S.8 #1 | Sacred Strategy of Combating Antisemitism: An interview with Alexandra Levine

Antisemitism doesn’t start at the national level, it starts where people learn what to believe. I sit down with Alexandra Levine, an entrepreneur, political consultant, philanthropist, and host of a political podcast, to talk about what it looks like to stay loudly and proudly Jewish when the culture gets hostile. She shares how being the only Jewish child in her classroom shaped her backbone, and why Jewish identity, tradition, and community are not “extras” but real protection against isolation and fear. 

We dig into Holocaust education as a concrete strategy to combat hate, misinformation, and propaganda, from K through 12 classrooms to college campuses. Alexandra explains what bipartisan work can look like when the goal is bigger than party, and why local politics matters so much: school boards, county budgets, and state hearings can determine whether kids learn history accurately or absorb ideology. If you care about fighting antisemitism, Israel advocacy, or strengthening Jewish community life, this conversation offers practical frameworks, not just slogans. 

We also go beyond politics into spirituality, prayer, and resilience. Alexandra tells a moving story about advocating for her grandfather during COVID and how prayer, community, and persistence intersected in real time. We talk about welcoming spaces like Chabad, the importance of leadership that avoids political theatre in sacred settings, and how inviting non-Jews into synagogue can dismantle stereotypes and build allies. 

If you get value from honest conversations about antisemitism, Holocaust education, Jewish identity, Israel, community, and local civic action, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, beautiful soul. My name is Yulia, and I'm the voice of the podcast Love to Heal. This podcast outlines my journey from atheism to Judaism, exploring spirituality from diverse perspectives. It is my hope that my journey will inspire others to embark on their own adventure of self-discovery and spiritual growth. Thank you for tuning in to Love to Heal Podcast. Please like, share, rate, and subscribe. That is the best way to support this show. I'm delighted to present my guest, Alexandra Levine, an entrepreneur, a national political consultant, a philanthropist, and the host of Alexandra Levine Live, a political podcast part of America's Pulse Network, a network built by Patriots and that stands for God of Truth in the America First Movement. Welcome, Alexandra. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. I'll start by saying that I first met you at a Tubishwad women's program. And I was very inspired by your speech, your wonderful speech that you did on Jewish heritage. And then I began to follow you on social media and I learned of your political accomplishments and your ongoing efforts to combat anti-Semitism. And I was extremely impressed. And so I wanted to get a little bit more information from you on your some of your projects and also hopefully you will inspire others like you did me. And that leads into my first question. Is in times of rising anti-Semitism like we are experiencing today, where does your strength and your valor come from to keep going and to be sort of loudly and proudly Jewish?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Thank you. I appreciate you asking that. So I grew up in Sarasota, Florida, which was a very small town at the time. There was no Jews. I was literally the only Jew in the classroom. There was maybe only a handful of Jews. And there was a lot of anti-Semitism because the kids were very ignorant in regards to the Holocaust. They were very ignorant to Jewish culture. And I got made fun of a lot from age five all the way to 13. It wasn't until they taught the Holocaust in middle school, in my eighth grade class, that the kids finally woke up and they were like, oh my God, we had no idea. And it was interesting because it was a come together moment where all of us we held, we hugged each other, we cried, we realized that we never want this to happen again. And it doesn't just happen to Jews, it could happen to Christians too. So that was kind of like my fight was being 12 years old, being a going into being bot mitzvah, and just really engaging in my Judaism, getting more involved in my synagogue, doing confirmation at the age of 18, or excuse me, the age of 15. And then at the age of 18, I did birthright and I went to Israel for 10 days. And that really opened my mind up to be like, I love being Jewish, I love Israel, I love the Jewish people. And that's when I got more involved. And then, you know, fast forward to now with the anti-Semitism and college campuses, I'm a graduate of NYU. I have a master's from NYU. When I was there, they were starting the Israel Apartheid Week, the boycott, divest, and sanction crap. And it was me and four others that actually removed that group away from the NYU campus. Fast forward to years later, now they're back and they're more ferocious than ever. And I called, you know, NYU and I said, How can how can this be? How can you allow this? And it's just, you know, they really have no words and they call it freedom of speech, but it's really not because they're pushing out hate, speech, and propaganda. And what people need to understand is if you don't have religion in your life, it's a huge problem. You don't have to be the most religious Jew or the most religious Christian, but you have to have some form of religion in your life. A lot of these idiots that are pushing the anti-Semitism and the pro-Hama stuff, they do not have religion in their life or they claim they have religion in their life, but they read the Bible upside down. I'm getting all these things from Facebook where people are saying, like in the Talmud, it says that Jews are pedophiles and that we are Satans and that we're scum. I mean, I'm getting that like now, like in present time. And I'm getting it from not kids, I'm getting it from grown adults. I'm getting it from, you know, 27-year-olds and 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds. So that compels me more to say to myself, there is lack of education here. So I've taken initiative, um, and this is my life's work, to push Holocaust education in K through 12 as well as in colleges and universities nationwide. I've worked with state senators with it. I've worked um bipartisan actually. I've worked with Republicans, Democrats, and independents on this. I'm actually going to be going to Pennsylvania soon for a Holocaust education hearing. So this is something that's important to me. One thing that really was kind of my highlight was when I was in Annapolis, um, I testified to remove CARE, which is a terrorist organization from the Anti-Hate Commission permanently in Maryland. It was a unanimous decision across the board. They had tremendous bipartisan support. I worked with a modern Democrat Orthodox woman to get it passed. And then actually, I worked with a far-left socialist Jewish Democrat to get it passed. So you can work across the aisle with people that are not of the same political views as you, because at the end of the day, everyone knows care is a terrorist organization. Most people recognize that it's a terrorist organization. So that was kind of the pivotal moment. And I said to myself, I can work with, you know, bipartisanship, whether you're left or far left. There's a lot of people, especially after October 7th, Jewish Democrats, that realize that this is bad, that we really need to educate people. And we're also seeing something in the Republican Party where the alt-right is becoming this like neo-Nazi movement. They've really embraced this like white supremacist KKK movement now, and they're becoming like socialist democrats. So socialist democrats now, when I say socialists, I mean like the Rashida Talibs, the AOCs, the Ilhan Omar's, and the alt-rights, like the Nick Fuentes's, they're all coming together now to help push any uh hardcore Democrat in there, but they're working together to actually undermine Israel and to undermine the Jewish community in America. And that's something that needs to be stopped, and that's something that I'm currently working on too as well.

Building Rallies After October 7

SPEAKER_00 6:33

That's amazing. I have to say something too. Uh recently I was at my synagogue for a class with our rabbi, and he mentioned something very profound. He said, when we uh Jews as a nation are not confident in our identity, when we do nothing to protect it, when we're not proud of it, when, like you said, we don't have the tradition, as much as religion as you want, but at least something, if you don't have that in your life, if you're not proud of it, then that's when we become the most vulnerable as a nation. And that's when we become prone to attacks from other nations. And I really feel like you said, after October 7th, a lot of people sort of woke up, a lot of Jews, and I'm one of them. Like I used to never wear my Star of David. I didn't want anything to do with Judaism, and I was actually afraid of telling anybody that I was Jewish. Now I feel like I'm confident in who I am, and I want to, like you also mentioned, educate others about what Judaism is. Because you're right, there's so much negativity, there's so much stigma around our religion and our traditions. And I think any effort that we do is going to benefit tremendously. Um, I also would like you to touch on you mentioned to me some rallies that um you were part of to combat anti-Semitism.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah. So when October 7th happened, I was in Maryland and I have a good friend named Fred Profiter. He were he was the president of the Frederick County Conservative Club, You Just Stepped Down, with my good friend Seth Eisenberg, who's actually on my network. He does the conservative corner every Sundays, um, and he does the Pulse also on my network. And he and Seth Eisenberg is Jewish, Fred is not. But Fred was like, we got to do something about this. We need to rally for Israel. And he took initiative. You know, with me and Seth, we all three of us, we took initiative and we put together one of the first rallies, uh, I would say nationwide, right, like literally right after October 7th. And we didn't hesitate. We literally put the rally together in three or four days. We had hundreds of people. It was on a Sunday, and it was in an open park in Frederick City. We had police present and it was very safe. We didn't have to worry about, you know, any um counter-protests or anything like that. And that kind of opened up the door for more counties and more states to have rallies in support of Israel. Um, I did a rally in support of Israel in Baltimore City months later. Um, then I put together a huge event in Rockville, uh, Maryland, which is extremely democratic Montgomery County. That's where a lot of CARES headquarters are. So there's a lot of illegal uh terrorists and illegal Muslims that live in Montgomery County. But I did a huge event at the JCRC of Greater Washington, which is actually where my parents met. So I actually dedicated the event to them. And I had about 50 speakers. It was a packed house. And I had speakers of students there. Um, I had elected officials, people that were running for office, um, at Jewish advocates, non-Jewish advocates. I mean, I had White House reporters there that were big um supporters of Israel. And it was a great, it was a great event. It was like a four and a half hour event. It was awesome. And that again brought a lot of awareness for me to open up the door to work with legislators in Maryland, actually. And I told them, I said, if we have to go to, if we have to go county by county to uh work with the school board, because school board in Maryland and in liberal states is extremely difficult. And school board in general is very difficult. That's why it's really important who your school board members are, because there's a lot of Democrats that are school board members that push the pro-Hamas agenda. They're very political, but politically biased driven. And these are your kids. So, you know, they're starting from the ground, they're starting from, you know, age six all the way up to, you know, 12, teaching the kids not the history, putting in their own political spin, um, which is something that I advocate against. I'm I'm a big proponent of rallying and get prop and getting proper candidates in there that actually will teach education, you know, aka or for example, the Holocaust as it as it was, to show Schindler's list at the schools, to have the kids, you know, go to a Holocaust museum or a JCC or a Holocaust memorial near them. I'm a big proponent of that. And I hear all this crap, well, we don't have the money and all that. That's that's BS because so many people put money into education over the years. It's the priority of the governor, what the governor wants to spend on, and also what the county executives and the county councilmen want to spend their money on and the superintendents as well. So, you know, it's it's it's very, very how do I say this? It's it's not difficult. It's not difficult to stand up for what you believe in. And not only did I do a rally for supporting Israel, but I did rallies to bring the hostages back. I did that in in Maryland as well. I wholeheartedly believe that one of my rallies, and it was also in Frederick City with Fred Properter in South Eisenberg, um, our voices were heard to um Ben Cardin and others. Ben Cardin was the former uh senator uh in Maryland who actually brought a lot of the hostages back and he had the hostages' families with him at a synagogue um event that I was present to. I really feel that the rallies, the the petitions that we did um really helped bring a lot of those hostages back and really made it made a difference and really made a buzz, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Wow. That's incredible. So now that you are in Cleveland, Ohio, uh you live here now. Do you have plans to do any of this work that you had done in other states?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Um yeah, I mean, I I don't, I I I'm very private about the work that I do. Um and you know, I I guess I could say it's in the work, so to speak. Um, I I'm very politically involved. I know a lot of the um uh political people that are running um in Ohio, um, as well as um incumbents. Max Miller is a good friend of mine. Uh he's uh uh an incumbent congressman. And um Vivek, of course, um, wholeheartedly will be the next governor of Ohio. And so um when we had the trade agreement in 1948 with former President Harry Truman and Israel, um, that was a direct agreement, an alliance to do so, to, to, for the United States and Israel to have an agreement where we work with their military, their central intelligence, and so forth. So every governor has a connection to Israel. So the question is, is Havek going to, you know, have that connection with Israel once he gets in? In Maryland, for example, we have something called the MIDC, which governor Larry Hogan worked with the MIDC on that. The new governor, Wes Moore, and he's up for re-election. He does not work with the MIDC. He works with, you know, the other side, he works with Kerry, he works with the terrorist organizations. So the question is, you know, is is Vivek gonna work with the organization that works with Israel, or is he gonna do his own thing, or you know, what's he gonna do? So that's something that, you know, I will have to talk to him about. I I'm very heavily involved still with State Senator Doug Mastriano. Um, he's huge in the state senate. Like I said, I'm gonna be going to a hearing of his next month where he's gonna be pushing for full Holocaust education in the entire state of Pennsylvania. Uh, John Fetterman, who's the senator there, he's a big proponent of Israel, and that that's on the federal level. So, you know, obviously we'll be talking to John Fetterman to push more on the federal level. So I work, I mean, it's funny. I used to always think the federal level was so important. You have to get, you know, congressmen and senators in there. We got to pass these bills. But what we're seeing is that politics is local and that if you have the wrong person in locally, like up Mondami, they just keep going up the chain. That's why it's so important that we have to get proper people in local positions so that they eventually become congressmen and senators and maybe vice president and president of the United States, because those guys are gonna really make the difference in the long run. And that's what we need to, you know, that's that's what people really need to understand is you really need to focus on your local level, your school boards, your county executives, your county councilmen, your mayors, et cetera. Because unfortunately, they really control the power of the purse um all over the country.

Balancing Activism With Spiritual Life

SPEAKER_00 14:45

That's a great point. Yeah, thank you for that. Can we talk a little bit about spirituality work balance? I mean, you have so many projects, you are so involved. How do you balance that?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Well, I keep a schedule, of course. You have to. Um, I'm the type of woman that likes to do everything, that likes to be involved in everything, but I also like to put myself in different hats with things that I love. And I always believe, and actually, President Trump says this you got to do what you love and love what you do. And I love helping people. Um, I was a professional opera singer for many years. That's also something I'm getting back into. I will be getting back into the arena of music. And it's just bringing, you know, awareness, but also I love education. I love putting a smile on someone's face and I love a young person to say, you know what, Alexander, you inspire me to do this, or you inspire me to be a little bit more religious. Um, I can tell you that I have friends and family that were not that religious. And I brought them to Chabad and now they practice a little bit more. Now their kids are enrolled in Chabad. Now they're starting to keep kosher. Now they're starting to celebrate the holidays and go to synagogue more than twice a year. That was, you know, that was by design. I would never, I mean, Judaism is not about pushing someone to be more religious, but the fact that I invited people into that element, they felt welcome. Um, I actually invited non-Jews to synagogues. And I do that on purpose because, again, I want to get rid of the stereotypes that, you know, the Jews think we're better than everybody else and all these crazy stereotypes that these alt-right people are pushing. We don't proselytize, you know, we don't say Hashem is king. I mean, we say Avenom Mokenu, our father, our king, but that's different than saying Christ is king. It's a whole different mindset. And again, when when I invite non-Jews to a synagogue, they like the fact that I'm including them. They've invited me to churches, I've attended churches, I've sung at churches. Because honestly, especially now, Jews and Christians really need to come together to save Western civilization. That's the thing. If we Jews push the Christian community away, that's where the massive anti-Semitism comes from. And again, if Christians push Jews away, that's not good either. I really feel that you know, we are a Christian nation, but we live on Judeo-Christian values. We have to keep those values, we have to have those values, we have to remember those values. So I'm a big proponent and I work with the Jexit organization, um, which combats anti-Semitism. My Jexit spokesperson, Siggy Flicker, was just at the ZOA um convention in Florida, which my I was invited to, but I couldn't attend. Um, but that was that, I mean, that is her biggest um uh goal is to have Christians and Jews really come together because if we don't come together with the other religions, I mean, Islamic jihad, I mean Islamic jihadists will just continue to invade. And that's why Israel is one of the only countries besides America where we have, you know, Muslims and Christians and Jews, they all we all celebrate the holidays together. There's two million Arab Israelis that get along with Jews. I'm friends with Arab Israelis from Israel. I was in a cab with an Arab Israeli. I did not, there was no fear in my mind. I didn't think that they were gonna blow me up, you know. But that because it's that come togetherness in the common sense as well. So if we don't include our Christian brothers and sisters as Jews, we will fall. And we will fall to um Islamic uh jihad, we really will.

Prayer, COVID, And A Grandfather

SPEAKER_00 18:14

That's wonderful to hear that. And I think also uh Judaism is a lot about, at least from what I've learned from Chabad, is teaching and uh leading by example. I I want to be that kind, uh that intelligent person, the one that will help anybody. I don't, you know, it doesn't matter to me what religion, what race they are. I I will donate to different causes, I will support all kinds of different people from all walks of life. But I want to be that uh that person that people see and think, wow, okay, she's really nice to everyone, you know, she's educated, she is a great mother, uh, a great wife. I I want to uh I want people to know that uh modesty is good. I want people around me to know that you know being a woman also is good. Uh, you know, like uh ever since I started practicing Judaism more, uh I really um became more in touch with my female side. Like I wear more dresses, I I don't feel like I need to do men's work, you know. Please, men, hold the door for me. Please carry the heavy bags for me. Like I'm not into that feminist sort of um vibe anymore. So just like all that, I want to also be that example for a lot of people. And and hopefully people around me will by osmosis maybe absorb a little bit of what it means to be Jewish. No, it's true, it's very true. Yeah. Can we also talk about the power of prayer? Because that's something that you touched upon in your speech that I heard at the women's program.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Um, well, there was a couple examples there. So the power of prayer to me is a moment where you need God for something that's so important, whether it's the, you know, if someone's dying, whether if you're looking for a change in your life. So for me, the biggest power of prayer was with my grandfather. I was very close to my grandfather. This was my mother's father. And he was in a rehab center in Sarasota, Florida, recovering from partial hip replacement surgery. And my grandfather's very strong. My grandfather was a World War II veteran. He lived in and worked in the Philippines in the air corps for five years. So if anything were to kill him, it would be being World War II, but he survived that. So my grandfather was at this rehab center and he obtained COVID. He was the only one that obtained COVID in his in the ward, we call it, or in his recovery, which my mother and I thought was very strange. Why he's the only one that has COVID and no one else. So we thought it was like a false positive test. But the nurses kept testing him and saying, no, he's positive, he's positive. So my grandfather's 98 and a half years old. So what do you do with a 98 and a half year old? Do you just let him like live with the COVID? No, you treat someone, especially when they're older. What we were finding is that the place that he was at, it was a private center, it was actually run by Jews, which is even more so. These were liberal Jews, actually, that it was run by. Um, they did nothing to help him with his COVID. They gave him absolutely nothing. They gave him like robotussin and mucinax when he really needed like an antibiotic and ivermectin, hydroxychoroquine, and stronger stuff. And of course, because the COVID wasn't cured right away, he obtained pneumonia, which my grandfather's never had pneumonia in his life. And again, you have a 90 and a half year old man who has pneumonia, you treat it immediately, or he will die. So I thought it was asinine that these doctors did nothing to help him. So I went above and beyond. And I have a very good relationship with my governor Ron DeSantis. And um I worked with him on his campaign when he ran for governor, but I contacted. And I said, look, my grandfather's 95 years old. He's a World War II veteran. My governor's a veterans. My governor understands. And I'm like, they're not saving him at the doctor's office. They they really're just not saving him. What do we do? So the governor at the time was pushing something called Regeneron, which is the monoclonal antibody treatment. And they're actually finding out now that it really did help people with COVID. When I got COVID, I had it as well. And it really saved my life. And my grandfather only had a certain window of time to get it before they said he's no longer eligible. If I hadn't prayed that the governor would call me back, if I hadn't prayed to God and say, please, God, give my grandfather this treatment, I don't think he would have survived it. And because we were able to get the treatment, because the governor's team came in and administered it, not only to my grandfather, but to five other people that were COVID positive. I saved my grandfather from dying from this ridiculous virus. I have issues with the virus. And the issue was that the private facility that my grandfather was staying at, they mandated my grandfather and everybody there to take two shots of the COVID vaccine, which whether it was Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca or whatever. I wholeheartedly believe that the vaccine did have a did kill my grandfather. There was a reason there. Because like I said, my grandfather was perfectly healthy, takes the vaccine and gets COVID out of nowhere. I wholeheartedly believe that the hospitals, especially in Sarasota County and beyond, did everything they could to kill COVID-19 positive patients because it was more money for them. And my grandfather eventually died later of the pneumonia that was never cured. But I'm very happy that I was able to save my grandfather from COVID and give him extra months of life to live. But he didn't have to go through that at all. And you know, it's still painful. I mean, my grandfather's been dead for almost five or four years, but it feels like yesterday. But the the point of that is, sorry, I rambled, but the point of that is the power of prayer for me. I never prayed so hard for a person in my life. I never prayed so hard for, you know, just just to want him, you know, just you know, just to want him to live, you know, long enough to see me get married, long enough to see me to have kids. And um it I had I actually had the whole nation behind me on this. Um, I put it all on Facebook, but I was also on national TV. My mother was too. We were on Grant Stenchfield's show on Newsmax, I was on Fox News, I was on OANN. It became a national um syndicated um story. And the governor and the and the lieutenant governor actually brought my myself and my parents down to a press conference to discuss the the wonders of the monoclonal NMI tree and how it did save my grandfather from COVID. So it it it became national success. But nobody should have had to go through my grandfather went through. Nobody should ever have to go through that again. But again, the power, if it wasn't for the power of prayer, I don't think my grandfather would would have survived um the COVID.

Choosing Synagogues Without Woke Politics

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yes, and you know, um you I think you bring up another important point, uh, which religion provides is is community. Honestly, uh before uh returning to Chabad, before starting to practice Judaism um through Chabad, I uh I didn't have a community. I used to practice a lot of yoga. Um I really was into Eastern philosophies, and so I would sit on my uh yoga mat at home and uh pray, quote unquote, to something in the sky. Um, you know, I learned about finding answers in me from the universe, this and that. But I just always felt so alone. And then when I started going to the synagogue, um, I looked around and I thought, okay, we're all on the same page, we're all praying together. And this prayer in unison and with your brothers and sisters, it it blew my mind. I mean, I felt I felt so supportive. And I felt like our prayers could move mountains. And I I feel like that every time I attend a service. And I think that a lot of people, I feel like until you try it, you don't know because it's very true. You know, it's very true.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

And I can tell you, so I wasn't brought up Chabad, um, I wasn't always Chabad. Um, I was brought up conservative. Um, in Sarasota, there wasn't any Chabad shuls or any Orthodox shows. There was a big conservative shoulder and a reform shoul. But I to me, it's about the rabbi. And I see that even now, I have a lot of friends, they only go to synagogue or chabad because of the rabbi. If the rabbi is like very political and very politically biased, and you know, against our president and against Netanyahu, it's a problem. And I remember like when I was in DC, and this was Yom Kippur service, and this was at an Orthodox show, a monothodox show. And at the very end, this was Yom Kippur. You know, the rabbi is giving us the priestly benediction, and he says, um, may we pray that President Trump doesn't become the president and may we pray that Netanyahu doesn't get re-elected. And this was Yom Kippur. We just repented for our sins. This guy, you know, this guy committed the sins again. And I was just flabbergasted and disgusted. I, you know, I left the synagogue. I wrote them right away, and I was like, this is disgusting. Of course, I didn't write me back. But that for me was like a sign. I'm like, I can't believe they're throwing political bias and wokeism into the synagogue. The synagogue that my great-grandfather built is Of Shalom Talmudora. It's called the National Synagogue in DC. It was an ultra-orthodox synagogue. My great-grandfather's Tallaestan is still there to this day. We actually found pictures of my great-grandfather and my great uncles there. My, I think one of my dad's uh relatives was like the first bore mitzvah. My dad was bar mitzvah there, very ultra-orthodox synagogue. Fast forward today, it is called a modern orthodox synagogue, but they have a trans rabbi, which is a woman becoming a man. And I'm like, this used to be an ultra-orthodox synagogue, and they're throwing in a trans rabbi, which is so against Judaism, that's called desecration of your body. It's worse than a tattoo because you're cutting off your genitalia or whatever, adding a genitalia that you were not born with. It is completely against Judaism. So to have a trans rabbi at an Orthodox synagogue or a synagogue that used to be ultra-orthodox is asinine to me. And a lot of people have left those types of synagogues because of the wokeism, because of the transgenderism, and so forth. So now I do go to Chabad because I love the rabbis there. I love their messages and they're not political. What are their sermons about? The Tor portion, the portion of the week, which is how it should be. Uh sometimes they, you know, they do talk about Iran and they do talk about people that are very anti-Semitic. That's not political bias. That is, I mean, that's part, I mean, that should be bipartisan across the board. If you're a rabbi and you're not talking about combating anti-Semitism, if you're not talking about the anti-Semites that are online, then you have a problem. So that, you know, that's not political. That is, these are facts. And the rabbis are quoting directly what Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, and Nick Fuentes are saying. It's not their opinion, it's not their political spin, these are facts. So, you know, when when you go to a synagogue and you really want connection, you know, and and you have certain values, make sure that you really do the research and make sure you go to the and the reason that people you know love chabad or they're more involved with certain synagogues is because they feel that their values um or they feel sorry that the synagogue's values reflect their values. Yes. And yeah, and that's why people become more observants, because they feel the more observant they are, the more it pushes away a lot of this wokeism and radical left uh wing agenda that a lot of these conservative synagogues and reformed synagogues too, and I'll make another point. So when you go to a reformed synagogue or a conservative synagogue, they have something called a board. The border volunteers, majority of them are leftists and they control the fate of the rabbi. When you go to a chabad, the chabad is owned by the um the head, the head rabbi, the the person the person that's involved. Like, for example, like down in Sarasota, we have Chabad of Sarasota, which is owned by Rabbi Steinmetz and his children. There's no board to knock him off. He owns it, you know, he owns it. There's no board to knock him off. So that makes a big difference too. I know in Sarasota there's a conservative, the board just got rid of a very pro-Trump conservative rabbi. And the synagogue has not been able to recover because they keep getting rid of good rabbis. So that synagogue is going to suffer. I did just find out in Sarasota that they are going to be opening up a new modern Orthodox synagogue, which is actually going to be right by the Chabad. So the Chabad and the Orthodox synagogue, they may have a little bit of competition. But I feel that those that the Chabad and the Orthodox synagogue in Sarasota, Florida will thrive because people are tired of the wokeism from the Reformed synagogue in Sarasota and the conservative shul getting rid of, you know, some uh a pro-Trump conservative guy that actually doesn't even talk about Trump in his sermons. So it's it's interesting. It's it's very, very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Very interesting. Wow. That's um that's crazy what's going on today. But again, I am happy that I have discovered the world of Chabad. And you know, they're so accepting. Like you and I were not orthodox like them, but right? And we don't have to be.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

That's the point. You do not have to be. Just because the Rebiton wears a wig, you don't have to. Just because the Rabbitin, you know, dresses from the neck all the way down and covers the shelf, that doesn't mean you have to. You do not have to do that. The fact that you show up, they are happy about that. And I want people to understand that even when we become a Baal to Shiva, you do not have to, you know, wear a shadow and all that stuff. And if people judge you for it, that's actually against Judaism to do that. You should not be judged for not looking like them. The the the person who becomes a Baalta Shuva, um, they that is not their mission should never be to be as religious as an as an or as a Chabad rabbi. It's just not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. But the fact that you show up is so important, and and that's where the the community comes in. That's where the welcoming comes in. It's very, very important that people need to understand that. You know, just because I'm not wearing a wig and just because I'm not dressed from here down does not mean that I'm not observant, does not mean that I don't know the traditions.

Practical Steps To Combat Antisemitism

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Absolutely, so true. That's great. I think lastly, I just want to ask for somebody like me. I I don't know a lot of politics. I'm going to be honest. I have not always been involved in politics. But if I want to think it's depressing, it'd be very depressing. I'm sure. But you know, now that I'm older, now that I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I'm finding myself more a little bit more involved every time. Like now when I'm in the car, I listen to the news. I'm interested in some podcasts about the news. So, like slowly but surely, I am getting into it. If I want to somehow get involved to help combat anti-Semitism, to, you know, educate others. Like, can you give me some examples of what somebody like me can do?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Uh, I mean, you could put a rally together like what I did. Um, yeah, you know, I mean, it's true. You know, take be the leader. I always say be a leader, not a follower. Um, take the initiative yourself. Um, sometimes you can sit around and talk and talk and talk about it, it never happens. And that's why I loved working with Fred and even work with a non-Jew. You know, sometimes you'll get, I hate to say it, we'll get more um uh how do I say it? Uh forcefulness to do something with a non-Jew than sometimes a Jew. Because we as Jews, we're very calculated people. We have to write everything down, we got to plan everything down. Then somebody says, Well, I don't know if this is gonna work, and I don't know about that. It's just it's it's just it's how we are, it's just our makeup. Yeah. So sometimes when you when you work with a non-Jew, you get a lot more work done and you're unemotional. And that's the whole thing is you can't be emotional when it comes to this stuff. We as Jews, we are very emotional people, especially Israelis. I see that a lot. Um, and it's just it's I I don't even like to call it emotion, it's passion. We're very passionate about our religion, we're very passionate about what we do. The issue is when we are too emotional, we let our emotions take over and it screws up our logic. And you have to think more logically than emotionally. So if you if you know, people get very you know, people were very upset about October 7th, it was emotional. We lost, you know, 1200 people plus. But I had to strip back that emotion to give myself the strength to think more logically, to put events together, to get up off my butt and say, okay, I can sit here and cry, or I can get up off my butt and do something about this. And that's what I did. Um, I also encourage you to get involved with Jewish organizations. Um, my issue with the Jewish community, because we're so divided with the politics, because most Jews are very secular and very democrat, it doesn't work well when you have like a JCC and a federation, they're doing their own event and a more like hardcore conservative group like ZOA or so forth does their own event. It doesn't look good. It divides us. What I've asked the JCCs and the USYs and the Benay Brits to work with ZOA, to work with more conservative Jewish organizations, because we can get a lot more done. People say, oh my God, these pro-Hamas people, like they can put a rally together in two days and get 300,000 people. Well, yeah, because they're working with care, the Muslim Brotherhood, uh, was it uh Jews for Jesus or not Jews for Jesus, Jesus, Jews, uh Jewish voices for um peace or whatever the hell or there's so many weird organizations care. I mean, yeah, because they work with the same groups, there's like no divide. So if the Jewish organizations, in my opinion, if we all got together as one, whether you're reformed, conservative, or orthodox, it would it would make a much bigger rally and make a much bigger difference. It shouldn't be one person trying to take credit over the other. We should all work together as one team. Um, but yeah, I mean, and and also going to different events. If I encourage you to go to a ZOA event, you know, go to a friends of the IDF event, you know, go to like we're having like uh the women are having like a Rosh Hashanah event, you know, March 18th, it's coming up on Wednesday night. You know, go to that type of events. Um, events where, you know, you're surrounded by Jewish people, but also events that uh and and also when you go to events, you network. So you get to talk to different people that do different things. Um, so I do encourage you to go to Jewish events so you can get to know the people that are at the Jewish events. You may find out that, you know, one person is very well connected with with another and that one person's willing to step it up and put an event together. But you can't do it alone. You know, you do need help, but it takes that one person to make a difference. So I would not wait for anybody. If I were you, I would take the initiative, put a business plan together. That's what I've done over the years. And and if you know, if you get people that follow, that's great. If it's just you and your husband, whatever, you know, sometimes it starts that way. It's not where you start, it's where you finish. So sometimes you, like I said, I'm a big proponent of being a leader, not a follower. So if I were you, I would take the initiative yourself. If that's something that you're passionate about and something you really want to do.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Awesome. That's great. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, your passion. You're truly an inspiration. So thank you, Alexandra.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Thank you. I really appreciate it.