Meaningful conversations should do more than affirm what people already believe. They should create opportunities to deepen understanding of Israel and its people, hear human stories, build lasting relationships, and imagine what might be possible together.
That sense of possibility gave particular meaning to a private gathering this week at the Los Angeles home of Dr. Phil McGraw, the iconic television host and author, alongside Sylvan Adams, president of World Jewish Congress Israel and a visionary Jewish leader. What began as a morning conversation on the patio continued over a meal as we discussed Israel, storytelling, college campuses, and what becomes possible when Christians and Jews bring their influence and ideas together.
Dr. Phil understands the power of that encounter. He has spent decades listening to people whose experiences might otherwise be misunderstood or overlooked. That includes hearing from a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre.
Giving a survivor room to speak carries a particular responsibility. The person across from you has lived through something that audiences may know only through headlines, political arguments, or images on a phone. Their experience deserves to be heard on its own terms.
Yet in discussions about Israel, the individual can disappear beneath the argument. A murdered person becomes a disputed talking point. A survivor’s testimony becomes an invitation to change the subject.
My connection with Sylvan began in Israel during a meeting with President Isaac Herzog. In that setting, surrounded by a shared sense of responsibility for Israel and the Jewish people, Sylvan and I recognized an instinct we had in common. We both believed that there was meaningful work we could do together, and we pledged to find a way to make it happen.
That conversation did not remain an abstract promise. It led to an idea involving Dr. Phil and eventually to the gathering I organized at his home in Los Angeles.
The significance is not who brought everyone to the table. It is what became possible once the right people were sitting around it.
Some people think outside the box. Adams never seems to have seen the box in the first place.
That is what drew me to his work. He does not limit himself to the conventional boundaries of Israel advocacy or wait for people to enter a political conversation. He finds the audiences wherever they already are, through sports, culture, education, and firsthand experience, and gives them an entirely different way to encounter Israel.
Adams, who has described himself as “Israel’s ambassador at large,” helped bring the Giro d’Italia’s historic opening stages to Israel. The cycling race allowed an audience estimated at more than a billion people to see Israel’s cities, landscapes, and people through their television screens.
Speaking to young people at the March of the Living, he captured that principle powerfully: “You are not here only to remember how Jews died. You are here to show how Jews live.”
That is prosemitism in practice. It does not deny persecution or minimize the dangers of antisemitism. It refuses to allow persecution to become the entirety of Jewish identity.
Israel and the Jewish people should not be presented to the world only as targets in need of defense. They are builders, innovators, caregivers, athletes, artists, journalists, families, and citizens creating a future.
People form opinions about places they have never visited and populations they have never met. An encounter can interrupt that certainty.
Our conversation also turned to college campuses, where young people are often asked to form judgments about Israel before they have encountered Israelis or examined the country for themselves. Sylvan made a particularly smart point: We cannot answer a generation shaped by slogans with more slogans. We must bring young people to Israel, introduce them to its people, and trust them to think for themselves.
I raised a related challenge.
“We cannot wait until students arrive on campus and suddenly expect them to know how to answer sophisticated misinformation about Israel,” I said. “We have to give them firsthand knowledge, credible facts, and the confidence to use their own voices before the loudest voices define the conversation for them.”
Through ShieldGiving, the nonprofit group I cofounded, I bring journalists to Israel to meet the people behind the headlines. Our work carries different responsibilities, but Sylvan and I share a conviction about the value of firsthand experience.
The goal is not to tell journalists or students what to think. It is to ensure they have enough knowledge, access, and confidence to think for themselves.
The Christian and Jewish dimension of our conversation carries that same promise. Too often, interfaith solidarity is measured by a photograph or a statement after an atrocity. Those gestures can matter, but relationships need substance before the next crisis arrives.
Christians and Jews do not need identical beliefs to defend one another’s freedom, oppose antisemitism, or affirm Israel’s right to exist.
The measure of our influence is not simply how loudly we defend what we believe. It is what we make possible for the people we reach.
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Our conversation began in the presence of Israel’s president and continued around a table in Los Angeles. What started as a commitment between two people to find meaningful work together became an opportunity to imagine something larger.
Standing with Israel means helping more people discover its stories, know its people, and take part in shaping a hopeful future. Around that table, that future felt within reach.
Ariella Noveck is a journalist specializing in antisemitism and Middle East affairs, with extensive experience covering Jewish communities worldwide. She can be followed on X and Instagram @AriellaNoveck