Acclaimed filmmaker and human rights activist Rabbi Raphael Shore chats with Zibby about WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG, BAD JEW, a bold, eye-opening exploration of the world’s oldest consistent form of hatred: antisemitism. Rabbi Shore shares his personal journey—from growing up in a secular Jewish family in Canada to discovering a profound connection to Judaism in Israel. He challenges conventional explanations of antisemitism, explores Hitler’s ideology, and flips the narrative to highlight the strength, mission, and enduring impact of the Jewish people.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Rabbi. It's so nice to see you on Zoom, even though we had coffee and that was way nicer, but it's fine.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Jew? Congratulations on your book. 

Ralph: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Zibby. It's a pleasure to be here with you. 

Zibby: Oh, pleasure to be here with you. Well, we talked about this when we met and it's in the book as well, but talk about how you didn't think that finding a Jewish path was what you were going to do until certain things happened in high school and your brother's influence and all of that, how things ended up leading you down this path.

Ralph: Okay. My story. 

Zibby: Your story. Yeah. Tell me your story. 

Ralph: My brief story is I grew up in Canada, small town, Canada, not a religious Jewish family, but a very strong identity, strong Jewish identity, strong Zionist identity. My father was a leader in the community and a member of parliament for a little while, and so we were proud Jews, but at age 20, my twin brother, no age 18, my twin brother ended up traveling through Israel and landing on a yeshiva and spending time there, and I thought he must be out of his mind, why would he become religious, that's crazy, and I don't think he'd be here today.

And two years later, that's when I was 20 because he's my twin brother, I came to get him out of yeshiva. So I prepared myself at university and I studied philosophy and logic courses and religion courses to make sure that I understood the other side. And I wouldn't get fooled and tripped up by by whatever those rabbis were going to be teaching and so I was shocked when I got there for the summer and that Judaism was sophisticated, intelligent, rich, spiritual, deep, all the things that I would have said were the opposite based on my very insufficient Hebrew school education growing up in London, Ontario, Canada. When I was had by Bar Mitzvah, I was very convinced that Judaism was completely irrelevant and silly.

At best. And so I discovered it, and I'd already discovered that Israel was the most awesome place on the planet. And so that combined with now discovering Judaism, I decided, okay, I'm going to become more observant myself, and I studied for five years in Yeshiva. And already at that time, it was when I was finishing university, I started to do the research that became The foundation for what this book is about.

Zibby: Interesting. And you said you had been sort of sitting on this book for 30 years, and then when the events of October 7th happened, you felt compelled to, you know, get it out the door, so to speak. 

Ralph: Yes, indeed. And then at first, the part of the story that I didn't share that you just reminded me was that in high school, my last year of high school, you know, I was in a school that had 20 Jews out of a thousand people and my brother and I, and a couple of other Jewish friends, we became part of the upper society clique, you know, the cool people, football players and everything and the hockey players. And we were part of that group and we would party together every weekend until one Friday night. All of a sudden, there was a sign, uh, that said no Jews allowed, and they locked the door on us, and we were like shot completely out of the blue, all of a sudden, Jews are not welcome, these were our, this was our social circle, and that was the one night in my life that I got into a fist fight with my girlfriend's brother, as it were, who was the, uh, uh, leading anti semite of the group, I discovered, and so that was a wake up call.

That was a wake up call. We thought, we thought, Hey, aren't we just like everybody else? Why do you guys think, why do you guys think that we're different? Culturally, yeah, maybe, but not much else. So, that was, that was, I don't think that was pivotal. I think my brother's journey to Jerusalem was more pivotal.

Nevertheless, it was a, it was a wake up call, and it was part of my journey to find out more about what being Jewish is about. So in the book, I'm exploring the reason that they don't like Jews, that people don't like Jews, and why they haven't liked Jews for 3, 000 something years, and why antisemitism has been so much part of our history.

And it's bizarre, and we can't figure it out, and it doubles standards, and it's perplexing. And in my book, I answer it in a different way than most people know about. But I always have to say, that's not what the book's about, even though that's. Quite a contribution to explain anti semitism in and of itself, but really that's not the purpose.

The purpose of the book is then to flip it on its head and answer why the Jews, from a positive perspective of What are we all about? What is the mission of the Jewish people? What's the purpose of the Jewish people? What's the greatness of the Jewish people? And that's really what I, what I share, but it comes through the lens of antisemitism because it turns out that the antisemites sometimes know us better than we know ourselves.

Zibby: I mean, I hate to say anything nice about the antisemites, but okay, fine. I'll let that slip out. Now, you know, my, my husband converted to Judaism and we had all these meetings with the rabbi as he was going through that. And I remember him asking like, well, I just don't get it. Like, but why, why don't people like Jews?

Like, I don't get it. And the rabbi then tried to explain, and maybe you could give like a, a short, not, obviously, the book goes into depth about it, and you have all these different, you know, parts and, you know, reasons and everything. But if you, if you could sum it up, uh, what you found different. Then maybe other people would, what would it be like, what would, what would a kid need to know?

Ralph: Yeah, and it is difficult going to sum it up, but I will, I will do my best. I also produced a companion film called Tragic Awakening. So I'm touring around. It's a 50 minute film. You can find out more at tragicawakening. com. So that helps also synthesize the ideas in a short way. The book goes into more depth.

So the first thing is what it's not. And what anti Semitism is not is the reason that everyone told us it is in other words, my book challenges the conventional wisdom that we've all been taught to accept. It's not because we're just scapegoated the common explanation for the Holocaust and antisemitism is that the Jews are a minority in the wrong place, wrong time, easy to blame for society's problems when things go sour.

So that's not it. It's not. It's also not just a disease. It's not just a rational disease. Oh, and we can't explain it. No, if we're doctors, we need to go and try to find out what's the nature of the disease. So let's go further and say, yeah, it's a virus, a mutating virus. But what's it all about? And it's not the explanation, the superficial explanation that they always give because they're all opposite.

They contradict each other. We're rich. We're poor. We're capitalists. We're communists. We're too, too much like them. We're too different from them. Every explanation that's opposite. So that's not it either. So my book goes deeper and into the understanding that Adolf Hitler had about, about why he did the Holocaust.

Which, sadly, he was totally clear about. The sad part is that the academics and the Jewish world have forgotten, or have not informed us of what Hitler's ideology was. Essentially, Hitler said that there was two ways to look at the world. One is based on humanitarian principles. Love your neighbor. Peace on Earth.

Goodwill to all men, equal rights, God based morality, ethical monotheism. That's one way of looking at the world. The other way was basically, uh, social darwinism, natural law. That the world is, is, that humanity is not a spiritual being. Humans are part of the natural animal kingdom. We're animals and the laws that govern the world are survival of the fittest.

And just like the animals operate by that rule. And as a result, That means you don't have pity on the weak. And you don't help the poor. No, just the opposite. The weak of each species and the weak species are eliminated. And as a result, the animal kingdom thrives. And so Hitler understood and this wasn't a new idea.

This was popular in Europe. late 19th century, that humanity should be operating on those principles as well. The strong, survive, might makes right, this was a Nietzschean principle as well. And undermining that principle was the Jewish idea that love and humanitarianism should be the governing principle.

So Hitler looks at the world and says the Jewish people with their, introduced these ideas into the world, and through them and through Christianity, The world has changed. Western world has bought into these Jewish ideas. And deep down, the Jewish people are somehow influencing and pushing the world in that direction.

And Hitler understood that means the end. That will be the end of humanity. And so Hitler is trying to save the world by eliminating the Jewish people. So I think deep down, deep, deep down, most people, most anti Semites can't articulate it. But deep down, there's a moral responsibility, there's a push that the Jewish people have been bringing into the world that the world rejects and reacts negatively to.

They can't always articulate it as well as Hitler did. But, so they say, oh, too rich, too poor, too this, too that. But ultimately there's something bothering them about the Jewish people that's much deeper. And therefore anti Semitism is a moral, spiritual phenomena more than anything else. Sorry, I can't get it.

I still can't get it into 30 seconds. 

Zibby: That's okay. I, that is okay. Because that's what, that's, that was the preview you gave us too. It is this this do good, love your neighbor philosophy and tikkun olam and all of this that makes us who we are and that also doesn't sit right with everybody. So talk about why us and why do you think Jewish people even had this?

Why are these the things that characterize us as a people? Where did that come from? 

Ralph: Abraham. So in the, in my book, I go into great detail because first of all, I trace. Hitler's ideology. I traced the fact that the normal explanations that we've been given. Are not satisfactory. They're superficial. They don't make sense.

They're not. They don't really explain the phenomenon of anti semitism and then I explain Hitler's philosophy, but then I flip it all on its head and say, well, he's correct. He says that the Jewish people have transformed civilization with these values. And in every other aspect, he looked at Germany and he said, wow, how are the Jewish people still standing after 3000 years of persecution?

And how is it they're influencing Germany so much? And so he noticed that even if Jews aren't religious, even if they're not out there pushing religion and ethical monotheism and these things, they're pushing, they're driven to create change and to, and to succeed. And it made him nuts. And even if it's secularized, like human rights ideas or even communism, which is basically, Judaism without God, a utopian view of peace on earth and love. He just traced it all back. Judaism, Christianity, Bolshevism, it's all from the Jewish minds. Jesus, Marx, Moses, Abraham. He saw the pattern in history. So where does it all come from? It comes from the first Jew. Abraham was elected by God because Abraham chose God.

And God said, okay, you know what? You're going to be my man. You're going to be the father of a people. I'm going to give you the Torah I'm going to give you the principles. Your job is going to be to bring this into the world. And that's why it says at Mount Sinai Sinai came into the world. There's a midrash that says actually a Gomorrah Talmud that said the play on the words Mount Sinai Sinai, Sinai, Sinai, at the mountain of Sinai, hatred came into the world, the hatred of non Jews to the Jews, because it's a rebellion against the ethics that Mount Sinai revealed that the Jewish people were tasked to bring into the world. So for 3, 000 years, more or less, the Jewish people have been hanging on to this mission, trying to do God's Word and God's Torah, getting blasted in every generation for it, but trying to hold on. Sometimes we lose our way.

And even when we lose our way, so we're leading every other social cause on the planet because it's in our spiritual DNA. And that's what Hitler said. That's why when Hitler said, I want to destroy Christianity and I want to destroy Bolshevism, communism. It was an ideology. But with the Jews, Hitler says, I need to wipe out every single Jew because Hitler understood it's in our spiritual DNA.

Doesn't matter. He said explicitly, even if there was no Jewish school, even if no one's practicing Judaism, Hitler said every Jew represents these ideas. He called it, of course, a germ, a germ and sedition. But he saw it in every Jewish soul. It was a spiritual DNA and that's why genocide and he was explicit about it, but the book's basically flipping it all on its head and say, he's right.

This is who we are. This is our heritage. And if you're Jewish, own it, embrace it, love it because it's awesome to be part of this legacy. Even though we're hated for it. But if you know why you're hated for it certainly gives you a lot of strength. And that's my motivation. That's why I wrote the book and made the film because I want to give strength to the Jewish people and understand it.

And I want non Jews to be able to see who we are, understand who we are, understand antisemitism and get on the right side of history, hopefully. 

Zibby: I love that. When we met, I was like trying to solve antisemitism, which is like ridiculous, right? I'm like, I can fix this, but you know, and I remember sitting there being like, but what can we do?

And you were like, that's actually not the right question. Like you can't stop antisemitism, but how can you strengthen the Jewish people? What can you do in the world? And I've actually repeated that conversation many times. I talked about the book because it's a shift, right? It's a shift in how we approach all the communication around what is happening and it turns to something positive instead of something you know, we're not battling something.

We're building something which is a very different mindset. 

Ralph: Yeah, it's a hundred percent It's um what I call Giving inner spiritual armor to the Jewish people because we've been beaten down, you know, this 2000 years, especially in the last, in the exile, it affects the Jewish mindset, the Jewish psyche. If you're disliked in every Generation, or if you want to stand up for Israel and you get pounded, I know like you've bravely done, it makes you, you know, consider, do I want to do this?

Do I want to be out there saying I'm Jewish and I'm proud and I think Israel is a great place? even with some, you know, the not being perfect. And so that has really affected who we are and how we look at ourselves. And I think we need to really strengthen our moral self confidence. And that's my motivation to me.

That's. Like you just said so nicely, that's, to me, the main challenge is to look at antisemitism, look at the double standards, and realize it's their problem, not my problem, and actually it's coming from our point of greatness and goodness that is creating the negative reaction. So I can love myself and that's creates inner armor, inner spiritual armor.

And that's what I think is the most important thing. And the Jewish world, as I say, I'm challenging conventional wisdom because the Jewish world invests hundreds of millions, probably every year to fight anti Semitism from the ADL to all the organizations, stop anti Semitism and anti Semitism this, but you're not, what I'm saying is that it's.

Antisemitism is a moral and spiritual phenomenon, and telling the non Jews to stop hating us is not going to be the way, or creating studies that shows how much they hate us, and they say, oh, we didn't realize we hated you so much, we'll stop, you know, it's, it sounds ridiculous, but we're putting millions and millions of dollars as a Jewish people into this, and, and I think that if we are strong, and if we Embrace our values and embrace who we are.

That is the best way not only to give ourself the inner armor and self confidence that will minimize anti semitism because it's a moral and spiritual phenomenon. The last chapter of my book, I tell a dozen plus stories of amazing people who In the face of antisemitism responded in this moral spiritual way and became proud.

I think that's, that's the message we want to take with and give to our people. 

Zibby: So if the people who are spending the hundreds of millions of dollars fighting antisemitism were to take those hundreds of millions of dollars elsewhere to do something, what would you do with that money? 

Ralph: I would first and foremost use the money to educate our Jewish people on who we are.

And, you know, that's the core of what I'm trying to do. I think that, unfortunately, the, as I said, the, the Jewish people have had a superficial view of what antisemitism is, the nature of antisemitism. But that's only one of the two problems. The other problem is we've had a very superficial view of who we are.

And as I mentioned at the beginning, that sometimes antisemites understand us more deeply than we understand ourselves. And if you ask 100 Jews, what is the nature, purpose, mission of the Jewish people, very, very few people, A, will say the same thing, and B, will get close to what the right answer is. And, uh, so there's, we've really failed ourselves.

Part of it is understandable. Our mission is heavy. Our mission is, is a moral burden. And that's why the world reacts negatively against us. And sometimes we react negatively against it ourselves and we don't really want to carry it. The fact that we can explain the Holocaust for the past two generations as being not really about us, just they needed a scapegoat.

And the world went insane, so really it's nothing about being Jewish, it's nothing about the Jewish people, just a coincidence. That is an escape. That's a psychological escape from facing the reality that no, he understood who you were. And it was because you're Jewish, and this is what it was about. Now what do you want to do with that?

How do you want to deal with that? So it's heavy. It's heavy. Being Jewish is heavy. And I think that It's an incredible privilege and a beautiful heritage, but it's real. So I would take a lot of that money and put it into positive, inspirational, spiritual education on who we are so that we can really love being Jewish.

Cause telling all the young Jews how much we're hated. It's not a good recipe for loving being Jewish. True. 

Zibby: Although there has been a lot of, I guess by nature of all of the attacks, a lot of younger Jewish people are finally stepping up and, well not finally, they're young, but you know what I mean, they're stepping up in a way that they didn't realize they needed to, and they're seeing this firsthand, and now they're getting the same wake up call that you had around the same age, right?

Ralph: Mm hmm, 100%. And that's the opportunity here, that there's been like a, a, a, a wake up call. And that's why I call the film Tragic Awakening. There's been an awakening, October 8th, and that's wonderful and beautiful. And now, ideally, it would not only stand up for Israel and stand up for being Jewish, but really deepen our understanding of what it is.

And why we are. 

Zibby: How can people watch the film? 

Ralph: So in the short term, we can go to the website tragicawakening. com. I've been touring around with it. So any community church synagogue conference who wants to screen it, they can go online, get a screening license. We've, we've been doing screening. Lots and lots of screenings in the short term, that's what we're going to do for the next few months.

Zibby: Additionally, I want to do a screening. Can I do one? 

Ralph: Okay. Yes. Let's do it. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Ralph: Let's do it. And we'll make that happen. Yeah. It could be in your home with a bunch of people. It could be in a larger group. We did Parkey Synagogue when I was there, when I met you that time. Additionally, once a month, we're doing online free screenings.

The next one's February 23rd at 8 p. m. Eastern. Again, you can go to tragic awakening. com sign up. Once a month free online screenings. Newsmax is going, has licensed it and end of February they're going to do a premiere and start screening it fairly regularly. And then come the summer or so we will put it out on some platform so everybody can see it even more easily.

That's how it is in the short term. And then the book's available at Amazon if you want to go deeper and really get inspired. 

Zibby: So. In your efforts so far, and traveling around, and screening the movie, and marketing the book, and doing it all, are you sensing success? Like, do you feel like it's getting through and making a, a change?

Ralph: It's a great question, Zibby. So, yes a resounding yes, I've been blown away. This is my 18th, this is my 18th feature length documentary film. So I've, I've been around the block and I have, I have never seen this kind of impact. And it's only a 53 minute film, but the film really gets people's souls. And, and I get this reaction, very common, like we were, we did a 400 person event in Miami last week, three minute standing ovation at the end of the film.

I've never seen anything like that. But it's inspirational also because it features this Arab, former anti Semite, recovered anti Semite named Rawan Osman, who's been on tour with me right now as well, and she has become, uh, Zionist and is actually converting to Judaism. She comes from Syria and Lebanon.

So her story is wild and amazing. And she explores the nature of antisemitism, the nature of the Jewish people in the film as our featured personality. But when people watch the film, they come away and they say, You know, they have this interesting reaction of, I kind of knew this, but I never heard it before.

And there's kind of like nothing new, but everything new. And so in other words, the way I interpret it is like, yes. You've been sold a bill of goods on what Anti Seminole is about and you knew, especially after October 7th, that there's something more going on, there's something deeper going on, but no one told you what it was.

And now that the film told you what it was, it immediately resonated with you as yes. That must be it and it's so deep in that it even makes sense and you thought you knew it already because you knew that wasn't it and so we're getting that kind of reaction then it's inspirational that's my whole point is that this is inspirational so it's really hard to explain the book and the film I say it's an inspirational look at antisemitism and people look at me as like you sure those words all go together but but bottom line is that I think I'm giving a lot of strength to, to a lot of people and Jews and Christians and non Jews have been showing the film to a lot of different groups.

Just in Phoenix this week it was mostly non Jewish leaders in the Phoenix community. It's enlightening and inspiring and So I'm very excited and it's growing every time we do one event, five more events are coming from it. So it's exciting. We want this to be seen by millions and the book read by millions, I hope.

Zibby: Thank you so much. This is such great work you're doing. Obviously, you know this, but it's so important and at such the right time and is so needed and I'm not surprised about the effect of all of it. And your book is amazing. Um, highly readable, approachable, all ages, right? You, it's a, it's a distilled version and very conversational almost tone to help us understand and not be afraid of highfalutin concepts and whatever.

It's like, okay, here we go. I've told it like it is. Who's afraid of the big, bad Jew? So congratulations on the book. Thank you for the movie. More to come. So thank you. 

Ralph: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here with you, Zibby. 

Zibby: Of course. Thanks for coming on.