Very pleased to be joined by Jonathan Greenblatt.

He is the chief executive officer of one of America's most important institutions, the

109-year-old Anti-Defamation League, the ADL.

Jonathan has a big job. Thrill to have them. Welcome.

Thank you, Steve. Before we get into contemporary events, today is a monumental day in history.

It is May 8th. 78 years have passed since General Eisenhower cabled from his headquarters that the

mission of the Allied Expeditionary Forces had been achieved.

The thousand-year Nazi Reich was smashed into oblivion and the Germans unconditionally surrendered.

But anti-Semitism didn't end in 1945, did it? No, no, no. I mean, you know, Steve, anti-Semitism has been called the

oldest hatred and it has persisted, you know, across millennia, different continents, different cultures. And it has been

the kind of core in many ways of different, you know, dictators who've scapegoated the Jews

for their own megalomaniacal purposes. So it was Hitler in the 20th century.

It was the Tsars, you know, the 19th century.

It was the, you know, Martin Luther in the 18th century.

It was the church in an earlier time and so on and so forth.

Today, unfortunately, the scourge continues. and it's metastasized and mutated, but the essence, this kind of conspiracy theory that posits that Jews are at the center of society's ills, your personal problems, that core remains, unfortunately, as poisonous today

as it was, you know, for the past 2,000 years.

I should also mention an important anniversary today, a birthday, Harry Truman, born on May 8th, 1884.

Of course, President Truman, 11 minutes after the state of Israel

announces its existence, President Truman is the first world leader to acknowledge that the United

States recognizes the state of Israel. Yeah, and he did that, as you know, as a student of history. See, if he did that

at the risk of offending his kind of mandarin's in the state department, who said, no, don't do this.

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