really think
about, you know, what are we doing here in New York when
we're having this much hate and violence right towards us?
To me right now, I walk with my Yamaka probably.
And I think thank God we could still do that in New York.
And as long as the NYPD and those who are, you know,
assigned to making sure that criminals are prosecuted and
making sure that people who are consistently making it unsafe
for the Jewish community are not being able to propagate that
hate. I think, you know, we should be
able to be faith here. And if we can't be, then we have
to reckon, you know, what are we doing in in a diaspora?
We are. We can't be safe and live as
proud Jews. So now antisemitic incidents
represent 55% of all incidents in New York, which if you it's
like greater than any other group by exponents.
OK, at what point does it become?
Too much like how do you know when it the problem has gotten
out of control? Because, some might argue it's
now. I think look, I think Graham
numbers are a snapshot of what's going on in the city.
I mean, we're talking about, you know, a few crimes every month
that people understand that, you know, these, some of them are
violent, some of them are vandalism, some of our super
dangerous, like scary. They're ramming into 770.
I mean, Buffle, you know, a guy with a T-shirt with the Iranian
Islamic Republic flag was busy assaulting people in
Williamsburg this past weekend. These are real incidents, and we
have to address them appropriately.
But I think as long as we could walk publicly in New York City
and be, as you know, walking through Yamaka, be able to go to
our our synagogues and our Jewish institutions, then I
think people must continue to do so.
Live as proud Jews. I mean, is there a barometer of
like this is too much? I mean, I think it all, of
course it's too much. I mean, that's why we started
the mayor's office, common Semitism.
And that's why I'm, you know, my full time capacity is working on
these type of issues and making sure that we are able to live as
Jewish people in America. I want to ask about the more
observant community because I find that when I go like I was
in Crown Heights, if you talk to like a very from kind of
Orthodox person and I asked them like, are you concerned about
anti-Semitism? I find that they're like, no,
surprisingly, they're like, no. And I, I'm trying to understand,
you know, why that is. And the sense I get is that
because they live in a strong community where they're feeling
Jewish life every day prevalently, they can kind of
not get bogged down by the chaos that be because they feel
supported within their net. And that's all great.
But sometimes by the time you wake up from that kind of
insular view, the disasters at your doorstep and you've missed
the chance. And so I struggle with
understanding like, where is the the fine balance there?
What do you think? I love that you brought that up
because I think not enough people understand this.
There's a massive differentiation what's happening
within like Yeshivish Orthodox communities, communities and
others in the US, especially in the tri-state area and almost
everyone else in the space. I grew up in Kensington in
Brooklyn, you know, leans more to Yeshivish type of community.
I went to yeshivas most of my life and so I definitely
understand the community very well.
At the same time, you know, I lived up aside and we're working
with, you know, the institutional Jewish world and
the wide range of, you know, Jewish life in New York City.
So I understand and talk to just about everyone in this space,
and it's a very interesting phenomenon where you're
describing is that within the very, you know, from spaces,
we'll call them, it just doesn't faze them like for two reasons.
And and you brought up a very good point as well about, you
know, but when should it faze them?
Because they live their lives mainly surrounded by other
people within their community. If you grow up in a huge
community and you're going to school with other Jews, you're
going to college with other Jews, your workplace is mainly
Jewish or very friendly to Jewish, you know, interests,
then you're not going to have that much interaction with
anti-Semitism. You're just not, you're not
going to be in a campus, you're not going to be in a workplace
environment that's hostile. You could be at some point in
your life and some, some are. But even when you are, you have
this understanding of like, we are a Jewish community.
We know what we're supposed to be doing.
We have a very strong sense of, I mean, I guess it's ego when it
comes to Judaism, I would say. Like pride?
That's pride, but it's more of like, this is how we're supposed
to live our lives. Like I'm going to be wearing my
yarmulica. I'm going to be dressing the
way, you know, from girls to be dressing.
I'm going to be doing this. I'm not going to be changing it.
It's not going to change. And therefore, yes, people are
not going to have understanding of what it is.
They're not going to. But I don't know if we have to
assimilate to their interests. We don't have to be accepted by
the wider society. And we have this attitude.
We're going to be living our lives.
We're not trying to gain any acceptance.
We're not trying to gain any favor from, you know, the wide
world. And I think to me as when it
comes to advocacy, I still have that like perspective of we have
to live as proud Jews do things that we think are important to
us. And yes, there's a storytelling
of, of what the Jewish community mean.
What does it mean to be attached to your homeland?
What does it mean to be a Jewish person who's on a college
campus? And what does it look like?
And other people should care about it too.
But I think for the individual Jew, I think that having that
pride in your own Judaism and having that ability to say, this
is who I am, this is what I care about, this is who we are as a
people. I'm like, I don't know if I care
about the haters. And that's an attitude I've
always had. And that's I think why I was
able to get things done the way I've done them.
And I think that I want to be able to instill that also for
others, you know, in my and I think we're seeing that more
among like Gen. Z, you know, Jewish community
from all faith and all backgrounds.
They're seeing it. They're they're, they're having
a lot of pride in who they are as a people.
And they're saying, you know, other communities are not going
to accept us the same way that we've always had.
And maybe we should just stand up for ourselves.
And I, I think that's super. Important there is kind of a
divergent I would say in the community is you're either
seeing people drop off and become an engaged all together
or worse yet become like anti Zionist or you know, join that
camp of thought. Or you're seeing people double
down and the people that are in the middle are a little stuck
because they don't know what to do.
They don't feel comfortable either way.
So it's just refreshing to hear somebody who is so close to all
of these different incidents, you know, in Manhattan
especially, have such a like a just confidence in that things
are going to be OK. I, I was surprised to hear it.
I thought that you would come in and, you know, be very gravely
concerned about what's ahead. I mean, I would confidence in
what though? I'm confident in the Jewish
people. I'm confident that we're going
to stand strong. I'm confident that, you know,
we've done, we've went through much worse on this.
Let's be real. I mean, we've done, you know,
there's crusades, there were a Spanish Inquisition, there have
been expulsions from just about every single place that we've
been in the past 2000 years. And you know, that's actually
sadly checker like it's, you know, the eternity of the Jewish
people doesn't lie. Like we're here, we're going to
be here. Young Jewish people are already
getting more passionate, more invested.
They're doubling down on their Judaism, as you talked about.
And therefore, I'm confident. I'm confident in, you know, what
it means to be a Jew. And I think others are realizing
that, too. And I think outside the Jewish
community, people also realizing it, they're understanding that
Jewish community is a force that should be reckoned with.
We contribute a lot to our society.
American values have been based on a lot of our traditions and
ideas, especially through the Christian world.
Whistle through the biblical world.
I was going to say the world's civilization has been based on
our ideas. Yeah, and, and we've been a
great, you know, contributor to the ongoing, not just, you know,
in the ancient times, but ongoing throughout throughout
the years, been a major contributor to New York City.
I'm saying like we live in New York, which has, you know, most
of, you know, the cultural things in here to talk about New
York. We're like a bunch of Jews who
got together and said, hey, we want to create this.
We want to make this happen. And I think everyone should
appreciate it and they will appreciate it when, you know,
when they're not being influenced by the ridiculous
propaganda coming out against them.
And I think it also is part of like a larger phenomenon as well
that we talked about for young people who are unsure, you know,
which direction they're going. And you mentioned because
there's a much larger issue going on in America where you
have this is, you know, studies that were done on the GOP and
the Democratic Party and their youth, basically anyone of the
40 has vast conspiracy theories. I mean, they believe like, moon
landing was fake, 9/11 was inside job.
They will talk you about, you know, how political violence is
justified in like 3040% numbers in some in some of these
categories. And what these studies also show
is that it comes from this perception that your history,
facts that you don't believe are like a given or historical, you
also often don't have a relationship with your church,
your synagogue, your House of worship, You are, you know,
church going. And conspiracy theory is people
who believe in conspiracy theories correlate.
And it's it's amazing that people who are just unmoored
from society in different ways, they are going to continue to be
unmoored. And they sometimes it comes from
mental health issues. And especially, you know, some
parts of the party, you'll see that it's tied to mental health
issues and other ties, just tied to just your lack of family
ties, traditional ties in any sort of way.
And therefore, they're believing all sorts of crazy things.
And they believe these things about Israel.
They believe these things about Jewish people and also believe
these things about America. Like 911 was in his high job.
So we have a problem. We have a problem in society
right now where people are being fed crazy information.
They don't feel deep connections and ties to anything.
And it's coming out in our political system.
And it'll be coming out in, you know, crime levels, I'm sure.
And Jewish community is just, you know, a victim of that.
And I think that we have to do is, OK, I understand.
How do we build our ties to our communities, to our young
people? How do we build those traditions
and ideas to keep these people completely more to reality?
And that should be a big focus of, you know, what the Jewish
community should be doing now. So I think the correlation that
you talk about that people that are less susceptible to buying
conspiracy theories have some kind of like religious anchor.
A couple of weeks ago I did an episode with a guest who talked
about the explanatory power of anti-Semitism.
So for most people, everybody wants an explanation to why is
it that the world is the way that it is, right?
Why is it that I'm living this way?
Why is it that I can't afford health insurance?
And we can go on and on and off. Why, why, Why?
For people who have a religious anchor, that explanatory power
comes from their religion, their faith-based community.
When people feel no connection to such a community, they need
to find that explanatory power elsewhere.
Conspiracy theories often offer that explanation where there
might be none. And anti-Semitism becomes an
explanation for why I'm poor or why my life sucks, or why the
media is crooked and why the president is who the president
is. It becomes like the thing, the
common denominator between all of us and it's that's really
what it boils down to. And so whenever I see, you know,
legacy Jewish organizations or Jewish influencers talk about we
need to combat anti-Semitism or we need to focus on changing
people's minds about how they view the Jews, anti-Semitism is
often a symptom, not a cause. And so if you want to stop
anti-Semitism, you often have to look further up the chain to see
what is really causing it and work on that.
And anti-Semitism will be reduced as a byproduct, as a
second order effect. So in our society today, that
can be like, you know, demoralization or what kids are
learning in schools, loss of trust in our government, loss of
trust in Western values. If we deal with those things,
anti-Semitism will be reduced as a second order effect and it
will be more effective. I think that it's a key piece of
what we're seeing is that anti-Semitism is just the oldest
conspiracy and therefore it's consistently used to address
people's grievances. We have a society right now
where there are a lot of grievances based off, you know,
they'll say that the government's job is to fix our
economy or the government's job is to give them social, you
know, benefits of different sorts.
And when you say, oh, well, it's because of this war that's
taking the money away, or it's because of the Jews because XYZ,
then that becomes their life basis of, you know, OK, This is
why my life is bad. No, your life is bad because
you're sitting in your mother's basement not doing anything with
your life. But they'll use that as their
key to understanding. And I think you phrase in a
really good way of how, you know, you need to have some make
some sense of the world. And that's how they're doing it.
And people have done this forever.
I mean, Jews have always been blamed for whatever I'll of
society, whether it was capitalism or socialism, whether
it was anything that was going wrong, the Jews fault.
And that's how we've always been.
And I think that one of the ways to the IC that we can actually
change that is we should look for aspirational leaders.
They're not grievance based leaders.
You know, a lot of politics that we're seeing right now is a lot
of grievance based. So how bad they are, how bad
this is and how, oh, we're going to fix these problems for you.
But every once in a while there is going to be a leader who's
going to come and be like, no, life is great.
We're going to make it even better for you.
We're going to give you the best jobs and the best society.
We're going to make sure your roads run well and your, you
know, the economy is running efficiently and life's going to
be good because America's great. And you need people that are
aspirational to be able to do that and not just go into the
dirt muddiness of grievances which consistently feed off of
this terrible mentality. I just for anyone listening,
that's in Jewish legacy institutions, you know,
influencers, academic scholars, I really challenge you to
reframe anti-Semitism from being a racism or prejudice to being a
mental model that people use to try to understand the world.
Because once you make that shift, you can be a lot more
productive and solving problems. And I still think in the
community we are missing that even like anti Zionism is a form
of racism. All of these, it's not, it is a
mental model to try to make sense of the world is the first
history's first conspiracy theory that is a lie.
And that's really like what we're reckoning with now as a
community. I'm curious to know you're a
former kiruv, right? You have this element of
persuasion, inspiration. What do you think your message
is for Jewish people today, especially Jewish New Yorkers?
Be loud and proud. We have a great religion, a
great faith, a great culture, and we're part of this awesome
nation of AMI Saal. And lean into it, learn more
about it and then be loud, use it.
We have so much to teach to the world.
We have so much that we can be as as inspiration to others.
And more specifically, get involved in your politics, get
involved into the local level. Go work for government office,
go intern for your local Congress member.
Like there's so much that could be done if people are willing to
do the work. And that's what I've seen in,
you know, my couple years in government.
Do the work and get things, make things happen.
And I think that that's my message.
If people cannot leave their full time jobs to get involved
with government, is there anything you recommend like as a
side hustle? Yeah, there's campaigns that are
taking in volunteers on a regular basis.
You're look at, you know, who's running for your local assembly
races, looking for council races, Congress, congressional
races. There is so much just everyday
people who are have full time other jobs and they're going to
make some type of commitment to be able to be involved in
government. I think that people have all of
a sudden, you know, use a lot of their advocacy in the social
media world. I don't it's not where I live my
world. And I think that sometimes you
need to live it in the streets with the people who are doing it
in your government. Show up at meetings, go to, you
know, folder people who are working full time jobs but will
go to Albany like once a month or a couple times a year even
and push for something that is important to them.
And that makes a difference. Like people need to show up to
these meetings, to these events and to advocate on behalf of
things that you care about. And there's a lot of ability to
do that even if you're working. And the same time, I also think
that it's a great job for many people, you know, especially
when you're first starting out to start in government, it's a
great way to get experience. It's a great way to understand,
you know, how many things work, especially in a city level,
national level, and highly recommend it.
Happy for people to reach out, help them get get there.
What's next for you? What are you working on now?
So I started an advocacy group specifically for the purpose of
advocating for national legislation, similar things we
were doing in the city level and making sure that Jewish
community is safe. It becomes a blueprint, you're
saying for other places or like other states?
Yeah. I mean, we're going to work on
other local cities, but also working on national level
legislation, things that need to happen from the State Department
on levels that we need to make sure that Jewish community is
not just safe, you know, just in New York, but across America,
across the world. How can people connect with you
and keep up with your work? I do have to add that I think
you are under serving our Jewish community by not being on social
media. I do have a social media
account. I you climbing X under score
Moshe Davis. You can send me messages there.
I'd be happy to respond to people.
To me, my voice isn't the, you know, be the storyteller.
I think you have great storytellers in the Jewish
community. I think my role in policy, you
know, talking to the people that are we're going to be making
decisions, that's where I generally focus my time.
So that's what I do. But yeah, I mean, there's people
like you who do great job on in the world of the media.
Well, thanks. OK.
I have one final question for you.
It's one that I ask every guest who would you like to nominate
for people? Do you want to?
Know. So for that I think I would pick
my father-in-law, maybe David Foreman.
He is the head of all of beta. It's a great platform for Jewish
learning for all types and backgrounds, and he's actually
now advising AI companies on morality on what it means to.
This is such a hot button topic. Yeah, and he's, he's really, I
mean, he, he teaches Torah. He literally just teaches Torah.
And he's a really sincere person.
But it's like the secrets of the world, unlike that's what's in
there. And he's he's showing it to you.
So he's a great person for people to.
You're really selling him. OK, You know what I was actually
thinking about this morning? I got a newsletter from Dan
Ariely that talked about morality and AI and how AI is
trained to like, compliment you and to say you're right so that
you keep using it. And if you really want like an
honest opinion from AI, what you can do is a small trick to
correct for. That is to say, my friend is
planning to do this and that is that a good idea?
So if you talk about someone else, then AI is more likely to
tell you something honestly instead of flattering you with
compliments. And that's a good heuristic.
Cool. I mean, I find that AI is a
great tool to be able to get stuff done and make things
happen and like, you can use full teams of people, right?
You know, doing research, writing code.
And you could also do it yourself.
I, you know, generally wouldn't like it for advice because
again, you're just asking yourself like what your thoughts
are and it's not a, you know, an outside sense and other people
who are a lot of arguments about it.
And maybe have my father-in-law and he'll have a good discussion
to talk about it. But to me, you know, as we are
entering the stage, I think people have to realize like what
it shifted is. But it's just an amazing,
amazing way of being able to get things done that you never been
able to do before. Thanks so much for doing this.
It's really a treat and I'm very excited to see what's ahead.
It's been a delight to get to know you, and this is just the
beginning, really. Great.
Thank you so much for having me on.
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