Name: Rabbi David Wolpe | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #520
Uploaded: 2024-07-31T19:35:57.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rabbi David Wolpe | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #520' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-07-31. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rabbi David Wolpe | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #520' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-07-31. Transcript available.

Rabbi David Wolpe | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #520

I got a few tour dates to tell you about Wallingford, Connecticut, Portland,
Maine, Bangor, Maine, Moncton, Canada, Las Vegas, Nevada.
We'll be back for the USC LSU football weekend, Oklahoma City, Northern Little
Rock, Springfield, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
La Crosse, Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Moline, Illinois.
You can get tickets for those at TheoVaughn.com slash T-O-U-R.
Thank you so much for your support.
Thanks for tuning in.
Today's episodes are regarding the conflict in Israel and Palestine.
I've heard a lot about this issue, and I wanted to deepen my own understanding.
I recognize that this is a sensitive topic, but the only way to learn is to
seek knowledge.
I decided to have guests from both sides of the aisle, if you will, to help me
learn by sharing their views.
I did it in separate episodes because I'm not a debate moderator.
I chose guests who I thought would share their views sincerely, and I think
they both did.
I'm very thankful to have the opportunity to learn, something that they don't
even have in some countries.
Today's guest has been called one of the most influential rabbis in America.
Until recently, he led the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and has also taught at
UCLA, Harvard Divinity School, and more.
He's written nine books, led numerous missions to Israel, and he's seen a lot
in his time.
I'm really grateful for his time today.
Today's guest is Rabbi David Wolpe.
Shined that light on me
I'll sit and tell you my stories
Shine on me
And I will find a song
I've been singing
Almost
Yeah, thank you so much for your time.
Sure, happy to do it.
Yeah, really appreciate it.
Rabbi David Wolpe.
Yeah, there's no way you would know by looking at it.
No.
No, not at all.
I get Wolpe all the time.
Yeah, Wolpe.
The Wolpe of Wall Street, was that ever?
It would be a different type of Wall Street probably.
Yeah, different kind.
You just got back from Israel.
Yesterday.
Wow, welcome back.
Thank you.
I've never gotten to go.
A lot of my friends have gotten to go on birthright and that.
I mean, it's really an amazing thing to do.
I recommend it.
Yeah, I always hear great things.
I would like to get to go.
What was it like over there?
What's the vibe?
It's resilient, but depressed.
I met with these students at the Technion,
which is like the science.
It's like MIT of Israel.
The Technion?
They all serve.
They miss a hundred days of school because they all...
Literally, when you're in Israel, it's an hour's drive and you're at war.
Wow.
And then you drive home for the weekend and then you go back.
It's crazy.
It's not like here where you have Canada, Mexico, and two oceans.
Right.
There, right next door, are the people who want to kill you.
Just always in the heat.
It feels so...
Does it feel like even...
Like how close were you to Gaza?
You could see it from where you are.
I mean, it's very easy.
It's not hard.
You can see the West Bank.
It's just a bit...
I mean, Israel's really tiny.
It's like smaller than New Jersey, so...
Oh, wow.
It's...
Yeah.
Is there a general sense of like, we are Israel going on?
Is there people that are on the fence about what's going on over there?
Like, what's kind of the...
The general sense is, of course, we have to defend ourselves.
The government is very unpopular there right now.
Like, really unpopular.
Like, the unpopularity of governments here doesn't compare to how unpopular
that government
is right now.
Yeah.
Netanyahu's government?
They feel like he's badly mishandled this.
So...
But the sense that there has to be some...
That Hamas has to be eliminated, to the extent that you can eliminate it, I
think almost
everybody in Israel agrees with that.
Wow.
So...
How did he become so unfavorable, do you feel like?
I think, honestly...
I mean, this is too easy, but he stayed too long.
It's like, at a certain point, you have to say, I've done what I could.
I'm getting complacent and not paying attention, and he's out of touch, and he
just...
I mean, Biden visited some of the families whose kids were taken hostages
before Netanyahu
did, which is insane.
Yeah.
So...
Not great.
Yeah, he gives me the GB sometimes, you know?
I don't know why exactly.
They need someone new.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
66% of Israelis want Netanyahu to leave politics.
Yeah.
And 85% support an investigation into what happened on October 7th, and he was
prime minister.
Do they believe...
I mean, you hear rumors.
You hear people say that they let their guard down on purpose.
Do you believe that that would ever have happened?
No.
I don't believe that.
Yeah.
I really don't.
Because the enormity of the destruction is far too great, and no government
would...
Let me put it the other way.
Any government would know that if you do that, you will go down in history as
having failed
your people.
Yeah.
So I can't imagine they did.
Yeah.
I think it was a monument...
One of the things that just is true in general is I try never to attribute to
maliciousness
things that can be attributed to incompetence, because it's almost always
incompetence.
People think, oh, well, that's so suspicious that...
Why did they leave the shooter on the roof for Trump?
And I think because it's so easy to get stuff wrong.
Yeah.
It's so easy.
There are like a thousand ways to get stuff wrong, and only one way to get it
right,
and generally, it's not always true, but generally, it's incompetence.
Yeah.
So...
That's a good point.
It's like...
And we've become in such a place like with media where people, I think, don't
trust media
or are uncertain, and there's so many...
There's so much media now.
Right.
Like there's so many...
There's AI versions of things.
There's animations.
It's like you don't even know if the voice you're listening to is really of the
person
that you're listening to.
No.
So it's almost impossible to...
So I think that just creates even more...
Or option for fantasy.
Distrust is gonna grow.
There's no way it can't grow.
I mean, it's...
Yeah.
It's scary what AI is doing and will do to people's perceptions of the world.
For all of us, you know?
Oh, yeah.
And it's hard not to...
Because there's so much stuff you do that you're used to believing on your
phone and on
your...
Yeah.
And it's hard not to believe your eyes.
Yeah.
Right.
It's like, they're my eyes.
Of course I believe them.
Yeah, these are them.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Rabbi Wolpe, you were a professor at Harvard, right?
You've had a storied history and I could go into a lot of stats and I'll put
those in the beginning
of this episode so people know.
You were working at Harvard?
Yeah, I was a visiting scholar at the Divinity School.
Okay.
Right.
And you left after the October 7th?
I didn't leave Harvard.
I left.
What happened was, so when I got there, I was a visiting scholar at the Divinity
School.
After October 7th, the president asked me, would I be a member of the Anti-Semitism
Commission?
She was really shaken up.
This is Claudine Gay.
Would I help her understand what happened?
Would I give her some books?
Would I be part of the Anti-Semitism Committee?
I said, of course.
So I became part of the Anti-Semitism Committee and to make a long story short,
it was clear
to me that they weren't doing anything.
That Harvard wasn't?
Harvard wasn't doing it and didn't really intend to do anything and I think
that the committee
was kind of a cover for it.
And so I resigned.
I was going to still teach my class next semester and I still did.
By the way, the kids were great.
They were great.
And most of the students at Harvard, like students everywhere, just want to get
a job,
want to finish their degree, but not all.
But when I resigned, it became a giant like public thing, which I did not
expect because
I think people were so fed up with the idiocies and the radicalism and the just
thoughtlessness
of the demonstrations and also of some of the faculty.
And so we're still, as you know, we're still fighting this.
I mean, there are lawsuits now and testimony and-
I don't even know that.
Oh yeah, it's an ongoing thing.
So, and all of the universities are trying to recover.
I've never seen any institution ever lose as much credibility overnight as
Harvard.
I mean, Harvard was Harvard.
It's like, I watched a season of this show, Suits.
I don't know if you've ever seen it.
Yeah, I've seen it.
So-
My friend used to be in it.
She had a list too, actually.
Yeah, but that doesn't matter.
And it's all about, we only hire from Harvard.
Yeah.
Only hire from Harvard.
And it's so funny because I'm watching this and I'm thinking, wait, you have no
idea.
You would never say that now because their stock has plummeted.
Like-
Do you mean just amongst like Jewish families who would send their children
there?
Or do you just mean overall-
Overall.
Overall.
I mean, there are law firms, major law firms, some of them not Jewish law firms
who said,
we're not hiring from Harvard because we don't want kids who, the part of the
issue is that
they were not solely anti-Israel, anti-Jewish.
They were anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-Western.
And so they don't want to hire from, I mean, it's all part of the same complex.
Nobody's like, I really love America.
I love freedom.
I love capitalism.
I just hate the Jews.
Yeah.
That's really rare.
Certainly not on the left.
Maybe it happens on the right, not on the left.
That left anti-Semitism is America's bad.
Israel's bad.
Colonialism is bad.
All the culture they've created is bad.
Everything's bad.
Where are the Native Americans?
Exactly.
We'll burn the Israeli flag and the American flag.
They were cheering the Houthis.
The Houthis have on their flag.
This is the flag of the Houthis.
I am not misquoting it.
You could see it online.
It says, death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews.
God is great.
Dear God.
Wow.
And they put it in Christmas colors, too.
There it is.
Oh, there you go.
There's that beautiful flag.
Oh, my gosh.
And the Houthis are...
The Houthis are from Yemen.
And they were blocking all the shipping in the Straits.
Yeah.
And they were cheering them on Harvard's campus.
And you think to yourself, what are you, crazy?
So you're saying on the campus, it didn't become like a pro-Israel or pro-anti-Israel,
pro-Palestine or anti-Israel.
It became all this other stuff?
It was much bigger.
Wow.
It was much bigger than that.
Yes.
So as a result, and the fact that Harvard didn't, other places did take almost
immediate action.
And guess what?
If you tell students you're not going to be able to graduate if you don't stop
protesting, they stop protesting, amazingly enough.
But Harvard didn't do that, and Columbia didn't do that, and Penn didn't do
that.
And then also, there were outside agitators, too.
It wasn't just students.
A lot of the people who came onto campus were from the community who saw an
opportunity to, you know...
Yeah, some people were looking for something to do, even.
Yeah.
I remember somebody sent me, it was an Evite, to a protest.
I was like, they're doing Evites to it?
Did you feel...
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I said to somebody, the secret of all this is that
they're having the...
time of their lives.
Yeah.
They were ordering all sorts of...
What's a nice way for a rabbi to say this?
Sexual paraphernalia to be brought into the camps at all the different colleges,
sure.
The condoms, other stuff.
Because they were basically camping out for...
And they're college students.
Yeah, they think it's a rave almost to some.
Yeah, it is kind of a rave, I know.
So anyway.
Watch next year, there's like protest raves.
Yeah, protest.
It could easily happen.
Did you feel like the students had a right to get out there and voice their
thoughts?
Yeah, I didn't have it.
I don't know anyone who was reasonable, had a problem with the students
protesting.
Yeah.
I disagreed with a lot of what they said, but protesting was fine.
The things that I objected to were, one, when they broke the rules basically by
interrupting
classrooms, by interrupting people at the library, by