Episode Transcript
The Jewish Mexican-American Shark: KIND Billionaire Daniel Lubetzky on Building a Builders Mindset
Hey, here's a kind bar for you.
Oh, thank you.
You argue that kindness is a strategic advantage.
Sell me on that idea.
You have 25 hours for this.
If you're a victim, you cannot take agency of your life.
And if you're an oppressor, you're an oppressor.
Your actions don't dictate what you are.
It's how you were born.
If you could do one thing differently with kind bars, what would you have changed?
Not sell it really.
And welcome to the show.
My guest today is best represented by a single word.
And he's Mexican and American and Jewish.
He supports Democrats and Republicans.
His first company provided economic opportunity to Israelis and Arabs.
His billion dollar snack food brand is profit driven and purpose driven.
He's a wildly successful capitalist and an unabashed idealist.
He's a builder of businesses and a builder of bridges, and also a builder of something called builders, but we'll get into that later.
He's kind of famous and famous for being kind as one of America's most prominent Mexican Jewish business leaders.
He puts both the Ark and the Tan in Shark Tank.
Please welcome Mr.
Daniel Lubetsky.
That is probably the most fun I've heard.
Yes.
Glad to hear that.
It's one of one of my specialties here.
Very nice.
Daniel, thank you so much for being here.
I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.
It's a pleasure, Jonah.
And uh, a shout out to Juliana.
Who, uh, works on your team?
Who I went to Jewish sleepaway camp with and, and I was at the same wedding with Yes.
When she and Ruben got married at, so you heard me sing at the wedding and, uh, yeah.
She's married to my, uh, friend Ruben Cohen.
The most Jewish man in America.
Shout out to Ruben.
Um, okay.
So I actually wanna start by talking about, I wanna start by talking about, oh, you start, you said you went to camp with Julian.
Yes.
Camp Ramma.
Camp Ma.
I think like.
That's kind of the solution to everything.
It's kinda amazing, right?
Every kid that I've met that went to come from a good values, good human being, just like Juliana is amazing.
She's amazing.
It's just a really, they really teach you, uh, very good values.
Mm-hmm.
Purpose and kindness and respect and a hard work ethic of everybody that I've met from camp Man.
Tend to easily generalize, but it's really, they do something good.
That's awesome.
I'm sure there's a selection process there.
I was gonna say, there's probably a little self-selecting there too, the kind of parents that want their kids to go there or raising kids that way.
As I was preparing for this interview, you know, one of the fun things is I get to sort of see this.
You know, full 360 view of your life from the outside and really the major through line of your life is not necessarily entrepreneurship, although of course it is, but really it's bridge building is really your life's great passion from.
From high school when you would, you know, refuse to sit at a single social group table and you sat with everybody, you first step into it with PeaceWorks, you have one voice, which we talked a little about on this show with Jason Alexander when we had him on, we got builders.
I know you're doing some stuff with Van Jones who's a friend of the pod, so.
I wanna start by asking why, like why is this the constant of your life?
The easy answer is that my father almost died during the Holocaust.
A lot of his family did.
Yeah.
He was in a concentration camp in Dachau and the lesson that he and my mom inculcated in all of us, my three siblings and I are.
Bridge builders and connectors.
Like if you meet any of my sisters or my brother, everybody jokes like, dude, these people we're always connecting.
We're always building bridges.
We're always, Hey, here's a kind bar for you.
Oh, thank you.
We're always trying to build connectivity and I think my mom and my dad, our mom and dad taught us to, to do so.
I think the more you go into the psyche of a.
Child of a Holocaust survivor, the more you realize that it's really like fascinating how much of that influence of what my dad started talking to us about when we were kids, about what he went through, how much that.
Informed who we became.
Like, to me, it doesn't appear natural that the takeaway from that experience is build bridges.
Like, it's not like you became, you know, a great Holocaust educator or something.
It's, it's a very sort of specific message.
So, you know, what was it that your parents said that that was the nugget that came out of it?
I think partly was.
That I was raised in Mexico in a Jewish community in a predominantly Catholic country, and my mom had been raised in community where maybe there were five Jewish families and everybody else was Catholic, and she had learned how to build bridges.
She taught us how to build bridges.
My dad taught us how to build bridges.
So I think it was just, we observed, you know, how you.
Yeah, do more what you observe than what they tell you.
Of course, we observe, my mom and dad always reach out to the other, always be kind to the other was literally offering popcorn in the movie theater.
Well, back when people sat down in a movie theater.
Yeah.
Passing the popcorn down to total strangers.
And we were probably embarrassed.
And now I am the guy.
Right?
Like you, uh, progressive can't help you from becoming your parents.
Now I am the one that's handing out the popcorn and, and your kids are like, dad, stop.
Yeah.
So I think a lot of it was observing them but also.
What's interesting about my dad's experience in the Holocaust is how he.
Told us and told himself that he survived because of the kindness of others that he survived.
That's by the way, why we named the company kind after him.
Hmm.
Uh, he passed away the year we conceived kind.
Wow.
And by the way, you mentioned Jason Alexander.
Yeah, he was with me in the Middle East that year.
It was a very interesting year, the, because it was one of the most painful years of my life losing my dad.
Yeah.
And.
In a very weird way, also one of the most magical years.
It was fascinating because I grew so much, I was so sad and so sorry.
No, please.
It's, it's real.
I was so, I was so heartbroken when I lost my dad and yet.
That year I grew so much spiritually and professional.
I did caddish every day and I went to Temple and, and, and under the Jewish tradition, when you lose your parent, you need to do a service of Kaddish.
Go to Temple.
And I was not a temple goer.
Yeah.
And I told our rabbi, like, rabbi, don't connect to this.
What the hell is this?
Like I just, why are we praying to God?
What the hell does that mean?
Who do we think we are that we're gonna be, that God's listening to us like God is much.
Bigger than any of us.
Why would he care?
Why would God care that we pray?
And they're always said, Daniel, do me one favor.
Just go try it out and if it doesn't work out for you, we'll talk about it.
And just started doing it.
And the prayer of Caddish where you basically praise God and basically recognized you are nothing and that God is everything, and then that moment of pain where you lost you, the person that you love the most.
You need to still remember that you need to praise God.
And it's very tough to get into it.
But maybe in my year of prayers, twice, twice out of 700 times, I connected to something much, much deeper than me, and, and, and like felt something like that, that I would like to bring back.
But even though I've only done that a handful of my times in my life where you.
Get out of yourself and really, really connect to something.
To the, just what, the higher spirit to connect to this.
Like under the Jewish tradition, there is this force, you know, and Star Wars would be called, the force in Judaism is like the way I say Shana Shaina, which is kind of like, you know, we're more than just.
Physical pieces right there.
There's a spirit, there's an energy, there's something that connect all of us as human beings.
And while I haven't been done a good job at connecting to that, often when you connect to it is like a incredible experience.
But even when you don't get to there, when you're able to meditate and have a conversation with yourself and remember what would my dad wanted me to be?
Mm-hmm.
And so that year I did that.
At least two or three times a day.
And it made me grow so much and it made me build so much that it was a very interesting year.
The day the year my dad passed away is the year that we launched Kind.
Right.
And it's the year that we launched the One Voice Movement.
Wow.
It was so weird that I launched one of the largest.
Brands in the food space in the world and and I launched a movement that brought together close to a million Israelis and PAs.
And I surrounded myself with some of the most incredible people in the world, including Jason Alexander, who's like about as bright as they come.
Yeah, he's not just a great comedian and actor, but just so deep.
And that grounding experience of having lost my father and having done that prayers allowed me to be interacting with some of the captains of industry and not lose purpose.
Of my purpose.
What, if anything, were you able to take from that experience of mourning your father to carry with you past that year?
Once.
Once the, once the Kaddish was gone, was all of that gone with it or was there something that you now had that you could tap into?
I felt, and I still feel that I carry a piece of my father inside me, and I think that that year played a very important role in my connecting to the pieces of me that carry the legacy and responsibility.
To follow his example and to try with one, to try to become who he was.
I will never be able to achieve that, and I, it's not false humility view.
Anybody that met my dad say is saying there, he was an incredible human being.
He had the ability to live his life For others, like, I love myself a little too much.
Mm.
I, I.
I'm not as selfless as he was.
I'm not as much a coach as he was with my team.
I suffer from when I have something to say, just say it rather than help them figure it out.
With my children, I struggle to become who he was.
He was the type of person where if I would tell him a problem, he would sit down and listen and help me come up with the answer.
That takes more work.
That's a lot of time and patience and it, I'm just not so good at it, like, and that's, it's my opportunity.
Yeah.
Well that's, at least you're self aware about it and you, you know, we we're always working on something.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about PeaceWorks.
So that was your first, you know, 25 years old, your first sort of step into social entrepreneurship.
Tell me about what it was and was it successful and, and you know, obviously it came to an end.
Why did it come to an end?
What it was is a business trying to help Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians Egyptians, Turks trade with one another, help Israel's neighbors gain a vested interest in making money together.
Israelis and Arabs, Jews and Muslims, people across the region.
Helping discover each other's humanity, shatter stereotypes, discover each other, work with each other, and then gain a vested interest in preserving those relationships because they're profiting from those.
So that that was Peace works eventually with adventures also in Indonesia between Muslim, Christian and Buddhist women in Sri Lanka between Alis and Tamils, and.
South Africa in Chias, Mexico.
I might be missing a couple.
Wow.
But, but the whole concept was a really cool concept.
Really cool.
It succeeded at a micro level, relationships that we struck between Israelis and their neighbors.
Continued for two generations.
We eventually closed the company 25 years later because during that period of time, other things had exploded in size in my life.
Mm-hmm.
Including Kind, which had been born in the Shadows of Peace Works, but it grew so much that then now peace in the shadows of kind.
Right.
And I was focusing more on kind and I, I, I.
Tried for 25 years to keep peace Rocks alive for 25 years.
'cause it meant a lot to me.
But we eventually, it never grew up enough.
And I can tell you why.
Um, and also had built the one was movement and other things, right?
And so I, I'm really bad at closing chapters.
I like, I opened a chapter and it never closes in my life.
I develop a relationship with a human being and I wanna maintain that bond.
Till the end.
Going back to my dads and mom's lessons about building bridges and maintaining those bridges open, I, I love building bridges.
I don't know how to close chapters or bridges.
I'm a hoarder of ideas.
If you look at my.
Content of my computer.
I have yeah, lists and lists and lists like of all sorts of type, and I, I just have a bunch of ways in which I open new chapters.
I love languages.
I love people, I love collecting.
But PeaceWorks, after 25 years, we, it was a less than a million dollar company and we were just struggling to keep it alive, and we chose to close it.
We tried a Piecework 2.0, uh, with a farm that we had in Jordan, which was fascinating.
John, I almost never talk about this venture.
It was an amazing venture.
We had Jordanians.
Syrian refugees, Egyptian refugees, Israelis working together side by side.
You had Israeli rabbis checking for the krut next to Muslims.
Women wearing all of their coverings because they were from traditional bedroom families, working side byside respectfully by the side with obviously ever touching with the rabbis, and it was a really cool thing.
It was a really cool venture, but economically that one didn't pan out.
We couldn't sustain it.
But maybe we have a couple things we're working on that maybe will be PeaceWorks 3.0.
Okay.
That'd be exciting.
Uh, the concept makes a lot of sense, you know, tying each other's interest to each other economically.
It makes a lot of, and elevating everybody, right?
All the rise, tide lifts, all boat's, these false paradigms of Oz versus them helping everybody build together.
Yeah.
Okay.
So one voice, tell me what that was and was it successful and what you wanted it to do, and why did that come to an end?
The word success is, um.
Fake word 'cause what does that mean?
Well, I guess what I mean is did it achieve what you hoped it would achieve?
But, but that's how you, you can define what is success.
So I can tell you a hundred ways in which was successful and a hundred ways in which it wasn't.
Hmm.
So it's just those simplistic terms that we dealing live with.
We tend to wanna say, is this person successful?
Is this venture successful?
And the truth is, that's not how really life works.
Right?
Like.
If I start PeaceWorks and it never goes above $2 million in revenues, but it provides me of my partner, Sarah, like I.
Make 200,000 bucks and I love it and I'm making a difference and I'm connecting people.
But it never becomes a multi-billion dollar company like kind.
Is it successful or not?
You can evaluate it, but the truth is it's a wrong framework for you to live life.
Like for, but I'm not trying to, I'm just trying to share a thought with the listeners that you need to be careful.
I mean, there, there's an incredible, um, poem from Rudyard Rudyard Kipling Yeah.
Who is very controversial and now they, they don't.
Teach him anymore because he had some parts of his life that were not politically correct, but his poem, if you have to listen to his poem, it is incredible.
And he talks about how success and failure are both imposters.
And if you really think about it, it's really, really important to live your life with that approach.
So those, you're not gonna take risks if you're afraid of failure.
And I think you, you need to just try what you believe in, what gives you purpose.
So in that sense.
Peace Works was successful.
One voice was perfect, successful other because they really fulfilled something that was important in me to do it now.
Now I'll give you a strong analysis about where it succeeded or didn't you have 25 hours for this company?
Yeah, while I was running Peace Works, uh, and building bridges between people at a local level.
All of a sudden the captive negotiations break out and there's so much hope and all of a sudden PeaceWorks is thriving.
And then.
Seven years later in the year 2000, the uh, second Intifada breaks out.
Yeah.
And when people were hoping there was gonna be peace, it was imminent.
People thought they could smell it in the horizon.
All of a sudden, not only is there no peace, but there is word, there's lynchings of Jews in Roma.
And from my Jewish narrative, I'm like, what the hell happened?
I thought we had, I knew we had Palestinian partners that work with 'em.
Where are they?
And after like a year of depression, because I left my.
Fancy Wall Street opportunity to sell Undre tomato spreads made through corporation.
Perhaps in Israels.
We talk about peace rocks, but the reality is I was pedaling these products, I outta a Stanford law education and I had undre tomato spreads that I was trying to let people try door by door in the streets of Manhattan.
And I'm trying really hard to get peace rocks off the ground and all of a sudden this, the violence breaks out and I am.
Confounded and at some point, uh, I start connecting the dots of how.
The problem is I go back to the region and I talk to my Palestinian friends and I'm like, what happened to you guys?
Where did all you go?
Like, you know, we want peace.
And you guys turned out was, they're like, what are you talking about, Daniel?
We are all here.
Where are you?
I'm like, what are we talking, where are you?
We are all here.
It's like, well, and I tell 'em what I see is all these images of violence and terror and lynchings, and they're like, let us show you what we see.
And the positions turn on the television and I'm in their living room and it's terrifying.
Almanar Television from Hezbollah Al Jazeera television back then, even a Rabia, all of the networks they show me in every network, the most horrible images of Israelis, the most horrible images.
And the problem I start realizing is that.
On the Israeli media, they were only showing the worst part of the Palestinians or the Arab media, only the worst part of the Israeli.
And you didn't see the overwhelming majority that it's not that they love the other side, they just want a better future for their children, right?
They just wanna be left alone.
And you didn't see the voices of those moderates.
You only saw these tiny extremist bastions just.
Represent all of one society that's happening on social media every day, in every conflict, on every front, and we need to break through these bubbles and understand that it's upon us to not allow the destroyers to rule.
One voice was an earlier predecessor of what we call the builders versus the church frameworks, but it was incomplete, but it was about empowering moderates to stand up against extremists.
And we would go to Palestinians to say, these are 10 principles that we came up with.
Do you agree with them?
And they would read them and they'd say, yeah, I agree with all these 10 principles, but you're wasting your time because you're not gonna get a single Israeli to agree.
We take the exact language to the Israelis, we show it to them, like, do you agree with these principles?
Say.
Of course, I agree.
But Daniel, you're wasting your time.
There's not one single Palestinian that's gonna agree.
So we got 10,000 people, Israelis and Palestinians to agree, and they're like, okay, but those were the 10,000 exception.
Like you're not gonna really get good numbers.
So it's like, okay, so we got 25,000, they got 50,000, we're at a hundred thousand.
We got close to 1 million Israelis and Palestinians to sign onto our principles and join the movement and be part of one voice and mobilize and go through leadership programs.
Who were credited with the AM Annapolis Peace Process, uh, with bringing back by the Bush administration.
Abba and Ulmer all said that thanks to our work, they were able to brought back the Annapolis process and we built a 10% of the Israeli Palestinian population recognition that they needed to.
Be active.
Ultimately the sense of what I for sure want, which is an end to the conflict and a better future for all peoples.
We failed.
Right.
In that sense, we haven't succeeded and we have a lot of work to go.
Yeah, no doubt.
It sounds like, and I know you know, builders which we're gonna talk about is, you know, the website builders movement org, you're starting, you're trying to begin movements and to me.
You know, it's quite ambitious to say, I, I'm gonna start a movement.
Does that feel achievable to start a movement?
I mean, to me it sounds like so.
I can't even wrap my arms around that.
Yes.
First of all, calling it the builders movement is perhaps dangerous because what somebody told me is if you call it a movement, then it's not, we're not yet a movement.
We're a great organization, but I'll, I'll talk about what builders is in a second, but first of, I'll talk about the concept of movements.
What is a movement, an organization?
I'm here and I recruit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people.
Or I recruit 10, or I recruit 20.
An organization is a central organization, a movement.
I recruit five, and each of those five recruits five, and each of those five recruit five.
Mm-hmm.
And then it goes viral.
That's a movement.
And I've achieved that at least twice.
Once when we build one voice, the the reason we got 2 million people is because people felt ownership to then recruit others.
And I definitely achieved that with kind both the kind of business, which of course grew.
But we have something called the kind movement where we got.
Tens of millions of kinds act performed by inspiring others to make kindness a state of mind, to do kindness to others, to pass acts of kindness.
We started so many fun activations where we, you'd start a kind chain and encourage other people to follow the kind chains.
We would give people kind cards.
This was over 20 years of experiments, all of these initiatives and kind Tuesdays and all kind people.
We had a lot of, we had a lot of fun initiatives, but all together they were about helping inspire every one of us to.
To trigger kindness and then create that butterfly effect.
And we definitely did that with kind.
And so for builders, we still have a long ways to go, but the same way I felt something where we did it at Kind and at One Voice, I feel it very strongly.
There's so many people, everyone that's viewing your show right now, every single one of them feel that our world is not moving in the right direction.
Right?
I would say the overwhelming majority of human beings, overwhelming meaning.
In the 90 percentile.
90, I dunno if it's 99% or 95%.
9%, but all of us understand there's something going on.
That's not the way we want it.
It's not fulfilling our potential to elevate humanities.
Yeah, there's so much division, so much hate this algorithms are against us.
They.
Monetize scandal, cable news, monetize hate.
Foreign powers are using that to divide us.
Rigid ideologies are being taught in schools.
There's so many things that are so many special interests that drive division and hate, and that, like my friend Tim Trevor calls it the hate industrial complex or the polarization industrial complex, and we need to break out of that.
Yeah, and there is a.
Incredible reservoir of goodwill, like we are the people, the overwhelming billions of people that are fed up with where things are heading.
We just need to tap that and give people a way to channel those frustrations into construct business.
That's what builders does.
Builders completes.
The way of thinking it was before in one voice, it was about moderates versus extremists.
And the reason that seemed complete is that yes, moderates might be 90% extremists only 10%, but extremists wake up in the morning and they think, how can I advance my cause?
Right.
They, they're so passionate, they advance their cost.
Moderates wake up in the morning and they're like.
What can I have for breakfast?
Right?
They wanna drink their coffee or their water.
Mm-hmm.
And as long as that happens, a tiny, tiny minority is gonna hijack the lives of everybody.
Yeah.
Our framework now, it's not modern versus extremists, it's builders versus destroyers.
What is the destroy, first of all, let's understand what is the wrong framework?
A framework.
All this simplistic.
All versus them frameworks are very incomplete.
You look at the Israeli versus Palestinian framework where there's good Palestinians and there's good Israelis, and there's some bad Palestinians, some bad Israelis.
Mm-hmm.
Jew versus Muslim, black versus white, you name it.
Republicans versus Democrat.
Those frameworks are very incomplete.
Mm-hmm.
The worst framework is oppressor versus victim.
'cause you have.
Two, you can't win if you're a victim.
You cannot take agency of your life and be a protagonist to make things better.
And if you're an oppressor, you're an oppressor.
You're labeled an oppressor.
No matter what you do, your actions don't dictate what you are.
It's how you were born.
This is one of the stupidest frameworks there is.
Yeah.
So the, we need to replace this oppress, oppressor versus victim framework with.
A framework where we all have agency of our lives, where regardless of where you come from, you can choose how to think and how to act.
And if you wake up in the morning and think, I wanna deny the humanity of the other side, if you deny other people's humanity and take action to divide.
To demolish and to diminish.
You're a destroyer by the inverse.
If you wake up thinking, how can I unite, how can I bring light?
How can I build, how can I build together?
How can I build bridges, build schools, build inventions, opportunities, organizations?
Elevate humanity bring more light to the world than you're a builder.
And the vast majority of human beings, the overwhelming majority, aspire for the latter rather than for the former.
We need to find a way to give them a recognition of their power and the responsibility that comes with our power.
And it starts with how we live our lives every day.
By the way, just acting with that purpose of building bridges.
So how do you activate that?
That builder muscle in folks.
How are you guys trying to achieve that?
There's three vectors across which we work, education, media, and civics.
In education, we're trying to replace divisive curricula with.
Best practices and curriculum and tools to help young people think like builders.
How did I build, kind by thinking with curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage.
The four Cs by the way, just so you had your five Cs.
That's right.
And two of them are so curiosity and compassion.
Yeah.
So we got some overlap.
And by the way, the trick is the C is such a good word.
Guess so like I have three C's for entrepreneurship.
You have your five C's, we have the four C's for, uh, because C, there's so many Cs, so many words.
And there's so many good words, but there really are four Cs for, for having a builder's mindset.
Curiosity is about being a critical thinker, a critical listener about thinking out, you know, don't assume that you have all the answers.
Compassion.
Put yourself in other people's shoes and be able to understand where they come from.
That's how you actually create solutions and value.
Mm-hmm.
Creativity.
When you can think outside the box and, and come up with something nobody ever will come up with.
And courage to work across.
Lines of difference.
That's how we, I create a kind.
That's how you, that's how you create society's better interests, empires, purpose organizations.
And are you, when you say education, does that mean you guys are going to state governments and, and school boards and things like that?
Or this is something that's just sort of like a toolkit that lives online?
We have a builders crash course that we give to colleges for them to implement for orientation, so that way young people come in, they're taught these essential values to carry with them forward.
We have a program for RAs to, for the kids to do after school.
We fund, we have partnership with Stanford where we have a holistic program to inculcate the builder's mindset in so many different ways.
We have a builders speakers bureau where we.
We have over 400 extraordinary people.
You mentioned Van Jones, Jason.
We have like 400 builders from all religions, from all nationalities, from more politics that sometimes we book to be interviewed in podcasts, in television shows, go and do um, college tours, as I mentioned, best practices where we try to partner with presence of universities to learn what are the best practices for them to implement.
We're trying to do stuff with K 12.
Um, yeah, kindergarten through 12th grade.
We're trying to work with the school boards.
I would just say we're at 1% of where we need to be there.
Yeah.
But we've done some stuff and you can go to the Luki Family Foundation website and learn a little bit about what we're doing there, as well as in the Builders Movement website.
But in terms of our vision, we have a long ways to go.
The second vector we work, which is probably the most developed, is Builders Media.
We've created channels.
In Hebrew, Arabic, English, and we've also have dabbled in Ukraine and other things.
But the biggest one is the us, the builders movements websites, and across all different channels, we've generated over a billion views.
We have 4 million subscribers or members.
Wow.
We're just starting to, but it's the media channel's goal is not to tell you what to think, but how to think to teach you to think with nuance, with, as a critical thinker to question when you're being thrown.
Tools of propaganda to to, to know how to be a critical and skeptical thinker and how to create value and then.
In civics, which is incredibly important, is where we're growing the most.
We chose we.
We have a global vision for builders because it's a global problem and opportunity, right?
It's a framework that works.
By the way, I was talking about how dumb these oppressor versus victim, or let's take about the resistance or west versus the resistance.
These frameworks crumble because why are people not supporting the Persian people, the Iranian people rising up against.
Perhaps one of the darkest regimes in human history.
If you were creating a James Bond movie and you describe the IRR, the Islamic Republic regime, the people that give you favor say you're being too unrealistic.
The, it's right, it's not credible, and yet you have this regime that's brought so much darkness to the world that is maimed, blinded, and arrested.
About a half a million Iranian, or it's some people, a half a million people, just in the last month.
In two days, they killed 43,000 people of their own people, just because Nonviolently, they protested because they want peace.
This is one of the darkest regimes.
They export hate.
They export terror, and yet you have a lot of people not standing up against them just because they're the enemies of Israel.
Yep.
Because they supported Hama.
Like these Prepost, you should understand that if you're supporting this horrible regime, there's something wrong with your framework.
Yeah.
And so we invite you to adopt the builders versus this trust framework.
'cause you adopt that.
You understand that in every society, in every religion, in every culture, there's builders and there's this choice.
And all of the builders, the overall majority, need to unite, to prevent the destroys from hijacking us.
From your mouth to God's ears.
Glad, glad somebody's doing the work.
If you're persuaded by what I'm saying, you need to go to builder's movement and join us at the, take this small step, join our social media, join, do something.
You cannot wait for others to do it for you.
There's so many excuses about like, well, we have the wrong leader, the wrong president.
You.
We cannot make excuses because that's creating a vacuum that gets filled by extremism and hate Every one of us, not just you, not just me, but every single one of us have to a role to play and a duty to play it.
And that means just how you look at people's eyes.
How do you.
Conduct your daily life.
You can change the world just by living your life like a builder, let alone many more things you can do.
You can go to our website and learn, but at a minimum, conduct yourself like a builder in what you do and build those bridges yourself.
Yeah, a really, it's a really helpful framing, I think.
Just a, a switch to flip in your brain of how, how you view yourself and, uh, a prism through which to see.
How you operate in this world, and if more people flip that switch, things will look a lot different.
If you're anything like me, and I'm assuming you are since you like my show, you probably care a lot about giving to causes that are important to you.
But sometimes the logistics of charitable giving, when to give, how much to give, what the tax implications might be, can be overwhelming, or you don't really think about it until suddenly it's the end of the year, you're filing your taxes, then you feel rushed to make a big decision before a deadline.
But fear not my friends, there's a solution and it's called a donor advised fund.
Specifically, I wanna tell you about the Jewish Communal Fund or JCF.
Here's how it works.
You can contribute money or appreciated assets like stock and potentially maximize your tax benefits now, but then recommend grants to charities later when you're ready.
So instead of scrambling at the end of the year, you can give more thoughtfully on your own timeline and support any IRS qualified charity that matters to you.
And what I really like about JCF is that their team provides white glove support to help simplify the whole process.
So your giving can be more strategic and more impactful.
They also do something really meaningful.
Every year a portion of J'S revenue goes towards grants that support the welfare and security of the Jewish people, both in the US and around the world.
So if you want your giving to be less stressful and more intentional, it's definitely worth checking out.
You can learn more or open your fund@jcandy.org.
That's JC FN y.org.
So you're from Mexico City.
Around 40,000 Jews.
Super tight community.
It's funny, somebody reached out to me just yesterday on social media and they were like, will you do an episode about Mexico City's Jewish community?
I was like, that's not really how it works, but I have to have a guest where that like comes up organically and then like here you are, 90% of the Jews in Mexico City send their kids to day school.
Totally different than the US and there's almost no intermarriage, so like very clearly a very cohesive.
Community.
What did it feel like from the inside growing up in that?
Well, I didn't know anything else, so I so much didn't know that when I was growing up in Mexico in the 19, I was born in 68, so in the 1970s I was going to the Yiddish in Mexico, the Yid in Mexico, the, it's Spanish name, Mexico, the Israelites School of Mexico.
So it's, we were already, uh, dysfunctional and that he had.
Two different names, but they taught us Yiddish as kids.
That was the first time.
Like conversational?
Yiddish?
Yiddish, yeah.
Wow.
I speak Yiddish and I, when I go and meet German people, I speak to them in Broken German because of my Yiddish.
Amazing.
I mean, that's just weird.
Well, no, it's cool that it's like, you know, it's a dying language so that the fact that some people are still walking around speaking some version of it is great.
Some Mexican Jews, uh, when I'm on Shark Tank, sometimes they say, oh, VO and I get all these comments like, vo what is.
Vo.
I mean, my parents say, oh, Ian, they didn't go to Yiddish school.
By the way, your parents, I know them very well, and what you may not know is Mark, your dad was really, really instrumental when we were building the One Voice movement.
He was a very, very good partner to us and very generous with his time and opened a lot of doors and like.
Sure he gave some money because I, everybody that had a breath, I would like ask him to give some money.
But when?
When I had none and I had no idea.
Yeah, I didn't know.
Shout out to dad former, uh, and mom who's got so much else, both former guests on the pod themselves, so the Mexican Jewish community is very tightly knit.
I do think they.
Teach you a lot of the values to not just be proud to be Jewish, but to give back to the world.
Like there's a, a big, my conception of Judaism and I would think the Mexican Jewish conception of Judaism is our obligation.
To bring light to the world, to give back, to make this a better world.
To live it better than you found it.
And so a lot of the way I was to Judaism were the stories of it.
Singer and Shala, Malay Hamdi, Yiddish culture were the message that I got.
I remember the stories were stories.
Of an architect of kindness, not of religiosity.
Like there's, there's different segments.
Like in every Jewish community, if you have two Jews, they have three temples, right?
So there's so many different, uh, approaches.
But in our Jewish school, it was not religious, but it was very, it.
Proud of our customs and of our, and of our traditions.
And we, we studied Bible, Torah.
It was a secular school.
Right.
And a lot of the values that I was taught was about the Judaism of, uh, Ola, the Judaism of, of mitzva of, of doing kind deeds.
How similar is how you grew up Jewishly to how you've raised your own family?
Yeah.
Completely different.
Hmm.
Completely different.
Say more.
Well, I grew up going to Mexico, going to Jewish school, speaking Yiddish and Hebrew as a kid.
Yeah.
Uh, going to Israel, I only started developing deep friendships with non-Jewish kids when I came to the United States.
Right.
And I arrived to San Antonio, Texas, you know.
Cradle.
The cradle of civilization.
Yeah.
And I start making, there's almost no Jews there.
Right.
And I, a lot of my friends are from different faiths and traditions and nationalities and stuff.
And, uh, Ian was my best friend.
Uh, his family were Vietnamese refugees today.
I think my kids are all very proud of their heritage.
I, I love, I was just reflecting today how my oldest, Roman is very proud and he really, he really care.
All of my four kids really care about their upbringing, but they, they go to Jewish camp, they go to.
Uh, they all had their bar or bat mitzvah, but I have to do more work for them to get the tools that I got to have, the, the, the knowledge that I got because I can talk about these things for hours.
I understand the Bible, I understand, uh, history.
I can talk to you about deeply, deeply, deeply about the Middle East, about all the issues.
I, I mean, I've worked for decades about these issues.
Sure.
The Jewish Day School is a very, very powerful way to build mensch, to build good human beings that will be proud of their heritage and will contribute to society and make this a better world besides coma.
It's probably the best tool.
Yeah.
W why didn't you send your kids one Very practical reasons like.
Where we live there, there isn't a Jewish school.
Uh, and we, we lived in New York when they were growing up and we considered it, they went to Jewish nursery school, but then we sent them to a secular school and we debated it was between three or four schools and part of it was just, uh.
I'm embarrassed to say it wasn't, uh, proximity.
Proximity, yeah.
Yeah.
It's like, you know, in New York City, it's funny because it's just small town, but like if you're in the west side and we're in the east side, you need a passport to get there.
Right?
Like it's a 30, 40 minute ordeal to get there where we could just walk to our school.
They went to a, to a good school.
But yeah, I get it.
Some of the challenges we face as a, in this.
Country.
In the Jewish community.
Let's separate the Jewish part for a moment.
How much do you identify as Mexican?
I'm very proud of my Mexican culture and heritage.
I love being Mexican.
I, I'm proud of my.
Culture, my traditions, my personality.
I think we're very warm and we hug and we're, I, I think that both Jews and Mexicans love mm-hmm.
Being warm and hugging.
You.
Sure.
But, uh, I love the food.
I love the people.
I love the creativity of the people.
I wor love the hard work ethic of the people.
The only thing I don't love about Mexico is the government.
Sure.
There's so much crime and corruption.
That's, but other than that, I'm very proud of being Mexican and I'm also extraordinarily proud of being American because my right.
Existence today.
The reason I'm here today is because of the United States of America.
'cause it's American soldiers that liberated a continent that liberated the whole concentration camp, that liberate my father and my grandfather and my uncle.
And they are the reason why exists.
So for me, the United States is the most extraordinary country with all of its problems.
Like you said, when you did your really awesome introduction with, and I'm very proud to be Jewish.
And Mexican and American, and I find it fascinating that for some people it's hard to recognize that you can have all of those identities and more, I mean, I have many more identities.
Sure.
As a builder, as I have father, as whatever, it's not this or that.
It's, and, and for me, I'm, I'm very proud of all of those being Mexican.
And Jewish.
Sometimes you get the best of both worlds because I don't think the Jewish people did a good job with the food.
I mean, like we kick ass on so many fronts, Nobel Prizes, but what the fuck did we do with our food?
Oh my God.
Well, it depends where you're talking about.
Well, for the most part as a general, as a general proposition, you know, it's like the Sebastian Maniscalco.
You ever see his thing?
Exactly.
It's like we gotta let the Italians cater the Passover meal.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And fil the fish, right?
Void like that.
You can't.
But Mexican gefilte fish is delicious.
My grandmother used to make this pesca Ana.
They would take guango, which is I think red snapper warm, not cold.
So they do the little balls, but they warm it up and in a red simmering sauce with olives and tomatoes and.
Peppers and it's just delicious.
I, I live for Mexican gefilte fish, not for the traditional one.
Yeah.
So sometimes you can combine things and do come up with good stuff.
One of, one of my favorite home cooks is a, a woman named Susan Schmidt.
Shout out to Susie, who is a Mexican Jew and her Shabbat dinners.
Or just like you, like pray, you get an invite, you get Where's my invite, Susie?
Come on.
Yeah.
We're gonna get, we're gonna get Daniel next time.
It's all like.
Uh, Mexican, Jewish Hungarian fusion stuff and just like the best taquitos and also like amazing sopas and challah that she makes.
Have you heard of Patti Hini?
No.
She's an award-winning chef.
Very, very close friend of mine.
She should be on your show.
I can connect you.
Cool.
Fanger, like a lot of people that come from that community love food.
Amazing.
I love so good.
Obviously the, the one operative word.
That we haven't hit on enough yet is kind, um, clearly an important word and theme in your life.
Your book do the kind thing.
You argue that kindness is a strategic advantage, so sell me on that idea.
I was talking to my kids and telling them that every single thing in moderation is how you need to take it, because.
Something in X is no good.
Even love, if you give too much love, you might then cuddle your kids.
Like sometimes you need to give tough love.
Mm-hmm.
Every single force you need to keep it in moderation except kindness.
I cannot come up with an example where too much kindness would be bad.
Well, if you, I guess like what jumps to mind is if you're essentially always putting others before yourself and not looking after yourself.
The, the proper amounts because you're being, but I don't think that's kind, so kind.
I don't think that's kindness.
I cannot think of an example where you are.
Being kind to others and not being kind to yourself because that's not kindness.
Mm-hmm.
That's service.
Like kindness for me is this magical power where both people are better off.
It's one of, I call it as a nerd, a net happiness aggregator.
What does that mean?
There's this amount of happiness in the world and if everybody's kind to each other, there's this amount of happiness.
We just create more kindness.
'cause when I do a kind to you.
You feel better.
It's like, oh, that was nice.
You feel better that you, but the giver of the kind act also feels better.
You both sides all of a sudden go from here to here.
The more kindness we bring to America, the more everybody gets elevated.
It's like these powerful force where we, all of us just were more kind to one another.
Everybody would be happier.
Nobody would right lose from that.
That's the magic of kindness.
Yeah.
It makes sense, but kindness.
The reason sometimes kindness gets in trouble is they confuse it with being nice.
Right?
And being kind and being nice are completely different.
You can be nice and just be polite, but to be kind, you need to be honest.
All of the attributes of kindness requires strength.
Strength of action.
You can be polite and not have any strength.
You're just.
Staying on the sidelines, but honesty requires strength to give that feedback like somebody has a piece of thing in their teeth.
Oh, it's so embarrassing.
Tell 'em you walk, you're being nice.
You're not trying to embarrass them, but you're not being kind to be kind.
You need to let them know that they have something in their teeth that's kindness.
If somebody's being bullied, if you're not a bully, you're, you can be nice, but you're not kind by not.
But that's doesn't make you kind to be kind.
You need to stand up to the bully, right?
If you are nice, you're not causing troubles, but if you're kind, you're standing up to solve those problems.
And so kindness is you need to be a protagonist.
You need to be self-possessed enough to have the confidence to be kind, whereas to be nice doesn't take quite that level in the post-OC October 7th World.
Not so fun for Jews.
How do you encourage people to stay kind when they're getting treated with so much unkindness?
I've thought about this topic a ton, and my reflection is we cannot allow haters to turn us into haters.
Did you watch the movie The Untouchables?
Like Elliot Ness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, a, a long time ago did see with Sean Con and, and he's talking about how in his fight against the mafia, he has lost his way and his.
Allowed himself to lose his way.
Right.
I just don't think we can give them that victory.
I think we need to, by the way, I'm not a pacifist.
Right.
I think that if there's a terrorist, we should kill them.
I think if there's an enemy that wants to kill you, you should kill them first.
I am very comfortable with using force to defend ourselves.
You have to have a dual approach.
It's kind of the tacro being approach with one hand.
You pursue terror as if there's no peace.
On the other hand, you pursue peace as if there's no terror, meaning you will stand strong.
You should use force to defend yourself from the true violent threats and push back play offense.
Don't play defense, but don't allow that to be your singular.
Definition of who you are, because that's not what Judaism is.
Judaism is about bringing life to the world, bringing life to yourself internally and to the world, and be a positive actor.
And so for me, that part of who I am is really, really important.
And so the thing that worries me about post October 7th is that the thing that I'm very excited is that so many Jewish people have reaffirmed their commitment to the thousands of years of.
An incredible people that for a thousand years have brought so much light to humanity.
But what I don't wanna have happen is that people start thinking garon mentalities as us versus them.
'cause it's not.
Or it's, and be part of who you are and build all of those bridges.
That's why I worked so hard with Van Jones because Van talks very poignantly about how both the Jewish and the black populations need to join forces to make these a better world.
Yeah.
Not just for the sake of those two communities, for the sake of the world.
And I completely, and he and I have a bunch of initiatives that we have underway to try to.
Deepen that partnership.
And you need to do that with evangelists.
You need to do that with Muslims.
You need to do that with Palestinians, with Israelis, with Jews, with atheists, with everybody every single day.
How you live your life, build bridges, and and, and live with that purpose.
Yeah, if you just heard that sound, that means Daniel and I just finished recording five deep questions.
It was really good.
We got into Shark Tank, we got into Kind Bars.
He dropped a, an answer that I was not expecting.
If you wanna check it out, you have to be a part of our subscriber only community, the Keah, which you can join at any time at being Jewish Podcast.
Dot com slash community.
Alright, Daniel, we're getting to the end here, so I'm gonna finish as I always like to do on the show with a little game that I've devised, especially for you.
Ooh, this game is called Shark or Shonda.
I am going to talk about a, a business.
Some of them are fictional, some of them are actual businesses that have been on Shark Tank.
And you tell me if, uh, it's shark worthy and you would invest in it, or it's ashanda.
And we gotta scrap it, which means a, a, a shame.
Got it.
All right.
Bubbie's Kitchen, a meal kit service where every delicious, classic recipe comes with a note explaining why you're not making it.
Right.
What do you say?
Do we have a deal?
I love it.
I love it.
I would not invest in it, but it's genius.
Okay.
Fair enough.
The schmooze a Jewish LinkedIn, but everybody already knows each other.
Isn't that the reality?
But it's a, you know, it's a digital platform.
Very cute.
I would not invest in, okay, deli direct, a subscription pastrami service that overnights deli meat from New York City to Jews living in pastrami deserts.
That's got some legs.
The thing is that, you know, there's, uh, gold Valley, gold Valleys already kind of cornered that market, and I, I, uh.
Was, uh, through a fund and investor in Gobel.
Oh, nice.
It's a cool concept.
I think it could be a subsidiary of Gobel just to get the past drummy business.
There you go.
Waken bacon, an alarm clock that wakes you up by cooking bacon.
Wow.
That, that should be started by a rabbi.
You know, my, uh, my grandfather.
Came from, from my mom's side, came from Eastern Europe.
Mm-hmm.
And he kept kosher, but he ate bacon and they're like, Don Marketos, why you follow these rules?
But you eat bacon?
Say, yeah, bacon doesn't count.
He made an exception.
He was so good.
There you go.
And that's their moderation, uh, right.
No, and I think because back in the, they didn't have bacon, so he's like, he saw it differently.
So what do you think invest in, in wake at Bacon or, no, I can't invest in it because of liability purpose.
Like it burn, burn your house down.
I'm good.
People are gonna sue me, but, uh, I think it's a cool idea who's coming up with this stuff.
Some, some of these are me.
Some of these are me with help from Claude, and some of these are Shark Tank things that failed, including Waken Bacon, which was a Shark tank.
Someone pitched Waken Bacon.
Are you serious?
Yeah, yeah.
Cougar Energy.
Drink an energy drink, marketed specifically to older women Pass, and I think that was a real one.
It was a real one.
Um, potato Parcel, a service that writes personalized messages on a potato and mails it anonymously to anyone you choose.
It's so stupid that I think it was probably real.
You're right.
It was real.
Did somebody invest or no?
Uh, I don't know if somebody invested or not.
I didn't get that far.
But why did they do the potato?
Why was that?
I, I, I have no idea.
It makes no sense to me at all, I guess, because you can like write in potatoes.
It could have been apple, then it rhymes with parcel.
I mean's.
Alliteration.
I do remember as a kid, I don't know if you had that in your American school, but in my Mexican Jewish school, we did a lot of things with potatoes where they emitted this purple ink and you could grow in the potatoes.
There's pot.
We didn't mess with potatoes and you didn't, we didn't have.
Where did you go to school?
I, I mean Jewish Day school here in la.
You did?
Yeah.
What was it called?
Sinai Akiba.
And did you like it?
It was a mixed bag for me.
You did it through 18?
I did it from mommy and me to eighth grade, not high school, eighth grade.
It didn't go up to high school, goes through middle school.
When?
When I had teachers who could.
You know, challenge me and make me feel seen and really give me stuff to do is great.
And I thrived.
And when I didn't have that kind of a teacher, we really butted heads and I got in a lot of trouble.
Th rocks, socks sold in packs of three.
So you always have a spare when one gets lost.
Cute.
But no, because 99 it does happen, but 90% of the time it doesn't happen.
So now I wouldn't do it.
And that was also a real product on Shark Tank.
Mazel tones.
Custom ringtones for Jewish holidays plays the shofar when your mother calls.
Cute.
I would not invest.
All right.
You're savvy investor.
Spicy matza ball, ramen, cross-cultural soup offering from a husband and wife, chef team.
I was on that panel.
Uh, I I'm pretty sure you're talking about it.
It's like this Brooklyn, uh, yes.
Company.
Shalom Japan.
I met Shalom Japan.
It's awesome.
I love them.
They, and they're on, they're on GoldBelly.
They saw the, the mats of barama.
Yeah.
I, I, I was in that panel.
I don't think I made an offer.
No.
It was, uh, Barbara.
Barbara.
But they're, they, that was a great story and I loved them.
Shiva eats a meal delivery service that sends food directly to morning families, because someone always has to bring the rugola.
First of all, I, I like the idea, um, when my dad passed away.
We were treated very well with food and I remember it like, I remember my uncle Robbie sending the best food from Spago 'cause we were morning here in la.
There's something nice about like the Jewish tradition sending food to people.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
When you know, when you, when you're emotional it some just feels good.
To have a good food.
Yeah.
And I, and I think it could travel.
I don't think it would just be a Jewish thing.
I think we could pass that tradition to help others treat others with, with that type of love.
I, I'd consider it.
Okay.
So that's, that's our closest, we've got, um, the Euro club, a hollow golf club that functions as a portable urinal for golfers who don't wanna leave the course.
I think that's real.
It is.
I think that's real.
I think it just happened.
And the worst part is, I considered it.
No, just joking.
But do you want me to really get personal with you?
Yeah.
I don't have a driver.
I don't like having a driver, but at some point we dabbled with having a driver and he had a bottle for when he, for peeing while he is in the car.
And there was a lot of jokes about that.
Uh, alright.
Last one.
The Shabbas alarm, a smart home device that automatically shuts off your lights, locks your phone, and plays soft.
Carl Bach music, 18 minutes before sundown every Friday.
I, I'll buy it myself.
It's really beautiful.
There you go.
Daniel, thank you so much.
Thank you.
This has been a blast and, and just really enlightening and thank you.
Pleasure.
That you pearl.
You do.
Thank you.
Oh.
Big ups to D Lubes.
Please be sure to check out buildersmovement.org to see what builders is all about.
If you haven't already, please take 10 seconds, pop on over to Apple and Spotify.
Leave me a five star review.
Be kind.
Okay?
Alright, I'll see you right back here for the next, I don't know, kind episode of being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.