Noa Tishby Brings Fire, Wit, and Hope to WHC

On a Wednesday evening in May, close to 800 people filled Washington Hebrew Congregation to hear one of the most passionate and plainspoken voices in the Jewish world today. Noa Tishby — Israeli-born author, actor, activist, and founder of the nonprofit Eighteen — received a standing ovation before she had uttered a single word.

That kind of welcome, it turned out, was entirely fitting. Over the next hour, Tishby delivered an honest, funny, urgent, and deeply personal conversation about Jewish identity, antisemitism, Israel, allyship, and what it means to be a Jew right now.

The evening was made possible by the generosity of the Ellenbogen family and Nancy and Marc Duber, and moderated by Rabbi Sue Shankman, who introduced Tishby as a two-time New York Times bestselling author and Israel’s former special envoy for combating antisemitism. But Tishby — who sold the Israeli TV series In Treatment to HBO, making history as the first Israeli show to become an American series — wasted no time dispensing with formality.

If Rabbi Shankman’s introduction highlighted the breadth of Tishby’s career, Tishby herself quickly explained how that career evolved into advocacy. She described the shift with self-deprecating candor: “I just couldn’t shut up. That’s it.” After moving to Los Angeles, she kept encountering people who held fierce opinions about Israel without any knowledge of it. “I don’t know anything about Denmark,” she observed, “so I don’t say anything about Danish governance. Why are you obsessing about this weird country you shouldn’t care anything about? And I became obsessed in return.”

That obsession produced her landmark book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, and later Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew, co-authored with Emmanuel Acho, winner of the 2024 National Jewish Book Award. On the question of whether to engage hostile audiences, Tishby was pragmatic: “I felt very strongly that we needed to educate our own community first — in the same way that you put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your kid.”

But perhaps her most provocative and original analysis was reserved for social media and artificial intelligence. She warned that while the Jewish community worries about TikTok and Instagram, a far larger danger is taking shape: AI systems being trained, in part, on content from propaganda sources. “The Jewish people and the State of Israel are patient zero in this worldwide war on truth,” she said. “We are the first ones that they’re trying to take down. But this is much bigger than us.”

Her prescription? Pride. Openness. Engagement. “What’s happening right now is so scary that we all have the urge to close down,” she said. “And I’m saying no. Open. Like exactly the opposite. Open up. Be more proud. Be more open. Be more welcoming.”

Through her nonprofit Eighteen, she is doing exactly that — producing animated educational content, leading celebrity Hanukkah candle-lighting campaigns, and most recently getting a Jewish American Heritage curriculum adopted by the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Inspiring Jewish pride is what is going to get us through this,” she said.

For all the urgency of her message, Tishby ended on a note of resilience. When Rabbi Shankman asked what gives her hope, she turned to history. “We’ve done this before,” she said. “We’re just in another one of these moments in time. Don’t get down — get excited, get inspired. We’re all survivors. We got this.”

Judging from the crowd’s response, the message landed: 800 people left with a renewed sense of clarity, pride, and resolve.