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(As delivered)
Thank you! Thank you for this incredible recognition, and an enormous thank you to the ADL. Jonathan, thank you so much for your kind words.
As we all know, hatred, intolerance and bigotry are on the rise. Most of us will never have experienced a worse time for antisemitism in our lifetimes.
But we should feel safer knowing that the ADL has our backs. So thank you ADL for the work you do for all of us.
My name is Gal…I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an actress, I am an Israeli – and I am Jewish.
I’ll say it again. My name is Gal. And I’m Jewish.
Isn’t it crazy that just saying that, just expressing such a simple fact about who I am feels like a controversial statement? But sadly, this is where we’re at today.
I grew up in Rosh HaAyin in the center of Israel. My mother was the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her father, my grandfather, Abraham Weiss, may he rest in peace, was born in what was then Czechoslovakia. He was the only one of his family who survived. His father died fighting for the Czech army when the Nazis invaded. His mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. He came to Israel with nothing and built a life for himself, and despite the horrors he endured, he always taught me the values of love, compassion and tolerance. “You don’t win anything with anger and hate” he used to tell me.
On my father’s side, I am the eighth generation to be born in the Land of Israel. One of my ancestors was the very first chemist at the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem.
I’m very proud of both sides of my family and they show two sides of Israel. On the one hand, a country that provided a life-raft for refugees fleeing the horrors of persecution, pogroms and the Holocaust. On the other hand, the historic homeland of the Jewish people, where our roots run deep and where we are an indigenous people.
I am proud to be Israeli and I am proud to be Jewish.
But this is a time when many of us in the Jewish community have had to find our voice, and confront the hatred against us even if it’s extremely uncomfortable. That’s been the case for all of us, in every walk of life, and every profession – including my own.
I’d never really wanted to talk about politics. I kind of tried really hard to avoid it, because no one wants to hear celebrities going on and on about political issues, right?
But also, I always regarded myself as a citizen of the world, an equal among equals. I’m Israeli, of course, and I knew that antisemitism and anti-Israel hate existed. And like all of us, sometimes I’d caught a whiff of it. But I never thought of myself as being where I came from. It was an aspect of who I am but it didn’t define me.
And then October 7 happened, and everything since.
Never did I imagine that we would witness such a day of such death and destruction of Jews in our lifetime. And never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States, and different cities around the world, we would see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying and cheering on a massacre of Jews.
I know I’m not the only one in this room when I say that it was a wakeup call.
And here’s the thing – however much you tried to avoid it before, even if speaking up wasn’t really your thing, none of us can ignore the explosion of Jew-hatred around the world anymore.
And that is what I am doing. No AI needed. It really is me, standing in front of you today, saying, simply, that my name is Gal, and I am Jewish. And we have had enough of Jew-hatred.
We will confront antisemitism. We will call it out. But we will never let it, not only defeat us, but define us, because our love is stronger than their hate.
In the days after October 7 we were all distraught. Like many of you, I was glued to the horrors coming out of Israel and the hatred spilling over here. I’m not a religiously observant person. But I found myself in Temple – in the synagogue. And it was then that I was comforted. I felt the embrace of the Jewish people and the power and the warmth of our community.
And I will never forget that feeling. Because even though I was a long way from Israel in a Temple in Los Angeles, I felt at home, like I was among family. And for those few precious moments, the chaos and violence of the outside world felt just a little easier to deal with.
October 7 showed us that what happens to Jews anywhere affects Jews everywhere. And this goes both ways. Not only what happens there affects us here, what we do here affects them there.
So we are here, together calling for the release of every single one of our hostages. We have to bring them home!
With every hostage release we hear new testimonies of the horror they have been through. Every minute for them is hell. Their lives are in danger. We need them home.
We want the hostages and their families to know, that we have your back, and that we are here for you. I want you to know, that wherever you go in the world where there is a Jewish community, you will find people who campaigned for you, who love you and who will always be there for you.
Because this is who we are and who we will always be: taking responsibility for each other.
Along with my husband Yaron, I’m bringing up four daughters to also be proud of who they are: to take responsibility, to love themselves and to love others. We’re raising strong independent Jewish women. Strong women who stand with other women.
I know that many women in this room and in our community, have always stood strong for the rights of women and girls. On October 7th, Jewish women were sexually terrorized, murdered, raped and kidnapped by Hamas. We were all listening out, hoping to hear support from our sisters around the world, and too often heard silence.
We can’t wait any longer. We can’t hold our breaths, pray or beg for support from people groups or communities that don’t want to be there for us. We need to be there for ourselves.
And this is why every single Jew must lean in now, in whatever way we can. Speak up. Learn more about our history – we can always do that. Join a temple. Find your tribe, get connected. And as we support our own community, never stop reaching out to the world.
Rabbi Hillel famously said: אם אין אני לי מי לי “if I am not for myself then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? So even if we don’t hear others speaking up for us, we have to keep speaking up for ourselves and reaching out our hand for everyone to join us.
That is what I tell my daughters. First, learn to love yourselves, who you are and where you’re from and then the rest will follow. It is time to pass onto our children a love of who they are.
So who are we? We, the Jewish people, are an ancient people, with an ancient story in an ancient homeland. We are the people that celebrate live. We work to see a better and more peaceful future. We challenge the hate we face but we do it with love, while always striving to make the world a better place.
And who am I? My name is Gal. And I am Jewish.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Thank you!
