Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Okay, good. Hello, everyone. We are here with Joe Teplo, coming from Manhattan, coming from his apartment in Manhattan, but on the way to Miami, which we're going to hear about in a. In a couple of minutes in terms of what he's been doing for the last year, basically, and how he's experienced it, and hopefully connect that back to S.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Our opening up podcast is a way that we try to connect with our community and to open up things that we do at sar. And in this case, really we have a wonderful series of just meeting remarkable people who were all connected to sar, but remarkable people who have been doing a lot over the last 14 months to make a difference in connection with Medinat Israel and things that happened after October 7th. So, Joe, thank you for taking the time to be with us. I know that we've been talking about this for. For. For a while and trying to make it happen. So thank you for making the time. And why don't we just start by going backwards a little bit. Remind us all, when were you at sar? What brought you to sar? I think you crossed a bridge to get to S.
You can talk to us about that.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Good to see you, Rabbi. Thank you for making the time. Yeah, I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. I think I switched into SAR in third grade and I grew up over the GW Bridge every morning, I guess back and forth and then went to SA High School and I believe I was graduating class. I was like the third graduating class of the high school. So 2009, you're always been a pioneer.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: So you took it.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Not the first, the third. But yeah, it was really special.
And, and yeah, now I live in downtown Manhattan.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Okay, why do you want. Sir, we don't have to talk about the other side of the. Of the Hudson. But what attracted you to sar?
[00:01:46] Speaker B: To be honest, in total transparency, in third grade I was not in charge of my educational decisions, but I think my parents. I'm a kid of two artists at the in their hearts and saw a lot in S and the philosophy that was really, I guess, a home for creative souls. I remember in high school a few friends and I got together and we wanted to organize a roller hockey tournament.
And when we first it was, it was to raise money for Israel. It was called Skate for Stay Road. And that the unfortunately obviously still really relevant.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: And we wanted to do roller hockey, which obviously when the school wasn't being played because we played floor hockey. And we asked some people in administration at the time in my memory was that they said it was Too dangerous. And we needed some sort of. It was just too dangerous. And we could do floor hockey, but roll hockey wasn't.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: I have a feeling you didn't take no for an answer.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: We then one of my friend's dads was the lawyer for the high school at the time.
And we had a waiver drafted up and we presented it to Rabbi Heartstock at the time. And I could be making this up, but I'm pretty sure that's what we did. And he brought in the school's lawyer. We got the school's lawyer on and we got it cleared. And we had every attendee sign the release form and we did skate for Sirot. And it was transformative for me both because it was like at the time the biggest thing. I had organized and I um, my friends had organized and we had 30 teams from across the tri state area from different schools come in. It was like three on threes.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: I remember. Amazing. Wow.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: And we had T shirts and every. Everyone got their own jerseys and raised. I don't know, I don't remember. I think 10, $20,000. And it ran for multiple years.
But it really was for us just like a celebration of something we did with our own hands and trust that we were given by s to really like, just like the building is yours and assuming everyone is safe, use it for good things. It was really special. And I remember we as a thank you for having. And maybe he still has it in his office today. We like framed the jersey from Skate for Stereo and gave it to him in the same office that we were first turned away from this initiative. We now had a test that's actually a wonderful partnership.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: It's a wonderful story and it's great. And actually my next question was some kind of connection with the United Yisrael that came through here. So obviously doing something for State Road. I don't even know how many years.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: We going back roughly 2008, 7008, something like that.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Okay, that's pretty remarkable. Now let's try to move forward a little bit. So you graduate from Sar High School around 2010. That's. Am I getting right? Yeah. 2009, 2010. Where do you end up after that?
[00:04:19] Speaker B: I went to yeshiva for a few months.
It was not the exact right time and place for me. But only have a car to that institution. And then I was like ditching afternoon seder and going to like some hesed programs in Jerusalem and I don't think they loved that.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: And.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And I was trying to still run the organization that was doing Scape for steroid on my laptop. You weren't have left. We weren't supposed to have laptops in Shiva. It was a whole.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: It was a good outlived that it was.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: There was. There was like a parent organization. Yeah. So CA for sero and there was a few other initiatives we ended up doing. At the time it was called Teens for the World and. And I was going to cafes in Jerusalem doing this and yeshiva found out and it was beautiful and anyways then I think I got swine flew at the time and I was isolated in a dorm room in yeshiva for a week.
They were bringing food to the door. This is pre. Pre Covid. And. And I just had enough. So I left. I started YU early with a lot of the Shanabed kids from that yeshiva and was pre med and doing my thing that also wasn't. I didn't finish there either. I think I was spoiled. I had been volunteering on the ambulance in Teaneck for a little while and I had experience patient care and rolling on my sleeves and being able to help people in a very intimate way with very little training and the prospect of pre med for seven years not being able to help anyone in the way that I was used to. I think I was a little impatient and.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: But you worked for EMT.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: I was EN T&T when I was actually in SAR. I remember.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: I did the course not at SAR, but I did with some friends from S. And. And. And I was volunteering at NTNAC and then. And then. Yes. So then at YU it was pre med. Ended up dropping out, had a failed attempt at starting a company. I moved to Palo Alto to this incubator. It was really special. A couple of months and then it's called like Y Combinator. It's like a little. It's an incubator. It's like a rapid MBA for startup founders. And you live there. It's on site. And I was like the youngest. I was 19 and like incredibly wildly intelligent and generous and humble people. It was like the delta between intelligence and humility. There was like crazy Learned a tremendous amount. That first little startup didn't work out, went back to yu. I was now a year behind everyone. Back where I should have been with.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: All the course of, let's say three years. You finish high school, spent a couple months in Israel, start college, move to Palo Alto.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: All the Jewish moms and students that were pre med on the like the very stable path, they were having their I told you so moments.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: I see. Okay.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Which was even worse for Me.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Sounds like it was a challenge for you.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: And. And then, thank God, what really happened is I made some friends in downtown and nyu. There was an amazing community in the Chabad house. And I started spending my Shabbats downtown and eventually moved downtown. Even though I was in yu, I was schlepping down. I remember I was on the shuttle downtown with all the girls that were going to Stern at night and they're like, where are you going? I was like, home. And then eventually had the good fortune. I started this charity in YU to build a habit of generosity. Essentially, the Rebbe, like the Lubavitch Rebbe and others in Maimonides, teach that as with anything in life, cultivating a habit of doing that thing in small ways regularly, like generosity is more important than grand gestures of generosity. Right? So giving small amounts on a regular basis is more important than giving a large amount once. And you really build a muscle and you transform your character in that way.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: And you said the name of the organization was saying.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: So the name of that organization was Good Today, but it was called Good street at the time. But basically it's. It still exists. It's goodtoday.org, but I was a bunch of friends and we were students at YU and we said, we want to build a habit of generosity. We want to. Now we all know the power of habits. It's become like pop psychology.
And it was. Students would subscribe for 25 cents a day. Every morning they would get an email. It would tell them about a problem in the world. They would have to choose, where do they want to give their 25 cents? It wasn't automatic. You had to choose. It would be like, hey, we're going to support breast cancer. This is one charity that's looking for a cure. That's one that. This is one that's supporting families.
Choose where your 25 cents goes. And you had to choose. So it's something active in the morning. And a couple thousand students signed up. And then someone basically introduced me to someone who was experimenting with email. And everyone loved that you didn't have to like download an app, put in your credit card, have a password. You just clicked. It was a one click interaction. And we're a very impatient society and especially young people. And it dawned on me and my friend that maybe we could do this for brands and let them have their customers take action very quickly. Inside of emails. And so eventually we built this technology that you could embed forms and quizzes and surveys and product reviews inside of emails for e Commerce brands.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: What I'm understanding, if I'm understanding correctly, a couple of things. First of all, you've clearly been an entrepreneur from a very young age, which makes a lot of sense. And that's your impatience and you're interested in getting things done and not going the traditional route. And I'm not. I don't even know if Skate for Stereo was the first thing, but certainly that was a high school thing. But what's interesting to me what you just said now is it seems like you're the philanthropy came before the, before the business. Is that the way it happened?
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah. The genesis of the, of the company was definitely charity. And I think importantly because for me on the pre med track I had this like clarity as to what I was going to be doing that was meaningful, then use my skills and veering off to that to build a for profit company I think would be too aggressive of a transition for me. And so the fact that the for profit, the company we ended up starting to build, that email software was called Rebel Mail, was the genesis of, that was a nonprofit, I think provided me with this like stepping stone of like meaning. And I kept the nonprofit running the whole time. And I always said at the time if I didn't have that while I was building my company and I'm still involved today, then it wouldn't have. I wouldn't have been able to do it just like from a meaning standpoint. So we built this, this company, Rebel Mill. I ended up raising some money once we raised the round, dropped out of YU again. This time for good.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: How many people get to say they dropped out of YU twice? There you go.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: I don't know. The first time I was dropping out, it was a semester off.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Taking a break. Got it.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: And. And yeah. And then thank God we built the company over a couple of years, maybe three and a half years, and we sold the company to.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: What are you up to? Are we at 2018 or am I missed?
[00:10:21] Speaker B: I dropped out of yu probably 2014. 15. Built the company for three and a half years, sold it in 2018.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: And. And then towards 2019. And then yeah, thank God that we sold it to big public company, tremendous company with tremendous people and an amazing founder who is a remarkable human. And so it's a company called Salesforce.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: You still involved with it or sold it?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so I actually work for the company with our leadership team and help guide our artificial intelligence strategy.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Okay, so you're still there but you sold it?
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, yeah. Nothing to do with my email software. That I sold the company, but now I've moved to cover much broader portfolio of products.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: I got it. Now let's move to 2023. So you're successful, you're living here in New York, working for this company that you sold, obviously, at a young age. And then could you tell me where you were on October 7th?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I was in Jerusalem. I'm in Israel pretty often, both for work and also my grandmother lives in the old City, Jerusalem, and thank God, we're very close. So I'm there usually five, six times a year. So I was there on one of my trips where I usually bounce to Tel Aviv, do some investing or work with some of the companies that I'm. I'm close with, and then see my bubby and. And I was there for the hag and spent that morning in the bottom shelter, obviously. And then when we finally got a sense of what had actually transpired, I usually do shifts on the ambulance when I'm there just to expose myself to the system there and. And learn. And I'm. I'm very close with Hatzala there. I'm. I'm a volunteer medic with Hatzala in. In Manhattan, in Miami. But I. Whenever I'm there, I just love the team there. And I've grown close with a few of the volunteers there. And so I do a shift on the ambulance in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv for a couple of hours, and I asked if I could. If I could suit up. And I was on the ambulance in Jerusalem. And then mainly, really what happened is I. There was a lot of gaps. So many of the ambulances were down south. We also had to cover the calls that were just happening in the country, as per usual, and there was a lot of supplies needed. And so I was essentially in the back of the ambulance facetiming folks in the States that I thought could help move the needle for what we were doing. It was tremendous to see dear friends step up. If you're in America, I can't imagine how helpless I would feel. And so people were looking for opportunities to begin.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: You're in the ambulance because you're volunteering, and you're also.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, like, in between calls or.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Also just. What ended up happening is only ambulances allowed to be led on that route, and army vehicles and police, obviously. And so what we ended up doing because the ambulances are so large is we would stock them with supplies like water and food and things that soldiers needed and the families needed in the areas that were closed off because there was some sort of like security perimeter. And everyday citizens were dropping off things at Hatzalah headquarters in Jerusalem. Like, not just things like pallets and pallets of things, like. But not by trucks, like, in their vans. They were, like, bringing food and bamba and water and cleaning supplies and toiletries. And we were stocking the ambulances as they came from the south, dropped off patients in the hospitals. They would come to the headquarters, we'd stock them up with stuff, and then they would drive back, unload the stuff, take more patience.
And so it was like a dual purpose. And so I was doing a lot of that. And in between things, I was FaceTiming folks, especially late at night. And tremendously lucky. Many friends stepped up, started matching each other, raised a number of millions of dollars that at that moment.
And then perhaps the more transformative thing was a few of those friends that I had spoken to said that they wanted to come to Israel after things settled. And I was blessed to do a few trips to Israel, a number of trips.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: And obviously you came back at some point. You stopped with a shift, you came back and then you brought people.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah, a few days later that.
A few days later I returned. Hatzalah was pretty overwhelmed with the needs at the time. And so they. My friend and Hatzala asked me to lead their, like, international shipments because everyone was, like, in America was trying to send them things, so we needed triaging. And also something makes sense to send on a plane. Some things don't make sense, and things that didn't make sense were taking the space of things that did make sense. And I had a teen mom sending tuna fish cans and towels on the same LL plan that I'm trying to get tourniquets on. And I love tic moms. My mom is one. But. But it was a lot to. To everyone wanted their stuff on the planes. And it's funny, like, I've been on my phone a lot on Shabbat for when I'm taking an immediate medical emergency, but this was the first time that I was on my laptop, like, actually, like, transacting.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: There was a business of saving lives and taking.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Wait, it was. I didn't. I didn't know that until I got a call. I thought I was going to take a break. And then I got a call from Israel. I know that a Chavez for you, but I'm so sorry. We need xyz. And it was my first time, like, on my. I'll never forget just like straight doing work on Chavez for the whole time. And thank God, hope they don't hear this, but Elal was amazing at the time with their pricing and we were able to get three full planes of supplies at the time. Anyways, I so once that slowed down, I said, okay, let's start going back and supporting in other ways. And a few friends and I had the privilege of going together, spending a few days on the ground and I'm not a tour guide by any means, but set up a meeting with Tor of the kibbutzim. This is early, right? Like December, November even tour of the kibbutzim, the hospitals, the hostage families. And we did the rounds and everything was quite intense and did this a few times. And then one of my trips was. Was with my. My close friend's friend. His name is Scooter Braun and he's a big music manager and he wanted to go to Israel. So I said, okay, here's my itinerary. You could enjoy first time to Israel for him. He had been to Israel before he managed Justin Bieber and he had done a concert in Israel and I think he grew up also had been a few times, but certainly his first time after what, what transpired on the 7th. And I said, here's the itinerary. He called me up, no, I hear you have to come with me. We're going to do this. Said, okay, got my friend. We went together and we did a week and we did all of those things like the kibbutzim, the injured soldiers in the hospitals. We did, we did met with a number of hostage families and people who had lost loved ones on that day.
Scooter was remarkable. I was so taken by his patients. I was his glorified assistant at the time. And I was downstairs meeting with Rachel Goldberg and greeting her and saying, okay, Scooter's upstairs, but he's busy with someone who lost their daughter. And he didn't look at his phone because he's so present in these conversations. So I had to pull him away from someone that lost their daughter to meet with someone that had kidnapped son and then pull him away from a kidnapped son to. It was hours on end. So we had this trip and one of the things that we almost didn't go to because we didn't understand why we needed to see this when we had actually seen the sites themselves. Was this what they called like a lost and found or like memorial for the Nova massacre in Tel Aviv.
It was like an expo. Some artifacts, some music, and really just a lost and found where families could go and pick up things from their kids and, and just remember but it was very somber. We went around this and with one, with a few survivors that we had met a few days prior at a healing camp for the kids.
And Scooter was just incredibly taken. I was as well. But for him, I think, coming from the music world, and he opened his mouth, what would it take to bring this to America?
And funnily, I think that the founders of the exhibit of like the Expo in Tel Aviv had heard this from a few people. But Scooter really pushed and I jotted it down as his assistant. And we had done a lot of one off projects together, but that stuck out to me like it was the top of my list. And so when we got home, I said, scooter, here's my takeaways from the trip.
This one I think you'd be uniquely capable of pushing forward with your capabilities and your strengths and I think it would be really meaningful. Uniquely you. And I set up a few meetings to prepare the Nova founders for what that might look like because it was organized in a very Israeli fashion.
But we, and they were under so much stress and it was such an intense time and they were doing so much.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: And so the one in Tel Aviv was, was a.
I, I was not the one in Tel Aviv. I, I was at the one in New York.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: It was less about the attack that took place, much more somber and like much more of a memorial versus a testimony to what happened. These were family members that were coming, so they didn't want to see the unfolding of the attack and what happened, but it was more the aftermath, if that makes sense.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: And the idea, your idea, Scooter's idea, to bring that to New York, you started saying it just now. This is about what was the primary motivation or the thought. Was it about testimony for the world? Was it about the Jewish people?
Was it about community and letting the survivors see that, that, that people far away love them and care about them? Was it all of those things?
[00:18:20] Speaker B: I think it was probably some, some of all of that for Scooter in particular. And what I later learned was so powerful, I think there was an idea that he managed Ariana Grande and there was a massacre at one of her concerts, a suicide bomber that killed more than 20 kids. And there was an uproar from the music industry. There was immediately a relief concert with top talent playing. There was no question that like in the face of that sort of violence and extremism, like this would not be acceptable by this industry just strictly as music fans. And there was unfortunately not. This was the Largest massacre in music history. And there was not the same response. And so Scooter felt, what if we told the story strictly from the lens of music?
This is not about Israel. This is not a political statement. There's no Israeli flags in the exhibit. You know, if you notice, it's not about Israel, really. It's about a music festival and a massacre that took place there and killed more than 100 people that I thought was very unique.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: You're talking about things moving very quickly. It's been the theme of our whole conversation. But was it June that you talk? December that you were there, November, December that you're there, and by June, it was already open to the public. Here is that. Do I have it right?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: It was open in April. We were there December. It was open in April. Yeah.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Okay. Three months of preparation to.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember we set a date for the opening, and as you can imagine, the observance backgrounds of a lot of the folks at the NOVA were very different than mine. And I realized at some point when we were marching towards this that the opening was going to be right before the Seder. And I said, what is everyone's plans? Like, we're flying in 10 survivors, the whole NOVA founding team, Remarkable people and their families in some cases. And so I said, what's going on? And they said, oh, you need a Seder. So I said, okay, we're hosting Seid there. We did one for them. It was so special. And this has colored my year in many ways. Right. Kukota built a suka in LA around the exhibit in la, and we hosted everyone. And it's been a side part of this experience that I think has been so meaningful to me. Many of their first times in Asuka. It's funny, just. I don't think Scooter knew what he signed up for. When he asked me to be his. His companion on the trip, we only ate kosher. It was to fill in on the bus.
But yeah. So anyway, so that's what we. We.
We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. I think we thought it was going to cost a million dollars in the beginning. Ended up costing many times that. But we opened up in New York, and thank God 120,000 people came through the doors on Wall street through the exhibit.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: One of the things I think a week before, two weeks before it came out, people hadn't heard about it. It was slowly trickling out. I got. Actually when we brought our congressman, Richard Torres came to the exhibit. His chief of staff called me, like, let's bring some group, a group to the exhibit. And I didn't, I had to pretend I knew what he was talking about. But within a couple of weeks it was something that everybody in New York knew that they needed to, to go to. So it was pretty remarkable how fast that that evolved.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Really special. And I agree and really credit to the team that we assembled. It was world class in every way. I had never built something at this scale, that of something physical. You walk into everyone end to end, our landlords, our security, our. It was really special. And we did it in New York, I think surpassed all of our expectations. And then New York for about three months. They're like two months. I don't know if you remember, there was like a pretty wild protest at the end that was quite shocking in the brazenness of, of the sort of messaging. There were signs that said kill the hostages. And it was wild to say the least. And then we decided in response to that the only appropriate response would be I was at a Shiva and I got a FaceTime from Scooter and he said, Joe, we're going to extend the exhibit. Like I saw the protest, it's horrible. He was in la, said Scooter costs like a fortune every week. We don't even tell the landlord. You can't just extend. Let's give me five minutes. And we sent a message, me, Scooter, to this group of friends and supporters that helped us open this and said, listen everyone, look at the videos of this. I sent a video of the protests. I said look what's happening outside of this. Clearly this is doing to some degree if we're having opposition of this force, every good force in the world has an opposing force. So this is a pretty strong opposing force. We're doing something right. We want to extend by a week. We're going to need X amount of money. Ten minutes later we had what we needed to extend and into the summer. And then you and the extension. The extension was tremendous in attendance and news. And the next day the, the mayor is there, the next day all the attorney general. Like we had many influential folks from every sphere come there, packed it up, talk it across across the country and we were open in LA for two and a half months as well. A really special 75,000 folks. Something a wild amount of people.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: The Jewish, non Jewish visitors. Do you know that breakdown?
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Yeah, people ask that I think. I don't know the exact, the exact numbers, but certainly a diverse group of people. I know personally a lot of influential non Jews that I brought through on Monday were closed to the public. But we would take some people that wanted to see it privately and obviously can't name them on a podcast, but just I was like very heartened by some of the people that spent hours there with like tears in their eyes to witness what happened. And, and yeah, I don't know the exact, exact, exact percentage breakdown. We don't ask your religious, you know that.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: I mean, it reached, obviously.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: But I can also tell you that for me, it's such an. It's like a very American Jewish response to want to know, like, how many hundreds are seeing this. And what's funny though is like the project was never about that for me. I think I realized pretty early on how worn down even the American Jewish community was by a lot of the messaging. If you're the average college student with a less of an education exposure to Israel, you read the New York Times, you read cnn. Like you're just reading what's happening and the way that things are being framed and it wears you down and you're. Wait, hold on. Like, maybe what happened wasn't what I thought. And so even just awakening our own people, I think was for me the main focus.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: I told you, I met Ron who came here, and I met Milette actually at Nova, and then at Nova, at this Nova site in Israel when I was there in April, and then a couple days later, she was here working there. If I understood correctly, this is also where the tribe of Nova, and it was also about bringing them something, a community to heal and to gather. Obviously there were very graphic testimonies to what happened, which I think was obviously part of what you were trying to do and to show. But could you talk about that part of it a bit? The healing part of it and what.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Yeah, certainly the. The part of the exhibit was the other side of the, like the end of the exhibit when you exited. We had this healing room, we called it, where it said we will dance again. And everyone walked through would have the opportunity to meet a group of survivors and grounding what you had just seen in videos to living, breathing that had experienced this, I think was like an equally potent part, if not more potent than what people saw in the exhibit. And young sweet kids, basically, that that had gone to this, this concert. And as part of that, we had a delegation, like two weeks at a time, and people would come and stay and then go back. And my house became like, I didn't realize, a boarding home. I had. I had two survivors that stayed here. One of them ended up staying for three months in my house and we didn't acknowledge that he had not left. And he actually ended up really thriving here and helped us on the exhibit and then applied to SH University and got his visa and he's now a student there. He lives uptown. But there's, and there's a few stories like that of people that the trajectory of their lives have been changed by. But what took place in this, in that space. But yeah, I think that was an underappreciated part of it for me. And just having this place internationally, right. You forget that for these people there, like some of them was their first time in America, not connected to the exhibit. But I had one of the hostages, Andre Kozlov, he stayed in my home for his first time in America only a month and a half after he was rescued after eight months. And he stayed with me for a week and, and I'll never forget, he walked into my home, he saw like the hostage little poster that I have and he like started crying and it was because he said he's. You don't understand. Like in Gaza, we didn't know that someone cared about us outside of the room, let alone outside of like the five miles, let alone outside of the country. And the fact that. So I think for these survivors was a similar feeling, right? Like walking into the. Seeing 120,000 folks in the States come through their doors of this exhibit in New York was like such a powerful thing for them.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Today we have kids from Kibbutz Raim here at sar, and I think that these are unfortunately really hard stories and they're just like spending the day, you know, playing sports and doing whatever they're doing. And unfortunately we're slowly learning the stories or parts of the stories. A girl who celebrated her Bat mitzvah but, you know, not but and lost her father that day. And I think that when they gather on our steps and they see these kids connecting with them, there's, there is something about knowing that people, people care and people are connected and people are sad with them, which I think you really created through this remarkable project.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Thank God. The team is tremendous and it's somewhat of a well oiled machine.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: You give a lot of credit to other people, but I know that, you know, you put your sweat and your nights and your days into this. And I saw every time I spoke to you how you really wanted to do this interview, but didn't even have time to breathe. What would you say to our kids, our 8th graders, our 12th graders, kids that are going out into the world in terms of I tell every kid at the Rabbit's Foot that what they do matters, clearly what you do matters is mattering to a lot of people. Anything that you want to share with them about what they can do and what they should do or how they should look at it.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: My economics teacher in high school, she brought my a group of kids to meet me in Salesforce and given the tour, the ping pong and the snacks and the this and one of the kids looked at me and said, joey, what would advice would you give us? I said, automation is coming, right? We have a lot of intelligence coming down the pipe and our parents generation was educated for competency, right? We always wanted to be the top of our class in whatever it was, whether it's math or science, et cetera. When intelligence becomes a commodity, which in some ways it is, and competency becomes a commodity, I think we're going to start valuing more like the uniquely human qualities within each other. And that already has shifted to some degree and therefore education has to adapt, right? And so I told the kids, I said listen, what uniquely human qualities do you possess, right? Generosity, empathy, spirituality. How do you cultivate those? Probably very differently than you cultivate some of the competency. And so I said spend less time on the homework and if for you that volunteering with your special needs friend on friendship circle or if it's playing the piano, if it's learning to sing, spend more time cultivating those because in the end of the day I believe that will serve you well and I think that's going to be more and more appreciated by all of us at large over time.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Beautifully said. And I'm happy that you came here in third grade. You came all the way through 12th grade.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: It's my only diploma, Sar.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Your only diploma. We're very proud of that. And you've clearly taken it very far with all those competitions season with your connection to people and you're caring about people and that's made a big difference. So I'm going to let you get to Miami so that you can keep on doing that. And just to say thank you on behalf of our community, to say thank you for what you've done because it's reached very far and wide and we should really be grateful for that. We are.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Thank you so much Toda.
