Mitch Mallett

Today's guest has a passion that can only be described as fierce. It is a fierce love of a strong nation and people and culture; the nation is Israel and the people and culture are Jewish. The man with this fierce passion is Mitch Mallett. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to How We Love. I am Robin Lane. Today's guest has a passion that can only be described as fierce. It is a fierce love of a strong nation, people, and culture. That nation is Israel, a nation that is currently under the microscope and which some find controversial. But Mitch Mallet, an American with this fierce passion and extensive knowledge, will explain his love and admiration. So let's hear his story. Welcome, Mitch.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Well, thank you, Robin. That's that's quite an introduction. I almost didn't recognize myself.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

It's well deserved. Why don't you start with a story? Because you and I don't know each other. I met you by reading the story that you had written about your was it your grandfather your grandfather, the great grandfather, correct?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Great grandparents, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Yeah. So why don't you tell us that story?

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Okay. Well, can if it's okay, I'm gonna let people know where it is, where they can find it. Yes, please. Because it is published, and it's published at the JCA, it's actually J.ca, International Um Jewish News. Anyway. This is um this story means a lot to me, and uh for for years I was telling this story, and people say you need to write it down, and I wrote it down in December, and I posted it on a Facebook group that I run, which now has over 9,000 people, and then it got published on May 18th.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Okay, let's get into the story, Mitch.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

All right, if I stay, there'll be a Jew.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

That's the title?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

That's the title. Well, the whole title is If I stay, there'll be a Jew. A family story of survival, memory, and building Jewish life in America. For many American Jews, survival did not begin in the history books, it began with our own families. I am writing when I when I'm sharing this, is my generational memory. It's been passed down and carried forward, and I'm very grateful to share this with you. This story did not come to me all at once. I first heard it in pieces as a very young child, in the background of adult conversations. I remember telling my mother, I like to listen to grown-up talk. She thought it was cute. It was more interesting. That instinct goes back to when I was three and four, five years old. At home, my bedroom shared a wall with the living room. When my parents had friends over, I would lie in bed listening to the conversations through the wall. When we visited family, I'd listen to my parents' generation, my grandparents' generation talk. I was quiet, but I was paying attention. Through those conversations, I learned things long before I fully understood them. I learned that some members of the family got out of Russia and some did not. Some were lost in the Holocaust, those that didn't leave. I learned that there were correspondence with family members who remained behind, letters exchanged until World War II, and I learned later that those who did not get out did not survive. The story itself was solidified when I was 22 years old, the final year of my great-grand, my great-grand, I'm sorry, my great-uncle's Loskar's life. And he was talking about his parents. He was relentless about telling me those stories. Fanatic, really. He wanted to make sure I had them. I profoundly am grateful that he did. Rabbi Nissan Meyerson was his father, born in 1856, the same year I was born, exactly 100 years later. That coincidence always stuck with me. I do not know what it means, but it made me feel close to me long before I understood why. As I grew older, I also heard another phrase from my grandfather's generation. They would look at me and say, referring to myself, he he has the spirit of our father in him. At that time, I did not fully understand what they meant. I was a child, but I understood that they were connecting me to someone larger than memory, someone whose courage, stubbornness, and Jewishness, and a sense of responsibility still lived in the family. I do not know whether that was destiny, family expectation, or self-fulfilling prophecy. What I do know is that it helped me shape who I became. Over time, that phrase gave me a sense of personal response, responsibility, not as a burden placed on me by others, but as something I felt within. If Rabbi Meyerson had such an impact on his generation, his Jewish community, then I felt responsibility to try in my own time and in my own way to carry that spirit forward. I had a brother.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

But you have an extended family, right? Of your grandparents.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

But Kumbar Mitzvah time, all of a sudden, all these second cousins appeared because all of all my mother's first cousins, which was the grandchildren of Nissan and Julia Meyerson, they were all their kids, which were more or less my age within a few years, were all getting bar in Bar Mitzford in North Jersey and in Long Island. And it seemed like every couple months we're going to someone else's bar mitzvah. And I met these second cousins, and um it was nice to meet them. You know, we've lost track of them, and my parents have since passed away. And I would like to find out who they are. And um if you mean now.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Now, actually, well let's let's let's go back. Let's go back. Let's go back. So that's quite a story that you told, but when did your involvement, when did you start Hebrew school and when did your passion with Israel begin?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Oh, I started Hebrew school in kindergarten. It was wonderful. At the Lake Hiawatha Jewish Center. And then um in in second grade or third grade, my parents decided they were more comfortable in a reform synagogue because Nisa Meyerson affiliated quickly with the reform movement that was in New York. He was one of the early, one of the early reform congregations, actually. That makes me fourth generation reform Jew. That's a rarity. Um so I remember in third grade, the uh the Hebrew school teacher, who was beloved by all her students, including me, came back from a trip to Israel and she showed a slideshow and uh of her trip. And this was really my first memory of what Israel was. And she showed these pictures of a kibbutz and and the banyas and uh the rivers and and the beaches and Jerusalem. And I came home and I said, let's go to Israel.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

What what was it about that that attracted you?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Well, her passion transferred to me. And um, you know, her passion, and I don't remember all her words. All I remember is is I have to go there. And um, as I got older, and it was youth group time, and the temple, the temple had a a poster on the wall for the youth group, and I was a freshman, and it said Niftian Israel. That's the National Federation of Temple Youth, the Reform Movement's youth group. And I came home and I said, Hey, I want to go to Israel. Here's a trip. And uh my parents says, Well, you have to be 16, you're 14. So 16 rolled around, and they said, Well, we didn't want to go. My father, who did serve in World War II, and and he uh he barely survived World War II a couple weeks after, but that's like a different story. He ended up working for the Defense Department as an industrial engineer, and so they were getting a lot of feedback because he he had some um he had some clearance, so he understood more clearly than most how dangerous it was for Israel and the threat back in 1972 when I wanted to go, and then a year later, you know, I was on the track team.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Did you I'm sorry, you said you Mitch, you just broke up. What year was that?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

1972, but the following year was my real opportunity to go.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

What was going on in 72? Was there a war there?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

No, the the young Kirpa War was in 1973, and I'm actually getting to that because there was um in our temple, Temple of Beth Beth Am in uh Parsipony, New Jersey, one of the men who was in his 40s was an Olympian runner for the U.S. Olympic team in 1952. It sounds like a long time ago, but back then it was only 20 years earlier. And and he ran the following year in the Maccabear Games, where he gold medaled several times as a distance runner. And when he heard I was on the distance team, he asked my father if he could coach me on Sundays, and he turned me into quite a runner. And he was also not he was also on the U.S. Maccabeya Committee.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

So he was an athlete and you were an athlete?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

I was an athlete, and he coached me. Eventually I ran a four-minute and 32-second mile, which which is fast. Wasn't record-breaking, but it's fast for a high school kid. And it was because of his personal coaching. And they had Maccabe games in 19 in 1973 on my birthday, April 29th. Um, so I ran I ran in five races. I gold medaled in four of them. That means I came in first.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

You gold medal in four, you won four gold medals?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, it's it was the New Jersey Maccabear Games. And it happened to be in my hometown. That must have been thrilling. It was thrilling. And I came in, I won a silver, which was an open race that I didn't know I was gonna run. But my coach, who was there, because he he he was the chair of the whole thing, he said, uh, you got one more race in you. It's a half-mile race, and I'm in it, and I want to see if you can beat me.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

So did you?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, um, no, but let me tell the story because there was about 15 people in the race. A lot of these people were not serious runners, but some of them were. But he and I sprinted out ahead, and and I was ahead going around the last corner because it was two laps around the track, and he passed me, and I said, I'm not gonna let him pass me. And and uh he hadn't run a race, so I was kicking with all my might. I want I tried to pass him, and uh the faster I went, the faster he went. And he just he just beat me by you know not even a second. And um he said, I didn't I haven't run a race like that in a long time. And he I was there with my parents and some other members of the temple who were there to cheer me on, and he says, I I can't believe I beat you. I he goes, I I was gonna really beat you, but I was he I impressed him.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

And uh so but you didn't hold on, Mitch, hold on, but then you didn't get to Israel until you were what, 22?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yeah, but I have to tell you, I qualified for the Maccabeya team for the 1973 Maccabear team that was gonna be that summer.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

In Israel?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

In Israel, and all expenses paid. And um my coach, which uh I can't his name slipped my mind, but I'll remember it, I'm sure, after the podcast, he said to my parents in front of me, you know, just give them a hundred dollars or so in cash. That's all you got to do, is give them a little spending money. Everything else is covered, and my father wouldn't let me go. He goes, I understand the tension that's there, and I can't in good consciousness allow my son to be there. And um, and that's because in that fall, young Kipper, um, there was there was the Young Kipper War, and my father knew it was gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

And I must have you must have been heartbroken.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

I was really heartbroken. Yeah, I can imagine.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

But anyhow, let's let's move on to so when you finally did get to Israel, you were 22, and how did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Um, well, that was my second trip. My first trip. Oh, my first trip. Well, I was uh I wanted, I was gonna go in in um 77 on a Hebrew Union College trip. That would have given me like 20-some college credits. I convinced my new girlfriend to go with me. I later married her, and uh my parents heard I was going, and they said, if you're going to Israel, you can afford to pay your own tuition. They cut off all the funds to me. So I didn't quite have enough money, and I was very involved in the reform movement college program. And I even went, I took her to the airport and I was there. The security was a little more lax. So at the terminal, I was in the terminal where they're giving them the orientation. And uh the rabbi there who knows me says, What do you mean you're not going? I don't have enough money. He goes, You have your stuff here to go? I said, I don't. He wanted to just pull me on, and um, I didn't have a passport with me. That's what ended that. But I went the following year, and they wanted me to work at uh a reform movement camp at Camp Eisner in the Berkshires. So I decided, and my great uncle Oscar said, Mitch, you take this the weeks between your last final and when the camp begins, and you go. And it's just under five weeks, six, just under six weeks. And that's just what I did. And I got on that plane, and um, you know, it was hectic. I had all these finals, and I had to get all my stuff home. And I woke up at like three in the morning to get to the airport, and and this time I saved up my own money, and and the guy next to me, there was it was uh, it was like a 707. It was a chartered plane, three on each side, and I had a window seat. There was a much older couple, they were in their 40s, sitting next to me. The wife was right next to me, and the husband leans over and goes, So where are you going? I said, I'm going to Israel. And I said it with pride. And he goes, This is a direct flight. We're all going to Israel. Where are you going? Where are you going in Israel? And I said, All I know is I have a youth hostel pass and I have a bus pass, and they get bus pass. And I'm going to spend nearly six weeks there and get on a plane, go home.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Then you must go in alone, and you went to Jerusalem, correct?

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, but he goes, You should go to Jerusalem. Um, he goes, Um, I only had $220 on me. My parents wouldn't give me a dime. They didn't think I'd get on that plane with, and that was a lot more money back then, with $200, over $200. And the guy, I told the story to him. He goes, We're we're taking um um, oh, the word slips to my mind. It's like a shared cab. And he goes, seven of us. He goes, The cab ride is on me. We'll drop you off at the bus station. And we we own a condo.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

I want to cut to this chase. I want to cut to what it was like for you when you got there, what you felt, what how this love for Israel grew.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Oh my god, I got I got there, Robin, and and the plane was delayed. So the youth hostel was closed that I had a reservation for, and it was after 10 o'clock at night. I ended up sleeping in the bus station with a bunch of other Americans about my age. I ran into. And um, you know, they asked me how long I've been here, and I said about 20 minutes. And the plane arrived a couple hours earlier. And that next morning I walked. I was told that's where uh the old city is, and I wanted to go to the wall, and and I went to the wall.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Would you explain to our audience what the wall is?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

That's the western wall, the um where the uh retaining wall to the uh old temple. And this is gonna really move you because it really moved me. And um, I was at the wall, and you know, before I left, Uncle Oscar for weeks just spent days just telling me everything he knew about his father, he wanted me to remember, and I kept coming up for weekends and dinners, and he came down, and um he was 87 years old. And when I I got to the wall, and I'm there at the wall for a few hours, and all of a sudden I felt the presence. I'm gonna break up, I felt the presence of Oscar like within me. And um and I just felt warm and I felt the love from him. Excuse me. And um anyway, I you know, I can't uh make a long story short about that trip, which we can dive into if you want, but you know, just under six weeks later, I got on a plane and came home. My parents picked me up at the airport, and on the way home, we have some sad news to tell you. Oscar passed away.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

And it was um the next day I had to be at the summer camp, but it was about a week into the summer camp. You know, I called home. We didn't have cell phones. I said, what time did Oscar pass away? And then I figured out the seven year, seven hour difference in time. He died when I felt him at the wall. Oh my god. You're kidding me. I'm not kidding you.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Oh my god. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Wow, I had a goose one. That's that's quite something, but I'm I'm gonna move from that very deeply moving story into something so when you came back, what was the feeling that you had about Israel?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Oh. I felt like I needed to go back. And um You felt almost as if you belonged there. I did. I did. And um I went back the following year. I graduated from Rutgers. And um I almost married my future wife, but we didn't get married because um I said I gotta go to Israel for at least a year.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

And she did you go for that long a period of time?

SPEAKER_00 22:33

No, I went longer.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

How long were you there?

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I was there for 15 months.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Oh my goodness. And I bought a what did you what did you do there?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

I I bought a one-way ticket because if you buy a a round trip ticket, you had then you had to use that ticket within a year, you lost the ticket. And I said, why bother risking losing the ticket and tying up that money? And so what did you do there in that length of time? Well, I got into the Woodges Institute. Are you familiar with the Woodges Institute? No. Well, everyone just Google World Union of Jewish Students Institute, W U J.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

People are not going to do it. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

All right. And um and it's a great program. I just heard it ended, but I this week. But um, but um, it was out of a rad. You had to be a university graduate, you had to you had to be interviewed and accepted, which I was. And so I went and I decided to go a few weeks earlier because it takes place in Arad, which is a small development town of about 20,000 in the northern Negev, about 20 miles west of so, in other words, you went to you went to school there. I did, but the first five weeks I wanted to, I was gonna hang out with my friends who were about two years behind me at Rutgers, because I had a lot of Jewish friends there. And uh they were there was about five of them that were in the um the one-year program at Hebrew University.

SPEAKER_02 24:14

Mitch, I'm I I can't go into all of those details because I'm gonna run out of time. What I want to understand is listen, listen to me. What I want to understand is the passion that you developed for Israel and how why Israel has such a bad rap. How you how do you see that?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Oh, well, I've been back for a total of five times I've been back to Israel. And I've been 20 years of my life there. I was a delegate to two world Zionist Congresses.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

You spent 20 years of your life there.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

20 months. 20 months.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

20 months, okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

And people are just full of propaganda. And the propaganda, which was like a massive propaganda launch on October 7th, which was definitely coordinated with what happened on October 7th, 23. And they have there's such misinterpretations of the realities of what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on in Israel.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Could you be very specific about that?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Yeah, Israel's accused of genocide. There was no genocide. There was an attempted genocide. Whatever, whatever they're accusing Israel of, Hamas is guilty of. And there would, there's no genocide, but they could try to commit a genocide with Israel. There's um there's two million Palestinian, Israeli citizens who are extremely loyal to Israel. They say there's an apartheid.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

We did not know that there are two million Palestinians?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Two million Israeli Palestinians who carry Israeli passports. They're full citizens. They they get to go to the university systems if they qualify, and there's a lot of them. They become doctors, lawyers, professors. There's a Supreme Court judge, they are police officers, there are um, there's there's Knesset members in the Knesset, and they participate in the democracy. And a lot of them, Jews.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Just go on back to the bad rap that started with Hamas.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Well, it started with Islamic jihad, and really it's coming out of Iran and Qatar. All this whole thing, this is a propaganda war. On October 8th, the day after this massacre, there were in in um dozens of college campuses, which turned into hundreds, but the day after there was protests in the streets in New York on college campuses across the world with the same signs.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

They had so clearly that was organized by Israel, anti-Israel forces. That that's pretty clear.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

That's really clear.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yeah, and there's an assault. And you have written something about um Iran? I have to want to talk about that because we're we're running out of time. Do you want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah, I've written 19 published articles since March.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

Well, we can't listen to them as much as we'd like to. No, but in a few of the articles, this is what I think the gist of your uh educated uh opinion.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Okay, the gist of it is if you want peace in the Middle East, you know, this war started against Iran, and it had a noble cause of regime change, and then and then that that's been pulled back without getting into the political issues. That that goal has been pulled back by America, not by Israel. There's no boots on the ground needed in Iran. We just need to equip the um democratic movement, the democrat, the democracy movement in Iran. There's 90%.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

How strong is that movement in Iran?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

There's millions of people in the streets almost daily, right now. And then there's there's a couple million Kurds living in the northern part of Iran, and we need to equip them. We need to equip this the democracy movement, and we just need to give them air support, and and they will they will create regime change.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

And well, what is holding it back? Because I know Donald Trump would very much like to see that.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

I think he would like to see it, but now there's such an anti-war movement going on, and and I think it's misguided. And I think I think um the real understanding, if if you if you Google me for the Times of Israel and read that article that got published just a few days ago, I go into detail in that.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

But so give us all right, so give us very slowly the address to Google.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

To Google?

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yeah, for that to get to read the article on Iran.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

You can go to you can actually go to the Times of Is Israel and the blog. And um, in the blog, you can um just do a search for my name. The title of the article is Myths About Israel Debunked, Why Iran Democracy is the path to peace. If there's regime change, this nightmare of the last 47 years. If we don't have regime change, that's gonna be another 50 years in our future. That 47 years, I was I graduated records in 79. That's my whole adult life. A few months ago, I turned 70. You know, it's time for for a change. They they fund and they bankroll and they train Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. They got Israel surrounded. Israel's made peace with Jordan and Egypt for decades. There's there's a demilitarized border for decades with them. Israel's not bombing those countries because those countries made peace. Any country that makes peace of Israel, Israel embraces the peace and keeps the peace. So this misconception that Israel's war-mongling, Israel's attack in Lebanon, the government of Lebanon is encouraging Israel to attack because Hezbollah is like a second government inside. The government of Lebanon is not equipped to get rid of this terrorist organization. It's almost a second government. It's and um in Iran right now says if you want to if you want a ceasefire, Israel's got to stop attacking Hezbollah. Well, you know, to Netanyahu's credit, he shouldn't stop attacking Hezbollah. They really got to be broke broken down. I see video.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

I don't think I don't think there's too many people with any well that are educated at all that would disagree with you on that. Listen, I'm really so sorry. We're going to have to stop because you're someone I could listen to talk for a very long time.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Maybe we can do this again.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Well, let's see. But for the time being, thank you so much, Mitch Mallet.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

You've been can I um can I give a plug to uh my uh Facebook group? Yes, you certainly can. All right, we are progressive, liberal, woke, and pro-Israel. I started a weeks after October 7th, and we're at we're over 9,000 members. By the end of the month, we'll be at 10,000, and it's a very strong community.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

More power to you. Thank you so much, Mitt. I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Thank you, Robin, for discovering me.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Bye now.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Bye bye.