How to Have Uncomfortable Conversations, ft. Noah Tishby and Emmanuel Acho
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Free delivery on your first three orders. While supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. Rise and shine, Fever Dreamers. I'm Sami Sage, and this is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News, where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Today, we are so lucky to be joined by Noah Tishby and Emmanuel Acho, authors of the new book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew.

a follow-up to Emmanuel's 2020 book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. V is out today, and I know she is very sad to miss this interview, but I'm happy to have you all here. Welcome, Noah and Emmanuel. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. I have been reading your book and, you know, also just even as we're getting ready to go on this show, observing the dynamic and the friendship between the two of you. And it has been such a bright spot to see like a really constructive, friendly, giving each other the benefit of the doubt conversation and dynamic, even from

Well, obviously throughout the book, as I know you come from different places in your perspectives in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways you don't. One thing I want to say is thank you for creating that bright spot. And right now I think things are looking pretty bleak. It seems like no one can get along. So I would love to hear from you about your experiences and how you've

been able to help people of differing perspectives reconcile them. And I guess kind of like what you've witnessed as you've brought this book into the world with the goal of creating more understanding. Oh my God. I love this question, by the way, you've used the word. I think Emmanuel, nobody actually used. And I think it's so, it's, it's crucial. You use the word constructive. Yeah.

It's a constructive conversation. It's a constructive friendship. It's a constructive book. It's a constructive relationship. We don't do that in our society these days. So much of the, it's not a conversation. It's actually just a virtue signaling. It's actually just in order to make a point. And this was not what we wanted.

What we wanted, what Emmanuel and I wanted was to make sure that we create a blueprint to have an uncomfortable conversation. And that was, it was all Emmanuel. He reached out to me. He had this idea of reaching out to the Jewish community. He noticed that there is a rise in anti-Semitism before October 7th. So by now, everybody understand that there is a problem with anti-Semitism in this country and in the world. But Emmanuel noticed that before and he wanted to have that

constructive conversation. And it was extraordinary. And I think that's a big word that we're going to be using from now on. I love to hear it. Yeah, Manuel. So what have you, I mean, what inspired you? I mean, other than just seeing the massive rise in anti-Semitism, but it seems what I've learned from the book, obviously, just providing context for the listeners, is that you had a friendship before. And how important that

friendship was to form the basis of that understanding. So can you talk a little bit about why you wanted to invite Noah into this series that you were already having when, you know, it is, as you mentioned in the book, it can be risky or, you know, uncomfortable to put yourself out there for a community that might cause backlash within your own community.

Yeah, well, one, to all the listeners, y'all are in for a treat. Noah and I usually have spent every waking moment together, but we haven't seen each other in like a week now. So this is like the most energy and like we're literally like staring into each other's eyes, smiling. So y'all are in for a treat. Y'all are getting me and Noah fresh. No more regurgitated conversations. Y'all are getting brand new dialogue.

There is a foundation of friendship and at least a foundation of genuine respect that I believe is imperative to have constructive conversations. I think for everybody listening, wondering why they can't be heard or why the conversations are going bad, I think because our current society lacks the foundation and the fundamental respect and love that is necessary to have dialogue like this.

You can't just engage in geopolitical affairs. You can't just engage in domestic political affairs. You can't engage in any type of these intense affairs if there is not a foundation of friendship. Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. The first time Noah and I ever met, we didn't talk about, though the war hadn't happened yet, we didn't talk even about anti-Semitism. We ate salmon.

and broccoli, and I think maybe chicken parmesan. And we shared dessert at a restaurant in West Hollywood. We talked about each other. We talked about her family. She asked me about mine. We talked about her books. I talked about mine. Before we ever talked about the intense matters, we talked to and talked about one another. We learned each other so that if I ever said anything that may have been deemed disrespectful or vice versa, no, I know you care about me.

So before we built any tension, we built love. We built friendship. We built unity. And that way, when tension arose, it was all good. That's so true. I mean, having a basis of trust and respect that you can give that person the benefit of the doubt, like that maybe they just do not have the same perspective or set of facts that I'm operating under. And maybe they will even say something very offensive and not know.

And that was very important for us as well. But the thing is that in today's conversation, there's no intentionality of love and friendship to begin with. There's only the intentionality of virtue signaling, of riding the high horse, of being holier than the Pope, of saying something that's painful, of getting likes and the algorithm pushing you up, of basically engaging in our amygdala and our most

and seated kind of like down fears and anxieties. And that is not constructive at all. And Sammy, if I may very quickly, it's fascinating. I've never thought about this until now. You said having trust so you can give someone the benefit of the doubt. And that's beautifully said. But the aperture of my mind has been opened. The more trust you have, there is no doubt to give someone the benefit of. I don't even doubt if Noah says something that I, oh, well, I think she's coming from a good place. Duh, she is.

Because I know her. Like there isn't even an ounce of doubt. When I said things that may have been deemed rude or insensitive or anti-Semitic, Noah doesn't even have to give me the benefit of the doubt because she knows me. A hundred percent. And so I encourage all these listeners, like work your relationships with coworkers, with family, with friends, with distant relatives. Work the relationship to where there's not even a benefit of doubt you have to give. There isn't even doubt.

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I have a pulse. You're going to be okay. Dr. Odyssey, Thursdays, 9, 8 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. It seems like you both have, you know, an optimistic view of humanity, which I think is obviously very crucial for times like these. And something that was in your book that really spoke to me that I think doesn't really go addressed because it's so subtle is the question of who's responsible for a trauma response. When we experience something traumatic,

you know, maybe not something as overt as a swastika or the use of the N word, but these more insidious stereotypes that, you know, befall both of our communities quite frequently. The conversation about who is responsible for a trauma response, would you be able to talk about that concept and how you addressed it in your book and sort of like where that line falls and especially in the context of relationships where people either trust or don't trust each other?

Noah, let's share the story first off, so the listener understanding kind of the context of the trauma response. So there were two stories really in the book. I'll expedite them both. Number one, I was like, Noah, why are Jewish people so upset with Dave Chappelle?

And Dave Chappelle did a stand-up skit, for those that are listening. Dave Chappelle's a Black comedian, and he did a stand-up skit in the wake of Kanye West's craziness about, you know, Hitler had some good ideas. And Dave Chappelle just made jokes. Comedians, they make jokes. He made jokes that were about the Jewish community. Jewish people have power. I was like, Jewish people have power in Hollywood. Jewish people run Hollywood, he said. I said, no way.

Why are people so upset? Why are people so upset? Cut to the quick tangent. I'm in Austin, Texas. I'm with my dear white friends and black friends, 10 of them in total. For all those that are listening, my black friend had a two-year-old daughter. The two-year-old daughter was climbing up a table. One of the white friends that were present said, oh my gosh, she's such a little monkey.

All the black people instantly got quiet, picked up their cell phones, started texting each other. Who's going to tell her? Who the hell is going to tell her you can't call a black kid a monkey? Who's going to tell her? Because historically speaking, porch monkeys and black people being called monkeys and then historically speaking, power. Noah, you want to elaborate and then we can answer the question on the Dave Chappelle conversation and how that went.

We're hanging out in my house and I and my son, Ari, who's eight and a half years old, is running around. And I kind of go something about monkey. Do you want to have dinner? And Emmanuel goes, stop right there. And then we start having a conversation. I actually had no idea about that trope. I had no idea that it used to be a thing that was black people were called monkey. And it mortified me beyond. But I and I stopped using that.

Right. To Emmanuel's Dave Chappelle story, he was asking about Jews in power. And I said that to acknowledge that there are Jews in positions of power, it's OK, or that in your life, Emmanuel, in Emmanuel's life, there were a lot of Jews that had power.

that had positions of powers historically, that is totally fine. But moving into the realm of control is where you start kind of dabbling in antisemitic tropes. So both of our communities have these like buzzwords. So when I hear as a Jew, I hear, oh, the Jews control the media, or the Jews control all the money. I freak out immediately. And when Emmanuel hears, oh my God, a monkey, who's a kid referred to a monkey, he has that kind of visceral reaction as well.

well. So both our communities, again, without communicating about this, we would never have known, right? Emmanuel wouldn't have known about the trope, like control to power, and I wouldn't have known about the monkey. But to your question before, okay, conversations is crucial, and talking about these things is crucial, and talking about these things without getting triggered is

is crucial. And I am in the belief, and so is Emmanuel, that my intention is to kind of educate and share as much as we both can, right, Emmanuel and I, but I'm also going to be responsible for my trauma response because it's always my trauma response. So whenever, when Emmanuel would say stuff that could fall into the anti-Semitic tropes, I would never get triggered. And honestly, I

work on to me and I talk about this in my speaking engagements especially for younger people like for like high school and college

To be unmessable with is a superpower. And I have stood and had conversations with people that aren't as amazing as Emmanuel, right? That have bad intentions, like really anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist and think that the Jews are X, Y, and Z. And if I am able to not allow my trauma response to take over, if I'm allowed, if I'm able to not get triggered, that is a superpower. And that's how we approached this book, Emmanuel and I. Nothing was triggering. Everything was educational.

Beautifully said. And the only quick thing I'll add to that is I think you have to identify the trauma that you have so that you can identify your trauma response. I speak of those differences between being racist, racially insensitive and racially ignorant.

If someone, if a dear white friend might say, oh my gosh, he's such a little monkey. My friend who said that in Austin, Texas with my black community, they weren't being racist. They have no idea that calling a little black child a monkey was racist. You know what I mean? They were being racially ignorant. Like they were ignorant to the history. Um.

When I would say, you know, Jewish people control Hollywood. I'm not trying to be anti-Semitic. I'm sitting here thinking, Sammy. I'm like, wait, my agent, he's Jewish. The CEO of the agency. Well, yeah, he's Jewish. My book agent. Yeah, he's Jewish. The CEO of the book. I'm just saying like what I think to be.

It's normal practice. So when Noah educates me, I'm like, oh, wait, Hitler, 1939, 1930s, used that ideology of Jewish control to say, well, we need to overthrow the Jews. So I take some responsibility once I am aware of their trauma. The point in this book is to understand the trauma that exists so that we can better live life with people around us. Right. And that's why it's become so dangerous when it's like a competition of trauma.

There's so many different directions you can go in with that. But ultimately, we're talking about these small trauma responses, but I would say that...

and you mentioned this in the book, is that both of our communities, many of the same people who are against critical race theory and want to deny that slavery ever happened are of the same ideology of the people who want to deny that the Holocaust happened and who want to promote anti-Semitic tropes. So do you have any ideas other than building relationships and building conversation for how to sort of get

each community, like both of our communities to see, like I know as, you know, as a Jewish person, like I even find it hard in my own community to,

for people who are extremely protective of Israel and of being Jewish to see the analogy, like the parallel that, that the black community has suffered in America. And it's like, we could be fighting the same fight and we should be. I think it's just very hard for people to see how intertwined we are. I can speak to that. I think education first and first and first and first and first and foremost, I,

If we're being real, like this generation of kids, not specific to any gender or sexuality, this generation of kids, they don't even realize that Jewish people helped found the NAACP. They don't even realize that. They don't even realize that MLK and pastors and preachers and rabbis were marching together throughout the 1960s. That's not even in the comprehension.

So the first thing we have to understand and remind everyone is there was a foundational and fundamental relationship, and that relationship did exist. I think the second thing we have to try to break down and understand is, well, why did the fracture occur? I think it behooves Jewish people to understand why the fracture occurred. Noah and I talked about it in the chapter, are Jews white?

Because Jewish people don't perceive themselves as white, but non-Jewish people and me myself would have perceived Jewish people as white. And if you put Jewish people in the white bucket, then by the transitive property of black people and white people have tension, then black people and Jewish people have tension. So I also think we need to rebrand Jewish people aren't necessarily white.

They're not white. And so that way you can understand, oh, wait, so there's a relationship here? Because if Jewish people are white, then you're the oppressor. You're the racist. You're insensitive. You're all the things that historically in America, white people have been perceived as towards the black community. But the last thing I will say then is there has to be the understanding of, OK, wait, I do benefit from white facing privilege if I'm a white facing Jew. So there's just so much education that needs to be had. And Noah and I, we brilliantly talk about it.

And it's so delicate. There's so many intricacies about this. Like to understand that the prism of oppressor and oppressed and melanin in the skin, once you once the world kind of changed into that and this is in like kind of polite circles, that's how you judge the world. Right. Which, by the way, to me is reductive and unhelpful on so many levels and not progress. And it's not it doesn't progress you anywhere.

to look at the world through those prisms of oppressor and oppressed and melanin in the skin. Once you look at the world through those glasses, the Jewish community doesn't fit. We don't fit. The Jewish community, we have never benefited from the same privileges as white Christians have historically for thousands of years. And in the last generation, once it changed into like white passing, the Jews were like, oh, okay, we're good. But that doesn't erase the history.

So the whole concept of, by the way, we're good, the white passing Eastern European origin American Jews, we do need to acknowledge that we do benefit from looking white, but we're still not white, which still means that we have to be allies to other communities and still means we need to be out there on the front lines, as we have been historically, continue doing that. And again, this is what Emmanuel and I refuse to let the schism between the Jewish and the black community continue.

And the more I think about it, if there was something I would have said we should expound on in the book,

the book, it would be what Noah just said. And it would be expounding on what are Jewish peoples and what are Black people's relationship to America? Because I believe that Black people look at their pain through the prism of their relationship to America. I believe that Jewish people look at their pain through the prism of their pain. Meaning, in America, I was talking to Tova Friedman, one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, and it was an interview for MTV. And we were leaning over the Hudson River and we were staring at the Statue of Liberty. And

And she was like, when I look at the Statue of Liberty, it just reminds me of my freedom. She said, after I survived the Holocaust and the gas chambers malfunctioned, and I took this boat across with my mother, my father had passed at the time, it just reminds me of my freedom. But the Statue of Liberty does not necessarily remind the Black person of their freedom.

Because the black person came to America across a boat and shackles, and the Jewish person, at least Tova Friedman, came to America across the boat for freedom. And so there's a much different relationship that the black person and the Jewish person have to America. And so while the Jewish person has suffered tremendously, particularly prior to October 7th and James Baldwin, he writes about it, their suffering in America and the black person suffering in America is different.

And I think that is a major, major, major point of contention because it's like our relationship to America is not the same. And I think that has to be expounded on.

I think that you, the two of you have, you know, a new model for DEI in America. It's a really, it's a really, really huge conversation to tackle. I can give you a personal example. My dad's parents were in the Holocaust. They met after being in Auschwitz in a displaced persons camp and they were unable to get into America for a while. So they traveled around and they got into Canada. Yeah.

Well, you said traveled around and make it sound like they just traveled. No, they were refugees, like slammed from one shore to the next on both poor, unallowed in every country and any place in the world. Just that to me. Yeah. It's not the love boat. It's not like a... Oh, no, it was definitely not the love boat when you meet my family. So now I'm... My dad was born in Canada. I'm now able to get a Canadian passport.

to have as an advantage. I will also add that my dad had an older sister who was born, I believe,

while they were, I think, trying to get out of Germany or Poland. And she had a daughter when she was older. And the father of this daughter, who we don't actually know who it is, is a Black man. So I found out through Ancestry, or she found out through Ancestry, she is a Black woman who, she looks Black even though she's technically half Black.

has been living in Brooklyn for 40 years, and we just met two years ago. And I think about how different our lives have been because of her mother was my dad's older sister, was born closer to the Holocaust, closer to all that trauma, was not able to prosper in

in the same way in terms of like mental illness and all of these things. And I just, I look at that and I'm like, I have this first cousin who I did not know I had my whole life. And I see our, our different lives and the precarity of that and how it's been affected by our past, our shared past and our skin color here. And I think about that and I'm like, it's so hard to look at these barriers, both as not mattering at all, but also as,

the chance of who could have been in which position is really something I think about a lot. Yeah. Wow. What a great story. Thank you both so much for being here and for sharing your intimate friendship. It's really beyond a lesson in antisemitism or racism or how to have these conversations. We have, you know, a lesson in the importance of real live friendships. IRL. Yeah. IRL. IRL. Thank you both so much for being on the show. Thank you.

We can find your book everywhere, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew. And until next time, I'm Sammy Sage, and this has been American Fever Dream. American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage, at Sammy and me at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com. Betches.