In medieval Europe, Jewish scholars were summoned before Christian authorities and forced to defend the Talmud against claims that it said things it didn’t. The proceedings, called disputations, were rarely fair and not exactly voluntary.
Henry Raz, 17, is a high school junior in Marin County trying to counter a flood of online videos that claim the Talmud exposes secrets Jewish leaders want to keep hidden and permits Jews to deceive and kill non-Jews. To Raz, it looks like the same dynamic as the medieval disputations, adapted to the age of social media algorithms. That’s why he started a YouTube channel called “Disputations.”
Raz didn’t grow up attending synagogue, but his family regularly celebrated Jewish holidays and he became a bar mitzvah. His family now belongs to Congregation Kol Shofar, a Conservative synagogue in Tiburon.
Alienation and outrage would both be reasonable reactions to online antisemitism for a Jewish teenager. Instead, Raz has chosen to defend his faith and identity through education.
Raz, a Diller Teen Fellow who studies Talmud weekly with a local Chabad rabbi, launched his YouTube channel earlier this year to debunk the misrepresentations flooding his feed and to explain the Talmud accurately and accessibly for Jews and non-Jews alike. The channel is just getting started, but he spends a lot of time researching, writing and producing each video, and plans to keep them coming regularly.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me where your journey begins.
About two years ago, I was on a field trip in New York when this Hasidic guy came up and asked if I was Jewish. He asked if I wanted to put on tefillin, and I said, “absolutely.” I’d always thought it looked so cool.
He was getting me set up when one of the trip leaders said we had to go — we weren’t going to make our bus. So I couldn’t go through with it. But before I left, the guy told me to reach out to my local Chabad rabbi and learn how to put on tefillin.
And you emailed the rabbi?
When I got home I emailed the rabbi. Here’s the email. Can I read it to you?
Yes, please!
This was to Rabbi Mendel Misholovin of Chabad of Central Marin. Over the years I’ve developed a great friendship with him.
“Dear Rabbi… Over the past year, I’ve started to reconnect with my faith, and I realized that there is only one thing I haven’t done as a Jew yet and that is wrapping tefillin. I guess that’s not true. There’s plenty of things I haven’t done as a Jew, but I was wondering if your Chabad house offered wrapping.”
You must have made the rabbi’s day.
We wrapped tefillin together and I enjoyed it.
What did you enjoy about it?
It felt like a cable, like I was connected. Does that make sense?
Yes, it’s not even an analogy, you’re literally bound when you lay tefillin. I can tell you have a real excitement about Judaism. Where does it come from?
Every time I’d watch a cartoon — like “Rugrats” — my favorite characters were always the Jewish ones. I’ve always had an affinity for them.
When I was really young, we didn’t go to synagogue. My mom is a passionate convert and my dad grew up in a traditional Jewish home with Israeli parents, but for the first 10 years of my life we were really just celebrating holidays — Hanukkah, Yom Kippur. As I got older and thought more about Jewish identity, I felt the only real way to discover what was missing from my faith was to engage with the actual Judaism part of Judaism — the commandments, the Torah, the Talmud — all these aspects that had played no real role in my life when I was young.
So how did you start making videos about the Talmud?
Over the past several years, and especially recently, I’ve noticed more people online trying to dive into Jewish theology and mislabel it or claim it teaches things that it doesn’t. My goal is that when someone sees a claim online about the Talmud, they have accurate information.
I’m not a Talmud scholar. I’m not Orthodox, and I don’t really have an intention to be. But I wanted to learn more about how to be observant. So I started attending weekly Talmud study courses with my rabbi.
I really loved those meetings. Rabbi Mendel would often make the lessons relevant to things we experience in everyday life. That’s how I learned about the Talmud, which, unfortunately, I don’t think most Jews could give a concise definition of.
In that sense, my videos are made for Jews and non-Jews alike.
How do you convince people that some of what they’re seeing is just wrong?
Fortunately, most of these claims can be disproven pretty quickly.
For example, there are videos telling people that the Talmud permits a Jew to kill any non-Jew — a ridiculous claim. But many people who are just scrolling through their feed and who may already have preconceived notions about Jews are going to take that and let it serve as further evidence for why Jews are bad.
I’ve had friends personally send me videos saying, “Did you know Jews believe this?” and I had to tell them, “That’s not true.” I think that was the real motivation behind making the videos.
How does it feel to get a message like that from a friend?
Well, I know it’s not coming from a place of hate. It’s coming from a place of curiosity. I think it’s sad that these claims have become so pervasive, and that media literacy is so low that people will see something on Instagram and blindly believe it.
But I’m thankful friends do ask me, because I am able to say, “This isn’t true, and here’s why.”
I’d like to think I’m knowledgeable enough to be skeptical of online claims about the Talmud. One thing I didn’t know before watching your video is that the Talmud doesn’t mention Christianity.
It’s a debate. There’s no mention of the religion Christianity. There are mentions of pagans and idol worshippers.
There is a figure named Yeshu, and there’s debate about whether that refers to Jesus. The timeline doesn’t match up perfectly, but some say it could be referring to a Jesus of Nazareth who claimed to be the Messiah.
Tell me about your research process.
I can give you a specific example. There’s a claim that Sanhedrin 57a says all non-Jews should be killed. A lot of the time I can pull up Sefaria, look at the full quote and see that it’s completely wrong. Often you can debunk false claims just by putting things in context.
But even then, I like to look at the Hebrew version. I have friends who have helped me translate the Hebrew and I have used AI to make the Hebrew more conversational.
For historical context, I use books. I’ve got a lot of books on Judaism — on ancient Judaism, on ancient antisemitism. There’s this big one right here that’s really helpful: “A Brief and Visual History of Antisemitism” by Israel Bitton.
After the research part, you need to compile what you found, write a script, collect images and produce the video. What’s the topic of your next one?
It’s about the Chosen People. Where does this idea come from? Does it mean Jews are better than everyone else? Many people use that term and it’s become a trope. It carries a really negative connotation — when in reality it’s nothing that radical.
You don’t identify yourself in the videos. Why not?
I don’t want it to be about me. Putting my face in the frame would be a distraction that takes away from the content.