My Yom HaShoah Wish

Every year at this time, my life partner, Gidon Lev, speaks at several Yom HaShoah gatherings.  He is devoted to telling his story.  Every year at this time, sobering articles come out about how few Holocaust survivors are left in this world. Every year at this time, a representative of the IDF visits with Gidon. He receives flowers and podcast invitations. But this year, Gidon is tired. Maybe it’s the chamsin. Or the war. Or the fact that Gidon, my most beloved, is 90 years old.

In many ways, Gidon has been a trailblazer. Together, we have created an enormous library of content on TikTok and Instagram with over 10 million likes that will be available for years. Gidon has made an impact and has left us a legacy that will not soon be forgotten.  But all of our work has been self-funded. And honestly, we’re both drained and exhausted.  Something needs to change.

Legacy institutions –universities, museums, memorials, and the foundations that fund them- have done the heavy lifting of Holocaust education and remembrance for the past several decades. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the USC Shoah Foundation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and many more have amassed archives, artifacts, educational materials, and powerful exhibits that are sobering and impactful.

But nobody in the sphere of Holocaust education and remembrance had a blueprint about how to teach about it in effective, lasting ways that didn’t include the belief that the Holocaust was the nadir of the Jewish experience and that antisemitism would be a relic of the past only entertained in our modern times by neo-Nazi nutcases.

And yet here we are.

The crown jewel in terms of impact was Schindler’s List. Viewed widely and incredibly powerful, it was an immersive film experience that did much to bring the horrors of the Holocaust into the public eye, spectacularly and sensitively. But Schindler’s List was released thirty-two years ago —long before today’s Fortnite players and TikTok users were born.

Of course institutions play an essential role in the fight against antisemitism, but it’s preaching to the choir. If someone is availing themselves of educational material, a museum, or a documentary about the Holocaust, they are already showing the kind of humanity we seek to preserve.

What worked in a previous era—a museum exhibit, a somber film—must now compete with the internet’s sheer velocity, scale, and volatility. It is evident in a post-October 7th world that hatred for the Jews never went away at all. It just went underground. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Today, we are in a perfect storm of deeply embedded Jewish hatred, misinformation, and disinformation online, a polarized society, and political bodies shifting rightward by the day. The Jewish world is in a state of emergency.

How can we meet this moment in time?

A panoply of Jew-positive content is being created by everyone from Hen Mazzig/the Tel Aviv Institute to viral dancer Montana Tucker to Michael Rappaport (for better or worse.) There is Orthodox nurse and mom Miriam Ezagui, who shares insights into the rituals and traditions of her life. A nine-year-old Israeli boy makes Instagrams about his experience of this war. Luc Bernard, a visionary in the gaming world, has taken on the biggest gaming companies, addressing the rampant antisemitism in the gaming industry.

Jewish advocacy content is fast, affordable, and instantly shareable. It responds to trends and social tides in real time—without needing a script, a grant, or a board vote.

But most of these content creators are pouring their hearts and souls into this without any kind of financial or creative support. This new wave of Jewish advocacy is nimble and responsive. But it’s not sustainable.

My friend Eitan Chitayat, who has racked up 300 million views of his “I’m That Jew” initiative, is comprised of a team of precisely two people: Eitan and his wife.

When we spoke about this, Eitan had this to say:

The fight of our times off the physical field is this one…to win the narrative war and show people who we truly are instead of letting our enemies determine our narrative, which leads to lack of physical support and solidarity which influences policy which can result in the loss of our reputations and our very lives. Jewish organizations need to cut the red tape and be as selfless as everyone else who is doing good work in the identity space and get behind us.

There are plenty of private donors who fund organizations that fight antisemitism – Robert Kraft is a great  example – but private donor organizations tend to focus on their own closed-ended strategies, which often overlook creators like a nine-year-old Israeli boy sharing his daily reality online.

The Jewish world is full of institutions, donors, and creators all rowing in the same direction on a foggy lake. We can’t see each other. We can’t find each other.

Most of the large foundations are incredibly bureaucratic. That’s how these things go – board members and advisors, quarterly meetings, and lengthy grant processes. Just try to get someone on the phone at the Claims Conference or the USC Shoah Foundation. It’s nigh well impossible.

I have been trying to get the attention of Steven Spielberg for five years. I have written about how Gidon pines to meet him. I have exchanged emails with people who know him. I have worked with the USC Shoah Foundation, a partner in the documentary about Gidon “Follow Me.”  But I just can’t get through – not yet. The documentary is complete but it needs what are called “finishing funds.” I can imagine that there must be hundreds if not thousands of organizations or private donors out there who would love this film and rush to fund its completion so it can get out into the world quickly. But they don’t know about Gidon, or the film. It’s a foggy lake and the rocky shore is jagged.

My wish this Yom HaShoah is for a centralized hub for Jewish advocacy and Holocaust education. A place where content creators, artists, writers and producers can be matched up with organizations and funders willing and able to meet this moment in new and innovative ways. A place that is responsive, interactive and above all, fast-moving.  A place that keeps up with the blistering pace of antisemitism and those brave, committed, creative souls thinking outside of the box, trying to do something about it.

I would love to be a part of creating this hub. But I too am tired.