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May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782 • Kedoshim Vol 21, No 14

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Lifting a curtain on Israel’s birth

We celebrate the Jewish State’s 74th with 8 fun founding facts included Zion (dismissed because it’s a biblical name for Jerusalem, and also to distinguish between the general Zionist movement and Israeli citizenship), Ever (after the biblical figure Eber, and similar to the Hebrew word for Hebrew, Ivrit) and Judea (rejected in order to differentiate between Jews and Israeli citizens). Israel, by the way, was the name suggested by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

By Naama Barak, Israel 21c As the modern state of Israel celebrates its 74th anniversary this week, the passage of time and the solemn black-and-white photos of the founding period lend a feeling that the country’s first footsteps were orderly, well-thought-out affairs. But in reality, things couldn’t have been more different — the country’s very name was hotly debated, the Declaration of Independence was far from ready on time, and even the curtain that is a backdrop in famous pictures of the declaration’s signing hid more than you might have imagined. Here are eight fascinating facts surrounding Israel’s founding, an event that typified the country’s famous atmosphere of balagan (chaos) and demonstrated that its resourcefulness were there right from the start.

1. Country’s name not an obvious choice

Israel is obviously nowadays called Israel, but other options

2. Famous Independence Declaration backdrop was a makeshift affair

Israel’s leaders sign an empty piece of parchment that will later be sewn into the text of the Declaration of Independence. Frank Shershel/GPO

Israel’s independence was solemnly declared at the entrance of what was back then the Tel Aviv Museum. Famous photos show long drapes, Israeli flags, a portrait of Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl and serious-looking men assembled on stage and on chairs in front of them. The drapes, it appears, were hung to hide the nude paintings on the walls. See 8 fun facts on page 4

May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782 THE JEWISH STAR

The Temple Mount ‘status quo’ There have been changes, but they haven’t been good for the Jews. Analysis by Nadav Shragai Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs The status quo on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as formulated by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in 1967, no longer exists. Today, the reality on the mount is very different from what it was 55, 40, or 30 years ago. One of the explanations the Palestinians often give for the recurrent riots and violence on the mount is that Israel is violating and altering the status quo in ways that favor Israel and the Jewish side and harm Muslims. They call this an “assault on Al-Aqsa,” an “invasion of Al-Aqsa” and, most frequently of all, proclaim that “Al-Aqsa is in danger.” Yet, a careful look at the changes on the mount during the 55 years since the Six-Day War reveals an opposite picture. The changes in the 1967 status quo, and in the arrangements that were made in its light, have greatly improved the Muslims’ status and hold on the Temple Mount. At the same time, the new reality has eroded the status of Jews and Israel there. First, it is worth looking at the main features of the status quo put in place in 1967.

The Dayan status quo: main features

1. The Waqf, a branch of Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf Islamic Affairs and Holy Places, would continue to administer the site and would be responsible for the religious and civil arrangements there. 2. Jews would not be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, but would be able to visit it. This freedom of access was eventually anchored in Israel’s Law on the Preservation of the Holy Places. 3. The Israel Police and the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) would be in charge of security for the sacred compound, including its walls and gates. 4. Israeli sovereignty and law would be applied to the Temple Mount, as it was to the other parts of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War (a measure that was approved more than once by the Israeli Supreme Court). 5. The display of flags of any kind on the Temple Mount would be prohibited. 6. The essence of the arrangement, which was informal and remained unwritten, was to freeze the existing situation and create an unofficial division of the prayer areas between Muslims and Jews, whereby Muslims would pray on the mount and Jews at the Western Wall — the retaining wall of the Temple Mount compound, which derives its holiness from the mount and beside which Jews have prayed for centuries.

The main changes to the status quo since 1967: Four new mosques 1. The Dome of the Rock: This structure, which originally was not built as a mosque, was used as such by Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly on Fridays and mainly by Muslim women. 2. The El-Marwani mosque: In Solomon’s Stables, located underground on the southeastern part of the mount, the Waqf and the Northern Branch of the Israeli Islamic Movement established another mosque, the largest ever in the Temple Mount compound. This was done without authorization, to the severe detriment of the antiquities there. 3. The “Ancient Al-Aqsa” mosque: Under the existing mosque, in 1998 yet another mosque, “Ancient Al-Aqsa,” was established without authorization. 4. At the Golden Gate (or Gate of Mercy): A prayer area was set up near the gate in 2019 without authorization, which eventually became a mosque. 5. Paving: Considerable parts of the Temple Mount plaza were paved over the years, and they too serve as prayer areas for Muslims. The expansion of the Muslims’ prayer areas and the establishment of additional mosques on the mount stemmed from a new definition of the Temple Mount compound by the Muslims, who began to

Foremost among these, of course, was the use of bulldozers to excavate tons of relic-rich earth.

Upgrading Jordan’s status on the mount

A Jewish group tours the Temple Mount under police supervision. When the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds published this photo in April, the caption claimed the tourists were “breaking into the Al-Aqsa Mosque” on the “so-called Passover holiday” on April 19. Al-Quds

refer to all of it as “Al-Aqsa” and to regard the entire mount as one great mosque. They began to call the Al-Aqsa mosque itself, which is on the mount’s southern edge, “Al-Jamia al-Kibli” (the Mosque of the Direction of Prayer — in the direction of Mecca, signifying Jerusalem was Muslims’ first direction of prayer). Until the Six-Day War the southern mosque was defined differently from the other parts of the compound, and was called by its real name, Al-Aqsa; the compound as a whole was called “al-Haram al-Sharif” (the Holy and Noble Place). But after the Six-Day War — as the Jewish-Muslim dispute over the mount intensified — the situation gradually changed and the Muslims applied the name “AlAqsa” to the whole compound, with all its buildings, streets and walls.

Restricting Jewish visits to the mount In the first decade after the Six-Day War, Jews were allowed to enter the mount through, among other openings, the Chain Gate and the Cotton Merchants’ Gate. But the Muslims closed these two gates to Jews, and today Jews can enter only through the Mughrabi Gate, which is located at the center of the Western Wall (on its upper level). All the mount’s other gates are open to Muslims only. For two decades after the Six-Day War, Jews’ visiting hours on the mount were more flexible, less formal and included more hours of the day. In past years, Jews were also allowed to visit all parts of the mount, even the interior of the mosques, and could visit on Shabbat. Today, Jews’ visits to the mount are limited to Sunday through Thursday, three and a half hours in the morning and another hour in the afternoon. On Shabbat, they cannot visit at all, and visits inside the mosques also are not permitted. For religious Jews, who are now most of the Jewish visitors to the

mount (and sometimes also for secular Jews), certain fixed routes and areas were established. In the past, these visits were accompanied by police officers and Waqf personnel; today they are accompanied by police officers only.

Limiting the rule of Israeli law In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli law was extended to the mount. Israel’s Antiquities Law was enforced much more effectively, with careful supervision. For several years Israel’s Planning and Building Law was also partially enforced on the mount, and overseers from the Municipal Inspection Division worked there. The situation has been different, however, for many years. Overseers from the Jerusalem Municipality are not allowed to enter the mount today. The Israel Antiquities Authority operates there in coordination with the Waqf and with police mediation. Sometimes the supervision is tighter, sometimes looser. As Shuka Dorfman, who was director-general of the IAA for 14 years, stated in his 2014 book “Mitachat l’Pnei Hashetach (Under the Surface)”: “For years the chief decision-makers in the Israeli government did not deal appropriately with violations of the law and the enforcement of Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount. … This situation had major consequences for the Israel Antiquities Authority’s work on the mount. The authority is indeed responsible for safeguarding the Temple Mount’s antiquities, but unlike at other ancient sites, where it operates according to the law, precisely at the most important site for the Jewish world, it does its work in a limited way only.” The latest outcome of this loose supervision is that during the recent riots on the mount, dozens of ancient shards and pieces of masonry were used as obstacles against police. Over the years, countless reports, official and unofficial, have highlighted the damage to antiquities on the mount from all eras.

Originally, the status quo gave Jordan a role in administering the Temple Mount through the mechanism of the Waqf, which, as noted, is an arm of the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf Islamic Affairs and Holy Places. But from the beginning of the 21st century, Jordan’s role on the mount greatly expanded. Formerly confined to managing religious affairs there and paying the salaries of Waqf employees, Jordan now influences Israeli policy on the mount, and even regarding its walls and surroundings. The first public acknowledgment of Jordan’s special status on the mount was made in the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty. An article of this document gave Jordan precedence on the mount over other Arab actors whenever a comprehensive, permanent settlement is reached. In practice, for various reasons — including common security interests and an attempt to lessen the influence of radical Islamic elements such as the Northern Branch of the Israeli Islamic Movement — Israel decided to upgrade Jordan’s status on the mount even before a permanent settlement is reached. Thus, Jordan was given the task of renovating the mount’s southern and eastern walls when cracks and bulges appeared in them. Israel also allowed Jordan to veto a permanent replacement for the temporary wooden Mughrabi Bridge (which leads to the Mughrabi Gate), which was built after weather conditions and a mild earthquake caused the collapse of a dirt ramp leading to the gate. Israel has also refrained for years, in the face of a Jordanian veto, from clearing out building debris and trash from behind tin sheets along the “little Western Wall” (the Western Wall’s continuation into the Muslim Quarter). In one instance, a discussion of the Temple Mount issue in the Knesset plenum was even deferred after a Jordanian request. The close coordination with Jordan on Temple Mount matters sometimes involves security as well — such as deciding whether Israeli security forces will enter the mosques when riots originate therein, to seize stockpiles of rocks and iron bars or to make arrests. In recent years, the number of Waqf workers and guards funded and maintained by Jordan on the mount has grown by hundreds.

Ending the prohibition on flags on the mount The rule against displaying flags on the mount goes back to 1967. Yet, in practice, the only flags not displayed there are Israeli ones. The Palestinian Authority, PLO, Hamas and Hizb al-Tahrir flags can often be seen there, sometimes even Islamic State flags, and the Israel Police take no real action. Yet, many years ago even a small flag on the desk of an officer at the Temple Mount police station was removed following Muslim protest. After riots on the mount last month, a PLO flag was flown for days on the Dome of the Rock itself.

Violence, incitement and terror on the mount

While Jewish prayer is permitted only at the Kotel — the Temple Mount’s retaining wall — the Muslim prayer area above it has expanded greatly despite the “status quo.” From the Temple Mount, Arabs have periodically attacked Jewish worshippers below. The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

For years, the Muslim side has been accusing Israel of plotting to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount and build the Jewish Temple in their place. These baseless libels have taken many forms. They were detailed in my book “The ‘Al-Aksa Is in Danger’ Libel: The History of a Lie,” which the Jerusalem Center published in 2012. In recent years, this libel has gone beyond lies and incitement to outbreaks of terrorism and violence, generating hundreds of attacks and attempted attacks over the years. That process is the focus of another book, “Teror Al-Aqsa — m’Alila l’Dam (AlAqsa Terror — From Libel to Blood),” that I wrote a year and a half ago. Continued on next page

3 THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

Continued from previous page Along with many terror attacks in Israel and in Judea and Samaria (including shootings, vehicular assaults, stabbings and the throwing of countless stones and firebombs), and attempted attacks on the Temple Mount itself — most of them thwarted riots organized on the mount have included attempts to harm police officers, Jewish visitors, and even Jewish — worshippers at the Western Wall. This onslaught of violence — which turns a place sacred to Judaism and Islam into an arena, a target, a pretext for violence and terror and a means to an end — is part of the ongoing assault on the status quo to which Muslims pay lip service.

Quiet Jewish prayer on the eastern Temple Mount

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After a succession of changes to the status quo by the Muslim side in the past 50 years, a change was also made on the Jewish side. For several years, on the eastern flank of the Temple Mount, with the permission and under the eyes of the police, Jews have been praying, sometimes in a quorum (but without prayer shawls, phylacteries, or prayer books). These are referred to as “non-demonstrative” prayers, usually done in low voices or from texts uploaded to cell phones. For years, Dayan’s original status quo had banned Jewish prayer on the mount, but allowed Jews to visit. Indeed, for a long time the Jewish side exercised that right only to a very limited extent, leading Muslims to think Israel had forgone it completely. For many years, both Haredi and national-religious rabbis prohibited Jews from entering the mount, whether for prayer or visitation, on the basis of halacha. For the police, whose main concern was quiet on the mount, that stance was convenient, even ideal. Thus, the last prerogative the State of Israel left to Jews on the mount — the ability to visit it — became largely theoretical. Few Jews ascended, mainly secular Jews for tourism purposes. It was not because of Muslim opposition at that time but because of the halachic ban that so few Jews ascended the mount. How, then, did the reality change to the point that Jews now pray on its eastern side? This development stems from an increase of about 1,000 percent in the number of Jews who visit the Temple Mount each year. If a decade ago about 4,000 Jews visited the site annually, today that number is approaching 40,000. This surge occurred amid a growing demand by the Jewish public to visit its holy places, as well as a change in the rabbinical stance on Jews entering the mount: today close to a thousand rabbis permit it. The new state of affairs differs fundamentally from the sweeping prohibition by religious-Zionist and Haredi rabbis in the first three decades after the Six-Day War. The spike in the number of Jewish visitors also reflects a change in the stance of the police, who have enabled and even encouraged (while Gilad Erdan was internal security minister) more visits to the mount by Jews. For several years the police have also succeeded to keep out the vocal and threatening Muslim men and women of the Murabitun and the Murabitat, offshoots of the illegal Northern Branch of the Israeli Islamic Movement that harass Jewish visitors to the mount. When the Israeli Supreme Court was indirectly asked about allowing more Jews to visit the mount, it responded favorably. In 2017, attorney Iris Edri petitioned the court in the name of religious Jewish visitors to the mount. They complained of discrimination compared to nonreligious visitors, due to being required to stand in a separate line and undergo various checks. Although the judges rejected the petition, for the first time they addressed the growing quantity of Jewish visitors to the mount, stating that “the numbers of Israelis visiting the Temple Mount in recent years speak for themselves, and prove the success of the police in implementing the right of access to the mount.” This reference to “success” demonstrates that, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected petitions on Jews’ right to pray on the mount, in a broader sense, it views the right of access and visitation there positively and sees it as a worthy objective. Nadav Shragai is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He was a journalist and commentator at Ha’aretz between 1983 and 2009 and is currently a journalist and commentator at Israel Hayom. He has documented the dispute over Jerusalem for 30 years.

8 fun facts surrounding the founding of Israel… Continued from page 1 The chairs were taken from surrounding cafés because the decorating budget didn’t quite stretch to purchasing them, and the portrait of Herzl and the flags were borrowed from the United Israel Appeal. The whole thing took 24 hours to put together, but the results ended up looking absolutely timeless.

3. Declaration’s signatories didn’t in fact sign it

Israel’s Declaration of Independence, aside from being a canonical text, is a beautiful work of painstaking calligraphy. So painstaking, that was it wasn’t completely ready in time for the signing ceremony. As a result, its signatories did not add their names to the bottom of the text, but rather to a piece of parchment that was later sewn by its designer’s wife into the complete scroll. Ben-Gurion, in case you were wondering, read the text from a plain typewritten piece of paper to which he added some handwritten notes.

4. First flag flown in J’lem was colored with crayons

Rebecca Affachiner was a true trailblazer, becoming one of the leading Zionist figures of the early 20th century and dedicating her life to the Jewish community and Zionist cause. Among her remarkable achievements was the fun fact that she flew the first Israeli flag in Jerusalem on May 14, 1948, following the announcement of the establishment of the state. Resourceful woman that she was, she sewed the flag herself and used simple blue crayons to color in its Star of David and stripes. Ingenious.

5. Tel Aviv’s first annual parade failed to march

In Israel’s first two decades, a military parade took place every year as part of Independence Day celebrations. But in 1949, a year after the state was founded, things didn’t quite take off as planned. The parade started out alright, but soon the overenthusiastic crowd in Tel Aviv’s streets blocked it from proceeding any further. The sham was viewed as highly embarrassing and led one newspaper editor to wonder how the same army that had just a year earlier managed to defend the whole country failed to make it across a simple street.

6. The government invited the public to design the state emblem, then rejected hundreds of proposals

Creating a state emblem is no easy task, and one which needs to take into consideration design, history and functionality. Shortly after the foundation of Israel, the new government invited the public to submit proposals, specifying that the said emblem must feature a seven-lamp candelabra, seven stars and the colors blue and white. Dutiful artists sent in 450 proposals, and eventually a design by Gavriel and Maxim Shamir of Shamir Brothers Studio made the cut. Their drawing included a modern-looking candelabra and stars alongside olive branches but was later changed to feature the candelabra from the Arch of Titus in Rome and the word “Israel.” The stars were dropped, and the result is what we see on lapel pins and coins everywhere.

7. Israel’s first Knesset met in a movie theater

The Knesset, or house of parliament, is a true landmark here in Israel, with its majes-

The drapes hanging behind Israel’s leadership were put in place to cover nude paintings, and the portrait of Herzl and the flags were a quick loan. Zoltan Kluger/GPO

tic architecture, sculptures and famous glassstained windows. But the legislative assembly’s first home, bizarrely enough, was none else than a grand movie theater in Tel Aviv called Kessem (“Magic”) Cinema. The huge building, constructed in 1945, boasted more than 1,000 upholstered seats and enjoyed a fabulous seaside location. For most of 1949 it hosted Israel’s first parliamentarians until they moved to Jerusalem. In later years, the building was used by tax authority officials and the Israeli opera house. It was then torn down and rebuilt as a residential building with quite a history.

8. 1948 wasn’t first time a government was declared It’s common knowledge that the State of Israel was founded in 1948, but it’s far less common knowledge that some people tried to bring it about a whole five years earlier. In 1943, when World War II was still raging, veteran Zionist leaders convened a large public meeting in Ramat Gan called “The People’s Congregation” from which a temporary Jewish government would be elected. As the National Library of Israel’s “The Librarians” blog recalls in detail, nothing momentous came out of all those lengthy speeches. Still, they tried.

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By Jeffrey Bessen, Nassau Herald As students moved with purpose toward the HAFTR High School auditorium last Thursday, the only light emanated from yahrzeit candles held by students who stood outside classrooms. Then at 9:20 am, a siren sounded — as sirens had sounded earlier in Israel. “This is our first school-wide assembly in two years, and it is a significant milestone to connect once again as a school community to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Yom HaShoah, said HAFTR Principal Naomi Lippman. Lippman noted that those who mark the day have three major obligations: recognizing the existence of “unfathomable evil” in the world, mourning “the immeasurable loss of six million precious lives,” and celebrating “the faith, resilience and optimism of the men, women and children who resisted and endured.” In order for students to learn about, understand and continue to remember the Shoah, the school asked them to uncover their families’ stories of the tragedy, which will be compiled in a book HAFTR is calling “Lasting Legacies.” Juniors Rachel Czeisler, Eva Czegledi and Eliana Perl presented their stories at the assembly. Czeisler had written about her greatgrandmother Sara Glickman, a Holocaust survivor who told her great-granddaughter her story. “Once they ran out of food, so my greatgrandmother’s mom left to find more,” Czeisler recounted. “But there was a blizzard, and her mother never made it back home. She froze to death.” Mugda Wohl, Czegledi’s great-grandmother, endured much suffering. Her father lost his successful grocery store. Her family was shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she came face to face with the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele and learned that family members had been killed. “My great-grandmother endured immense hardship and witnessed cruel events, yet she is the most loving and peaceful person I ever

met,” Czegledi said. “My great-grandmother lived a happy life after the war, and she refused to live her life with any resentment or hatred towards anyone due to what she lived through.” Perl’s aunt Anna survived one of those incidents whose description sounds like a movie scene. She was sent in a cattle car full of people on March 26, 1942, on the first transport to Auschwitz. “Anna’s number was 1,002,” Perl said. “Anna believed they survived because they spoke German; they were favored instantly and given better jobs. Anna escaped death many times. For example, everyone had to jump over a ditch. If you fell, you were sent to the gas chambers.” Anna fell once. Her sister, Serena, pleaded for her life. The guard said, “If she doesn’t die today, she’ll die tomorrow.” Anna died in 2019. “Almost 80 years have passed, and the nightmares are still there,” said Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, of Congregation Ash Chodesh in Woodmere. A 40-panel Holocaust exhibit created by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in Manhattan, has made its way to HAFTR, with 27 of the panels on display in the high school. “As Jews in the world,” HAFTR Executive Director Ari Solomon said, “we have to constantly remember, not forget. It’s part of our history of how we are, where we are and who we are. As more deniers in the world exist, we have to make sure that [survivors’] stories are remembered, and it’s with great pride that we began an initiative this year called the ‘Lasting Legacies’.” Trying to understand, and then remember, atrocities such the Holocaust, or even the current war in Ukraine, is hard for everyone, Solomon said. “We have the pictures. We have the videos of it to really comprehend what these people went through,” he said. His own mother- and father-in-law are Holocaust survivors, and, he added, “We can’t comprehend this.”

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Great Neck rabbi and Rambam boost Tiberias By Judy Lash Balint, JNS Rehabilitating a crack house in Tiberias was not exactly in the job description of Rabbi Yamin Levy, spiritual leader of the Beth Hadassah Synagogue Great Neck (the Iranian Jewish Center). But that house happened to be right next to the dilapidated tomb of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the great medieval philosopher and halachic authority known as the Rambam, or Maimonides. And so, Rabbi Levy could not sit idly by. That was back in 2004, during the closing days of the Second Intifada, when Rabbi Levy led a solidarity tour to Israel that included several of his congregants as well as the then-mayor of Great Neck. “We were mortified when we stopped for a visit to the Rambam’s grave and saw that house,” Rabbi Levy recalled. “There was blatant prostitution there,” he says. “I was so upset; I was physically sick.” Back in New York, he set about determining who owned the house and raised the funds from among his congregants to buy it. “That’s how our organization started,” he explains. Among the initial donors were Joshua Setton, CEO of Setton International Foods; and the late Stanley O. Silverstein, founder of Nina Footwear. Visitors to the Tiberias site today see an entirely different reality. The tomb of Maimonides that the 2004 New York delegation found neglected, dark and dirty is now well-lit, surrounded by well-maintained shrubbery, filled with new prayer books, and furnished with comfortable and attractive seating. Plaques in English and Hebrew explaining important facts about the revered sage line the approach to the site. The former crack house next door is now a restored three-story building that houses the Maimonides Heritage Center, an active educational and community facility used as a place to carry out the Rambam’s principles of education and acts of lovingkindness. But in the early days, opposition came fast and furious from an unexpected quarter: Israel’s haredi political leaders who oversaw the National Center for the Development of Holy Sites that operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Religious Services. They did not want to relinquish control of the site. “We had to go to war with them,” recalls Rabbi Levy. “They asked: ’Who is this American rabbi who came out of nowhere to take charge here’?” With the help of people like Likud Knesset member Limor Livnat, who served as Minister of Education (2006-2008) and Minister of Culture and Sport (2009-2015), things began to move. Livnat, who has a home in northern Israel, shared the vision of bringing 1 million people a year to an educational center in Tiberias based on Maimonides principles. According to Rabbi Levy, it was Livnat who used her influence to fight the opposition and push through the bureaucracy that allowed the Americans to proceed with the renovations at the tomb, as well as the purchase of the property that became the Educational Center. Acting Mayor of Tiberias Boaz Yosef told JNS that he is not bothered by the fact that almost all the funding for the revitalization of the Maimonides tomb and center comes from abroad. “Unfortunately, the government doesn’t approve, and there’s almost no government funding coming our way,” he laments. “Such a site is of importance to all the Jewish people, and we welcome anyone who wants to participate.” Today, the center enjoys the support of the Ministries of Education and Tourism as well as the President’s Office. ‘You’ll find your link to Judaism here’ In recent decades, Tiberias — a city of 55,000 on the western shore of the Kinneret —

The former crack house in Tiberias that’s the Maimonides Heritage Center.

At the Tomb of Maimonides (the Rambam) in central Tiberias. Judy Lash Balint

has suffered from tension between the secular and ultra-Orthodox populations, coupled with a succession of mayors who have failed to capitalize on the remarkable physical and historical assets of the city to change its image. The coronavirus pandemic caused even more deterioration to a city whose economy relies heavily on tourism, so Yosef sees the Maimonides Center as an important draw. “Jews from all over the world honor the Rambam; we want to build a place where they can all come to honor this great heritage,” he says. Now, the goal is to expand the existing renovated center into a $20 million state-of-the-art Rambam Quarter in the heart of Tiberias. “The vision is that you’ll find your link to Judaism here, no matter who you are — religious, not religious, male or female, Sephardic or Ashkenaz. This is our link,” Rabbi Levy states enthusiastically. The rabbi’s group has hired the Diskin Multidisciplinary Design firm, whose Israeli projects include the Peres Peace Library in Tel Aviv and the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem. The Diskin motto — “Achieving immersive emotional and physical experiences that convey your message” — is exactly what both Yosef and Rabbi Levy hope to create in the area surrounding the tomb of the Rambam.

Despite growing up in an observant home in Montreal and having a Jewish day-school education, Rabbi Levy recounts that he never encountered the teachings of the Rambam until the early days of his yeshivah studies in Israel. It was his teacher, Rabbi Haim Fogel, who opened the door to Maimonides for the young Yamin Levy. The discovery of a figure who combined philosophy, Talmudic wisdom, medical knowledge and intellectual rigor was intriguing and became the focal point of Rabbi Levy’s Judaism. “Rambam was a codifier of the Talmudic tradition and a staple of Jewish law. You can’t learn Jewish law without the Rambam,” he states. “I firmly believe the Rambam is the voice for the 21st-century serious Jew. It’s the voice of reason, profound spirituality, the voice of science and philosophy, and halachah at the highest level and the voice that links our Talmudic authorities to Jewish law until today,” he explains. “The Rambam is the voice of reason when it comes to Jewish law. The beauty of the Rambam is that women can lead the Purim Megillah reading because of the Rambam and the haredi world does things their way because of the Rambam.” Rabbi Levy told JNS that back in 2004, he focused on an idea from the Rambam that suggests that the Messiah will come from Tiberias. Tiberias was the last place where the Sanhedrin was exiled, and so before returning to Jerusalem, it must reconvene where it last met. “I came back to the US and said, ‘We’re going to bring Moshiach from Tiberias!’ It was a naive young vision, but that’s what got people excited,” he recounts. He adds that “along with the development of the educational center, that vision developed into the goal of helping achieve economic stability for the city of Tiberias.” ‘He’s a mover and shaker’ Members of the Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York, as well as members of Rabbi Levy’s congregation, joined together to adopt Tiberias as a place for investment as well as charity. Eight years ago, they invested in several projects in the city, including a new mall and renovation of the promenade along the Kinneret. In Israel, the day-to-day work of the center is overseen by Fogel, the former yeshivah teacher who, like Rabbi Levy, wears many hats. In addition to his role as chairman of the Maimonides Heritage Center, Fogel is the chairman of the Rav Kook House in Jerusalem and heads up the board

July Lash Balint

Rabbi Yamin Levy, 58, founder of the Maimonides Heritage Center in Tiberias.

of trustees of Orot Israel College, a teacher training college in Elkana; and Ort’s Rehovot campus, formerly the Moreshet Yaakov College. “He’s a mover and shaker,” relates Rabbi Levy. Dozens of volunteers and a smattering of employees carry out the work of the center. There’s a waiting list to be accepted as one of the 40 Sherut Leumi (female National Service) volunteers who get professional development and shared housing in exchange for working with local youth and the elderly, in addition to running after-school activities. On the educational front, the center maintains close contact with school principals and provides weekly printed and online content for students of all ages. More than 10,000 schoolage kids visit the center every year, in addition to Birthright tours and groups from the Israel Defense Forces. For adults, the center runs an Annual Rambam Conference that attracted more than 1,000 people last year to a Tiberias hotel. Rabbi Levy is optimistic that these activities and financial investments will help restore one of Israel’s four holy cities to its rightful place as a sought-after education and tourist attraction. “Tiberias is the most beautiful city in Israel,” he insists. “I have a small apartment there, and it’s where I plan to retire.” “One million visitors travel to Cordoba in Spain to look at a statue of the Rambam,” says the rabbi. “We want to bring 1 million visitors every year to a beautiful place to learn and connect with the Rambam.”

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THIS is who’s teaching our kids to hate Israel Moshe PhiLLiPs

e hear a lot about Jewish college students who have become pro-Palestinian. We know about polls showing that younger American Jews are much less connected to Israel than their parents. How can this trend be explained? Why do so many Jewish 18 yearolds begin their university studies with the pro-Israel sentiments they learned at home, then emerge four years later more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than to Israel? At least part of the answer to this question can be found in a recent essay by a retiring professor of Israeli and Middle Eastern history at the University of Pennsylvania. For more than 30 years, Ian Lustick taught about Israel to many members of the large Jewish student body at Penn. He lectured to them every day. He assigned their readings. He answered their questions. He organized discussion groups and symposia and summer trips to Israel. When it came to Israel and the Arabs, Ian Lustick was their authority figure. Reflecting on his recent retirement (in the lat-

est issue of the Penn Jewish Studies newsletter), Ian Lustick explained what he set out to do in his academic career, and how he did it. When Lustick was a student at Brandeis University in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he writes, he spent an “impactful” semester at the Brandeis program in Israel, known as the Jacob Hiatt Institute. We have a glimpse of that “impact” from an article he wrote at the time (in 1972) for a student newspaper, “The Jewish Radical.” There Lustick urged American Jews to give less money to Israel and instead “channel” some of it to a Hiatt Institute fund to help Palestinian Arabs. He declared that world Jewry bears “moral responsibility, if not culpability, for the suffering of millions of Palestinian Arabs.” eturning from Israel to the Brandeis campus, Lustick found that the demands being made by “the movement for Black Studies” on campus “resonated with me.” He was referring to the eleven-day takeover of a Brandeis building in 1969 by student militants demanding creation of an AfroAmerican Studies department. At the time, not many American universities had Jewish Studies departments. Apparently, the militants’ takeover inspired Lustick to realize that through Jewish studies programs, he could influence large numbers of young Jews regarding what he called “real problems” such as “discrimination by Israel against Palestinian Arabs.”

Parents have a right to know who is teaching their kids about Israel, and to decide if they are comfortable with that prof’s perspective.

Prof. Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania.

He recalled proudly that at Brandeis, he and his friends undertook “more sophisticated forms of engagement with Israel than those prevailing at the time.” He says those activities helped create the environment which led to “the founding of Jewish Studies programs around the country, including at Penn,” where he ended up teaching for more than three decades. In his classes at Penn, Lustick writes, he promoted “an intellectually rigorous approach to the study of Israel and Zionism.” He says his “best teaching” was when he helped students who were “struggling” with the “unsettling discoveries” they made about “Israel-Palestinian relations.” Let’s take a closer look at what he has written and said about Israel over the years, to understand what he was undoubtedly saying to his students in class to inspire those “unsettling discoveries” about Israel. In 1988, Lustick wrote a book called “For the Land and the Lord.” It was so hostile to Israel that

even the left-wing magazine The Reconstructionist complained that “Lustick’s sermonizing reeks of the dual standard so frequently applied and misapplied by the West to the Middle East.” At the height of Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel, in 2002, Lustick wrote that Palestinian Arab violence was “probably a necessity” to convince Israel to make more concessions. Lustick has also compared Israel to the Nazis. He has written that Israeli soldiers who serve in the territories, “in the aftermath of the Holocaust,” are comparable to soldiers in the past who were infamously “following orders” (2002). He has demanded that Israel apologize to the Palestinian Arabs for committing “injustices” against them, just as Germany apologized to the Jewish people after the Holocaust (2006). In a 2013 op-ed in the New York Times, Lustick compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, demanded that Israel surrender its nuclear weapons, and called on Israelis to give up “statist Zionism” and agree to live in “one state” with the Palestinian Arabs. n his most recent book, published in 2019, Lustick claimed that Israel carries out “the continuous mass shooting of Palestinian civilians [in Gaza] … murder[ing] and maim[ing] so many men, women and children trying to escape from the ghetto within which they have been concentrated.” This, then, is what Ian Lustick has been teaching Jewish students at Penn for more than thirty years: that degenerate, racist, Nazi-like Israelis are slaughtering Arabs and preventing peace, and therefore the Jewish State should be replaced. So I ask, which is more likely: that Jewish college students are being seduced by Muslim campus groups, or that they are being gradually influenced by Jewish authority figures such as Ian See Phillips on page 14

A letter to the editors In support of BDS and a Free Palestine of Harvard’s Crimson Eight US presidents emerged from Harvard University. The following editorial emerged last week from its student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. (See columnist Richard L. Cravatts’ response to the right.)

hen oppression strikes anywhere in the world, resistance movements reverberate globally. The desire for rightful justice spreads, like wildfire, moving us to act, to speak, to write, and right our past wrongs. Over the past year, the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee has strived to do just that. Amid escalating tensions between Israel and Palestine, PSC has hosted informational programming, organized weekl- y demonstrations of support through “Keffiyeh Thursdays,” and even installed a colorful, multi-panel “Wall of Resistance” in favor of Palestinian freedom and sovereignty. In at least one regard, PSC’s spirited activism has proven successful: It has forced our campus — and our editorial board — to once again wrestle with what both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called Israel’s “crimes against humanity” in the region. We first and foremost wish to extend our sincere support to those who have been and continue to be subject to violence in occupied Palestine, as well as to any and all civilians affected by the region’s bellicosity. We are not sure how these words will reach you, or whether they’ll do

so at all. But our stance isn’t rooted in proximity or convenience, but rather in foundational principles we must uphold — even if (or perhaps especially when) it proves difficult. his editorial board is broadly and proudly supportive of PSC’s mission and activism, including its recent art display. The admittedly controversial panels dare the viewer to contend with well-established, if rarely stated, facts. They direct our eyes towards the property and land confiscations, citizenship denials, movement restrictions, and unlawful killings that victimize Palestinians day in and day out. Art is a potent form of resistance, and we are humbled by our peers’ passion and skill. In the wake of accusations suggesting otherwise, we feel the need to assert that support for Palestinian liberation is not antisemitic. We unambiguously oppose and condemn antisemitism in every and all forms, including those times when it shows up on the fringes of otherwise worthwhile movements. Jewish people — like every people, including Palestinians — deserve nothing but life, peace, and security. Nothing about PSC’s Wall of Resistance denies that. While members of our campus might well find its messages provocative, or disagree with their philosophical outlook, nothing about them is, in our view, worthy of that delegitimizing label. We have a certain community-wide tendency to dismiss opposing views as inherently offensive and unworthy, straw-manning legitimate arguments and obfuscating difficult but necessary discussions. Yet civil discourse and debate, even when trying, are fundamental steps towards a better reality. See Crimson on page 14

Israel remains America’s favorite First Amendment blindspot.

RichaRd L. cRavatts

n a breathtaking display of tendentiousness and a misreading of history and fact, you published an editorial on April 29 in The Harvard Crimson titled, “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanction and a Free Palestine,” an outrageous column replete with slanders against the Jewish state that called for the Harvard community to commit itself to the corrosive BDS campaign against Israel. You suggested that the editorial was inspired by the April demonstrations and programming of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (HCPSC) which, as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, “installed a colorful, multi-panel ‘Wall of Resistance’ in favor of Palestinian freedom and sovereignty.” Even more importantly, you contended, fallaciously: “The admittedly controversial panels dare the viewer to contend with well-established, if rarely stated, facts.” What are examples of those “facts” you alluded to? One panel announced in capital letters, for example, that “Zionism is: Racism‒Settler Colonialism‒White Supremacy‒Apartheid,” mendacious slurs that echo the notorious 1975 Resolution 3379 issued by the United Nations that proclaimed that Zionism is racism. Framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a matter of race, as this foolish display did, and ac-

cusing Israel of maintaining a system of apartheid is something that Israel-haters are fond of doing, even when the charge is patently false. And the puerile accusation of white supremacy against Israel is as grotesque and unhinged as is the oft-repeated claim that Israelis are the new Nazis, committing genocide against the Palestinians. Both are not only counter-factual but also forms of antiSemitic expression described in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. Of course, your claim that the “facts” on the HCPSC mock wall are “well-established” is only true inasmuch as these are facts that live in the minds of progressives and antiSemites who carelessly throw around words without attention to their actual meaning and import. Your other preposterous contention that these attitudes towards Israel— these supposed facts—are “rarely stated” is so naive that only college students who have just begun to counter anti-activism could possibly believe them since the campaign to slander, libel and destroy the Jewish state has been in high gear for some two decades, and this counterfactual language and the allegations within it have been and continues to be ubiquitous on campuses worldwide. It requires no bravery at all to be an enemy of Israel on university campuses seeped in such activism, as much as you try to impute bravery on the part of those who promote Palestinianism. In justifying your position in this debate, you remarked: “It is our categorical imperative to side with and empower the vulnerable and oppressed.” Really? Does that include Jewish civilians who are being stabbed, rammed with cars, blown up and See Cravatts on page 14

Your commitment to and promotion of the toxic BDS campaign reveals your bigotry and anti-Semitism.

13 THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

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Continued from page 12 Lustick, who are in a position to shape their views every day in class? I’m not accusing Lustick or like-minded Jewish professors of being bad Jews or self-haters or traitors. They are entitled to their opinions. And freedom of speech on our college campuses ensures their right to teach whatever they want. But parents also have a right to know who is teaching their kids about Israel, and to decide if they are comfortable with a particular professor’s perspective. This is not just a matter of concern to individual parents; it also has important implications for our community as a whole. The Jewish community needs to take a long, hard look at the role that many Jewish academics have played, and are continuing to play, in influencing Jewish college students to side with the Palestinian Arabs over Israel.

Crimson…

Continued from page 12 Israel remains America’s favorite First Amendment blindspot. Companies that choose to boycott the Jewish state, or otherwise support the proPalestine Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement face legal repercussions in at least 26 states. Even for journalists, openly condemning the state’s policies poses an objective professional risk. Only last year, the Associated Press prompted outcry after firing a news editor over college-age tweets critical of Israel. The controversial decision followed a long-established pattern: Dare question Israel’s policies or endorse Palestinian freedom and you will be shunned from the newsroom, past accomplishments or legitimate arguments be damned. For college students like ourselves, speaking bluntly about events in the region can prompt online harassment or even land you on a blacklist. What this immense opposition to student activists and journalists makes clear is the overwhelming power imbalance that defines and constricts the ongoing debate. This stark power differential extends far beyond the arena of free speech, shifting from rhetorical to lethal on the ground in Palestine, where Israeli soldiers have killed nearly 50 Palestinians, including eight children, this year alone. s an editorial board, we are acutely aware of the privilege we hold in having an institutional, effectively anonymous byline. Even on this campus, many of our brave peers advocating for Palestinian liberation can be found on watchlists tacitly and shamefully linking them to terrorism. These twin factors — the extraordinary abuses and our privileged ability to speak to them and face comparatively less unjustified retribution — compel us to take a stand. Palestinians, in our board’s view, deserve dignity and freedom. We support the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement as a means to achieving that goal. In the past, our board was skeptical of the movement (if not, generally speaking, of its goals), arguing that BDS as a whole did not “get at the nuances and particularities of the Israel-Palestine conflict.” We regret and reject that view. It is our categorical imperative to side with and empower the vulnerable and oppressed. We can’t nuance away Palestinian’s violent reality, nor can we let our desire for a perfect, imaginary tool undermine a living, breathing movement of such great promise. Two decades ago, we wrote that divestment was a “blunt tool” that affected all citizens of the target nation equally and should be used sparingly. Yet the tactics embodied by BDS have a historical track record; they helped win the liberation of Black South Africans from Apartheid, and have the potential to do the same for Palestinians today. Israel’s current policy pushes Palestinians towards indefinite statelessness, combining ethnonationalist legislation and a continued assault on the sovereignty of the West Bank through illegal settlements that difficults the prospect of a twostate solution; it merits an assertive and unflinching international response. The arguments made against BDS could have been and indeed were once made against South Africa, and we are no longer inclined to police the demands of a people

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yearning to breathe free. We do not take this decision lightly. BDS remains a blunt approach, one with the potential to backfire or prompt collateral damage in the form of economic hurt. But the weight of this moment — of Israel’s human rights and international law violations and of Palestine’s cry for freedom — demands this step. As a board, we are proud to finally to finally lend our support to both Palestinian liberation and BDS — and we call on everyone to do the same.

Cravatts…

Continued from page 12 showered with rockets in their sleep by the genocidal terrorist organization of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and lone-wolf Palestinian terrorists? Or it is only the Palestinians you care about, who have rejected statehood when offered to them on multiple occasions, preferring instead to mount an endless resistance against a sovereign state they cannot and will not abide simply because its residents are Jews? Calling for a BDS campaign to be unleashed against Israel demands that, among the many and various calamitous examples of human strife and suffering occurring around the world, Harvard should focus on and commit to denouncing only one: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And more than that—just as the Third Reich and Arab League before them—you wish to target Jewish businesses, organizations and educational institutions, and expel them from the world community. You yearn for the “liberation of Palestine,” but what do you assume such an event would result in? When you refer to a liberated Palestine, are you talking about the West Bank and Gaza for a new Palestinian state? Or are you really describing and eagerly imagining a liberated Palestine that BDS supporters and their fellow travelers in the Arab world and in the West actually seek — one that includes, and subsumes, present-day Israel? Israel knows that because of its experience after cleansing Gaza of all of its Jews, that instead of working on the creation of the beginnings of a state for themselves in the Strip, the Palestinians allowed Hamas to transform Gaza into a terror enclave from which to continually assault Israel. And that is something Israelis understandably imagine could happen again were the West Bank to be totally controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Fatah or in another scenario, Hamas. Conspicuously absent from your editorial is any questioning or critique of Palestinian agency, responsibility, behavior, political decisions or even the nature of their culture and society. You feel very comfortable, sitting in the safety of your Harvard Square offices, hectoring Israel to tear down its security wall, welcoming millions of Jewhating Arabs into its country as citizens, abandoning territory it rightfully owns or won in defensive wars, and otherwise making any concession you and other critics of the Jewish state demand of Israel, even to its own detriment and physical safety—consequences you apparently could care less about in your relentless quest for social justice for the long-aggrieved Palestinians. You make a careless reference to Israel’s killing of Palestinians, including children, without any context, failing to mention, of course, the inconvenient fact that since the 1920s, Arabs have resisted, through violence and attacks, any Jewish presence in the Holy Land, including to the current day. Like other enemies of Israel, you are quick to count Arab bodies when they are killed by Jews, but carelessly and immorally ignore the deaths of innocent Jews in Israel at the hands of psychopathic murderers who randomly attack civilians without provocation, including the 14 innocent people murdered randomly in the streets in the past month as part of an uninterrupted campaign of terror that you and your fellow travelers help justify when you euphemistically excuse “resistance” on the part of Palestinians. The plea in your editorial to employ the corrosive BDS campaign as a part of the cognitive war against the Jewish state again reveals that you are either ignorant of or indifferent to the actual stated intention of that movement—namely, extirpating Israel completely, thereby “liberating” Palestine and removing any annoying “racist” Jews from what is now modern-day Israel. Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., is author of “Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.”

MICHAEL HINMAN

Herald Community Newspapers

f someone calls you and asks you to send money — for any reason — be skeptical. If they want to get on your computer, say no. If they ask you to use gift cards, or tell you that you must provide them with sensitive personal information, hang up. Most important, be careful what you share. Facebook is a great way to connect to those we love, but it’s also a great way for scammers to collect a ton of personal information about you — information they can weaponize in an effort to empty your bank account. Be careful about how you dispose of papers

containing sensitive details about you. Scammers will dig through your garbage, and they will find exactly what they need to take what rightfully belongs to you. My dad will never see that $20,000 again. So many more like him have lost money that is now counted in the billions. But it doesn’t have to continue. We can fight scammers by being vigilant, and by educating ourselves, so we — and those we love — are never victimized again. Michael Hinman is executive editor of Herald Community Newspapers and The Riverdale Press.

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eople have called him many things — kind, loving, helpful, funny. I’ve heard him described as meticulous. But to me and my siblings, he’s simply Dad. This year my father turns 89. He still drives. He still displays his musical talents on the organ, which he taught himself to play. He lives just blocks from my stepmother, who is in an assisted-living facility with severe dementia. He spends as much time there as he can. My dad loves his wife, his family, his spiritual home, and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I don’t think anyone was more excited about Tom Brady making the move from Boston. But when I think about my dad, more often than not, my smile turns to tears. Not about anything he did — he was and still is a great man — but because of what someone did to him. y dad was meticulous as he divided a large stack of cash into separate envelopes. His hands shook with fear as he packed each envelope carefully into a box to send off to who knows where. This was $20,000 — money my father, a retired railroad welder, didn’t even have. It came from a loan, one he continues to make payments on today. The worst part was that my dad knew he was being scammed. He knew that if he told me or any of my siblings, we would stop him. We would help him. But the scammers on the other end of that phone scared him so much that fear overcame reason and logic. I’ve recently discovered a YouTube channel

called Scammer Payback. It’s led by a cybersecurity expert known only as “Pierogi,” who targets the scammers who have their sights on our parents, our grandparents, our sisters and brothers — really anyone we love. Pierogi ties the scammers up on the phone for hours. He hacks into their computers and steals their files, turning all of what he unearths over to the authorities. He has identified leading scam operations overseas, and pushed for police to arrest them. And he’s personally called people targeted by scammers — many of whom have been victimized for years — to help them break free. Scams are nothing new, but the scope of such fraud and theft today is unprecedented. The Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network reported 4.8 million complaints of consumer fraud and identity theft in 2020 — up 45 percent from the year before. Nearly half of all Americans experienced financial identity theft in 2020, according to the Aite-Novarica Group. Nearly half. That cost all of us more than $700 billion at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. In recent weeks, AARP Long Island and the US Postal Inspection Service have hosted a series of webinars with the RichnerLive arm of Herald Community Newspapers to explore all kinds of fraud —identity theft, elder fraud and, this week, romance scams. I’ve been honored to moderate these panels. We’ve learned so much.

THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

Protect your elders (and yourself!) from scams

16 May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782 THE JEWISH STAR

‫כוכב של שבת‬ Jewish Star Torah columnists: •Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed Congregation, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native •Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn •Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem

Contributing writers: •Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l, former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive VP emeritus of the OU.

Contact our columnists at: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com Five Towns Candlelighting times: From the the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY

Fri May 6 / 5 Iyar

Kedoshim Candles: 7:37 pm • Havdalah: 8:47 pm

Fri May 13 / 12 Iyar

Emor Candles: 7:44 pm • Havdalah: 8:54 pm

Fri May 20 / 19 Iyar

Behar Candles: 7:51 pm • Havdalah: 9:01 pm

Fri May 27 / 26 Iyar

Bechukosai • Shabbos Mevarchim Candles:7:57 pm • Havdalah: 9:07 pm

Fri June 3 / 4 Sivan Bamidbar • Candles: 8:02 pm

Sat June 4 / 5 Sivan

Erev Shavuot • Candles: 9:04 pm

Sun June 5 / 6 Sivan

Second Night Shavuot • Candles: 9:04 Monday night Havdalah: 9:13

The Jewish democratization of holiness: From Sanctity and priesthood to peoplehood rabbi Sir JonaThan SaCkS zt”l

omething fundamental happens at the beginning of this week’s parsha, Kedoshim, and the story is one of the greatest, if rarely acknowledged, contributions of Judaism to the world. Until now, Vayikra has been largely about sacrifices, purity, the sanctuary, and the priesthood. It has been, in short, about a holy place, holy offerings, and the elite and holy people — Aaron and his descendants — who minister there. Suddenly, in chapter 19, the text opens up to embrace the whole of the people and the whole of life: The L-rd spoke to Moses: “Speak to all the community of Israel. Say: ‘Be holy, for I am holy; I, the L-rd your G-d’.” Lev. 19:1–2 This is the only time in Leviticus that so inclusive an address is commanded. The sages explained this to mean that the contents of the chapter were proclaimed by Moses to a formal gathering of the entire nation (hak’hel). It is the people as a whole — not just an elite of priests — who are commanded to “be holy.” It is life itself that is to be sanctified, as the chapter goes on to make clear. Holiness is to be made manifest in the way the nation makes its clothes and plants its fields, in the way justice is administered, workers are paid, and business conducted. The vulnerable — the deaf, the blind, the elderly, and the stranger are to be afforded special protection. The whole society is to be governed by love, without resentments or revenge. hat we witness here, in other words, is the radical democratization of holiness. All ancient societies had priests. We have encountered four instances in the Torah thus far of non-Israelite priests: Malchizedek, Abraham’s contemporary, described as a priest of G-d Most High; Potiphera, Joseph’s father-in-law; the Egyptian priests as a whole, whose land Joseph did not nationalise; and Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, a Midianite priest. The priesthood was not unique to Israel, and everywhere it was an elite. Here for the first time, we find a code of holiness directed to the people as a whole. We are all called on to be holy.

In a strange way, though, this comes as no surprise. The idea, if not the details, had already been hinted at. The most explicit instance comes in the prelude to the great covenant-making ceremony at Mount Sinai when G-d tells Moses to say to the people: ] “Now, if you faithfully heed My Voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasure among all the peoples, although the whole earth is Mine. A kingdom of priests and a holy nation you shall be to Me.” Ex. 19:5–6 Meaning, a kingdom all of whose members are to be in some sense priests, and a nation that is in its entirety holy. The first intimation is much earlier still, in the first chapter of Genesis, with its monumental assertion: “Let Us make humankind in Our image, in Our likeness.” So G-d created humankind in His own image: in the image of G-d He created him; male and female He created them. Gen. 1:26–27 hat is revolutionary in this declaration is not that a human being could be in the image of G-d. That is precisely how kings of Mesopotamian city states and Pharaohs of Egypt were regarded. They were seen as the representatives, the living images, of the gods. That is how they derived their authority. The Torah’s revolution is the statement that not some but all humans share this dignity. Thus was born the cluster of ideas that, though they took many millennia to be realized, led to the distinctive culture of the West: the non-negotiable dignity of the human person, the idea of human rights, and eventually, the political and economic expressions of these ideas – liberal democracy on the one hand, and the free market on the other. The point is not that these ideas were fully formed in the minds of human beings during the period of biblical history. Manifestly, this is not so. The concept of human rights is a product of the seventeenth century. Democracy was not fully implemented until the twentieth. But already in Genesis 1 the seed was planted. That is what Jefferson meant when he wrote: G-d who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of G-d?

It is the people as a whole — not just an elite of priests — who are to ‘be holy.’

The irony is that these three texts — Genesis 1, Exodus 19:6, and Leviticus 19 — are all spoken in the priestly voice Judaism calls Torat Kohanim. On the face of it, priests were not egalitarian. They all came from a single tribe, the Levites, and from a single family within the tribe — that of Aaron. To be sure, the Torah tells us that this was not G-d’s original intention. Initially it was to have been the firstborns (those who were saved from the last of the Ten Plagues) who were charged with special holiness as the ministers of G-d. It was only after the sin of the Golden Calf, in which only the tribe of Levi did not participate, that the change was made. Even so, the priesthood would have been an elite, a role reserved specifically for firstborn males. So deep is the concept of equality written into monotheism that it emerges precisely from the priestly voice — from which we would least expect it. The reason is this: religion in the ancient world was, not accidentally but essentially, a defense of hierarchy. With the development, first of agriculture, then of cities, what emerged were highly stratified societies with a ruler on top, surrounded by a royal court, beneath which was an administrative elite, and at the bottom an illiterate mass that was conscripted from time to time either as an army or as a corvée, a labor force used in the construction of monumental buildings. hat kept the structure in place was an elaborate doctrine of a heavenly hierarchy whose origins were told in myth,

whose most familiar natural symbol was the sun, and whose architectural representation was the pyramid or ziggurat, a massive building broad at the base and narrow at the top. The gods had fought and established an order of dominance and submission. To rebel against the earthly hierarchy was to challenge reality itself. This belief was universal in the ancient world. Aristotle thought that some were born to rule, others to be ruled. Plato constructed a myth in his Republic in which class divisions existed because the gods had made some people with gold, some with silver, and others with bronze. This was the “noble lie” that had to be told if a society was to protect itself against dissent from within. Monotheism removes the entire mythological basis of hierarchy. There is no order among the gods because there are no gods, there is only the one G-d, Creator of all. Some form of hierarchy will always exist: armies need commanders, films need directors, and orchestras, conductors. But these are functional, not ontological. They are not a matter of birth. So it is all the more impressive to find the most egalitarian sentiments coming from the world of the priest, whose religious role was a matter of birth. The concept of equality we find in the Torah specifically and in Judaism generally is not an equality of wealth: Judaism is not communism. Nor is it an equality of power: Judaism is not anarchy. It is fundamentally an equality of dignity. We are all equal citizens in the nation whose sovereign is G-d. See Sacks on page 22

Rabbi DR. tzvi heRsh weinReb Orthodox Union

love visiting residences for senior citizens. For one thing, being around older people invariably helps me feel young by comparison. Recently, I was a weekend guest scholar at such a residence. I dispensed with my prepared lectures and instead tried to engage the residents, not one of whom was less than 90 years old, in a group discussion. This proved to be a wise move on my part, because I learned a great deal about the experience of getting old. Or, as one man insisted, “You don’t get ‘old’ — you get ‘older’.” The question that I raised to provoke discussion was this: “What made you first realize that you were getting older?” I was taken aback by the group’s reactions, because there were clearly two very different sets of responses. One member of the group responded, “I knew I was getting older when people started to ignore me. I was no more than a piece of furniture to them. Worse, they no longer noticed me at all.” About half of the group expressed their

agreement with this person’s experience. They proceeded to describe various experiences that they had in being ignored. Some of those stories were quite poignant and powerful. One woman even described how she was present at the outbreak of a fire in a hotel lobby, and the rescue workers “simply did not see me sitting there. That is, until I started to scream!” But then some of the others spoke up expressing quite different experiences. “I knew that I was getting older when passengers on the subway or bus stood up for me and gave me their seat,”one gentleman said. That basic gesture of respect conveyed to these senior citizens that they had indeed reached the age when they were not ignored, but rather the beneficiaries of acts of deference. The discussion then entered another phase, as both groups agreed that, while they certainly did not want to be ignored, they also were resentful of these gestures of respect. The group unanimously supported the position articulated by the oldest person there, who said: “We don’t want gestures of respect. We want genuine respect.” They wanted their opinions to be heard,

their life experience to be appreciated, and their accumulated wisdom to be acknowledged. Symbolic gestures were insufficient, and sometimes were even experienced as demeaning. his week’s Torah portion, Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27), contains the basic biblical commandment regarding treatment of the elderly: “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old; you shall fear your G-d: I am the L-rd.” (ibid. 19:32) Rashi’s comments on this verse indicate how sensitive he was to the subtle reactions expressed by the members of my little group. Here is what he says, paraphrasing the Talmudic Sages: “What is deference? It is refraining from sitting in his place, and not interrupting his words. Whereas one might think to simply close his eyes and pretend not to even see the old person, the verse cautions us to fear your G-d, for after all, he knows what is in the heart of man.” Interestingly, not sitting in his seat means much more than just giving him a seat on the bus. It means recognizing that the elderly

A major component of the holy society is its treatment of every member, especially those who are vulnerable.

person has his own seat, his own well-earned place in society, which you, the younger person, dare not usurp. It is more than just a gesture. It is an acknowledgement of the valued place the elder has in society, a place which is his and his alone. Similarly, not interrupting the older person’s conversation is much more than an act of courtesy. It is awareness that this older person has something valuable to say, a message to which one must listen attentively. How well our Torah knows the deviousness of which we are all capable. We can easily pretend not to notice the older person. But He who reads our minds and knows what is in our hearts will be the judge of that. We must fear Him and not resort to self-justification and excuses. We must deal with the older person as a real person, whose presence cannot be ignored but must be taken into full account in our conversation. abbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, in his commentary on this verse, refers us to a passage in the Midrash Rabbah on Parsha Beha’alotecha in the Book of Numbers, which understands the phrase “you shall fear your G-d” as being the consequence of your showing deference to the elderly. Thus, if you treat the elderly well you will attain the spiritual level of the G-d-fearing person. But if you refrain from showing the elderly that deference, you can never aspire to the title “G-dSee Weinreb on page 18

Double-teaming honors: Shabbat and parents Parsha of the week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

n the listing of ingredients for the proper pursuit of holiness, the Torah puts reverence of one’s parents and the observance of the Sabbath at the fore front, on just about an equal footing. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch clarifies that the term used in the Torah — imo v’aviv tira’u, which is often translated as “fear your parents,” is better understood as an instruction to “be mindful of our parents and of our obligation to fulfill their wishes.” More importantly, Hirsch says, it is not “the good that parents do for their children, but the mission given to the parents concerning their children that is the basis of the mitzvah of honoring one’s parents.” As to why observance of the Sabbath is attached so closely to the commandment to fulfill

the wishes of the parents, Hirsch explains, “A child who sees his parents observing the Sabbath will learn from their example to place his world at G-d’s feet; obedience to parents leads to obedience to G-d.” In a larger sense, the mitzvah of reverence for the parents should be an easy one to fulfill. If I owe everything, life itself, to my parents, I should logically want to repay the kindness and fulfill their every wish. But Hirsch twists this idea on its head. It’s not just that parents bring children into the world — their responsibilities to their children do not end there. It is they who are to mold and shape and guide their children so that their children will understand the role their parents play in raising them, not only as ethical human beings but as incredible Jews. This reverence of parents is merely a reflection of the reverence of G-d that the parents demonstrate and display to their children.

hen I talk to younger children about G-d, I use their parents as the example. “When you want something and you ask your parents for it, do they always give it to you? Or do they sometimes say ‘No’?” What’s fascinating is that the Sabbath and honoring one’s parents share similar billing in the Decalogue, and both appear there with a different action word. We are told in Shmot 20 to “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy,” and to “Honor your parents.” In his book “Or HaDeah,” Hassidic Rabbi Uri Langer suggests that just as shamor and zachor were said in one saying with regard to the Sabbath (Rosh Hashana 27) kavod and yirah (honoring and revering) were uttered in one saying. It is easy to honor one’s parents when they are gone — to say kaddish, to commemorate a yahrzeit, to say the kel malei rachamim, to speak of them in a respectful way. But on equal footing is the obligation to revere them — to

Obedience to parents leads to obedience to G-d.

listen and to fulfill their will — when they are alive. One reveres one’s parents through following their ways. In the end, the responsibility is two-directional. The child has to follow the ways of the parent, but the parent must make the life choices and commitments to be admired by and be desirable to the child. It is no one else’s responsibility. Not the school, not the shul, not the rabbi, not one’s friend, not even one’s own parents (the children’s grandparents). The observance of the Sabbath is a good first ingredient to achieving the reverence. But even the observance of the Sabbath requires a lot more than “not violating the law.” We must make Shabbos a day of holiness of beauty and the beginnings of a family bond that creates reverence of the holy day and reverence of G-d. Through this first ingredient, may those of us who are parents merit to enjoy the honor and reverence we receive as we model it for our children through our own honor and reverence for G-d. Originally published in 2011.

Am Yisrael’s marching order: Trust in Hashem torah

Rabbi DaviD etengoff

Jewish Star columnist

arashat Kedoshim includes many wellknown mitzvot, such as reverence for parents (Vayikra 19:3), the prohibition of lashon hara (19:16), and the obligation to demonstrate love toward other people through acts of kindness (19:18). Like most of the commandments in our parasha, these mitzvot are under the rubric of mishpatim, laws that are essential for the functioning of a proper Jewish society. The Rambam defines them in this manner as “commandments whose rationale is revealed and the value that obtains as a result of their performance is manifest in this world. For example: the prohibitions of stealing and murder, and the obligation to honor one’s fa-

ther and mother.” In contrast, our parasha also includes mitzvot that are included under the category of hukim, defined by the Rambam as “commandments whose rationale are unknown” but must be performed. Talmud Bavli, Yoma 67b, says “they include the prohibitions of idol worship, forbidden acts of intimacy, murder, stealing, and cursing Hashem. … Hukim are actions wherein the [the yetzer hara] attempts to disprove their validity and veracity, including the prohibitions of eating pig flesh, shaatnez, chalitzah, the ritual purification of the individual afflicted with tzarat, and the scapegoat rite [of Yom Kippur].” The Torah expects us to lead a dignified and honorable life because it is a book of reasonable laws. So why does it mingle chok and mishpat?” ask Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (the Rav). His answer advances our understanding of the mitzvot in new and exciting ways:

“

“This mingling carries with it an additional message. The hukim, which are seemingly unreasonable and presented in enigmatic language, also have a meaning we cannot grasp. We ultimately trust that hukim are as reasonable as the mishpatim. In fact, they may even be more reasonable. “The highest of the mishpatim is to love your fellow human being as yourself. The Torah says, as it were: I have another group of mitzvot called hukim that are not as comprehensible, such as shaatnez. G-d says: Trust me in everything. If I can trust my neighbor, why should I not trust G-d and His Torah? … Since one might have been inclined to dismiss the hukim categorically, the verse ends with the phrase ‘I am the L-rd your G-d.’ In other words, G-d tells us: I am the G-d who gave you both hukim and mishpatim. “Why would I give you laws that are unreasonable? … Our special relationship with G-d obligates us to go beyond our logic and trust G-d completely. Later, in retrospect, we may understand.”

The element of trust bitachon (trust) in the commandments is one of the key elements that emerges from the Rav’s analysis of these categories of mitzvot. In essence, bitachon is the actualization of emunah in our daily lives, in that it takes emunah from the realm of the theoretical to that of practically actionable behaviors. In particular, the Rav is teaching us that our current inability to comprehend the hukim is not the deciding factor as to whether or not we should obey them. Instead, “our special relationship with G-d obligates us to go beyond our logic and trust G-d completely.” The Rav’s presentation is reminiscent of a well-known passage in Sefer Tehillim: “Yisrael, trust in the L-rd; He is their help and their shield. Beit Aharon, trust in the L-rd; He is their help and their shield. Those who hold the L-rd in awe, trust in the L-rd; He is their help and their shield.” With Hashem’s help and our fervent desire, may this be so. V’chane yihi ratzon.

THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

If we’re holy, we’ll treat elderly with respect

May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782 THE JEWISH STAR

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Defend living Jews while honoring the 6 million JONATHAN S. TObiN

JNS Editor-in-Chief

ight decades after the Nazi attempt to murder all of European Jewry, the ranks of the survivors have thinned to the point where we know that it won’t be long before we will be holding such events without the presence of those who personally experienced in this great tragedy. Without their courageous example in coming forward to speak of the unspeakable, observances like last week’s Yom Hashoah commemoration will necessarily be less moving and perhaps less meaningful. As a result, Jewish institutions must redouble their efforts to record survivors’ testimony for posterity. But as the very last of that generation leaves us, two things are apparent: The Jewish world often misunderstands the most important truths about what happened and, just as important, many have forgetten that the imperative to remember the Shoah is not just to honor the victims and those who survived but also to educate ourselves and the world about the historical lessons at the root of this great crime. It is on these points that much of the organized Jewish world continues to fail badly. That’s been amply illustrated by our failure to properly assess just how dangerous ideas and movements that single out Jews for opprobrium are while instead continuing to obsess about others that present far less of a threat. In doing so, we are treating the security of living Jewish communities, and most especially the State of Israel, as unimportant — something that is incompatible with any honoring the memory of the Six Million. he basic fallacy at the heart of most forms of Holocaust education and even many Yom Hashoah commemorations is the belief that what happened in Europe under the Nazi regime was the ultimate result of the toleration of preju-

dice. By universalizing what happened to the Jews of Europe, many in the Jewish community believe they can avoid its repetition. That’s a mistake. The eliminationist hate of the Germans and their collaborators is often compared to the sort of prejudice that occurs everywhere in the world. But the origins and the mechanisms of European anti-Semitism were not a function of ordinary unkindness or routine prejudice against outsiders. The Jew-hatred that produced the Holocaust was something different. It was a way of looking at the world that was fundamentally political. The will to regard the Jewish people as a foe to be destroyed rather than as a minority who might be tolerated, however reluctantly, on the part of those who perpetrated the Holocaust was part of a process rooted in history. This misguided approach is best illustrated by the way many Jews analogize the Holocaust to their contemporary political beliefs. For example, many, if not most, Jews in the United States are politically liberal, and along with most partisans of the Democratic Party have adopted a position that treats the collapse of enforcement of immigration laws and border security as unimportant or merely an opportunity to welcome into the United States anyone who wants to come. That has led them to label those who disagree and believe in upholding the rule of law and the rights of nation-states to have borders as not merely prejudiced but following in the footsteps of Nazi persecutors of the Jews. That’s why so many support treating illegal immigrants as if they were Jewish refugees running for their lives from Adolf Hitler’s regime, even though there is no rational basis for comparison to the events of the Holocaust. While reasonable people can disagree about the issue, the debate about immigration — both in the United States and in Europe — has become distorted by these inappropriate arguments. That’s especially true in Western Europe, where open border policies have played a major role in the growth of anti-Semitism because the newcomers are Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa who have brought their hatred

The Shoah was not just ordinary prejudice but a war on the Jews.

of the Jewish people with them. Yet to some in the Jewish world, efforts to curb immigration are treated as if this were a prelude to another Nazi takeover. At the same time, many in the Jewish community are essentially indifferent to the two main forces driving anti-Semitism today: radical Islam and leftist ideologies like intersectionality and critical race theory. Yet some of the same people act as if opposition to open borders is akin to the Third Reich, whether in the United States or even a country like Hungary, where a government that is friendly to Israel and supportive of Jewish security is mischaracterized as authoritarian or even anti-Semitic. t’s true that anti-Semitism still exists on the right, as is illustrated by the persistence of such attitudes in France, where the roots of Jew-hatred run deep. Though such forces are politically marginal in the United States — their violence makes them worrisome — any kind of anti-Semitism can’t be tolerated. Yet the fundamental problem with a lot of Jewish thinking about anti-Semitism is that Jews are not properly focused on those forces that are spreading hate today as opposed to those that remind them of fears that are largely rooted in the past. That’s the only explanation for the insufficient alarm felt in the organized Jewish commu-

nity about the popularity on the left of ideologies that treat Jews and Israel as part of “white privilege” or an oppressor group, essentially granting a permission slip to anti-Semitism. It also explains why so many Jews are willing to buy false claims of “Islamophobia” from radical groups like CAIR and anti-Semitic politicians like Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar rather than understand such attempts to distract others from their own Jew-hatred. Equally frustrating is the failure of much of the Jewish world to properly acknowledge just how crucial anti-Semitism is to the opposition against Israel and Zionism. That is true not just of Palestinian Arabs who support murderous attacks on Jews; it also comes from the Iranian regime that is working towards a nuclear capability that could repeat the Holocaust while denying the one that already happened. That’s something to remember as we listen to Holocaust commemorations that often downplay contemporary threats to Jewish life while universalizing the slaughter of the Jews during the Shoah. Honoring the generation of survivors we are losing means not just re-learning their personal stories, but understanding that our primary duty is to defend living Jews against the very different foes that have risen up to continue the work of those who spilled Jewish blood in the past.

Viewpoint

BEN COHEN

recent letter delivered to UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres by 200 former senior UN officials included a bleak warning regarding the consequences should diplomacy fail to end Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Such an outcome would mean “the UN becoming increasingly irrelevant and, eventually, succumbing to the fate of its predecessor, the League of Nations, with the human losses and material destruction that went with it,” the letter declared. On the surface at least, the United Nations has been more resilient than the ill-fated League. To begin with, all the major world powers are members of the United Nations and its Security Council, whereas the League, created after World War I, was distinguished by the absence of US participation (much to the chagrin of then-President Woodrow Wilson), as well as the exclusion of Germany and the Soviet Union from its ranks in its early years. By the time the world stood on the cusp of global conflict following the Nazi seizure of the Sudetenland in 1938, the League had become an irrelevance. Yet what the authors of the letter to Guterres didn’t mention is that one of the last acts of the League of Nations was to expel the Soviet Union, which was finally admitted in 1934, in 1939, following its invasion of Finland in December of that year. Not surprisingly, historians have understood this particular episode as the desperate measure of a shrinking organization to claw back a credibility that had evaporated much earlier. Nevertheless, the historical fact remains; the Soviet Union is still the only state to have been expelled outright from a global organization dedicated to maintaining international peace and security. Although South Africa’s UN membership was suspended in 1974 after the General Assembly declared apartheid to be a crime, no UN member state has ever been expelled for aggression and systemic human-rights violations that

are frequently on a par with, or worse than, the Soviet invasion of Finland. Indeed, perhaps the greatest indictment of the United Nations is that the most isolated of its member states has been Israel. Since the mid-1970s especially, Israel has become the focus of a cluster of political committees and agencies within the UN structure that function as platforms for the most immovable, unreasonable Palestinian demands, including the so-called “right of return” — a call for the descendants of the original 700,000 Arab refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence to “return” en masse to a country they have never even seen. This fixation upon alleged Israeli wrongdoings is the flip side of the world body’s tolerance for, and indulgence of, dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. And yet, every so often, a crisis comes along that reminds us of why the United Nations was created in 1945, along with the hopes it embodied. Ukraine is one such example. ast week, Guterres visited Moscow and Kyiv on his first mission to the region since the Russian invasion in late February. Until that point, he had taken a relatively cautious position, as UN chiefs tend to do when faced with grave international conflicts. His decision to fly to Moscow first, where he, too, sat at the opposite end of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s enormously elongated white table, sparked the ire of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who stated that Kyiv, the capital of the victim nation, should have been Guterres’ first port of call. Yet Guterres spoke reassuringly during his visit, pointing to the key issues facing the United Nations in this war — from the violation of its charter to the creation of humanitarian corridors that would allow residents of besieged cities and towns to flee to relative safety. On a visit to Bucha, where Russian forces carried out grotesque human-rights violations during a month-long occupation there, Guterres said that he “imagined my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black. I see my granddaughters running away in panic.” Then he added simply: “The war is evil.” If such a response doesn’t seem like a big deal but the natural reaction of a responsible leader

How useful can the world body can be as long as Moscow exercises a power of veto?

UN Secretary-General António Guterres with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Nov. 24, 2016. Kremlin photo via WikiCommons

to reports of atrocities, it’s worth recalling the statement of a previous UN Secretary-General in a similar situation. Arriving in Sarajevo, the besieged capital of Bosnia, in December 1992, Boutros Boutros-Ghali brusquely told its hungry and freezing residents that he could think of 10 places around the world where conditions were worse. That insult was never forgotten. As well as empathizing with the Ukrainians’ plight, Guterres also spoke plainly when in Moscow. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of its territorial integrity and against the Charter of the United Nations,” he said, a rare example of a UN statement with no ambiguities at all. Standing alongside a frowning Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Guterres offered another pithily worded summary of the problem: “We have not Ukrainian troops in the territory of the Russian Federation, but we have Russian troops in the territory of [Ukraine].” s Guterres acknowledged in an interview with CNN, the United Nations is not in a position to bring peace to Ukraine; only Russia can do that, by withdrawing its troops. Encouragingly, neither did Guterres advocate endless rounds of meetings as hostilities become more entrenched on the ground, suggesting that the United Nations would only be able to play a peacebuilding role after the war had definitively ended. He said he had told Putin “the same things I say in New York … which means that the Russian invasion is against the charter of the United Nations, is a violation of the territorial integrity

of Ukraine and that this war must end as quickly as possible.” Yet it is hard to see where Guterres’s honest appraisal of Russia’s invasion and its impact on Ukraine and the world more broadly will lead. Russia isn’t any old aggressor, but a member of the UN Security Council armed with nuclear weapons that its leaders have invoked on more than one occasion in the last two months. The split within the world body between those states with liberal democratic orders (Israel being one of them) and states for whom the value of sovereignty lies in the principle of noninterference (thus enabling them to persecute their own populations without sanction) is the organization’s most enduring. If the response of democratic nations to the Russian invasion is to promote a rules-based world order — the success of which requires all governments to treat both their subject populations and their external borders with solemn respect — then it begs the question of how useful the United Nations can be as long as Moscow exercises a power of veto. The United Nations won’t follow the example of the League of Nations by expelling Russia. But democratic member states can — and should — take all necessary measures to isolate Russia within its ranks and to expose it as the pariah state it is. Beyond that, the debate about how to establish a rules-based world order that actually works — a debate that also took place in 1919, 1945 and 1989 — is still hanging.

At end of the day, whose Temple Mount is it? JErOld AuErBACH

o one calls the Temple Mount, site of a recent eruption of Arab violence, the “Mosque” Mount. The holiest Jewish site, it was the location of the First and Second Temples (hence its name). The First (Solomon’s Temple), was built in 957 BCE and destroyed by invading Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Second, following the return of Jews from Babylonian exile, endured from 515 BCE until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The site was seized by Muslims in 638 CE. Jordan’s “West Bank,” captured by the Hashemite kingdom during Israel’s independence war and under Jordanian occupation between 1947 and 1967, is identified in Jewish history as biblical Judea and Samaria. After it was restored to Israel during the Six-Day War, the boundaries of Jewish statehood finally began to resemble those of its ancient past in the Promised Land. Israel’s stunning victory, when its soldiers returned to Jerusalem’s Old City after two de-

cades of Jordanian rule, restored the ancient Jewish holy sites there — the Temple Mount and its Western Wall — to the Jewish people. At the time, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Mordechai (“Motta”) Gur, commander of the victorious Israeli military forces, radioed headquarters to exclaim joyously: “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” He gave permission for the Israeli flag to be raised over the Muslim Dome of the Rock. But Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, watching this triumphant historic moment through his binoculars from Mount Scopus, immediately commanded the removal of the flag, lest it trigger Arab fury throughout the Middle East. Far more astonishing was Dayan’s meeting with Muslim Waqf officials when he returned the newly liberated Temple Mount to their control. His shocking surrender meant that the Waqf would determine who could pray there. Jews, it turns out, could not. s Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi wrote: “An unplanned victory ended in a spontaneous concession” that is unlikely ever to be rescinded. It remains unclear, he added, “whether Dayan acted with wisdom or weakness.” Whatever Dayan’s motive, his capitulation — and its likely permanence — represented a monumental loss for Judaism in the holiest Jewish city.

Dayan was not the only high Israeli official to sacrifice a revered ancient holy site. In Hebron in 1994, with Purim and the Arab celebration of Ramadan overlapping, tension mounted as several hundred Arab men impatiently awaited access to the magnificent Isaac Hall in the sacred Machpelah shrine where the patriarchs and matriarchs shared by Jews and Muselims are entombed. The raucous and lengthy Purim celebration triggered Arab rage. They screamed “etbach el Yahud (“kill the Jews!”). The next morning during Arab prayer in Machpelah, Kiryat Arba doctor Baruch Goldstein, fearing an imminent massacre of Jews, entered Isaac Hall and murdered 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death. To placate Arab fury, the Cabinet under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin restricted Jewish prayer in Isaac Hall to major holidays. There, as on the Temple Mount, Jewish prayer at these ancient holy sites remains either constricted or prohibited, as ordered by Israeli political leaders. Several months ago, Israeli Rabbi Aryeh Lippo was removed from the Temple Mount during his

silent prayer on Yom Kippur. (Moshe Dayan had prohibited vocal prayer, tallit and tefillin there.) But a Magistrates Court Judge upheld Lippo’s appeal, noting that his prayer was solitary and quiet. The Israeli Security Minister appealed the ruling, insisting that Jewish prayer must be confined to the Western Wall below the Temple Mount. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the Temple Mount must remain exclusively a Mosque Mount. Jews may visit, but their prayer is prohibited. The Temple Mount has remained volatile. Recently, during the overlapping holy days of Ramadan and Passover, violence erupted when rioting Palestinians carrying Hamas flags barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aksa mosque and threw a cascade of rocks at Israeli security forces. During the closing days of Ramadan, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced that Israel would not permit non-Muslims (i.e., Jews) to pray on the mount. So in a striking twist of irony, Jews are prohibited — by the Jewish state — from praying at their most ancient holy sites in Hebron and Jerusalem.

No one calls the Temple Mount the ‘Mosque’ Mount.

THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

Can the UN really survive the war in Ukraine?

May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782 THE JEWISH STAR

There’s no one to talk to now in Washington caroline glick Israel Hayom

ast Tuesday, Israel Hayom reported that there is a growing sense among Israeli and US officials that the Biden administration will not reach a nuclear accord with Iran. To be understood, the report has to be seen in the context of a statement made later on Tuesday by President Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki. During her daily press briefing, Psaki said that the administration assesses that Iran is just weeks away from nuclear breakout capabilities. Nuclear breakout is reached when a state achieves the independent wherewithal to develop nuclear weapons. A nuclear breakout state does not necessarily have nuclear weapons, but is regarded as a nuclear-armed state because it has the capacity to build a nuclear arsenal at will and within a relatively short period. The Biden administration began its nuclear talks with the Iranian regime in Vienna in April 2021. The declared purpose of Biden’s nuclear diplomacy, like the declared purpose of the Obama administration’s nuclear talks with Iran, which led to the 2015 nuclear agreement, is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But the content of Obama’s nuclear agreement and the leaks regarding the content of the deal that Biden’s team is negotiating make clear that the opposite is the case. The content of both makes clear that far from preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state, the intended end of the both agreements was and remains enabling Iran to become a nuclear armed state, equipped with the economic wherewithal and diplomatic power to dominate its neighbors in the region. The limitations the 2015 deal placed on Iran’s nuclear operations were insignificant when compared with the carte blanche Iran received to develop more advanced nuclear capabilities. While Iran was ostensibly curbing the quantities of low-enriched uranium it was permitted to stockpile under the deal, it was developing advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to bomb-grade levels. Those capabilities are permanent, whereas the restrictions Iran accepted on the nuclear activities it was carrying out in 2015 were temporary. Then, too, those temporary limitations were supposed to be enforced by a harsh, intrusive inspections regime. But the inspections regime the Iranians agreed to left much of their nuclear program outside the purview of UN nuclear inspectors, effectively rendering the entire inspections regime partial and fundamentally non-credible. The most optimistic projections claimed that the 2015 deal kept Iran a year away from nuclear breakout. That view was disputed by then-President Barack Obama, who admitted that at the end of the lifespan of the deal in 2030, Iran’s breakout time would be reduced to zero. he most optimistic assessments of Biden’s sought-for nuclear deal claim it will keep Iran four to six months from nuclear breakout from the moment the Iranians decide to cross the nuclear threshold. This brings us to the claims by Psaki, other US officials and senior Israeli officials last week that the Iranians are currently weeks

from nuclear breakout. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., has been one of the leaders of the campaign for harsh economic sanctions against Iran in response to its nuclear weapons program for the past 15 years. On March 3, the FDD published a report titled “Iran Approaches the Nuclear Threshold.” The report set out the timeline of Iran’s nuclear advances over the past four years. In May 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran due to Iran’s breaches of the substance and spirit of the agreement. In May 2019, Iran announced that it was renouncing its commitment to the limitations on its nuclear activities it had accepted under the deal. Despite their announcement, the Iranians did very little to openly expand their nuclear operations. Their restraint had three sources. First, they feared eliciting a harsh response from Trump. Second, they wished to empower the Democrats, who had officially committed to reinstating the US commitment to Obama’s nuclear deal upon retaking the White House. Finally, the frequent sabotage assaults against Iran’s nuclear facilities along with the assassinations of Iran’s senior nuclear scientists and officials, attributed to Israel, kept the Iranians off balance and forced them to devote their main efforts to defense, rather than to moving forward with their nuclear capabilities. hortly before Biden was inaugurated in early January 2021, the Iranians abrogated their agreement to the most significant aspects of the nuclear deal’s inspections regime and increased their level of uranium enrichment from the 3.67% purity permitted under the 2015 deal to 20%. In February 2021, Iran began producing uranium metal, which is mainly used to produce the core of nuclear weapons. Around the initiation of the nuclear negotiations in April 2021, the Iranians increased their level of enrichment yet again, to 60% enrichment, which is 99% of the way to weapons-grade enrichment levels. They enriched the uranium with advanced centrifuges they developed after agreeing to the nuclear deal in 2015. If the Biden administration’s goal really was to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Biden and his advisers would have responded forcefully to Iran’s actions. They would have strengthened the standing sanctions and imposed additional ones. But instead, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken stopped enforcing key sanctions and so enriched and empowered Iran still further and awarded the ayatollahs for their brinkmanship. The administration greenlighted the transfer to Tehran of billions of dollars of Iranian government funds frozen under US sanctions imposed by Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The administration stopped enforcing bans on Iranian oil and gas exports. Due to the administration’s moves, today Iran reportedly earns as much from oil and gas exports as it did before Trump barred the sale of Iranian fuels on international markets. he Biden administration blocked the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency from publishing a harsh report condemning Iran’s massive breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal and outlining its illicit nuclear activities. The State Department has released reports on Iran’s breaches of its nuclear limits, in accordance with US law. But it watered down the language to make it seem that Iran’s behavior is acceptable.

Biden and his advisers may believe that Iran becoming a nuclear breakout state outside an agreement could be politically advantageous for them going into the midterm elections.

President Joe Biden.

The United States has responded weakly to Iran’s wanton aggression against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the first days of the administration, Biden removed Iran’s Yemeni proxy the Houthis from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, and has kept the Houthis off the list despite their escalating attacks on the UAE, Saudi Arabia and US forces in those states. Even worse, the Biden administration continues to court Iran and seems poised to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the list of foreign terrorist organizations even as the IRGC has deployed cells to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former Iran coordinator Brian Hook. The three former Trump administration officials receive around-the-clock protection. In January, a Twitter account associated with Iran’s dictator Ali Khamenei posted an animated video of an Iranian hit squad assassinating Trump on his golf course. In summary, both the content of the nuclear deal that Biden seeks to achieve and the administration’s permissive responses to illicit Iranian nuclear and terror operations make clear that Biden’s true object is to facilitate Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and hegemonic power, even at the expense of US allies, strategic interests and national security. This returns us to Tuesday’s report that the Biden administration may be ready to pull the plug on nuclear negotiations and on achieving a new deal to limit Iran’s nuclear operations. While it is clear that Biden’s desired diplomatic end state is to get a new nuclear agreement with Iran that may extend Iran’s nuclear breakout time from a few weeks to four to six months at the outside, it’s possible that the administration may be willing to see Iran become a nuclear breakout state outside an agreement. While this is clearly not Biden’s preferred outcome, Biden and his advisers may believe that it could be politically advantageous for them going into the midterm elections in November. If Iran crosses the nuclear threshold outside the confines of a nuclear deal, Biden and his advisers may believe that they will be able to blame Trump for the outcome. ince taking office, despite the fact that Iran only began to significantly step up its nuclear operations after he was elected, and mainly since he entered office,

POTUS/Twitter

Biden and his advisers have been insisting that Trump is responsible for Iran’s actions. According to their reasoning, if the United States had remained in the nuclear deal, Iran would not have begun breaching its commitments to restrain its nuclear behavior. As for Israel, the Bennett-Lapid-Gantz government gives the impression that Israel’s leaders think Biden’s rhetoric is more important than his actual policies. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his partners like Biden’s attacks against Trump because those attacks are aligned with their own attacks on former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Almost every day since forming their government last May, Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and their colleagues have insisted that had Netanyahu not proved to Trump that Iran was breaching the 2015 deal and that the Iranians had lied to the Americans about their intentions, Trump wouldn’t have abandoned Obama’s nuclear deal and Iran wouldn’t be weeks from nuclear breakout. Although reports of sabotage of Iranian nuclear and drone installations still pop up from time to time, the volume of reports has dropped precipitously since last May. Upon entering office, the Bennett-Lapid government promised the United States total transparency in Israel’s operations in Iran. The implication was that Bennett and Lapid were giving the administration veto power over Israel’s operations. With the precipitous drop in offensive activities against Iran’s nuclear installations, the Iranians now feel free to expend less effort protecting their nuclear installations and more time using them to develop nuclear weapons. Without effective inspections of Iran’s nuclear and missile sites, it is hard to know just where Iran stands in terms of moving from breakout capacity to an actual nuclear arsenal. Israel estimates it will take Iran a year or two to move from where it ostensibly stands today on the brink of independent capacity to develop and deploy nuclear weapons to actually possessing deployable nuclear weapons. Despite the uncertainty about when precisely Iran will become a nuclear power, what is absolutely certain is that so long as the Biden administration remains in power, Israel’s leaders’ faith in Washington endangers its existential interests.

21 THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

Making Jewish journalism great again.

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Honest reporting. Torah-true.

‘No one asked who was Weinreb… Sacks… right-wing, who was left’ H today, our enemies rise up against us to destroy us with hateful terror, and as always, they find us ready and determined — with one hand holding a weapon and the other extended in dialogue and peace. It is precisely in these heart-breaking moments, escorting our heroes and heroines on their final journeys, together with their beloved families, whose pain instantly becomes our own — precisely in these moments, we discover time and again the sheer power of our wonderful and marvelous nation, a nation that knows how to overcome any obstacle.” Earlier in his speech, Herzog said: “Here, at the Wailing Wall, in silence and sacred trepidation, we bow our heads in memory of the sons and daughters, the fallen soldiers of Israel’s wars and victims of terror attacks. From south to north, east to west, members of all communities and sections of society, members of all waves of aliyah, of all religions and faiths. Partners in pride and in pain.” According to figures, 56 soldiers fell this past year, and 84 disabled veterans passed away due to their disabilities.

‘All politics is local’ —Legendary US House Speaker Tip O’Neill

So are we.

For the scoop on what your electeds are up to, trust your local newspaper.

Continued from page 16 ence the elaborate political and economic structure set out in Leviticus, organized around the number seven, the sign of the holy. Every seventh day is free time. Every seventh year, the produce of the field belongs to all, Israelite slaves are to be liberated, and debts released. Every fiftieth year, ancestral land was to return to its original owners. Thus the inequalities that are the inevitable result of freedom are mitigated. The logic of all these provisions is the priestly insight that G-d, Creator of all, is the ultimate Owner of all: “And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine. You are merely migrants and visitors to Me. Throughout the land that you possess, you must allow land to be redeemed.” Lev. 25:23-24 G-d therefore has the right, not just the power, to set limits to inequality. No one should be robbed of dignity by total poverty, endless servitude, or unrelieved indebtedness. What is truly remarkable, however, is what happened after the biblical era and the destruction of the Second Temple. Faced with the loss of the entire infrastructure of the holy, the Temple, its priests, and sacrifices, Judaism translated the entire system of avodah, Divine service, into the everyday life of ordinary Jews. In prayer, every Jew became a priest offering a sacrifice. In repentance, each became a High Priest, atoning for their sins and those of their people. Every synagogue, in Israel or elsewhere, became a fragment of the Temple in Jerusalem. Every table became an altar, every act of charity or hospitality, a kind of sacrifice. Torah study, once the speciality of the priesthood, became the right and obligation of everyone. Not everyone could wear the crown of priesthood, but everyone could wear the crown of Torah. A mamzer talmid chacham, a Torah scholar of illegitimate birth, say the Sages, is greater than an am ha’aretz Kohen Gadol, an ignorant High Priest. Out of the devastating tragedy of the loss of the Temple, the Sages created a religious and social order that came closer to the ideal of the people as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” than had ever previously been realised. The seed had been planted long before, in the opening of Leviticus 19: “Speak to all the community of Israel. Say: ‘Be holy, for I am holy; I, the L-rd your G-d.’” Holiness belongs to all of us when we turn our lives into the service of G-d, and society into a home for the Divine Presence. That is the moral life as lived by the kingdom of priests: a world where we aspire to come close to G-d by coming close, in justice and love, to our fellow humans.

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Israel began marking Yom Hazikaron, the Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, on Tuesday evening when, at 8 pm, a one-minute siren rang out throughout the country, causing all to stop in silence. The central ceremony was held at the Kotel in Jerusalem’s Old City. “Our sons and daughters, who fell in defense of our state, fought together and fell together. They did not ask — nor did anyone ask them — who was right-wing and who was left-wing. Who was religious. Who was secular. Who was Jewish and who was not Jewish,” Israel President Isaac Herzog said. “Nor did grief pose these questions to them or to you. “They fell as Israelis, defending Israel. In cemeteries, arguments fall silent. Between the headstones, not a sound. A silence that demands that we fulfill, together, their single dying wish: the resurrection of Israel. The building of Israel. United, consolidated, responsible for each other. For we are all sisters and brothers.” He added that “over the past year, past weeks, and indeed, past few days, grief and pain have struck us time and again. Even

Continued from page 17 fearing person” no matter how pious you are in other respects. There is another entirely different perspective on our verse which provides a practical motive for honoring the elderly. It is to be found in the commentary of Abraham ibn Ezra, who explains the phrase “You shall fear your G-d” in the following way: “The time will come when you will be old and frail and lonely. You will long for proper treatment at the hands of the young. But if you showed disrespect for the elderly when you were young, and did not “fear G-d,” G-d will not reward you with the treatment you desire in your own old age.” As each of us strives to show genuine respect to our elders, we help construct a society in which the elderly have their proper place. That society will hopefully still be there when we become older, and then we will reap the benefits of our own youthful behavior. Our Torah portion is entitled Kedoshim, which means “holy.” One of the major components of the holy society is the treatment it accords to every one of its members, especially those who are vulnerable. Treating the elderly with genuine respect, truly listening to them and valuing their contributions, is an essential part of what it means to be a “holy people.”

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May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782 THE JEWISH STAR

23 THE JEWISH STAR May 6, 2022 • 5 Iyar 5782

Jew | joo | noun

The indigenous people of the land of Israel.

Zi·on·ism | zī

-nĭzm | noun

The Jewish national liberation movement.

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We are Jews. We are Zionists.

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