Just one candle Students fill the gap as survivors dwindle
By Ed Weintrob
was different this year. And it was a preview of what’s to come.
In prior years, six Holocaust survivors would each light one candle in memory of one million of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
This year, as the community assembled in Beth Sholom in Lawrence last Wednesday night, only one survivor was in the room. He lit one candle. Additional candles were lit by five high school students in memory of relatives who survived but are no longer with us to retell their stories themselves.
“Sadly, as we reach the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, we are approaching the loss of the generation of witnesses,” Sharon Fogel, who co-chaired the event with Nathaniel Rogoff, told The Jewish Star. “This means we have a responsibility to instill in the next generation the importance of keeping alive the experiences of those who are no longer with us here to tell their stories.”
The survivor who delivered the evening’s Fanya Gottesfeld Heller keynote address was Paul Gross, a member of the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst and earlier of the White Shul in Far Rockaway.
He lit a memorial candle accompanied by his wife and family.
Gross was born in 1937 in a small town in Hungary where the Holocaust came in 1944.
In introducing him, Rabbi Yaakov Trump of the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst, said Gross had told him that it took 75 years for his family to rebuild the numbers of those who were lost in the Holocaust.
“We celebrae every one of their lives,” Rabbi Trump said.
“Unfortunately, not many Holocaust survivors are alive anymore, therefore I feel more obligated to tell my story,” Gross said.
He described how he first encountered antisemitism, how the relative safety of living in Hungary disappeared when the Germans entered the country in 1944 and forced Jews inside a walled ghetto, and how he was stunned when neighbors turned on their Jewish friends.
“On the last Shabbos in the ghetto, we got word that we would be going to labor camps,” Gross recounted. “The rabbi of our town, with a long white bear, showed up in the shul clean shaven. I was a young boy but it shook me up. It made me realize that nothing would be normal from that point on.” The rabbi had heard that the Nazis were ripping out the beards of Jews.
“Many of us in this room grew up hearing Holocaust stories that most people in the world can’t even imagine,” Fogel told the gathering, composed of members of several Five
See Just one candle on page 2
Torres issues call to action to stop Jew-hate
By Ed Weintrob
Rep. Ritchie Torres told a Yom Hashoah commemoration in west Hempstead on Sunday night that to be successful in the fight for Israel and against antisemitism, Jews must be “politically engaged, civically engaged.”
Torres, a gay Latino Democrat whose district includes both the South Bronx and Riverdale, is one of the staunchest supporters in Congress of the Jewish state and American Jews.
“We need every member of the Jewish community who cares about fighting antisemitism, who cares about Israel, to be politically engaged, because the soul of America is at stake,” he told the more than 300 people assembled at Congregation Shaaray Shalom for the event hosted by the Jewish Community Council of Long Island and sponsored by 20 organizations from different parts of Long Island.
Eying local developments, he cautioned that “what’s unfolding in New York is terrifying.”
In a reference to Zohran Mamdani, one of the leading candidates in June’s Democratic primary, Torres said, “We have a mayoral candidate who said that if he were elected mayor, he would direct the NYPD to arrest members of
the Israeli government.”
Torres recalled that in 2020, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Mamdani, sent a questionnaire to City Council candidates with two questions:
“Do you pledge never to travel to Israel if elected to the City Council [and] do you pledge to
support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel.”
“So in the Democratic Socialist worldview, it’s morally permissible to go travel to China, which has committed genocide against Uyghur Muslims; to travel to Russia, which has invaded a sovereign nation state Ukraine; to travel to Iran,
which is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world,” Torres said. “But travel to the world’s only Jewish state, that is strictly forbidden.”
Linking Jew-hatred in Nazi Germany to antisemitism today, Torres pointed out that “Germany at the time was the most educated society on Earth. How could the most educated society on Earth be so barbaric to commit the greatest crime against humanity?”
“The lesson,” he said, “is that education is no guarantee of morality. Education without ethics will not bring civilization, it will bring barbarism. One of the cruel ironies is that some of the most academically educated people in our society often are the least morally educated.”
Shifting his focus from a society’s educated elite to its mass of ordinary people, he referenced a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt in her coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial: Banality of evil.
“One need not be like Hitler to be monstrous,” Torres said. “There were masses of everyday Germans who were complicit in the Holocaust, who were content to be cogs in a machine of industrial mass murder against
See Torres issues a call on page 2
Paul Gross, a child survivor from Hungary, accompanied by his wife and family members, lit a candle at the Greater Five Towns Community Yom Hashoah Commemoration last Wednesday. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
Rep. Ritchie Torres is interviewed by Larry Rosenberg, Holocaust Remembrance chair, at a Holocaust Remembrance Day event in West Hempstead on Sunday night. Madison Gusier, LI Herald
The Yom Hashoah commemoration in the Five Towns
Just one candle…
Student ambassadors from HAFTR High School, DRS Yeshiva High School for Boys, and SKA High School for Girls lit candles and spoke in memory of relatives who were Shoah
Continued from page 1
Towns shuls including Bais Tefilah of Woodmere, Irving Place Minyan, YI of Hewlett, YI of Woodmere, YI of Lawrence Cedarhurst, and the Jewish Center of Atlantic Beach.
“We are the last generation to meet a survivor face to face, and in a few years, no Holocaust survivors will be left to tell their stories. What will happen when that day comes? Will we remember? Will we keep the stories alive as the last ones to hear their voices?”
The student ambassadors who lit candles, and later distributed yahrzeit candles bearing the names of Jews murdered in the Shoah, came from HAFTR, DRS, SKA and Rambam, “demonstrating that they are a link in the chain, that they will serve as torches in a world of darkness and live for the ideals that so many died for,” Fogel said.
HALB’s fifth grade choir opened the event.
Torres issues a call…
Continued from page 1
their Jewish neighbors.”
“The Holocaust is a time not too distant from our own, and that’s why we must never forget,” he said. “That’s why we must remain eternally vigilant in the fight against antisemitism.”
“Israel has no greater friend in the world than the United States,” Torres concluded. “For me, one of the greatest traditions of American exceptionism is America’s exceptional commitment to the Jewish people in the Jewish states, and I’m proud to uphold that tradition as a proud Zionist member of the United States Congress.”
Now that there are few survivors left to deliver in-person testimony, recordings made of their stories have become an essential component in the arsenal of Holocaust remembrance.
Several years ago, Shira Stoll, then a videographer for the Staten Island Advance, teamed
up with Lori Weintrob, founding director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center on Staten Island, to create a series of videotaped testimonies. These NY-Emmy award-winning videos have been shown for six years at the West Hempstead event, Holocaust Remembrance Chair Larry Rosenberg said.
This year’s video presented testimony by Hannah Steiner in which she describes how her young mother died in her arms after liberation and how her future husband carried her photo with him for seven years during and after the war.
In addition to the lighting six memorial candles for the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah, each by generations of survivors, a seventh candle was lit in memory of the nonJewish victims and an eight candle for the victims of the October 7th attack and the fallen IDF soldiers.
survivors. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
LEFT PHOTO: Videographer Shira Stoll (left), whose SI Advance NY-Emmy award-winning video of survivor Hannah Steiner was featured at Sunday’s event in West Hempstead; Hannah’s daughter Helene Bondar (center); and Lori Weintrob, founding director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center on Staten Island. RIGHT PHOTO: Jewish war veternas Edward Freeberg (left) and Gary Glick flank Rep. Ritchie Torres after Torres spoke to the Holocaust Remembrance Day event.
Left photo by Sandy Stoll; right photo by Madison Gusier, LI Herald
Rep. Ritchie Torres of the Bronx delivered a powerful address about moral courage, antisemitism, and the importance of standing with Israel and the Jewish people, at the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum on Monday in Manhattan. The group honored Torres with the inaugural AJC Nita M. Lowey Congressional Leadership Award.
As an ally, I pledge this to each and every one of you: I will never fall silent in the face of antisemitism and I will always stand up and speak out with moral clarity at precisely the moments when it matters the most.
There are many in America who are neither antisemitic nor anti-Zionist, but who are nonetheless morally confused about the causes of the war and the conflict.
The dominant narrative in American media often portrays Israel as the greatest obstacle to peace: If only Israel had the right government, or if only Israel made the right concessions, the argument goes, peace would become possible, a two-state solution would become a reality.
There’s just one problem with that one-sided narrative. It’s not true.
The narrative is a lie of omission. It omits the most tragic truth of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, that there’s a genuinely genocidal anti-Zionist and, yes, antisemitic ideology, that demands nothing less than the extermination of Israel as a Jewish state and the eradication of Jews from the ancestral homeland.
That ideology incited October 7. That ideology animates terrorist regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran. That ideology inspires terrorist organizations like Hamas Hezbollah and the Houthis, whose motto is Death to Israel and death to America.
There is no subtlety there. If you’re an academic or an activist, a politician or a journalist who is downplaying or even denying the genocidal ideology at the core of October 7, then you are not part of the solution. You are part of the problem.
An international community that subsidizes and an international media that sanitizes a genocidal ideology is not promoting Israeli Palestinian peace, it is perpetuating the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
The cruel irony of the so-called free Palestine movement is that it does not free the Palestinians, it oppresses them. It is Orwellian oppression masquerading as liberation.
Consider the contrast between how deeply Israelis value Israeli life and how deeply Hamas devalues Palestinian life throughout the world. … Hamas sees Palestinians not as ends unto themselves, but as a means to an end, a means to the destruction of Israel.
Instead of investing in homes, hospitals and. Schools, Hamas built a sprawling network of terror tunnels so vast it rivals half of the New York City subway system. All that money and ingenuity that could have lifted up the Palestinian people were squandered on tearing down their Jewish neighbors. …
•The ideology of Jew hatred in the Middle East did not begin on October 7.
•It did not begin in 1967.
•It did not even begin in 1948.
•The hatred for Jews in the land of Israel is older than the Jewish state itself, dating back to the Nebi Musa riots of 1920, the Hebron massacre of 1929, and the great Arab Revolt of 1936
which has been described as the pre Intifada. … October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. It was the continuation of a cycle of a century long cycle of violence and terror against Jews in Israel, that critical context is rarely explained to the American people by the American media.
Golda Meir was right. If the other side lay down its arms, there would be peace, but if Israel laid down its arms, there would be no Israel, and that tragic truth is rarely explained to the American people by the American media.
There is an alternative to this history of hate that began with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and continues with the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is an alternative vision of shared peace and prosperity, of common humanity and dignity, and that vision is the Abraham accords.
•The Islamic Republic’s empire of terror is crumbling in real time.
•Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all shadows of their former selves.
•The Assad regime in Syria has collapsed.
•Iran’s defenses have been degraded.
The future of the Middle East does not belong to the Islamic Republic and its empire of terror. The future of the Middle East belongs to Israel and the Abraham Accords.
The future of the Middle East does not belong to hate. The future belongs to hope, hatikvah, in the great grand sweep of history, in the millennia-long Maccabean marathon. That is the story of the Jewish people.
We are as close as we have ever been to realizing the Abrahamic dream of a world where all the children of Abraham — Jews, Christians and Muslims — can coexist in peace and prosperity.
A durable peace is possible, and we as Americans, in the greatest country on Earth, have the power, indeed the responsibility, to make it so and make peace. We will.
G-d bless the United States of America. Am Israel chai.
Rep. Ritchie Torres addresses the AJC Global Forum in Manhattan.
1 settlement, 4 fallen soldiers, 1 terror victim
By Tal Weiss, JNS
One morning, when Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Weitzen, the rabbi of Psagot, prayed in the Weiss family shiva house, mourning the death of a local soldier, a neighbor — a war widow herself — approached him and said she had no more strength.
“I told her, ‘I agree that you feel tired and even broken, but I disagree that you feel powerless and the proof is that you are here in this house of mourning, coming to help and lending support’,” said Rabbi Weitzen.
He added, “People ultimately have strength, because within their Divine soul is a great spirit. And while there is definitely shock and pain during bereavement, when there are spiritual foundations, they endure and even manage to grow.”
Rabbi Weitzen knows bereavement firsthand. Amichai Weitzen, the rabbi’s son, fell defending a southern kibbutz from terrorist infiltration on Oct 7, 2023.
Two friends from Psagot, Amichai Weitzen, 33, and Moshe Yedidya Raziel, 31, were fighters in the Kerem Shalom kibbutz readiness squad.
On Oct. 7, they fought for hours in a heroic battle against dozens of Hamas infiltrators, defending the kibbutz with their very bodies. The two young men who grew up together also gave their lives together to protect the State of Israel and its citizens.
Staff Sgt. (res.) Hanan Drori, 26, who was injured by an RPG missile while fighting in the Gaza Strip and later died of his wounds, lived in Psagot until a year and a half ago. His grandparents still live in the community.
Yitzhak Zeiger of Shavei Shomron, who was murdered in a terrorist attack at the Eli gas station, was a founder of Psagot, and his son lives in the settlement.
The latest casualty is Psagot resident Elon Weiss, 49, a reservist tank commander who was killed in the northern Gaza Strip. A beloved Torah teacher in Ma’ale Adumim, Weiss was married and the father of seven. He was also the first grandfather to be killed during active duty.
Psagot is a religious settlement located just north of Jerusalem, high up on a mountain peak, overlooking the Arab city of Ramallah. Founded in 1981, it now has a population of a little more than 2,000 residents. When one resident is killed, the entire community feels the repercussions.
“Each bereavement reopens the wound for many. And after the third, fourth, fifth time in this war, it seems sometimes as if there is no strength left,” said Rabbi Weitzen. “When one goes up to the holy mountain, Mount Herzl (the site of Israel’s main military cemetery), there is a terrible pain that penetrates the soul as well as a great shock, a kind of inner earthquake.” He added, “Homes that don’t have solid foundations fall. The ones that survive and can later be rebuilt are the houses that were built well and correctly on sound foundations. They may shake in the earthquake, but they do not fall. They remain standing and stable.”
Power of faith
“The foundation of everything is faith in the knowledge that everything that happens to us is precise and unchangeable,” Weitzen said. “We understand that there is something ordered here and that we are part of a definite plan. We are not at the mercy of blind fate. Nothing happens by chance, but there are things hidden from our perspective. We do not know everything and cannot claim to know all of life’s secrets.”
He continued: “The second foundation is that nothing happens to our detriment. God, the source of all life, is good and beneficial, and even difficult events will have beneficial outcomes. Unfortunately, we are very confused between ‘fun for me’ and ‘good for me.’ The Western world places fun and pleasure at the top of its scale of values, and every time we encounter a painful and unpleasant reality, it distances us from the purpose of life.”
According to the rabbi, “we need to prioritize the good, not the pleasant.”
“When everything is good, everything will be pleasant. But first of all, we must work to make things good, and in order for that to happen, we sometimes need to go through trying periods, and at times that hurts. Pain hurts, but it is not bad. Though we are in pain, we don’t run away from it, because this is the experience that God wants from us. It is intended to change something within us and grow something new, so we will experience true goodness.”
Weitzen said he believed Jews today “have the tremendous privilege of living in the time of redemption. In exile, when there was a pogrom, a Jew could not tell himself that there was a chance for salvation.”
He added that “all these great souls who leave us do not cease to be present in our lives, and sometimes they are even felt more strongly.”
Addressing his personal loss, he said, “We lost the earthly Amichai on Simchat Torah. But since his death, Amichai’s strength and power have been much more present among his family, friends, and community.”
He said the same thing applied to the relatives of Elon Weiss, who built his family on solid foundations. “We hope the family will be able to withstand this earthquake, and so will we as a community. Elon will not stop being present; he will be present in a different way, from a much more distant place. The pain is from this distancing.”
Strength of community
The upheaval that the Psagot community is experiencing engenders great strengths, Rabbi Weitzen argued.
“From a communal point of view, if a person needs to leave the world, it should happen in a communal settlement,” he said. “The community has a very great power to comfort; there is great support for those within it. Every Shabbat feast and every community gathering is an opportunity to strengthen ourselves to-
gether, when we sit together and tell stories.”
Private bereavement that is intertwined with national mourning comforts both those close to us and those far away, the rabbi said. “It is part of our comfort that we know that we are not private individuals and that there is a huge stream of life called the Israeli nation, which gives meaning to each and every one who belongs to this great thing called Israel.”
Reaching innermost point
Elon Weiss had long passed the age when he needed to do reserve duty. But he insisted on continuing his annual service and even fighting in the current war, even though he was exempt and had seven children and a wife waiting for him back home.
Eliyahu Nazlovin, a graduate of the Amit Eitan School in Ma’ale Adumim, studied under Weiss some seven years ago, when he was a new teacher at the school.
“When Rabbi Elon entered his class as a new teacher, many years older than the students, looking a bit like a nerd, in a buttonedup shirt and his tzitzit hanging out, I doubted his ability to take control of his class,” the student said of his teacher. “But within a few days, the students became his admirers. He was a master, simply a master, of human relations.”
He said that Weiss’s ability “to reach each and every one of his students and touch on their most significant point and strengthen was extraordinary.”
Nazlovin continued:
“What was special about him, and I have not seen this anywhere else, was that he never raised his voice at a student. He also did not humiliate, tease, insult, or speak in a negative tone. He was always positive and joyful in a pure way, even in very challenging situations. He managed to lift the students up and help them succeed without instilling fear, but with a hug and love.”
Weiss, he said, would sit outside in the school yard with every student who was having problems with his studies, for a personal talk, until they solved the difficulty together, and the student began to improve.
“Although he began teaching here when he was already in his forties, he was the teacher with the most youthful spirit, enthusiastic about doing everything the students liked, including Purim plays, games during breaks, and more,” Nazlovin said.
“When I enlisted in the army, I went to a paramedic course on a Negev military base. One day, I saw Rabbi Elon at the base,” he recalled. “He was walking around there, smiling from ear to ear. When he noticed me, he came over and hugged me. It turns out that he had traveled to the base, four hours each way, to attend the graduation ceremony of a student of his, who later became an officer and was even wounded in the fighting in Gaza. That’s how it is: A heroic teacher raises heroic students.”
Turning bitter into sweet
“According to Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of Israel), redemption includes both concealment and revelation,” Rabbi Weitzen noted. “The greater the concealment, the deeper the revelation. We are currently in a period of concealment, but I believe there will soon be a very great revelation. The belief that good will come from all this is important. This is the sweetening of bitterness.”
He added, “It is written in the Zohar that he who sits in the study house of the Messiah is he who knows how to turn the bitter into sweet. The Messiah will have an acceptance test for his yeshiva, in which he looks at the person’s character, and the measure he is looking for is whether he knows how to turn bitter into sweet. To succeed in this, we must also have the ability to taste the bitter, not to run away from the pain. The second thing is to believe that it things can be sweet and do the work of turning the bitter into sweet.”
“Every day for the last year, I have been trying to do this with my fallen son Amichai,” he said. “I feel bitter that someone who was close to me and whom I could hug and laugh with cannot be here with me. In the first stage, these are huge longings, and every day I meet, as it were, with what is not there.
“The sweetening happens by releasing Amichai as he was in this world, with his laughter and smile. I no longer have him here, but by virtue of what I am experiencing now and what he was, a new Amichai is born to me, who is in the heavens, a pure soul that gives me a lot of inspiration and a lot of strength.
“This is what it means to sweeten. To accept reality but not to be enslaved to it. Not to stay in the past and get stuck, but to move forward. This is the ability that the Messiah wants. People who are from the world of correction and change and know how to grow from their current predicament.”
In recent months, Weitzen said he had visited many families of fallen heroes and has tried to find a common denominator amongst them all. “Many of those who were killed were very humble in their lives, not well known. Now, suddenly, the entire country becomes aware of the great light that they and their families possess. God is very precise when He chooses people who will serve as an example for others. Some will be inspired from afar, and others from close by.
“Elon’s father told me, ‘Important people will come today to comfort us. What should I say to them? I answered him that Simchat Torah of 5744 (Oct. 7, 2023) shows us that many things can suddenly collapse. The security cameras can collapse, military intelligence can collapse, American aid can collapse; the belief that Arabs have limits to evil can collapse.”
“The one thing that does not collapse is the Israeli spirit, which is eternal,” he concluded.” The families of the fallen soldiers need to reveal this light, that there is an eternal spirit here that cannot be broken. This is our strength.”
A view of the community of Psagot.
Courtesy Olam Katan
Elon Weiss with his wife Neta. Courtesy Asaf Weiss
Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Weitzen.
Bibi: You cannot build peace and security on lies
The following is a slightly abridged transcript of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the inaugural JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday.
Iwant to encapsulate some truths for you tonight because I think they explain where we are today.
In the founding of the State of Israel, 77 years ago, we faced a fairly united Arab world. It was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser who promoted the idea of pan-Arabism. One of the sources of unity was to drive [out] Israel, [which] had no place right in the center of that great Arab domain. … We’re here in Jerusalem, about a kilometer away from David’s capital, which was established 3,000 years ago. We are not foreign interlopers. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. We’re not the Dutch in Indonesia. We’re the Jews in the Jewish homeland, Judea. That’s one truth, an important truth. …
At first, they didn’t try to actually annihilate our history, they just tried to annihilate us. And it wasn’t such a big task. We were very small, on a tiny strip on the edge of the Mediterranean. … Having, from our point of view, miraculously defeated them in the War of Independence, they didn’t think it was over. And they arranged … themselves to choke us and drive us into the sea [in 1967]. ….
We were about to be finished. But in six days, we turned the tables on them. And of course, we came back to our ancestral homeland in full force. And by the way, we took the high ground and we will not leave it. It’s ours.
They still didn’t give up. They tried the War of Attrition. And then in 1973, a combined attack, this time by two Arab armies in the Yom Kippur War, they surprised us. Within three weeks, we were at the gates of Damascus and Cairo, and that ended that. …
The Arab world began to realize that Israel is here to stay and that they have to make their dues with it.
And so, we began a process — first with the peace at Camp David between Begin and Sadat, and later the peace with Jordan that was signed by Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein. … The Arab world was slowly coming to realize that Israel is a fact that cannot be removed, and they were beginning to make peace with us.
We couldn’t progress on that peace because one part of the Arab world resolutely remained against us. The Palestinians clung to the original opposition to Israel, that basically you do not recognize a Jewish state in any boundary, in any form.
Israel has to be annihilated. Israel has to be excised like a tumor. That was their position, and that was and remains the principal obstacle to a Palestinian-Israeli peace. …
They keep saying, “We want a Palestinian state in our ancestral homeland, in order to destroy the Jewish state.” They say it in Ramallah. They say it in Gaza. They teach it in Ramallah to their children. They teach it in Gaza. There’s no difference in the textbooks; exactly the same.
One pays-for-slay in Ramallah and operates the ICC, and conducts warfare against us. Lawfare. And you know all this by heart.
The difference between Hamas and the PA [is] Hamas says we will destroy Israel by terror and military conquest right away. And the PA says, no, you destroy it politically by driving it, through propaganda and lawfare, to the ’67 boundaries.
And then you can do the military thrust because you’re a few kilometres from the sea. That’s the difference between them.
But the persistent refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to recognize a Jewish state in any boundary is the source of this conflict. For 100 years and more, from the Mufti in the ’20s to today — no difference.
So, the idea that you’ll create a Palestinian state and that will produce peace — the idea is folly, nothing more than folly. We just tried a Palestinian state in Gaza. You saw what that brought, right? …
After we had these two peace treaties — historic peace treaties with Egypt and with Jordan — these are cold peace treaties, because there
wasn’t really pacification of the population, but between governments. And that still holds. And that’s good, because a cold peace is a lot better than a hot war.
It took us another quarter of a century to get the next peace treaty, because everybody said, the only way you’re going to get it is you have to go through the Palestinians. That is, first solve the Palestinian problem, and then you’ll get peace with the rest of the Arab world. Remember that? Who said that? John Kerry? …
Of course, I didn’t think so, because if we had to go through the Palestinians, aside from creating a state that would spell the end of Israel we knew the Palestinians would not make peace. They don’t want a state next to Israel; they want a state instead of Israel. … So, we decided — I decided — to do something different. I chose to go around the Palestinians and went directly to the Arab capitals. In about two months, we made four peace treaties with four Arab states, expanding the circle of peace.
The main thing you can see here is that the number of Arab states that attacked us kept declining over time: five (arguably seven) states in 1948, three in 1967, two in the Yom Kippur War, and then one in the Lebanon War of 1982. Gradually, the Arab world began to normalize its relations with Israel. And that was the good news.
The bad news, however, was that the Arab world was being replaced by a much more potent force that had appeared on the horizon — Iran.
Beginning with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran became the primary Islamist force in the Middle East, replacing the Arab world as the engine of attacks against Israel. They were committed to destroying Israel for a simple reason — they were determined to conquer the Middle East.
They correctly identified Israel as the only real force standing in their way in the region. … If we were not here, the neighboring countries would collapse on the spot. I won’t give you all the details, but I could—there are many. The ones who don’t need the details, though, are the Iranians; they know this very well.
So, they embarked on a campaign from the very start that targeted Israel. And it wasn’t just about conquering the Middle East; their ambition was larger: to subjugate all Muslims to their
fanatic creed, as written in their constitution, and to export their revolution worldwide.
Their chant from the beginning was clear:
“Death to Israel, death to America.”
To get rid of us, they designed two main forms of attack.
The first attack was to try to develop, over the last two decades, nuclear weapons. We’ll talk about that in a minute. The second line of attack is something they developed piece by piece, step by step, which was to choke Israel by conquering pieces of the Middle East, both for their own reasons [and] as a noose of death around us.
And you could see them moving from Iran to Iraq to Syria to the Mediterranean and Lebanon. They control Lebanon completely. They control Syria in many ways. They control Iraq. So now they have a continuum right to the sea. And then in the south, in Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and then further south, the Houthis.
And they have other plans. They would like to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. They would like to topple Jordan. They want to complete the conquest of the Middle East. But what stands in their way? Israel. So, if you have this noose of death, tighten the noose. And the plan that they hatched is something that became much clearer to us in the course of the war.
We were attacked savagely, horribly, on October 7. Chancellor Scholz, who visited me in the beginning of the war when he saw the film “The Horror” and visited the sites, said they’re exactly like the Nazis. And I said, well, they’re different. Not in intent, not in savagery. But the Nazis tried to hide their crimes; these people carry GoPro cameras, live, they’re ecstatic about the blood they shed, the people they butcher, the women they rape, the men they beheaded, the babies they burned. They’re ecstatic about it.
So, they took 250 and some hostages. … We intend to bring back all of them.
But the most important thing we had to do was to stop the invasion, which we did. And as we stopped the invasion and continued to take the fight into their territory — and of course, into Lebanon, where Hezbollah joined the day after — we learned one simple truth: that Sinwar jumped the gun. He deviated from the plan that the noose of death had planned in advance — and that plan was that there would be simul-
taneous invasions from Gaza and from Lebanon. The distances to the center of the country are very small. Simultaneous bracketing Israel [and sending] barrage after barrage of ballistic missiles and rockets into a tiny country was meant to basically erase Israel. That was the plan.
But Hamas didn’t wait, couldn’t get over themselves. They fired too quickly. In fact, Hezbollah was surprised. “They said, why did they not tell us? They were supposed to tell us, but they didn’t.”
And so, we had time to prevent a similar ground invasion that would have been much more potent; there’s no comparison of the power of Hezbollah compared to the monsters who attacked us [from Gaza; Hezbollah was] much more potent.
But by that time, we could move our army to the north [and] we stopped that invasion …
Isaid, we will change the face of the Middle East. We first had to go into Gaza; [we told] our American friends who came here. And I appreciate the fact that President Biden came here at the beginning of the war and gave his support the beginning of the war.
But they said, “Don’t go in, don’t do the ground invasion. Do it from the air.” And I said, “Joe, we tried that.” I myself, as head of the government, [had previously] authorized three attacks, three major operations, against the Hamas terrorists.
After they had attacked us [previously], we killed thousands of terrorists. We killed their military commander, Jabari. It made a dent. It stayed them. They had to rearm again and so on. But it didn’t stop it.
I said, “It’s not going to work this time. We have to go in.”
So, against their better advice, we went in and, well, very soon the propaganda war began to work against us [and] the diplomatic support we had at the start of the war turned against us. And now we are facing pressure to mitigate the fight and very soon to stop the fight.
We went into Gaza City. They didn’t like it. We went into Shifa Hospital. They didn’t like it. We went into Khan Yunis and then we reached the outskirts of Rafah. And there the Americans said, “Don’t go in, don’t go in. And if you go in, we’ll put an arms embargo on you.”
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the JNS International Policy Summit, in Jerusalem on Sunday.
JNS
And I said to President Biden, look, I respect you. You’re the president of the United States. Please respect me, I’m the prime minister of the one and only Jewish state and we are going in. Secretary of State Blinken came in a few days later and he said, “The president is serious.” I said, I know he’s serious. He’s going to do it. I know he’s already done it.
And he said, “So what do you say?” I said, Tony, we will fight with our fingernails if we have to. And we did. But we had more than fingernails. I said in the Cabinet that the weapons will take care of themselves. We’ll fight with what we have, but we will survive.
We are not a vassal state. We’re the independent state of the Jewish people. And we will do what we need to do to protect us. So, we went into Rafah. The Americans told us that we can’t go into Rafah because there’ll be thousands of casualties. Some said [there would be] 20,000 casualties [and that] don’t have a place to go.
Well, I said, they do have a place to go. They can go two kilometres westward to the beach. There’s a safe zone there. And they did. Within six days, 1.4 million people moved to the beach because we kept moving them out of harm’s way. I visited the extraordinary brigade commander there in the Rafah crossing, saw our soldiers and asked him, so, Itzik, how many terrorists have you killed? And this was in the middle of the fighting — he said, “At this point, 1,203.” I said, how do you know? I said. “Body counts. We see them there.” And I said, how many civilians have you killed? You know what he said? “None. None. Because they all left.”
They ended up killing 2,000 terrorists and practically no civilians. In fact, the only civilian deaths that are recorded are in the beginning of the fighting, as far as I know, because we dropped a stray bomb before we actually went in, and it hit an ammunition dump that Hamas had placed among civilians, and 20 terrorists died and 20 civilians died.
But in the course of the fighting, the assump-
tions that were broadcast around the world were untrue, that we would create extraordinary civilian deaths or that they had no place to go. They were proved to be wrong. And now we got the Philadelphia route. And so, we surround Gaza. We hold the perimeter inside Gaza, in the Philadelphia corridor.
The sea is on the other side, so they can’t smuggle weapons now. They can’t do anything about that. Having done that, having destroyed most of the organized battalions of Hamas, they still have remnants. They still fight there. And we still have a job to do. And the only reason we’re not doing it in such a short time is because of the hostages. Otherwise, it would be over long ago.
But in the course of doing that, what is a battalion? A battalion means there’s a Hamas chief and he says attack. And 100 people come out of the tunnels and attack. And when you destroy a battalion, three people come out, two people come out. Unfortunately, a sharpshooter can come out, but there’s no organized military structure.
So, having done that, having removed the threat of invasion from Gaza or the threat of serious rocketing from Gaza, having also done away with Sinwar — remember him? Remember Deif? Remember Haniyeh? — having gotten rid of them, we turn north. And having turned north, we had this small thing, you know, the beepers. You remember the beepers, the pagers?
So, we had a little debate. Should we use the beepers? Some of the people said, “We have to tell the Americans.” I said, No, no. And we didn’t because I don’t read the New York Times that often, but why give them the advance? I mean, it would be on the net. It would be, you know, that doesn’t make any sense.
We had to bring up the beepers a bit because we decided that we’d go into Lebanon in October. Why October? Well, obviously, because it’s one month ahead of November. You’ll figure that out. Okay, okay.
But in late in the third week, I think of September, we learned that Hezbollah had sent three
beepers to be scanned in Iran. We had previously bombed a scanner they were going to bring in. So we got rid of that and the guy who operates it.
But now they had these and, you know, they have this minuscule amount of TNT. And when the Mossad guy showed it to me a few months earlier, he’s giving me an update how many we’ve got inside. And I said, is that really going to do the job? I mean, how much TNT you have there? So, he says, I don’t know, nano nanograms, something like that. And I said, it’s not going to do anything.
He said, oh no, it’ll do it.
But now it turns out that they are scanning this. … Could take a day. I said, well, we have to do it right away. So, we did it.
And that meant that we brought up the shock and the beginning of the great campaign in Lebanon.
[In preparing for action in Lebanon, one option] was targeting the main stock of missiles that Nasrallah had built over the years in private homes. He was relying on the fact that we would not attack private homes. And he was right. We didn’t over the years. But we set a goal for the Army — attack these homes, but get the population out.
And they came back 48 hours later with a brilliant plan. They commandeered Lebanese television and radio. Can you imagine this is the IDF telling you if you’re a resident of somewhere — leave because they had a missile in every garage and a rocket in every kitchen. They would open the roof and out it comes and so on.
And that was done. So, in six or seven hours we destroyed the bulk. Not all, but the bulk of the main weapons directed against us that Nasrallah had built over 30 years.
Now, in the course of those weeks, we had targeted and killed many of the Hezbollah’s commanders, military commanders. But there was still one person there, and he was running the war independently; he was doing it quite well, I have to say. And that was Nasrallah himself. We knew where he was. And the question was, do we hit him or not?
And that wasn’t a simple answer, because he was the number two in the Iranian axis. He was the second most admired Shi’ite leader in the Shi’ite world. He was the beloved son of Khomeini. You know, he treated him like a son. And what does that mean?
I received a big thicket of intelligence reports. I read it, all about Nasrallah. Then I read it again, 80 pages. I said he has to go.
I was particularly impressed by the fact that not only was he a capable leader, but also that his relationship with Iran was somewhat different from what I had thought. I would say he manipulated Iran much more than Iran manipulated him. He influenced Iran much more than Iran influenced him. And when I read this report, I came to the clear conclusion that he was the axis of the axis, and if we remove him, the axis would break.
And so, we went into a debate in the Cabinet. Do we take him out or not? And there were two things that were brought up. One, we have to tell the Americans; again, I say, no, no, no, we’re not going to do that. And the second was, well, you know, you have to really think seriously about the consequences.
I mean, Iran has a lot of ballistic missiles, as long as from where I’m standing right up to that wall. It’s like a bus full of tons of TNT. And you have many hundreds of these, and they would fall in Israel and they would do serious damage. So, you couldn’t quite dismiss that. And then the question was, do you do it, or don’t you do it?
The Cabinet was split not quite half and half; most wanted to do it, but some didn’t. And the senior echelon was hesitant. I could see that. So I called the then-Minister of Defense and then-Chief of Staff to a separate room. I said, look, the American thing is out of the question. At best, we could tell them when the planes are en route, give them the courtesy, but we’re not going to tell them.
But I want to think about your opinions, and I’ll come back to you. And there was a real sigh of relief there, because, you know, I’m going to
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Bibi talks history, peace, security at JNS event…
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the States to give a speech at the UN. I was a few hours away from giving a speech.
By that time, we had intel that Nasrallah would probably leave for another place, where we didn’t have access. So that would solve that dilemma. What I think they didn’t know is that I have what is called an Air Force One — it’s really Air Force minus one, kind of dilapidated but very serviceable because it has a bed and it has a secure line.
So, I slept for a couple of hours, two hours, got up, opened the phone and called the Chiefs in, and I said, okay, I’ve made a decision — we’re going to take him out. And I ask that you convene the cabinet on a phone line when I get to New York. I got to New York, went to the Regency Hotel.
I’m sure there have been many important conversations in the Regency Hotel, but I don’t think there was anything like this. We had a cabinet meeting in the Regency Hotel and decided on the attack. I still had to write my speech. …
Right after the speech, I was meeting some Israeli journalists. I don’t do that very often; there’s no point. And my military secretary came in and gave me a note with one word, “Done.”
Now, the collapse, the removal of Nasrallah, really broke the axis. It was a terrific blow. Some people are irreplaceable. And so far, he’s been irreplaceable. And so, having delivered that blow to Hezbollah, we also delivered a blow to Assad because Assad was relying heavily on Nasrallah. He wasn’t relying on his army during the civil war. Every time he got into real trouble, Nasrallah would send thousands and thousands of fighters to help him. And now there was no one to send the fighters. So, there was an opening, obviously, which Al-Sharaa used. They didn’t understand how come they’re rolling into every place. There’s no one to fight. And they just kept moving from town to town with the full blessing, that’s a diplomatic word, of Turkey. But Iran[‘s] unbelievable investment in the axis [of resistance] … was going down the tubes. And so they had to rescue Assad. What they wanted to do was to send one or two airborne divisions to help them.
And we stopped that. We sent some F-16s towards some Iranian planes that were en route to Damascus. They turned back. So, being shed of any support from the West and any support from the East, the Assad regime collapsed.
And just to make sure, we destroyed 90 percent of their armaments. And then improved our positions a bit, like taking the summit of the Hermon Mountain, a very beautiful place. That’s what we did.
If you summarize everything that I said up to now, what we did is we had peace going with the Arab world, Iran coming up, Iran putting a noose around our necks, and Israel turning the tables on them — from a situation where on October 7 people thought that Israel was doomed to making Israel the most powerful country in the region. Within a very short time.
We could do that because of the incredible courage of our soldiers and our commanders. They’re really the lions of Judah. They really fight. The are heroes, and the fallen are heroes and those who are wounded.
You should see the wounded. There’s a guy who lost both his legs, and he has these artificial legs and an arm. And he lifts another arm. You know, he says, I want to go back and fight — and he’s not alone. These are amazing heroes.
So having done that, we’ve smashed the Iranian axis, but we didn’t finish the job. Remember, there’s still more to be done. We have to finish the war in Gaza, get our hostages back and destroy Hamas. Hamas will not be there and we’re not going to put the PA there.
Why replace one regime that is sworn to our destruction with another regime that is sworn to our destruction? We won’t do that. I can say that Israel, in any case, will control the area militarily. We’re not going to succumb to any pressure not to do that.
And I very much welcome President Trump’s plan to allow the voluntary relocation of Gazans who want to leave. And believe me, many of
them want to leave.
So, what’s left? Well, quite a few things and many opportunities, but obviously they’ll all go down the tube if Iran gets nuclear weapons.
The reason Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons is because successive governments, under my prime ministership, have led successive actions, which I won’t discuss here, forgive me, with the same detail over the years. And that set them back about ten years from where they thought they’d be ten years ago. They already thought they’d have a nuclear arsenal. They don’t.
We delayed them. But we didn’t stop them.
They moved very far on enrichment. They’re trying to move on weaponry. And the question is now what to do? Happily, we have a president in Washington who’s committed, as he says. And as he said to me many times, including just recently, we can’t allow Iran to have nuclear weapons.
And I said, I absolutely believe that I devoted a good chunk of my life to prevent that. But there are two ways to do it. One is to get a deal that would prevent them from doing that by dismantling their nuclear infrastructure; that means not that they will not enrich uranium, but that they will not have the capacity to enrich uranium, which means you destroy the centrifuges.
You remove, of course, the nuclear material that is already enriched. And there are a few other things that you have to do. But that’s the crux of it. The real deal that works is the deal that removes Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. By the way, the only reason you enrich uranium is to have nuclear weapons. There are dozens and dozens of countries that have civilian nuclear programs, and they don’t enrich uranium. So, Iran is constantly thinking, well, we have to find a reason why we’re putting these things in bunkers under mountains, maybe for radio isotopes, right, for medicine, or for nuclear submarines. Give me a break. They enrich uranium for one reason and one reason only. And that’s to make nuclear weapons, which they intend to use to destroy my country and threaten America once they have the weap-
ons of delivery. Ballistic missiles, ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, they will threaten every city in the United States. That is a palpable danger to Israel and to the free world. And it must be prevented.
The way to prevent it is to dismantle all the infrastructure of Iran’s nuclear program. That is the deal. We could not live with anything short of that, anything short of that could bring you the opposite result, because Iran will say, alright, I won’t enrich, wait, run out the clock, wait for another president, do it again. That’s unacceptable.
Equally, I think we should bring in the ballistic missiles — the prevention of the development of ballistic missiles into the deal. I think these are the two requirements. I said to President Trump that I hope that this is what the negotiators will do.
But I said one way or the other, Iran will not have nuclear weapons. So, from a seven-front war, we have a one-front war with Iran and its proxies. We appreciate the fact that the United States is taking action against the Houthis. It’s very important. We appreciate the help that we’re getting from the United States. Arms are flowing in.
It’s important we share the same goals, but we have to make sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons. A bad deal is worse than no deal. We need a good deal. And the only good deal that works is a deal like the one that was made with Libya that removed all the infrastructure. I can tell you now, you should applaud that. That’s the main point.
We have another front. It’s called the deep state. You heard about that? You’re talking about the deep state in America. It’s very shallow. It’s a puddle. Ours is ocean deep, it’s very deep.
It threatens democracy. It abrogates the rights of citizens to choose their government that will make its own decisions, its own appointments. That has to be obviously resolved. But we have to understand that there is another threat on the horizon.
And with this, I’ll finish, because I think it relates to what JNS is doing and doing so ably. And
that is, puncture the lies. The lies are disseminated in America by a systematic campaign that is funded, organized by governments, by NGOs, that are funded also by very wealthy individuals. There’s a lot of tourists in America. Yeah, a lot of tourists. There’s a lot of tourists in Israel, too. So, what do they do? They pay influencers. They use the social media in a very systematic way to attack the supporters of Israel. And I’m not talking about only the supporters of Israel on the left. I’m talking about the supporters of Israel on the right.
And that is a palpable threat to our future. We do not ask others to fight for us. We don’t ask for boots on the ground, but we ask for that support. That support means that the UN Security Council does not make binding resolutions against Israel. It means that Israel is not sanctioned, is not choked by the international community, and that support is being threatened by the systematic public opinion campaign.
And if there’s one thing that has to be done, it is to fight back. That’s what we do. We have to fight back, and you fight back. You fight back with the truth.
So, I ask you to continue to fight for the truth. All of you do it in one way or the other. You should do it well. You should do more, more, more and more. Because we’ve learned in the long history of our people that if somebody says that they want to kill you — believe them.
And these people who want to kill us enjoy the support now of young Americans who support our killers and our rapists and our wouldbe destroyers more than equally as much as they support us.
That has to be reversed. As fast as it came up, it can go down. But like in anything in antisemitism, people respect you only if you stand up for yourself.
And the main thing is not to cower, not to cower before our enemies here, not to cower before lies that are spread here and there, not to cower, to stand up and fight back.
That’s my message to you.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the JNS International Policy Summit, in Jerusalem on Sunday. JNS
SCHOOLS
This week at HALB: Art, history and Hatzalah
Here’s this week’s news from HALB, pictured below, clockwise from left.
Art
The eighth grade students created incredible food sculptures in art class! Hatzalah
An ambulance came to visit for the letter “A.” Students got the chance to go inside the ambulance and learn all about the life-saving work that Hatzolah does!
NYS History Days
On Sunday, April 27, five groups of HALB students traveled to Cooperstown to compete in New York State History Day as part of the National History Day (NHD) program. These groups had previously advanced from Long Island History Day and represented HALB in the Junior Group Documentary, Website, and Exhibit categories.
The students’ participation was part of a year-
long process in which they researched, designed, and created original projects based on the 2025 NHD theme, “Rights and Responsibilities.” HALB students excelled at the competition, with two groups advancing to Nationals to represent HALB and the State of New York and one group earning third place as an alternate. The results were as follows: •1st Place, Junior Group Website: “Voices of Conscience: The Vrba-Wetzler Report and the Responsibility to Act” by Alex Bornstein, Eli Berman,
It’s legacy Sunday at MTA
MTA hosted its annual Legacy Day on Sunday, devoted to bringing talmidim together with their grandparents and other special relatives.
After davening together, a lavish breakfast was served, with talmidim sitting with their relatives, friends and rebbeim, enjoying the varied options offered along with the camaraderie.
After benching, the talmidim went to shiur with their rebbeim, while their relatives listened to a shiur by MTA’s rosh Yeshiva and MTA grandparent Rabbi Taubes. The guests then joined the talmidim in their respective shiurim. This part of the program was definitely the highlight, as it brings tremendous nachas to learn with the next generation
and experience the continuum of Torah learning first-hand.
MTA puts a strong emphasis on continuing the legacy of strong Torah learning, and this program exemplifies this important value.
MTA looks forward to bringing family members together for such future events as their annual siyum and Seudas Preida.
Bram Feldman, Siggy Simon and Azi Verschleiser. •2nd Place, Junior Group Documentary: “Freedom Summer: Fighting for Rights, Shouldering the Responsibility for Change” by Lily Greenberg, Aviana Guttman, Ella Hametz, Molly Konig and Yakira Rogoff. •3rd Place, Junior Group Website (Alternate), “Enduring the Game: Rights and Responsibility in the Shadow of CTE,” by Daniel Ifergan, Sammy Matlis, Eli Pollack, Eli Taubenfeld and Aidan Weiden.
WINE AND DINE
As Lag B’Omer nears, let’s talk about eggplant
The eggplant — a beautiful berry — is so popular that its iconic color is instantly recognizable far beyond the food, in paint and fabric and more. My eyeglasses are eggplant as is a pretty serving platter I have. Even Farberware has an entire cookware set in eggplant. Most restaurants have some iteration of eggplant on the menu and most people eat this in some form or another. But at one time, the eggplant was thought to be poisonous and to make people crazy.
The eggplant came to us via a long a winding road. It was first cultivated in Southeast Asia, where it’s been grown for 4,000 years. It travelled through Persia and then through Europe. It was once reserved for the upper classes; the peasants believed that it was poisonous and called it “melanzana,” which means “mad apple.” It was believed to make people crazy.
Eggplants made their way into Sephardic cooking somewhere around the 9th century in Spain. The fruit was so popular among Sephardim that the phrase, “eating Jewish,” meant eating eggplants. As a result, few people outside of the Jewish neighborhoods, used eggplants in their cooking.
When Jews were expelled during the Inquisition, they inadvertently helped popularize the hardy plant, taking eggplants and their tasty recipes with them as they fled. They spread the hardy plant throughout northern Italy and the Mediterranean, cementing its place as a staple in the Mediterranean diet. Still, the name, and some of the myth, continued.
The integration of the Jewish population throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, and a few hundred years, helped dismiss that myth of the eggplant as poisonous. However, the name was permanent — it is still called melanzana in many parts of the world and on many menus in America — but the fear and stigma eventually disappeared.
Early Israeli settlers took food ideas from their neighbors in what was then Ottoman controlled Palestine. One of those foods was eggplant. Later, during what was called the
“tzena,” the austerity, settlers discovered that the strong plant would grow in the desert, making it one of the first crops grown in Israeli soil. Today, chatzilim is still a very popular ingredient in Israeli and Middle Eastern cooking. Many people in that part of the world claim they eat eggplant every day of their lives in many different ways.
Eggplant is a nutritious and versatile ingredient and can be part of a low fat and low calorie eating plan. The berry-used-as-a-vegetable, has about 35 calories per cup and is filled with fiber and lots of nutrients such as Nasunin, an antioxidant that helps fight inflammation in the body. This is found in the deep purple skin which is totally edible, especially in smaller eggplants. Eggplant also has Vitamin B, lots of vitamin K and other nutrients.
Eggplants can be cooked to be savory or spicy, or even bland enough for a young child. It can be fried or stewed, baked or broiled, made into a dip, or even a slightly sweet jam.
Many eggplant dishes are often loaded with oil which adds a lot of calories. Eggplants are like sponges and will drink in any liquid they come in contact with. A little bit of oil will suffice for frying and lots of flavors like lemon juice, vinegars, and tomatoes will seep into the plant when cooking and will enhance the bland flavor.
Enjoy this versatile and delicious ingredient in a myriad of different and scrumptious ways. As we celebrate Lag B’Omer, let’s also celebrate one of the oldest crops grown in Israel and take some eggplant dishes on our picnics.
Smoky Roasted Eggplant Dip (Pareve)
Easy to take on a picnic.
Extra Virgin olive oil
• 1 large or 2 small eggplants, about 1-1/2 to 2 pounds
• 1 head garlic, roasted, 15-30 cloves, to taste
• 2 to 3 large onions, sliced and caramelized
• 2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste
• 3 Tbsp. scallions, minced, white parts, to taste
• 2 Tbsp. chopped parsley
• 2 Tbsp. tahini, to taste
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Sesame seeds, black and white, to garnish (optional)
• Sunflower seeds, to garnish (optional)
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with foil. Set aside.
Rub the eggplant all over with EVOO, prick in about 10 places all over and place on the prepared pan. Roast until black, turning every 10 to 15 minutes. This will take about 30 to 60 minutes. When charred all over, Remove from the oven and let cool.
In a medium heavy saucepan, place 15 to 30 peeled cloves of garlic in enough olive oil to cover. Place over medium-low heat and cook until the cloves turn golden and are softened. Do not let them burn. Turn off the heat and remove from the burner. Let cool.
Alternatively, cut the tips off the cloves of a large head of garlic. Place the garlic on a sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle some olive oil over the garlic, bring the foil up over the top of the head of garlic and place on a cookie sheet to roast. Place in a 375 degree oven for about 50 minutes, until the garlic is soft. Set aside to cool.
While the eggplants are charring, thinly slice the onions and place in a skillet with some extra virgin olive oil. Cook over low heat until they become deep golden brown. Stir frequently to prevent burning. If they stick, add a tablespoon of water and scrape with a wooden spoon or silicon spatula. Set aside to cool.
Cool the eggplants and remove and discard the charred skin.
Place the onions, and scallions in the food processor. Add the roasted garlic, reserving the oil for later. Process with a few on/off motions until the mixture is jut blended, but not pasty. Scrape into a large bowl and add the eggplant. Mash with a fork and add tahini and lemon juice to taste. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Garnish with parsley and sesame seeds. Drizzle a bit of the garlic infused olive oil over all. Serve with warm pita or toasted pita. Makes about 3 to 4 cups.
Eggplant Fakin’ Bacon Snack (Pareve)
This is delicious and has a rich, smoky flavor that is great with dips or alone with your picnic meal.
• 1 eggplant
• 3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 Tbsp. tamari sauce or Soy sauce
• 2 tsp. pure maple syrup, Grade A dark Amber
• 1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp. liquid smoke
• 1/4 tsp. grated garlic
• 1/4 tsp. grated onion
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with foil and then with parchment paper. Set aside.
Whisk all the ingredients, except the eggplant, in a medium bowl. Set aside. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise. Cut thin slices and then cut the slices in half lengthwise so you have long, thin strips.
Place them on the parchment so that there is a bit of space between all slices. Brush one side with the seasoning mix, turn the slices and brush the other side.
Place in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Brush the top side once more and place back in the oven for an additional 20 to 30 minutes, until the slices are cooked through and are beginning to get crispy. Makes 30 to 45 strips. Delicious alone or with hummus or eggplant dip.
Simple Roasted Eggplant (Pareve)
This is a simple side dish that is delicious and low calorie. Great cut up in a salad to go.
• 1 tsp. paprika or smoked paprika
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1 eggplant
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Freshly squeezed lemon juice
OPTIONAL: Garam Masala, cinnamon, celery salt (omit salt) or any other spices your family likes. Place the first 6 ingredients in a small bowl and mix well. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and then a sheet of parchment. Set aside. Cut off the ends of the eggplant. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise, and then cut each half in half lengthwise. Place on the prepared pan and brush generously with the olive oil. Let sit for 5 minutes and brush again. Sprinkle all sides with the seasoning and place in the oven. Let roast until deep golden brown and soft. Drizzle with olive oil and/or lemon juice. Serves 4 to 8.
Kosher Kitchen
JoNI SchocKEtt Jewish Star columnist
Israel opens long scenic route in Judea, Samaria
Israel has inaugurated the Gvaot Forest Scenic Route (Derech Nof Gvaot) in Gush Etzion. The 4.3 mile road, Judea and Samaria’s longest scenic route to date, was paved through the heart of Gvaot Forest, planted in the 1980s by the Jewish National Fund.
The route “offers breathtaking views, forest serenity, and the options of hiking, cycling, or driving,” according to a Gush Etzion Regional Council statement.
The project was initiated by the Gush Etzion Regional Council and executed in partnership with and funded by the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Settlement Directorate and the Civil Administration.
Civil Administration Director Brig. Gen. Hisham Ibrahim noted that tens of thousands of Israelis came to hike in the Gush Etzion area over the Passover holiday “despite a complex security reality.”
He lauded the efforts of the Israeli security forces for managing to provide “maximum secu-
rity for hikers and local residents” and commemorated the unit’s efforts to benefit “this wonderful region.”
“This is exactly our grand vision — that teenagers, families and adults will roam freely throughout the vast Gvaot Forest, beyond fences, like free people, as befits the sons and daughters of this land,” said Gush Etzion Regional Council Head Yaron Rosenthal.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich commended the occasion, saying, “The 2025 settlement revolution is the biggest since 1967.”
Derech Nof Gvaot “is not only a stunning natural experience, but also another link in the normalization of settlement and, most importantly, a significant step in land preservation,” he continued. “We are investing in settlement — in infrastructure, tourism and connecting Israeli citizens to the Land of Israel.” —JNS
The new Gvaot Forest Scenic Route is the longest in Israel, stretching across rolling hills, lush woods, and “must-see” Holy Land views. JNS on X
At Mount Sinai South Nassau, we honor the power of nurses and recognize the invaluable contributions they make to our hospital, its patients, and the communities we serve.
Mount Sinai South Nassau nurses have earned Magnet® Recognition, a national quality standard that few hospitals obtain, three consecutive times since 2014. A Magnet designation highlights the nurses and hospital’s commitment to patient care and is an indicator of better outcomes for patients. As we celebrate Nurse’s Week, we recognize the Mount Sinai South Nassau nurses who achieved this high standard of care.
www.mountsinai.org/southnassau
תבש לש
Jewish Star Torah columnists:
•Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, 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,
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Holiness and childbirth: Life beyond biology
former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus •Rabbi Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi, Great Synagogue of Sydney •Rabbi Yossy Goldman, life rabbi emeritus, Sydenham Shul, Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association. rabbi Sir
The sidrot of Tazria and Metzora contain laws which are among the most difficult to understand. They are about conditions of “impurity” arising from the fact that we are physical beings, embodied souls, and hence exposed to (in Hamlet’s words) “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”
Though we have immortal longings, mortality is the condition of human existence, as it is of all embodied life.
Rambam explains:
We have already shown that, in accordance with the Divine wisdom, genesis can only take place through destruction, and without the destruction of the individual members of the species, the species themselves would not exist permanently... He who thinks that he can have flesh and bones without being subject to any external influence, or any of the accidents of matter, unconsciously wishes to reconcile two opposites, namely, to be at the same time subject and not subject to change. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, III:12
Throughout history there have been two distinct and opposing ways of relating to this fact: hedonism (living for physical pleasure) and asceticism (relinquishing physical pleasure). The former worships the physical while denying the spiritual, the latter enthrones the spiritual at the cost of the physical.
The Jewish way has always been different: to sanctify the physical — eating, drinking, sex and rest — making the life of the body a vehicle for the Divine Presence. The reason is simple. We believe with perfect faith that the G-d of redemption is also the G-d of creation. The physical world we inhabit is the one G-d made and pronounced “very good.”
To be a hedonist is to deny G-d. To be an ascetic is to deny the goodness of G-d’s world. To be a Jew is to celebrate both creation and Creator. That is the principle that explains many otherwise incomprehensible features of Jewish life.
The laws with which the Parsha begins are striking examples of this:
When a woman conceives and gives birth to a boy, she shall be teme’ah for seven days, just as she is during the time of separation when she has her period... Then, for thirty-three additional days she
A hedonist denies G-d. An ascetic denies the goodness of G-d’s world. A Jew elebrates both creation and Creator.
shall have a waiting period during which her blood is ritually clean. Until this purification period is complete, she shall not touch anything holy and shall not enter the Sanctuary.
If she gives birth to a girl, she shall have for two weeks the same teme’ah status as during her menstrual period. Then, for sixty-six days after that, she shall have a waiting period during which her blood is ritually clean.
She then brings a burnt-offering and a sin-offering, after which she is restored to “ritual purity.” What is the meaning of these laws? Why does childbirth render the mother teme’ah (usually translated as “ritually impure”, better understood as “a condition which impedes or exempts from a direct encounter with holiness”)? And why is the period after giving birth to a girl twice that for a boy?
There is a temptation to see these laws as inherently beyond the reach of human understanding. Several rabbinic statements seem to say just this. In fact, it is not so, as Maimonides explains at length in the Guide. To be sure, we can never know — specifically with respect to laws that have to do with kedushah (holiness) and taharah (purity) — whether our understanding is correct. But we are not thereby forced to abandon our search for understanding, even though any explanation will be at best speculative and tentative.
The first principle essential to understanding the laws of ritual purity and impurity is that G-d is life. Judaism is a profound rejection of cults, ancient and modern, that glorify death. The great pyramids of Egypt were grandiose tombs. Arthur Koestler noted that without death “the cathedrals collapse, the pyramids vanish into the sand, the great organs become silent.” The English metaphysical poets turned to it constantly as a theme. As TS Eliot wrote in “Whispers of Immortality”: Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin…
Donne, I suppose, was such another…
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton…
Freud coined the word Thanatos to describe the death-directed character of human life. Judaism is a protest against death-centred cultures.
“It is not the dead who praise the L-rd, nor those who go down into silence” (Psalm 114) “What profit is there in my death, if I go down into the pit? Can the dust acknowledge You? Can it proclaim your truth?” (Psalm 30). As we open a Sefer Torah we say: “All of you who hold fast to the L-rd your G-d are alive today” (Deut 4:4). The Torah is a tree of life. G-d is the G-d of life. As Moses put it in two memorable words: “Choose life” (Deut. 30:19).
It follows that kedushah (holiness) — a point in time or space where we stand in the unmediated presence of G-d — involves a supreme consciousness of life. That is why the paradigm case of tumah is contact with a corpse. Other cases of tumah include diseases or bodily emissions that remind us of our mortality. G-d’s domain is life. Therefore it may not be associated in any way with intimations of death.
This is how Judah Halevi explains the purity laws:
A dead body represents the highest degree of loss of life, and a leprous limb is as if it were dead. It is the same with the loss of seed, because it had been endowed with living power, capable of engendering a human being. Its loss therefore forms a contrast to the living and breathing. The Kuzari, II:60
The laws of purity apply exclusively to Israel, argues Halevi, precisely because Judaism is the supreme religion of life, and its adherents are therefore hyper-sensitive to even the most subtle distinctions between life and death.
A second principle, equally striking, is the acute sensitivity Judaism shows to the birth of a child. Nothing is more “natural” than procreation. Every living thing engages in it.
Sociobiologists go so far as to argue that a human being is a gene’s way of creating another gene. By contrast, the Torah goes to great lengths to describe how many of the heroines of the Bible — among them Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah and the Shunamite woman — were infertile and had children only through a miracle.
Clearly the Torah intends a message here, and it is unmistakable. To be a Jew is to know that survival is not a matter of biology alone. What other cultures may take as natural is for us a miracle. Every Jewish child is a gift of G-d. No faith has taken children more seriously or devoted more of its efforts to raising the next generation. Childbirth is wondrous. To be a parent is the closest any of us come to G-d himself. That, incidentally, is why women are closer to G-d than men, because they, unlike men, know what it is to bring new life out of themselves, as G-d brings life out of himself. The idea is beautifully captured in the verse in which, leaving Eden, Adam turns to his wife and calls her Chava “for she is the mother of all life.”
We can now speculate about the laws relat-
ing to childbirth. When a mother gives birth, she undergoes great risk. Throughout the centuries, childbirth has been a life-threatening danger to mother and baby alike, and even today there are ever-present risks for many. Furthermore, during the process of childbirth, a woman is separated from what until now had been part of her own body (a fetus, said the rabbis, “is like a limb of the mother”) and which has now become an independent person. If that is so in the case of a boy, it is doubly so in the case of a girl – who, with G-d’s help, will not merely live but may herself in later years become a source of new life. At one level, therefore, the laws signal the detachment of life from life.
At another level, they surely suggest something more profound. There is a halachic principle: “One who is engaged in a mitzvah is exempt from other mitzvot.”
It is as if G-d were saying to the mother: for forty days in the case of a boy, and doubly so in the case of a girl (the mother-daughter bond is ontologically stronger than that between mother and son): I exempt you from coming before Me in the place of holiness because you are fully engaged in one of the holiest acts of all, nurturing and caring for your child. Unlike others you do not need to visit the Temple to be attached to life in all its sacred splendor. You are experiencing it yourself, directly and with every fiber of your being. Days, weeks, from now you will come and give thanks before Me (together with offerings for having come through a moment of danger).
But for now, look upon your child with wonder. For you have been given a glimpse of the great secret, otherwise known only to G-d.
Childbirth exempts the new mother from attendance at the Temple because her bedside replicates the experience of the Temple. She now knows what it is for love to beget life, and, in the midst of mortality, to be touched by an intimation of immortality.
Protecting our souls from lashon ha’rah plague
In September 2000, in the wake of the second intifada, my unit was activated up as part of the massive call-up of reserves that occurred as fighting broke out all over the country. We had no idea how long we would be in for, which of course made the experience all the more difficult. Our unit was tasked with patrolling the “border” between Efrat, where I live, and BeitLechem (Bethlehem) and its environs, which lay a short ten-minute walk to the north.
One afternoon, I got an urgent call from one
of our lookouts that there seemed to be a large crowd gathering in one of the Arab villages near Efrat, and that it seemed they were surrounding a Jewish man with a gun. As we approached, we could see from a distance a large crowd of Arab villagers gathered around a kippah-wearing Jew.
As it turned out, the Jewish man caught in the middle of this crowd was someone I knew very well as he was the civilian deputy in charge of security for Efrat. It transpired that the Arabs in this village had seen that the council of Efrat was putting up street lights between Efrat and the Arab village, along the dirt road that led to Beit-Lechem. This was being done to prevent terrorists from sneaking into the village at night and opening fire on Efrat, which of course would cause our men to fire back and enflame the area.
The local Arab villagers, seeing a bulldozer and some engineers taking measurements, had become convinced that we were somehow trying to usurp their land, or perhaps fence them in (separating them from their vineyards that lie between Efrat and their village). So this deputy of security went in on his own to calm everybody down.
After we diffused the situation and got this fellow out of there, I really let him have it. He had endangered me and my men, not to mention himself; these were not the times to be walking into an Arab village alone with a gun, even if we had previously shared good relationships with these particular villagers.
But his response took the edge off the whole situation:
“You think I went in there because I care so much about those villagers? The reason I went in there was because I care so much about what this whole situation is doing to us. When we wake up in the morning, and this has all calmed down, I’m not worried about what we will have done to the Arabs, I am worried about what everything we have to do to the Arabs may do to us. It’s not their bodies I am
Respecting religious paths chosen by other Jews
One can argue that even the Torah hints to the kohen’s autonomy when it tells us how the kohen examines the tzara’at mark. Fourteen times the Torah says “v’ra’ah hakohen” — and the kohen sees it, yet only five times it says, “v’ra’ahu hakohen,” and the kohen looks at it/him.
The primary topic of our double parsha, Tazria-Metzora, focuses on the affliction of tzara’at, its diagnosis and prognosis. The attention is primarily on the kohen, who is given detailed instructions for how to detect what is or is not tzara’at. He is also given tremendous autonomy in deciding whether the mark he is examining is tzara’at
There is no mashgiach monitoring to see that what the kohen declares is “correct.” The kohen makes the call.
The suffix “hu” added to the “v’ra’ah” leaves open the suggestion that the kohen not only examines the mark, but he also examines the per-
It’s been said by many, too often to enumerate, that “everything is in the Tanach.” Everything. It’s also been said “no one learns ‘nach’.” Tanach is the acronym TN”K for Torah, the Neviim and Ketuvim, and includes every book of our Holy canon, from Breishit to the last book of Divrei Hayamim (Chronicles). This is the total of Hashem‘s divinely delivered words, instructions, commandments, rebukes and prophecies to us, His emissaries on earth. We, His Mamlechet Kohanim, Kingdom of Priests (Shmot 19:6), His Am
Segulah, Treasured People (Shmot 19:5), are to deliver this message to the world by our speech, writings, thoughts and actions.
But what kind of messengers can we be if we don’t know or learn Tanach (not only the weekly Torah parsha followed perhaps not by the Haftara but by kiddush club)? I tell more people than want to hear, that if you really want to understand what’s going on, don’t go online or open a newspaper or put on Fox News — open the navi and learn.
Yes, it’s opaque at times and there are many commentaries, at times conflicting, but start with the words and choose some commentators to guide you. Better yet, find a teacher or partner, or join the 929 Project — that’s what “learning” is all about.
Thankfully, in Israel, the appreciation of the importance of Tanach has greatly intensified over
He was a character straight out of the novels of Charles Dickens. Scholars have long found Dickens’ attitude toward Jews problematic. The character Fagin in the novel “Oliver Twist” is certainly a negative stereotype. But many are unaware of the character named Riah in Dickens’ last completed novel, “Our Mutual Friend.” Riah is portrayed as a proud Jew, honest, wise, compassionate and courageous. Pinkus always reminded me of Riah. He was a Holocaust survivor with no family, who eked out
a livelihood by peddling his wares from door to door in Jewish neighborhoods. Such street peddlers were commonplace several generations ago, and he was among the last of them. He occasionally visited the Brooklyn neighborhood in which I grew up, but I knew him best from the lower East side where I went to yeshiva.
I no longer recall his real name, but we called him Pinkus because of a then-popular but now long-forgotten Yiddish song about Pinkus the Peddler.
We would buy our school supplies and other amenities from him, mostly out of sympathy. But those of us who had the patience to listen to his tales were more intrigued by his conversation than by the quality or price of his wares. Like Riah the Dickens character, he was proud, honest, wise, compassionate and courageous.
son. Has the person already learned the requisite lesson? Can the person afford to be away from home for a week? For an additional week?
Perhaps the kohen is allowed to make a diagnosis in this fashion due to the unique nature of the spiritual malady. Tzara’at is not like strep throat, where you either have it or you do not. (My mother often compares being honest to being pregnant — you either are or you are not.)
Despite any markings on the flesh, you only have tzara’at if the kohen says you have it. And perhaps that determination is made based on factors beyond the textbook definition of a “nega,” a mark that looks like it might be tzara’at
In this period of Sefirat Ha’Omer, when many people take upon themselves the custom of certain mourning practices in memory of the students of Rabbi Akiva, the feeling in the air of-
ten boils down to the question: are we guilty of the same arrogant behavior which the Talmud ascribes to his ill-fated students (Yevamot 62b)?
Let us take the kohen case as an example.
Imagine there was a Temple in Jerusalem and people were afflicted with tzara’at symptoms and needed a kohen diagnosis to determine the status of the flesh marks in question. How many kohanim, who are declared by G-d to be fit (on account of their DNA) to serve as kohanim, will now be called unfit by those who view themselves as “holier than thou?”
Everyone has the right to go to whichever kohen one prefers, but would people start ranking kohanim based on perceived levels of frumkeit? Would we call into question the decision of the kohen, claiming we know better what is and what is not tzara’at?
the years. Besides the aforementioned 929 project (Tanakh B’yachad, learning one chapter per day, five chapters per week to cover all 929 chapters) there is the weeklong series of Tanach lectures and classes during the nine days preceding Tisha b’Av that is attended by thousands of men and women.
Tehillim, more than any book in the canon, is suited to the plight of the soldier in battle, the hostage in a tunnel, Jews everywhere persecuted and oppressed, because the exact words needed are employed by David Hamelech in the same situations! His beautiful and poetic language serves as a template for any Jew in similar straits throughout the generations.
This has particular resonance on Yom Hazikaron when we recall the mostly young men and women, similar in age to David
Hamelech, who have fallen from nearly identical threats; perhaps not from bow and arrow, sword or hails of rocks, but by RPG, gunfire, grenades, and drone strikes.
For this reason, on this day of remembrance, the mournful dirge written by David Hamelech upon the death of King Shaul and his son Jonathan, David’s most beloved friend, have particular poignancy. In 2 Samuel (1:17–27), King David eulogizes them in language so apt as it is poetic, that the text has become a familiar accompaniment to services of remembrance for the fallen all across Israel.
At once amazingly broad in its content and its depth of feeling, it elicits all the emotions of loss, grief, and sadness, while also providing an enormous sense of comfort and purpose.
He discussed neither his Holocaust experiences nor his ultimate rescue. Rather, he plied us with riddles about the Bible and Talmud and was a treasure trove of anecdotes about the people he knew from what he called “my world which is no more.”
Much later, I discovered another peddler in our own tradition, so that I no longer needed to identify just Pinkus with Riah. This peddler of old was one from whom not I, but none other than the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yannai, learned a great deal. And that brings us to the second parsha of this week’s double Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora
This week we will read in comprehensive detail about the metzora, the person inflicted with blemishes of the skin often translated as leprosy.
In the Bible, and even more so in the Talmud and Midrash, these blemishes are seen as Divine
punishment for sins of speech: malicious gossip, slander, and defamations of character — so much so that the very word metzora is said to be a contraction of the words «motzi ra,” “he who spreads evil.”
Hence the anecdote described in the Midrash Rabbah associated with this week’s Torah portion:
It once happened that a certain peddler was wandering from town to town and crying out, “Who wishes to buy a life-giving potion?” Rabbi Yannai heard this man’s shouting and called upon him for an explanation. The peddler took out the book of Psalms and showed Rabbi Yannai the verse: “Who is the person who desires life, loving each day to see good? Then guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn
Parsha of the week
Rabbi avi biLLet Jewish Star columnist
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Telling the truth when most news media won’t
The following is adapted from JNS Editor-inChief Jonathan Tobin’s address to the inaugural JNS policy summit in Jerusalem on April 27.
We are at a time of unprecedented challenges for the Jewish people, Israel and the United States.
More than 18 months ago, a Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terrorist assault on southern Israel was more than a barbaric set of atrocities — it was the initiation of a new war on Israel’s existence, unlike any other in its history.
Not only did it inflict a traumatic loss of life, but horrific crimes were committed against entire families asleep in their homes on the morning of Simchat Torah and the kidnapping of more than 250 Israelis. It also unleashed a wave of antisemitic hate throughout the globe, most particularly on American college campuses, where Jewish students became the targets of violent pro-Hamas mobs who sought to silence, shun, intimidate and threaten them.
Thus, this latest round of conflict is not just another border skirmish or terrorist atrocity to be dealt with, but then quickly forgotten until the next set of attacks comes at a time of the enemy’s choosing. While the wars of survival that Israel fought in its early decades were existential in nature as Arab armies sought vainly to push the Jews into the sea, the challenge we now face is in some ways far more insidious and dangerous.
In the late 1940s, ’50, ’60s and even into the 1970s, Israel was embattled, but Jews abroad, especially in the West and even in America, weren’t subjected to this kind of hounding and delegitimization.
Today, the fashionable, toxic leftist ideologies of intersectionality, critical race theory and settler-colonialism, coupled with the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), are fueling hatred and having a devastating impact on a generation of young people. So much of this generation has been indoctrinated in the neo-Marxist idea that the world is divided into
Our job is to provide facts and to counter lies and misinformation about Israel and the fight against antisemitism.
two forever warring groups: people of color, who are always victims and always in the right no matter what they do; and “white” oppressors, who are always in the wrong no matter what they do.
They look at the world and see only a race war in which — however illogical their reasoning and however divorced this intellectual construct is from the truth about the Middle East — Jews and Israel are inevitably part of the white oppressor class that must be defeated and destroyed.
This is why this targeting of Jews has been tolerated and encouraged by the administrations of elite educational institutions. It is also why these attacks on Jews are depicted in the mainstream corporate press, and even many outlets that purport to represent and serve the Jewish community, as merely the well-meaning activism of idealistic progressive youngsters who should be heard and validated rather than labeled for what they are: a mob of deluded supporters of a genocidal movement that is not so much analogous to the Nazis but to their successors, who believe that one Jewish state on the planet is one too many.
So, while Israelis continue to fight for their lives against terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and their paymasters in Iran, Jews elsewhere are now also under siege.
This set of dilemmas has also set up a new set of challenges for journalists — one that, unfortunately, most of them are failing to meet adequately. For not only has the far-left undermined education, but it has also wreaked havoc on the media.
In the last decade, a generation of journalists has entered the profession believing that their duty is activism on behalf of leftist causes rather than the traditional search for truth. Whereas media coverage of Israel and the Middle East had often been biased, in the past much of that slant was due to ignorance of the history and the context of the conflict, manipulation by Palestinian fixers or just plain sloppiness and laziness. But in the age of woke journalism, those already serious problems are now compounded by a false belief on the part of many in the newsrooms of most major outlets that Israel is a white oppressor and the Palestinians, their powerless victims, who have no agency in deciding their conduct or fate.
That is the formula for not just a biased media but also a media that is completely uninterested in learning about the reality of Israeli and Palestinian society.
Like faux journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, a much-lauded writer who turned a 10-day trip to the region into a book published a year after Oct. 7 that never even mentioned the events of that day, Hamas or terrorism, today’s best and brightest in journalism aren’t interested in reporting
Jonathan Tobin displays a first-place Simon Rockower award he received from the American Jewish Press Association at its convention in Atlanta in 2022. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
and fairly evaluating both sides of the conflict. They think their job is merely to regurgitate anything that might confirm a predetermined conclusion that Israel is a replica of the Jim Crow South. Far from an outlier, Coates is emblematic of the way so many people at major print and broadcast media think.
In such a media environment, accurate accounts of the facts, context and sober reporting remain not only rare but are essentially deemed undesirable by most of those who inform Americans about the news. This is also felt in the media around the world, and, yes, even in Israel.
Moreover, the prejudicial, race-obsessed account of Israel is utterly divorced from the reality of a war that has nothing to do with race but everything to do with genocidal Islamist beliefs. That reality is seldom conveyed to American media consumers. It also filters down into social media, where so many people, and nearly all young people, get their information about the world.
Why, then, be surprised that polls show that even as young Americans are trending more conservative in their politics than their elders, nearly half of them side with Hamas — a genocidal organization of murderers, rapists and kidnappers with medieval attitudes about the world rather than with a liberal, democratic Israel.
Sadly, much of that prejudice also makes itself felt among young American Jews, many of whom know little or nothing about Israel or the reality of a conflict that Palestinians have no interest in ending on any terms other than Israel’s destruction. Nor are all too many of them aware of the plain fact that it is the Jews who are the indigenous people of the land of Israel.
In a media and cultural milieu in which false narratives about race invariably prevail over facts and lies about Israel obscure or deny the justice of the Zionist cause, what chance is there for journalists who want to practice their craft honestly?
If that’s your goal, you aren’t likely to get a job these days at the New York Times or most major outlets.
Indeed, to sum up the situation of the American media, there’s bad news, good news … and some even better news.
The bad news is that not only is anti-Israel media bias worse than ever, but in the case of mainstream corporate media, it’s not fixable since contemporary journalists aren’t just making mistakes out of ignorance that can be corrected. Instead, they deliberately skew the news against Israel to make it conform to their false woke activist beliefs about the world.
The good news is, as the 2024 US elections proved, the mainstream media no longer matters as much as it once did. We can’t make it better and it’s a waste of time to try, but these leftist-dominated outlets are also increasingly the dinosaurs of journalism.
While some of them, like the New York Times, have a profitable business plan geared to cater to the credentialed elites that are the backbone of the political left, their influence is declining and increasingly limited to those already inside the liberal bubble.
The even better news is that a growing number of alternative news sources that, far from being outliers, are now the only ones to trust to give you fair, honest and truthful accounts of the world.
I’m proud to say that JNS is one of them. Our incredible growth in the reach of our articles, unmatched array of news and opinion, and a growing lineup of popular podcasts are testimony to the hunger for honest journalism that exists today.
Our success is linked to our belief that integrity and reliability, rather than the mere pursuit of clickbait, serve as the path to success.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
JOnATHAn S. TObin
JnS Editor-in-Chief
Wake up, Harvard U: Woke will make you broke!
THANE ROSENBAUM
Distinguished University Professor Touro College
Borrowing a nifty lyric from the Beastie Boys (those white-hot, hip-hop Jewish sensations): “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Hate Jews!).”
Yes, the original rap song focused on an altogether different “Right”: the one to “Party!” — once an eager rallying cry at college. But those were different collegiate days — before social justice and self-importance transformed mirthful campuses into humorless hotbeds of antisemitism.
Keggers officially traded for keffiyehs.
Faculty and student priorities took an extreme hard-left and Islamist turn on Oct. 8, 2023 — the day after 1,200 Israelis were murdered, butchered, beheaded and gang-raped. In a world more sane than antisemitic, there would have been global solidarity with the Jewish state and a singular determination to rid the world of Palestinian terrorism, once and for all.
Instead, as the Palestinians of Gaza braced themselves for Israel’s just and undeniably deserved retaliation, the Western world, which is looking more and more like one big call to prayer
Why should the federal government underwrite what are essentially trade schools in malicious anti-American, anti-Zionist propaganda?
these days, and brainless (often Jewish) pinkhaired useful idiots on campuses, acting on cue, decided this was the time to mount a global campaign to end the Jewish state.
Posters of Israeli and American hostages were ripped down and defaced. Anyone with a sympathetic word about Israel was shouted down. Jewish students were hounded on campus, vilified on social media, denied access to buildings and walkways by the Hamas Youth, who decided that Jews must repent before receiving a hall pass.
Antisemitically intoxicated students renounced prosaic goals like grades and graduation. There was now a much higher calling than classroom attendance. Why study Plato and Shakespeare if one could openly scream at Jewish classmates, “I am Hamas!” “Rape is resistance!” and the genocidal ditty that topped the charts, “Globalize the intifada!”
Harvard, America’s oldest and arguably “best” university (now third and dropping fast), went on a Jew-hating holiday. When the orgiastic celebration over dead Jews commenced on Oct. 8, 31 student groups blamed Israel as being “entirely responsible” for the crimson carnage the day before.
Not to be outdone, Columbia (ranked 13th, and slipping even faster) took advantage of its proximity to the media capital of the world and wholly redefined the university’s mission. Students and faculty hijacked the campus and declared every day to be Halloween. Masked militants introduced a primal, Neanderthal bloodlust to the Core Curriculum.
Suddenly, hating Jews became fashionably woke and collegiately sanctioned. Harvard and Columbia raised the bar on what an elitist, antisemitic institution of lower learning could look like.
But best of all, they insisted on being paid for the privilege with taxpayer dollars.
A day of reckoning arrived in the form of Executive Orders by the Trump administration, demanding that these institutions comply with
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Discriminating against Jewish students and faculty who identify their ethnic and national ancestry with the state of Israel is against the law.
Federal funding and their tax-exempt status were now in jeopardy. Trump froze $2.3 billion in aid and another $2.7 million in grants to Harvard, and $400 million in grants to Columbia, with billions more under review. He even threatened to revoke student visas for incoming Harvard students.
The universities have thus far balked. Harvard filed a lawsuit, claiming, among other things, infringement on its free speech.
Question his motives if you must, but when it came to protecting the civil rights of Jews and
defending a democratic ally, Trump meant business. Given the size of their endowments, these schools are big businesses. Why should the federal government underwrite what are essentially trade schools in malicious anti-American, antiZionist propaganda?
Typical of Trump, he acted impulsively. Before being stripped of funding, Title VI requires a hearing. Still, do these universities really believe that they will prevail when the evidence against them is so self-condemning?
There are scant college courses that deign to permit a pro-Zionist reading on the syllabus. Hardly anyone — surely, no one who wants tenure — teaches the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
Rosenbaum on page 22
Antisemitism data illustrates the ‘new normal’
GLOBAL FOCUS
BEN COHEN
As we mark the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany and the liberation of the concentration camps, that terrible chapter of history no longer seems so distant. While there are only 15.7 million Jews among a global population of more than 8 billion — still less than the nearly 17 million who were alive in 1938, the year before World War II broke out — the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that the number is at least twice that, given the volume of media and political attention that the Jewish state and Jewish communities outside attract.
The great majority of Jews live in either the United States or Israel. For most of the postwar period, both countries were a potent symbol of Jewish life freed from the strictures of the past. Israel was a radical departure from the previous 2,000 years of Jewish history, a land where Jews as a collective could live as a sovereign entity defended by their own military, no longer dependent on non-Jews for their well-being and security. America — the “Goldene Medina”
Some people like to kick the Jews when they are down. Others take a longterm view.
as some Yiddish-speaking immigrants called it — marked a similar rupture with the past, as a republic with no established religion and no history of antisemitic legislation (apart from one intemperate order issued by Gen. Ulysses Grant at the end of the Civil War, which was swiftly dispensed with by President Lincoln. “I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners,” Lincoln wrote.)
In 2025, such a rosy narrative is no longer possible. Israel is in a frankly odd position. It remains traumatized by the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023.
It is bitterly divided, perhaps more so than at any other time during its brief existence. It has delivered powerful and sustained blows to its mortal enemies in Gaza and Lebanon, but Iran’s ambitions to weaponize its nuclear program, which will be bolstered by any deal agreed to by the Trump administration that does not involve the complete dismantling of its various facilities and development sites, remain a nagging, overarching threat.
Above all, Israel’s very existence, and not its policies, continues to be the primary complaint of its adversaries.
Meanwhile, in America, Jews are facing the most hostile atmosphere in living memory. According to data gathered and published last week by the Anti-Defamation League, there were a whopping 9,354 antisemitic incidents during 2024, the highest ever recorded in its annual audit. That marked a 5% rise on 2023 and an 893% rise over the past decade. In 2015, one year after another bitter war in Gaza triggered by relentless Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the south, the ADL recorded 942 incidents. At the time, it seemed like an unprecedented challenge. Now, it feels like a drop in the ocean.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the ADL report was its finding that nearly 60% of the incidents in 2024 were related to the Jewish state.
“Increasingly, extreme actors in the anti-Israel space have incorporated antisemitic rhetoric into their activism; it has become commonplace for perpetrators across the political spectrum to voice hatred of Israel or conspiracy theories about the state in a range of antisemitic attacks,” the ADL noted.
Among the offenders creating this poisonous atmosphere were Students for Justice in Pales-
tine, sundry groups on the far left and our very own fifth column — the spectacularly misnamed “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Additionally, slogans urging Israel’s destruction and chants of “We don’t want no Zionists here” are not restricted to public spaces but instead are increasingly present outside Jewish-owned businesses, Jewish schools from K-12, synagogues and community centers. College campuses are, of course, the riskiest locations with nearly 1,500 incidents involving offenders who would no doubt call themselves “anti-Zionists” and leave it at that.
See Cohen on page 23
Pro-Palestinian flag and signs at the University of Milan, Italy. Saggittarius A via WikiCommons
The Beastie Boys, all grown up in 2009. From left are Jewish band members Adam (“Ad-Rock”) Horovitz, Adam (“MCA”) Yauch and Michael (“Mike D”) diamond. Maddy Julien via WikiCommons
See
At LI museum, butterflies link Shoah and Oct 7
NECHAMA BLUTH
While most people today know something about the Holocaust, future generations will not have the opportunity to hear firsthand accounts from survivors.
Nevertheless, we’ll need to keep the history of the Shoah alive. That’s something that can be accomplished by watching movies and documentaries, going to museums, reading books or hearing survivors’ recorded testimonies.
I have visited a few Holocaust museums over the years but one that I didn’t know about is the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, in Glen Cove on Long Island’s North Shore.
At the center, there is a memorial (created in 1998 by Jolanta Zamecka) dedicated to the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Shoah. In 2019, an amphitheater for outdoor workshops and events was completed and memorial stanchions installed. On the entrance to the memorial and the stanchions are butterflies.
Why was the butterfly was chosen to represent the Holocaust?
Butterflies symbolize transformation, hope, and rebirth. As seen in the poem “The Butterfly,” by Pavel Friedmann, a butterfly represents the beauty and freedom that was ripped from those who were murdered during the Holo-
Butterflies signify transformation, hope and rebirth.
caust. Friedmann wanted to juxtapose that image of a child’s joy and freedom with connections to a butterfly and the reality of their captivity.
After recognizing the significant role of the butterfly within the Holocaust, the information I was coming across sounded oddly familiar.
Young Ariel Bibas loved butterflies. In his story, history repeats: A young child ripped from his home and murdered just for being Jewish.
All Ariel hoped for at his young age was flying (like Batman, his favorite superhero) and rescuing people from a pit. His freedom was stolen and he was held in captivity.
On April 6, the Academy of Hebrew Languages announced that they renamed the Jerusalem fritillary butterfly (Melitaea ornata) as the Ariel fritillary (in Hebrew, going from Kitmit Yerushalayim (Orange Jerusalem) to Kitmit Ariel (Orange Ariel) to honor the memory of four-year-old Ariel Bibas.
In Tanach, Jerusalem is sometimes referred to as Ariel.
The idea to rename an orange butterfly came from the academy’s zoological committee. The
committee has taken it upon themselves the task of giving Hebrew names to all animal life — and insects — that are native to land of Israel.
“The thought of Ariel flying amongst us and adding beauty and color to the world greatly moves us,” the Bibas family shared on social media.
This is one of the countless tributes being done in his memory.
Additionally, with the help of Toys for Hospitalized Children, an organization that gifts toys to bring joy and healing to sick children, they dedicated the Bibas Playroom at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Israel. It’s features orange flowers and butterflies and an image of the Bibas family dog Tonto. The room will have a “digital touch wall,” a gaming table and other play equipment.
The medical center hopes that the playroom will bring joy, comfort, and healing to young patients, in memory of the Bibas family.
“Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri’s memory is especially poignant as Schneider Children’s Hospital helped to triage children returning from captivity
in Gaza,” explained Rabb JJ Hecht II, president of Toys for Hospitalized Children. “This playroom symbolizes the strength and resilience of the Jewish community.”
We must continue educating future generations so that history doesn’t repeat itself yet again. Once was unimaginable and a second time was unfathomable.
We must each do all we can to prevent such horrors from happening.
Never again is NOW!
The Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, located on the Welwyn Preserve at 100 Crescent Beach Rd. in Glen Cove, is open weekdays 10 am to 4:30 pm, weekends noon to 4 pm. Admission is $10 adults, $5 students and seniors. www.hmtcli.org, 516-5718040.
Nechama Bluth is assistant for The Jewish Star. Write: nbluth@TheJewishStar.com
‘Aliyah of the soul’ doesn’t require Israel move
More than a year and a half after Oct. 7, the Jewish community in North America is at a critical juncture. We have kindled candles, altered our profile pictures and orchestrated panels and marches. Yet the fundamental question remains: What kind of Jew will endure the forthcoming chapter of history?
The solution does not lie in fundraising galas or interfaith brunches. The key to our future is in the transformative power of the “aliyah of the soul.”
Aliyah of the soul is not about moving to Israel, it’s about moving Israel into us. It’s a spiritual return, a cultural reconnection and an ideological revolution.
It is Hebraization. It is empowerment. It is the reawakening of Jewish identity from exile consciousness to rootedness.
Because the truth is this: If you’re not going to live in the Land of Israel, then the Land of Israel must begin to live within you.
•We need a Diaspora Jew who is not just “connected to Israel,” but constructed by it.
•A Jew who speaks Hebrew, not just stumbles
A Jew who cannot speak Hebrew is like a pianist who cannot read music. They may perform but never create.
through a Haftarah portion.
•A Jew who trains their body to defend their family, not just file another report to the AntiDefamation League.
•A Jew who knows their story, history and destiny, and isn’t afraid to own it publicly.
This is not a return to ritual alone. It is not about being more religious. It is a return to the mission, requiring three pillars: language, strength and consciousness.
The father of modern Hebrew, Eliezer BenYehuda, didn’t just revive a dead language. He rewired the Jewish brain.
He understood what too many Jewish educators have forgotten: that language is not just a means of communication but a crucial part of our identity. It’s not enough to teach Jewish kids to “feel proud.” They need to think in Hebrew because Hebrew carries within it the code of our people — the stories, values, rhythms and worldview of a 3,000-year-old civilization.
Today, Hebrew in North America is treated as a side-dish elective. Something you learn a little of before you become a b’nai mitzvah and then forget. This must end.
We need complete Hebrew immersion, beginning in early childhood and continuing through high school. We need Hebrew-speaking nannies, Hebrew-language Jewish camps and Hebrewinfused Shabbat dinners. And we need to fund these things at scale.
If Catholic schools can teach Latin theology and still produce doctors and lawyers, then Jewish day schools can teach Gemara in lashon hakodesh (literally “the holy language”) and still prepare kids for Harvard.
A Jew who cannot speak Hebrew is like a pianist who cannot read music. They may perform, but they will never create. And the future of the Jewish people must be one of creation.
Portrait of Eliezer and Hemda Ben-Yehuda in their house in Talpiot, outside Jerusalem, 1912. Widener Library at Harvard University
Digital rendering of the playroom being built in Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva by the Toys for Hospitalized Children nonprofit in memory of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas.
“The Butterfly,” a poem by 21-year-old Shoah victim Pavel Friedmann, is etched into the first stanchion in the Children’s Memorial Garden at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove. Jennifer Corr, LI Herald
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Freedman…
Continued from page 17
worried about, it’s our soul.”
And while I disagreed with how he went about it, thinking back, it still makes me proud to be a part of an army and a people that think that way.
The key question, with all that is going on today, is how we protect our souls. When Jewish soldiers offer water to Arab terrorists, or clean up Arab homes after being forced to use them as lookout posts, what they are doing is not only about the maintaining Arab property, it is about protecting their Jewish souls.
In this week’s double portion of Tazria and Metzora, the Torah speaks of the metzorah, a person who is “diagnosed” by the Kohen as being afflicted by tzara’at, a spiritual disease akin to (but not identical with) leprosy. This affliction comes, according to our tradition, as the result of the sin of speaking lashon hara, or slander. (See Maimonides Hilchot Tuma’t Tzara’at 16:10.) Once it is clear that an individual is in fact suffering from tzara’at, he must leave not only his home and family, but the camp of Israel as well.
Only after the proscribed period of time, can he begin the process of re-entering society.
Given that the malady in question is clearly viewed by Jewish tradition as a physical consequence of a spiritual mistake, one wonders why the process of mending the error of his ways necessitates being shunned by society and excluded from even physically being a part of the community.
Maimonides suggests that the penalty of the metzorah is so severe precisely because the sin is so destructive to the fabric of society. If his slandering tongue was used for such negative purposes, it is better, for a while, for him to have no one to talk to. Indeed, the Talmud (Erchin 16b) suggests that since he caused husbands to separate from wives, and friends to become separated from each other, let him now experience the same and be separated from everyone.
A closer look at this issue, however, reveals that all is not as it seems. Our general perception is that the problem with slander is that it causes people to think ill of each other, and distances the listener from those he is hearing slander about, causing rifts in society and separating us one from another.
But the first time we find an allusion to leprosy and slander in the Torah would seem to belie this supposition: Moshe, in the midst of his dialogue with G-d at the burning bush, is suddenly made to experience the pain of tzara’at, (Shemot 4:6), which Rashi explains comes as a punishment for his slander of the Jewish people. In declaring that the Jewish people would not believe he was sent by G-d (4:1), Moshe is essentially slandering the Jewish people by suggesting they would not believe the messenger of G-d. For this, suggests Rashi, Moshe is punished with a degree of tzara’at which, as mentioned is the consequence of slander. But what transgression has actually occurred?
It is ludicrous to suggest that hearing the “slander” of Moshe somehow impacts G-d’s perception of the Jewish people. And it is equally absurd to imagine such slander can cause G-d to distance Himself from the Jewish people. And the case of Moshe is not unique, as we find similar occurrences with both Eliayhu (Melachim I, 19:10) as well as Yishayahu (6:5), who are both punished for their harsh criticism of the Jewish people, even though they were speaking to no one else but G-d!
Perhaps the transgression of slander is so severe, not only for its impact on society, but also (and perhaps even foremost) for its impact on the speaker him or herself.
If a person can speak negatively about his or her fellow human being, then he or she does not really see the image of G-d that is part of every human being, and that will gradually destroy the speaker’s soul. If I speak ill of another person, I am not just damaging them (and their reputation), I am actually damaging myself as well.
Which leads us to a crucial idea that Rav Avigdor Nevehnsahl points out in his Sichot Le’Sefer VaYikra, and that is the relationship between where we are spiritually and where we are physically.
On Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol doesn’t just walk straight in to the Holy of Holies in the Temple. He first has to undergo an extensive process, which prepares him for that moment. He too, like the metzorah, must leave his home for the seven days prior to Yom Kippur, only he is headed in the opposite direction: he actually lives on the Temple mount for seven days before he is considered ready to enter the temple and the Holy of Holies. Apparently, part of the process, which elevates him spiritually, is that he lives in a place of sanctity. And where he is living is actually a part of who he is trying to become.
Conversely, the metzora his forced out of the camp precisely because his soul is on a lower level. When he speaks slander, he damages his soul, and the desolation he may cause others, is first and foremost the desolation that affects himself. So he has to spend some time in a place of desolation, as befitting the spiritual state of his own soul.
This, incidentally, is why, when the Jewish people, through their misdeeds, reach a particularly low spiritual level and were no longer worthy of living as a people in the land of Israel, and were ultimately forced into exile.
Even today, when we are in the midst of the incredible process of the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, we are still far from being worthy of a holy united city with a Beit Ha’Mikdash, a home of sanctity, on the Temple mount.
We often assume we are in great shape because, after all, we are doing so many wonderful things. We (hopefully) give a lot of tzedakah; we celebrate Shabbat and eat the most kosher meat in town. We have only to look around, suggests the Torah, and see where we are, to realize, to some extent, who we are.
The problem with slander is that it destroys one’s perception of those around us, and that destroys our soul. Which is why such a person is separated from society and sent off to be alone. Because he needs time to do some serious thinking or, quite literally, soul-searching.
And when we yearn for the people and places we miss and see how beautiful they truly are, then we are and will be at last ready, to come home.
Rabbi Binny Freedman is Rosh Yeshiva of Orayta in Jerusalem. A version of this column was previously published. Write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
ers choose to follow more stringent commentaries and poskim. Both approaches are admirable for the individuals who choose these routes for themselves.
The problem arises when people try to dictate for others how they should live. Every Jew who is a member of a shul, or who has a rabbi they turn to for halakhic guidance, demonstrates the acceptance of an acceptable halakhic authority figure who serves as the spot where the buck, soto-speak, stops.
Just as the kohen did not need a mashgiach looking over his shoulders, our communities need to find a way to stop looking over others’ shoulders or scaring people to submit to things they don’t believe in because they must look over their shoulders to see who is watching.
Live and let live. Mind your own business. Grow in your Jewish experience, and let others grow in theirs at a pace that works for them.
Avi Billet, who grew up in the Five Towns, is a South Florida-based mohel and rabbi of Anshei Chesed Congregation in Boynton Beach. This column was previously published. Write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
From time immemorial, commentators have struggled with the question, “What did the peddler say that Rabbi Yannai did not already know?” Rabbi Yannai, by his own testimony, had read the book of Psalms many times. The meaning of the verses quoted seems to be self-evident. What could this peddler have added to Rabbi Yannai’s understanding?
Permit me to share with you one approach to demystifying this passage in the Midrash. It is drawn from a work by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, a very insightful 20th century rabbi who lived and wrote in Israel. He reminds us of a teaching by Maimonides to the effect that there are similarities between physical health and illness and moral health and illness.
Taking that analogy further, Rabbi Zevin reminds us that there are foods for healthy people which those who are ailing can simply not digest. They need to first ingest medicine, healing foods, before they are ready for a proper diet.
Similarly, before one can embark upon the proper moral life, he or she often needs to first be healed from a prior tainted moral status. Thus, before one can live a life of “turning from evil and doing good; seeking peace and pursuing it,” which is a normal healthy moral life, it is often necessary to first wean himself from habitual immoral practices which are typically very resistant to change.
Continued from page 17
Ironically, what we think or even what we know does not matter when it comes to tzara’at. The call belongs to the kohen alone, without the input of a non-kohen.
How many of us recall stories of a bygone era, when our grandparents or great-grandparents would take a chicken, bring it to the shochet and then to the rabbi to see if it was slaughtered correctly?
And how many of us can recount stories of a rabbi who looked not at the chicken but at the poor woman, sometimes a widow, who the rabbi knew could not afford to lose this chicken, and he declared with tears in his eyes that the chicken was kosher?
What would some of our brethren say today about such a rabbi? That he wasn’t frum enough? That he was an am haaretz (ignorant simpleton)? That he was unfit to be a rabbi?
Or perhaps he knew a lot more about Torah and Chesed, and about being nohegkavod zeh lazeh (respecting one another) than Rabbi Akiva’s students knew, and than those of us who seek to criticize other Jews all the time know.
No one is perfect. We all klop “al cheit” on Yom Kippur. But it is time for all factions of the Jewish people to respect the fact that we are different and have different ways of serving G-d. Some are committed to Halakha, some are not.
Among those who are committed to halakha, some choose to follow a straightforward understanding, or even a liberal understanding of halakha, basing their approach in what is written in the Shulchan Arukh and its commentaries. Oth-
“HaTzvi Yisrael al bamotecha chalal, aich naflu giborim”-the beauty of Israel is slain upon Your high places, O’ how the mighty have fallen” (ibid, 1:19). This refrain, “O’ how the mighty have fallen,” so powerful that it has become common even in English idiom, expresses both deep grief and remorse over the loss, while simultaneously lionizing the strength and bravery of those who have been struck down. If you do nothing else on Yom Hazikaron , but read these 11 short pesukimverses, you will capture the essence of what Yom Hazikaron is.
And when we abruptly turn to Yom Haatzmaut, a day of great happiness and appreciation for the first sovereign, independent Jewish state in 2,000 years, we turn to another of David’s compositions — the Hallel, from Tehillim chapters 113 to 118: “Hodu la’Shem Ki Tov, Ki l’olam chasdo (give thanks to Hashem for He is good; His kindness endures forever)” (Tehillim118:1) and “Zeh Hayom Asa Hashem, Nagila v’nismecha vo (this is the day Hashem has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it)” (ibid 118:24).
Two days as opposite as can be, yet both appropriately expressed by words found in our same Tanach, in this case by the same divinely inspired author, King David. Words that are timeless and as appropriate now as when they were written over 3,000 years ago. You don’t have to shout them or even sing them. Whisper them to Hashem in Hebrew if you are able, as well as in English so you understand their meaning. If you can, read some commentary on them, easily available online or in the many volumes we have on our bookshelves. You’ll feel so much better.
As the Mishnah might say, here is the general rule:
•If you want to know what to say, readTanach.
•If you want to know what to think, read Tanach.
•If you want to know what to feel, what to expect, how to act, how to begin to understand, read and learn Tanach. It’s all in there.
Shabbat shalom.
Dr. Alan A. Mazurek is a retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida. He is a former chairman of the ZOA. Write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
Hence the ingenious insight of the peddler Rabbi Yannai heard. “Do you want to know the secret of a long life? Of a properly lived life of doing good and pursuing peace? Then first you must guard your tongue from evil. That is the secret potion, the healing medicine which will enable you to go on to the next step, moral health.”
In this analysis, correcting one’s patterns of speech is a therapeutic process, a life-giving potion; not a food, not the brad of life.
Only after this pernicious but pervasive fault is corrected, only after this moral disease is cured, can a person actively engage in the next verse in Psalms: “Turn from evil and do good…”
Rabbi Yannai was accustomed to reading these verses differently. He understood the question, “Who desires life?” But he thought that there was one compound answer: guard your tongue, turn from evil, and do good.
The peddler taught something much more profound. The answer to “Who desires life?” is a complex one. It consists of stages, the first of which is a healing process acquired by ingesting the potion of good speech. Then one can move up to the next stage, living a full and healthy moral life.
Pinkus the peddler taught me a lot when I was but a teenager. What I did not realize then was that he was following a long and honored tradition of itinerant peddlers who peddled not just trivial commodities, but words and wares of wisdom.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Continued from page 19
No one dares acknowledge that Zionism is, in actuality, the original and most successful postcolonial movement of self-determination. No one admits the biblically obvious: Jews are indigenous to the Holy Land.
No Ivy League official condemned the massacre on Oct. 7. No one called for the return of the hostages. Most shocking of all, Hamas was treated like a campus mascot. No one highlighted that Hamas is a genocidal death cult that is as much an enemy to Palestinians — most especially, women and homosexuals — as it is to Jews.
Continued from page 17
from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”
Rabbi Yannai exclaimed, “All my life I have been reading this verse and never quite understood what it meant, until this peddler came and explained it… Therefore, Moses admonished the Jewish people and said to them these are the statutes of the ‘metzora,’ the statutes of the ‘motzi shem ra,’ the bearer of malicious gossip.”
Universities demand free speech and academic freedom, but only if it is approved speech and the freedom to spread lies and distort history. To this day, each of these institutions believes that threatening Jews is justifiable so long as it is ancillary to supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel. Talk about shapeshifting, disingenuous nonsense.
Really? You mean if I happen to oppose racial equity, I can shove an African-American on campus and shout, “Lynch Blacks!”? Does academic freedom mean that the Harvard History
Continued from page 17
Continued from previous page Department, if it so chooses, can teach only one perspective on the Civil War — the one espoused by the Confederate Army and plantation owners — with each course concluding that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was presidential overreach?
Universities have surrendered critical thinking to groupthink, replaced free speech with selective censorship, and categorically forbidden viewpoint diversity, especially if it involves seeing Israel as anything other than a settler-colonial, apartheid regime.
Punitive measures were necessary and most definitely deserved. They had well over a year and a half to properly respond to the antisemitism that had overtaken their campuses. Instead comes academic jargon and lip service.
At the first, infamous congressional hearing, three presidents of elite schools refused to concede that calling for the genocide of Jews violates their Codes of Conduct. (It’s not protected under the First Amendment, either.) They dissembled, appearing contemptuous, all the while fearing how their testimony would play at home.
The natives on campus were restless, after all. The joke was on Congress. The gods of DEI were running these elite, out-of-touch, self-indulgent academies. Neither the safety of Jews nor the obligations of open inquiry were going to get in the way. Is it any wonder Jewish enrollment at these schools has been declining?
Some things, of course, never change. Many of the Jewish legacy organizations, and the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements, signed a letter opposing the deportation of pro-Hamas foreign students and the denial of federal funds to these universities.
Black Lives Matter déjà vu, anyone? Jews are always pumping their fists at the front of the line, loudly proclaiming their tikkun olam bona fides, only to end up standing alone in other lines, destinations unknown, wondering what went wrong.
Thane Rosenbaum is Distinguished University Professor at Touro University.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Cohen…
Continued from page 19
In the same week that the ADL released its report, Tel Aviv University published its annual report on antisemitism worldwide, which made for similarly depressing reading. That report noted a decline in incidents during 2024 from their peak in the closing months of 2023, when Israel was still reeling from the venom of the Hamas assault.
“The sad truth is that antisemitism reared its head at the moment when the Jewish state appeared weaker than ever and under existential threat,” noted the report’s editor, professor Uriya Shavit. Even so, the 2024 decrease was not uniform: Australia, Canada, Spain and Italy were among countries recording a rise in outrages targeting Jews compared with the previous year. Clearly, some people like to kick the Jews at the very moment when they are down, while others take a more long-term view.
The fact that so many incidents were logged in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 slaughter tells us that, just as in the Muslim world, the fundamental issue is not what Israel does, but the mere fact that Israel is. This reality manifests at every single pro-Palestinian — more precisely, pro-Hamas — demonstration. Some protesters will carry signs urging Israel to “stop bombing hospitals,” which is a gross misrepresentation of the IDF’s tactics, with its implication that Israel seeks to deliberately kill Palestinian civilians, but not necessarily antisemitic.
The point is that the majority of demonstrators seem more motivated by the prospect of destroying Israel than they are by the plight of the Palestinians. That is why chants urging the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” and banners condemning “Zionism” are far more common.
It also helps to explain why the pro-Hamas movement has studiously ignored the spread of anti-Hamas protests in Gaza, which, in recent days, have included calls to release the hostages
Proudly Jewish. Proudly Zionist.
still in Hamas captivity not because of any humanitarian reasons, but because growing numbers of Gazans have final twigged that their lives would be infinitely easier if Hamas would just back down.
The ongoing symbiosis of hatred of Israel with classical antisemitism can be twisted to make the point — as some anti-Zionists do, particularly those who identify as Jews — that Israel’s existence is the principal source of antisemitism today.
Within the Jewish community, that needs to be countered with the message that we cannot succumb to victim-blaming. Outside of the Jewish community, we need to stress over and again that the security of the Jews will never again be left to non-Jews.
In both spaces, Jews need to walk with their heads held high, knowing in their hearts that we do not have to apologize for Israel.
That may seem obvious, but I write these words in the anticipation that future audits undertaken by the ADL or anyone else are likely to remain consistent over the next few years, and may even worsen as conspiracy theories about Jewish influence and Israeli power that are not directly connected to the Palestinians take hold.
Ben Cohen is a senior analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Bellos…
Continued from page 20
Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote, “We were slaughtered in the ghetto not because we lacked arms, but because we lacked the resolve to use them.” In 2025, we have resources, wealth and education, but we still lack the courage to train our children to defend themselves.
Too many American Jews are still afraid of Jewish strength. We fear looking “too aggressive.” We fear offending our non-Jewish neighbors. We fear what it would mean to embrace
power. That fear is killing us.
Aliyah of the soul means integrating physical empowerment into Jewish life.
Every Jewish school should have Krav Maga on the curriculum. Every synagogue should have security protocols, not just guards but also trained members. Every Jewish teen should learn that “Never Again” is not a slogan — it’s a skill set.
Strength is not un-Jewish. It’s what allowed David to face Goliath. It’s what brought us from Auschwitz to the Israel Defense Forces. And it’s what will enable Diaspora Jews to walk tall again.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said, “The Jew bows only before G-d.” That’s not just political rhetoric; it’s a moral framework. Too many Diaspora Jews still walk through the world like tolerated guests. We hide our Jewishness. We downplay our Zionism. We explain ourselves. We apologize.
Aliyah of the soul is a reset button for the Jewish mind. It is the internalization that we are not relics of an ancient tradition, floating survivors of genocide, but living heirs of the most excellent civilizational story ever told — and our mission is not to survive but to lead. Our schools must teach Jewish history as a legacy of leadership, not a chain of victimhood. Our synagogues must become centers of cultural renaissance, not nostalgia. Our nonprofits must stop selling fear and start investing in the future. This is not a theory but a call to action. And the blueprints are already here.
Theodor Herzl built a state with a pen and a vision. David Ben-Gurion built an army with boys from the yishuv. Ben-Yehuda built a language with stubborn faith. Now it’s our turn. Not to make a second Israel, but to create a Hebrew diaspora. A strong diaspora. A soulful diaspora.
Aliyah of the soul is the next chapter in the Zionist story. It begins not with a plane ticket but with a mindset.
The question is: Will we return to ourselves? Or will we fade away in English?
The future is Hebrew. The revolution is now. Adam Scott Bellos is CEO of the Israel Innovation Fund. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
