Interview with Rabbi David Nesenoff, by Roger Aronoff

The “Take AIM” show on BlogTalkRadio, Thursday, June 24, 2010

ROGER ARONOFF: Good morning, and welcome to Take AIM, Accuracy in Media’s weekly talk show on BlogTalkRadio.  AIM is America’s original media watchdog, and every week we point out biased coverage and bring you the stories the mainstream media ignore.  We encourage you to visit our website at aim.org, and sign up to receive our daily E-mail so you can keep track of what the media are up to.  I am Roger Aronoff, a media analyst with AIM, welcoming you to Take AIM!  We really have an excellent show today, and we’ll be starting it shortly.  Our first guest is going to be a man who has become quite well-known in the media.  He is Rabbi David Nesenoff, and he is the man who approached Helen Thomas on the grounds of the White House back in May, and created quite a stir that ended up with Helen Thomas resigning, retiring, however you want to put it—perhaps “fired”?—from her position.  In the second half-hour, we’re going to have Kenneth Green, from American Enterprise Institute, and Mr. Green is going to talk to us about the BP spill and the Gulf of Mexico and the various implications for it.  Right now, we have Rabbi David Nesenoff on the line.  Good morning, Rabbi!  You there, sir?

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Good morning, Roger!  Good morning, Roger!  How are you?

ARONOFF: Fine.  Great to have you on with us on Take AIM.

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.

ARONOFF: Let me introduce you a bit.  Rabbi Nesenoff has served as a rabbi at several synagogues in New York.  He also served as an intervention consultant, selected by the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Office, for the largest discrimination consent degree in U.S. history, and that was against Denny’s Restaurants.  He produced, wrote, and directed an award-winning film for the New York State Department of Youth called Moving Day.  He came up with the idea of webcasting live services to the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and others who could not attend the service in person.  That, apparently, inspired him, in 2008, to set up his website, RabbiLIVE.com, for that purpose, and he calls video “the new literature, for good or bad.”   Welcome to Take AIM!  How are you, sir?

RABBI NESENOFF: Okay!  Good to be here.  Thank you!

ARONOFF: Good!  I was just telling, before you came on the air, about the incident—May 26^th, I believe—when you came to Washington.

RABBI NESENOFF: It was May 27^th, although I came in May 26^th, at night, very late, but I think May 27^th was the exact date.

ARONOFF: Okay.  Before we get into that, I recently had Jackie Mason on this show, a few months back, and talked to him about his journey from being a rabbi to a comedian.  So tell us a little more about your background as a rabbi, about your journey.  Why did you decide to become a rabbi?

RABBI NESENOFF: I think I went from a comedian to a rabbi, actually so maybe I’m with Jackie on that one.  No, I studied psychology, I studied speech and drama, I’ve always been, certainly, attracted to the liturgy, and I think I didn’t have a choice or something.  I don’t know—it just happened!  I do enjoy moving people, doing it in a way that people can understand things, and certainly telling stories that will allow people to understand, and I’ve done it with sermons and, more recently, with film, and now, of course, on Internet video, and I think—hey, look: We come in good company!  There was a rabbi who used to do it from a mountain—temple on the Mount—used to give his sermons.  I think it’s a classic way of people explaining to other people what’s going on in the world, and their opinions, and how it affects humanity, and I guess I’ve always been attracted to that.  I do like doing it with a non-boring way—like Jackie Mason—doing it where it certainly is interesting.  I think when you get up in front of somebody, you have a responsibility to do it in a way that’s going to be exciting and interesting.  You could have a great story and be boring about it.  And you could have a little story about an ant, and it could be a two-hour animated film.  Which they made, which became interesting.  So that’s part of what I do.  And I like moving people.  I like bringing people from one place to another, wherever that place is, and, in between, I like to make them laugh, and cry, and do all the emotions in between—because when we laugh and cry in the same moment, we remind ourselves that we’re alive.

So I appreciate you asking, and that’s part of my pulpit, I believe, is not just being on a pulpit.  I really believe part of my rabbinate has been when I work with different groups for tolerance.  Not just the people who are intolerant against Jews, but someone who’s intolerant against Hispanics.  Or African-Americans.  Or women.  Or disabled.  That’s been all part of my rabbinate, and that’s my responsibility.

ARONOFF: Okay.  The rabbi who gave the sermon on the Mount never had the chance to become a blogger.  How did that come about for you?

RABBI NESENOFF: Trust me, he would’ve!

ARONOFF: [Laughs.] So what brought you to Washington at that time, back in May?

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.  There was a Jewish Heritage Month, of May, and the White House had, for the first time, an acknowledgment of it.  They wanted to have a day where there’s some Jewish heritage celebration, and I went down there as press, because of RabbiLIVE.com, and, in fact, my son went with his friend as press, as well, for a teenage Jewish website that they have, ShmoozePOINT.com.  It’s kind of a video chat room for teenagers to discuss issues.  So we went down there, and there was a celebration where the President spoke, and there was a rabbi who spoke, and then there was a musician who played.  You know, the niceties of the way someone celebrates someone’s heritage.  There were people from—there were rabbis, and sports figures, and poets, etcetera, from all over the country, who came in—of Jewish background—to celebrate.

ARONOFF: Okay.  So that leads us up to your encounter with Helen Thomas—and actually, I’m going to play the relevant portion of that clip right now, and then we’ll talk about it.

RABBI NESENOFF: Any comments on Israel?  We’re asking everybody today.  Any comments on—

HELEN THOMAS: Tell ’em to get the hell out of Palestine.

RABBI NESENOFF: Oooh.

THOMAS: [Chuckles.]

RABBI NESENOFF: Any better comments than that?

THOMAS: [Laughs.]

UNKNOWN FEMALE: Helen is blunt.

THOMAS: Remember, these people are occupied.  And it’s their land.  It’s not German, it’s not Poland’s—

RABBI NESENOFF: So where should they go?  What should they do?

THOMAS: They can go home.

RABBI NESENOFF: Where is their home?

THOMAS: Poland!

RABBI NESENOFF: So the Jews—

THOMAS: Germany!

RABBI NESENOFF: You think Jews should just go back to Poland and Germany?

THOMAS: And America, and everywhere else.  Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?  See?

RABBI NESENOFF: Now, are you familiar with the history of that region, and what took place?

THOMAS: Very much.  I’m of Arab background.

ARONOFF: So I think we captured the context and the essence of what this was about.  So what happened after that?  How did it go from there to become a “media sensation,” we’ll call it?

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.  I—as you can hear there, I wasn’t antagonistic or aggressive.  I was being a reporter.  Even if it went inside of me, some place, as a Jew, or a rabbi, I was a reporter, and reported on it.  There’s freedom of speech in this country, which is just a fabulous thing—like we’re right now exercising that.  Helen exercised that for 60 years, and she exercised that for the two minutes that I spoke to her.  And that was a great thing, also, that I allowed her to have her freedom of speech.  I didn’t take it away from her.  In fact, just as a note, no one has taken it away from her.  The President didn’t take it away from her, the press corps, nobody did—she ultimately resigned.  Look, her boss could easily fire her.  That’s still not taking away her freedom of speech—that’s a relationship between employer and employee.  So what I did was, I did what one does to exercise freedom of speech.  I am not in charge of CBS and NBC and ABC and MGM Films; I have a website.  And so I put—I broadcast, as any good journalist, or as any broadcaster would do with what they had, and I placed it—I should say, a week later, on my website.  Just to note: There was no surreptitious or provocative reason; it was because my son, who’s my partner in this deal, and is my webmaster, had finals—May, June time of year—so I had to wait for him to graduate high school.  And then he finally had a little time.  I said, “Okay, let’s put it up!” And so he put it up that Thursday.

ARONOFF: So you hadn’t sensed the urgency, or the impact that this would make?  So it kind of sat there before you did anything, huh?

RABBI NESENOFF: You know what?  When she said it, I thought to myself, Wow!  I can’t bel—I thought, by the way, first of all, she said it so relaxed, I thought, I’m—I guess I’m not in the loop, that this must be something people know about, and I’m just this naive guy asking her questions, because she said it so relaxed.  So, number one, I thought maybe it’s just—maybe to me, it’s a shocker, but not to other people.  I have to say, also, I did call up a Jewish newspaper, and spoke to a reporter there, and told him—the day I came back—said, “You know what I just captured Helen Thomas saying?”  And his response to me was, ‘Oh, it’s nothing new.  We know that about her.’  And so, it still didn’t stop me from posting it, but I was thinking to myself, Maybe I’m just naive about it. It does tell us, by the way, that people did know this about her.  Either it’s wrong for them not to have said things, or the fact that, when you capture it on an image, and blast it that way, it makes a different impact than someone saying who—a reporter who recently said, a cameraman who recently said, “Oh, she’s always said, ‘Thank God for Hezbollah,’” or something like that.  But if maybe someone captured it on video and showed it, it would be different.  So I did want to get it up there, I felt an urgency inside of me, but I wasn’t a good—I didn’t know if I was a good barometer on this, because of the feelings that I had—and beside the fact, it didn’t matter: My 17 year-old, who’s running the show on the website-kind-of-thing—he wasn’t available, and I had to have a little patience. [Chuckles.]  I do!  I wanted the kid to graduate!  I don’t want to support him for another 20 years!  So—

ARONOFF: What was the moment that you knew this was going national?  That something big was about to happen?

RABBI NESENOFF: Well, I think it was the following day—when the E-mails started coming in.  More than us—we didn’t even check to realize that, within a day, a million people watched it, but we were— in fact, my son was at school, and we have on our iPhones, we can get—he gets the E-mail from whoever was E-mailing at the time.  We stopped it coming into the iPhone because it just broke the thing.  But it was—it wasn’t every second, it was every fraction of a second, we were getting E-mails, E-mails, E-mails, E-mails.  And still to this day—this is already two weeks later—the E-mails haven’t stopped.  Okay?

ARONOFF: Mm-hmm.

RABBI NESENOFF: A tremendous amount of people watched it, and are commenting on it in all different ways, and we knew, “Oh my goodness!  Look what we got here!”  And then, of course, it was the number one on Google.  Number one on YouTube.  It just blew up in that way that the bloggers were all over it.  Thousand of blogs.  Hundreds of thousands of Tweets—and then, of course, the mainstream press decided to just call every which way, and I wasn’t even set up for it.  It’s a personal story, also—just a guy—who posted something, and really had so many people calling, and had to somehow, without a PR company, without a press corps available to me, had to figure out how to manipulate and manage all these people calling in.

ARONOFF: So what was the first national story to pick it up—or national media—to pick it up?

RABBI NESENOFF: As far as television is concerned, Fox News actually had me on over the phone, and then I was there in person.

ARONOFF: All right.

RABBI NESENOFF: So that was—they were—people interviewed me concerning that.  I did learn a little about media, as far as—there seems to be some bias going on that I’ve been a little naive about also.  People will say, “Well, these people are this way, these people are this way,” and you always think, Come on.  They’re national—huge, international company, they have to report on things.  It’s amazing who didn’t report on it—not even just about me, doesn’t have to be about me—but didn’t report on the story.  Or who reported on it, and spoke about me, but didn’t take the time to pick up the phone and call me and ask me about it—just write things.  I think about All the President’s Men, the Watergate story where you saw Robert Redford sitting there, on the phone, saying, “If I’m right, don’t breathe, or say ‘Yes,’ or don’t say ‘Yes’”—“or just be quiet.”  They’re so worried that they should get a fact incorrect, that they can’t print the story unless!—well, those days are gone.  People write about whatever they want.  They make things up.  They write in stories—it’s not even—some of it, it’s not even—I don’t even know where it came from!  And some of it, they dig up to portray me, because they want to attack the message-giver.  If, God forbid, an anchorman reports on a rape taking place in Brooklyn, New York, we should now attack the anchorman?  Because he told such a horrendous story?  He reported on it?  People wanted to attack me, and tried to, tried to find something.  Who is this?  We have to make this rabbi—all of a sudden—who’s been on this Earth—for 50 years, doing only good things in the most incredible way, never asking for anything for it, didn’t have to be national, even if it was a national story—with Denny’s, I never went anywhere with that.  But they needed to somehow—If we can somehow discredit him, we now uplift Helen Thomas more.

ARONOFF: Another part of it is, you linked to a story on your website, RabbiLIVE.com, from the YID With LID, which is a blog, and it talks about “The traditional media’s biggest factual mistake was reporting that the controversy surrounding Thomas” was “making an anti-Israel comment.”  And it says this wasn’t about Israel, that “Helen Thomas got in trouble because her statement was anti-Semitic [Emphasis in original]. To suggest anything different is both a distortion of the truth, and propaganda for the anti-Semites who believe that Jews control the media and . . . Foreign [sic] policy.”  Do you agree with that view from YID With LID?

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.  100%.  This is about anti-Semitism, and I’ll tell you why it’s about anti-Semitism.  Listen: There has got to be peace in that region.  We’ve got to figure out a way of having people sit down and negotiate.  We’ve sometimes come close, maybe, but it didn’t happen.  There are issues.  There are issues within Israelis that disagree with their government.  And, by the way, they’re allowed to without being beheaded.  That’s one of the only countries in the region that can disagree with their government, and vote against their government, and protest their government, without being beheaded and killed.  There are American rabbis, there are Jews all over the world that might disagree with something Israel does, or doesn’t do.  And Israel sometimes disagrees with what they do themselves, and fix it!  But—but—when you start talking about the very existence of the state, that’s not up for negotiation.  That’s anti-Semitic.  That’s out of the realm of some political, geographical, regional discussion.  That’s not about fences, or Gaza, or Golan, or West Bank, East Bank, West Jerusalem, East Jerusalem.  You are talking about cleansing an area of a people that is established, is not even up for discussion, whether you believe God, or whether you believe the United Nations, okay?  Take one—it doesn’t matter to me—but never in the history has the United Nations mandated a region to be a country, and had anybody—anybody!—ever said, “Okay, we’re going to reverse that.”  So the very fact that the Jew—okay?—that for some reason the Jew has to sit there and continuously legitimize his very existence—this is anti-Semitism.  This isn’t a discussion over Gaza and blockades.  And that’s why, when they see a rabbi is the one who went ahead and exposed Helen Thomas, they have to attack me, and that becomes anti-Semitic.  Because the way they write it, it’s not written, “Gee, we disagree with you.”  I have 25,000 hate mails.  Some death threats.  It is an anti-Semitic topic, and the very fact that Helen Thomas didn’t just state her opinion—she said, basically, to cleanse that region—she also said the word “H”—I don’t know if we can say it over here—but she used the “H” word.  This is beyond a political, opinionated discussion.  This is a vile way that one speaks, you know, in front of two Jewish teenagers with yarmulkes on Jewish Heritage Day!  This is anti-Semitism!

ARONOFF: The “H” word is what?

RABBI NESENOFF: HELL!

ARONOFF: Okay. [Laughs.] Yeah, we can say that—

RABBI NESENOFF: Not “Helen.”  “Hell.”

ARONOFF: Right.  So then you were on Howard Kurtz, and he interrupted you, and I want to get you to finish the thought you were saying, which is, you said, “They’re accusing me of being some right-wing ambusher,” and “It kind of rocked my world a little, because I have to kind of reevaluate my life and my standing and the agendas, because,” yeah, “I’m a New York Democrat.  Jewish.  Liberal.  Supporter of Obama.  Donated to his candidacy for a year.  Said, ‘Give him a chance’ . . . Defended, watched all” these “liberal media.  And now I have to reevaluate” totally.

RABBI NESENOFF: Right . . .

ARONOFF: “I have to . . . speak” now “with all the different agendas, because” if I don’t—“if I was part of a team where their agenda was that Israel and the Jewish people don’t have a connection, which is exactly what Helen Thomas . . . said,” and then, basically you were cut off.  What is the rest of your thought?  Were you part of such a team, where their agenda was that Israel and the Jewish people don’t have a connection, when you were supporting Obama?

RABBI NESENOFF: Yeah.  I’ll tell you something.  Look: We’re given two political parties to choose from in this country, basically.  And people—really, there should be more.  Let’s start with that.  And two political parties—some people think they’re diametrically opposed, and one’s evil and the other’s an angel, and back and forth.  Listen, there are good people in both parties.  There are good people trying to make this country and this world a better place.  Fine.  We established that.  Some people are upset with the Tea Party.  I hear people saying, “Oh, this is a different type of thing.”  Hey, I welcome it!  Whether I agree or disagree at whatever time—good!  Another party!  How do you think Democrats and Republicans were formed?  They were formed out of those types of parties.  So let me establish that, that I respect all parties.  And we have to—what do we have to do?  We have to look at these parties, as I did, and figure, Where do I align myself?

And I will tell you, throughout my life, I’ve aligned myself with both sides at different times.  And I have to look at what’s their agenda.  And they have an agenda of ten things, or a hundred things, and you have to pick—Okay, which ones do I agree with and disagree with? Now, I guarantee you that most people who are members of a certain party obviously agree with most of those things, or there’s one specific thing that makes them agree with it, and even if their party has things they don’t agree with, they still have to be a member of it because, what else are they going to do?  Invent a semi-quasi party?  So, as any good American, I look over the agendas, and I say, “You know, this seems to be something that I agree with, on all these topics,” and maybe there are certain topics—I’m having some noise in the background here.  Sorry about that.  So maybe there are parties that I don’t agree with a lot of their things.  So what am I reevaluating?  What am I getting at?  I’m reevaluating that the various things that I had agreed with—do I have to give up the existence of Israel to agree with other things?  You know, if I’m somebody who says, “Hey, gays should have equal rights,” yeah, sure, that’s a humanity thing, I’m going to be very liberal about that, that’s great, that’s wonderful—but to say that, do I have to agree with the fact that Israel shouldn’t exist, and they should be allowed to have bombs thrown on them?  This is what I’m thinking about.  Is that something—that I have to—if I agree with, “Listen, people should be pro-choice!”—personally, I think that every life, every fetus is precious, and everything, but I think it should be up to the Church to do that, or the doctors, or whatever—look: this is a debate that goes on for years, the people who are pro-choice and people who are—I’m not pro-abortion, I was pro-choice!  But because of that, does that mean I have to say that I give up Israel’s right to exist?  So this is what I’m reevaluating.

ARONOFF: Okay.  Yeah.  So what is that connection regarding the Obama team, that you link that to the Helen Thomas incident?

RABBI NESENOFF: Okay.  Well, first of all, I’m looking at the way the relationship to Israel is, very strongly now.  As far as Obama has been so far—look, I had hope, I never believe in the world that isn’t—[unintelligible]—put in there for the United States, that there’d always be this strong connection with Israel, no matter which President it is, okay?  Every President has their own style, and maybe they take their patience, maybe one’s bending over backwards, like he did—you know, go to Cairo and “I want to show everybody I’m not going to do a heavy hand one way or the other,” and he takes his time—but there’s a Yiddish expression, it goes shoyn tsayt [best guess], and it means, “It’s time already!” [Laughs.]

ARONOFF: What?

RABBI NESENOFF: You can take your time and take your—shoyn tsayt. It means, “It’s time already.”  It means, “New.  Move it.”

ARONOFF: Right.  Okay.

RABBI NESENOFF: So it’s like, “Okay, you took your time, we know, and it’s good, and there—no one wants to run in, okay, you’re a diplomat”—I want my diplomats to be diplomats.  I don’t need Obama with guns in his hands, I need my soldiers with guns.  I need Obama with tactfulness.  And that’s good, and I respect it, and I like that about him.  This guy can talk—I need a talker!  But at some point, shoyn tsayt!  Move it! And when it comes to a friend—I mean, it’s mentioned—when it comes to a friend, you know what?  A friend is a friend is a friend.  Cops know it: They’re true blue to each other.  Soldiers, marines know it for each other.  And when it comes to Israel, this is a friend, and when Netanyahu shows up at your home, okay—you feed Arafat in your home!  You feed Netanyahu, you look after him, you talk to him, you treat him with respect.  This is a friend.  This is a friend who lives with dozens of countries with rockets and bombs faced at them on a regular basis, and this is a friend—and I’m very disappointed in that lack of friendship towards Israel.  He’s the one in charge now, Obama, and I would like to see him step up to the plate and make it clear that Israel has the right to exist, Israel is our friend, I’m going over there right now, I want to make everybody understand that I’ll bend over backwards in Cairo, and Gaza, and everybody, fine, and I’ll look out for your rights—but nobody should think for a moment that anything to do with this White House is anything but best of friends with this little state of Israel, who is a democracy, and who only wants good things, and who would never massacre anybody, would never hurt anybody, except—

ARONOFF: Right.

RABBI NESENOFF: —have the right to sustain itself. And I’ll tell you something: I was in Israel a few years ago, during that Lebanon war.  And I remember sitting in a hotel room, watching the television, and I saw President Bush get on television.  And no matter what I had, feelings about different things with his administration, I was in tears because I saw the only leader in the world get on world television, as I’m sitting in a country at war, and say, “Israel has the right to exist, and Israel has the right to defend herself, and we won’t stop her.”

ARONOFF: Okay.  We’re unfortunately running out of time, just have four or five minutes to go, so—

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.

ARONOFF: —let me try to get some quick answers from you.

RABBI NESENOFF: Please.

ARONOFF: Do you feel, in any way, there is a tone or an attitude toward Israel?  Obviously we’re referring to the last March, when Netanyahu was here, and there was no photo op and Obama walked out of the meeting.  But any tone, or an attitude, toward Israel coming from this administration that sort of emboldens people like Helen Thomas to more freely express how she really feels about the Jews and Israel than in the past?

RABBI NESENOFF: I know that she’s been saying this for 60 years, so I, number one, want to say, look: She’s been emboldened to say this, it’s just that I happened to—God has intervened and placed me there.  I truly believe at the right place, at the right time, and the right person—meaning me, also—to make sure that it was shown.  So I think it could have been, frankly, anybody in that White House.  Look: I could easily say, “She felt very comfortable because it was in the White House,” but she feels very comfortable to have said that, and I don’t think the jury’s out on what’s going on, but this is the man in our White House.  We have to—instead of me throwing darts at him, I have to do everything I can physically do, as one human being, to motivate him and push him.  I may disagree with, or agree with, other things—and that goes for Tea Party, it goes for Republicans, and—even if we disagree with a million things that he’s doing, we have to motivate him concerning this issue, and if he does the right thing on this issue, we should compliment him.  And I’ll tell you, one of the problems I do have with both sides—because they look at it like a football game, you love one side, you hate one side—when a politician, when a President does something, and even if he’s not a member of our party, and he does something that we like or dislike—we can like and dislike him!  We don’t have to just hate him because we didn’t vote for him.

ARONOFF: Right.

RABBI NESENOFF: We don’t have to just like him because we voted for him.  And I think some of the talk show hosts, they lose some of their credibility by not, sometimes, saying, “You know what?  He did right on this one—but there are still 20,000 things we have to fix.” And I think then there’s a little honesty in what they’re saying.

ARONOFF: Couple things.  In April, there was a McLaughlin poll that showed that 78% of Jewish voters had voted for Obama, but at that point, in April 2010, only 42% said they would vote for him again.  Are you finding yourself in that group that has moved away from him?

RABBI NESENOFF: I am definitely finding myself in a group that is terribly disappointed in him.

ARONOFF: Right.

RABBI NESENOFF: And I cannot—you know, listen: there are a lot of issues out there that I still might feel strongly towards but this is a life or death issue.  This affects world peace.  I’m willing to give up a couple of the other issues, here and there, to bring about world peace, to save world peace.  This is a big one.  And it’s not just Israel, because we know that this is affecting that whole region.  It affects us in downtown Manhattan.  So I’m definitely falling that way.  But, as I said, I’m not willing to go ahead and take a red marker out and just cross out someone’s name.  We have time to push this person to fix something, and then, when elections come, we can describe what we want.  But we have got to put pressure in a diplomatic, in a strong—whatever way, Tea Party way, whatever way—to say “This is what we need.”  And if you do it, we’ll applaud you and compliment you! We’ll give you credit for it, you deserve it!

ARONOFF: Listen, unfortunately we’re about out of time.  One more thing, though.  But I want to recommend people go to your website.  Again, it’s RabbiLIVE.com.  You have a great new video up there now from the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish boat that was boarded by Israelis, and this will show you the nature of the people who were on the boat, and what their intentions were for when the Israelis arrived.  But quickly, give me—what is the lesson about the power of new media, such as blogs and YouTube?  And—

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.

ARONOFF: —something quick about your near future plans, and then we’re going to have to let it go.

RABBI NESENOFF: Sure.  Sure, Roger.  I appreciate the time.  This whole story is interesting.  People say, “What’s the lesson here?”  The lesson goes beyond Israel, anti-Semitism, and everything else.  This is a lesson about media.  Number one, Helen Thomas, of course, being in the White House for so many years, we should review now everything she’s ever reported on, and make corrections, because now we know what glasses she was wearing.  Two, it’s about the media today, that doesn’t feel any responsibility—or some of the media, obviously, some submedia—doesn’t feel any responsibility to just put things up.  They can put something up things about the rabbi—you know, they put something up about me doing a Spanish accent.  It was part of a Purim spiel!  A children’s play that ten people saw!  But they want to make me out to be a racist—how dare they!  How silly is that?  How stupid of them, how buffoonish of them to call themselves journalists and not use the luxury of this beautiful media of Internet in a responsible fashion.  And so this is ultimately a story of media and how we use it with sanctity.  People look at media and Internet and blogs more than they look at the Bible.  You know what?  By that alone, it becomes holy.  There’s sanctity to it.  And they should write it like writing a Bible.  They should write with that type of care, because it affects so many people.  We can heal the world, or we can hurt the world, and you have the pen to do it, or the microphone to do it.  Anyway, I appreciate using this time, also, to speak, and good luck to you, Roger, as well.

ARONOFF: Thank you!  Our guest has been Rabbi David Nesenoff, RabbiLIVE.com.  I highly recommend it, and his son’s website, ShmoozePOINT?  Is that it?

RABBI NESENOFF: ShmoozePOINT.com.  And by the way, I’m speaking—I’m being asked to speak.  If you go to my website, and you want to hear this voice, somewhere, saying a few things, and have a personal touch of Q and A, people are asking me to speak, and I’m more than delighted to talk about these very important issues.

ARONOFF: Thank you, Rabbi, for being with us today on Take AIM.

RABBI NESENOFF: Thank you, Roger.