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In this special series, TEXTing: IRL – Ideas for Real Life, Elana Stein Hain brings the big dilemmas facing North American Jews into conversation with classic and modern Torah texts.

Guilt by Identification: Jewish Pride in a Hostile Environment Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: : Hi everyone, welcome back to our special series of TEXTing In Real Life — IRL, where we consider Jewish issues through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana: Stein Hain, and we are recording on July 21st, 2025. You can follow along in the show notes if you’d like to see our texts and thank you to our sponsors, the Walder Charitable Fund and Micah Philanthropies.

So in this series of ours, we’ve been looking at cognitive dissonance that North American Jews have been experiencing. In our first episode, we talked with Jacob Feinspan about progressive Jewish activism on the left, given how anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are becoming more and more normalized. In our second episode, we spoke with Dr. Tamara Mann Tweel, about gratitude to flawed leaders, specifically President Trump and Iran. And today we’re going to tackle a different issue. Today we’re talking about Jewish pride and self-perception.

Now, I have to say, so many Jews today are feeling themselves embattled when they’re in non-Jewish spaces because anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become more normalized. People may be worried about their very safety and whether they want to show their Jewishness. They may be discomfited by the fact that people are openly supporting terror organizations. Or they may simply be hurting and feel ashamed because people are telling us that the Jewish state is the villain, that we’re the bad guy, that we’re on the wrong side of history. So how do we deal with Jewish self-perception in this difficult time?

Now, I have to say, as a child of the 80s and 90s, I never experienced anything like this. My mom would tell me stories of how when she visited the South, she would see signs that said, no Blacks, no Jews, no dogs. But that’s just not something that I ever felt. In fact, the way that people described it to me is that after 1967, Jews went from the hunched over question mark in America to a tall, proud exclamation point. And I’m kind of worried that we might be headed back to our question mark status. So what are we going to do about this?

I think we need to talk to educators because educators are looking at the next generation of Jews, a generation that is already meeting a kind of hostility about their identity and their commitments that my generation never actually had to deal with, at least growing up where I did in the tri-state area. So I’ve invited Dr. Dan Held to talk to us today.

Daniel is somebody who’s been involved in education for a very long time. If you want to understand the kinds of positions he’s held, he’s been forming the next generation of Jews, literally. In Canada, he is currently the Chief Program Officer of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. And he was previously the Executive Director of UJA’s Julia and Henry Kaczynski Centre for Jewish Education.

And I invited Daniel on the show because I want us to think about how we can inculcate a positive Jewish identity in a time where so much negativity is being pushed at people? How we can talk to kids about what it means to feel safe and proud as a Jew, when and where? And not just in terms of how they think of themselves when they’re out there in the world, but how they think of themselves when they have just they themselves, nope, when they’re just sitting in their own Jewish community. How do we think about ourselves, especially those who may have critiques about the fact that the Gaza war is still going on or the way that it’s being waged. So Daniel, thank you so much for joining. We’re so happy that you’re here with us today.

Daniel: Elana: , it is such a pleasure to be here. I think that this show, TEXTing IRL, is actually what education is all about. It’s about enabling people to take our texts and our tradition and apply it to their lived experience. And I think that is just such a powerful example of what we need Jewish education to be today.

Elana: : That’s really incredible. Well, you know that this show revolves around Torah. And so I want to start us off with a text that I think presents what I would call the embattled Jew incredibly well. And it’s kind of feels like it’s out of nowhere because you have this line in the Babylonian Talmud. And again, look along in the show notes for people who want to. You have this line where the daughter of Caesar turns to Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chananya. Now, for those who are new to the name the last name “Ben Chananya.” Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chananya is just Rabbi Yehoshua, the man we know in the Mishnah time and time again. And here she says to him, “Ei chokhmah mefura’ah bi-khli mecho’ar!” “What beautiful wisdom in such an ugly vessel.”

She turns to him, a major Jewish leader, and I mean, how major the rabbis were at that time is a fair question, but certainly one of our major Jewish leaders and somebody who was creating rabbinic Judaism, and tells him, you don’t fit, you don’t make sense, in fact, you’re ugly, and we, the Romans, we believe in aesthetic beauty and wisdom going together. You don’t make any sense. Right? So when you read this, Daniel, what does it conjure for you? What do you think?

Daniel: I actually think there are two pieces. The first is she calls it “chokhmah mefura’ah,” like a glorious wisdom. And on one hand, she has incredible respect for us, our people, our wisdom, our text, our tradition. And I think we should take some pride in that, right? Like here is a daughter of a Roman emperor, daughter of Caesar, who is capturing the entire world at the time. And yet she sees our wisdom, not just as wisdom, but as glorious wisdom. So that’s number one.

But then her expectation of this glorious wisdom isn’t met because it’s being held in an ugly vessel. And we need to understand, what is it that she is seeing, that isn’t meeting her expectation of the glorious wisdom? But as the optimist, I want to start by saying she actually has incredible respect for our wisdom and for our tradition and for what we bring to the world.

Elana: : Okay, so I have a family member who says when somebody spits on you, don’t call it rain. It sounds to me like if Caesar’s daughter spit on you, you’d be like, there’s some nice, we’ve got some nice mist here.

But there is something true in that she doesn’t just say you’re ugly, your ideas are ugly. There is no wisdom here. She is just sort of, you know, shocked. Now I wonder to myself how long before she just says you have no wisdom either, right? And also, let’s remember this is our text, which means we get to author it. So this is also a way of the rabbis saying, we believe that we have wisdom, right? We believe that we have wisdom. But you know what? She messed with the wrong guy because Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chananya, throughout rabbinic literature, he is the embattled Jew. People argue with him all the time and he bests them every time.

So let’s just look at what he does here, okay? Because this is one of many responses one might give and maybe we’ll talk about that in a little bit. says to him, she says, he says to her, excuse me, you know, “Avicha,” your dad, “ramei chamra b’manei d’fachra?”“Do you think, does he put his wine in earthenware vessels, right? Feel a set up here, something precious and something cheap, right? Something wise and something ugly, right? And she says, yeah, of course, “Elah b’mai nirmei?” what do you think we should put them in? Of course, that’s what we put them in, meaning that’s what allows them to be preserved. Right? She didn’t say that, but we’re about to see it.

So amru lah, he says, you know, you guys are so important. You’re aristocracy. You should really be putting them in “B’maanei dahava ve-kaspah.” You should be putting them in gold and silver vessels. And so of course she goes and she says, okay, dad, we got to start, says to Caesar, we got to start putting our wine in gold and silver vessels. And guess what happens? The wine goes sour. Right? So he’s trying to prove a point here, right?

The emperor then calls him in when he finds out that Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chanana is responsible for this. He says, what are you doing? Why, why did you tell my daughter to do this? And he says, what do mean? I just responded to her the way she spoke to me. Right? She told me that precious shouldn’t be in cheap. And I said to her, good, try what, try, try what it looks like trying to put something precious, not in something cheap.

And of course, in the Talmud, this is all a way of saying, people who are going to be able to retain Torah are people who are humble. They’re people who are not overly concerned with what others think about them. Right? So he actually looks, it’s almost like the tortoise and the hare. Right? He says, you know, you all think the tortoise is going to lose the race, the tortoise is going to win the race. What you think is my weakness is actually my strength. Torah can be preserved, this beautiful wisdom can be preserved in me because I’m ugly.

So I’m curious, just in terms of his answer here, especially given that you’re looking at this as a, you know, she notices something good, but also something bad. I’m curious how you read the way he decides to respond.

Daniel: So I think she notices something good and I take great pride and comfort in that. And I think the analogy of that to wine is parallel. Like these are good things which are encased in things that aren’t as beautiful or as glorious. What I don’t know is, what is she seeing that is inglorious, that is ugly, right? What is she seeing that is the pottery and not the silverware?

I think part of that is the sense of machloket, the sense of struggle, the sense of debate. And even though the pathway may not always be clear, I actually take great pride and comfort in the fact that we have these debates, we have these pieces of machloket, we struggle to find what is right, what is moral, what is ethical. And that struggle, for me, is part of the beauty, but I understand how for others that can actually be ugliness, that can be clay pots, that can be the shell which doesn’t befit the wisdom and the glorious wisdom.

Elana: : Well, it’s so interesting, if I were to think what Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chananya could say back, right, to that, I actually think we’re seeing it right now. One response, which is what Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chananya does, he says, yeah, we’re violent and we need to be violent. We’re literally fighting the War of the West. You’re welcome. Meaning, you’re naive. You don’t understand what it takes. And this is what it takes. And it’s sad, but this is what it takes.

But he could have said a few other things. And I just want to think, not that he could have said a few other things, but we’re seeing other things, right? There’s a, no, you’re wrong. We’re not violent. The death tolls are less than other wars, and it’s not really what you think it is. Right? Meaning it’s not, we’re not violent. We’re not using, then you have people who you’re right. We’re being too violent and it’s a problem, but I’m still invested. Right. And being Jewish is not just that.

And then you have the people and I’m gonna go with sort of the anti-Zionist crowd is—those people are not me. I’m not them. I have nothing to do with them. I don’t, you’re talking to the wrong guy. Right. Just… I’m not involved. Something like that. Or, or I’m so anti that’s where I am.

I just want to open up by saying I think that sense of embattlement, there are a lot of answers that people can give. And that’s not even getting to pride yet. So I actually, I want to go to pride. I want to know when you’re trying to engage Jews and think about educating Jews towards being proud Jews, what does that mean? Proud of what?

Daniel: So firstly, I want my kids to be proud of so many different things about being Jewish. Not just one thing, but many things. They could be proud about Shabbat and this notion of Jewish rest. The ability to take a day without their phones, in real life social interactions.

Elana: : IRL you mean?

Daniel: IRL, exactly. They could be proud of Jews who have gone on to accomplish incredible things in science and Nobel Prizes, in sports. They could be proud of the ways that Judaism brings morality to life and the struggles. They could and certainly hopefully are proud in Israel and the biggest project of the Jewish people in the last hundred years in creating a Jewish and democratic state which is constantly struggling.

But what I think is happening today when you speak about violence is that a group of our haters are using that as a way to diminish our pride and to hold us and our children accountable for things which they are not responsible for, which is a way of being anti-Semitic. My eight-year-old is not responsible for Israel’s policies in Gaza. And yet, a couple of weeks ago at one of our summer camps, a summer camp where we create Jewish joy, we create intentionally immersive experiences which are designed to cultivate pride, some kid drove down the road next to camp, rolled down their window and yelled, “Free Palestine, free Palestine.”

That’s not because he thought that the eight-year-olds at camp or the nine-year-olds or even the 13-year-olds at camp were going to change Israel’s policy or Canada’s policy. That’s because he was trying to shame them for one piece of Jewish identity. And that I believe is anti-Semitic. And what I want my kids is to feel pride in the totality of the Jewish experience in many different things, including the state of Israel, including the struggles that the state of Israel struggles with as it wages this war.

Elana: : Okay, so I hear you saying a few things that I think are really valuable to tease out. One is I hear you saying, not gonna anchor, I don’t wanna anchor pride in being Jewish in any one thing. It’s too flimsy. You need some more depth there. So some things might be religious, some things might be cultural.

Daniel: Just to say—it’s not just too flimsy, but Judaism has so much complexity to it and so many layers to it that no one layer stands by itself, right? And I don’t want anyone to have that one piece.

Elana: : Ah, so it’s not even, this is not a utilitarian argument. You’re saying, you’re missing the thickness of it. You’re missing the thickness of it. So that’s one thing that I hear you saying, which by the way, it’s not an accident that you talked about Jewish summer camp, right? I Jewish summer camp is one of the places where people actually engage in lots of different ways, social ways, ideological ways, all sorts of ways, right?

The second thing I hear you saying is that it actually, regardless of whether you think what’s going on in Gaza should be going on in Gaza, by the way, Jew or non-Jew for that matter, people are using that as a way to attack Jews, including children, to try to make them feel shame. Try to make them feel shame. Meaning they’re not gonna change any policies. They want them to feel ashamed of being Zionist, ashamed of being Jewish, right, so that’s a second thing I hear.

Daniel: As a way to poke holes in their Jewish identity and their Zionist identity and who they are, as a way to shame them away from holding that identity strong.

Elana: : You’ll give it up. Eventually you’ll give it up. Eventually you’ll give it up. And then the third, it’s interesting. You want people to take pride in the struggle. And I think that’s very interesting because there are a lot of people who essentially look at Israel right now and they just flatten it and say, well, know, very reductionist. I know exactly what’s going on and I know why it’s going on and there’s no actual moral conversation, right?

And what you’re saying is, actually, I need people to be engaged in the fact that you can have a moral conversation, you can disagree, you may not win the argument and have no power to change it, but be in that struggle and take pride in being part of that struggle.

Daniel: I think that is true today, but I also think we can think of historical examples of that. There are many things when I think back in history, which I take pride in in Jewish life, and frankly, there are things which I in hindsight am ashamed of. There are individuals, there are circumstances, there are the ways that Israel has played out, the way that it welcomed or didn’t welcome some immigrants historically. These are all things that we struggle with, and I think what I take pride in is the striving towards the North Star and the struggle with finding the moral thing to do, which is not always simple and a straight line, but is complex and nuanced.

Elana: : Okay, so it’s interesting because, you know, I’m here in Israel for the year and what is much easier to take pride in here is the sacrifice that young people are willing to make to defend their country. Meaning, it almost doesn’t matter what you think about the war or the government or the… You’re just proud of these young people who are willing to risk their lives, or parents who have gone in for four rounds of miluim, of army service.

But from far away, unless you’re related to somebody, you actually, don’t see any of that and you don’t experience any of that. And so there is no, I’m not sure about the complexity of it in terms of having pride and also having critique. I think it’s a little harsher when you don’t have access to that pride in that same way.

Daniel: And in Israel, I think you also don’t have your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends, or at least former friends, who are intentionally poking at you and prodding and pulling at your identity. You don’t have, in the same way, rolling down the window, driving down the street, and yelling to children, “free Palestine.” There is a difference in the milieu in which we are able to hold pride and the ways that we need to teach pride between Israel and diaspora in today’s world.

Elana: : Oh, huge difference. And by the way, I would just say Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs who talk to each other, there’s a lot of disagreement there. You know what I mean? But that’s very different from me walking down Broadway and somebody ripping down a poster, a hostage poster, right? Like it’s a, there’s a little bit of a difference. So let me ask you, holding pride and I don’t know, concern for safety, pride and right, like, it’s not going to be unadulterated the way we had it in the 80s and 90s. It’s not going to be. How do you teach people to hold both? Like give me something concrete.

Daniel: So every year in Toronto we have our Walk with Israel. In the past, pre-October 7th, 15 or 20,000 people would come out and would walk through the streets of Toronto expressing their pride in being Zionists, in their own Jewish identity, in the state of Israel, in this project that we have created over the last hundred years. I remember when I did it as a kid and we walked 18 kilometers down the street for hours and hours without security at all. And once in a while there’s a volunteer crossing guard at the street to make sure that some little kid, probably me, didn’t run across the street. Right?

Elana: : Exactly. Listen, we also went to the airport basically without security before 2001, before September 11th. In America, it’s like there was no security at the airport. You just walk through.

Daniel: Exactly, exactly. For the last two years, it has changed dramatically. And two things have changed. One is the number of people who come to our Walk with Israel has increased unbelievably. So we used to have 15 to 20,000. Last year there were 50,000. This year there were 56,000 people who walked with incredible pride down Bathurst Street, down the core of the Jewish community in Toronto, celebrating our identity, celebrating Israel in incredibly strong, powerful, and vibrant ways.

At the same time, walking down the street, there were people on either side of the street yelling and screaming hate towards us. And I had to take my kids through that, right? So I have kids who are now 13, nine and seven, right? And walking with them down the street, on one hand, they felt incredible pride, not just in Israel, but in community and in this community coming together.

At the same time, they know that there are people who are pointing fingers at them and accusing them of genocide and murder. And holding those together at the same time is remarkably challenging, but I want to create kids, my own kids and our community of kids, who can hold that, who will feel pride in being Jewish because we want them to feel pride in being Jewish to be able to do all the other things that we want them to do in this world.

Elana: : Yeah, so I do think it’s an important thing to recognize that this is going to be mixed. It’s not a consensus issue anymore, to say the least. But what’s interesting about what you said is also the numbers. Meaning, sometimes the sense that you’re alone is overwhelming, but when you’re in huge numbers of people who are feeling like you,

But I can’t get over the fact you’re talking about Toronto. Not every Jewish community in Canada is Toronto, where you’re going to be able to marshal 56,000 people to come out to some sort of thing like this. So in those kinds of situations where you’re talking about smaller communities, are there things we actually need to do now, specifically now, to connect Jews in smaller communities to big groups of Jews to be in a place where they just feel, I’m the norm, right? Like, is that something we need to do?

Daniel: I think you’re absolutely right. I think people want to gather, right? And in this case with the Walk with Israel, it is a huge number and it’s about Israel. But I also believe in the power of Shabbat dinner. And I also believe in the power of summer camp. And I also believe in the power of PJ library connectors getting together people for a playdate in the park.

And people want to gather right now. Some of what we’re seeing in the surge into Jewish life isn’t necessarily about people wanting to sit down and send their kids to Jewish day school and learn text, but it’s wanting to be together with other people.

Elana: : Hey, hey, hey, don’t knock text.

Daniel: If only. But people wanting to be together with other people and really connect to each other. And we have to remember that, like, you know, our synagogues, in Greek, or our Beit Knesset, actually aren’t called a Beit Tefilah, they aren’t just called a house of prayer or a house of learning. They’re actually called a Beit Knesset, a house of gathering. And we need to provide those opportunities for people to gather about Israel, but also about the rest of Jewish life. That’s number one.

Number two is, it’s not just about Jews gathering with Jews. At the end of the day, I think back to, you know, the Caesar’s daughter who had tremendous admiration for our people, right? I still believe that she did. She said, you have this glorious wisdom. And the vast majority of Canadians, non-Jewish Canadians, and I believe that’s for Americans, actually do have an incredible admiration for us. And we have allies. Gathering together with allies to be able to think together about the things that we share in common. And that could be Israel, but that could be many, many other places, is also incredibly powerful and provides us the opportunity to develop that sense of pride.

So I think it’s both about us gathering for lots of reasons together and lots of ways together. It’s also about us gathering the allies and the other communities who stand with us in lots of ways to know that we aren’t alone. Because when I say that 56, 000 people gathered for the Walk with Israel, they actually weren’t all Jews. And that’s important.

Elana: : Right, right. No, I think in some ways that sense of abandonment, it gets so much more acute when you’re afraid to engage with those with whom you once engaged, right? Like it’ll surprise you every so often to know, no, we have allies, right? We have people who care about us and appreciate us. And there are things that we share, even Israel. And then there are other people with whom Israel’s not gonna be the thing, but there are other things that we share. It’s really interesting.

Daniel: And I should say, I think that is part of the strategy that is being employed against us. Like the venomous and vicious strategy to isolate us by shaming us and separating us from the rest of society. And what we need to be able to do, and what we need to do is hold our prides, that we can engage with others and continue to feel the sense of pride and admiration for our people and for who we are, even when we struggle with pieces of our community and with pieces of who we are.

Elana: : Yeah, even amidst criticism.

Daniel: Exactly.

Elana: : Even amidst criticism. Meaning it’s being patriotism or community or collective feeling like these criticism has to have a place there. It has to have a place there. But I’ll tell you a story. My kid is in… one of my kids is in Poland right now playing for the national Israel team, baseball. And I can’t… I’m going to be honest. I was so nervous when team Israel walked out in the procession of all the teams on the first day. I was watching the livestream and I was just like, what if somebody boos them? What if somebody boos them? What if somebody boos them?

And first of all, nobody did. That’s number one. And not only that, but the kids have beautiful pictures with Team Italy and Team Germany and whoever they’re playing tomorrow. You know, meaning, but I also think I might need to teach my kid somebody might boo you. I might actually need to teach him that and say, that’s okay. You can still be proud of who you are. Right? So I’m thinking about that.

And the other thing I’m thinking about is—I’ve got to bring God in here. I know that a lot of Jews don’t like to talk about God. I get it. But to me, in this moment, I’m being so honest, to me in this moment, I have more of a sense of Judaism being about the ongoing relationship between God and the Jewish people as a collective and that no one moment defines who we are and what we’re always going to be. I take pride in that covenant. I take pride in that covenant. But that’s also because I’m a person of faith. But I literally, I take pride in that covenant.

Daniel: I take pride in the covenant and I take pride in the North Star to which we are striving, right? Like Yitz Greenberg says, Judaism is founded on human faith and divine promise that the world can be perfected. And that is what we are striving towards. And when you bring God into the conversation, I believe we bring both God and humanity into the conversation, because that covenant is saying we are driving towards something better. And when I say that we should be proud in the struggle, I think we should be proud in the struggle of working out what is the right pathway towards that perfection of the world.

And that’s what I want my kids to be proud of, that even when people are pointing fingers and demeaning them and yelling at them, we are actually striving towards something. And we don’t have to be proud of everything in Jewish history, or Jewish tradition or Jewish text, but I want them to have enough in their backpack to say, is so much here that even if you’re trying to demean me, I’m not going to allow that to diminish me as an individual or to diminish us as a people.

Elana: : To be the totality. Yeah, look, I think the strangest thing about the Bible, the strangest thing about Tanakh, is that God wants a relationship with the people. Just why? We’re so flawed. We’re so flawed. And that God wants a relationship with a people who disappoint time and time again. There’s something really wild about it.

But I wanna move to danger because I wanna talk about this. I see more adults wearing identifiable Jewish garb, whether it’s a Magen David, a Star of David, or a Yarmulke, or like a chai necklace. Like I see adults making these statements that we’re here and we’re not gonna hide. And at the same time, I also know, like sometimes you better put that hat on instead of the yarmulke. Sometimes maybe you tuck in the necklace, right? And I’m curious what you think our approach should be in talking about this. Just Jewish safety and self-representation.

Daniel: So I want to say two things. Firstly, in the weeks after October 7th, I was asked by our community to really think about our security infrastructure here in Toronto. We were being threatened physically in ways that we hadn’t been before. Swastikas and shootings and like, it was a scary, scary moment. We did tremendous work to be able to fulfill two goals.

One is we should be safe in our community. And the second is we should feel safe in our community because both of those are important. I want every parent to know their kid going to school or summer camp or synagogue or the JCC is both going to be safe and they should feel safe sending their kids there. And that is tremendously important.

Number two is the way that we reflect ourselves in society. I wear a kippah and I know that when I walk into the street, I am identifiably Jewish. And I should say, for the first time, when I was traveling a few weeks ago in the States, this is in the commentary on America, I put a hat on. Because in those moments of vacation, it didn’t feel like the moment when I actually had to. I don’t know if I would have been confronted, but I didn’t have to. And that was an internal decision, which I made for myself. And I actually don’t know how I would have felt if my kids, who wear Jewish t-shirts, who wear a Jewish star, would have done the same thing. And we will see what happens going forward if I continue to do that or if that was a once off, I’m on vacation, I just need a break. But I want to feel safe and be safe no matter where I am and I want our community to be able to do that too.

Elana: : Yeah, and by the way, God bless Chabad because I do think that on an institutional level, Chabad is just more out there than ever. They’re just, we’re here, we’re here, right? More menorah lightings and getting people to come. I’m like starting to expect Chabad to light menorahs when it’s not even Hanukkah. You know what mean? I just want to be like, here we are. So sometimes institutions can do things that individuals cannot, but I think this is another place where we need to be talking to our next generation and being thoughtful about when and where, you know?

Daniel: Canadian society is known by the analogy of a cultural mosaic, where we are made up of many, many different peoples, each of whom has a little rock or a little pebble in this overarching picture of Canadian society. I want to make sure that the Jewish rock in that cultural mosaic can shine brightly. I’ve been asked many, many times over the last nearly two years if we should actually take down signs in front of Jewish institutions. Take down the name of the synagogue, the letters in Hebrew, the Israeli flag, the signs which say, you know, we are proudly Jewish, which UJA Federation has put up all up and down Bathurst Street.

And the answer over and over again has been no. We need to be proud as a people of the way that we represent ourselves in society. We need to make sure that our rock and the culture mosaic isn’t, you know, grimy and covered and hidden and sitting behind the cement, but is actually out there in public. That’s important both for us as Jews, and I believe it’s important for the society which we want to build. And that takes pride, and that takes thought, and that takes infrastructure, and that also takes the right security structures around it. But that is really important.

Elana: : And, it’s worth the risk. Meaning you’re doing all the things, you’re putting all the right things in place, but you are taking a risk and it’s worth the risk. Jews not being Muranos worth the risk.

Daniel: I was going to say exactly that. I don’t want us to be Moranos who light candles in our basement on Friday night and have to hide our Judaism in front of others. It is critical that we be proud and it is critical that we stand tall and it’s critical that we teach our kids the value and the incredible wisdom, as the text says, that Judaism has to offer that we should be offering into the world.

Elana: : So you know what, let’s actually end with this. Let’s go back to our text, because it’s always nice to go back. You know, one of the things that’s interesting about Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chananya is both because he’s talking to Caesar’s daughter and also because this is supposed to teach us something, it’s an internal tale. He feels the need to respond. And I wonder if sometimes you don’t always need to respond. If sometimes actually, and I’m going to leave this as a question, if sometimes you know what you are and you don’t need to play somebody else’s game, just leaving for the crowd to think about it.

But Daniel, I think you’ve given everybody a lot to think about. I think we have a real paradigm shift that we’re going through and we need to lean into it, and think about what it looks like instead of just being nostalgic for what was. So thank you. Really appreciate that you were here with us today.

Daniel: Thank you, Elana: . I have so appreciated this conversation. And I think that as we think about what education will look like in the coming years, these are the conversations we have to have. How do we inculcate pride? How do we do that both through the Jewish institutions we have, the schools and the summer camps and the synagogues, but also how do we do that at home? And we as parents who are models for our children, what is our role to play in inculcating pride? And what does our text and tradition teach us about how do we do that? So really, thank you for this conversation.