Fearless Even When Vulnerable

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. I want to take a moment to depart from our regular topics on all things related to caregivers and talk about an Instagram post I saw the other day from my longtime friend David Asarnow. In it, he was struggling.

You could tell he was struggling mightily on how to address this issue of what has happened in Israel. Here's the secret you all didn't know, but David, many years ago, bumped into me online, and we became friends. He waded into my life. If I have any success in broadcast and writing and my message and everything else, you could see David's fingerprints on it.

He has been a stalwart friend to me for a long time and been a great person to bounce things off of and to help direct me, help clear my head. As I was watching him struggle to speak about this issue, because you could see the emotions were so thick, I thought, I've got to do something. So I invited him to come on the program.

David is Jewish, and his son has moved to Israel. And so this is very personal for him and extremely painful and difficult. And I thought, well, let's just have a conversation about it. So David, welcome to the program. You've been on my program before, but most people don't know that you have been such a huge influence in my life. And so I want to give credit where credit is due. And I thank you for that. And I've had time to spend with you and your beautiful family over the years. And I just, it's a treat to have you here.

And I wish it was for different reasons. But I feel like this message is incredibly important. And so, first off, how are you doing? Well, first of all, Peter, thank you for reaching out to me and asking me to be here. And how am I doing?

Is that a loaded question? I'm doing a really good job putting the smile on the face because, you know, I still have a company to run and I have clients to serve. And I, you know, it's a testament to this, I was launching out a new client. And I was with them for a day and a half. And then I knew that Josh may call. And I, my team said, just let them know. And they're like, how have you been able to operate the way that you have knowing what's going on that your your son's over there in the in the middle of everything.

And, you know, we have to do what we have to do. And at the same time, you listen, I haven't gotten much sleep, I measure my sleep on my whoop and my aura ray. And my sleep has been diminished. I've got a lot of thoughts.

I can tell you this, Peter, I've prayed more in the last two and a half weeks, and I've probably prayed in my entire life. And that's not just for my son. It's not just for Israel. It's for peace. It's, it's for what I see going on in the world today. And, you know, I believe that this is not just about Israel, this is about light versus darkness, good versus evil.

And I'm praying for the world right now. Indeed, and so many are and I think when I saw your post, one of the things that struck me was that you feel like that the message of good versus evil, that there really is a pitched battle of good versus evil, was being obfuscated in the mainstream media. And so many people are trying to look at this, quite sadly, as our own president, as saying, well, they're two teams, like he said, I thought, this is not a sporting event.

This is two teams. It's not a sporting event. It's not political. And frankly, if you went back into history, there's there's this thing actually, right here, called the Bible, that tells the history if we if we actually want to go into that conversation, which today, I'm not an expert on that. But yeah, what you saw was my raw emotion, what I was seeing posts out there from people saying, Well, I don't know the story, I can't comment on this situation. And I can just tell you that, how can you not come on in a situation, these people who are absolute evil, they're not even they're below terrorists, they did things on that day on that morning, that, frankly, ISIS didn't even do. So when you say Hamas is ISIS, they're just as bad or even worse.

And the fact of the matter is, they don't even represent the Palestinian people, they would put them in harm's way in a moment's notice, they're they they have an agenda, that's, that's higher than anything. And we witnessed the evil. And I guess that what you saw on that, that post of raw emotion, was so many people that I knew, and even big name people that I knew, were not willing to stand up and talk about a pure massacre and evil and saying, well, there's got to be a reason why and even what happened with the UN, but that's a whole nother story, if they're even an organization.

Anyway, that's a whole nother set of circumstances. But yeah, I didn't know which post of mine you were talking about until you just brought it up here. But yeah, I was in a hotel room. And I put my camera down. And I just spoke for my heart. And I asked my daughter, was I too emotional? She said you were emotional post it. And so I did. She was right.

She was absolutely right. Josh is in Israel. Yes, I've known him. I met him first when he was 12 or 13. He was 12. He was 11 or 12.

Yeah. And now here is Josh is this amazing young man who is a champion weightlifter. And I mean, just this is he is a formidable young man. But he's still your boy. He is in the midst of a great deal of turmoil. First off, is he safe? Safe can be I spoke with him today. He's his he's as safe as is safe is safe can be right now. There's no, you know, I've had people ask me, does he want to come back? Does he wish he could come back? And the answer is no. He's a this is a calling, you know, for Josh.

This is purely a calling. He went on a trip last June, after he graduated from college, by the way, he's a smart kid graduate towards the top of his class, which is a very smart kid with a degree in history with a concentration in actually military history. He focused in on World War Two, and he focused in on ancient China and the battles that they had.

He also has a degree in finance with a minor in econ. And frankly, he he worked as an intern for US Senator and had an opportunity to work in DC. And he wanted to take some time and he went on a trip called birthright and Jewish kids have an opportunity to go on a free trip to your to Israel. We met him at the end of the trip a few weeks after and he told his sister that once I got landed in Israel, I knew I had to be here. It was just and I know there's a lot of people can't who have that same kind of feeling when they step into the Holy Land or you're at the the wall, the Western Wall and the motion you feel I'm actually one of those people who felt that when I was 22. And I went there at Josh's age and if I didn't have my, my now wife is my girlfriend, I may have done what Josh did.

So I understand the feeling that he had. This is tough question. Do you and your family, and people that you know, and your synagogue and so forth? How do you feel about what's going on here in this country? And do you feel safe?

Good question. I can tell you right now that my wife, my daughter, they don't feel safe. Am I concerned? If I if I was walking around and I was identifiably Jewish, would I feel safe? Absolutely not. I there's videos going around of people being attacked because, in fact, I just saw someone from Turning Point that was attacked because he was at a pro-Israel rally. I saw that.

You have to be Jewish, you just have to be supporting Israel. And so the answer is, no. And at the same time, I'm not scared. But that's just me. Maybe, you know, that's I've never known you to be scared about anything.

David Fearless Asarnow, I think. I put out a post the other day that says, if you have a comment, I'm not going to read your comment. I dare you to come say it to my face, because you're a coward, you won't. And I guess that's how I was raised. You know, you have to fight for what you believe in, you have to, you have to, you know, support the truth, and anything else in that you've got to be willing to challenge and speak out against. And listen, I the reason why it bothers me so much, especially with what you see going on college campuses, people being beat up or run over because they're identifiably Jewish, the protests that are going on around this country, on college campuses, in cities, around the world calling for genocide to the Jews, you know, lynched the Jews and things like that. By the way, Josh had an experience with that about nine months ago, just outside a year ago, just outside of in Jerusalem outside of the wall.

And we can go there if you want. But what I realized is, first of all, when I happened my son, I'm like, do you want to come back? He said, heck no.

It shows his resolve. When I was a kid, I was, I was beat up because I was Jewish. I was called names, such as dumb, stupid.

I was other things. My dad, when I was about eight years old, had a police officer come over my house. And he said, those are bullies. He said, don't listen to what they have to say. He said, by the way, kids will be expelled or in trouble these days for what my dad had happened. But the police officer said, you need to punch them first and you have to punch hard. And he said, I'm going to teach you right now how to fight. I remember it in the foyer of my house, this police officer coming upstairs and then showing me how to fight because when they would say this, I was ganged up on. I was punched.

I'd crawl up in the ball. I was kicked. And this is me as a little kid. Well, guess what? You know, I'm not a little kid anymore. And I'm not small anymore. No, you're not.

And so I don't need to go here. But what it makes me realize is my kids never grew up with antisemitism. My kids didn't, didn't face it, see it like I did. And everything that I've read about the 1930s before the Holocaust happened and how Jew hatred worldwide, people didn't speak up about it. They just said, it is what it is. And if you go back in history for thousands upon thousands of years, we've been the scapegoat, no pun intended about the scapegoat, right? I know the story with Aaron. Yes.

Yes. So we've, we've, we've become the scapegoat for any time, you know, the communists want to call us capitalists, the capitalists want to call us communists. You know, I've had someone who I thought was a friend talk about, well, there's satanic people out there that are masquerading themselves as Jews. And I'm like, well, someone could be evil. And it doesn't matter what their born religion is. There's evil people everywhere.

It doesn't matter if they're atheists or not. I'm talking with my friend, David Asarnow, and you can see now why so many businesses line up to have this man come into their world to help guide them and mentor them and build a pathway to success. He's a man of deep conviction and he's hurting. He's got skin in the game. His son, Josh, is there right now in Israel.

David is fearless and he wants to stand up and push back against this anti-Semitism that is rampant now worldwide. And I wanted to be a part of that with him. And I'm grateful that he's allowing me to do so. We'll have more when we come back. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Don't go away. There's more to come.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. I have a special guest today. It's my friend David Asarnow. We've been friends for, I don't know, 12, 13 years and he has been such a huge part of my whole focus of what I do, of speaking, of writing, of doing this radio program.

And I saw in a post that he had on social media last week that my friend was hurting and I wanted to do what I could to talk to him and to give him an opportunity to share his heart, to introduce him to you all and talk about what happened in Israel, what is happening in Israel and what may, it looks like is going to happen over the next several weeks, months, and maybe even years. And so David, David, by the way, is the CEO of Business Nitrogen. He founded this shortly after meeting me, which I have no ownership whatsoever in funding that company. I would like to say that I was the inspiration for it, but no, I was not.

I was certainly probably the inspiration for the need of it, but he's an amazing consultant to businesses, big businesses around the globe. At this point, I just wanted to introduce you all to my friend, David, who is hurting and his family's hurting. His son is tough and he's right there in Israel right now. Tell me about what it was like going to synagogue right after this. Oh, I was, Josh called that morning and we saw what was happening on the news and I asked, I said, he said, I said, what can you do? And he said, if you weren't planning to, please go to synagogue today.

I want you to go. And I went there and there was other people there who knew. Actually a friend, actually even more, a friend of my wife's husband who obviously now has become friendly with us.

He's from Israel originally. He was in the IDF and I walk in there and he just literally hugs me and he starts crying and he's like, I'm sorry. I'm like, I said, there's nothing for you to be sorry about. You didn't do anything. But listen, Israel needs to address this situation.

What happened is unconscionable. We've got support groups. We've got prayer groups. We've got a group right now that we're reading Psalms, a complete book of Psalms every day. We have different assigned chapters.

Mine are 26 to 30. And so a group of us, we're putting as much prayer out there as we possibly can, studying Torah, the Bible as much as we can. That's what we can do from here besides giving donations and sending supplies that are needed. Over in Israel, I would say that, you know, my concern is Israel notifies everyone before they send in a missile. Israel notifies everyone to move south out of the danger zone. And these evil subhumans, they call themselves Hamas, force people to stay or tell them to stay to ignore it. And people who ignore it, sometimes they torture them.

Sometimes they kill them. And so what's going to happen is Israel is going to be, is responding. We already saw what happened with the hospital, that it was fake news and they tried to blame Israel on something.

We saw that this happened again with the Greek Orthodox Church saying the hundreds were killed and the church is still standing today. The public opinion that is so, I would say anti-Israel, but I'd say a lot of it's anti-Jewish, is going to make Israel look really bad. And so I just ask for prayers, for support. If anyone has a friend who's Jewish or knows someone, reach out to them. Say, are you doing okay?

I'm sending prayers your way. Because I can tell you this, I certainly know who's reached out to me and I know those who haven't. And it makes us question a lot. What news outlet do you lean most of your information from that you found to be the most accurate source of information that you would point people to? Bernie.news. Bernie.news? Bernie.news. It's the facts and only the facts of what's going on over in Israel right now. B-E-R-N-I-E.news.

Okay. Well, so that's where you get your factual information, because I think that's the thing a lot of people are struggling to find out what's happening. No, there's no commentary on bernie.news. So it's Bernie News Network, Middle East News Without Bias. In fact, I asked my son on that Saturday, I said, Josh, where are you getting your information? Where's the facts without the story, without the commentary? And this is the site that he gave me, bernie.news. And they have a WhatsApp group and it's literally going all day long exactly what's happening, where missiles are coming from, what's going on. I pulled it up right now.

Yes, I could see where this is going to be a very, very helpful site here to go and get this information. Because I think that's the thing is nobody knows who to trust anymore. I mean, Einstein called this back in the 30s. I believe he said, one day the news will be, the media will be so powerful that people won't know who to believe anymore. Oh, totally. Einstein called that decades and decades ago.

And then Francis Schaeffer basically echoed the same thing in the late 1970s. Yeah, I want people to be able to find out where they can get accurate information of what's coming on. Sadly, we cannot believe in our own media here in this country.

I don't listen to our own media in this country. This is one site. This is the one that I'm getting on WhatsApp that you can go to the website too, but I'm getting it on WhatsApp. Okay. I got a scripture. Somebody sent me a card today, a listener to this program, Sharon.

And I wanted to read this to you today. It's from Psalm 91 four. And you said, you guys are going through the Psalms. He shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust. His trust shall be thy shield and buckler. Isn't that a great, isn't that a great verse to hang on to. And it's what you're saying is it's, it's, we have to trust in God.

This is God's hand. What is a particular scripture that has, as you guys go through the Psalms and other passages, what's a scripture that is stuck with you? The blessing you say for your children, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May he shine his countenance on you. The Aaronic blessing. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, you know, that's exactly what the konim do when they pray over the Israelites. It's the prayer ends when parents pray over their children. Uh, it's the exact same prayer.

And so I think about that every night before I go to bed. That is certainly a great, that's from the book of Numbers chapter six, verse 22. And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his son saying, this is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. That's a great prayer to hang onto.

And there's one other thing that my daughter and I were talking about this weekend, cause I was at a client event and I was speaking and there was close to 200 people there. And he did a prayer for the safety of all Jewish people, all of Israel. And we're talking about the story of when Moses, my son's Hebrew name is Moshe.

His English name is Joshua. And there's a whole story about this, but, uh, um, and what my client was talking about this story of when Moses was there and saying to Joshua, it's your time to go in there. And he was going to be facing the Canaanites and the Jezebites and all these people, these armies that were going to destroy them. And they said, you must have faith because God is with you. And I'm getting chills right now talking about it because my daughter teared up.

And when my client was talking about this story, because one that's both of my son's name, English and Hebrew, and I did name him that on purpose and with intention. And at the same time, he has this great calling to be there. And so all of this wrapped into one, this is, this is a God thing.

And we have to try. Uh, I think right now, more than ever, if you're a person of faith, I don't care if you're Christian or if you're, if you're a Jew, you have to believe in God that there, this is here for a reason. And maybe it's because we need to step back in the faith what's happened over the past few years, especially with COVID and the government closing churches and synagogues and keeping people away. I think that this has to bring us back to faith because otherwise I'm scared for the world. Well, you and I are in very much agreement that this is not a political issue. This is a spiritual issue and it will not be one in the political arenas.

It will be one in the spiritual arena. But David, I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate you. My heart hurts with you and your family. My heart is with Joshua. That is an extraordinary young man that you raised and you and your wife and your family are a beautiful family. And I would ask that this audience lift up Josh. He is in danger.

It is a place filled with turmoil and death. And yet that young man is there for life. I'm very grateful for him. So thank you for being a part of the program today, David. Thank you, Peter, for having me.

You bet. We're going to end with Gracie singing a song that I wrote called Covenant Lament. I wrote it after the shooting at Covenant Presbyterian Church earlier this year, and I felt like it would be appropriate to end the program with this today.

It's taken from Jeremiah 16 and Psalm 27. I rest upon your word. I am redeemed and free because of you.

I'm not my face. Incline thine ear unto me. Let my cry we are hurt by the earth for love alone can comfort me. Oh Lord, my strength, my hope on you. I cast my care in my distress. I know you hear my prayer on you alone.

I wait. I rest upon your word. I am redeemed and free because of you to you. I turn only you.

Well, I trust. I live my heart deep for you. My God has set me free. Oh Lord, my strength, my hope on you. I cast my care in my distress. I know you hear my prayer on you alone.

I wait. I rest upon your word. I am redeemed and free because of you. I am redeemed and free because of you. Because of you.