RUDY ROCHMAN

Part of the reason we're doing this documentary is to reconnect today’s activists back to the greater whole. But for us to be most effective in the short term, we have to understand the long term. It's just like playing chess. You have to know where you're moving your pieces in order to get to your end goal.

Cindy: What are effective steps that college students facing antisemitism and antizionism can take?

Rudy: I think we can learn from examples throughout history like the Civil Rights movement. The black community was able to get their rights by fighting for them, earning them, and shifting pop culture. And as that younger generation grew to a strong enough demographic, politicians had to take them seriously and eventually those individuals also grew up and became the next politicians.

And I tell the Jews living in Europe, where antisemitism is systematically much more developed, they either need to stand up for themselves and fight back or leave. They don’t have the option to stand down or ignore what is happening. And as the Jewish younger generation grows to a strong enough demographic and politicians start to take them seriously, and they grow up to become the next politicians, we will hopefully see that same pop culture shift.

Because if we don’t stand up and fight back, it’s only going to lead to what we've seen happen many times in the past. This applies to America too.

Cindy: How effective do you think the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) movement against Israel has been?

Rudy: BDS is a big distraction strategy.

It's trying to get us to focus on attacking a resolution rather than attacking the shift to pop culture. The moment that it's brought up every single year in this BDS campaign, whether it passes or not, is irrelevant to the fact that it's even spoken about. It shifts the mindset of the future political and intellectual class of the next generation so that when they get into positions of power, they look at Israel wrong.

And then I realized that the greater problems were not how strong the movement was, but how weak our own movement was or how nonexistent it was.

So it's a shift in mentality that I'm trying to help spark, especially amongst the younger generation. Dealing with the symptoms is not usually curing the actual problem that you have. We need to understand that the most important thing is to deal with the actual cause of this.

I don't think that I'm the first person to come out as an empowered individual.

I think that the Jews fundamentally are empowered.

But in my opinion, when you hide your identity you're partaking and investing in a reality that you should be afraid of, which only gets exponentially worse and is far more dangerous than the potential danger you could have faced as an individual or on the collective level.

And so we need to understand that regardless of us seeing ourselves in a very hyper-individualized society, we are a part of a collective and based on how we function, that collective will be targeted in different ways and then it impacts the individuals.

So again it's another shift of mentality about understanding how we need to see ourselves.

Again, that is the reason I went to Columbia. To prove that I could go to the number one most antiSemitic school, revolutionize the campus, and bring up a movement that was strong enough to inspire another 50 different campuses to do the same.

I'm trying my best to give tools to the younger generation in ways that I wish I would have had or understood or known when I was younger before finding them myself. I try to reach as many people through my videos. A lot of people that see these videos are able to see how they can stand up for themselves, they can be smart, reasonable, calm, and articulate.

Cindy: Today, if a young person didn’t grow up in a particularly religious home, or a culturally Jewish home, or a Zionist home, what do they hold onto?

Rudy: Someone can have the sense of identity if you understand that you're a part of a collective, you're a continuation of this history.

On top of that, if you add the layer of understanding our collective purpose, then you're able to be strong regardless of your spiritual level.

Although I do think the spiritual element is a huge part of our culture, a very important part of our culture.

Cindy: Is there anything you would like to add while we are on this subject?

Rudy: If we don't respect ourselves, we can't expect the world to respect us. If we want to change things, it's up to us.

It is also true that Jews tend to go and help every other minority group, because it's in our culture, it's in our nature to do so. But we can't do that at the cost of forgetting to stand up for ourselves.

I've been faced with thousands of antisemites from every single corner of the world, and I

Far left: We Were Never Lost filmmakers, Edouard David Benaym, Noam Leibman, and Rudy Rochman were arrested in Nigeria after only two days meeting with the Jewish Igbo community before they were captured. (2021)

Left: Jewish rapper Nissim Black and Israeli activist, Yirmiyahu Eliya aka "that_semite" with Rudy Rochman. can tell you that when you are strong and empowered, but also respectful, and not coming from a place of attacking but enlightening, it shuts down the antisemites every time.

Cindy: When did you know you would become an activist?

Rudy: My undergrad degree was in political science technically, but in practice, it was really fighting antisemitism and helping the Jewish people move forward.

That's really what I was learning there.

But even at 7 years old it became clear to me that I would live my life to help the Jewish people move forward.

Cindy: What triggered that epiphany?

Rudy: When I was seven, I took a trip to London with my mom and brother. We were on a bus when the driver asked my mom if she was Jewish, because of the Hebrew writing on her shirt. He literally threw her off the bus. That moment changed my life. That experience made me realize that the next time I go through something like this, I have to be prepared. Even at seven, I realized that the attack against my mother was also an attack against my people. I knew that I would always be a protector of our people.

Cindy: Where do you see yourself in 10 years or what are your goals for the future?

Rudy: Personally, I hope to be married with at least five kids and living in Israel.

My professional goal is to activate the Jewish people and to use my potential and the abilities that I have to fix the problems that I see.

I'm doing my best to achieve that. ♦