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[music playing] [music playing] hi i'm steve adubato welcome to a very important program it is the third program we're doing on the role of religion in society it is my honor to introduce two of our guests stephen ollendorff is the founder of the ollendorff center and rabbi jack bemporad i want to thank both of you for being with us this is the third program that we've done talking about the role of religion in society and every time i learn something new and hopefully more importantly our audience has why are we doing this stephen? and why is religion so important? during these three sessions i've also evolved in my thinking a lot cause when you go into these programs you tend to think and it struck me that religion is a very important

institution if we look back in recent history both in vietnam and in the ukraine it was religious influence that made the difference because those countries that were communistic especially when deprived of religion needed some moral force and when the monks came out and burned themselves and now in the ukraine when the priests went out and supported the revolution it was as a result of countries trying to become anti religious the problem with religion today is even though it has a very useful purpose are they meeting their mission properly? and that's the challenge rabbi well i think doctor what steve said is absolutely correct in the sense that one cannot not be religious ou said this before try it again one cannot not be religious? yes because everybody... and i can see folks watching on pbs saying wait a minute i'm not religious how can the rabbi say that? well they may think they're

not religious but they have a frame of orientation and an object of devotion which is what we mean by religion. to have something that they feel is absolutely precious to them in other words that's what they devote themselves to and that's what a religion is a religion is the frame of orientation how you put things together and also what you're devoted to. now you can do it in a good way or in a bad way your frame of orientation could be you know fascism and you could be devoted let's say to mussolini and hitler that becomes a religion or stalin those are religions are you differentiating this is very important someone says okay i'm religious slash spiritual but i'm not involved in organized religion. do you differentiate i mean i'm going to ask both of you this question do you stephen differentiate between organized religion and someone who just says yes i'm a religious person i do only in the sense of effectiveness where i believe religion has to do with

spirituality and a force greater than ours our own i don't believe you can be religious and be an admirer of mussolini or hitler just because you have a cause so i think it's a matter of something greater than yourself that is in this universe now what religion brings to the table is that it's a filter it is a structure where learned people think about these topics and then when you go to the organized religion or the leaders will have thought about it given a great deal of thought about it and be able to convey their thoughts to you most people in their day to day lives don't have that luxury of thinking about all the implications of religion and the consequences of it you know for example i've lately began because i have more time but you know when you think about making a mistake or doing something wrong is that a path down the wrong road that should have consequences down the road? most people make immediate decisions what religion's

supposed to do is give you a broader perspective of life but you talk about doing something wrong. there are people rabbi, who in the name of religion very organized religion, will argue that it is not just their right but it is their responsibility to do harm to other people i mean you can go back to 9/11 and many other instances where religious fanatics i'll put that in air quotes people who believe well i think in all honesty that's sort of the misuse of religion it's like taking religion both politicians misuse religion to they take religion and use it... oh excuse me as we're doing sorry... as we're doing this program yeah there are people in arizona yeah as we do this program politicians who are saying in the name of religion that's what i'm saying who say that if in fact your religious beliefs cause you to say that you believe homosexuality is wrong that a business that you run

and you run that business and your religion tells you it's wrong you don't have to serve that person that's not what you're talking about? look... no but here's i think we have to really get at the essence of it and the essence of it is this it is religion that gave to the world the idea of humanity because if you didn't have the belief that all human beings are made in the divine image or there's something sacred about it steve says about every individual that there's a spark of the divine in each of us hmm this is the foundation for all of your athletics and all of the concepts of common good love your neighbor because he is like you don't sit idly by the blood of your neighbor right the stranger the widow the orphan care for them you're talking about also the prciples of judaism as well though? yeah and also christianity i think we were talking before about pope francis before we came in here we were talking about pope francis what he was trying to do literally is to say look this is really what religion is all about and so you want to concentrate on that now if you concentrate on that then basically you're saying

that a human being isn't just flesh and bones there's a spiritual quality as steve said there's a connection to something that transcends us and to the extent that we can do that we are religious the problem is that very often we do that to something that is an idol. in other words something that doesn't bear the burden of that trust hmm what is an idol? an idol is something that is created rather than the creator it's something that cannot bear the trust that you give to that particular thing now i think in that sense to speak about organized and non organized religion you know if it wasn't for organized religion you wouldn't have the heritage the tradition you wouldn't have a bible you wouldn't have the great resources that a religious tradition presents us and those people say well i'm not especially religious you ask them about but do you believe in certain ethical principles? do you believe in doing right? do you have some hope about the future? all that

is basically rooted in religious that's organized religion? tradition... exactly go back stephen to the ten principles of judaism in which we actually started the series with right is that still the core of all this? it is the core in the sense of when we open this discussion today we discuss that there is a role for religion and organized religion because it is the only theoretical force that doesn't have ulterior motives. but we also discuss that religion may have misused that power or they may not be on the right track so there is a need for organized religion the question is how can they do it better because they certainly not done it better as some of the examples you pointed out i think shimon peres said when you talk a politician talks on behalf of the people when you get a religious leader who claims to be talking on behalf of god there's no discussion he's taken over the power of god so religion has to find a way to meet the test that we're talking about it has to be moral spiritual

and rational as a catholic we've had this conversation off the air as well stephen and i were having breakfast a while back and i started talking to him about in our church i see more folks than i've seen before in the catholic church and i'm not alone i talk to other catholics and it's not just about how many more catholics go to church because of pope francis what has he meant to this discussion? religion in society? because he is trying to change the face of the catholic church the catholic church to a lot of people represents pomp circumstance a little bit of hypocrisy asking a little bit [laughter] asking for money and it has this glorious sistine chapel yeah i mean we visited the church and some of their leaders the cardinals were totally out of touch and they had this very autocratic i know it all attitude and at the end most people

don't i think believe that people are people in a spiritual force greater than something special and i think pope francis is saying i'm a human being i'm mortal i'm modest i'm not taking the excesses of the church but i want to try to relate to people in their lives and what is meaningful for them in their spiritual way and that's the role of religion does he also send a message to non catholics? yeah absolutely rabbi? well several things first of all i think he is appealing to an element in all human beings that say we really have to be concerned about those people who are vulnerable those people who are poor those people who are suffering and we really have to do something about that we have to do something about war we have to do something about exploitation we have to do something about the fact that we have literally millions of people who are refugees from war we... meaning organized religion? meaning religions have to do something about that all? all religions and one of the

things that's clear is when he said for example i'm here to build bridges and not walls what he's saying is i want to unite with the other religions he has reached out to every other religion and said let's work together let's find a way in which we can all work for the common good something that we all believe is essential if we're gonna survive as a human race and the pope together with those who happen to be jewish talk about the potential connection here stephen well i think what makes pope francis unusual is a lot of people who talk and talk but don't walk the walk and his life reflects... it's very easy to sit in a 25 million dollar mansion and say you should do this and you should do this and you fly off in your glorious jets but his life reflects what he believes in and i think that's what people are looking for today i think people are a little disconnected because their leaders say one thing but they've become an imperial class and you talk about poverty and you talk about need but yet they're

living a life of absolute constant luxury look at the ukraine the guy had a 25 million dollar mansion and a 250,000 dollar salary total disconnect total disconnect and look what happened they reject that so the leaders have to connect yeah yeah they have to connect if you're in a poor country they don't want you you have to serve them this pope is saying i will serve you it seemed for many many years we were serving them and that's the speech he's making stephen rabbi i want to thank you for joining us thank you and we very much look forward to more discussions where we all learn together about religion and society thank you thank you very much stay with us we'll be right back right after this if you would like more information on this program or if you'd like to express an opinion email us at info@caucusnj.org visit us online at caucusnj.org or find us on facebook at facebook.com/steveadubatophd

hi i'm steve adubato we are in the statehouse in the senate chamber here with senate minority leader tom kean junior how you doing? good good how are you? good good you comfortable in this place? in the senate chamber? i love this place why? number one it's intimate you really get to know people and work with people in a real way if there's an issue you can just walk three seats away and you get a real statewide feel for the priorities and great people there great people it's interesting the kean family for those who know a little bit about new jersey history it's been around new jersey government foa long time give us people a sense your dad was governor for two terms mm hmm those years were...? they were 82 to 90 when he was actually serving he was elected in 81 for the election 89 uh he was in the assembly for ten years before that he was the speaker? he was yeah he was he was one of the early speakers and he was in with the speaker that was did back to back terms so he had two one year terms

and one of the things that he did back then was he was the first one to have back to back terms in that chamber and also expanded with something known as the office of legislative services because he thought he was the executive branch had access to all these resources hmm and so the just like they do in congress he thought we should have a equal research branch so that the legislature can keep focused on both on policy issues on oversight issues, on substance issues uh just like the executive branch of you had another relative before your dad? back in the day? well my grandfather was in the house 38 - 58 uh so he was there for 20 years i mean he was the ranking member of the ways and means committee and back then on if all the families went down to washington dc so you were there for essentially nine months and then air conditioning came and direct flights came jet travel came so people started leaving dc a lot more frequently but when he was there on sunday nights the chairman of the ways and

means committee would come over to his house and they would have a conversation and say this is what we're gonna agree on over the week this is what we disagree on over the course of the week and to make resolutions and then at a very different date because you used to know the people you used to know the families and my grandfather was the first person on the house floor to speak out against the holocaust and so you he had a real sense of his constituents actually newark who were talking on about family members that they were concerned about and about the issues going on across the atlantic at the time and so he was one of the first to speak out against the holocaust but he also was able to hmm build relationships in a way that over the course of 20 years opened real powerful solutions and his mother and his uncle were both in the senate and others going back across the tide senator what impact do you think this extraordinary lineage mm hmm in public service has had on you? in your view of serving in government? well i think there are really two things that

impact me um number one it's you know we always solve very clearly that it's proud that you know what your ancestors have done as all of our ancestors were proud of but you have to know what they did but it's deeply important that they would be proud of what you were doing and so whether it's in a volunteer capacity and me as a volunteer firefighter and emt or in other volunteer things that i've done um here in service it's important to give back and so when i was growing up you know i had people who would come up to me and say father's doing this this is great cause i was in high school well i was in high school when he was governor but just the other day someone came up to me and said your grandfather did this and it was meaningful and so you have that real touchpoint in history going back 20 years going back 50 years which is really meaningful and important and so to be able to see what my father's done grandfather and others is really a principled stand and i think it helped me in terms of how to serve why to serve how to give back

how to try and make important impacts on people's lives but also when i was in college i went overseas and i studied overseas in budapest hungary and it was before the wall came down the berlin wall and you were able to travel all around eastern europe romania bulgaria the soviet union and poland and you could see what government could do poorly take away people's hope take away people's opportunities and so when i had my first presidential vote that i cast it was for the first president bush succeeding reagan to see behind the iron curtain i was in the embassy in budapest and you could see the hope and the inspiration that this country provided but you could also see what the system of the soviet government did to crush people's aspirations and hopes so the integration between the what my father and my grandfather and others my family members my mom instilled in me to see all that counterweighted with and bolstered

by the experience erseas where you could actually see not only hope and inspiration the city on the hill but you could also see real cruelty that can be done by governments fast forward one of the biggest issues of the many issues you have been involved in here in the state senate mm hmm there's education mm hmm education opportunity uh describe your view of educational opportunity and more precisely and specifically kind of legislation that moves in that direction sure and why we haven't made more progress uh well loaded question i know well it's... well i think there's... again back to the base point... um... our founding fathers envisioned a system whether there was a equality of opportunity in our side and we're the only society in the world that has equality of opportunity and in this day and age it means you had to graduate from high school career ready or college reaea and too many incidences and to many zip codes that's not happy so my response to the opportunity scholarship act to say in real time let's have solutions if a public school is failing

students then we should have a situation where in real time you can get out of that situation where people are failing and so the opportunity of scholarship act provides opportunities for children for parents for grandchildren for grandparents to have a better tomorrow for their own kids and so i've been pushing the opportunity of scholarship act for years and unfortunately the status quo is blocking that because if you can have more efficiency more opportunities for kids uh a greater mix you know whether there's another public school whether there's a parochial school whether there's a private school this is a realtime immediate solution for ki in every single zip code that has a failing school and you as you know this steve is that schools it's not about talent schools are succeeding well right down the street from schools that are failing and those schools that are failing we have to do everything we can because if we don't help those kids now ten years from now twenty years from now thirty years from now those kids don't have a better future and if you don't have hope and opportunity, then you have the job issues, the out of wedlock births

the crime issues the... all those things that impact people on a day to day basis and pull families apart senator on just a couple of substantive issues in the limited time we have the pension issue mm hmm what would you say to those who say look the commitment is at was made mm hmm for the state to put in what it promised right with health and pension reform right pension reform and there was a discussion right now after the governor's state of the state of right not doing that you say? well i think we should keep our promises i think that when we focus on how we keep those promises those allow for some of those tough decisions n a $32.9 billion budget that we have, when we looked at this last year and the governor had a $32.9 billion budget only $7 million were taken out of the budget $100 million added in of that $7 million $2 million was an innovation fund to help yeah failing schools and the other two million was the opportunity scholarship act, so we can find solutions and help them on real

priorities and make the promise to keep our promises should it even be on the table? right now? the idea of the state not doing what it said it would do? well i think we need to keep our promises but we also have to understand that in a $32.9 billion budget tough choices have to be made so if we're gonna keep this committment then we've gotta focus on efficiencies in other places so you have to have a conversation because every year is a new responsibility a new start but we should have this overall conversation if we're gonna have this $700 million committment made yeah then we should also understand that if we don't change other actions, that this will be the consequences an important conversation go back to that to education real quick uh governor proposed in the state of the state longer school day you say? despite opposition i agree you agree? i do agree longer school year? longer school years a longer school day i think that we've got to compete in a global environment i think that the schools are prepared to be a better place for our kids and if we can increase that

instruction and have a greater partnership with parents i think the longer school day longer school year makes it less and paying for it? well that's part of the solution, i mean it's part of what we need to focus on going forward now is there's a huge focus there right now that we're not focused on efficiency right now when we're looking at education too many people are saying this is about the dollars you can put into the system as opposed to the product of well educated students who are able to compete either at college or in the career when you get out so if we're able to change the prism and say longer school day longer school year but you also have to have a way to... a more efficnt way to pay for it statewide you can afford this change senator final question mm hmm of all the issues that get debated and discussed down here you say the one issue that you came down here to get involved in and you say hey why aren't we talking about that issue is? affordability of opportunity living in the state right now we've got three generations of families that can't afford toive in the state of new jersey and if you have families

living across the country that pulls our families apart and so if you can focus on saying that we have affordability in the state of new jersey which means opportunity and jobs and grandparents who live a mile away as opposed to a three hour flight away, then you can have a better new jersey because parents grandparents and grandkids all live within a couple of miles and is there a better vision for the future of new jersey? and the property taxes you say one way to reduce them and we're gonna be sitting down with the president of the senate as we're down here steve sweeney and he was the one who actually started the conversation about you know not just consolidating but shared services you know encouraging and very aggressive and assertive ways doing that he was at that's a good idea right? steve well i think it's a mix steve was ahead of the curve and he's very much focused on shared services and how you create more efficiencies through shared services we probably wouldn't have princeton borough and princeton township as one entity if steve hadn't started that conversation but don't we need more of that? we do need more of that

but not at the risk of blowing up the small towns, there's a uniqueness to having a small town field and government at the local level makes a lot of sense and so what we can do is have different answers in different parts of the state just like massachusetts and connecticut have a different answer than maryland different parts of new jersey can have a different answer because in maryland they got rid of wasteful governments on the and in massachusetts and connecticut they got rid of county governments so you can have a mixture i believe in new jersey where you can have a different answer in a different part and but i think that i mean yes steve was ahead of the curve on this issue it's an importnat part of the solution we also need to understand that people want to have both their education and a real small town field as the reason you move to new jersey so you can and still keep property taxes down? do both. yes okay absolutely but that's why you have the toolkit and you have all those reforms that we've been talking about they give mayors and freeholders and others more freedoms to say let's value the worker

who's there and who's a public servant but let's also value the tax payer if you give more flexibility and more opportunity to make the right decisions for the taxpayer we can have more affordability in new jersey more affordable and accountable and transparent government and more opportunity for more families to stay in new jersey thank you senator i appreciate your time thank you sir thank you the preceding program has been a production of the caucus education corporation celebrating twenty five years of broadcast excellence and thirteen for wnet njtv and whyy funding for this edition of caucus: new jersey has been provided by hackensack university health network njit; new jersey institute of technology new jersey's credit unions health republic insurance of new jersey njbest; new jersey's 529 college savings plan celgene corporation and by

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captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: federal reserve chairwoman janet yellen told congress that the economy still needs the fed's help, and the recovery remains incomplete. good evening, i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. also ahead this tuesday, from pickles to popsicles, a very different look at the economy, and how artisans in brooklyn might be a key to bolstering the american middle class. >> there's tons of jobs out there that you just have to go figure out. you have to kind of craft it in your own community. >> ifill: plus, as the violence rages on in the middle east, what's driving hamas and why they rejected a cease fire. those are just some of the stori w