On January 23rd 2024, Shabtai hosted former New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief/Current Editor in Chief of the Forward, Jodi Rudoren at the Anderson Mansion, for dinner and conversation with student leaders at Yale University.
Editor-in-Chief of the Forward Jodi Rudoren: October 7th
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Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Thank you. That was fantastic. But I don't think you answered Toby's question. Toby's question was it was kind of broad, but she got very specific about why you think the groups that did so much for women have been so silent about the rape of Jewish women in Israel?
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah, I mean, I sorry, I did skip over that because I also think the moment of that story has really passed. Like, I don't I mean, I think.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Maybe. I mean I still feel it so it's still on my mind.
Jodi Rudoren: I still think it. I think it's like. No, I mean, it's not like.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: And women around me, I.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Mean, the hypocrisy. We're talking about the hypocrisy.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. No, I get it. Except I also think I totally get it, but I don't know. I also think that most reasonable people totally know there was rape. Um, and have acknowledged it. And I mean, you're right, the mainstream women's groups took a long time, and that was really upsetting. And UN women in particular. And then there was this big campaign against them, and now they've all kind of acknowledged it, I think. I also think there's something else going on, though, that I think. I think that, um. There's a thing that's happening with Israeli Jews in particular, maybe with some Jews here. It's like people want to feel better about. So I think that like, I think there's been. I don't know. I don't think there was ever a moment where any reasonable person didn't understand that there was a horrible terrorist attack that was barbaric and brutal and inhumane on October 7th. People were, I mean, there were there was, um, besides the rape, there was the grandmother who was killed and put on her Facebook. There was beheadings, there was babies. There was. And I think that the fuss over exactly how many of this kind of brutality or that was, is a little bit like, what? What's the point? Like I there was a really brutal terrorist attack. There has also been a response that has been devastating with a very high death toll.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, there still are these 100, more than 100 hostages still in captivity. Israel does not have a plan for the day after that. Is that all reasonable? Like all of those things are true and the right thing to do, the Jewish thing to do, I think, is to look at all of those things and to try to grapple with all of that complexity and difficulty. And I think some of the people, not you, I'm sure, who want to focus on why X or Y celebrity or X or Y group isn't talking enough about the rape of the women on October 7th is like a little bit of a deflection. Like, um, and also, I mean, you know, The New York Times did this really amazing story led by a friend of mine, Jeffrey Gettleman, about the rape. And it included a bunch of stuff about why the evidence was destroyed exactly or ignored. And one of the reasons why there was. I mean, you know, President Biden talked about rape on October 10th, on Tuesday in his very first speech. Actually, when he talked about it, there was- the IDF had not confirmed that there was any rape. So he was like he and Netanyahu were ahead of the evidence, which was never to say when we wrote a story saying that which we got some crap for.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, and I never occurred to me that there hadn't been rape, but it was also- it was interesting as to why how it got ahead of of its own, of the evidence. But I think, like, I don't know, I feel like this is a little bit of a side show and I feel like some of it is about
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: you think it was a side show?
Jodi Rudoren: No, I think the obsession about which women and which women's groups had, which kind of response is a bit of like, it's like to make us feel better about how victimized we were. And I think, like, I don't think I don't think again, I don't think there is any, um, politician in America. Um, I don't think there's any serious person who does not understand that there were rapes on October 7th, um, and that it was brutal. And I'm not disagreeing with you that in November there wasn't enough attention to it, but I feel like it's like I'm kind of over that. I've moved on from that moment. I feel like there wasn't enough attention and then there was more attention. And we all know there was rape. And why are we still talking about it?
Rabbi Shmully Hecht Simplifies October 7th for Jodi Rudoren
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Rabbi Shmully Hecht: I'm going to close. So I want to just again, thank everybody for coming out and staying a little bit past our usual time. Jodi, thank you for coming. It was fantastic to have this conversation. I think it's a conversation that should continue. And frankly, I think the YDN should probably have you back as a YDN event or maybe a Masters tea. Or Manuscript, you said you were in Manuscript And maybe a master's tea, a manuscript. You said your manuscript. So I don't know who's in manuscript, but you should be on campus more often. I think this is a the beginning of a much larger conversation with young people. Um, but I, uh, and I, and I want to say one thing in closing, um, based on what you both spoke about at the end. So this is not a critique of The New York Times or the Forward or of anything either of you said tonight. Um, but I have a different perspective, and I just want to share it with everybody here tonight, which is this is actually much, much more simple than we think. There's nothing complicated about it. All the complexities have actually fallen to the wayside. October 7th is evidence that, um, you know, 3000 people were sent in to annihilate the Jewish people to rape, pillage, behead, burn to death Jews for being Jews. And the leaders of the movement that that initiated the war said multiple times publicly that they would do it over and over and over again. There's nothing more simple than that. Now, going back to the historical question of Jewish independence, the Jewish homeland, there's a much longer conversation. Judging which side is wrong or which side is right is something that every person can can judge for themselves.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: What we can't judge, um, subjectively, is facts. The Hamas sent 3000 people to to annihilate and murder Jews, women, children at a at a at a at a music rave. They raped them. They burned them to death. They put them in ovens. They went into rooms and threw grenades into children. They slaughtered kids. They took women on motorcycles back and raped them and continue to do so and have these people in their basements. The population of Gaza is not demonstrating against Hamas. The Islamic world hasn't stood up against Hamas. The Muslim leaders in this country mostly have not come out to condemn Hamas. The leaders of the Arab world have not come out to condemn Hamas. Thank God America is a sane country. Some European countries are still sane. Um. That is the fact. It's very simple, very, very difficult for all of us normal people to accept. And the frustration of why the women's groups who claim to be for women and the the maybe Black Lives Matters groups that claim to be for certain minority groups or certain blacks haven't made the statement. The frustration I think that a lot of us are having is the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy, the terrible hypocrisy that in this instance, these groups that claim to fight for these underdogs, for these for the minorities, for people of one year old baby, 25 year old woman, Holocaust survivors have been silent. So how much more simple. Let me let me finish, please, if you don't mind.
Jodi Rudoren: Because it's just. No.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: If you don't mind, can I finish? I promise I'll let you speak. Um, so it's not. It's just the the the where I'm disagreeing with you, respectfully is to call this complex. I think most people in this room are very intelligent. It's not complex. It's very simple. Now, if you want to go back to justifying it or how did it come about or what could possibly justify something like that to happen? That's a that's the big narrative of Israel and the Palestinian population that lives in Israel. And the two state solution, all those questions. But what happened on October 7th, thank God, unfortunately, but thank God has shown the world the true color of what the people in Israel are dealing with. And unfortunately, it's spilled over to the world of what the Jewish people are dealing with. And hopefully the more simple we can actually narrow in and focus in on it and understand what it is, the faster we're going to solve the problem. That's my opinion.
Jodi Rudoren: So all I would say is, you know, I don't disagree with your characterization of the straightforward horror that happened on October 7th, but it is beneath you to suggest or argue or present that that is that slice of the story is the whole story. There's a lot of things that happened before October 7th, and there's 109 days or whatever, 110 days since October 7th. And so to say that it's simple, because this horrible thing happened on October 7th is, is really reductionist. So it's not about justifying what happened on October 7th at all. It's just about seeing the whole picture. So there's a big picture with a lot of parties and history and ideology, and I don't think that you have to I mean, I think it's. It's very twisted, I think, to suggest that in order to see the whole thing that's about justifying what happened. There's no justification for terrorism and for brutality and barbarism. But that doesn't mean that the lack of justification for what happened on October 7th means that there's no Palestinian humanity or Palestinian, uh, nationalism, or that you can't understand those things, or that the level of death and destruction in Gaza is simple. So it's just it's I mean, it's like to say like this one thing is simple, and therefore the whole thing is simple, I think is oversimplified. So.
My Life in Journalism | Jodi Rudoren
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Gabriel Diamond: Please join me in welcoming Jodi Rudoren.
Jodi Rudoren: Well, I got to shorten up that bio.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: It's fantastic. But why? So, um, I'm just going to, you know, ask you a few questions just to get us really comfortable because I think, I think that it's really amazing that we have this opportunity to have Jodi here. And I know that there are aspiring journalists in the room or journalists already. We got several here from the YDN, and so I figured we'd just get comfortable and then we'd open up to Q&A. Maybe, um, we'll see how we go.
Jodi Rudoren: Great.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Sound good?
Jodi Rudoren: Sounds good.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: So, um. Your your career is expansive. It's every journalist's dream, probably every writer's dream. I mean, can you tell us a little bit how you got started? I mean, being managing editor of the YDN to where you are today? I mean, that's a huge spread and amazing. Like, I had a million questions. I was I don't even didn't even know where to start. So we're just going to we're going to go and see how it goes. But I think that that would be great for sure.
Jodi Rudoren: I was going to when we were talking about correspondence, I was going to say, so my father died a year ago, and we've just moved my mom into like an independent living community. And so we've been cleaning out their house, and it's been amazing to find correspondence from our past and from our ancestors past. And one of the things I found was my college recommendation by my high school journalism teacher. Um. Who thought I was really, really awesome.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Wow, you never saw the letter? You didn't.
Jodi Rudoren: No I did see it. No. Yeah, I had it in my house, but I hadn't seen it in 30 years.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Okay.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, anyway, so I started doing journalism. The point is, when I was 13 years old, um, I'm the youngest of three sisters. My second sister had taken the journalism class when she was a junior, so it was the best class at the high school. You could take it any time you want. So I took it as a freshman, I was hooked, I was editor of my high school newspaper, and I really loved it, but I, I did not think that was what I wanted to do with my life, in fact, or even in college. Um, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and a senator. That was my very like, it's very Yale, right? To be like, yeah, I want to be a senator. Um, although it's funny, my roommate from Yale just was confirmed as a federal judge, so, you know, it happens. Um, but it was funny. I remember very clearly my interview, actually, for Columbia. I said I wanted to be a lawyer and a senator, and the person was like, you know, maybe you should go into journalism. Like, we have a lot of lawyers. We really need good journalists. And I was like, no, no, no. And then I remember very clearly when I was a freshman here, I went to the first meeting of the Yale Daily News.
Jodi Rudoren: And those of you who worked at the Yale Daily News. So, you know, it was up in the boardroom which looked even stuffier then. It now has a lot of like lighter pictures, but it was very like imposing this big wooden table anyway. And there are like 60 people there. And the editor, Chris Sheridan, we all went around the room and of course, everybody had been editor in chief of their high school newspaper. I was like, not very impressive. And also Chris, who I adored, kept saying how you didn't need any experience at all. No experience necessary. And I'm like, I have all this experience. So I was not excited by this moment of at the Yale Daily News. I did I took a story as I left this. Actually, I remember very clearly the story was, um, it was a feature story about older students, like people who were grown ups. And the lead that I wrote was about a guy who had fought in World War II, who was taking a class about World War II. Um, anyway, I got really hooked. I came back those those who were at the Elderly News will understand this and those who aren't, I'm sorry, but, um, I ended up turning the story in, like, in October, in the week before elections. And so it was this thing where all the people who were running to be editor in chief were, like, hanging around extra, like nobody.
Jodi Rudoren: Everybody wanted to impress their friends and colleagues about how committed they were. So there were all these really cool, funny, funny, sarcastic. And as it happened, very good looking men who all were running for editor in chief and they were just all hanging around, copy edit room. And, um, I was like, I like this place. This seems really cool. Um, but I still didn't, um, know I wanted to do this. I also got really involved in the Yale Political Union. Um, yeah. Um, the Liberal Party, um, although super random, I think it was like, just because of who my friends were, and I just, I had this kind of I had a couple of different sort of transformational moments. Um, one was I was walking across old campus and I lived in Wright Hall and somebody I was my friend of mine asked me some question about Wright Hall, and I was like, I don't know, but I can find out. And I just, um, remembered like that, like feeling so turned on by that idea of being able to find shit out and knowing how to find stuff out, knowing how to ask the right person the right question, and and the idea that I now have I mean, I've basically now spent the last 30 years being paid to find out answers to questions, which is pretty incredible.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, so that was a light going on. And then also, I had all these friends who were really active both in the political union and in also just as activists and doing various causes. And I was sort of covering a protest and my friends were like speaking at the protest. And I just sort of increasingly understood that where I was most comfortable standing in the world was observing and listening and not talking about my own, um, how, you know right I was about everything. Um, and I mentioned this just because my philosophy about journalism is people sometimes ask, like, when did you decide you wanted to be a journalist or, you know, and it's like, I, it's not a thing I do. It's a thing I am. It's very much about where you stand in the world, observer and not actor person, a person who finds stuff out. And I think as journalism itself has been so transformed by technology, um, it's become even more important to remember that, that that the core of it is actually still the same. It's like about seeking truth. It's about storytelling. It's about holding power to account. It's about bearing witness. And it doesn't matter if you do that on TikTok or in a, you know, 800 word, uh, column.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: What would you say? I mean, you you went from from Yale straight to the L.A. times, is that right?
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. I had an internship at the LA Times, and then they hired me.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: And then how long were you there? You were there for?
Jodi Rudoren: I was there for, um. I was five years in LA. I went I went literally like a week after I graduated here. I drove cross country in a 1981 Buick Skylark, um, and started this internship. And then I, and I thought I was going for the summer, and then I got hired, and I was weird because I was like, suddenly in Los Angeles, where I very much do not belong. Um, nice place, but not they don't really get my jokes. Um, anyway, um, sorry if you're from Los Angeles.
Jodi Rudoren: I actually just had a very nice vacation there. Um, but, um, so I spent I spent two years in Orange County, which is the suburbs of the south. It was at the time there was a 200 person newsroom in Orange County, and there was a newspaper war there with the Orange County Register. It was a different time. Sad. LA Times just cut 20% of its newsroom yesterday. Yeah. Um, anyway, and then I went and covered City Hall, um, in Los Angeles after I covered actually, my big break was I covered this, the largest municipal bankruptcy in history happened in Orange County in 1994. And it was like really a big break for me. Um, and then I went and covered City Hall, and then I went to the Washington bureau of the LA Times. I thought, well, I'm going to stay here. It's going to have to be not in LA. Right. Um, and then I ended up in The New York Times. I see I was only at the LA times for one more year. So six years altogether and then 21 at the New York Times.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: All right. So the LA Times, then The New York Times, and which you were for years in Jerusalem. Right. And some time in Chicago.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Covering elections, um, starting incredible things. You won, I guess, newyorktimes.com the first Emmy for One in 8 Million, which is incredible.
Jodi Rudoren: My kids were just giving me crap about my Emmy is not very polished or something like I let it tarnish.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Oh, gosh. It's it's it's like a martini.
Jodi Rudoren: I have an Emmy. Shut up.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Exactly. For those of you who haven't seen One in 8 Million, it's about the kind of everyday life of, like, the New York region, I guess 8 million.
Jodi Rudoren: It was. It was these- it was three minutes. It was really. It was really. It's funny because it's so it was so innovative and-.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: For the time.
Jodi Rudoren: So not anymore. It was the first digital first project of the New York Times had done like it was. We had to downstream it into print. We and it was, um, this thing, these things called audio slideshows. Does anybody remember the audio slideshow? Not really. Right. It had a moment and then it was gone. But this was like, you know, now you have like the cascading article video, whatever. This was just so they were um, they were three minute audio monologues, highly edited and gorgeous, gorgeous black and white photos and by this Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, um. And they were presented in what again, at the time in 2009 was like this very like ambitious and creative. Um, um. Interactive. It was like this. The photos cast. We did it. We did 50. We did it for a year. So it was over 50. There were 50 of them, or 55 of them, I think. And um, they would like cascade by and then stop on the one. And anyway, they were and the point was that they were about regular people. So we had we had three rules. What was very interesting about this project was there were these new people coming to the Times who had different backgrounds and different skills, and there were these two young women who had these background in audio and but they and they but they didn't really know how to like, do the Times, you know.
Jodi Rudoren: So I was the sort of traditionalist who was- I was the executive producer. They knew I didn't know anything about audio. I did, I did, I did one myself to be part of it, but I was just the one who was supposed to make sure that, like, the stories sort of held up to Time standards. But anyway, we had three criteria for picking the people. Um, they had to live in the five boroughs of New York. Um, I'm going to forget the third one. Oh, they had to be a good talker. You had to sound good on audio. Doesn't matter if you have a good story, if you can't talk. Um, and they had to have never had their name appear in The New York Times before or really in any paper. So. And that was, like surprisingly hard. But the idea was to get out of the, um, of that familiar, the people who we always cover. And so they were really everyday people. And the idea was obviously everybody has a story. Um, yeah. I also invented I, some people I don't know if you guys are like Times obsessives, but people are always very excited when I say that I invented the Sunday Routine, the column in the in the metropolitan section of what people do on Sundays. Anyway.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: So that was great. I was reading a story of a man, Mr. Cotton, who was a grandfather in the Bronx. This is, I mean, if you had a chance to check out this, this project, you should.
Jodi Rudoren: I'm impressed that you were able to, because for a while it was not online anymore, I don't know.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: So I was able to pick up a few, but.
Jodi Rudoren: Oh okay.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: One of them actually, that I did, I actually didn't see it, I read it, I read his story, and I loved it, and it kind of reminded me a little bit or touched on your article that you wrote about your great grandfather, um, while you were cleaning your your parents home. Sorry. In Newton. Um, uh, but this Mr. Cotton who has, or he's watching- he watches his four grandchildren. Actually, I don't know what year when this was. I don't know if you're familiar with this. If you remember,
Jodi Rudoren: I don't remember.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Just fabulous. He was describing about how he doesn't, um watching his grandchildren, he doesn't teach them anything. He just wants to them perhaps to um, I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, um, you know, if they glean kind of any insight just from being around him and from the things he shows him, and, you know, one day they'll remember that their grandfather showed them this and it kind of illuminates or gives them insight, you know, that to him was how he wanted to present himself as like, kind of like a a role model to them. And I love that because, you know, that's how I felt about my grandparents. And I still feel like, you know, I they showed us how to live versus telling us how to live. Um,
Jodi Rudoren: I'm so moved by how many of the people at this table are in some kind of correspondence with a person much older than them?
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Yes, I love that.
Jodi Rudoren: And like, it's really interesting to think about, um, and I think it's really hard to do so.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Also, not a lot of people are interested necessarily in communicating with people with, you know, I guess, you know, who who have, I guess, longer perspectives of life. You know, it's people are very much today about living in the present. And what I loved about your piece, um, so Jodi wrote a piece in the, in the Forward recently about cleaning your family's.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: And kind of like the emotion about being able to go through things which, you know, today, you know, in during a war and in the aftermath of destruction, people not having anything to homes to go home to. And I love that I totally understood that. And I think at the same time, it's so important to be able to connect to your to have that nostalgia. It's a it's a real gift. And I loved what you said about finding your grandfather, your great grandfather's wealth. And I love the fact also that your named after your great grandfather, right? Yeah. Yitzchok Yahoshua.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Um, and Zaydy Shea, by the way, Shmully has a great grandfather who was a Zaydi Shia as well, a third generation. He was Shmully's sixth generation American. But. And I loved his his description. I just loved the way you wrote it. It was so poignant and so important. And, uh, you know, you describe that, you know, he he taught your father how to be a Jew, and thereby you. And I just wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about what that— that was really a strong statement. I want to.
Jodi Rudoren: Sure.
Jodi Rudoren: I mean, so there were a couple of things about the column. First of all, so his will, this is a person who is very big in my father's life, um, and who, you know, I never knew and didn't know that much about, honestly. And I'd never seen this will, although, um, someone who wrote to me, they had they, they had like 20 years ago had the same experience of finding this will. They're they're a cousin. His brother is their grandfather and their, I guess, father had said, like, look at this. So it was this was one page typed will, and it's it's just super simple. It's like, um, you know, forgive me and don't carry me into the synagogue. It's just like very specific instructions, which my father also had very specific instructions about his funeral. Um, so that was interesting. And then it's like it literally said like it's like, here's an A gate. He gave $25 to each of these few places, five places, the synagogue, the Hebrew school, the cemetery. And he died in 66. So like, it's only like $250 now. Like it's not like he just didn't have any. You know, we I'm not from a family of of means, but there was something just incredible about this simplicity. So that was one thing that was very moving about it. And it's just, um, so this cousin has this long lost cousin has reached out to me.
Jodi Rudoren: He's got, like, our whole family tree on some website called Jenny Something, and he's going to now do a zoom with a bunch of cousins to show us all how to. And, like, I don't know, today, he seems to. Yesterday he sent us something about how we might be related to Elvis Presley. But I. It's possible he's like Looney Tunes, this guy, but we'll find out. Um, and, um. But yeah, the other thing was it's just interesting. It's also interesting, again, thinking about the correspondence and that some of it is from WhatsApp. And my son was saying the other day that, like, he's a photographer and his hard drive is screwed up, and I'm like, "Why do you even need a hard drive? How about the cloud?" But it's just interesting. Like this paper, like we have so much paper and the going through and the culling and you know, we're lucky I live my parents had this big basement. They didn't live in a big house, but they had this very, um, a lot of storage. And I actually do live in kind of a big house, so we have plenty of room to keep stuff. So then you keep these things, but, like, who wants them? I mean, like, I have, like, every note I passed that someone passed to me, like, in high school, which my parents had somehow kept. And now they're in my house and I do not want them at all.
Jodi Rudoren: But so we had an interesting time going through stuff and actually really picking things out very carefully. And then, you know, you come home and you want to show them to your kids and they're totally uninterested. I mean, they're kind of or they have a I don't know, it's just interesting to think about what we save. The longer you save something, the more the harder it is to throw it out. But which things you say? But but it was funny because a lot of the things that I found in my, first in my father's things, and then in this longer family archive last, right after he died, my mom gave us each this envelope of stuff that was in his desk that he had saved for us. And my envelope had a bunch of things that I would have expected, stuff from my wedding, stuff that I clips of mine. But it also had these two emails he had printed out, um, from when I was in Israel. And, um, there was this. And so one of them was about I had decided after the 2014 war in Gaza, which was a very, very intense I mean, it seems silly now to say, but it was intense at the time. Um, anyway, I decided that we really needed a vacation and we went to, uh, Crete, I think, for over Sukkot.
Jodi Rudoren: And my dad was very disappointed that we were going to, like, blow off Sukkot. And he told me it like on like every Yom Kippur when we were, like, apologizing to each other or something. And I was really mad. I was like, this is not good parenting like you. I understand, like, it's fine to be just me, but like, it's too late. Like you're telling me it too late for me to make a change. Like, either tell me earlier or tell me after it's over that you were disappointed, but, like, you're not. This wasn't helpful. I mean, that was one. And I wrote him this very hard, harsh email that was more articulate than what I just said. And it was. And he had printed it out and saved it for, you know, all these years. And the other one was even more interesting. Um, he, uh. There was really one. My my father was a leader in this Orthodox synagogue. Um, got a lot of crap about my coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict from people in his universe. This one guy I remember, actually, he didn't say it to my parents, said it to one of their good friends. He said, what happened to her? She was raised in this community. Like what happened to her? Anyway, my dad was- did not, um, give me much feedback on my coverage, but this one time he did. It was, um, it's a really rambling answer, but I think it's going to get to things that you might be interested in.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, it was, uh, I was covering something about a conflict on the Temple Mount, um, where there had been one of these very, very intense clashes. And actually Jordan had withdrawn its ambassador. It was really a crisis again, like, things have gotten so much worse that but it was unprecedented at the time. And, um, my dad was one of several people who had said to me that the articles we wrote about it, he was like, there was you didn't have enough context because it didn't say so. For those who don't know, the Temple Mount is also the Al-Aqsa mosque. Um, and it's controlled by Jordan. It has been since 67. Israel basically captured this area as part of the old city in 67, but immediately handed it over to Jordan to control, um for concern about this, you know, this holy, holiest place, third holiest place in Islam, holiest place in Judaism. This is going to be really problematic place. Um, and Jews are not allowed to pray there. Um, and so my dad and some other, like, pro-Israel types criticized me at the time for not including in these articles that, um, that that before 1967, Jordan had not allowed Jews to go to the Western Wall.
Jodi Rudoren: Jordan had controlled the whole old city, and Jews were not allowed access to the Western Wall, because now this was about access to the Temple Mount. At the same time, I was getting some criticism from the left for not mentioning in my article that people who lived in Gaza at the time were not allowed to go to the Temple Mount, because they aren't allowed to. They it was difficult to get a permit to leave Gaza at all. Um, and both of these were under the rubric of you don't have enough context in your article. Both of these things also seem to me to be not at all like essential to an article about, like, Jordan withdrawing its ambassador over this clash. Um, and this question of how much context to put in any individual article in the New York Times about these early Palestinian conflict is a perennial question. So I'd really gotten into it with my dad. I'd written him this very harsh email back, and again, he printed this out and saved it. And I thought it was quite a thing that he had saved these emails where I was like, you know, being kind of mean to him, um, but also being kind of forceful. So I don't know.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: That's really interesting. And he left them to you.
Jodi Rudoren: They were just in his. No, they were he had just kept them.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: He kept them. He printed them and kept them.
Jodi Rudoren: He printed them. They were in his Jodi file of whatever. I don't know why he printed that kept them. Maybe he read them over and over to himself about.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: He's trying to figure it out.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Um, speaking of personal and stories and anecdotes, we spoke on the phone and you mentioned that you like to be- you are personal. You share a lot of personal things in your articles. I don't know if you always have something new, but that's sometimes you get pushback because of it. And I'm wondering, as somebody in the profession of writing and. Um, how do you balance? Is there a balance between what's this? How do we balance professional professionalism and personal within writing and journalism and is do we have to? I mean, today, you know, it's interesting because I meet young people who, when they're in their job and they're in their office, they have a whole different persona than they are when they're not. And their voice changes, their mannerism changes. They're they're different people. I literally can get on the phone with somebody and her voice is different. And once she secludes herself in her office by herself, her whole body and her mannerism on the on the phone changes and I'm wondering, um. You like to blur the lines a little, but there you're getting some pushback. I personally love it. I think it's really great that you can be your whole self all the time. Have you always been that? Was that something new?
Jodi Rudoren: That's a great question. I mean, I do really believe in the idea of bringing your whole self to work, and I am really I'm really unpretentious and believe in sort of transparency, part of a kind of radical honesty philosophy that is very rooted in journalism, I think. Um, and my, my husband says that I have no orange cones in my head, like the normal things that stop people from saying things that they shouldn't say I don't have. Um, but so it's interesting. I mean, you know, I had a pretty traditional career in terms of reporting. And, you know, in the 90s when I worked at these major newspapers, you know, we didn't write in the first person. And we, um, there was this, like objectivity or whatever. I did always have a little bit of I did always write, um, kind of on the side, like, not my actual job, but I would occasionally write these different personal essays. I wrote about my grandmother, my great grandfather's daughter - excuse me - who, um, she was getting married for the fourth time, and I wrote about her. I wrote about I wrote about her weddings and about how, like, I was afraid. And I was 29, that she had, like, or younger than 29, I guess. But she had used up all of her weddings and started in on mine or whatever. Um, and the headline was when Harry met Goldie and it, um, it put all of her wedding pictures.
Jodi Rudoren: And that also led me to this really interesting correspondence. Somebody who, someone in LA who saw this photo was like, we must be related because your grandmother's wedding photo was in my house, like, who are you? And this was like before all those genealogy websites started. Um, I also wrote um. Uh, I at some point did I, I, I did the Atkins diet in like, I don't know when and I wrote this essay about like how the lead of it was about like all the eggs that I'd eaten. And anyway, I wrote this essay and it was very funny because it was very like out there, I was talking about losing weight and blah, blah, blah. And my boss and real mentor at the time was Ethan Bronner. And I, as soon as the essay ran, I got this call from like, I don't remember, I think it was NBC news. They, like, wanted me to be on the nightly news to talk about my essay. And Ethan, I think very smartly, was, I was like 30 years old, and I think he very smartly was like, I don't think you really want to be on the national news talking about losing weight, like you're a very serious journalist. Like, why don't you wait to get on the national news about, like what your actual work and that was not a bad piece of advice. But when I started writing this column for the Forward, a couple interesting things happened.
Jodi Rudoren: I mean, when I came to the Forward, people wanted me to write like editorials, and I'd never really written opinion before. I'd done a decent amount of these first persons, and we had started to bring the first person into reported pieces and serious pieces. But I didn't write opinion. I was a news reporter and editor and, um, and I didn't know what to do. People were like, you have to write these opinion pieces. People need to know what the editor of the Forward says about this and such, and I didn't have it in me to write like, here's what you should think about X political thing about intermarriage. My predecessor had written like, she's really opposed to intermarriage, and she was like constantly writing editorials about why intermarriage was bad. And I was like, I just don't think that way. I don't really want to tell people what to do. So I was trying to figure out what what does my value add, what could I what could I do in this column and what I- Ethan, actually, I forgot this. Um, Ethan said to me about a year into writing the column- he said, "you've perfected the genre of the news and me" which, of course, was not a genre or is not a genre, but but that's what I basically do, is I try to connect, like whatever's happening or whatever I decide to write about with.
Jodi Rudoren: Like my experience as a journalist like this profile I did last week about the Gaza woman, like her sister, is a stringer I worked with in Gaza. So I know her. And I wrote a column earlier in the war about Al-Shifa hospital when when the IDF took the hospital, because I've been to Al-Shifa a lot, so it connected to my own experience there. And sometimes that's about my kids. I also think that, um. I also think that a lot of the world's problems are best understood at the kitchen table. You know, I think that when you talk, I'm one of the I might write a book in this franchise. But my- during the 2021 conflict in Gaza, my daughter said to me, she's like you. She said you have to do a column answering people's questions, kids questions about Gaza, because all of my friends have all these questions and like, they don't have anyone to answer them. Like you're answering to me at our at our breakfast table, so I did. She went out and collected a bunch of her friends questions, and I did a column like that. And I've now done, I think, three kids questions about Israel and Gaza. Um, and it's super interesting. But anyway, I just think that like, um, I think people I don't know this like a false detachment between what's happening in the world and what's happening in your, in your life and your experience.
Jodi Rudoren: And I think connecting it makes it more relatable, makes it more memorable. Um, I also wrote, I mean, you know, people thought I wrote, um, I think in the fall of 2021, I wrote a story about, um, my fertility journey. I have twins, as I said, um, I always used to tell the joke, I've been pregnant twice. I've had two abortions. How many kids do I have? Um, because I had a traumatic pregnancy that, um, uh, I was advised to terminate. And then, um, after I did, I then did IVF and was pregnant with triplets. And the numbers on triplets are very bad for the babies and for the mom. And so I was encouraged to do a procedure called selective reduction, which is also an abortion. Anyway. So I wrote this piece about that. I thought it was important to write a piece, you know. Nobody talks about those abortions. Really. Um, and, uh, you know, 1 in 4 women have had an abortion in America, and many of them are really, you know, kind of routine and very, um, normal people. I mean, not not like some tragic circumstance. And so, anyway, I wrote this long piece that everyone thought was super brave and but it was just it was also very matter of fact. I think, um, I think the headline was something like My Abortion Story because it's true and real and people shouldn't be afraid to talk about it. Right.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Was it hard for you?
Jodi Rudoren: You know, it was I think I was it hard to write it? I mean, it, you know, I write my columns really on. I almost never write a word of them before Friday mornings. I do it in this very compact. And that week I did do it earlier. I wanted to make sure it got edited. Um, I think one of the things that was hard about that my kids was, you know, we've always been pretty honest with my kids. They were old enough to now hear the whole story. But knowing that this was going to be written like and that this would be the record they would refer to back about it, I think I was worried about that a little bit. Um. I don't know. I thought it was important, but it was definitely new for me to do that. Um, and again, it's important for me, it wasn't a story about, like, abortion should be legal or Roe v Wade is great. It was just a story about here's what's true. Yeah.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: That's a nuanced very.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, I hope so.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Yeah. Um. So I guess, um, before we open it up a little bit to questions, I wanted to just, um, dive into- I was going to ask you about your your highs and lows in the, in the industry, but. And get to that too, um, but you know, being that we are, you know, October 7th, we spoke, you know, the other day when we were talking and you said, that's essentially a lot of what, you know, you're doing, what you're reporting on and you're writing for, and your editor in chief of a of a Jewish journal now, um, is that is is this a lot different covering this for many reasons. Um, but since, you know, leaving the Times and now. You know, you know, being the voice of a Jewish paper and to the Jewish world, but also as a Jewish paper to the world in a very critical time and something that even our generation, our parents generation, we have been witnessed. Um. And how I mean, how has that been for you personally? How do you navigate that for yourself as somebody in the industry, but also as somebody who's covered beforehand for different type of paper? How is it different now? And um, as editor in chief, is there a certain, um, not control, but is there a certain narrative that you'd like to kind of present? Um, being that the response to October 7th has been nothing we could have ever dreamed as far as, um, I mean, we're we're on campus here.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Yale's been interesting. We've had other campuses that, you know, um. We don't I don't have to elaborate on that. But, you know, we are dealing with things that that we have never had to deal with, not in our generation. And and the reality is, is that I'm not sure I don't know if any of us know exactly how to navigate, um, the rising anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment that we're seeing in ways that we never thought, in ages that we've never seen. Um, just to give you, you know, to speak with. For me, I think the most concerning, um, and I don't know if you're hearing about this, you know, as you think about students in medicine, you know, in the medical school. Um, and you think about these are future. These are future doctors and nurses who have unbelievable responses to women who were, you know, such violence against women who five minutes ago, literally, we were marching in the street for to end violence against women. And something about the story about women and children, and it's just not something I don't think anyone has encountered in this degree of, of the inability to really call it for these many organizations and institutions who who have been standing up for women and have suddenly gone silent. And how are you navigating this, Jodi? I really I really want to know.
Jodi Rudoren: I mean, it's funny because you know, it was a pretty intense fall and a lot of people would be like, you know, how are you holding up? And I was very aware that as as challenging and intense, um, as my current job is, it was a lot, um, simpler than my prior job and my, than Patrick Kingsley's job as the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times. It is a very, very I mean, it's just, first of all, just an enormous amount of work. And the scrutiny is relentless and mostly not in good faith. And so it is a really difficult- that is an even more difficult job. But it's been- I want to talk first about the Forward, and then we can talk about the New York Times if you want. But I mean it's been a really interesting. So the Forward is a it's founded as a socialist paper, but it's really a non-ideological paper. Now I like to say it's not a paper, it's a digital outlet. But anyway, I like to say that the only ideology is that of inquiry. And it really is the only Jewish outlet that is, um, independent, um, with, with the exception of maybe the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is like our wire service. Um, and it's really committed to being broad minded and to having particularly in the opinion section, having kind of all of American Jewish diversity really represented: religious diversity, um, racial diversity, political diversity, geographic, generational, all those things.
Jodi Rudoren: And so what that means is that, you know, you're definitely not going to agree with everything in the report. You're going to see yourself hopefully reflected in what we publish and also really challenged by it. And so, you know, we had a day last fall where we published on the same day, big, thoughtful, smart, respectful, well-argued opinion pieces by Yehuda Kurtzer, who's the head of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and also by Yonah Lieberman, who's one of the founders of If Not Now. And those those two guys, you know, don't don't sit in the same room. And I thought that was really- I think that's really important. Um, look, I think what's been really interesting for me, um. I don't think I understood this about Jewish journalism until October 7th, and I'm not even sure this has really happened before, but one of the American Jewish responses to October 7th was really a drawing closer to people's Jewish engagement, Jewish identity. People drew closer to their Jewish identity. People, some, some people drew closer to Israel. Obviously, there's also a lot, and I know you see it on campus of the opposite. And a lot of those people and like, these are like my friends, my my kids' friends' parents from synagogue in Montclair, New Jersey. A lot of those people, it was very unclear kind of where they could be open about their experience and their feelings because they- one of the experiences after October 7th was being very surprised to discover what your neighbor or your coworker or your dorm mate or your, you know, fellow classmate, whatever, actually thought about Israel and about Jews.
Jodi Rudoren: And I think a lot of American Jews found that they needed, they wanted, um, the true story. They didn't want like, I mean, a lot of people do want propaganda, but some people didn't, and they also wanted it to be Jewish. They wanted to be in like a Jewish space. So what's interesting, it's always very interesting when when our story, our niche story is the main story, which has been now for the last few months. And we know that our readers also are reading The New York Times or The Washington Post or CNN or I mean, also obviously TikTok, but also like Times of Israel, Haaretz and Jerusalem Post. So what's what are we? What value are we adding to that diet? And I think, um, I think the two things really were we've really tried to provide some clarity amid all the chaos that is online around this war, um, including a lot of just really bad faith disinformation. And but we've done that in a Jewish way. So we're going to tell you, like, what the Talmud has to say about X or Y. We're going to talk about, um. You know, when we talk about the things around genocide, like we're doing this from this perspective of our history. Um, and for myself, I mean, you know, I feel, um, it feels like a bit of a bashert thing that I was in this chair when the story happened.
Jodi Rudoren: I have, you know, I'm very kind of ready to to lead coverage of this story. Um, and so it's been a real like it's felt like a real responsibility and also a real opportunity. I'll say, you know, a lot of my friends and maybe some of you felt the same thing, like in the first weeks after October and I suppose still now. Um, it was like, um, they didn't know what to do. They wanted to do something, and they didn't know what it was to do. And one of the things I love about being a journalist is that that never happens to me. Like when, you know, on Election Day, I'm doing elections. When there's a war, I'm doing the war. So I was I wasn't a I didn't have to I didn't spend a lot of time stopping to think about what did I think and what was I going to do. It was just like, there's a lot to do so, and people really needed us. And the response from readers has been incredible. I mean, just growth and people are giving us money. But more importantly, the feedback they send is so on point to this idea of we need clarity, we need truth, we need independence, and we need a Jewish lens.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: That's really great. Um, yeah.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: I'm just. Are we open here?
Mrs. Toby Hecht: I think we should. I mean, yeah, let's let's. Yeah, let's definitely start. Let's let's open to Q&A.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Shmully again. I'm just. Can you just answer Toby's- oh the mic. Just on that last. Thank you. That was fantastic. But I don't think you answered Toby's question. Toby's question was it was kind of broad, but she got very specific about why you think the groups that did so much for women have been so silent about the rape of Jewish women in Israel?
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah, I mean, I sorry, I did skip over that because I also think the moment of that story has really passed. Like, I don't I mean, I think.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Maybe. I mean I still feel it so it's still on my mind.
Jodi Rudoren: I still think it. I think it's like. No, I mean, it's not like.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: And women around me, I.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Mean, the hypocrisy. We're talking about the hypocrisy.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. No, I get it. Except I also think I totally get it, but I don't know. I also think that most reasonable people totally know there was rape. Um, and have acknowledged it. And I mean, you're right, the mainstream women's groups took a long time, and that was really upsetting. And UN women in particular. And then there was this big campaign against them, and now they've all kind of acknowledged it, I think. I also think there's something else going on, though, that I think. I think that, um. There's a thing that's happening with Israeli Jews in particular, maybe with some Jews here. It's like people want to feel better about. So I think that like, I think there's been. I don't know. I don't think there was ever a moment where any reasonable person didn't understand that there was a horrible terrorist attack that was barbaric and brutal and inhumane on October 7th. People were, I mean, there were there was, um, besides the rape, there was the grandmother who was killed and put on her Facebook. There was beheadings, there was babies. There was. And I think that the fuss over exactly how many of this kind of brutality or that was, is a little bit like, what? What's the point? Like I there was a really brutal terrorist attack. There has also been a response that has been devastating with a very high death toll.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, there still are these 100, more than 100 hostages still in captivity. Israel does not have a plan for the day after that. Is that all reasonable? Like all of those things are true and the right thing to do, the Jewish thing to do, I think, is to look at all of those things and to try to grapple with all of that complexity and difficulty. And I think some of the people, not you, I'm sure, who want to focus on why X or Y celebrity or X or Y group isn't talking enough about the rape of the women on October 7th is like a little bit of a deflection. Like, um, and also, I mean, you know, The New York Times did this really amazing story led by a friend of mine, Jeffrey Gettleman, about the rape. And it included a bunch of stuff about why the evidence was destroyed exactly or ignored. And one of the reasons why there was. I mean, you know, President Biden talked about rape on October 10th, on Tuesday in his very first speech. Actually, when he talked about it, there was- the IDF had not confirmed that there was any rape. So he was like he and Netanyahu were ahead of the evidence, which was never to say when we wrote a story saying that which we got some crap for.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, and I never occurred to me that there hadn't been rape, but it was also- it was interesting as to why how it got ahead of of its own, of the evidence. But I think, like, I don't know, I feel like this is a little bit of a side show and I feel like some of it is about
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: you think it was a side show?
Jodi Rudoren: No, I think the obsession about which women and which women's groups had, which kind of response is a bit of like, it's like to make us feel better about how victimized we were. And I think, like, I don't think I don't think again, I don't think there is any, um, politician in America. Um, I don't think there's any serious person who does not understand that there were rapes on October 7th, um, and that it was brutal. And I'm not disagreeing with you that in November there wasn't enough attention to it, but I feel like it's like I'm kind of over that. I've moved on from that moment. I feel like there wasn't enough attention and then there was more attention. And we all know there was rape. And why are we still talking about it?
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Um, yeah. Let's open it up.
Yosef Malka: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Oh, yeah yeah, please.
Yosef Malka: Thank you. Um. Thank you. That was fascinating. My question is about, uh, the Jewish and Jewish newspaper and sort of how you think about your audience because, you know, 100 years ago. Yeah. The Ford was a socialist newspaper. It was taking very particular stances. And they were controversies, legal controversies. Um, and I just wonder about, you know, what what it means to, to write for the American Jewish community. And when you make decisions and write your editorials, um, who do you. This is really a question about how you see the American Jewish community. It's a great question how it's how it's changed, what it how it's constituted today. Um, and yeah, and how you see the, the newspaper sort of in dialogue with it.
Jodi Rudoren: So just first of all, a very brief history of the Forward, founded in 1897 by immigrant socialists. And it was wildly successful. For 50 years it was published in Yiddish. It was a broadsheet in 19- in the 1920s. It has had more readers than The New York Times. It had editions and bureaus in every major Jewish city in America and in Europe, um.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: And in Yiddish, right.
Jodi Rudoren: In Yiddish. And so in those days, yes, it was socialist. And what I mean, so it was socialist, but I think that's actually the least interesting thing about it in terms of how it's different from today in some ways. One is it was an immigrant newspaper in the immigrant language. So it was- it was not writing only Jewish stories. Um, it was the main it was people's main newspaper. And it also was, um, this community institution, it had this landmark building on the Lower East Side. People would go there to watch election results. Also, people like Got Mail there. There's this we did this piece earlier last year. This we the Forward ran for many years a column called Seeking Relatives in which before World War II, during World War II and after World War TII, people would send these like classified ads that were like, I'm looking for an Uncle Shmully. He's a butcher in Brooklyn. They were like refugees trying to connect with some relative. And there are these stories of, um, in the Holocaust, people were like, given the address of their relative to like, pin to their. Um, anyway, we ran this column for many decades and really, you know, saved and reunited thousands of families. And so last year, one of my reporters, um, unearthed an archive of the original letters, and we wrote kind of the history of this thing, so that so that's what it was. And, um, for the first 50 years, it also ran the first advice column called the Bintel Brief, long before Ann Landers and Dear Abby. And it was very much teaching that community how to be American, um, teaching these Eastern European immigrants. There was literally like, should I let my kid play baseball? And a ballot of how to vote and all this kind of stuff. The Forward has lost money every year since 1946, which is kind of amazing we're still in business. Um, and it did not publish in English until- guess when we started publishing in English.
Jodi Rudoren: Anyone?
Jodi Rudoren: 1990, even 74 would have been pretty late. 1990 was really late. So now I'm forgetting your question. Oh well, how do we think? Yeah. So so so what- the role we played in people's lives in like the 20s and 30s is like radically, radically different from the role we play in our audience's lives today. So, um, it's funny, I'm happy to answer this question, and I it's just it's funny. I've been giving so many talks since October 7th, and it's like, I haven't talked about this. I've been talking only about the war. So it's really interesting to to get back to this broader view. Anyway, um, in the most recent Pew Research study about American Jews, it's long. It has like a gazillion, you know, little data points. But the upshot of it really, I think, can be distilled in like two sentences, which is there's a lot of people who are pretty into being Jewish and the Jewish, and this is actually a little bit of an example of one right at this table, the traditional, um, Jewish organizations, institutional Judaism, whether it be synagogue structure or like the ADL and the AJC and this alphabet is not working for people. They're they're like, it's not accessible to them. They don't they don't want to do Jewish in that way. And there's like huge interest in Yiddish. There's huge interest in Jewish food. There's huge interest in Jewish music. There's like a lot of different ways to be or do Jewish. Um, and I mean, I mentioned this because I think, like Shabtai is like not Hillel. Right. Like it's different. Um, and it responds to that thing of people are like, interested in their Jewish identity, but not in maybe traditional organizational Judaism.
Jodi Rudoren: So the Forward, to me that's the Forwards like opportunity and purpose, right, is we are a place where wherever you are, whatever kind of Jewish community you live in, whatever you think about your Jewish identity or Jewish engagement, we have, like on ramps for you to connect with that thing. Maybe it's Israel, maybe it's religion, maybe it's history, maybe it's Yiddish, you know, and we've got a little bit of all that stuff, and you can kind of wallow in it as much or as little as you want. Um, and it's not the same as belonging to a synagogue or whatever. Um, and maybe people, maybe we're a gateway for that kind of thing and maybe not. Maybe all someone's going to do, maybe their whole Jewish identity is going to be reading the Forward. Um, so that's how I think of how we sort of serve the American Jewish community. I think Tobi mentioned something ran over something earlier that is really important. We are by for about the American Jewish community, but we are also, and historically, have even been more of this, um, the voice of that community to the broader body politic. So in that heyday, um, New York politicians in particular, but American politicians generally like, look to the Forward to tell them what this community, um, thought about things or how they saw things. Um, we would like to restore that to have, I think we're not quite there yet, but we would like to be a sort of barometer of the diversity of American Jewish thought for. And it is interesting we do, you know, um, have these sort of really we do have some non-Jewish readers that are pretty committed. And it's very funny. It's interesting always to hear from them and who they are and why they read the Forward. Um, does that answer your question?
Yosef Malka: It's very interesting. You sort of said that it started selling or packaging or introducing Jews to America, and now it's sort of.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah, I mean, now I think it's like about, yeah, it's about teaching America. I mean, it's complicated to be an American Jew today and to figure out what that means. Um, and there's a lot of different ways to do it. And most there aren't that many pluralistic spaces. So we are very pluralistic space.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Thank you. Break down of the institutional, traditional institutional.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. And now finally we also took down the paywall. So no barrier to entry. Just like come read share whatever.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: That's great. Not a lot of.
Danielle Frankel: Yeah. Thank you.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Oh, yes.
Danielle Frankel: Thank you so much for being here. I'm from Brookline. So when you say inaudible. Yeah. Um,
Jodi Rudoren: Did you go to Brookline High?
Danielle Frankel: No, I went to Nobles in Dedham. Um, I so I was wondering about something related to The New York Times. So I have, um, family and friends who have been, like, very upset by the coverage, um, post October 7th of the from The New York Times. Um, especially with the hospital, the false coverage of the hospital. And I know people who have canceled their subscriptions to The New York Times. And I'm just wondering, like, what do you think about the trajectory of The New York Times and what's been what have been your feelings with that?
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. Um, I did an event two Fridays ago, um, and I the next morning I was like, I should have answered this question differently. So I'm going to give you my Saturday morning answer. No, I want to say first that like you're asking me to talk about my family and about how my family handled the hardest thing that ever happened to them. So like, I'm going to I'm not sure how. I mean, I know a lot about The New York Times coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and I am like, you know, one of the top experts on this subject. Um, but I also know a lot about how hard it is. And there are people who I admire and respect and love and that are making these decisions. So maybe I'm not so objective about it. Um. I think, I mean, I think I think the coverage has been basically extraordinary. And I also think that there has been more, um, showcasing of the Israeli narrative in this conflict than in the ones that I covered in this war than the ones I covered. Um, I got an email just I answered an email this morning about Patrick Kingsley, my successor as bureau chief. And just like, you know, his biggest project in the fall was this reconstruction of what happened at Beeri. Jeffrey Gettleman did this massive thing about the rape.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. There was um, and I think this and I think this hospital thing is I mean, you know, it was a it was a it was a fuck up. It was a mistake, by the way. Everybody made the mistake. And The New York Times and one other place are the only ones who apologize. Explained the mistake.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: For those who dont know what you are talkiing about...
Jodi Rudoren: Sorry. Sorry. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like in, like the third week of the war, there was an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, a small hospital. And the Hamas immediately put out a announcement that it was a strike by an Israeli airstrike and that 500 people were killed. And, um, numerous publications had a headline like that, including The New York Times, The New York Times. It was like the banner headline on the live blog. Um, it said it said 500 killed in an Israeli blast, Palestinians say, or something like that. Um, uh, that was on a Wednesday. And on the following Monday they issued a long editor's note saying that it had been a mistake. The the headline was changed within an hour or so. It was when Biden was on his way to the Middle East for his first trip. The Arab street erupted in protests, and he ended up changing his itinerary and didn't go to Jordan. And I forget where else that he was supposed to go. Um.
Speaker28: Ramallah.
Jodi Rudoren: In addition to the, um, in addition to the editor's note, the editor of The Times, Joe Khan, also did a 20 minute, like audio interview explaining what happened. And then later on, Vanity Fair published an article that they got leaked the like internal slack messages of how the decision was made around this headline, and it revealed that there had been a substantial debate around what the headline should say and how big it should be, and that but that the debate had been, um at a pretty low level. And one of the things that Joe said was like, when this debate is happening, like, I need to know this is happening. And so anyway, I mean, one of the things that I think is really specious that people have said about this incident is that the protests on the Arab street were about the were caused by The New York Times screwed up headline. Like that is just like patently not true. They were caused by the Hamas messages on telegram. And one of the reasons, you know, it's patently not true is because it didn't change when the headline changed or when there was a lot of traffic on Twitter being like, yeah, they've changed the headline. It's not this. It was it turned out only like a dozen people were killed also, and they were in the parking lot and not in the hospital.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, the people on the social platforms that were like going out and protesting in the streets were denying the things that were said on social once it was corrected. So I don't think that The New York Times is responsible for those protests. Um, you know, I guess part of the question is, um, what people think The New York Times is for and what the readers bring to the experience of reading The New York Times. And a lot of American Jews think this is a Jewish paper that is like for them. And it is not. Um, you know, you, um, you, uh, I think I think, I mean, one of the things I always used to say, I think this is, again, I think that this question is less potent around this war than other times. I think that The Times' coverage has been more tilted towards the Palestinians in prior wars, because the asymmetry was even more, um, profound. Um, but in any case, I think that, um, this is- look, this is a conflict that is a conflict of narratives, and the narratives are rooted in our identities. And so it is very, very difficult when you are trying to understand something or read about something that feels like it's about who you are, to be neutral about it. And so you, you or your family or whoever is canceling their subscription is bringing to the experience of reading to The New York Times a lot more than they bring when they read about other things, about other story lines, about, I don't know, the presidential election or, um, Africa or the water crisis or insects or whatever.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, you know, and I think, um, I, you know, I don't buy the I, I try not to say like, well, you know, the other side thinks, I mean, I was, every day, accused of being a self-hating Jew and an IDF hasbaras propagandist for the IDF by different people. I do not buy the idea that if everybody thinks if everybody is mad at you, you must be doing something right. I think that's simplistic, but I do think that this tells you something about it is in the eye of the beholder a little bit. And I mean, I just would encourage you to remember to judge The New York Times based on what it is setting out to do and not some other thing that that you've put on it. Um, I don't really mean you, obviously. I think also just remember, like The New York Times coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict is not for people. It's not primarily for people who are on 17 listservs about Israel from all the groups that they, you know, already know what they think and their part.
Jodi Rudoren: It's for people who otherwise wouldn't know anything about what's happening in the Middle East. Um, in that way, that's the biggest difference from the Forward. Like I used to say, that, you know, my job when I was the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times was to tell people a 360 degree view. People in, like Nepal or Nebraska who otherwise wouldn't ever go there, wouldn't know what was going on, whatever it was to give them the most nuanced and complicated and 360 degree view of the whole situation. My job now is not that. It's, you know, to to help American Jews think about the sort of Jewish questions related to the war or anything else. So anyway, I mean, I think I know people aren't very satisfied with that answer, but I think that, um. It's just, uh, yeah, I think I mean, first of all, I think the coverage has been- it's not perfect. It's really, really hard to cover a. I mean, the biggest problem with the coverage, honestly, this is probably not the, the problem that people are resigning their subscriptions over. And by the way, a large percentage of the people who cancel sign up again. Um, they like to cancel and make a big deal and tweet about their cancellation, and then they sign up again, which is fine. Totally fine.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, I think the biggest problem in coverage of this war is that there's no international journalists inside Gaza. Um, and there are two big problems with that. I mean, one is that all we're getting out of Gaza are like from, you know, Palestinians in Gaza who are basically stringers or photographers. They're not, you know, very experienced, sophisticated international journalists. And the even bigger problem from than that is that the coverage is really bifurcated. Um, the there's like The New York Times has like a little like Gaza coverage Bureau of Arabic speakers who are all day long whatsapping and phoning and dealing and looking on social media of the Gazan social media. And separately, there's a group of people who are doing stuff on Israel. And in the 2014 war, we were doing a mix of things, you know, and I was in Israel and then in Gaza, and people were and it's just it's. I mean, now there have been and then, you know, the people who are going into Gaza are only going under like IDF control and you can only look in certain places. So that's the biggest problem, is that there's not a really a 360 view of Gaza. Um, I think that's the thing that's missing. For questions. I'm going to try to have shorter answers, I apologize.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: You know, by the way, it is 9:40. If anybody wants to step out.
Jodi Rudoren: Wow. How did it get to be 940? Geez.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Very quietly.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Because we're going to continue.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: We'll make our next stop at 10:00. Yeah.
Jodi Rudoren: Okay. Sorry.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: No, no. Keep going, keep going.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Ely.
Ely Altman: Thank you for being here. Um, I'm not a journalist, but I've enjoyed hearing about your experience. It sounds like it's been difficult and fulfilling. And we, although not The New York Times, have had our fair share of drama with Israel, Palestine and news coverage at the university here.
Jodi Rudoren: I have heard.
Ely Altman: I know, and I thought that you might have and I and I wanted to get your opinion on it, which is that there was a big controversy about, um, you know, some articles had descriptions of rape that were then removed and it went crazy on conservative Twitter and Twitter and, and the alumni. And I'm just curious, from your perspective, someone who's a professional in the field, um. What were your thoughts watching that? Do you think that it was overplayed, underplayed? Appropriately played? Um, what words of advice would you give to students who are not in journalism when they're looking at student journalism to student journalists themselves? Um, any reflections that you have on the situation would be very interesting to me.
Jodi Rudoren: I mean, I, I have not reported this out, but I did hear I mean, I think there were also like really serious death threats against the editor. Right? And like somebody like then they papered her house or something like that. Right? With some kind of.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Is that true? We have death threats.
Danielle Frankel: I think so, yeah.
Ely Altman: No, no, I have heard that there were some threats against the editor and there was.
Jodi Rudoren: And some real harassment in any case. Right? So, I mean, that I would just start there to just say like, uh, that is just freaking crazy. And, I mean, I feel like all there's so many really terrible things that have happened, obviously, October 7th itself, a lot of the war, but also like the things that have happened on American campuses are like mind boggling. And I would say that the doxing and harassment is like maybe the worst, you know. I mean, I think that, um, there's just at some point, particularly in the academy, but really in the public discourse in general, the idea of terrorizing people based on what they say, I mean, even even more so for journalists who are trying to, like, make sense of what's happening on campus. But even for activists, I just think that it is just like, not okay to make expressing a view or practicing journalism or practicing activism a thing that is dangerous. And I mean, that is just like really un-American and un-Jewish and all of those things. So that I think is probably the most troubling. Um, I think what happened here and there have been a few other campuses where this has happened. And, you know, I there was a story a few years ago at Northwestern, not about the war, obviously.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, but, um, there was some kind of protest on campus, and the paper covered the protest, and they took some photos of some kids at the protest. And I think the kids were. Maybe like climbing over a wall or like some kind of, like maybe trespass. They were doing something not cool. Maybe it was at the president's house, I can't remember. Anyway, they ran a photo of this and got, um, criticized for it. And then they took it down, um, which was not the right choice. Um, and they got the editor of Northwestern. The person has turned out to do fine, but got really like the world, the professional journalism world kind of ran down on his head. Um, and I guess I feel like that sounds like a little bit of what happened here, too, is like, there's. It can be. Look, it's very hard to do this work under, like, intense activist pressure. And particularly when they're not good faith actors, when people are not interested in journalism, not interested in truth, not interested in diverse opinions, they're just interested in I want everybody to hear my side. And I think that it sounds to me like the decision to take it out was a mistake. Um, but just probably under great duress. And.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Do you mean to take out the story of rape, because there's duress?
Jodi Rudoren: I mean, I don't I mean, I'm not sure that I'm the expert on what happened here, but I think there was some.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: If an editor chooses to not talk about the rape, what.
Jodi Rudoren: But that's not what happened. There was a column that was published with a mention of rape, and then there was like pressure put on the editors and they took it out.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Right.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Right. And then they put it back in.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: What sort of duress do you have to be under to take out the fact that somebody is talking about rape. I mean, what what are you saying?
Jodi Rudoren: I'm saying that people were like, I think the- I don't know what kind of exactly. I mean, does anyone here from the YDN know what the pressure was? I don't know.
Michael Ndubisi: Yeah, so the issue was it was an attribution, a question of attribution. So there was a link that was under the keyword, uh, there was a link there that linked to an Atlantic article that there was some debate question about whether or not that actually did properly, you know, sort of support the claim that rape occurred and things like that. So it was it was going back to like the questions about, you know, what things can be said as statements of fact. And you know, how it is that you, Link them .
Jodi Rudoren: And what I mean by.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: That is they couldn't establish it as a fact that the crime and therefore no.
Jodi Rudoren: Sorry that's not- my understanding and I could be wrong is like so, you know, you're going through your process of editing the story and weighing this question of, what a proper attribution is, what you want to link to, whatever. But my understanding was that there was public pressure from campus around after it was published to take it out, and that there was like it became the focus of an activist campaign that was, I think, probably not about what the truth was, but was about this. I mean, one of the things that is incredibly frustrating is the way that people want to turn this conflict into like a basketball game where it's like my team, your team, and it's all about scorekeeping. This came up in this thing with my dad and the Temple Mount. It's like if you put in the bat, if you put in one more thing, that was the bad thing. And the other team did against my team, then this is a good article. If you put in fewer things that are bad for me and more things that are bad for the other person, that's bad. That's not a good article. And I think this kind of scorekeeping is reductionist.
Jodi Rudoren: It totally misses the complexity of this conflict. And when one of the things that has happened long before this war is that a lot of activists in this conflict have taken undermining journalism as a weapon in the conflict. So the idea of a letter writing campaign, or maybe it was a protest outside the building, I don't know what it was in this case, but when the editing of an article and the choices about what the right attribution is, or whatever becomes a kind of pawn in a political activist campaign, good journalism does not result. So I think that my my sense was that, you know, I mean, it's like also going back and forth and changing your mind is like generally, you know, you want to try to have as much discussion and scrutiny before publication, um, and then be able to stand by it. Um, you know, we make mistakes and we change things. We update things all the time. And that's part of especially in digital, um, if we do it transparently and fairly, like I think that's fine. Um, am I answering your question?
Ely Altman: No. Yeah. That was about 70%. The remaining parts was just what advice would you have for student journalists and for people reading the point?
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. I mean, I think look, I think that like, the biggest advice for the consumers of journalism is, again, to sort of, um. I mean, a few a few pieces of advice. I mean, first of all, I think, like media literacy is more important than ever in your generation because we have so many sources. You're basically your own curators. You know, in my day, the editors of The New York Times told you what was important, and you looked on the front page, and that was what was important today. And that's not how you guys consume news. You, first of all, the home pages of even the mainstream papers are much bigger. They're algorithmically, um, curated for you. But also, of course, you're consuming, you know, from many, many sources and really picking your own media diet. And so knowing what a legitimate source is and not and knowing how to- part of it is knowing about the source, the publication, part of it is also knowing how to read something and be like, is this well attributed or not? The other day my daughter came down from her room and she's like telling me that her friend was going to text me because this guy who was posting all of this stuff on Instagram was saying that the IDF was harvesting organs from dead Palestinians. And so I'm like, what? You know, like, what are you talking about? So we googled it and, you know, it was like, okay, this comes back to this thing called Euro-med monitor, which is like an activist leftist organization that has really no credibility. But even if you look at the report that it was citing, it was completely it was air.
Jodi Rudoren: There was nothing there. And then and finally you'd go like three sources down to there was something in the 1990s where there was an admission that nobody was killed to harvest their organs, but there was like somebody who was taking corneas from dead bodies to study the corneas or something. It was like such a it was so distorted, but it was very easy to see how distorted it was. You just if you just pay attention, like if you just look at the. So I think, you know, it is incumbent on you to um, to be smart consumers of media and, but also not to put on to the source an agenda of your own. And you should understand what the agenda of the sources are. And, and the agenda of The New York Times is, you know, to tell a 360 view of the conflict. I think also, you know, it's been interesting to me to watch over the years many, many smart, sophisticated, intellectually rigorous people who seem to want a very simple, um, take on this conflict in particular. Everything else they want to get into the nuances. But here it's like very black and white, very like my team or the other team, very basketball game. And I, again, I think it comes back to what happens when you're talking about a narrative that is core to your identity. Um, but I think it's not simple. It's really, really complicated. And I would encourage you to wrestle with the complexity.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Okay, I'll take another 1 or 2 questions.
Zachary Suri : Um, I just wanted to ask you, you mentioned earlier the role of the Forward in sort of like projecting to non-Jews, sort of the voice of the Jewish community as sort of like a secondary role. I'm curious what your thoughts would be on how we can get non-Jews to understand, but also Jews to understand the sort of complexity of Jewish history, but in particular the complexity of the state of Israel and this conflict. One of the things that's been frustrating to me is the way in which, as you said, people reduce the conflict and also reduce the sort of complicated layers of history that are involved in any discussion of the conflict.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. I mean. Now by doing it, you know. But I think one thing is language. There was a really deep piece, um, in The New York Times, I think on Monday or Sunday about like the origin and history of the term settler colonial colonialism. And it was really smart and detailed and took you through the whole. And I think that so so on the one hand, I think it's to be really careful in your day to day language, but also to then go deep into things. Um, but but I think I'm ignoring your question. So. Right. So how do we get non-Jews to engage critically with the full story of Israel? I don't know, I mean, just by, um, telling the full story of Israel. I mean, there's a lot of people doing a lot of things, you know, um, non-Jewish politicians. There's tons of trips for non-Jewish politicians to go over to Israel. Um. I think.
Jodi Rudoren: I don't know. I guess what I would say is that I would encourage you not to respond to over simplistic oversimplification with more oversimplification. I think that a sort of, you know, from the river to the sea. Like responding to from the river to the sea thing with a Israel right or wrong thing is not going to. I don't think it's going to help. So.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Abe. A final question. Unless we.
Abe Baker-Butler: A lot of pressure.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: What time is it?
Abe Baker-Butler: Mine's very quick.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: You are doing good.
Abe Baker-Butler: Um, I don't think you mentioned why you left the Forward for The Times.
Jodi Rudoren: Why I left The Times for the Forward.
Abe Baker-Butler: Oh, sorry. Yes. Um, why did you leave The Times for the Forward?
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah. Um, Gabe asked me this before, and I said temporary insanity. I mean, right, why did you leave the most successful news organization with the biggest platform in the world to run a scrappy, deficit laden nonprofit that has a tiny audience? Yeah, I don't know, for less money with a big 30% pay cut. Why did you do that? Good question. I was having a midlife crisis. Um, I it was a.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Yeah,
Jodi Rudoren: It was a few-
Mrs. Toby Hecht: And any regrets.
Jodi Rudoren: It was a few reasons.
Jodi Rudoren: I, um, it was a few reasons. I, um
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Should we turn the camera off?
Jodi Rudoren: No I've answered this question many times.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Come on Jodi.
Jodi Rudoren: But I don't think I've, I it's not succinct enough. I need to be succinct. Um, so there are a few things. One was I was involved in a lot of really important conversations at the times and contributing meaningfully to them. And if I wasn't there, it would have been fine, you know what I mean? Like, The Times is, like, wildly successful and.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: You don't feel like you were adding.
Jodi Rudoren: It's just like there wasn't I. So I thought that I could have more impact somewhere else. And I was in this role where I was seeing that while The Times had really figured out the digital subscription strategy and was beginning this, this growth to where it is now, um, all around The Times where these crisis, the industry was in crisis, the local news deserts were growing, and there was this very exciting kind of nonprofit journalism industry growing up. Um, and I just thought, like, maybe I could have more impact over there. And when this thing happened at the Forward where, uh, they decided to go all digital, and they fired their editor in chief, and they were looking for a new person to run it. I mean, I actually, I know I knew the CEO publisher, and she just asked me to go to lunch to give her some names of potential people. And I did that. And then I sort of dictated myself into the I was just very compelled by her vision. And so I was like, well, maybe I could do this. Um, I also, you know, I, I kind of miss the Yale Daily News. I was at this big place. People were praising me for knowing how to get ideas through the bureaucracy, which was not what I had gone into this for being, like, good at navigating the place felt sort of empty. Um, and I thought it would be fun to try to run something small again. Um, and it has been really fun.
Jodi Rudoren: And now it has been. It has. I mean, this last few months has felt enormously meaningful and important, and I've felt like I was in the right place and at the right time. Um. But it's also, you know, lonely and, uh, I mean, and I miss the, you know, at The New York Times, you, you had it was very difficult to get new ideas approved. But when you did, you had this incredible team of people with all different skills to maximize the idea. At the Forward, I can do whatever I want, but we have to do it by ourselves. Like, you know, it's like, uh, go find an app that can do that. I mean, this is like all very scrappy. And so there are pros, you know there are benefits and drawbacks of every job. I think that, I also I think like was trying to be um. I don't know, I, I wanted to not care as much about the brand name, the, you know, like, I mean, a lot of people ask me why. I mean, you know, I it took me a while to realize it, but I realized after a couple of years that maybe people thought that I had had something bad had happened to me at the Times. That was not the case. They tried very hard to keep me. They said, you know, my career was very bright. They have tried to bring me back multiple times. Um, and I may yet go back.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: That's nice.
Jodi Rudoren: Um, I left there in great stead. And I love the place. It's filled with flaws. It is a flawed, messy, complicated place, but it is a amazing miracle every day. Also, um, so I miss it, but I like what I'm doing, too. And, you know, life is long. I believe in life. I'm not saying all the same things I said to you, Gabe, did I? But you know, chapters, right? Like we have chapters in our lives. So this is what I'm doing now.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: There are two more.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Okay.
Jodi Rudoren: Yeah.
You did it. You did it.
Jack Madden: I can ask it. I have the answer. I don't think that.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: Somebody did anything with it. So we'll do two more. Yeah.
Jack Madden: So we already talked a bit about both like fragmentation of audience, audience bringing their identity and the importance of language, how both is somebody who's trying to read or like somebody that's trying to write a piece. Do we write something that that tries to communicate an idea when there isn't really a shared language, when like, for instance, like my parents can't agree on, like what an idea means, like how do we try to sort of even talk to each other or even try to communicate back and forth when I think I'm saying something and the person listening thinks I'm saying something very different, even though we're using the same set of words.
Jodi Rudoren: I'm not sure I understand, but I'm going to try. Um, I mean, I think. I one of the things I'm hearing in your question. I think one of the questions is like, who? It's always like, who's your audience? Who are you? Who are you trying to communicate with? Who are you writing for? And people can do whatever they want. But what I really believe in is writing for a broad audience. And particularly I'm not quite sure what the point is of writing something to sort of impress people who think like you do, or who have the same experience as you do, like, um, or to rally those people around, like, I mean, there is obviously a point, but it's not like a real journalistic point. I think, you know, I my goals are to I always say that like, I think the goal after you read an opinion piece should be to have the reader say, I never thought of it that way. You know, not like I don't think it's realistic. I don't think it's that interesting to be like, yes, you know, to have that reaction of like, yeah, I mean, sometimes it is really lovely to read someone who's managed to articulate what's in your heart and you hadn't you hadn't found the words or the way to say it. So that is a good reaction as well. But I think that like the sort of sometimes like on MSNBC, it feels like it's just preaching to the choir kind of cheerleading. That's not very interesting to me, nor do I think it's realistic to think like you're going to write something that's going to make someone who really, fundamentally disagrees with you be like, man, I've been wrong all along.
Jodi Rudoren: Like, sign me up for the other party. Or like, that's not going to happen. So it's all about like, enlightening or making. I mean, I think it's not even it's just about making connections for people, for people to be like, huh, I never thought of it that way. I didn't know that thing. I never really saw the humanity and that person who's so different from me. And now I understand that this woman from Gaza has this thing in common with this Holocaust survivor. Like, how interesting is that? And I guess it's just like, um, I think if you, for me, the point of journalism is shining a light. Bringing out a story that otherwise wouldn't be told. Making connections on things that people don't understand are connected, helping. I mean, it's really simple helping people understand a complicated world. The world is totally complicated and fucked up. And I think we want journalists to, like, go talk to people in different places and synthesize it for us to tell us, like, here's why this weird thing is happening. Here's who's, here's who's responsible, here's who's, you know, getting screwed, here's where the money is, like those basic things. And I think, like the sort of when it really gets ideological, it's so much less interesting to me. That's my take.
Sadie Bograd: Yeah. This is if we have time for one.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: More, we're going to make that.
Sadie Bograd: Yeah. This is sort of a follow up to what you were just saying. And also on this point of the Forward serving kind of a broad, pluralistic Jewish community. I'm curious how October 7th and the Israel-Palestine conflict has impacted the rest of your the Forward's reporting, both are there stories that have sort of fallen by the wayside and that you wish you had time to cover? Um, but that have sort of been displaced by just this massive global conflict and then has I'm curious whether and how what's happening in Israel-Palestine has changed the way that you feel about the other stories that you're editing and just the way that those stories get covered?
Jodi Rudoren: Great question. And it's a great time to ask in the fall, because I'm really trying to figure out now, like, what's the new normal? You know, for the first six weeks, it was just we mostly, I mean, there were a few other things, but really we were just doing the war and to some extent and then maybe it was I mean, I think we probably have been 90% on the war since October 7th, um, until the end of the year. And, um, you know, it's a much. And that includes everything on campus. I mean, it includes all the kind of aftermath and repercussions. And, you know, we made we made some commitments. We hired someone to be based in Israel. We had myself and two other people went to Israel to do reporting in the fall. So, you know, we were like restructuring and reallocating the budget to cover this. Um, but that's changing. I mean, I don't know what percentage it is now, but like today we had, you know, we're doing much more, not more stuff now.
Jodi Rudoren: And I think it's. I guess what I would say, I feel like this is a little bit of a zaggy answer to your question, but one thing that I'm really focused on right now is how I think we were at our best in October and November, because news is good for news organizations. I mean, it's good because people need us and they come and they read us, and but it's also good because we like, we know exactly what we should do. And, um, and we're very we were like, on a war footing. We were like, sharp. We made sharp decisions. We were discerning. We only did I during my days, like, only did meetings that were essential. I was all about the essential. And because I only had I mean, I was already like working endlessly. So it was like I didn't have time for any bullshit. And I'm just trying to hold on to that. Um, because I think like one of the luxuries of the Forward, but it's also a total Achilles heel is we can do whatever we, you know, there's no clear coverage map normally, and we want to have this broad like all these on ramps for people. But so it can also be like, yeah, what should we what's urgent today. What are people talking about today? And I just I really am working hard to, for myself and for my team to hold on to urgency and clarity of this is worth doing and this is not worth doing. So I have my answer is less about like. Um. The content, the subject matter, and more like the sort of standard, like we just should only do things that we can really add to the debate, where we can either turn, do a quick, sharp take on the news and what people are talking about right now, or a kind of holy shit conversation making story that will really like, grab people's attention.
Jodi Rudoren: I want to cut out the mediocre middle, the sort of like dutiful, boring stories that nobody really wants to read. Um, and I'm just trying to stay sharp on on that. I think that the war and the conflict, the broader conflict and the exposure of the sort of deep anti-Zionism and antisemitism that exists here is going to be the driving storyline for a while. But it's not the only thing, you know, we all we always think about Counterprogramming, too. So, um, I don't know, it's sort of a, you know, when you see it kind of situation. Um, but I think, I mean, I think there's, there's like always some fatigue around a news story like this. And I guess this goes back a little bit to when we were talking about the rape question. I think that it's clear to me that this is a driving, defining storyline still, but we need to keep pushing it forward. You know, what's the next thing, what's the next thing, what's the next thing? And you know, we're going to see this. The phases of the war are changing. There's going to be elections. There's you know, there's a lot that's going to.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Jodi. I'm not saying I think you're right. And there needs to be brought a perspective. I think the reason a lot of people are stuck specifically on this is because it hasn't been dealt with. And even The New York Times coming out two months later, which I understand this deep dive, investigative journalism takes time to get all the facts. And that's what I was responding to, people who were outraged about the delay. It takes time to gather facts and to put together the type of article that they did put together The New York Times, which was fantastic and fantastic. I don't use that word, but very important. Um, I think a lot of the reason why we're still stuck and haven't kind of emerged into the larger narrative is because it hasn't it wasn't dealt with in the onset. I think there's just still so much shock surrounding it and knowing that there's still women, you know, being held hostage, and it's unclear what's happening to them. So I think that it's not something that we can move on from, because I think in order to like, it's not like it's resolved.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: It's like, it's very.
Jodi Rudoren: I'm not saying you should move on. I'm just saying that I think a lot of. No, no.
Jodi Rudoren: But I'm not I don't think that like the activists need to. I'm not telling you as a reader, thinker, activist, what you should do. I'm just saying we need to. The story is constantly changing. So all I'm saying is that when we think about what is the right percentage of our coverage map that should be taken up with the conflict, it is going to get less, but it's also going to change in its dynamic. I think.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Maybe.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: I'm going to close. So I want to just again, thank everybody for coming out and staying a little bit past our usual time. Jodi, thank you for coming. It was fantastic to have this conversation. I think it's a conversation that should continue. And frankly, I think the YDN should probably have you back as a YDN event or maybe a Masters tea. Or Manuscript, you said you were in Manuscript And maybe a master's tea, a manuscript. You said your manuscript. So I don't know who's in manuscript, but you should be on campus more often. I think this is a the beginning of a much larger conversation with young people. Um, but I, uh, and I, and I want to say one thing in closing, um, based on what you both spoke about at the end. So this is not a critique of The New York Times or the Forward or of anything either of you said tonight. Um, but I have a different perspective, and I just want to share it with everybody here tonight, which is this is actually much, much more simple than we think. There's nothing complicated about it. All the complexities have actually fallen to the wayside. October 7th is evidence that, um, you know, 3000 people were sent in to annihilate the Jewish people to rape, pillage, behead, burn to death Jews for being Jews. And the leaders of the movement that that initiated the war said multiple times publicly that they would do it over and over and over again. There's nothing more simple than that. Now, going back to the historical question of Jewish independence, the Jewish homeland, there's a much longer conversation. Judging which side is wrong or which side is right is something that every person can can judge for themselves.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: What we can't judge, um, subjectively, is facts. The Hamas sent 3000 people to to annihilate and murder Jews, women, children at a at a at a at a music rave. They raped them. They burned them to death. They put them in ovens. They went into rooms and threw grenades into children. They slaughtered kids. They took women on motorcycles back and raped them and continue to do so and have these people in their basements. The population of Gaza is not demonstrating against Hamas. The Islamic world hasn't stood up against Hamas. The Muslim leaders in this country mostly have not come out to condemn Hamas. The leaders of the Arab world have not come out to condemn Hamas. Thank God America is a sane country. Some European countries are still sane. Um. That is the fact. It's very simple, very, very difficult for all of us normal people to accept. And the frustration of why the women's groups who claim to be for women and the the maybe Black Lives Matters groups that claim to be for certain minority groups or certain blacks haven't made the statement. The frustration I think that a lot of us are having is the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy, the terrible hypocrisy that in this instance, these groups that claim to fight for these underdogs, for these for the minorities, for people of one year old baby, 25 year old woman, Holocaust survivors have been silent. So how much more simple. Let me let me finish, please, if you don't mind.
Jodi Rudoren: Because it's just. No.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: If you don't mind, can I finish? I promise I'll let you speak. Um, so it's not. It's just the the the where I'm disagreeing with you, respectfully is to call this complex. I think most people in this room are very intelligent. It's not complex. It's very simple. Now, if you want to go back to justifying it or how did it come about or what could possibly justify something like that to happen? That's a that's the big narrative of Israel and the Palestinian population that lives in Israel. And the two state solution, all those questions. But what happened on October 7th, thank God, unfortunately, but thank God has shown the world the true color of what the people in Israel are dealing with. And unfortunately, it's spilled over to the world of what the Jewish people are dealing with. And hopefully the more simple we can actually narrow in and focus in on it and understand what it is, the faster we're going to solve the problem. That's my opinion.
Jodi Rudoren: So all I would say is, you know, I don't disagree with your characterization of the straightforward horror that happened on October 7th, but it is beneath you to suggest or argue or present that that is that slice of the story is the whole story. There's a lot of things that happened before October 7th, and there's 109 days or whatever, 110 days since October 7th. And so to say that it's simple, because this horrible thing happened on October 7th is, is really reductionist. So it's not about justifying what happened on October 7th at all. It's just about seeing the whole picture. So there's a big picture with a lot of parties and history and ideology, and I don't think that you have to I mean, I think it's. It's very twisted, I think, to suggest that in order to see the whole thing that's about justifying what happened. There's no justification for terrorism and for brutality and barbarism. But that doesn't mean that the lack of justification for what happened on October 7th means that there's no Palestinian humanity or Palestinian, uh, nationalism, or that you can't understand those things, or that the level of death and destruction in Gaza is simple. So it's just it's I mean, it's like to say like this one thing is simple, and therefore the whole thing is simple, I think is oversimplified. So.
Speaker4: Continued.
Jodi Rudoren: Thank you all.
Isha Brahmbhatt: Are you hiring?
Jodi Rudoren: Uh. We are. We're hiring an opinion editor. I just put out the posting two days ago, and we are always hiring interns and fellows. We have a internship program, a paid internship program, um, $15 an hour, 29 hours a week.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht: What about submissions like for students?
Jodi Rudoren: We are always thrilled to have students write for our opinion pages to pitch us freelance reported stories. All that. You can email me at rudoren@forward.com. My my last name Rudoren. Um, I'm happy to either look at something you're pitching or send it on to the right person. Um, we do have a one year fellowship that we also are hiring. We'll be hiring for this summer. Um, so. Yeah.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: No, I just wanted to thank you so much for coming. Thank you. It's really amazing. I think you have so much to offer. As far as journalism, I don't think I've met somebody with that much experience. In all the years that we've met. We've met a lot of had a lot of journalists come up.
Jodi Rudoren: Yep.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: There's so much more I could have asked you about for another time.
Jodi Rudoren: The next time. Next time.
Mrs. Toby Hecht: Part two. Part two.
Jodi Rudoren: Sure. Next time. Now I have to go to the bathroom.
Danielle Frankel: Thank you so much.
Jodi Rudoren: You're welcome.