I’ve always believed that truth has the power to change hearts and reshape worldviews. This week, I came across the story of Dr. Nikos Sotirakopoulos. It is a perfect illustration of this belief.

Nikos grew up in Greece, a country where antisemitism has always bubbled just below the surface — and often, it’s right there, out in the open. On the political right, Jews are vilified as “Christ-killers.” On the left, Israel is caricatured as a colonial oppressor, and obviously (for them), all Jews are to blame for Israel. 

Even ordinary Greeks – non-political, regular people – casually repeat anti-Jewish tropes around the dinner table. This was the air Nikos breathed as a child, and he absorbed these childhood influences uncritically.

By his twenties, Nikos wasn’t just vaguely prejudiced — he was actively consumed by antisemitism. He eagerly read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and drank in its vile prejudices against Jews as if it was gospel truth. 

His Facebook profile featured grotesque cartoons of Israel strangling its neighbors. He turned up at anti-Israel protests without knowing any real facts about the conflict between Israel and its enemies. But that didn’t matter. In his worldview, Israel was always the villain, and Jews were always to blame.

Now, 15 years later, Nikos is one of Israel’s most unlikely defenders. What happened to him during that time is what makes his story so compelling, and so important. After moving to the UK for graduate studies in his late twenties, Nikos decided to do a deep dive into Israel and its hostile neighbors. He began reading seriously — deliberately choosing books from both sides of the conflict. 

In the end, it was Benjamin Netanyahu’s A Durable Peace that forced the first real break in his thinking. On the very first page, a map of Israel leapt out at him: a sliver of land, just a few miles wide, “roughly 500 times smaller” than the surrounding Arab states. For the first time in his life, he understood how precarious Israel’s existence really was. One successful invasion, and the country would be gone.

From that moment on, Nikos was on a voyage of discovery. He discovered that in 1948, five Arab armies had invaded Israel on the very day it declared independence. He read about 1967 and 1973, when Israel was attacked by Arab armies determined to wipe it off the map. 

He realized that the land referred to by the world as the West Bank, which Israel is accused of “stealing,” had actually been under Arab control between 1948 and 1967 — but no Palestinian state was created, or demanded, by its inhabitants. He learnt that both peace and land had been offered time and again, but rejected by those who want to see Israel destroyed at any cost.

As the endless lies and warped narratives unraveled, Nikos saw something more profound. Israel isn’t merely fighting to survive — it is building a society devoted to life. Israel is an amazing country – a place where people raise families, innovate, debate politics with passion, write poetry, make music, and dream about a better future for all. 

By contrast, Israel’s enemies seem consumed by the cult of death — glorifying martyrdom over living, silencing dissent, and crushing anyone who dares to imagine a different path.

For Nikos, this realization was the actual turning point. Israel stopped being the faceless villain of his youth and became, in his words, “a land of modern heroes.” He was stirred by stories like the Entebbe rescue, when Israeli commandos risked everything to save hostages thousands of miles from home. 

The penny dropped: Israel is not some kind of imperial aberration, but a nation determined to safeguard life, and to offer hope and optimism even in the face of relentless hostility.

His journey reached its most emotional moment after October 7th, when Israeli families who lost loved ones in the massacre presented him with a medallion in gratitude for his transformation from hater to ally. For someone who once trafficked in the ugliest antisemitic conspiracy theories, it was nothing less than a moment of profound redemption.

Nikos’ story teaches us something profound: no one is doomed to remain on a bad path forever. And it is this very idea that explains why the Talmud dismisses one of the laws in Parshat Ki Teitzei as rhetorical fantasy. 

The Torah describes a phenomenon known as ‘ben sorer umoreh’ — a rebellious son who is gluttonous, drunk, disobedient, and seemingly on an inevitable path to a life of crime. His parents are told to bring him before the authorities, and the punishment — if the boy is found guilty — is death.

Shockingly, the rabbis of the Talmud reject this entire scenario out of hand. They insist that no case of ‘ben sorer umoreh’ ever happened in Jewish history, and none ever will. The law exists only as a theoretical construct, a cautionary tale. 

But how could they be so sure? Simple. Because Judaism refuses to accept permanent moral determinism. However dark the path you’re on, however entrenched the negativity, change is always possible. And Nikos Sotirakopoulos’s story is living proof. He was barreling down a road of hatred with no exit ramp in sight — and then he turned himself around.

Parshat Ki Teitzei ends with a very different lesson: the mitzvah to remember Amalek. This was the vicious warrior tribe that attacked Israel in the wilderness, hoping to wipe out the Jewish people before they had even found their footing. The Torah commands us to erase Amalek from the world and to show them no mercy. 

But the rabbis ask the obvious question: why does this mitzvah remain if the nation of Amalek has long since vanished from history? Their answer is that Amalek is not only an external enemy — it is also the Amalek within us: the baseless hatred, the corrosive cynicism, the prejudice we harbor in our hearts. Think of those Jews who can only ever see Israel in a negative light. That hatred for Israel is their Amalek — and it must be mercilessly rooted out and destroyed.

Seen together, these two passages form a profound existential truth: evil exists, but it does not have to stay that way. People like Nikos prove that even the ugliest bigotry can be unlearned. Nikos is not the only example — history offers other remarkable stories of transformation. 

Governor George Wallace, once the most notorious face of segregationist racism in America, spent years spewing venom and using every tool of power to hold back the Black community. But in later life, Wallace publicly repented, sought forgiveness from those he had wronged, and was even embraced by many of the very people he had once tried to exclude.

More recently, there is the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef, better known as the “Green Prince.” The son of a founder of Hamas, he was raised to hate Jews and groomed to inherit his father’s jihadist mantle. But he broke with Hamas, rejected its cult of death, and devoted himself to exposing its lies. 

Together, Wallace and Yousef demonstrate that even the deepest hatred can be unlearned — and that even those most consumed by poisonous ideas can still find their way to truth.

All these stories remind us that hatred and evil are not an inevitable destiny. Jewish tradition insists that no one is beyond redemption — and it also warns us never to tolerate the Amalek within. If even the most entrenched haters can change course, then there is hope for a world drowning in extremism and lies. 

But hope alone is not enough. Change requires truth, courage, and the willingness to confront falsehood head-on. Evil exists — but here’s the key: it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.