Ivanka Trump, who served as a top White House advisor in her father Donald Trump’s administration, joined podcaster Lex Fridman to discuss a wide variety of issues. During the course of her conversation, Ivanka discussed several core concepts of Judaism, making for an interesting conversation with the Jewish, but irreligious, podcaster. When asked about the hate and vitriol lobbed at her and her family over their immediate association with Donald Trump, Ivanka said: “There’s a concept in Judaism called Lashon Hara, which means evil speech. The idea is that speaking poorly of another is almost the moral equivalent to murder, because you can’t really repair it. You can apologize, but you can’t repair it. “Another component of that is that it does as much damage to the person saying the words than it does to the person receiving them. And I think about that a lot. I talk about this concept with my kids a lot, and I’m not willing to pay the price of that fleeting and momentary satisfaction of sort of swinging back because I think it would be too expensive for my soul. And that’s how I made peace with it, because I think that feels more true for me.” At another moment, when discussing the concept of gratitude, Ivanka referred to the bracha of Asher Yatzar: “There’s a prayer in Judaism you’re supposed to say every morning, which is basically thanking God for your body working. It’s something so basic, but it’s when it doesn’t that we’re grateful. So just reminding ourselves every day the basic things of a functional body, of our health, of access to water, which so many millions of people around the world do not have reliably, is very clarifying and super important.” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)