 of what Pius XII did during the war before, during and to some extent after the war in a new book reviewed in the New York Review of Books, The Pope at War. We're gonna talk about that today here on Sync Tech, Global Connections, because it is global, it is about Europe, but it has implications everywhere. I'm Jay Fidel, the fellow who set the show up and introduced us to Brad Kerwin. It's our old friend Carl Ackerman. Hi, Carl. Welcome to the show. And Brad, thank you so much for joining us. It's my pleasure. Thank you. So what's very interesting about this article in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere is that there were two books, one that criticized Pope Pius XII and the other one that said, no, he did a lot for the Jews during the war. My own view of it up till now has been the Pope didn't do anything for the Jews during the war, and he could have made a statement, but he didn't. So I kind of agree with, it was a massacre. And I take the position and I've sort of come at this full disclosure of the position that the Pope didn't do the right thing. But there are those who disagree and it's a religious issue in part, or at least it's a church issue. And I wanted to get into it. Carl, how'd you become aware of this book? And what does this book mean to you as a Jewish person? You know, I was able to see actually the author of this David Kertzer on American Jewish University, a podcast. And so it became a great interest to me because I thought number one, he was pretty fair in his appraisal of Pope Pius XII. And also I felt that this was a very interesting issue concerning the, you know, the relative culpability of Pope Pius XII. Okay, right, how'd you become aware? I'm sure you were aware before Carl told you about it and you have been raised Catholic so you've come out from a different point of view now. Yeah, yes. For me, for somebody who hasn't been raised Catholic, your point of view is gonna be entirely different. I remember when Pope Pius XII died. It was in 1958, I was in second grade with Sister Rose Damien. I remember when he died. I remember when they elected Pope John, the 23rd, whom everybody adored and loved. And so people at that time were looking back, I think, already on Pope Pius. I mean, for young people. It's kind of like, so what did he do? Was he the world peace leader? And no, he was not. It's different for somebody who was raised that way for sure. And he could have done a bunch of stuff to help everybody, not just the Jews, but a lot of other different people. One of the things, Jay, that just hit me about Hesseman's book was when they got to the point where he said, when the Allies got into Sicily and because he was not supporting the Allies at all. And when they did get onto the mainland that he, the Pope said that he didn't want any, when they got to the Vatican, he didn't want any servicemen who were colored to be, who were colored to be stationed at the Vatican. That kind of pretty much told me what kind of person he was. Yeah, and where the church was. I mean, you have to look at the church through him. He was calling the shots for a long period of time. Yeah, and I think it asked us, what was going on with the Vatican and with its relations in general with other countries in Europe before, during and after the war. And my reaction to that is the Vatican was really, it felt itself was pretty lucky because after the consolidation of Italy in 1870, they followed a period of negotiation, finally ending up in an agreement with the sovereignty of the Vatican as Vatican City, a separate sovereignty within Italy, quite remarkable. And I'm sure that every Pope said to himself, hmm, this is good. I really want to hold on to this. And if I don't play my cards right, my geopolitical cards right, if I, for example, again, if you're arguing with Mussolini, next thing you know, I lose the Vatican. So there were practical issues that covered this. The other thing, of course, and it's revealed in the movie that's become popular lately, although it was made in 1972. And it was a remake of a movie done in 1950s though, called The Garden of the Finci Contini. It's a very, very interesting movie. And it was about being Jewish and wealthy in the town called Ferrara near Rome in the 1939, 1940. And you could see it closing in on this Jewish family. And they didn't realize it. And I think that when we look at Europe in the spirit of time, we have to realize that people did not know necessarily. Nobody knew for sure what the Pope was doing or not doing. They were following signals. And Mussolini was capitalizing on the very Catholic quality of the country. But suffice to say, one day you couldn't drive a car and you had to drive a bicycle. Next day, you had to give up your bicycle. Next day, you had to wear a Jewish star. Next day, they came for you. And that's what happened in The Garden of the Finci Contini, these people who lived the sweet life with Dennis Kortz and the swimming pools. One day, they came for everybody in the family, three, four generations, all picked up, all at the same time, all astounded, that their wealth and their political power, previous political power could be disregarded that way. And yet that's what happened in Italy, Catholic country. So I mean, we have to look at Europe in general. Don't we, Carl? Yeah, you know, Jay, you were quite eloquent in talking about, you know, the resurgimento or, you know, the Italian unification because, you know, by 1870, the Pope didn't have anything. And that's because Napoleon III had protected, you know, during the early parts of Italian unification, the Pope and the Vatican. But when they, when he eventually lost to the Germans with German unification, you know, and Napoleon III actually was going to protect, you know, the Vatican, but no longer because, you know, Bismarck wasn't charged, the Kaiser wasn't charged, you know. And so, you know, he, the Vatican had to go through a process of reestablishing itself. And I think early in the 20th century, if I'm not wrong, there was a, you know, little area carved out which is Vatican City. And if you know, if you go to Europe and I think, I know Brad's boys, Brad's sons, and I know my daughters really enjoyed going to Vatican City because you could get your own stab, but it's his own country. And so that's just wonderful. But going back to the article by Tim Parks, who was, you know, a specialist on Italy and I read a lot of his things and only because I had a wonderful colleague named Christopher Strahan when I taught at Iolani School, a wonderful, wonderful school. And he said, you got to read this guy, Tim Parks, who knows a lot about Italy. So he's the guy that wrote the article. And the way he begins it, and I think it's worth quoting, he says, should outrage and atrocity always be denounced, whatever the consequences? And will the answer be the same for a private individual, a political leader and a spiritual leader? And I would go further and say an institutional leader. And clearly in the first three categories, Pius XII failed miserably. There's no question about his morality. And as Dr. Kerwin pointed out, you didn't want African-Americans in the Vatican. So, you know, that tells you where his minds were at. And of course he was getting advice by Cardinals who were particularly anti-Semitic at the time. But remember, that's why I suggested we have to look at Europe in general. For that matter, we have to look at the US in general. The 30s was a time of bigotry, of moving to the right, of autocracy. Reflected ultimately at Hitler and Mussolini and probably Stalin in the same category. And so what we have is everybody's being bigoted against everybody. In this country, we had Father Coughlin, by the way, who was Catholic and whose followers were Catholic too, I might add. So, you know, we had, in the 1930s, everywhere in the world was going to bigotry. So when the Pope said he didn't want African-American soldiers there, he was reflecting a very wide swath of public opinion. It wasn't just him. You know, that's very true. And of course, there were huge rallies at Medicines Square Garden led by Nazi, just before World War II. And thank God for Rabbi Stephen Weiss, who led sort of counter-movement, reformed Judaism and other people, et cetera, et cetera. So no question about it. And I just sent friends of mine an article about the anti-Semitism at Stanford that curtailed Jewish enrollment in the 50s. I'm not that long ago, really, in the 1950s. All right, and now they're apologizing for it. And they're apologizing for it, which is to their credit. But I mean, it was from Fairfax High School and Beverly Hills High School, high schools that Brad and I know well, because we grew up in that area. And it wasn't, you know, we grew up in the 70s. And so it wasn't that far away. But anyway, you're absolutely right, Jay. The only thing I would say is, and I wanna hand it over to Brad and his commentary about Pius XII, but is that at every point when Pius XII could have made a comment and could have talked about, because we weren't talking about just prejudice. We were talking the mass extermination by policy. Well, are you saying, Carl, that it was obvious that Pius XII knew what was going on in Germany and the countries that were occupied by Germany? I don't think there's any question. After I would say, I'm not sure he knew before, you know, actually, Hitler came up with the final solution, but he certainly knew after that. And for him not to, I mean, Dr. Kirwan and I discussed this recently and that was that, you know, there was 1,000, according to this article by Tim Parks, there was 1,000 Jews who were captives at Italy later in the war, who he knew all about it. And he let them get on the trains and I've got 1,000 plus, like 14 lived. So, you know, his moral authority... I think it's a very important point to note that Hitler was expanding his territory in the late 30s, the early 40s, and he controlled a lot of countries. And as he expanded the territory, he expanded his anti-Semitism. And so Kristallnacht was not just in Germany, it was all over Europe. It was a huge and public plan. So if you were observing, whether you were the Pope or not, what was going on in Europe, if you were half awake in Europe, if you read any newspaper at all in Europe in those days, you knew that Hitler was onto the Jews and he was gonna do something. You may not, as you said, you may not have known as Pope that the final solution was about to happen, but you did know the anti-Semitism was rife wherever Hitler went. So Brad, you know, you are Catholic, you raised Catholic. There were two books reviewed in this New York Review of Book Story. And one of them is an earlier book, 2018, just a few years ago, by somebody who was working inside the Vatican. And I don't think it's a quote, but close to say that this book stands for the proposition that this Pope, Pope Pius XII, did more than anyone else to protect the Jews. And that is 180 different from the book where we're looking at today, the silence of the Pope, which is the one that was primarily in the review. How do you come out on that? Which side of it do you fall on? What are your feelings about it emotionally and from a religious part of you? It's hard for me because what makes us really difficult because they brought it up inside the article was talking about even back then, Hitler is asserting that, you know, he's got all kinds of stuff about all the abuses that the priests were visiting upon children about women, boys and girls, and that he could let loose with that stuff anytime he wanted to, which means it's gone back, that goes back further and further. This man ends up, that author ends up being an apologist for things that didn't, didn't happen. The fact that all of the documents that had anything to do with abuses by priests and stuff before that happened then and before were all to be burned so that no one would ever know about any of that stuff. So the person taking the side of the Pope, I understand wanting to try to keep the institution, if I'm in charge of the institution, I understand wanting to do that. The fact that it lacked any kind of moral consistency and that he was skating around through different things is pointed out repeatedly. And I knew about from a young age, probably from the time I first started at UCLA, it's like, well, John with the Pope did. You know, he was basically just kind of like, he was not ticking a stand. And on the other hand, there's the whole idea that did he not look and see, do you understand what's gonna happen if the Nazis do take over? They're incredibly anti-Catholic. In the end, you're gonna be in a horrible, horrible shape. If you agree that Europe and in a large part, Catholicism in Europe, which at least at the time was a dominant religion in Europe, has experienced, has had within it a thread of antisemitism from way, way back in the early days of Catholicism. And when you look at the development of Europe and the development of antisemitism and the development of the church, you see this as a contention that started very, very shortly after the birth and death of Christ. Right. Yeah, yes, yes to all of that. And it's, as someone, again, raised Catholic, you look at this and you go, well, you know, you Christians, you Catholics, you're the, you killed Jesus. Jesus was killed either, no matter how you look at it, either by the other Jews or by the Romans or both. There were no Christians, there were no Catholics. Jesus, who and I, I'm sorry, I started studying religion really heavily and it might have been you, Carl, who pointed out to me goes, Brad, there was nobody named Jesus. Pardon me? There was nobody named Jesus. What do you mean? Don't you look at, okay, I don't agree with everything, Carl, but so we just know, Brad, there's no J sound in Hebrew. So there's no Jesus, there's no John, there's no Joseph, there's no Jacob. That person was probably named Jeshua or something like that, which was probably like Joshua or Yahshua. Yeah. Kind of go on. Well, yeah, sorry, but for me, we're all into this together. Me and my Old Testament brother, we should be taking care of each other and that's what bothers me is because I don't think the Pope took care of people. Well, you know, one thing to be bothered by is the true books, let me express them. One is the Pope at war, the secret history of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler by David Pertzer. And the other book also mentioned in this New York Review Books Review is the Pope and the Holocaust. See how uncharged that is, that is a very flat statement of the subject. Pius XII and the Vatican Secret Archives by Michael Hesseman. And it was written in German, by the way. What's interesting, I think, is that he was writing it for the Vatican. He was inside the Vatican and I guess this is a Vatican book. And what troubles me is that, hey, it's pretty clear. If somebody says something, that's a matter of record. But if somebody says nothing, that's just as clear. If not clearer, the Pope didn't say anything. He didn't say anything to Hitler, he didn't say anything to Mussolini and he didn't say anything to Europe and the public in this country, where he could have. And so what you have is a very clear dichotomy between the two books and one of them by its nature is much more credible than the other. But what troubles me is that the Vatican, if you ask them today, Carl, what their view of this was, they would say, well, we like Michael Hesseman's book. It's the correct statement because it was written by them, for them and all that. And that's a cover up. That's a cover up of the silence, isn't it, Carl? Well, here's the argument that Hesseman makes is simply that there was no other choice. And in a sense that Kertzer, David Kertzer, when he was ending his speech for American Jewish University said this, they asked him a question about whether the Pope did what was correct for the institution, as Brad identified earlier in this talk. And you can say, if you are a real politique follower of Otto von Bismarck, that indeed, the Pope was aiming at saving the Catholic Church as an institution. The question is, and this is the million dollar question, not even the $1,000 question, but the million dollar question is at what price? And so if you think of the Pope as a spiritual leader and as someone who has to make decisions that are not just based on a state but based on some sort of moral dimension, then he failed miserably. But I don't think a case can be made that he failed as an institutional leader. I think that he had choices to make, but here's the, even as an institutional leader, here's the historical problem. When you have Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or a Joseph Stalin, you can't have two gods. You can't have the Catholic Church and the leader of the Nazi party, the leader of the Fascist party in Italy and the leader of the former Soviet Union. So eventually, I think had the Nazis been successful, they would have tried to eliminate the Catholic Church because you can't pay obedience to two gods. Well, okay. So you're lining up the reasons why it was important for the Pope to say nothing and let it happen and even if you don't say that he was stood by for six million deaths. In 1942 or so, it was already clear in the newspapers that there were at least two million deaths. In the United States, it was clear. Or maybe four million. What's the difference really? I mean, it's huge. And he knew this. He had to know this as an informed person. So he stood by for that. Now you can say that, well, there are reasons why he didn't wanna lose the church. The church was more important than the moral compass here. However, that wasn't my question. I wanna pose my question to Brad. Even assuming there were reasons for the Pope to remain silent and they were good reasons for the protection of the church, even assuming that what we have since then is tantamount who would denial of the reality, who will cover up. Right? Yes. Because in the end, a bunch of the things that he did, then Carl, you and I have talked about this. Because you have to look at them regardless of, if the institution fails or it doesn't, what are you doing in terms of since you are a Catholic and you believe in Jesus and you believe in God, I got, where do you stand morally? Ethically. And yet what's his name? The one author, the one pro person. Well, yeah, he tried to get visas for the kids to go to Brazil and he did it again and again and again and they just weren't able to have those 3000 visas. Well, okay, that's a thing, but it still doesn't come down to, yes, he was afraid that the institution was gonna fail, it was gonna be his fault. And a bunch of the stuff he did, as far as I'm concerned, was self-serving, institution-serving and yet immoral. I agree with you. I was gonna ask you if you agree with that, Carl, because I think he put you on the spot. No, he doesn't put me on the spot because if you listen to what I said carefully earlier, is that there are four different categories and if you talk about the Pope as a moral spiritual leader, he failed miserably and there's no question about that, but I was struck by David Kirchner's answer to this question about whether he failed as an institutional leader and Kirchner could not answer that question. He was ambivalent, which I am, also ambivalent about if you just examine the Pope as a leader of an institution, but my point is that you can't justify anything the Pope did. He basically, from a moral point of view, as from an individual point of view and from a spiritual point of view, but if you take the tack as Heisman has done, which is that he is akin to any other political leader, and by the way, political leaders were doing this all across the world, including the United States refusing ships from coming in with refugee Jews, that he was acting the way Audubon Bismarck acted in terms of real politic. And it was horrible and you can't justify the Pope's actions, but if you look at it only from the institutional preserving church as the leader of the church, the way you would have a leader of another country, then in some respects, you have to say there is that possibility that you could have a monograph that comes out with the way that Heisman did. Having said that, it's interesting to note, as Tim Parks points out, is that the Jews that were allowed to get visas were Jews that had converted to Catholicism. So overall, Jay, I mean, I understand your righteous indignation and it is righteous indignation. The Pope was horrible during World War II, but you have to, from a historical position, and I'm a historian, you have to see what the questions are being asked, and Heisman asked a question that I think is an incorrect question about the culpability of the Pope, but he is looking only at the Pope as an institutional leader. Well, if you wanna get inside the Pope's mind and see the distinction between being Catholic, reading the Bible, finding the moral path and all that, of course. And a good Catholic person would never have stood by knowing that millions of people were being slaughtered. There's nothing in the Bible that could ever in the world justify any of that. In fact, it would all speak, it would yell. It would not be silent in any way. Now, when you say, well, the Pope actually was trying to do the best thing, the practical solution to protect the church, that assumes there's a distinction between a good Catholic and a good church that you can actually divide them. And this is very problematic. If I were a Catholic, I would say, why are you kidding me? There's a separate morality, a separate morality for the good Catholic and the good church. I wouldn't be able to accept that. Brad, comments? I agree with what Carl said, though. He ended up trying to protect the institution and the institution is still here. And he could have lost it a whole bunch of different ways. It could have gone down the tubes, the Nazis could have won. He could have come out really strongly against everything that was going on and they could have been shut down and he could have been killed, which is another possible. Well, true. You think those things would have happened historically? The interesting thing both Brad and Jay is that in the article itself, it talked about how the Pope didn't want to fragment the Catholic support because had he come out against Hitler, he was afraid of dividing Catholics in Germany, which he thought, and I think quite correctly that he would have lost the battle. The people were so mesmerized by Hitler. Now, the issue is- Are you saying that the Catholics in Germany were supporting Hitler? Yes, I am. And not to the same extent, I think, and this is what Tim Parks points out also as the Protestants did, but I think there was, it's difficult to understand and having lived in the former Soviet Union, the power of the media and the power of a totalitarian state when things are coming at you. And I think there were many, many good Catholics, including Oscar Schindler, who did what they could in terms of trying to save Jews during the war. But you can't defend the Pope on a spiritual basis, on a moral basis, and on an individual basis. You can't, it's horrible. But what Heisman is trying to do is defend him institutionally. And your point, Jay, is a good one, is can you separate the institutional wanting of saving the Catholic Church from the moral duty? Is that possible? And what I pointed out is, you can only support what the Pope did if you're taking a huge real politic position that he was able to save the church and perhaps not. And remember that from a historian's point of view, no one knew in 1941, 1942, who was gonna, in much less 1939, who was going to win this war. And so the Pope had a lot of things to consider, but as you pointed out, Jay, it was an anti-Semitic era anyway, and the Pope had to make certain decisions. But from a historian's point of view, I can see the Heisman position. I don't agree with it. The other position is much more attractive to me. But as I go back to David Kertzer, when David Kertzer was asked that question about whether the Pope did a good job for the Catholic Church as an institution, he was ambivalent. And so am I. Because, and from the other three positions, it was absolutely horrendous. But it's tough being a historian and being a person. Well, if I give you a syllogistically, a country which has a substantial number of Jews in it who are waiting for a direction from Pius XII and the direction they get is silenced during the war. And little by little, they become aware of the fact that Jews are being murdered in huge numbers. Okay, and then the war ends. And I agree with you, nobody knew at the time how it was gonna work out. It could have been any kind of ending, including a most horrible imaginable ending. It was horrible and unimaginable anyway. And then I turn back, and I am now a child of the war. And there are many families in Germany right now today. We know some of them who are children of the war. How do they think of the church and its performance during the war? Because all this has been made clear to them one way or the other. How do they think now of the church? Has this strengthened the church in the eyes of those Catholics? What do you think, Brett? I don't know, Jay. In terms of this particular issue and World War II and the Holocaust, so much of the stuff and my relationship with the church and Catholicism is colored by everything that keeps coming out about my family's religion that goes back forever in Ireland of the Catholic church filled with abusive people doing horrible things, not in any one particular place, but everywhere. So it's colored by all of that. Those are the kind of things that rise to the surface when people talk to me and ask me about being Catholic. You know, I'm reminded of the provision in the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, to the U.S. Constitution, which makes it clear that this state shall not establish a religious separation of church and state. And I think there was probably a lot of good reason that that was written down. Just as you say, the church had not done a very good job at promoting justice among groups in the society. It had been cruel in so many ways. It had not been helpful even by its own, its own stated morality, biblical morality. And so these guys back in the late 18th century, they said, let's keep them apart. We don't want the church running politics because it'll get us in trouble. We have had enough experience in Western civilization to know it's a bad idea. And yet, okay, it still exists today. And maybe all of this discussion between you, Brad, and Carl and me is really about the separation of church and state. If the Pope had said, look, I'm sorry, I can't get involved, that's political, I would feel better about him. He didn't say that. And he made no effort to make that clear. So I'm thinking that really we're talking about this kind of corruption that happens when you assume that the church, a religious organization has influence in a non-religious society. Carl, what do you think? Yeah, you know, and you and Brad, first of all, before we end today, I just wanna say what a pleasure it is with these two fellow menches working together. But I would agree with you. And one of the things, Jay, that I wanna conclude with is that, people who study European history, if you don't understand the Catholic church, you're not gonna get very foreign European history because it wasn't until the Enlightenment that things changed. And of course, for Jewish people, the Enlightenment was a godsend. And it was people like Napoleon that freed people from the ghettos because he was an enlightened thinker, to a certain extent, a dictator in other areas. But so the Enlightenment really helped out. And of course, our forefathers were Enlightenment thinkers. And so what you're talking about the First Amendment is coming right out of the Enlightenment. I completely agree with you and thank God for people like Benjamin Franklin, who is truly a man of the Enlightenment. But I don't wanna end this discussion about Catholicism without making a point that the tremendous work that Jesuits have done, and especially around the world, what the Catholic church has done for the poor and the needy. And Jay, I'd sent both you and Brad this comment that on my nightstand is a picture of Mother Teresa in that regard because I had a very good friend who was a nun who worked with her in India. And so there are many good things about the Catholic church. And of course, just to conclude, but of course, Pius XII is not one of them. If I can go back to those hopes way back when, when the papacy was first being developed, even in Perpignan way back when, I would say to them, good, but not good enough. I want you guys to do more. I don't want there to be any corruption. I don't want there to be any weakness. You have to follow your own principles absolutely and with everyone. You have the power, use it properly. And I'm afraid to say that, although I certainly agree with Carl, the church had done a lot in some ways. It has not done enough. And it certainly didn't do enough during World War II. So let's go to closing comments, Brad. What are your closing comments? How would you integrate all this discussion and what message would you leave with our viewership? I don't want anyone who listens to this or any of my friends to think that I don't have a great deal of love for Catholicism as an approach for my friends who are Catholics. I wouldn't want them to be angry at me just because I'm not taking position that they like because there's a lot of really good people who are Catholics. There are a lot of really good priests and nuns who my work with. The thing that I have difficulty with the Pope and with it is that they're just people and they make mistakes. And unfortunately, if you're in a power of real position, you can make heavy-duty mistakes. And a lot of Catholics have and a lot of people who are Catholics in charge have made them. He made them. And that makes me unhappy. And it makes me unhappy because this is my religion or it was. Now I'm just a student. If you could go back to him now, the inception of his prophecy, what would you tell him? I just had something that was scattered with obscenities run through my head just now, unfortunately, but wake the heck up, take care of people and not the institution. Start taking care of the people and everybody, not just the people who are like on your team. And it's like everybody. Jesus, you believe in Jesus? Jesus was for everybody, for everybody. And you need to be for everybody. Vicar of Christ, you represent him. Do it. That's wonderful, Brad. So Carl, now your turn to see if you can summarize and create a message, express a message to our viewership about this discussion. You know, my message will be kind of an academic one. And I think they should read the article by Tim Parks that Think Tech has elucidated and put on their website because I think it's a very thoughtful article about Pius XII. And, you know, it's hard to believe that you're Jewish to come to any other conclusion about Pius XII, not saying anything, among many other leaders. He's not alone. Oh yeah, there's a whole study of that in Ken Burns movie, recent documentary of the U.S. and the Holocaust. A whole study of how that worked in the U.S. And I haven't seen that and I want to see that. But I mean, it's very difficult. Before I came on, I was wondering, you know, about people who, you know, you know, that are the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors. And, you know, it's a difficult, difficult thing that we approach today. And my net conclusion is that Pius XII, that had I had the same opportunity as my good friend, Dr. Brad Kerwin had, I would say to him, you have to make the moral call. You're a Catholic leader. You're not just a leader, you're a Catholic leader. And you have to be someone who preserves life and the life of the innocent and the life of people who have been brutalized. And I would make the same argument to those people who are watching the crane today and not taking a stand. Because, you know, it's not a clear policy. It's not comparable in many ways to the Holocaust. But it's, again, leaders not coming up and taking a stand. Yeah, pretty good. And I would say to him, you know, the New Testament is a progeny of the old. And there's much to be learned, you know, from the Jewish way of looking at things. And you should look and see what the Old Testament is saying. And you should do mitzvah. That's another Latin word, Brad. You should do good deeds, affirmatively, good deeds. That's what I would say to him. Anyway, thank you very much, Brad Kerwin, Carl Ackerman, thank you. This has been a wonderful discussion. I really appreciate it. And I, with you, I recommend everyone take a look at this article in the... Thank you, Brad and Jay, two menches. Same here. Thank you, my menches. Brad, two menches.