Noam: Mijal, today what are we wondering about?
Mijal: We’re going to be exploring and wondering how generosity of time, effort, finances, resources and talents actually moves the Jewish story forward, how it moves the needle in terms of our progress as a people and what it looks like when giving of yourself and or your resources becomes a life practice rather than just a line item.
Noam: So I, with that in mind, I’m gonna introduce our guest who’s joining us. Our guest is Mitch Jules.
Mitch Jules is the co-founder, the co-chairman, the co-CEO of Canyon Partners.
Mitch Julis: Codependent.
Noam: The co-dependent, okay, I like that. He is a graduate of Princeton, went to Harvard Law School, I’m made his parents very proud, got an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University, did a lot of different important things, been a trustee of, is a trustee of the Brown University Corporation, was a member, tell me if I’m wrong about this, but you were at some point on the Princeton board or something like that.
Mitch Julis: I served on the Princeton board for four years, and I actually just finished my service both on the Brown Corporation. And that was six years, and then about eight, nine years on the Watson Institute of Public and International Affairs, which is now a school of public and international affairs. And now I’m on the board of Yeshiva University.
Noam: And, and let’s say few.
Noam: Board of Yeshiva University also is a member of the advisory council for the Jules Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance. That’s something that you developed. For me, most importantly, are two specific things. One is that you were a founding board member of Jerusalem U, which then became OpenDor Media, one of the critical board members. And I had the great fortune to be your kid’s principal in Jewish day school back in the West Coast back in Los Angeles a number of years ago, eight, ten years ago.
Mitch Julis: So obviously you did a good job because my oldest son, Elliot, is making aliyah as we speak and he’s engaged to an Israeli girl who’s a Moroccan Iraqi from just south of Haifa. So an example of how good education and good mentors and leaders provide great influence on your most important portfolio, which is your children, obviously.
Mijal: Wow, congratulations.
Noam: That’s a beautiful, beautiful note. So Mijal, any other thoughts before we really dive into this?
Mijal: No, I’m excited. And I’m excited also, it’s not awkward that you were Mitch’s children’s principal. I love it.
Noam: Not awkward at all. By the way, here’s what I’ll say about your kids, Mitch, just to be weird for a second. No one would ever know from meeting your kids that their father is the founder of Canyon. No one would know that from meeting your children. And I think that says a lot about the way you raise your children. they’re just like, the greatest, kindest, just humble people.Mitch: Well, that’s great to hear. think having been born in the Bronx to parents who were teachers, we’ll get into it. And being raised for the first 10 years of my life, essentially next to my immigrant Greek parents, Greek Jewish parents. I think those lessons, their behavior really became a prominent part of how I at least maybe unknowingly try to transmit to the kids about, you know, living their lives. So I would think that my grandparents, both sides, and my parents, particularly my mother, would be happy to hear your comments. Thank you.
Noam: Okay, good, good. So let’s, you went directly into it. First of all, you were the, and I’m embarrassed to say this about myself, but I first learned about Romaniote Judaism from you. And I didn’t know much about it until you taught me about it like a decade ago. And I want to hear a little bit about what your origin story is. In like a snapshot, what is, if you were describing it to a teenager, what is your origin story, Mitch Jules’ origin story?
Mitch Julis: Born in the Bronx in 1955, and we lived in, I guess, a pre-war building between Tremont Avenue and Fordham Road, which is two blocks away from the Bronx Zoo, about five blocks away from, I guess, the Lexington Five. We call it in the New York, we call it the L because it’s where the subway becomes elevated in the outer boroughs. And a few blocks away from, also about let’s say half a mile away from the Botanical Gardens, Arthur Avenue, which was an enclave of the Italians that maintained itself despite the decline of New York City during the 60s and 70s. Great Italian food.
And we lived on the fourth floor, right next to my Greek grandparents. And so I didn’t know any Yiddish. I knew Greek words and had Greek food. I didn’t have Ashkenazi food. So why do I mention that? was because it was very unique for my mother, came from parents that came from Poland, Russia, Rubinowitz, very fair skinned, green blue eyes, to marry somebody who was very dark, my father Maurice Julis, who had jet black hair, brown eyes, and was very different.
My mother was actually engaged to a Murray, nice Ashkenazi Jew, who aspired to be an engineer. And then because she was a speech pathologist, she was giving diction lessons to my father. And so his name was Mori, Maurice. So she dropped Murray for Mori. And that was a big deal. And it was such a big deal that when my parents were getting married, my Ashkenazi grandfather, Michael Rabinowitz, found Romani culture and rituals so foreign to him that he yelled that in Yiddish that this is not a kosher wedding. And he brought up his rabbi to finish the ceremony. But despite that inauspicious beginning, the mix of cultures really influenced me and gave me a sense that many people don’t have, that the spectrum of Jewish ethnicity, culture, really spans a very wide swath. And I think that’s unique, that perspective to grow up with, to have that appreciation.
So… I think that multicultural, guess for lack of a better word, has really influenced me. Certainly it influenced me when I met my wife, Jolene, who comes from a very mixed background. HHer father came from her grandfather, whom Elliot is named, Eliyahu, came from Spain during the 30s. What a Jew was doing in the 1930s in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, we don’t really understand. And then he immigrated to Mexico, Aguas Calientes, a lot of Jews, that was a port of entry or place of entry and then eventually a place called Kiretaro. So a lot of Jolene’s initial years were in Mexico.
And then my son has continued the tradition by making Aliyah and marrying somebody who’s Moroccan Iraqi. So it goes deep, but I think it really creates a unique, somewhat unique perspective that, you know, particularly in today’s world where all Jews are whitewashed as white, privileged, you know, colonialists, right? And we are people of color, if you want to use that word, which I don’t even like to use. And so having that sense of that mixed identity, ethnicity, has always been with me my life, throughout my life.
Mijal: You know, Mitch, it’s so interesting for me to hear. there’s so many stories like yours and your wives and your family, that people just, like you said, absolutely do not know. They think that the American, the US Jewish experience is all homogeneous, all from Eastern Europe, all describing one particular experience. And I’m grateful as we share more stories that expand our understanding of who Jews are.
Mitch Julis: Yeah, the one other thing I’d like to say is that the, back to your original point about the Romaniote Jews being very distinct and different, they date back from Hellenic times. And the fact that my grandparents came out of Greece in around 1905, 1906 was because of the Greek national movement for nationhood, because they were pushing out the Turks.
The Jews and the Turks actually got along. It was imperfect, second class citizenship, extra taxes. But my grandmother Esther Dalvin, who became Esther Julis, lived in a place called Yanina. My grandfather came from a nearby town called Arta, which is in Northwest Greece. And my cousin, my grandmother’s cousin Ray Dalvin, who became a professor and wrote the Jews of Yanina, which we’re going to issue a new edition updated with a lot more of her works, describes life there. They all came around that time and they established the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, which is on Broom Street, Eldridge Street, called the Kehila Kedoshah Synagogue. And every year, yeah, and every year there’s a Greek Jewish festival in May. And so if people want to understand more about the Romaniotes, they can go down there.
Noam: That’s great. I love it, Mijal, because like you said, like both you and Mitch are talking about understanding the broad swath of Jewish identity is so important to understanding the Jewish story. And when we don’t do that, when we reduce it to one thing that we imagine, then we’re not giving the credit to the full
Mitch Julis: that it makes us vulnerable to all the cliches, the stereotypes they’re trying particularly which are really weaponized today.
Noam: Yeah. But I’m also saying internally, it’s important for the Jewish people to understand our people as a whole.
But I want to talk about that, you gave us your origin story. Could you say a little bit about an aspect of your origin story also as it relates to giving? Like, do you have a moment that you can remember going back into your life where you could say, when I was younger, I did my first act of giving or maybe I was receiving that helped you think about your story as it relates to Israel and Jewish identity. Is there any moment that you either received or gave that comes to mind early on?
Mitch Julis: The first time that I was aware of giving was actually in my grandmother’s apartment next door to us. And she had what a lot of people describe as that little can that you would put excess change.
And in this particular situation, it was a can to collect excess change for the Sephardic Home for the Aged in Brooklyn, which her cousin Joe Dalvin was the director of. He was the brother of Ray Dalvin, who was the professor that I mentioned who wrote the Jews of Yanana. So Joe became a doctor, and a major accomplishment for a guy who got off the boat. And then he became the director of the Sephardic Home for the Aged in Brooklyn. So my grandparents always had that little can in their apartment in the kitchen to give money to. So that was like the first time that I was aware of the giving.
And then my mother always was involved in Jewish activities because her father was pretty Orthodox. He would go down during the winter from New York to Collins Avenue in Miami to one of those little hotels and he would be the cantor. so my mom, in honor of Jewish tradition and her father, when she was a counselor, my parents were counselors during the summer because they were teachers, so you had the whole summer off. And to be able to afford to send me and my brother Richie to camp, they, they became counselors. They worked at this place called Copay Country Club, which was established by a Jew in the 20s or 30s. They bought a whole bunch of land up there. It’s gorgeous. There’s a lake. And then they established a camp. It used to be an adult camp, and then it became also a youth camp.
And so nobody was doing Shabbat on Friday. So my mother took it upon herself to make sure that they made a challah out of the kitchen. There was grape juice and candles. So she did that during the summer. And that was a very, very vivid memory.
So look, I think as long as you maintain a connection, whatever it is, to Jewish tradition, ritual, you’re going to, by its very nature, have a sense that part of that is to give. And I think it’s just ingrained in it. So that’s a little background.
Noam: Great, great. Mijal, I wanna now go into different aspects of how we think about philanthropy in general and how we think about the distinctions between power and influence. Like power is often described as something that’s more forceful, it’s more control oriented, whereas influence is much more perhaps positive. And Rabbi Jonathan Sacks always has really beautiful ideas about this. He quoted Shakespeare once, he said, the influence we have lives after us, the power is often interred with our bones. And so there’s a distinction between power and influence. And I want to talk about that within the realm of philanthropy.
When you’re thinking about philanthropy or when you’re giving advice on funding in 2025 or philanthropy in general, what is the type of thing that you probe first? Do you look at the people? Do you look at team? Do you look at the theory of change, do you look at metrics, do you look at values? How do, I think philanthropy is this area that people are very confused about.
Mijal: Mystified, mystified, yeah.
Noam: Mystified, that’s right word. It’s like, what’s behind all of this? So how do you think about it in your realm of philanthropy? How have you thought about it the last 15, 20 years?
Mitch Julis: So let me first give context to your point about power and influence. So I got into, when I was at Princeton from 1973 to 77, I migrated from being obsessed with Soviet Union and Red China and the possibility of nuclear destruction, which we grew up with in the 60s, having to go think about where bomb shelters were, the Cuban missile crisis, you know, it in the zeitgeist. We had movies like Dr. Strangelove and Sail Safe, et cetera.
But because Nixon deconstructed during Watergate, during the time I was in college, I started to get very interested in psychology and leadership, what makes leaders tick. And we were lucky at Princeton to have two leading scholars in that area, Fred Greenstein, who became my mentor and thesis advisor, and Robert Tucker, and who taught in Soviet politics, Soviet history. And one of the books that we learned in presidential power, the course that Fred Greenstein taught during the time that Nixon was deconstructing in Watergate, was by Richard Neustadt. It was called Presidential Power.
And he says in the book, the power of the president is the power to persuade. And that really has stuck with me all these years. You have to be able to enroll people, so to speak, in a vision, right? And you can’t dictate it to them. I mean, I guess you could use certain raw power. But it really is about persuasion. Particularly if you’re in different roles.
The only way, for example, in the finance world, that you can really get your company, your enterprise moving, is to persuade the people to enroll in your vision and to learn from them. So two-way street. Because you’re dealing with very talented people who have opportunities elsewhere, and you can’t just dictate. And you’ve got to really have respect for them, a sense of humility, and back and forth.
All those things apply in the philanthropic world, I believe. one of the rabbis, Dov Heller, from the Los Angeles community said that the trifecta of Jewish learning is threefold. Always have great teachers, rabbis, whatever you want to call it in your life, throughout your life. Have great partners, personally and professionally. And also teach. Have great students, because the student, from the students, in that student teacher relationship, if you respect it It’s gonna become a two-way street. because we’re all human beings we get I guess for lack of a better word triggered by different things anxiety, own fears, we project stuff, but you know that’s a guiding thing and you had examples of it in your own life, throughout your life, I think you learn that and you try to employ it as best you can. So that’s number one.
Number two, in terms of philanthropy, the other element that I’ve developed over time is what I call the approach of finding leverage points, to either hug or hit. So you have the most bang for your buck or whatever you want to call it. So what do I mean by that? Well, a good example of hitting is publishing a piece, as we have in the Jewish Journal, of that.
Noam: When you say we have in the Jewish journal, just tell everyone what you’re talking, what you mean. Who’s we? Okay.
Mitch Julis: I partnered with David Suiza and Peter Loewy. Peter Loewy has been the longstanding supporter of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. And then when we orchestrated bringing in David Suiza, who’s done a great job, part of that is financial commitment. But the other part is coming up with ideas. And so that platform of the Jewish Journal is an example of philanthropy in the content area where we both hug and hit. We try to build bridges, but we also try to hit where it’s important to hit.
So for example, we wrote a cover story about the dangers, particularly to Israel and the Jewish community, by connecting the dots between the 1619 Project and the whole intersectionality, critical race theory, identity politics. And we basically said any rewriting of American history that says the United States was created to perpetuate slavery as opposed to form a more perfect union based on the idea of a covenantal relationship with the Almighty is gonna be warped and a danger, because Jews will be swept up into that narrative and look as part of that conspiracy to perpetuate slavery. And we’re gonna be part of that whole white colonialist supremacy gig that they are perpetuating today. And so we try to expose that five years ago. So that’s hitting, okay? But you can’t just hit. You have to be able to hug and build bridges. So an example of hugging, We’ve created a project at the Yeshiva University with Rabbi Stu Halpern and Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik called Restoring the American Story, the Role of the Hebrew Bible in American History. And most recently, we’re expanding that to give an idea of American civics from a Jewish perspective. So both Jewish students and non-Jewish students can understand the foundational values that were influenced by Jewish history and ethics, and that how they can appreciate their citizenship in the United States by really delving into better, by really delving into what it means as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is espoused, what it means to come from a unique country that believes in a covenantal relationship, where our rights come not from government, from the Almighty. It’s in the Declaration of Independence, right? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those are words, beautiful words, but to bring them into actuality, to really integrate it, requires better content, and particularly better content, both didactic and experiential.
Mijal: What I’m hearing you say, Mitch, which I appreciate, is that we live in times where there are forces that are threatening and it requires from us to fight, but we cannot do so without also offering a constructive vision forward of what we want the world to look like. So it’s not only a critical project of disagreeing with different bodies, it’s also offering our conception of what the world should look like.
Mitch Julis: That’s exactly right. I mean, I wrote an article that got a lot of criticism back in 2012 about Steven Spielberg’s movie Munich, which came out at the end of 2005, about four years after the…
Noam: Yeah, I remember.
Mitch Julis: you know, 9/11, the downing of the Twin Towers and all the other horrible things. And I wrote it in the context of lambasting that movie and also honoring the new alliance between Cornell University and the Technion on Roosevelt Island, which is the exact place for the last scene of Munich. So I drew a connection. So in Munich, if you remember, not everybody picked it up, but some at the time. At the end, part of the remaining assassin who has PTSD to avenge the killers the victims in the 1972 Munich Olympics. The avenging force, the one remaining guy, doesn’t want to return to Israel. And his handler from Israel meets him on Roosevelt Island and says to him, come back, your home is Israel. You’re living in Brooklyn. He says, no, no, no. What I’ve learned from being an assassin is my home, it’s not my nation. I don’t buy into its mission anymore. My home is my family, I’m staying here. And then Spielberg pans up from their meeting in Roosevelt Island to the horizon. And what do you see? The Twin Towers. And what’s the implication? That because Golda Meir ordered a team to avenge the deaths, of the Israeli Olympic team that Israel was part of a cycle of violence.
The moral equivalence is outraging. It’s totally outrageous, right? So I wrote that that’s what Spielberg wanted to say, that Israel had lost its way, was part of a cycle of violence, that it’s okay in Schindler’s List for Jews to be victims, but when we’re warriors, it’s not good. It’s not good. I thought that was a horrible message.
But the interesting is on that same island where Spielberg vilifies Israel is the same place that Israel through the Technion aligned itself with Cornell University to create a tech complex so that New York City can emerge from not just being a financial center, but a tech center. And that was building bridges, right? So I wrote something that in that article both hit against the kind of ideology that says Jews can only be victims and they can’t be warriors. That’s horrible. It was a horrible message then, and it’s a horrible message they’re using against us now.
But at the same time, to your point, Israel didn’t just respond to that slander by, you know, criticizing and vilifying Spielberg, they basically said, we’re going to create something different, something new. We’re going to create a vision for an alliance between New York City and Cornell and the state of New York and Israel and Technion, which is its leading tech academic complex.
And so in that effort, what I was trying to do and what I have seen others do like Bloomberg and Sandy Weil, who put that those two together and its influence today, I’m inspired by that. I’m inspired by that. So it can’t just be negative. You have to be positive and you have to create from those challenges. You have to create really good things.
Noam: Mitch, you are first of all, you’re a movie savant and that’s something I did not include in your bio, but I’ve known this about you for a long time. If you’re ever, by the way, if you’re ever at a dinner party with Mitch Jules there and you’re not sure who to speak to, just go over to Mitch and just start talking about movies and then you will have something to talk about for the next two hours. You’ll get lost in the evening. So I’m just saying that in relation to the, watched Munich a couple of times and I never picked up on anything that you’re talking about in the slightest. And that’s cause I’m not you. Okay.
Mitch Julis: Spielberg denied it. Spielberg denied it. I was criticized by some who said, you know, because he did the Shoah Foundation. I was being too harsh. If you go to the HBO special that is about Spielberg and how it’s centered around how all the movies that he did. And this came out before the Fablemens, which is really autobiographical. But this documentary basically shows how at different points of Spielberg’s life, he brings those familial elements into his movies. right? And his tortured relationship with his father is depicted, for example, in War of the Worlds. Right? His sense of wonder is an ET. Munich was about his ambivalence towards Zionism. And he later admits in that documentary years later, he admits they had five different possibilities for that ending scene. And they deliberately chose the scene where they digitally inscribed the Twin Towers to make that moral equivalence cycle of life. He admits it.
Noam: Interesting, interesting. Well, Mijal, you know what we have to do? We have to get Steven Spielberg on right after Mitch. Yeah, and to hear what Steven Spielberg has to say about all this.
Mijal: Yeah.
Mitch Julis: Defend himself.
Noam: We’ll do it, Mijal, we got this, we got that, okay? Okay, so Mitch, I wanna transition from that to, I wanna speak more about what it looks like to be really a culture of philanthropy. One of the things that people say about 18 to 34 year olds very often is that, meaning younger people, is that they don’t quote “get it,” and that they don’t “get it” both in terms of Israel and Judaism and they don’t get it in terms of philanthropy, that they should start doing philanthropy earlier on. So it’s a two parter here.
I wanna know what you would say to those younger people who argue that the older generation actually doesn’t understand a lot about the younger generation. They just like you guys are just so tone deaf and Mitch you’re part of your no offense. You’re no longer part of the younger generation. Okay, so what so what okay, so what is it? What what do you say to people who are 18 to 34 both in terms of them arguing that the older generation doesn’t understand them as it relates to their relationship to Judaism Zionism in Israel?
Mitch Julis: 70 years old. But baby boomer, you know.
Noam: And also, what do you say to them in terms of philanthropy? How do you design some sort of on-ramp to giving for 18 to 34-year-olds? Is that something that you’ve thought about? So a two-parter.
Mitch Julis: Yeah, recently, somebody cited a statistic that 80% of young Jews, or 80% of Jews in general maybe, haven’t come into Israel.
Noam: Really? Mijal, is that true?
Mijal: But I have no idea.
Mitch: I think you have to check that out. Somebody said, but whatever it is, I think the answer to your philanthropy question is get more young Jews, particularly to Israel. Really important. and I think it’s more important today than ever.
Noam: Yeah, it’s major, it’s a major, birthright’s major, major, major. Yeah.
Mitch Julis: Even with the challenges going to Israel because of the war, you know, everything after October 7th, but it’s still possible, they still do it. I think it’s imperative for Jews to connect experientially with Israel and to get a sense of what it means to be part of our history and to decide what role do you want to take place. know, Rabbi Spiro has written what I call a trilogy, right? He wrote, years ago, World Perfect, which is about the values Jews gave to the world as a gift. There’s another book similar by an Irish non-Jew called The Gift of the Jews. So it’s the values. Then he wrote Crash Course in Jewish History, which is really about how our history evolved over time, the key events, so that somebody would have one volume, an overview of Jewish history. And then he wanted to write Destiny, so that people can chart their course going forward. So when you look at it, look at the kind of formulaic way, even though those books are far from formulaic, they’re inspiring. You have values plus history equals heritage, right? Because combined together, it’s what we’re given, it’s our legacy. And a lot of that is a lot of, as they say, blood, sweat, and tears, where those values got forged into our spiritual DNA, our cultural DNA at great cost. Great joys, but great cost. And then we also know that we have free will, right?
So when you know your heritage, and you have a sense that you are a free agent. And if you look at the movie, the last installment of Mission Impossible, Final Reckoning, it’s all about choice and free will. Well, it’s all over the Torah. know, choose life so you shall live. So if you have values plus history equals heritage and heritage plus free will equals your destiny, not only for yourself but the Jewish people and Israel. So We’re all about free will. That’s what God, that God gave us free will, right? you have to really understand your heritage. You have to embrace it and one of the most important ways to do that is through going to Israel itself. That’s why, for example, for the last 17 years, we have been taking professors from universities, colleges, to Israel on an eight-day trip where we show both sides. It’s run by academics.
My partner, you want to talk about philanthropy, you have great partners, right? By Bremerman, formerly Aveshe, he runs it, he’s built it into a great organization. We’ve covered over a thousand academics and administrators, including a president from major university. And we have follow-up seminars, salons, conferences, and we built a network. And you know what? Those professors and administrators embrace the network, not just because they get to deal with a complex, nutty, a terribly tough issue they call a hairy, one of those hairy complex problems that stimulates their academic intellectual mind, but because if they can talk about Israel in a civil way that leads to constructive outcomes, they can talk about everything else that’s going, that’s challenging them, whether they’re left, right, or center at universities and colleges today. And so therefore, it’s a vibrant network. And so my point is that we have that for the young Jews today, right? We have these great organizations. They dwarf whatever we’ve tried to accomplish with our professor program. We have to invest in those and build those. And whether it’s through birthright trips to Israel or Chabad trips that are done, Chabad on campus trips to Israel, they’re really important. And I think that’s the gateway to philanthropy for the 18 to 34 cohort and young professional trips, all those different organizations that involve that experience. It’s seminal.
Mijal: You know, Mitch, what you’re saying just reminds me of our friend, Haviv Rettig Gur, often tells a story of an encounter he had with a student, I think at Harvard, and basically saying once the student has a sense of Jewish history and Israeli history and where they come from, the student has a sense that they can be invincible, basically, in any of the battles that they’re encountering. So that’s what I’m hearing from you about the importance of really…
Mitch Julis: What’s the, somebody has said, the most important thing that a Jew can do today is to make sure that they embrace their Jew-iness, whatever you want to call it, and make sure that Israel is strong, because that will mean the Jewish people will be strong. And that doesn’t mean necessarily without criticism to support Israel in all elements because every nation has its strengths and weaknesses.
And if there’s anything about Jewish history, culture, it’s, as I said at the beginning of this, we talked about it, it’s the two-way street that has to, that is part of every part of Judaism, our relationships within ourselves, that kind of inner conflict. It’s the relationship we have with our fellow human beings writ large. It’s the relationship we have with God. There’s so many examples of that opposing element. Why should it stop? It’s upsetting to see some of the way these things manifest, but I think it’s why we emerge stronger.
But we can’t take our eye off the ball that for Jews to be strong and to embrace it, we have to embrace a strong Israel, in my view. And the bridge to that understanding are the trips.
Noam: Okay, so Mitch, I wanna do something. I wanna ask you four questions and five minutes total for these four questions. You ready?
Mitch Julis: Sure.
Noam: We’re gonna be quick on our toes here. Number one, what is one thing that you have changed your mind about in the last couple of years? Could be since the 7th of October, but I wanna hear in, like we have one minute for this question. What’s something that you have changed your mind about in the last couple of years?
Mitch Julis: You know, last time I went to Israel with the professors, I really feared for those soldiers. I really feared for them and going into a meat grinder, sort of similar to the meat grinders that my grandfather, when he was in World War I. And you know, those soldiers are amazing. When I had a chance to see them shortly after October 7th in January 2024, my assumption that it would be a meat grinder of these guys, these young people, I was wrong. There have been tragedies, but what they have been able to accomplish, the IDF and the leadership, not only in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, amazing. So I would have been one of the more reticent people, when it came to the use of force, are really worried about the kids. But you know something? The kids did the job with the leadership, and we really owe them an amazing debt of gratitude.
Noam: Number two, I wanna hear something that is a hard no. What’s the type of cause that you won’t philanthropically support and why?
Mitch Julis: I believe one of the greatest threats within this country and around the world is this unholy alliance between the progressive left, and the Islamists.
Noam: What about the extreme right? What about Tucker and Candice and their ilk? Why them? Why the extreme left?
Mitch Julis: Yeah, that’s an issue. It’s an issue. the extreme right doesn’t really have a great strategy for institutional capture. The left and the Islamists understand institutional capture a lot better than the extreme right. And that’s a big danger. So I am a hard no on any organization, that alliance is really, really negatively synergistic for Jews and Israel. And you have to follow the money and be a hard no on any organization that takes money from them.
Noam: Number three, I want you to give one or two sentences on your advice to a young audience and how they gave their time, energy and money. Just one to two sentences. What is your advice?
Mitch Julis: I think they, Chabad on campus, young people, if they have a connection at college and university, Chabad on campus is one of the most important things to support Jewish life and stand up against what’s going on in colleges and universities. It’s an incredible organization, that’s number one. Number two, I think Jews should, you know, I’m sort of repeating myself, but they need to support any trip, whether it’s conducted by Chabad or a Birthright or anyone that’s doing trips for young adults, they should support that by their physical presence or whatever money they can give.
Noam: And fourth and final question, what is your ask of our listeners? What is one doable action that they could take this week? Whether time, money, whatever it is, what’s a doable action that you could recommend to the people listening?
Mitch Julis: Well, exercise your civic responsibility first and foremost to vote. Register if you’re not registered to vote. Become educated about the issues and then vote whatever you want to vote. But show up. If you waste your precious right to vote in this country, you have no complaint as to who represents you, whether it’s a city, state, or the federal government. So become a mensch when it comes to civic responsibility in this country. When it comes to Israel, you know, I think I’ve already said where I think my priorities are.
Noam: Yes, agreed. Agreed. Well, Mitch, I just want to say a huge, huge thank you to you, Mitch, for joining us and wondering with us together on this podcast and giving us some food for thought. And I’m definitely going to find myself watching Munich for a third time and seeing if I agree or disagree with your assessment of it all.thank you Mitch. Thank you so much for joining us.
Mijal: Mitch, so good to meet you and your energy really comes through as somebody who’s both a hugger and a hitter and thinking about the different battles ahead of us.
Mitch Julis: Okay, thank you. Real pleasure, privilege. Thank you very much. Take care.
