Z. Klein: Good evening, everybody. Good evening, President. How are you?

Pres. Herzog: You know, I’m very moved to see everybody here. It’s an incredible crowd of people. a dream come true, a great vision. I want to thank again all the partners, the founders, the leaders, those who gave their support from day one. But the real story is you guys, members of the council, and of course, all the tutors and leaders, et cetera. This is an incredible, unique group of Jews which is going to change the world. 

Z. Klein: Amen.

Pres. Herzog: Absolutely.

Z. Klein: If we had more time, we would go country by country and have them all clap.

Pres. Herzog: Quite amazing! First of all, let’s teach you a little bit of history some of you don’t really know. So the two great Jewish institutions which are the pillars of this partnership are the World Zionist Organization with Theodor Herzl founded in 1897 in the first Zionist Congress. And it was about 200 something people from all facets of the Jewish world.

So here’s another Congress out there. And the Jewish Agency which was founded a few years later, which encompasses the entire Jewish world, 66 countries, and covering huge facets of it. That’s the organized Jewish world with so many organizations that are doing so much good.

And then there are the great families who are supporting this organization, this unique initiative, which were mentioned, of course, the Wilf, Azrieli and the Drahi families, and the Mandel Family Foundation as well. And this shows that from generation to generation, we must come with new ideas, brilliant and bold ideas of how we deal with our Jewish identity, which is ever challenged, especially in this era. So I’m very moved to be here with you.

Z. Klein: So my two elder sons, twins, I told them I’m going to interview you this evening. And they said, oh, we know, we know, we learned about his grandfather. He was the chief rabbi. It would be cool if you’d interview him. The President, they weren’t so excited [sarcastically].

Pres. Herzog: I’ll tell you why, because in your son’s schools, in your kids’ schools, this year they’re teaching about my grandmother and grandfather.

Z. Klein: Right, so they said, they said, we know about Isaac Herzog the rabbi, you know, funny!

Pres. Herzog: I’m very proud of that.

Z. Klein: You should be!

Pres. Herzog: By the way, you run an illustrious organization called the Jerusalem Post, which how many years is that?

Z. Klein: 92.

Pres. Herzog: 92 as well!

Z. Klein: And proud and strong. So my two sons, you know, years ago, when you were the chairman of the Jewish Agency, one day they came up to me and they said, “Aba, are you a convert?: And I said, “no, why?” They said, “well, you are from America.” And, you know, they grew up in a religious school in Israel. And to them, you know, it’s just the way it was. And I think that’s one of the importances of this, you know, forum here is for people to get to know each other because they don’t know. You know, they don’t know about each other.

Pres. Herzog: Absolutely. So my wife and I, Michal and I, we’re seeing thousands of people a week. And we see them from Israel and, of course, from various facets of Jewish life. And each one lives, you know, people live in their own echo chambers or their own lives. It’s about time people get to know each other and understand that Jewish story is ever-evolving in a magnanimous way. That is the purpose of this great initiative. 

Z. Klein: Right, so I remember back in the day when you were the chairman of the Jewish Agency, and you spoke about, you know, over and over again about this Jewish Davos, right?

Pres. Herzog: Yes, absolutely.

Z. Klein: And this was, I don’t know, it was like three, four years ago even. And, you know, it finally came to place here, and how does it feel? 

Pres. Herzog: It feels fantastic. First of all, I want to commend each and every one of you that was willing to leave everything and come here.

Z. Klein: I have the list. You want to read their names? [laughing]

Pres. Herzog: I can’t say that you were handpicked because you were picked by an algorithm [laughing]. But it’s truly each and every one of you is expected to influence the Jewish story wherever you are for the rest of your lives. And I’m sure you’ll do that. And I pray for the moment that many, many years, decades down the road, even after 120 of mine, you will say, I started my involvement in the Jewish world in this initiative of Voice of the People.

Z. Klein: Or met their spouses here. [cheering]

Pres. Herzog: Absolutely.

Pres. Herzog: But I will say that our nation is ever challenged, the Jewish nation. The Jewish story, the story of Israel, the state of Israel, and the lack of knowledge and understanding of the challenges that each one of your respective communities faces has to be told to one another. Look at the diversity that’s in this room. Everybody’s here. All facets of Judaism. And we’re a small nation of 15 million human beings. Perhaps if we add all sorts of additions, we get to 20. In a sea of 8 billion human beings, we’re a drop in the sea.

And we have such a huge contribution to humankind and to the universe and spiritually. We gave the book of books to humanity with all its great values and we have to continue that story from generation to generation. Look how many terrible atrocities have befallen our people and we strive on and on and on. And we do good. And we strive for the great values of tikkun olam. And we are the nation state. We here are the nation, the only nation state of this people.

So we have to make sure that we are strong together and that we know each other, respect each other and bang our heads together to come for solutions that are so important for the future of our people.

Z. Klein: So I’m going to ask some questions. 

Pres. Herzog: Go ahead, my dear. It doesn’t mean I have to answer. I don’t promise to answer. [laughing]

Z. Klein: I know, I know. 15 million prime ministers, right? [laughing] So you mentioned atrocities, and I think it’s actually also fascinating the fact that I think many people who were in the know were like, okay, all these initiatives that you were working on before October 7th, surprised that it actually took place. At the beginning, no one could think of anything but here and now and what is going on. But I think it’s impressive, first of all, that the team and you made it happen.

Pres. Herzog: It’s an incredible team. It’s about time to thank the team. Allow me to thank the team. Thank the team. Shirel Dagan-Levy. The incredible team. Of course, the chairwoman, Amira Aronovich, and my staff and everybody, and the entire team has been working incredibly well. I’m proud of them and I want to thank them.

Z. Klein: So with everything going on in almost a year and a half, and there’s still more than 20 hostages, living hostages in Gaza, what can you tell us, and you speak to heads of state, you meet with people all the time, what can you tell us, because many people don’t see where this is going?

Pres. Herzog: Because it is the main topic of our lives as human beings, as a nation. It affects the national psyche of Israel dramatically. Naturally, it’s extremely painful. We care, as we care for every person, we care for every family. They became family members of Michal and I. We know each of them personally. We speak constantly on a daily basis with them. We just came from the Shiva call of the Idan family. The Idan family is one of the worst tragedies of October 7th in Kibbutz Nachal Oz because these barbaric terrorists broadcasted the live how they are assassinating the eldest daughter, Maayan, how they are killing Tzachi, the father, and how the mother, Gili, and the kids are broadcasting live how worried and scared they are under this huge terror attack. And you see the resilience because they are in another kibbutz, Mishmar HaEmek, because they haven’t gone back yet since October 7th. And right now, we have to deal with the second stage, with the next stage of the hostage deal, hostage release. One thing is clear, it’s above any real practical consideration, is the moral duty to bring each and every one of them back home to the last one of them. I also speak to, I also speak to families of hostages who were killed, whose bodies are there in Gaza. We must not forget them as well. Of course, we want to bring all of them, and especially we want to bring those who are alive back home. But we have a duty to everybody.

The stories that come out are horrific. But let me make it clear. Look, this war was waged on us. We did not seek that war. The enemy, barbarically, savagely violated an internationally recognized boundary and kidnapped, raped, burned, took hostage, carried out the worst of atrocities. Michal has been dealing with the sexual violence story throughout the international community. and we can go on and on speaking of everything. We met this year, since the war, over a thousand bereaved families in our nation, of all facets of life, all religions, all beliefs, all lifestyles.

One thing is clear, we cannot allow Gaza to remain as is under Hamas control. It must be clear that the reality has to change. This is at the peak. So the problem that we always identify with our enemies is that they analyze us mistakenly. They always tend to think we’ll go a different direction, and they do not understand our resilience, and our determination to change the course of history and bring a better future for our people. And by the way, for the region and our neighbors, they deserve it as well.

So that’s where we’re at. There are heated steps being taken in order to bring about a hostage release as much as we can to bring all of them back home. But it has to be always connected with the grand vision of changing the reality.

Z. Klein: So Mr. President, there’s a lot of talk in the Jewish world. In Israel, not so much, but I think it’s the same phenomena of October 8th Jews. Jews that were never, or weren’t enough engaged in their Jewish identities, in their heritage, in their history, as you mentioned. And we’re seeing a revival, and as the Jewish federations call it, the surge. So many people, and it was interesting, I asked you just before if you saw A friend of yours, Gal Gadot, you may have heard of her. [applauds] She’s terrific.

Pres. Herzog: She’s definitely terrific.

Z. Klein: She spoke at the ADL event yesterday in America. And her speech was overflowing with Jewish pride. The amount of times she said, my name is Gal and I am Jewish. Shortstop. But many times. And even encouraging people to go to a synagogue or go to a Jewish center. Things that, you know, I don’t think she ever said publicly like that. And I’m wondering, you know, what your thoughts are on this.

Pres. Herzog: First of all, I congratulate her. We wrote to her, Michal and I, because we truly respect her and we think it was a very important speech of hers. But we have to, I’m sure in your deliberations, you speak about the fact that many of your children or the community young people are afraid to tell their fraternity friends in college that they’re affiliated with Israel or that they’re even Jewish, which something which mind boggles me because I went to university in the United States. Or are afraid in school, in public schools especially, to say they’re Jewish or that they’re going to Israel. And we have it live. Or faculty members who tell us how they were harassed for years and years and they were walking on broken glass because they couldn’t say they support Israel because they could not get their papers approved or their books approved or their promotions approved. So this whole culture, it’s a historic moment in humanity, a historic moment in the Jewish story, and we must fight back. I tell everybody, fight back, don’t be afraid, raise your voice.

Be proud of yourself. And we meet endlessly with so many groups and we tell them, we kind of charge them and tell them, go back, don’t be afraid. And of course, be proud of Israel. [appluads]

Z. Klein: So our time is almost up, but we have two questions that people from the audience asked.

Pres. Herzog: Of course, go ahead.

Z. Klein: Yeah, the production’s gonna kill me. You know, if I …

Pres. Herzog: It’s okay.

Z. Klein: I’m gonna ask you the question.

Pres. Herzog: Also, you know, people deserve to eat something too. [laughing]

Z. Klein: Nah, they don’t need eat. [sarcastically] Okay. Food for thought. Ariella Sherman Weiss from Mexico asks how good or bad do you personally see the level of participation of the Jewish youth around the world, and what do you think it will take to shape the future of Jewish leaders?

Pres. Herzog: So that’s the whole idea of this. By the way, the whole idea of this initiative is to bring on board people who are not involved or affiliated as as such, okay. Who are, who are basically saying, okay, I’m Jewish, but what do I do about it?

And I tell them, come on board and change the world and do good, including with the youth. The youth is the future and the youth is under huge pressure and fears of antisemitism. If you’re a Jewish kid in school and you go to school, you see how your school is protected with police from here to the end of the square nearby, and that is quite scary.

Now, Israelis, there are fifties Israelis here in this cohort, have no clue about what’s going on in Jewish life abroad. Let’s be honest about it. The greatness of this initiative is to enable people to speak about their pain, the diversity, the diversity of Israeli society, the evolution of Israeli society, and the evolution of Jewish society abroad, and see how this nation together finds its way through with new ideas that will emanate from these discussions, that will be implemented by the organized Jewish world.

Z. Klein: Okay. Raviv Sapir from Germany asks, I’ve seen how meeting Jews and Israelis for the first time can break down stereotypes and reduce antisemitism. How can we create more opportunities for these personal connections, especially in places where people haven’t had this exposure?

Pres. Herzog: So in the modern connective world, these are great opportunities and I believe that part of it is, in way and above, all the great initiatives that are there and permeate in the Jewish world all around the world and in Israel, we should find ways to connect more and more. I’ve been going for years, especially when I was chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency.

And telling Israelis. You know, start talking to each other. Okay? So you’re Haredi and you are secular. So what? That means we are not under the same canopy of the jews you know, of our nation. And the same I say for Jews abroad. Don’t judge and don’t condescend. Just talk to each other and you’ll see that you share so much in common.

You know, I, we saw, , Malki Shem Tov and his wife Shelly, just a few days ago, the parents of Omer Shem Tov and they were saying, crying on tv, they’re secular Israelis and saying, he said, you know, Shema Israel in the dungeons, that’s all there is to it. There’s one great Jewish story that, that connects all of us together and we must be together.

Z. Klein: Right. So our time is up. I wanted to thank you and Michal, I think we probably have never had a President. Um, and first Lady. So engaged in the Jewish world. I see on social media the amount of times, the amount of groups you meet have met in the past year and a half. I think it’s, it’s regardless of senior, you know, who, junior college students.

I think it’s, it’s so important, for people here and for people in the Jewish world and uh, and good luck with this, uh, initiative.

Pres. Herzog: Because we are this era. We are in a very historic era in age. These challenges were, we haven’t seen them for generations, let’s be honest about it. We know that many, many young people and just Jews from all over the world have been shocked by an amount of antisemitism.

We’ve been shocked and mind boggled by the fact that they lack of honesty and truth that they face with our own best friends. We keep on hearing these stories and of course, here in Israel, we faced a huge wake up call. On where we are as a nation, how do we fight back? So yes, from chapter one in the Bible, we like to quarrel, but otherwise, apart from quarreling and arguing, we have one great trajectory as a nation to move forward.

And this is why this wonderful gathering, this wonderful initiative, this council, which will rotate and bring and more and more young, you know, young and diversified voices to lead the Jewish people in next generations. I wanna wish all of you great success. Good luck. I’m sure you had a worthwhile time.

Be proud of the fact that you’re Jewish and be proud of the fact that you are council members.

Z. Klein: Amen. President Herzog. Thank you very much.