- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

Keep getting better.

Kean University.

Where Cougars climb higher.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Moving the region through air, land, rail, and sea.

PNC Foundation.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

Everyone deserves a healthy smile.

NJM Insurance Group.

Serving New Jersey’s drivers, homeowners and business owners for more than 100 years.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

And by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Working for a more a healthier, more equitable New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

And by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with Rabbi Marc Katz, Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Rabbi, good to see you.

- Nice to see you.

- Rabbi, I wanna talk about... We can go back and talk about the attack, the fire bombing of your temple on January 29th, 2023.

First of all, remind us of how horrific that was, A and B, connect it with the rise in antisemitism in our nation, please.

- The attack really took us by surprise.

We had been feeling like there was rising antisemitism all around us, but the fact that it hit our doorstep was something that we didn't envision.

I do need to say though, everything came together afterwards.

So as horrific as the event actually was that someone would walk up to our congregation and throw a Molotov cocktail at it, the response by the community was unbelievable.

We felt wholly held by our religious partners, by law enforcement, by elected officials.

We ended up gathering 1200 people in the wake for a big inter-religious gathering, really a vigil against hate, where we had members of lots of different communities reflect on rising hate that was affecting both them and the wider community.

And so it hit home how close antisemitism is, but also how important our allies could be.

- Connect it, please, to the rise in antisemitism in our nation.

- So antisemitism is considered the oldest hate, and it's not like it ever disappeared off of the American stage.

What it has done in recent years is it has A, morphed, and B, become more out into the open.

And so people who would normally not deface a synagogue, put a swastika up in the public schools march against a Hillel house just by the nature of who they are on a college campus, feel free and emboldened to do that, to say things that people wouldn't normally say.

And the fact that someone chose us as a target to throw a Molotov cocktail last year is indicative of the fact that people are more likely to act and to be public with antisemitic sentiments than they ever were before.

- The horrific attack, a brutal unprovoked attack of October the seventh by Hamas in Israel.

What impact has that had, Rabbi, on the folks you serve every day, A and B, the larger Jewish community in the United States.

- My congregation, like many congregations, was completely broken after October 7th.

We happen to have a lot of Israelis in our community too, and it hits the Israeli expats living in our area in a very different way, even than it does the American Jewish community, who is the majority of the community that we serve.

But we ended up gathering people together for healing service afterwards and it's caused a number of things to happen.

The first is that people who haven't paid attention to Israel history and read Israeli newspapers, for example, are really starting to pay attention in a different way than they ever did.

It's also caused people to have hard conversations with their children, their neighbors, about Israeli history and also Israel's actions after October 7th.

The community is reeling and it's still reeling.

And every single week we pray for the hostages.

And it's been something, for us at least, the prayer has been a cathartic experience, but the fact is that we're now entering into... We're well into 200 days into this, and-- - As we tape this program, it'll be seen later.

It'll be many more days, unfortunately, and we pray that that isn't the case, but we don't know that will be the case, please, Rabbi.

- Yeah, and the fact that these hostages are still there, I mean, weighs really heavily on everybody's heart for sure.

- Yeah, so let me ask you this.

When you have a media platform like this, you try to find a way, you represent a lot of people, and you try to find a way to do meaningful, impactful programming.

One of the challenges is, is how the heck can you do that when the issues are so complex?

October 7th speaks for itself the barbaric actions of Hamas, a terrorist organization by any reasonable standard.

Once you start talking about what's going on in Gaza after that, and again, we're taping it toward the end of May, we don't know what's gonna be happening.

It starts to become more complex for certain people and not complex for others.

Question, how are you talking to the folks at Temple Ner Tamid about the events in Gaza A and B, what's happening to the Palestinian people, the role of the Israeli military, and the fact there are still 130 hostages taken by Hamas?

Complex stuff, how do you even talk about that?

- So, one of my jobs as a rabbi is to help people hold competing truths and help people hold complexity.

And one of the beautiful things about the Jewish religion in general is that we're able to talk about really hard things and debate really hard things and hold competing values against one another.

And so what I tell people, by the way, is that there can be a lot that's true, right?

It can be horrible that the hostages are still there.

October 7th can be horrible.

Israel needs to defend itself and you can compassion for the Palestinian community and you can be horrified by children who have gotten caught in the crossfire.

And that compassion need not be a zero sum game.

And it's not like you have an armor that you have to keep up that's so heavy that you can't show real true brokenness for the whole of the experience that everyone has been having since October 7th.

And so I help people hold that complexity together and I truly believe that that is the most authentic and really the only authentic experience that one can have.

If you're not a little bit broken up over everything and you're not feeling torn in a certain way with both love for Israel, but also pain for the Palestinian people, you're not doing this thing right.

- Alright, lemme try this and I have a feeling we're gonna go longer than we originally planned if it's okay with you, I'm sure you have a very busy schedule.

So we had a scholar of Muslim affairs from Rutgers University on recently.

People can check it out.

And I raised the issue that the term from the river to the sea was brought up by a previous guest who happened to be Jewish and said Steve and the original guest, Julie Rodinsky, you could check out that interview, who's a political analyst, said, Steve, it's clear what from the river to the sea means.

It actually calls for the extermination of the state of Israel.

And when I said this to the professor, Professor Aziz from Rutgers University, she says, Steve, that's not at all what it means.

It means something different.

And I sat there and I said, well, could it mean anything else other than the extermination of Israel or should we be open to some other interpretation of it?

- So for me, I agree with your guests that said that the river to the sea ultimately means the destruction of Israel.

- That was Julie Roginsky.

The professor from Rutgers said that's not at all what it means.

- Yeah, so I agree with Julie.

I see it as an incredibly problematic phrase.

I could see a world where people interpret it in such a way that it doesn't call for the "genocide" of the Jewish people.

It calls for, let's say, a one state solution, but even that is for the destruction of Israel as an entity among itself and I find it highly problematic and I believe that it should not be a chant that is tolerated.

I mean, one of the things that I've had to debate with other colleagues of mine is the fact that if a phrase is seen as problematic by a side, it doesn't then allow you on the fly to change the meaning of that.

So I've gotten into debates about the word intifada and people saying that doesn't actually mean what it means.

It just means a shaking off like a dog would shake off a flea.

It does not mean violence.

But the second intifada, which when Jews hear the word intifada, they hear bus bombings in the early 2000s.

That means something for us.

And there is a way to get your point across without choosing to have those different phrases that ring in people's ears, like the dog whistles that they are.

And so river to the sea feels to Jewish people like you are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and even potentially the destruction of Jews in general and there is a way to get your point across without having some of those really problematic phrases.

And so I do not believe that is a phrase, that is a neutral phrase or a hope for some kind of peace in the future or anything like that.

- Rabbi, let's do this.

When we come back after this quick break.

Even though the academic school year has ended, while we're taping this program, the higher ed school year, I wanna talk to you about those campus protests.

And they're not all the same, they're different in different universities, different colleges, but I wanna talk to you about your thoughts on what's going on on college campuses and what could very easily be going on in the fall of 2024 as well.

Rabbi, we're right back after this.

Stay with us folks.

- [Narrator] To see more One on One with Steve Adubato programs, visit us online at stateofaffairsnj.org.

If you would like to express an opinion, email us at info@caucusnj.org.

Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/steveadubatophd and follow us on Twitter @steveadubato.

- Welcome back, folks.

We're talking to Rabbi Marc Katz.

He's a rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Islamophobia, define it from your perspective.

A and B, how much of a concern is it of yours and other brother religious, Jewish religious leaders that you interact with?

- Islamophobia is a problem.

It's a big problem, just like antisemitism is a big problem.

Islamophobia is the hatred of people who practice Islam, and it comes in many manifestations.

And just by the way, as I would hope that people would treat antisemitism with a nuanced understanding and would take it seriously, I think that it's the obligation of everybody to take Islamophobia seriously as well.

And I can tell you that even locally, just as the Jewish community is scared that there's violence against Jews, that people are finding swastikas in public places, I can tell you from talking to Imams locally, the Islamic community is feeling the same way.

And that anytime there's a crisis, there are going to be bad actors who take advantage of that crisis to do harm.

- You talk to Imams on a regular basis.

- I have a few that I talk to, yes.

- To what degree, Rabbi, has it become harder, more challenging to talk to Imams in a meaningful, substantive way?

Because I have this crazy idea, maybe it's not crazy, that I could have a leader in the Jewish community and someone who is very pro-Palestinian, pro-Muslim, whatever that means, and have a meaningful dialogue together.

Maybe that's a pipe dream, I don't know.

Has it become more difficult for you to have conversations?

- So there are really two groups of Imams in our sphere.

There are those that I can't have meaningful conversations with right now, because things are- - Why is that?

- They won't return my calls, even though I've tried.

I have reached out, but I think things are too heated, and my hope is they'll come back to the table and we'll be able to speak.

There are others, because we've got good pre-existing relationships, or because we sit on inter-religious communities, or because they feel a connection to the Palestinian cause, but that's not their main makeup of their mosque, that we're able to still be in contact.

And it's with them that we can have really good, meaningful conversations.

And the truth is, sometimes it's really painful.

We had this night in Montclair, where we got Jewish leaders and Muslim leaders together to kind of just share our collective brokenness.

And we had Christian clergy testify afterwards to what they heard us say.

And it was really a hard night, but also really powerful.

And I think that hearing hard truths and saying hard truths is really important because it's the relationships that are really gonna matter in the end.

This war is gonna end at some point.

And if those relationships are so broken through this war, we're not gonna be able to do good, important work afterwards that we need to, especially to heal the communities.

- I know it's partly your job to be optimistic, but why are you optimistic that this war will end?

PS, I wanna be clear, New Jersey, if someone might asking, hey, Steve, aren't you a New Jersey-based operation?

Yes, we have the largest Palestinian population, if I'm not mistaken, in the country, and the second largest Jewish population in the nation.

Am I correct with that, Rabbi?

- That is, to my knowledge, that is correct, yes.

- Okay, so it matters to a lot of folks who live in this region, in this state.

Why are you optimistic that this war will end?

- I don't see a world where it goes on forever.

I can't, I just, I can't imagine.

But also I have to be.

And by the way, there is a difference between optimism and hope.

Judaism, by the way, is not a religion of optimism.

Optimism just says things are gonna be fine.

Hope is having this kind of resolve that we can get there through collectivity some way.

And I am not optimistic that the tensions right now are gonna end anytime soon.

They might change.

There might be a ceasefire, there might be the release of hostages.

There have been some things that can change, but it's gonna be messy for a while.

But I have hope in a future that we can get to a place where one day we can have peace, because I don't think I could do this job if I didn't have that hope.

And it might be audacious and it might be unrealistic, but I actually think it's the job of every religious individual to hope for things that seem unfeasible, and then to do their little work to try to get there.

Because if we don't have that audacious hope, we're never going to get anywhere.

- Let's move to the college campuses.

As I said, the academic school year on the higher ed end has ended.

We don't know what's gonna happen in the fall.

Which aspects of, and again, every campus is different.

Rutgers had protests.

Columbia obviously had protests.

Schools across the nation did.

For you, where does the line between the right to protest peacefully on a college campus, for those who are concerned about what's happening in Gaza, where is the line crossed to the point where Jewish students are at risk?

- I think there are obvious pieces, and then there are less obvious pieces.

The obvious pieces.

- Please.

- A kid is trying to walk to campus, walk through the campus, and they get stopped because they've got a Jewish star on their necklace.

Or they're being asked, are you a Zionist?

As a litmus test to be able to get into a certain kind of space and they're denied that space.

Or someone who is an Israeli student is walking down, and this happened at Harvard after October 7th, and people surround them screaming, shame, shame, shame.

Or a group of students are sitting for a Shabbat dinner in a Chabad House, and people are protesting outside the Chabad House, not because of anything having to do with Israel, simply because it's a Chabad House, which hosts Shabbat dinners.

And that then impedes people's first amendment rights for freedom of religion because you're intimidating them.

Those are the obvious.

Less obvious, and where I feel torn, is also the question of once speech becomes antisemitic, but it doesn't follow with any kind of action.

And I do.

- For example.

- For example, the chant, "Say it loud and say it clear", "we don't want no Zionists here", which is antisemitic.

I mean.

- Explain to folks why that is antisemitic.

- 90% of the Jewish community is Zionist.

And so to Jewish ears, this is a dog whistle.

It doesn't feel like we don't want the ideology of Zionism anywhere.

You could say Zionism, by saying Zionist, it's a code word for Jews, and that's how Jews hear it.

And that unfortunately feels that way.

Intifada revolution.

Calling for the violence against Jews, reminding Jews about the early 2000s and bus bombings in Israel.

That itself, that crosses into antisemitism.

Utilizing the language of World War II to describe Jews.

There are lots of ways to criticize Israel and to criticize the Israeli government.

If you start calling Jewish students Nazis, that then crosses into the realm of antisemitism.

And I would also say very clearly that if you are confusing the Israeli government, the Israeli people, and the Jewish people, and you're mixing up those three categories and lumping them together, that then falls into the realm of antisemitism too.

- Well, let's stay on that.

- Yeah.

- If someone were to be critical.

Listen, the President of the United States, as we do this program, President Biden is being critical of the Prime Minister of Israel.

There's a whole bunch of things going on, and we don't know what's gonna happen with the funding, United States to Israel for weapons.

We don't, that's, I don't, we don't know that.

But there are a whole range of folks who are critical of the Israeli government, the Israeli military, for the way the war is being fought as we speak at the end of May, 2024.

- Yeah.

- Is that antisemitic to you?

- No, that is not antisemitic.

- Please.

- Antisemitism starts crossing over when you start confusing those three categories of Israeli government, Israeli people, Jewish people.

And if you start mixing up those categories, that's problematic.

Everyone has a right.

I've been critical of the way this war has unfolded.

- Critical of the Israeli military and government?

- Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Critical in different ways throughout the course of this, from civilian casualties to plans around starvation, all of that, I've been critical.

That doesn't make someone antisemitic for saying those things.

What makes them antisemitic is if A, they use that as proof to deny Israel a right to exist.

Or if they start calling Jews into account who may or may not even be up on what's going on in Israel, reading the newspaper well enough, and being made, those Jews on college campuses, to answer for Benjamin Netanyahu.

That then crosses into the realm of antisemitism.

Jews may have this collective identity, it may be part of our, not only culture, but our religion to care about what goes on in Israel.

But to hold Jews collectively responsible for anything is an antisemitic act.

- Last question on my end.

You've talked about the messy middle.

Right?

- Yeah.

- Define that real quick.

- That means not feeling like one has to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything, but being able to hold competing values, competing truths, competing pains at once.

- Okay.

Here's the question I've been wanting to ask, and it's self-serving on some level, but coming at it with an open heart and an open mind.

What do you believe, Rabbi?

As those of us in the media who are trying to get this right and do the right thing, what do you believe our responsibility should be?

Particularly given the number of people in New Jersey and in this region who are directly affected or indirectly affected by the events in the Middle East starting on October 7th, the Hamas attack in Israel.

What should we be doing?

- I think telling stories that are fair.

I would say giving facts over opinions.

And when you ask for opinions on the facts, because facts inevitably create opinions, bringing enough distinct voices to the table that allow people to understand that a given person's opinion is one read of the world and of the facts, but not the only one.

I would also say, and this is a very difficult thing.

I was talking to a member of my congregation who's also in broadcast journalism about this.

The images from Gaza are brutal.

And if you're, let's say a photojournalist, it's much easier, honestly to have 10 pictures that tell a story about Gaza than it is to tell the subtleties of the aftermath of October 7th, where in an age where if it bleeds, it leads, it's much harder to tell the Israeli story too.

- Also, you can't see the hostages, but keep talking.

- Exactly, that is exactly right.

- Go ahead.

- Yeah.

And so to find a way to be able to explore that story too, so that you're really telling the fullness of what this war is doing to the psyche of both peoples is really important.

We talk all about the refugees in Gaza.

There are hundreds of thousands of Jews who either lived in the Gaza envelope or in the north who are not in their homes right now.

Now, I don't wanna compare the two because it is not in comparison, but there are some real difficulties going on right now in Israel as well as this war is being fought.

And so to be able to tell both stories, I think will even things out and also will give credibility to any one story that you're telling.

- Thank you, Rabbi.

I know that we planned for, I know we didn't plan for this time, but it was time well spent.

I appreciate you taking the time.

We appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you, Rabbi.

- Of course, thank you.

- I'm Steve Adubato, and we'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

Kean University.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

PNC Foundation.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

NJM Insurance Group.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

And by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

And by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

- (Narrator) Life is full of changes.

At Hackensack Meridian Medical Group, we're ready for them.

If you have a cold or chronic illness, our five star doctors can treat any ailment.

Whether you're starting recess or retiring, we're prepared with pediatric and adult specialists.

And if you just moved here, we are in your neighborhood.

You now have access to a health team thousand strong.

So no matter what or when, we're ready.