Speaker 1: Here's a question that I am turning over in my
Speaker 1: head over and over again lately. How should we be
Speaker 1: doing content or talking about subjects in relations to Jews
Speaker 1: when the climate is becoming increasingly hostile. What bad things
Speaker 1: are we to talk about? And what should we not
Speaker 1: talk about. I'm not asking this question as an invitation
Speaker 1: for assurances Freeda, It's okay, you cover things sensitively. I'm
Speaker 1: not asking it in an attempt to self validate. I'm
Speaker 1: asking it to raise genuine questions about ethical journalism, sociology,
Speaker 1: and storytelling in a changing climate. I'm thinking about this
Speaker 1: a lot. I have to say, my work as a
Speaker 1: content creator who tells the story essentially of people is
Speaker 1: something that I feel. I'm always walking a tight rope
Speaker 1: of moral decisions coupled with, of course, an element of
Speaker 1: self interest. I'm always making decisions and calls. It's not oh,
Speaker 1: this is the story and I tell it. Storytelling is
Speaker 1: about taking this story is going to skew the narrative,
Speaker 1: this story is going to help frame an effective narrative,
Speaker 1: and making these filtering calls constantly throughout for my entire
Speaker 1: career of documenting the Hasidic community, and I could say
Speaker 1: it's twenty years, because it was twenty years ago when
Speaker 1: I first logged on online in the Citic community and
Speaker 1: made my first blog, and I started to write anonymously
Speaker 1: from the perspective of a Hasidic woman. I've always had
Speaker 1: the same goal to humanize, to tell a story of humans,
Speaker 1: where oftentimes that is a very difficult story for outsiders
Speaker 1: to hear. And over those twenty years, I have always
Speaker 1: made moral decisions about how to tell this story effectively.
Speaker 1: I've also balanced that with self survival with at some
Speaker 1: points that meant being anonymous. When I first started, I
Speaker 1: was Spitzel Shrimpken, and I changed all the details about
Speaker 1: myself because I had to. I was risking everything in
Speaker 1: my life. I didn't intend to blow up my life,
Speaker 1: although it did end up happening, and it was necessary
Speaker 1: for me to protect myself, and so I had to
Speaker 1: lie about my details, changing all where I lived, how
Speaker 1: many children I had, and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: in order to balance self interest with storytelling. Likewise, along
Speaker 1: the way, different personal interests have come in the way
Speaker 1: with my work that I have tried to juggle alongside
Speaker 1: the moral questions. Now, however, I feel i'm at a
Speaker 1: crossroads again where I am trying to ask some really
Speaker 1: hard moral questions of myself, and I had the urge
Speaker 1: to articulate them with you all. I'm very fortunate to
Speaker 1: have an audience that is very thoughtful, that I have
Speaker 1: learned a lot from, and that I feel is able
Speaker 1: to appreciate the importance of these questions and to participate
Speaker 1: in my internal debate and also the external debate we
Speaker 1: should be having about the ethics of journalism and work
Speaker 1: documenting the Jewish people in this current climate. And so
Speaker 1: what I'm juggling right now internally in my ethical questions
Speaker 1: of how do you tell the story effectively? And how
Speaker 1: do I also think about myself as a human being
Speaker 1: that needs to survive and feed myself and my child,
Speaker 1: my son who is no longer a child but is
Speaker 1: in college and still on my dime. As I juggle this,
Speaker 1: I am right now asking the question my work is
Speaker 1: for the first time, reaching anti Semites. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've experienced that before. It is reaching people who have
Speaker 1: preconceived notions about Jews and are looking to validate those
Speaker 1: notions about Jews and to buttress their arguments about Jews.
Speaker 1: We're watching the climate about Jews go from oh my god,
Speaker 1: I cannot believe someone said the Austrian painter was right
Speaker 1: to it being so commonplace that you're starting to see
Speaker 1: it bleed into everyday life. It's not just the trolls
Speaker 1: on the Internet. It's not just a few people. It's
Speaker 1: a sentiment you're starting to see just in everyday life casually,
Speaker 1: a focus on the Jewish people as some kind of
Speaker 1: villain that is at fault for what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world. It's something that when I first experienced anti
Speaker 1: semitism in my common section, this kind of anti semitism,
Speaker 1: it was like storybook childhood fantasy anti Semitic villain come
Speaker 1: to life. It's like the witch from Sleeping Beauty has
Speaker 1: walked into your life and you're like pinching yourself. Is
Speaker 1: this real? This is my formative childhood legend of villainy.
Speaker 1: Is this real? And now, of course it's real. It's
Speaker 1: completely normalized. The problem of Jews being blamed for what's
Speaker 1: going on in the world, of course, is a long one,
Speaker 1: and different people will see different reasons why this has
Speaker 1: come to the four again. But one thing for sure
Speaker 1: is that I want to be very careful in how
Speaker 1: I tell the story of Hasidic Jews in particular, in
Speaker 1: order to be mindful of this climate. There are many
Speaker 1: things that I am turning over in my head. First
Speaker 1: of all, how much control do we really have? Anti
Speaker 1: Semites are going to run with anything. Silence will be weaponized,
Speaker 1: words will be weaponized. There will always be something that
Speaker 1: they will use. So should we be asking these questions
Speaker 1: at all? And to that I will say yes, yes.
Speaker 1: It is still very, very important to publish some things
Speaker 1: and not others, to publish with discretion, to tell stories
Speaker 1: with care, even though no matter what we do, no
Speaker 1: matter what we do, those who want to see Jews
Speaker 1: in the anti Semitic narrative will see it that way.
Speaker 1: And yet ethical decision making in storytelling is pertinent, and
Speaker 1: throughout my entire time creating this content, I have made
Speaker 1: these decisions constantly, constantly. So when I started to really
Speaker 1: get into this role as sort of street anthropologists was
Speaker 1: when I became a tour guide fourteen years ago. That's
Speaker 1: when I started to walk the streets, when I came
Speaker 1: to believe that being immersed in a community in a
Speaker 1: world is the right way to do sociology. Instead of
Speaker 1: in the Ivory Tower in academia, and I fell in
Speaker 1: love with this way of seeing the world, especially because
Speaker 1: as this was happening, as I was walking through the
Speaker 1: world and observing it, I could see how wrong media
Speaker 1: narratives were, how detached from reality they were, how much
Speaker 1: the system of journalism where you call three experts who
Speaker 1: are in academia and you get two quotes, completely loses
Speaker 1: understanding of the big picture. I said, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that. I'm going to live in the world,
Speaker 1: observe the world, and tell the story and see the
Speaker 1: big picture. When I started to do this, it was
Speaker 1: very fashionable to bash that setic community, very fashionable. Deborah
Speaker 1: Feldman came up with unorthodox people devoured it. There was
Speaker 1: almost no counter narrative, anyone who tried to counter her narrative,
Speaker 1: which was full full of so many issues. And by
Speaker 1: the way, she went to Germany and became a celebrity
Speaker 1: there something that has always made me feel so uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and told a story of Jews as terrible people that
Speaker 1: it's always felt to me so morally problematic, so something
Speaker 1: that I felt we should criticize. But at the time,
Speaker 1: anyone who criticized Deborah Feldman was ripped to pieces. Ripped
Speaker 1: to pieces. It's amazing how I've watched the climate change.
Speaker 1: Big moment, first moment of being canceled, was when I
Speaker 1: started to share views on Hasidic education. So basically what
Speaker 1: happened like ten years ago in this climate where Hasidic
Speaker 1: Jews are a cult, they are crazy. There were all
Speaker 1: these negative things said about them. And by the way,
Speaker 1: just want to pause here to point out something that
Speaker 1: I found myself do. When I do this quote Hasidic
Speaker 1: Jews are cult, They're crazy, I find myself stepping back. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't say that. It's going to be taken out of
Speaker 1: context by anti Semites. This is how the new climate
Speaker 1: is infiltrating my mind. But back to what happened about
Speaker 1: ten years ago. The first time I was canceled, the
Speaker 1: Hasidic community was being shredded to pieces. I would regularly
Speaker 1: read on the New York Times. People called them a
Speaker 1: drain on the planet. People were saying they're spreading diseases
Speaker 1: because of measles outbreaks in the community. Things that shocked me.
Speaker 1: It seemed to call the Jews diseased. I could I
Speaker 1: could see the kernels there. I could see the kernels
Speaker 1: of a narrative that would later sprout fully, and I
Speaker 1: screamed off the rooftop saying, wait, wait, stop blaming them.
Speaker 1: They're vaccinating, many of them are vaccinating. They have a
Speaker 1: lot of children. The arguments that they're too many people
Speaker 1: and using up the resources of the planet. It was
Speaker 1: always so scary to me, and I wasn't wrong. I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, I wasn't wrong, but that was
Speaker 1: very unpopular and I would get no audience. I was
Speaker 1: screaming into the void about these things until it came
Speaker 1: to the education issue. So what happened was, in this
Speaker 1: very negative climate towards a Cidic Jews, an organization sprung
Speaker 1: up called yeah Fed that spearheaded by enough to Leye Moster,
Speaker 1: who has gone through his own long journey. I've had
Speaker 1: him on my channel, but anyway, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go into that. Yafed aimed to change Hassidic boys education.
Speaker 1: The media loved this, They loved this narrative, they loved
Speaker 1: this project. They fully fully gave it the stage. Basically,
Speaker 1: the goal was to force the government to force the
Speaker 1: Hasiitic community to change their education. Now me. I did
Speaker 1: not disagree with the fact that the Citic community has
Speaker 1: to think about change, or that people that or rather
Speaker 1: that many people in the Citic community are interested in
Speaker 1: this kind of change, an expansion of education for boys,
Speaker 1: and so the premise of rectifying education for boys wasn't
Speaker 1: a negative one to me. However, the way it was approached,
Speaker 1: which was this tremendous negative publicity stunt saying they are
Speaker 1: all uneducated and poor and living off the government. I
Speaker 1: did it again. I regret saying that. But the way
Speaker 1: it was framed I thought was going to be counter effective,
Speaker 1: That it was going to make people close ranks and
Speaker 1: stop the natural pace of change, because they're going to
Speaker 1: become more zealous as a response to outside pressure. As
Speaker 1: I was walking through the community watching street posters crop
Speaker 1: up everywhere screaming help, they're taking us to Auschwitz. Spiritually,
Speaker 1: I was like saying, Oh, I'm seeing it. They're doubling down.
Speaker 1: They are feeling attacked, and they are going to resist change. Now,
Speaker 1: when a Hasidic man comes into a boys' school and
Speaker 1: says let's introduce new textbooks, they're going to have their
Speaker 1: antennas up. Why by bah bah Bay change no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not doing change. There's always change in the Acidic community,
Speaker 1: but under pressures from the outside that feel like forced assimilation,
Speaker 1: they become cognizant of the change and more mindful and
Speaker 1: more concerned about it. And this relates to understanding the
Speaker 1: entire Hasidic system. It's like a culture, it's a system.
Speaker 1: There are deep embedded values. This goes back to well
Speaker 1: before the Asidic community came to America and Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: where they were fighting for their survival and were persecuted,
Speaker 1: and so there's like a deep seated cultural memory about
Speaker 1: what it means like to experience religious persecution and that
Speaker 1: can be awoken if outsiders start to put pressure you
Speaker 1: must change. So this was my argument at the time.
Speaker 1: I said two things. One, they are not uneducated. Education
Speaker 1: is a complicated concept and calling them uneducated is extremely offensive. Yes,
Speaker 1: the boys don't learn secular subject but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they're uneducated. It's very, very problematic. And number two, you're
Speaker 1: going to shoot yourself in the foot if you're going
Speaker 1: to ham fist change like that. That was my argument
Speaker 1: out You could disagree with this argument. It's okay if
Speaker 1: you say, actually, this is the pace of change, or
Speaker 1: this is the process of change, you need a charatenistic
Speaker 1: or whatever. I am open to hearing other sides. This
Speaker 1: was my argument, and I became persona non grata among friends.
Speaker 1: We had the most heated debates, but basically on Facebook,
Speaker 1: which is where the conversation was happening. Then people were saying,
Speaker 1: this is the woman who doesn't want children to be educated.
Speaker 1: She herself greedily left and she doesn't want an education
Speaker 1: for the children. I felt extremely hurt by this. I
Speaker 1: felt extremely hurt by this. I felt misrepresented and definitely ostracized,
Speaker 1: definitely ostracized. I was shocked to experience ostracization for the
Speaker 1: second time in my life. I thought, when I left
Speaker 1: that stated community, I'm done with that. It's a very closed,
Speaker 1: small community. It's a very cohesive community. It's an our
Speaker 1: group world. You get canceled easily. It has good sides
Speaker 1: and bad sides. The good side of the secular world
Speaker 1: was supposed to be you don't get canceled. Well, this
Speaker 1: was I left before the word canceled became a thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I got canceled, and that was my first taste of
Speaker 1: what it's like to have an unpopular opinion and my
Speaker 1: first experience with myself as someone who cannot help it.
Speaker 1: My views, my opinions, my perspectives, they are what they
Speaker 1: are when they are popular. They are what they are
Speaker 1: when they're unpopular. It's only when they're unpopular it's not
Speaker 1: only extremely painful and isolating, but I become creatively crippled
Speaker 1: and go into hiding. I'll stop being as comfortable speaking.
Speaker 1: For instance, I'm about to publish a video with Pearl
Speaker 1: where she says some very unpopular things. She says, essentially
Speaker 1: that the Jews are to blame for the Holocaust in
Speaker 1: so many words. I'm sorry to state it this way.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm not framing it incorrectly, but you can
Speaker 1: watch that video. Definitely unpopular. I expect her to be shredded.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the reaction is going to be,
Speaker 1: but I admire her courage. She's cognizant that the climate
Speaker 1: for her views right now is very, very harsh. She
Speaker 1: is cognizant of the fact that this will probably make
Speaker 1: her very unpopular, and yet she shares them. What Pearl
Speaker 1: and I have in common, I feel, is deep convictions.
Speaker 1: Even when the world doesn't agree something that I think
Speaker 1: is admirable. What she has that is so admirable that
Speaker 1: I don't have is that she has thick skin and
Speaker 1: she says her bit and goes on her way while
Speaker 1: I shrivel up and hide. And my first experience with
Speaker 1: being canceled was a lesson in how I handle it,
Speaker 1: and that it's very disruptive to my work, and that
Speaker 1: I will not change my opinion because of it. I
Speaker 1: will only limit my voice. And I expect it to
Speaker 1: happen again. I don't know what the future holds, but
Speaker 1: I expect it to happen again. I expect at some
Speaker 1: point people to say, oh, I used to like her,
Speaker 1: I don't like her anymore because XYZ, and for it
Speaker 1: to hurt a lot, for people to say she she
Speaker 1: was great until she took this position and then no.
Speaker 1: I expect this to happen because at some point people
Speaker 1: will say, I don't like your position. It's only part
Speaker 1: for the course. The tides of the world change, and
Speaker 1: there are popular opinions, and I have watched the climate
Speaker 1: for the Hassitic community's popular opinion go from they are
Speaker 1: the worst people from other Jews saying terrible things from
Speaker 1: I don't want to repeat what I heard from other
Speaker 1: Jews about the Actic community during my career as a
Speaker 1: tour guide, but they were very disturbing to suddenly everyone
Speaker 1: being a fan of nuance and acceptance and embracing all
Speaker 1: stripes of Judaism and Hasidic Jews being cool for the
Speaker 1: moment and Exacidam and Hasidam and all sorts of Orthodox
Speaker 1: Jews being very big proponents on the nice things, the
Speaker 1: positive narratives about that Setic community. When that Actic community
Speaker 1: was ripped to pieces by Tyler Oliverira, who was a terrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible video and an example of bad journalism, instead of
Speaker 1: the reaction being like it was with Unorthodox no defense
Speaker 1: and silence and a lot of people enjoying it, the
Speaker 1: entire Jewish community basically was upset by that video, especially
Speaker 1: the Orthodox Jewish community. In the past, the Orthodox Jewish
Speaker 1: community was largely silent about acidic Jews. You made them
Speaker 1: uncomfortable when you talked about acidic Jews. They didn't know.
Speaker 1: They felt like, oh, a city Jews are too much
Speaker 1: and we are just the right amount. But if you're
Speaker 1: a Hasidic, don't become anything else because you make us
Speaker 1: on come it was a touchy subject. Now a city,
Speaker 1: Jews are the cool kids, and it's all a moment
Speaker 1: of rosiness. When I saw the climate change and my
Speaker 1: work pick up and receive so much. Oh, I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that you're doing positive work. I thought to myself, Well,
Speaker 1: this is a transient moment. Let's see what comes next.
Speaker 1: How will the climate change? Maybe the pendulum will swing back,
Speaker 1: It'll be the debrovelpment error again. Well, life is always surprising,
Speaker 1: and the way it has been changing, in my view,
Speaker 1: has been instead an increasingly anxious climate about talking about
Speaker 1: anything problematic. So it went from only the bad things,
Speaker 1: and I'm feeling the climate shift towards let's not talk
Speaker 1: about anything bad. Let's not talk about anything that could
Speaker 1: even be construed as bad. And I think this might
Speaker 1: be where things are headed. But it's definitely something I'm
Speaker 1: already receiving feedback on. And I'm actually, in my own
Speaker 1: life receiving feedback in my own moral mind. My own
Speaker 1: work has become more measured, and I thought, with time,
Speaker 1: I'll become more audacious, and I find myself actually becoming
Speaker 1: more self scrutinizing. What I mean to say is, if
Speaker 1: you look At my early blogs, I talked very comfortably
Speaker 1: about things like head shaving, which is the body of
Speaker 1: overseers zelots who can sow terror in the acidic community.
Speaker 1: I talked about these things openly alongside the fact that
Speaker 1: they are just a part of that world, and I've
Speaker 1: become more measured when I talk about these things. Right now,
Speaker 1: here's what the ethical dilemma is. It's becoming really scary
Speaker 1: to talk about anything because A the climate is changing,
Speaker 1: and B the climate is changing in response to real
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, and that means B the viewers are changing
Speaker 1: to a viewership that are taking things and using it
Speaker 1: to reconfirm their biases in the most antisemitic framings. I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example, the air the line that encircles
Speaker 1: a neighborhood to allow Jews to carry on Shabas. On Shabas,
Speaker 1: the Jews day of rest, you're not allowed to push strollers,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to carry bags, and that is one
Speaker 1: of the halaris, one of the laws, because on Shabas
Speaker 1: you're supposed to rest. God rested on the seventh day.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to rest on the seventh day, and resting
Speaker 1: means follow in Orthodoxy, means following a number of halaris.
Speaker 1: In Judaism, action oriented observances is very core and there
Speaker 1: are Lama testiments. They're forty nine laws, and among the
Speaker 1: laws there is the law that you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: carry in a public space. You can carry in a
Speaker 1: private space, but not in a public space. You're also
Speaker 1: not allowed to drive a car, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, turn on switches. There's a lot of rules.
Speaker 1: Not being allowed to carry in a public space means
Speaker 1: that women can push strollers, and it's very difficult law.
Speaker 1: There is, however, a way of making things easier, which
Speaker 1: is to ask the question what is a private space
Speaker 1: and what is a public space? And to define a
Speaker 1: private space as a space that is encircled. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of laws around the air of. I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with them, but essentially an air of is an
Speaker 1: encircling So you have a front yard, you encircle it,
Speaker 1: and now it's considered a private space. This can be
Speaker 1: then used to encircle larger spaces like an entire block,
Speaker 1: or even a neighborhood, or even a borough of the
Speaker 1: Borough of Manhattan, borough of Brooklyn are encircled with that
Speaker 1: line called an air of encircling. This is something that
Speaker 1: was always a rather difficult subject for me to explain,
Speaker 1: and I didn't like talking about it so much on
Speaker 1: my tours. But it's interesting. It is to me the
Speaker 1: most non controversial subject you can talk about until now.
Speaker 1: Now I'm nervous to make content about the air of
Speaker 1: Why because I can already see it. Oh, the Jews
Speaker 1: are tricking God again? Here we go, here we go?
Speaker 1: How else do they trick God? So this is the Jew,
Speaker 1: the stereotype of the trickster Jew. Envision yourself that image
Speaker 1: that they love to use. That's the association that I
Speaker 1: have come to make with the air of that anti
Speaker 1: Semites will grab anything that I make about the air
Speaker 1: of and they will say, did you hear about these
Speaker 1: Jews that are thinking they're tricking God? Now? That makes
Speaker 1: me think, should I talk about the air of? Is
Speaker 1: it necessary? Should we not talk about the air? What
Speaker 1: if the Arab is in the news, What if there
Speaker 1: is a debate in the Hasidic community of the air
Speaker 1: of is koshure and having that debate means the lives
Speaker 1: of women who are impacted by the laws of shabas
Speaker 1: are not only women women, men and children are enormously
Speaker 1: impacted by the debate we're having. So I think it's
Speaker 1: very important to have these conversations. It's very important to
Speaker 1: have these conversations carefully and with nuance. Yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, every conversation like this we have becomes fodder.
Speaker 1: So maybe we shouldn't have a conversation, or or maybe
Speaker 1: we should only have it if it's an issue in
Speaker 1: the community. So here's an issue in the community right
Speaker 1: now this moment, the issue of magazines. There are all
Speaker 1: these magazines that have been publishing four years now. They're
Speaker 1: free magazines. They were still around in my childhood. In
Speaker 1: my day, there was just the community connections, I think,
Speaker 1: and then there was like the bulletin that came in
Speaker 1: the mail for free. But basically these are free magazines
Speaker 1: that are just at They will put in some recipes
Speaker 1: and pictures of kids, toys, these creations, but it really
Speaker 1: started as just ads. They come to you in the
Speaker 1: mail or you can get them from these magazine containers,
Speaker 1: and people like to keep it in the bathroom to
Speaker 1: browse through. Remember, these people don't have the Internet the
Speaker 1: way we have it, so this is very very like scrolling.
Speaker 1: It's like mindless scrolling. You mindlessly look through the ads,
Speaker 1: and the companies of these magazines fund themselves through the ads.
Speaker 1: I have been watching these ads get increasingly ostentatious and materialistic,
Speaker 1: which I'm not a fan of. And one of my
Speaker 1: first long form videos on my channel, we're actually looking
Speaker 1: through the community connections and remarking on that. At the time,
Speaker 1: I was remarking on how amazing it is that the
Speaker 1: city community is rising in comfort levels after being such
Speaker 1: a starter community. It's really a community that is an
Speaker 1: immigration success story, and that was something that I remarked
Speaker 1: on in a climate in which everyone was saying they're
Speaker 1: illiterate and they don't and they can't work. So at
Speaker 1: that time, the way that comment was seen was, oh wow,
Speaker 1: look at them. They actually are not the way the
Speaker 1: simple way that you're framing them. But now the way
Speaker 1: it's being received in the current climate is totally differently
Speaker 1: because now the Jews or no one cares anymore if
Speaker 1: the if the Hasidic Jews are not educated and are poor,
Speaker 1: now they're the villains that are. It's very painful to
Speaker 1: I don't want to say the words. But back to
Speaker 1: these freebie magazines, I have been interested in them for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I've been watching them and looking
Speaker 1: at them, and I've been noticing how worldly they're getting.
Speaker 1: I've been noticing they've been to me good artifact that
Speaker 1: gives an example of how worldly the acidic community is getting.
Speaker 1: So like I have an artifact a hasidic kid's rule
Speaker 1: book for the school, for the sottomore school, that is
Speaker 1: an artifact of how extreme or draconian rule based it
Speaker 1: can be. That is a pull in one direction. On
Speaker 1: the other side, there is a pull in another direction.
Speaker 1: There's a pull towards these magazines. In the middle, there
Speaker 1: are people just living their lives. They're following the rules,
Speaker 1: they're enjoying the trends. You know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the middle, you understand people who are navigating life. They're
Speaker 1: not extremists. They're not living these oppressive Dracronian rules, and
Speaker 1: they're not living this non stob materialism. You have to
Speaker 1: take it all in context, and all of these artifacts
Speaker 1: interest me. They create the institutions through which people are
Speaker 1: doing normal life like you and me. This particular secular
Speaker 1: this particular free magazine or set of free magazine is
Speaker 1: now the subject of a zealous campaign from I am
Speaker 1: told dis Almali faction of the Southmore sect to cancel
Speaker 1: the magazines. And this reveals the bullish behavior of the
Speaker 1: extremists in the community. I have been told that the
Speaker 1: extremists of not just hung posters everywhere decrying these magazines,
Speaker 1: which by the way, are the livelihoods of quite a
Speaker 1: few people who are not in a position to show
Speaker 1: their faces and fight back, but also they went to
Speaker 1: all the containers and emptied them out and threw the
Speaker 1: magazines out, so created serious financial harm to the people involved.
Speaker 1: I don't know that this happened. I only heard it
Speaker 1: from people. But I went to check a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of magazine containers and they were all empty, so on
Speaker 1: that grounds I corroborated it. So do I talk about this?
Speaker 1: Do I talk about this in the past? Of course
Speaker 1: I would talk about this. I've talked about it in
Speaker 1: many contexts. I talk about it, and for me, my
Speaker 1: personal bias is I don't like the people who do
Speaker 1: this bullish things. They terrorize you. They're bullies. But those
Speaker 1: people are one faction, they are one set of They're
Speaker 1: a minority. They're a minority. Most people actually are either
Speaker 1: indifferent or feel terrorized by them. When I represent the
Speaker 1: extremist minority or the modern minority, it's a minority. What
Speaker 1: I hope for you to understand is that somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle, there are people who are living life, grief
Speaker 1: and joy and family and finding a way to thrive
Speaker 1: as best as they can without this being the defining
Speaker 1: factor of their lives. It's a defining factor if you're
Speaker 1: a zealous or if you're coming across those zealots. In
Speaker 1: my own work, I feel like I'm from a place
Speaker 1: of love. I feel I love New York City. I
Speaker 1: love gritty, grimy, real cultures. I love cultures that are
Speaker 1: not like I'm in Park Slope all the time. Great.
Speaker 1: I love Park Slope. It's full of corporate chains, it's
Speaker 1: not full of mom and pop shop life. I love
Speaker 1: the Caribbean area, Chinatown, the places where people live, Brighton Beach,
Speaker 1: the Cidic community. I have such a great love for
Speaker 1: the city community because they're my people. It's me, I'm
Speaker 1: one of them. But I love in general communities, and
Speaker 1: I make my work from that place of love for societies.
Speaker 1: I feel it's great to share that love. But my
Speaker 1: love is not for the rules it's not for the rabbi,
Speaker 1: it's not for the zealots. It's for the everyday people.
Speaker 1: And those everyday people are not perfect and are not
Speaker 1: things that their world is perfect. And I don't think
Speaker 1: you're showing love when you tell a story where that
Speaker 1: world is perfect. Here is a community that is perfect.
Speaker 1: It's loving, kindness and has said in everything, very nice,
Speaker 1: very nice. The people who are navigating these these tricky
Speaker 1: lines in life in order to express individuality and fit
Speaker 1: into a really conformist world, I don't know that they
Speaker 1: are being seen in this narrative. I don't know that
Speaker 1: you're telling their story. To me that is not a
Speaker 1: positive story to me, that is not coming from a
Speaker 1: place of love, That is coming from a place of
Speaker 1: dehumanization and lack of understanding outsiderness. The ability to speak
Speaker 1: to the negative is to me the way to tell
Speaker 1: a positive story if it's told correctly. However, However, that
Speaker 1: being my work king motto and my ethical guideline, I
Speaker 1: still make decisions every day about what's negative too much
Speaker 1: that it will paint like discolor everything, and what's the
Speaker 1: right amount of contextualization. I don't want to like overapologize.
Speaker 1: So this is a line I'm constantly walking alongside. That
Speaker 1: is my self interest of trying to reach an audience
Speaker 1: in a climate where I feel like you're wading through
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of content and competition is like the
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's hard to reach an audience. So I
Speaker 1: started out just doing long form, and now I'm doing
Speaker 1: these short forms that are supposed to be like. The
Speaker 1: amount of learning I had to do to understand the
Speaker 1: psychology of short form and how to hack that that
Speaker 1: was a whole education itself. I loved it. It was
Speaker 1: very challenging, but it also required learning tricks of attention
Speaker 1: grabbing that I'm not so one thousand percent sure about.
Speaker 1: When I took over my thumbnails from my editor, I
Speaker 1: started to do them on my own. About a year
Speaker 1: or two in, I learned how thumbnail psychology works. It's
Speaker 1: mind blowing. You're essentially learning how the human brain processes
Speaker 1: information in milliseconds when confronted with a bunch of inputs,
Speaker 1: and which input is most likely going to spark their attention.
Speaker 1: If you have a whole bunch of things, we have
Speaker 1: limited attention. Where is the attention going to target? And
Speaker 1: you're trying to make yourself the target. Wow, that was
Speaker 1: really eye opening. I love doing it. I loved playing
Speaker 1: with different thumbnails and learning oh this works, this doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And so I got a little bit enthusiastic. And my
Speaker 1: son was not a fan. He's in fact been my
Speaker 1: biggest critic. I'm going to make a video about that.
Speaker 1: At some point filmed did I just need to publish it?
Speaker 1: But essentially I would say, ma, mom, I'm disappointed in you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, see, this is a call I'm making.
Speaker 1: I'm not one thousand percent sure. I'm constantly making these calls.
Speaker 1: And when I make a call, I'm not one thousand
Speaker 1: percent Surrey. And I go on my comments and someone
Speaker 1: is like, I'm disappointed in you. Boom, You've just activated
Speaker 1: the little niggle in my mind that was already disappointed
Speaker 1: in myself. But you know what, at the same time,
Speaker 1: I need to survive. People don't realize there's no money
Speaker 1: in many of these videos. A lot of interviews I spend,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, fifty hours putting together. I can't
Speaker 1: even tell you how much goes into an interview. It
Speaker 1: makes seventy dollars. I'm not exaggerating. And I also spend
Speaker 1: on production I spend on software. I make zero money,
Speaker 1: so I want to see it make a living. I
Speaker 1: want to be able to keep doing it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've made some decisions along the way that I was like,
Speaker 1: h freedom, Maybe you're losing your moral Maybe you're getting
Speaker 1: carried away and greedy and losing your moral center. I've
Speaker 1: asked myself this question a million times, and when people
Speaker 1: say it, it is a big punch in the gut
Speaker 1: because I'm like, maybe, maybe, And I have bypassed so
Speaker 1: many opportunities in my life, so many because I sat
Speaker 1: at that maybe and I said m. And at this point,
Speaker 1: every single thing I publish I run by other people
Speaker 1: because that maybe is difficult to know. Maybe maybe I'm
Speaker 1: too careful, maybe I'm being hyper vigilant. But at this point,
Speaker 1: that maybe is something that I'm finding is requiring more
Speaker 1: and more courage of me. More and more I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's not talk about anything, because look,
Speaker 1: if anti Semites use the Sile as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: reconfirm their narratives, I'm not to blame. But if they
Speaker 1: use my content to say, see, the Jews are tricking God,
Speaker 1: then I'm to blame. So selfishly. Let me opt out.
Speaker 1: Let me opt out, so at least I can sleep
Speaker 1: with a clean conscience. And I have to tell myself, no,
Speaker 1: that is not the right reason, that is selfish. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in that. I believe journalism is important. Documenting
Speaker 1: is important, historical storytelling is important. Silence is not the solution.
Speaker 1: Having a conversation remains necessary. That's the line I draw
Speaker 1: when people say we shouldn't be documenting them, I disagree. No,
Speaker 1: my moral line you have different morals than me. My
Speaker 1: moral line is we should. Yes, we should, with care,
Speaker 1: with care. It is always important to do journalism with
Speaker 1: care in order for the story to transmit correctly, not
Speaker 1: to manipulate, but because there's an accurate story that you're
Speaker 1: trying to tell. And to tell the story accurately, you
Speaker 1: have to walk a very very fine line of with
Speaker 1: discretion selecting information, just like a museum curates right. If
Speaker 1: a museum will take only all bad images, if it
Speaker 1: doesn't tell a story very carefully, the people will not
Speaker 1: hear the truth. So telling the truth requires editorial discretion
Speaker 1: that I believe in, and I am juggling at this
Speaker 1: point that editorial discretion with losing courage, more pressure for
Speaker 1: me to take risks to stay in the game, so
Speaker 1: to speak, and at the same time more fear of
Speaker 1: how this kind of work is going to be exploited.
Speaker 1: So I really felt like unpacking this because unpacking is
Speaker 1: my way of functioning, of coping, of gaining clarity. And
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you hearing me out and walking with
Speaker 1: me through this. I'm not asking for validation. I'm not
Speaker 1: asking for cheerleading. Rah rah rah, You're doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: I'm asking for support in thinking through the moral conundrum
Speaker 1: in gentle guidance. Freeda, this, maybe let's think about if
Speaker 1: this is too far Freedda here, you need to have courage,
Speaker 1: You need to talk about X. We need to have
Speaker 1: certain conversations, We need to be willing to have conversations.
Speaker 1: What if the climate becomes such that the only thing
Speaker 1: Jews want to allow us to want to see discussed
Speaker 1: are the good things, Like with the climate on Zionism,
Speaker 1: I would say at this point, Jews do not want
Speaker 1: to talk openly about anti Zionism in religious Judaism or
Speaker 1: writ large. What happens when that becomes the climate? How
Speaker 1: do we handle that? Where is the line and how
Speaker 1: do we gain the courage to keep to that line
Speaker 1: when people are like, it's your fault that there are
Speaker 1: anti Semites, it's your fault that there is an attack
Speaker 1: on Jews, It's your fault of what's going on out there.
Speaker 1: This is to me a very important question and conversation
Speaker 1: to have right now, and it leaves me thinking about
Speaker 1: so many different things. What should we cover, what should
Speaker 1: we not? And I invite you to give me your
Speaker 1: honest feedback along the way, to think about it from
Speaker 1: my philosophy and to help me navigate it from that place,
Speaker 1: and also to contribute, to contribute your own perspectives. I've
Speaker 1: learned so much from comments and other content creators who
Speaker 1: have a similar philosophy of courage and integrity and truthful storytelling,
Speaker 1: and I think we should do more of it, and
Speaker 1: not less, but we should do it alongside conversations of
Speaker 1: the ethics of journalism. This was very long. When I
Speaker 1: sat down here, I was really out of it, and
Speaker 1: I said to myself, I don't think I have it
Speaker 1: in me to talk this out, and I have to
Speaker 1: listen back to this and see if I am going
Speaker 1: to publish it, because I don't know if I'm coherent,
Speaker 1: but if you're still with me right now, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Bye bye,