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May 31, 2025 - Epoch Times

22:49

Jonah Platt: The Incredible Story of Muslims and Jews Visiting Auschwitz Together

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	Hollywood is about as left and progressive a community as there is.
	And unfortunately, part of the box you have to check is being anti-Israel.
	Jonah Platt is a jack of all trades in the entertainment industry, an actor, director, producer, and singer.
	In the aftermath of the October 7th massacre, he launched the podcast Being Jewish.
	He recently visited Auschwitz, the largest German death camp, alongside over a dozen Muslims.
	He went with the organization Sharaka, which builds on the work of the Abraham Accords and educates Middle Easterners and other Arabs and Muslims around the world about the Holocaust.
	Some of these people came on this trip at great personal risk.
	You know, if you're coming from Pakistan to hang out with Jews in the middle of this Israel-Gaza war, I mean, you could be in real physical danger.
	They couldn't be in any photos, and their identities had to be kept secret to protect them.
	This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janje Kellek.
	Jonah Platt, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
	Thank you.
	Thanks for having me on.
	Happy to be here.
	Hot off the presses, top of the Epoch Times homepage, Trump meets with Syrian leader, urges him to join Abraham Accords.
	Yeah.
	Your reaction?
	Yeah.
	In theory, on paper, it's amazing.
	It really depends on the execution and the details of how that will play out.
	Iran is the head of the snake, so you can't really have it with Iran still having any sort of capability and desire to mess things up.
	But the more of its neighbors and former proxy nations saying, hey, we want to play the game with the West.
	We want to be open for business.
	We want stability.
	The better.
	I mean, it's really an impressive advance.
	I hope it's for real.
	But time will tell.
	And what in your mind would be an expression of, you know, kind of an effective execution?
	So the stipulations that the Trump administration has put out are, you know, got to kick out all the foreign terrorists.
	You got to make sure that you get rid of your internal terrorists, that you're supporting Israel.
	There's all these different sort of stipulations.
	And taking care of ISIS in the land so that American troops don't have to do that anymore.
	If those things are met and met actually in good faith and not on paper or for a minute, then that's the real deal.
	And I don't know how America intends to keep an eye on those developments and ensure they're actually happening and not just, oh yeah, we got this.
	But if they do and it's real, it's an amazing thing.
	And you can see from the other Abraham Accord countries.
	Only good things come from this.
	Only more financial development and trade and all the good things that come with being a player at the table with the rest of the world.
	So tell me a little more about that.
	Of course, I Huge developments, a lot of initial good things happening right away, flights happening.
	But in terms of this development, tell me about it because I haven't been following that closely.
	Yeah, I mean, where you're mostly seeing the positive developments are Business-to-business, country-to-country kind of things, like you said.
	The flights are open, and there's business development happening.
	Iran launched that missile strike.
	like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, these are now players at the table.
	These are people who can offer support to America and Israel and weigh in and try to work as a coalition to create stability in that area.
	Whereas before, you know, they weren't, There was no presence.
	And having more of these powerful nations invested in just creating stability, that's better for everybody.
	And now there's also work that needs to be done on the people-to-people level, so that now that the doors are open to this communication, that people are coming together and you're getting it from the bottom up as well to create real bonds.
	So Abraham Accords figure into how...
	I was at the Religion Communicators Council Awards.
	We had won a couple.
	And you also had won one of these Wilbur Awards for your podcast, a particular episode of Being Jewish.
	And so at the same time, my producer was actually in Poland.
	On this remarkable trip where it turned out that you were as well.
	So, you know, when this confluence of events happened, I figured, okay, it's time.
	Yeah, I love that when that happened.
	Well, so explain to me a little bit about this trip and what you were doing.
	Right.
	So I mentioned the people-to-people piece of the Abraham Accords.
	There's an organization called Sharaka, which means partnership in Arabic.
	And they are the first of its kind in the wake of the Abraham Accords.
	They have begun programs to bring...
	And so I was there with your producer for March of the Living, which is an event that happens every year on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which is sort of, you know, a brave, defiant moment in Jewish history, which is when Yom HaShoah is now, which is Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day.
	People march the 1.2 miles from Auschwitz I, which is sort of the administrative area, to Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, which is where the prisoners were enslaved and killed and gassed, which is the opposite of what the actual death marches were when the Germans knew the Russians were closing in.
	They marched the prisoners in the freezing snow from Auschwitz II to Auschwitz I so they could burn as much of Birkenau down before the Soviets arrived and cover their tracks.
	So they had to clear it out.
	So people go now and do the opposite and say sort of here we are, we are survivors.
	And a lot of people after that trip will then go to Israel, which is sort of like this is Syria, and it was really I thought really I was going, I was invited by Shiraka because I do a lot of bridge building in my work.
	I think that's really key, not just for the Jewish community, but for humanity.
	Like we need to be talking to each other.
	And so they know that that's my work.
	They brought me along.
	And I thought I was going to sort of teach these 20 Muslims about Jewish life and what American Jewish life is like.
	And I did do that.
	But really, I learned so much from them.
	And I was so...
	intelligent, moderate, modern people who want better relationships and want more understanding.
	I mean, some of these people came on this trip at great personal risk.
	You know, if you're coming from Pakistan to...
	I mean, you could be in real physical danger.
	Some people, they couldn't be in any photos, and their identities had to be kept secret to protect them.
	And that they want to understand the truth about Jews and connect in that way so deeply that they're willing to put themselves at risk in that way was very moving for me and really just a beautiful experience.
	There was a moment when we were on the bus.
	That's where all the magic happens, right?
	You go to these different sites, and you're looking at the tourist things and learning, and then you get on the bus together, and that's when you really get to talk and get to make connections.
	And the Moroccan contingent, led by this 21-year-old Sufi sheikh, who's the youngest sheikh in the world.
	He has like millions of disciples and travels all over.
	He sort of led this outbreak of song, some Muslim sort of religious song, but was being sung not in a so prayerful way, but in a celebratory, sing-songy way.
	I just felt like I was back in, like, Jewish sleepaway camp on the bus singing Hebrew songs.
	First of all, Hebrew and Arabic are, you know, cousins.
	some of the words are like literally the same word.
	Salaam aleichem, shalom aleichem.
	So I'm hearing words I recognize, the melody, the enthusiasm.
	In Hebrew, we call it ruach.
	It's like spirit.
	And it felt so familiar and so normal and so joyful.
	And I felt so at home with them.
	And the conversations we had were incredible and different with everybody.
	So I don't want to overgeneralize the conversation I had with an ex.
	Anti-Semite was different than one I had with a 20-year-old French Moroccan girl who's a student in France and teaching herself Hebrew because she is so fascinated and so in love with sort of the Jewish way of life.
	So just the fact that I would meet a 20-year-old Moroccan girl who speaks Hebrew was amazing.
	Jonah, one quick sec.
	Jonah, one quick sec.
	We're going to take a break, and folks, we're going to be right back.
	And we're back with Jonah Platt, host of the Being Jewish podcast.
	So how knowledgeable were the people on the trip that were from the Islamic countries about the Holocaust and the realities of it?
	Very little.
	I mean, they knew what they were getting into.
	They knew they were coming on this trip to go to this site and that the Holocaust was a thing.
	But like, for example, I mentioned I spoke to a Yemeni ex-antisemite.
	He was very...
	And again, the communities where they come from, there's a ton of just straight Holocaust.
	Now that didn't happen or it wasn't that many because they're literally being taught that.
	I mean, it is very clearly indoctrination.
	So once they came and got to see it for themselves, that was a very meaningful part of the trip was seeing.
	It land on these people and them really comprehending the scale and the devastation.
	People decided that this group of people should be absolutely wiped out.
	Man, woman, child, elder, you're all getting killed.
	And seeing people grapple with that and really take it in was very meaningful.
	And I hope it's something they take back to their communities and talk about and help disseminate around them.
	Because it's vital.
	Misinformation is maybe the most potent weapon against Jews and Israel and Western values that we're seeing right now.
	What did you do other than which sites did you visit?
	So we spent about 24 hours in Berlin to start, which was sort of like a scene-setting moment.
	So we saw the Brandenburg Gate, and we went outside the Reichstag building, and we went to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which is this really sort of haunting collection of slabs of concrete, sort of almost a maze.
	That's just sort of meant to disorient you.
	very powerful and we met with the And we met someone from within the German government who's sort of their liaison for fighting anti-Semitism, got to hear from him.
	And then we went to Krakow, which is where we were based out of in Poland.
	And the bulk of that stop was Auschwitz, so we went twice.
	We went for the March of the Living, which you don't really get to explore too much.
	It's, you know, everybody gets set up, you march, and then it's kind of over, and it was And for me, it really sort of grounded me in like where I was in the history and thinking about how there were Jewish slaves there working out in that kind of rain in, you know, threadbare
	pajamas, starving to death and having to do physical labor and be shot if they didn't.
	And meanwhile, I'm freezing in the cold, but I get to go on a warm bus and get a hot meal after this.
	So we did that, but then we came back the next day and were able to do an immersive three-, four-hour visit where we really were taken around with a guide and got to see everything that's on display there and go into the gas chambers and to the barracks and see and understand, really, the horrors that went on there.
	And then the final night, we had an amazing experience.
	We went to Shabbat dinner, which...
	It's the day of rest, and Jewish holidays go from night to night instead of morning to morning.
	So it starts Friday night.
	I went to the JCC Jewish Community Center in Krakow, which is run.
	The director is an American guy who is from New York who now lives there and is, you know, leading that community.
	And that was incredible.
	Shabbat's already amazing because you're just bringing people together to take a pause from the regular work week and be present together and be grateful for what you have and just be with one another.
	So to be at a Shabbat dinner with, you know, 20 Muslims, a handful of Jews, and then the people from the JCC.
	So we had some Polish people there.
	We had a Ukrainian refugee who works there, a couple more Americans, just a real...
	It was a really cool melting pot.
	And the joy that erupted there.
	We broke into song and dance a number of times, both in Arabic and in Hebrew.
	And it was just an amazing expression of brotherhood.
	And joy and togetherness there.
	So that was a really beautiful way to end the trip.
	And how does this fit with the Abraham Accords?
	Maybe it's not obvious, right?
	Well, I mean, so, you know, Morocco, Bahrain, those are Abraham Accord countries.
	Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan.
	These are the kind of countries that we would hope would join this coalition.
	Hopefully Lebanon.
	It's soon to follow as well.
	But really, it's just about bringing Jews and Muslims together and creating that connection.
	And again, if those accords are really going to mean something, it can't just be the business-to-business side or the government-to-government side.
	There has to be the people-to-people.
	Otherwise, what's it all for?
	So it was really meaningful, and I'm really grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of it.
	Got the award for, and presumably that's part of the reason why you were invited to come on the trip too, because you had this podcast.
	Yes, that's certainly how most people in this world know me now is through the podcast.
	Right.
	Well, so how did that come about?
	It's relatively new.
	I saw you had Van Jones on.
	That was the clip that they showed at the award ceremony.
	Tell me about it.
	Yeah so it came about really in the wake of October 7th.
	I was already doing Some Jewish advocacy online.
	Mostly, my career has been in entertainment.
	I mean, entirely.
	Acting, writing, singing, all of those things.
	So I built somewhat of a platform for that, and I began using it to speak about Jewish things and Israel things and current event things and culture things within the last couple of years.
	But once October 7th hit, it went into overdrive.
	I often think of this Mark Cuban quote, don't follow your dreams, follow your effort.
	And while in my head my dreams were sort of Hollywood, I found that I was pouring all of my time and energy into Jewish advocacy and responding to October 7th, trying to provide clarity on what was going on.
	You know, October 10th, I did like a two-hour live Q&A on Instagram.
	Just bring me your questions.
	Let me help you understand what's going on here.
	I was surprised by how many people, especially within the Jewish community, were so uninformed about.
	The big picture of what was happening.
	And I just wanted to get involved in that.
	And I was putting out fires in real life and online.
	All different kinds of things.
	very reactionary.
	And a couple months into that, I was like, all right, I wanna get back to sort of my preferred lane of Jewish advocacy, which is empowerment and celebration and normalization of taking up space in the public sphere as Jews and being proud of that.
	Now I can take as much time as I want to discuss.
	A different idea each week, which is how I open my episode.
	Just things I'm thinking about in the space, in the culture, mostly related to Jewish stuff, but sometimes not, just sort of where we are right now.
	And then I also wanted to normalize Jewish people, notable Jews and non-Jews who I have on the show, like Van Jones, having conversations about Jewish stuff and showing that we can do this.
	It's normal.
	It's not scary.
	It doesn't have to be controversial or political to have...
	And it's not lame, it's not academic, it's not uncool, which I think a lot of Jews have that fear that, like, oh, it's not cool to talk about.
	Jewish stuff.
	So I wanted to model that.
	I wanted to provide an environment for these notable Jews and non-Jewish allies to talk about this stuff, because they don't usually get the opportunity to really be honest and go deep and have meaningful conversations about their own identity in this way.
	Usually, if you're a...
	They're not getting asked, what did it feel like when you were shooting that movie in the wake of October 7th and having to navigate being on a cast with people who might have different views than you.
	Like, we get to get into that kind of stuff.
	Obviously, Jews, this is generally known that Jews have played a major role in developing Hollywood.
	And yet Hollywood, we're talking about hotbeds of progressivism.
	In Hollywood, I can't almost think of a...
	Do you think that's odd?
	Well, if you look back at the way Hollywood was founded, I mean, it was very literally invented by Jews at that time in the early 20th century.
	You know, the big aristocrats and businessmen of America didn't want anything to do with movies.
	It was seen as sort of a lower class, you know, riff raff entertainment kind of a thing.
	And so as has always been the case for Jews historically, they have to.
	So this industry of this new movie thing, they were like, oh yeah, we don't care.
	You guys can do it.
	It's beneath us anyway.
	And so you had all these Eastern European immigrants coming in and creating Hollywood.
	I mean, you hear the name Samuel Goldwyn, which is like a famous film studio.
	His real name is Shmuel Gelbfisch.
	You know, and changed his name when he got to America, Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Golden-Mayer.
	He had some other, you know, Yiddish-sounding European name.
	So from the very beginning, Jews were hiding their Jewishness in the building of Hollywood.
	And I sort of get it for them, because it was less about hiding Jewishness and more about we're American now.
	We've left the old country behind.
	We're American.
	We're American businessmen.
	and we want to be taken seriously and be part of the fabric of this country.
	But that, And so even though Jews were very literally in those days, Jews were running Hollywood because that's the only people making it, it's not like you saw 100 Jewish movies on screen.
	were not that you know they would put the sort of their jewish ethos on screen which is why so much of american culture is sort of has baked in sort of jewish comedic storytelling sensibilities but rarely in jewish storytelling or through jewish characters and so i think when you sort of fast forward to today uh a lot of that is still there where you have jews in hollywood they're not running it the same way anymore there's a lot of them there's plenty of non-jews running it too um but
	the the ethos again is to sort of make it be american and with the and and not put the jewish part of Except for Seinfeld.
	Here's an example.
	The character of George, who is Greek on the show, was written as a Jewish character.
	I mean, it's Larry David, basically.
	But the network was like, well, we already have Jerry.
	We can't have another Jewish character.
	So he was Greek.
	So even in the Seinfeld, there's a little bit of the, like, we can't be too Jewish, even though the show is created by...
	So where can people find Being Jewish and, frankly, all of your work?
	Yeah, so the podcast, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt, you can get on audio on any of the podcast platforms you use, Apple, Spotify.
	We're on YouTube.
	We put out everything on video as well.
	We're also on TV.
	We're on Jewish Broadcasting Service, JBS, which people can find on cable or Roku or Fire Stick.
	And then we put out a lot of stuff online, social media, at Jonah Platt on Instagram, on X, at Being Jewish Podcast on Instagram, and at Being Jewish on TikTok as well.
	Well, Jonah Platt, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
	Thank you, Jan, so much.
	I really appreciate the opportunity.
	Thank you all for joining Jonah Platt and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.

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