Even if anime robots like this one were subject to jus cogens (defined as fundamental principles of international law from which no exception is permitted) and they violated those rules by committing such attrocities as genocide, it’s unlikely the international community would call them to account. While anime robots — and killer-states such as China, Sudan and Syria — get a free-pass, Israel, uniquely, is subject to exaggerated claims under what our columnist calls Jews cogens Andrey, Adobe
JERUSALEM — After working for the New York Times for 35 years (and now, almost 20 years after I retired as managing director for creative services), this and a related post on Facebook is my first public criticism of the work of my for-
mer colleagues. In the past, I’ve confined my comments to a private Facebook group of about 2,500 Times alumni and staff, as well as to personal discussions with friends and former co-workers.
But what we are seeing at the Times today is not just bad journalism. It is an appalling twisting of the facts and a mindful, heartless concealment of the truth.
Last Saturday, rather than running a photo of hostage Evyatar David being forced to dig his own grave by Hamas terrorists and writing about the actual reaction of millions of Is-
HOWard BrESSlEr
THE JEwISH STAR
There is a legal term, jus cogens, that refers to a category of norms — peremptory norms — that govern international law. The term speaks to a body of law from which no exemption is permitted, including war crimes and crimes against humanity — rules from which international state actors cannot be excused from compliance.
But lately, there appears to be another area of international law: the law of Jews cogens. That would be a set of “norms” that are only considered normal and inescapable when applied to the Jewish state.
France
When Islamic terrorists killed 128 people and wounded 200 in Paris, France’s President announced: “To all those who have seen these awful things I want to say that we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless.” But when similar Islamic extremists kill ten times that number — and also rape, mutilate and kidnap hundreds of people in Israel France intends to reward them with a state of their own.
This is France, which collaborated with the Nazis during its Vichy regime, that now seeks to punish the Jewish state for refusing to allow people who mean to commit genocide against it to do so, endangering Jews with its fecklessness.
England
England, in response to Islamic terror attacks in London in 2017, expressed that “[the attacks] are bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy
raelis who had seen it, the video desk and foreign desk ran an article leading with a photo of a relative handful of protesters in Tel Aviv, with the following headline and subhead: Hundreds Protest in Tel Aviv After Hostage
Videos Surface From Gaza: The circulation of videos created by Hamas showing Israeli hostages living in dire conditions incited families to protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a cease-fire and the return of their loved ones.
If the Times still had a Jerusalem bureau that reported the thoughts, communications and actions of the vast majority of Israelis, as
it once did, it would have told readers that the reaction of millions to this and other photos and videos of the physical and psychological torture of our children is neither fear nor protest. It is horror, rage and resolve.
The symbolism of the photo is so apt, since this is exactly what most current Times news, editorial and op-ed page writers and editors — and those justifiably fearful of the Islamic street in the West — are arguing daily that the people of Israel should do: Dig our own graves.
See Newspaper of record on page 3
Blood-stained England and France have the Charles de Gaulle to accuse Israel of disproportionate force…
and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam.”
And when England was targeted by suicide bombings — the kind of thing Hamas has specialized in — the United Nations Security Council condemned “without reservation” the terror attacks and urged nations to prosecute perpetrators of such “barbaric acts.” In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council expressed condolences to the victims of the attacks (something it could not do even tepidly when Hamas terrorists and “ordinary” Gazans engaged in an orgy of blood and depravity against Israelis).
During World War II, when Great Britain faced an enemy entrenched among civilians, here’s how Winston Churchill, perhaps the greatest leader of the 20th Century, described Britain’s resolve:
“[General Mackesy] stated that before the proposed action against Narvik [Norway] began, he felt it his duty to represent that there was no officer or man in his command who would not feel ashamed for himself and his country if thousands of Norwegian men, women, and children in Narvik were subjected to the proposed bombardment. ... Before leaving [the Supreme War Council in Paris], I had drafted a reply which was approved by our colleagues:
‘I presume that Lord Cork has read the bombardment instructions issued at the outbreak of war. If he finds it necessary to go beyond these instructions on account of the enemy using the shelter of buildings to maintain himself in Narvik, he may deem it wise to give six hours’ warning by every means at his disposal, including if possible leaflets, and to inform the German Commander that all civilians must leave the town, and that he would be held responsible if he obstructed their departure. He might also offer to leave the railway line unmolested for a period of six hours to enable civilians to make good their escape by that route.’
The Defence Commmittee endorsed this policy, strongly expressing the view that ‘It would be impossible to allow the Germans to convert Norwegian towns into forts by keeping the civilians in the towns to prevent us from attacking’.”
From “The Gathering Storm,” p. 637 (emphasis added).
Israel has far exceeded the British example, delaying its ground operations in Gaza for several weeks, establishing and policing humanitarian corridors and safe zones, and utilizing every means of media to warn civilians to evacuate areas that were going to come under attack.
Yet now, in the face of nakedly genocidal
ambitions of Palestinian terror groups that are in lockstep with the groups that attacked Londoners, and which have proudly announced that they will commit as many October 7s as they can, England has announced that it, too, will recognize a state of Palestine next month. That polls consistently show Palestinian Arabs, left to their own devices, would elect Hamas to lead them, has given Great Britain no pause.
England was the first European country to have officially banned Jews entirely with the 1290 Edict of Expulsion — an Edict issued on,
Neither England nor France (nor Canada, which has jumped onto the soiled coattails of those European countries) provided millions of tons of food, fuel and medical aid to German civilians during WWII. Nor did they do so when they assisted in fighting Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan.
To the contrary, during their wars, they did everything they could to prevent enemy populations from accessing basic resources.
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, one of the world’s leading experts on urban combat, has pointed out the fact that “Israel is doing what no military has done. It is facilitating direct humanitarian aid to the population of a territory governed by a terrorist army that it is still fighting in closequarters urban combat. Whether this fact is recognized or not by the international community, it is a historic first.”
Yet Israel, which is unique in allowing millions of tons of aid into hostile territory (aid that is hijacked by Hamas to keep itself well fed and in business) gets only approbation from its supposed friends.
Neither the French in Algeria or England in Iraq, or either during WWII, took anything near the measures to avoid enemy civilian casualties that Israel has and does.
ern Cyprus, Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Morocco in Western Sahara, among others, all have facilitated the settlement by their citizens in occupied territories, yet have received little attention, much less approbation, from the international community or its legal organs.
More on immediate point, very little condemnation was issued and no affirmative action was taken to address Jordan’s illegal occupation of, and the free movement of its citizens into, the very territory (Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem) that has produced a maelstrom of attention and condemnation for Israel.
Indeed, as Professor Eugene Kontorovich has noted, “[t]he most striking thing about the state practice [with regard to settlement in occupied territories other than Israeli settlement in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem] is the ubiquity of settlement activity and the accompanying international acquiesce.”
Only with regard to Israel’s presence in Judea/Samaria — the very heartland of the Jewish people and territory to which it has legitimate claims — does the world insist that every last citizen of the occupying power be forcibly removed from the territory in question; that Judea must be Judenrein
of all days, Tisha B’Av — and was, literally, Jew-free for 365 years.
Lest we think that modernity reformed British malevolence toward the Jews, in 1929, when Arab mobs massacred the millenia-old Jewish community in Hebron, the British response was to empty the city of all its Jews, instead of punishing the perpetrators. And, of course, in response to violent Arab rioting, in part growing out of virulent Arab opposition to allowing Jews to emigrate to British Mandate Palestine, Great Britain issued the infamous 1939 White Paper, severely curtailing Jewish entry to Palestine, effectively sealing the fate of millions of Jews at exactly the hinge of history when they so desperately needed a safe haven.
This, as well, was in direct contradiction of the Mandate’s terms which charged Great Britain with facilitating Jewish emigration to, and “close settlement” in, Palestine under its watch. The Jewish nation, some 85 years later, has never fully recovered from the slaughter which Great Britain could have helped — but refused to help — avert.
In WWII, approximately 67,000 British civilians were killed by enemy fire. England, with its allies, including the United States, killed between 2 and 3 million German civilians (and 800,000 or so Japanese civilians). It did not kill them by accident or collaterally — it purposely targeted them.
France’s actions in Algeria killed, by some estimates, as many as 1 million Algerians.
Yet England and France have the Charles de Gaulle to accuse Israel of disproportionate force, even genocide, in fighting a war with complexities that those countries never faced in terms of an enemy that so doggedly entrenched itself among, behind and underneath civilians, with the specific aim of maximizing its own civilian casualties for political ends.
The dichotomy between jus cogens and Jews cogens could not be clearer when it comes to territorial occupation. While Israel has been subjected to inordinate focus and condemnation for allowing Jews to return to live in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem (after they were illegally ethnically cleansed from these areas), the international community has effectively turned a blind eye — as well as a mute voice and weak hand — to other, similar occupations and policies.
Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in North-
Moreover, while actual genocides (in Sudan, in China involving Uygur Muslims, in Syria where Islamists are targeting the Druze), are being carried out around the world, only Israel is called into the dock in the Hague. In London and Paris and Montreal, hundreds of thousands of people do not fill the streets to display righteous indignation ignited by crimes to which a Star of David cannot be appended.
During the current Gaza war, the law firm where I was working hosted Natasha Hausdorff, a renowned international lawyer who has defended Israel on the international stage. I asked her then: can a rule of international law be considered an actual law, binding on international actors, when in application it is only applied (or applied with extreme disproportion) to one?
Of course, the answer was “no.”
Jus cogens is a thing. Jews cogens is not.
Howard Bressler is a resident of West Hempstead. An attorney, he is author of “Wrong Conclusion, No Resolution: United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334’s Erroneous Conclusions on the Legality of Israeli Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem” and “The Layman’s Guide to Surviving Cancer: From Diagnosis Through Treatment and Beyond” (Langdon Street, 2014).
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Newspaper of record…
Continued from page 1
I’m not sure it would have bothered me as much if it hadn’t followed an article published in the Times a few days earlier, and noted in an excellent editorial in The Free Press:
In a highly influential front-page article titled “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” originally published on July 24, the paper, without fanfare, inserted an editor’s note — one that went largely unnoticed, despite its serious implications for both journalism and public understanding of the war in Gaza.
The original article, bolstered by a heartwrenching photo of a frail child in his mother’s arms, quickly went viral.
The child featured so prominently — Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq — was introduced as a once-healthy baby now suffering from severe malnutrition due to the war. That version of the story omitted the fact that Muhammad had preexisting conditions, including serious neurological and muscular developmental issues. That important detail was added later—quietly, and without clear acknowledgment of the prior omission.
Further complicating matters: Muhammad’s older brother, who appears healthy, was cropped out of the photo. This should have been a dismissible offense.
The editors of The Free Press concluded the following:
The Times should respect its readers by bringing them news that reflects complicated reality, not propaganda. And the most fundamental fact of all is that anyone who wants this war to end must insist that Hamas return the 50 hostages that still remain in its captivity.
The Times should treat its readers better than this. But after 21 months of its reporters taking their cues from Hamas’s public relations operations, we should not expect that they will anytime soon.
What happened?
For many years, when people would ask me,
“Why is the New York Times so anti-Israel and antisemitic?” I would answer quite sincerely that the New York Times is no more antiIsrael than about half the Israeli public is antiIsrael and antisemitic.
My first argument with a colleague about Israel happened in the upstairs bar at Sardi’s restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. I was drinking with a friend, the late Phil Drysdale, then a young black Harvard University grad who became deputy editor of the Op-Ed page.
We were arguing back and forth about Israel and the Arabs, and I finally shouted: “Why do you have to hold Israel to a higher standard than everyone else in the world?” And he screamed back: “Because you’re the Jews, God dammit!!” And we ended that with a laugh and another drink. Zero antisemitism, and I do think we heard each other.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the former chairman and publisher, was my first boss at the Times when I reported to work in April 1971 as his office boy. Both he and his son showed nothing but respect when I chose to become religious after
I doubt you’d find a ‘minyan’ of registered Republicans, or churchor synagogue-going staff, among thousands of Times employees.
working there for 15 years. In fact, I didn’t start getting serious promotions until after I became religious and outspokenly “pro-Israel.”
I am certain there is no way I would be hired today if I came in wearing a kippah and tzitzit.
When I retired in 2006, his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., personally did my exit interview, and to start off, asked me: “What do I need to know?” Without going into detail, my answer was: “You need to know that your masthead does not know the meaning of the word ‘diversity’.”
That’s far truer today than it was then.
Once upon a time, I had no idea what the politics or religion of most of my colleagues in the newsroom were. It was a mix of Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, with your occasional Marxist thrown into the mix.
Today, I doubt you could find a minyan of registered Republicans, or church- or synagogue-going staff among the thousands of employees there. As far as I can tell, it is the most politically and philosophically non-diverse workplace imaginable.
And that’s the problem. Being a “pro-Israel” Jew or non-Jew at today’s Times is not a dismissible offense — because there is no way you are going to get hired in the first place.
Even the token conservatives among the OpEd columnists have a vitriolic hatred of the democratically elected leaders of Israel, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and contempt for the people who elected them. Their disgust for the majority of Israelis is almost as strong as the vitriolic hatred they have for the elected leaders of the United States, led by President Donald Trump, and the utter contempt they have for the people who voted for them.
This is not something that can be changed in less than a generation. The only thing we can do — since editors and writers still hope to hide behind the camouflage of “objective journalism” — is call them out on their offenses as clearly and loudly as we can.
After 35 years on the news and business sides of the NY Times, Yaakov Ort has been deputy communications director at YU, founding editor of the Jewish Learning Institute’s Torah Studies program and, for 12 years, an editor at Chabad.org. He’s edited books on Chassidic thought and is currently writing a book on Kabbalistic somatic healing of trauma, and a new translation and Chassidic commentary on the daily and Shabbat siddur.
Gei essen! Boston learning with a side of fries AMERICA
By Anna Rahmanan, JNS
The German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig led the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Free Jewish House of Learning), which Tablet magazine describes as “a revamped beit midrash tailored to assimilated Jews” that “met in community buildings and rented halls” and “lacked modern precedent,” in Frankfurt in 1920.
The “Jewish adult study center,” where “students were encouraged to examine classical Hebrew sources, searching for what is vital and relevant” and which “became a model for similar institutions elsewhere in Germany,” as Britannica puts it, also inspired a restaurant and study center that opened in Somerville, in the Boston area, in 2023.
Inspired by the 1920 study center, co-founders Rabbi Charlie Schwartz and Joshua Foer created Lehrhaus in Somerville, Mass., “as a new kind of Jewish space that integrates Jewish learning, community and food in unique and engaging ways,” per the restaurant’s website. “Our Lehrhaus aims to revive and modernize Rosenzweig’s institution for today’s world, creating a vibrant, and delicious, hub for Jewish life that is open to all.”
Schwartz told JNS that after a successful debut in the Boston area — near the Harvard University campus — which drew more than 50,000 people since March 2023, the co-founders are eying a second location in Washington, with the goal “to open as soon as humanly possible.”
“We’re still finalizing our location,” Schwartz said.
Lehrhaus is not a typical restaurant, even by the standards of eateries adjacent to the Ivy League private school in Cambridge.
It merges Jewish text study with a full-service, kosher restaurant and bar. Its website directs readers to “view the full Talmudic version of our drink menu, food menu, our dessert menu and our spirit list,” which indeed are laid out like pages of the Talmud, with commentaries running along the margins, flanking the central text.
A “Tu B’Av salad” references the rabbinic holiday, which some see as a modern Israeli Valentine’s Day, and a “chocolate budino,” which comes with “tahini caramel, tahini brownie, ses-
ame and cocoa nib tuile,” is noted, in the marginalia, to be Italian for “pudding.”
The desert “has Iberian roots as a dessert, brought to Italy by Sephardic Jews in the 16th century,” per the Lehrhaus menu. “Chocolate versions trace back to Sephardic merchants, who controlled cacao trade routes between Central America, Amsterdam and Italy in the early 1600s.”
“We weren’t launching just another restaurant,” Schwartz said. “We wanted to imagine a wonderful Jewish space, where people could encounter the best of the Jewish world, from food to drinks and history.”
“We thought people wanted to meet and gather in person, and we thought there aren’t great Jewish public places to experience the best things about being Jewish,” he said. “There are JCCs and synagogues, which are great, but other than those, there isn’t much.”
Lehrhaus leases its Somerville location and employs approximately 30 staff, including both full-time and part-time employees. The establishment makes just over half of its operating income in revenue from food and beverage sales, private events and ticketed classes, according to Schwartz. As it expands, it hopes to increase that portion to about 70%.
When it named Lehrhaus one of the best new restaurants in the country in 2023, Esquire reported that “it is both delicious and a revelation.” Schwartz said that the ranking was the first time a kosher venue made the Esquire list in more than 40 years.
Lehrhaus draws a mixed crowd, according to Schwartz. “About a third kosher-keepers, a third Jewish people looking for a Jewish experience and a third non-Jews, who are coming in with Jewish friends, colleagues or partners,” he said, “and also because the place is getting a lot of buzz.”
Naomi Levy, who launched the pop-up Maccabee Bar in New York and Boston in 2018, leads the food and drink programs at Lehrhaus.
“When it comes to the tavern side of things, we really wanted something that gave a very wide view of what Jewish food and drinks are and can be,” Levy told JNS. “Jewish food is so much more than Israeli or deli cuisine.”
“In the Jewish Diaspora, there is a huge world of flavors and traditions to be explored, and we really wanted that to be the highlight,” she said.
The cocktail menu features drinks inspired by Syrian Mexican Jewish migration and ingredients like amba vinegar—a nod to Iraqi Jewish tradition. “Fish and chips actually has a Jewish history,” Levy said. “Being able to tell the story of something so ubiquitous to taverns by working here is special.”
That thread extends to every part of the Lehrhaus experience.
“We talk about storytelling as part of our approach to hospitality,” Schwartz said. “When we serve amba vinegar, for example, it’s the perfect moment for our staff to tell customers about the Iraqi Jewish population and what this fermented mango sauce is and how it became popular.”
The eatery’s menu states of the fish and chips, which comes with “amba vinegar, s’chug aioli and Old Bay fries,” that “it is believed that Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition first brought fried fish to England.”
“In the 18th century, the now iconic British national dish was referred to as ‘fish in the Jewish fashion.’ Today, matzah meal remains a popular batter of choice in many British fish and chip shops,” it adds. “Amba, derived from the Marathi for mango, is a tangy sauce first introduced to the Jewish world by Baghdadi Jews trading with India.”
Jon Levisohn, director of the Jack, Joseph
and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis U, who holds the Mandel family associate professorship in Jewish educational thought at Brandeis, said that Lehrhaus stands apart from other Jewish cultural spaces due to its historical and intellectual lineage.
“Lehrhaus positions itself as an inheritor to the famous Frankfurt Lehrhaus, an early 20thcentury effort to re-invent the traditional beit midrash in a more liberal German Jewish context,” Levisohn said.
“Unlike American institutions inspired by models like Chautauqua,” the US adult education movement in the late 19th century and early 20th century, “where culture is consumed more passively, Lehrhaus actively invites people to engage in lernen,” he said, using the “Yiddish term for sustained engagement with traditional texts that gets translated, but not quite accurately, into the English ‘learning’.”
Although there were Jewish taverns in Eastern Europe, “the mash-up of the two — tavern and house of learning — is novel,” Levisohn said. “To be frank, I find the success of that mash-up to be as surprising as it is delightful.”
The Jewish diversity that Lehrhaus celebrates and presents is a defining element, according to Levisohn, who notes that books, music, food and art in the venue reflect traditions from Yemen to India to Baghdad.
“This is not performative diversity,” he said. “This is deep appreciation for the wide range of Jewish cultures as they have existed around the world and over time.”
The venue offers nearly nightly classes on topics ranging from classical texts to Jewish punk history. (Fees range from $10 to $180, and Schwartz said that “we never turn anyone away for financial reasons.”)
“There are so many things to love about Lehrhaus,” Sam Gechter, a frequent visitor, said. “It is a deeply and unapologetically Jewish space with many layers. There’s an enormous library of Jewish books. There are pictures on the wall of important well-known and lesser-known
Jews. There is real Jewish learning happening on interesting and timely topics.”
He also noted that there is a Lactaid dispenser for the lactose intolerant, and his favorite detail is a replica of Michelangelo’s sculpture of a horned Moses, at San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, perched behind the bar.
“It’s a wink and a nod to Jews,” Gechter said, “and a slap in the face to Jew-haters.”
The atmosphere at Lehrhaus shifted after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Schwartz.
“People would come in and start crying,” he said. “We get less of that emotional intensity now, but still a lot of that relief.”
Lehrhaus hasn’t experienced antisemitism directly, but Schwartz noted that a kosher grocery store two miles away in Brookline recently had a brick thrown through its window.
For many, Lehrhaus has become a place to process a new and uncomfortable reality.
“It used to be that in times of antisemitism, we could take solace in being with other Jews,” Gechter told JNS. “The worst part of this latest round is the way we have been split apart, the way that being around other Jews doesn’t always feel safe anymore.”
“At Lehrhaus, Jews are in charge of the conversation about Jews — not our haters,” he said.
Sherry Leffert, another regular, takes classes about twice a month at Lehrhaus. “I love the high-level content, the friendliness of the staff, the opportunity to socialize with other Jewish and like-minded people,” she said. “I have not changed my mind about Lehrhaus since Oct. 7.”
From the beginning, Schwartz envisioned Lehrhaus as a test case — an experiment to see if such a hybrid cultural space could thrive in a city with a relatively small but strong Jewish community, like Boston.
The plans to expand to Washington suggest the model is working. “We are trying to say that Judaism is more than one thing,” he said. “It’s this incredibly diverse experience of the world bound together by a sense of peoplehood.”
A class at Lehrhaus in Somerville, Mass., near the Harvard University campus. Lehrhaus
Offerings at Lehrhaus, the kosher tavern and house of learning, in Somerville, Mass.
Studying at Lehrhaus, the kosher tavern and house of learning near the Harvard campus.
Tu B’Av: Rabbis’ gentle reminder to nation in strife
Jan Lee
I’ve been waiting all year for Tu B’Av to arrive. Like a hapless romantic who refuses to believe that life is now summed up by tragedy and discord, I’ve refused to give up on the calendar’s one, exquisitely timed homage to love.
The 15th of Av arrives six days after Tisha B’Av, like a gentle antidote to our grief, reminding us that love, despite all that we have just mourned and lost, is always possible, always triumphant.
The ancient rabbis believed that Tu B’Av had powerful lessons to teach us, so powerful that Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (first century CE) likened this minor holiday to Judaism’s holiest day of the year: “There were no days as happy for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur.”
For the generations that flourished before the Roman occupation of Jerusalem, Tu B’Av was a day set apart to celebrate the beauty of romance, purity and love.
Still, it seems like an odd observation for Gamliel to make about such a minor holiday. Could it be that the sages were trying to expand our understanding of Tu B’Av and the importance of love?
The centuries in which the Ta’anim and Amor’im sages lived (first to sixth century CE) were marked by ongoing upheaval and political strife, both in Judea and later in Babylonia. (Rav Shimon ben Gamliel himself lost his life during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE and is among the 10 martyrs we mourn at Tisha B’Av). Then, like now, the Jewish people were of-
ten fraught with division and war. So it’s no surprise to me that the sages go to great lengths to try to tie this holiday of love to historical events that seem to have little to do with romance and everything to do with another kind of love: the love that is fostered by a united and caring Jewish nation.
Each of the stories that the sages introduce in Mishna Ta’anit 30b has similar messages about the value of love, redemption and change.
G-d’s mercy toward the daughters of Zelophehad, who risk losing their inheritance of land if they are forced to intermarry outside of their tribe, in Rav Shmuel’s perspective, sets the stage for a more cohesive nation. So does the compassion that is shown to a new generation of the tribe of Benjamin when it seeks forgiveness from the rest of the nation for the disastrous Gibeah incident. We’re urged to remember that war has the potential to transform and divide a people, and it’s only through reconciliation that we can find unity.
Romance does receive its recognition in this Mishna, however. But again, compassion seems to be at the fore of the discussion. The rabbis take a moment to reacquaint us with the sweet traditions that were lost with the destruction of the First and Second Temples:
[The] daughters of Jerusalem would go out in white clothes, and on the fifteenth of Av they would go to the vineyards and dance [and await suitors].
The sages go on to explain the intricacies of this yearly dance:
The daughter of the king borrows white garments from the daughter of the High Priest; the daughter of the High Priest borrows from the daughter of the deputy High Priest; the daughter of the deputy High Priest borrows from the daughter of the priest anointed for war, (i.e., the priest who would read verses of Torah and ad-
dress the army as they prepared for battle); the daughter of the priest anointed for war borrows from the daughter of a common priest; and all the Jewish people borrow from each other. Why would they all borrow garments? They did this so as not to embarrass one who did not have her own white garments.
Sadly, these early traditions disappeared following the destruction of the Second Temple until around the birth of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948.
Today, Tu B’Av is widely recognized in Israel, where it’s celebrated as a holiday to honor love and romance. While the holiday has gained some attention in North America in recent years as a “Jewish Valentine’s Day,” it’s largely forgotten from North American calendars. Still, the rabbis’ enduring messages of the power of love, compassion and forgiveness, especially in times of war and discord, live on. And right now, that is a message we could all heed. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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“The Daughters of Zelophehad,” from “The Bible and Its Story Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons,” 1908. WikiCommons
Matchmakers help couples find love during war
By Eve Glover, JNS
This Shabbat, the 15th day of Av, is Tu B’Av, the Jewish Day of Love.
Shrouded in mystery, this romantic holiday, which is primarily celebrated in Israel, has roots that go back to the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Young women dressed in white would dance in vineyards to signal the beginning of grape harvest season, and single men looking to find prospective wives would join them.
Aleeza Ben Shalom, an Israelbased dating coach and star of the hit Netflix series “Jewish Matchmaking,” told JNS that “Tu B’Av is an auspicious time for people to meet.”
It is also a popular day for people to get married.
This year, her Jewish Matchmaking movement was planning an online global Matchmaking Week from Aug. 4 to Aug. 10. “We are going to do a little bit of live matchmaking,” she said, and also teach about the process. The week will conclude with a celebratory virtual Tu B’Av White Party.
Ben Shalom, who has helped more than 300 couples from all levels of Jewish observance get to the chuppah, reported that now more than ever, Jewish people are looking for mates of the same faith.
“They are afraid if their partner is not Jewish, they will not support them or the Jewish people,” she explained. Since the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, an influx of people ages 24 to 49 have contacted her from Israel, the United States and across the world.
“War often speeds up connections and can help relationships grow or fall at a rapid pace,” she said.
Last year, at the age of 19, Sara Esther Guigui started preparing herself for what it would be like to marry a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She described anticipating how the dating process would be “very different from a normal couple in America.”
Despite the challenges, she said that being with a soldier became “of heightened importance” to her after Oct. 7.
“I want my kids to serve in the army, and I want them to have that example as a father figure,” she said.
Sara Esther made aliyah 10 years ago from Cincinnati. After seminary, she started doing national service last year by assisting midwives who are delivering babies at Hadassah Ein
Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem.
The Ohio native is a close family friend of Ben Shalom, who describes her as “like another mom.”
Sara Esther said it was especially valuable to learn about relationships from her because she came from divorced parents; she also needed support while navigating finding love through the heartache of war. She stressed that one of the most important lessons Ben Shalom taught her is the importance of knowing what your values are before you meet someone.
Last November, Shira Tjong Alvarez, a matchmaker and colleague of Ben Shalom, texted the profile of Yishai, 21, an IDF soldier in an elite unit, to Sara Esther. She saw that he was 6-foot-3, and replied, “I’m 4-foot-11. This is not going to work.”
Ben Shalom had encouraged Sara Esther to narrow down a list of the top 10 attributes that were essential for her in a partner. From Yishai’s profile and talking with older brothers of friends who knew him, he seemed to fit the criteria she was looking for. He was even from a location back in the States that she had envisioned.
Sara Esther noted, “I was saying for a while, I just want a Southern boy who serves in the army … it ended up he’s from North Carolina.” Coincidentally, Yishai had also made aliyah 10 years ago, a few weeks before her.
On Dec. 5, the two had their first date. They bought hot cocoa and coffee at a bakery in Modi’in, and then walked for hours around a nearby picturesque park that had a stream running beneath a bridge. “We walked over that, like a little fairy tale,” she recalled.
She said it was easy to focus on every detail from their conversation. She relayed how “he thinks before he speaks. … I felt like I was listening to his thoughts, and it made me realize how conscious he is of his words and what he says, which is something I really admire.”
She learned that Yishai had completed a commander’s course two days before Oct. 7. His entire service as an active soldier has been during the war.
• • •
After their second date two weeks later, Sara Esther was on the phone with Yisaha while working at the hospital and thought: “This person’s going to be my husband.”
A couple of days later, she received a distraught phone call from Yishai, telling her that a close friend of his
had been killed in battle. Sara Esther relied on Ben Shalom for solace and advice to help her navigate this uncharted territory.
“We were still fresh in a relationship, so I didn’t know exactly how he needed to be consoled or how I needed to show up,” Sara Esther recalled.
She met Yishai’s parents at the funeral. “We were like, ‘It’s nice to meet you, but not in this situation’,” she said.
Sara Esther drove Yishai back to his base three hours away, and the subject of the future came up because Yishai’s friend was a newlywed. To lighten the mood, they joked and couldn’t stop talking.
“I knew at that point I loved him,” she said. “The whole time we’re driving there, we’re like little kids talking about a wedding and life and the future.” When they got to Yishai’s base, they confessed their love for each other.
Shortly afterwards, Yishai was stationed in Jenin, and suddenly, Sara Esther received a text from him informing her that the soldiers’ phones were being taken away so there would be no distractions. After speaking with Yishai every day for two months, she felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her.
When Sara Esther received a phone call from Yishai’s sister, asking her if she was in a good place, she panicked. She was informed that Yishai was being treated at Rambam Hospital because a bullet had ricocheted into his shoulder. When she got to the hospi-
Brett described meeting Liz as a very quick click. I knew this could be it.”
On their first date a week later, Liz said that “within a couple of minutes, I was like, this is so easy. I feel like I know him. I feel like he’s my best friend.” Liz was struck by how familiar Brett felt; he even said a Yiddish expression she knew from her grandmother. “It almost feels like my grandparents are giving me a signal,” she said.
• • •
tal, she learned that younger soldiers Yishai trained had also been shot, and that he had valiantly continued to fight even though he was injured. After the bullet was removed, he fought in Gaza for a month before returning to Jenin.
Ben Shalom suggested that Sara Esther figure out if Yishai is the type of person who wants to talk about his physical and emotional pain, or if he prefers to keep things to himself. She emphasized the importance of finding out what it is that Yishai needs.
Yishai expressed how grateful he is that she showed up for him during this time, especially since he wasn’t expecting it.
“She was definitely there for me during the darkest time during my army service,” he stated. “I wanted to have that whole ‘hero that woman shows up to take care of.’ It was amazing that the storybook ending actually happened.”
The couple is presently focused on enjoying each other’s company and planning trips together. Sara Esther excitedly described how they recently got engaged on July 3.
Across the world in New York City, Liz, 36, a Food Network video producer, was trying on her wedding dress when JNS called for an interview. She echoed Sara Esther’s sentiments about how the matchmaker who coached her, Kami, who works with Ben Shalom, helped her to make better choices in a partner by understanding what qualities were important to her.
“I had never really thought to or known how to operate from a place that was values first,” Liz said.
By the time she met Brett, 34, a corporate attorney from Philadelphia, he had also been doing self-discovery work with his own matchmaker, Michal, to prepare himself to meet the right person, like practicing gratefulness and keeping a positive outlook.
After attending a large singles gathering at a Philadelphia bar that Brett said was “really not my scene,” his matchmaker and Liz’s matchmaker called him, urging him to go to a more intimate cocktail party in Manhattan organized by Liz. They both thought he would like Liz. “Finally, I felt so guilty that I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll go’,” he said.
The couple’s matchmakers still check in, but were mostly involved in preparatory work before their relationship took off.
On June 21, Brett kneeled down to propose to Liz in the exact spot where they had their first conversation at the Upper East Side cocktail bar a little more than a year ago.
Regarding finding a romantic partner post Oct. 7, Brett stated: “When things are tough, it’s good to have someone who gets you, who understands the world in a lot of the same ways you do.”
Liz said that even though she and Brett come from very different backgrounds — she grew up in New York City, and he is from Allentown, Pa. — they share similar religious values. They are not observant, but both feel a strong emotional tie to their Jewish heritage.
Liz noted that “it’s hard to find somebody who has exactly the same relationship with their Judaism.”
Ben Shalom, who has a new book out, “Matchmaker, Matchmaker Find Me a Love That Lasts,” thinks that this is one of the challenges to finding love in 2025. She said there are singles who are not sure how they identify with being Jewish.
“There are Oct. 8 Jews who just woke up to what’s happening, and they’re reconnecting with their Judaism,” she said. “They’re trying to find a partner, and they’re not exactly sure who they are yet.”
She described how some of these people are “on pause” because “the first person they’re going to find is themselves.”
Singles have confided in Ben Shalom that they feel guilty dating when hostages remain in captivity, and so many Jewish people are suffering. Others are afraid to attend Jewish events, leaving them isolated.
There is also tremendous pressure on young Jewish singles to meet someone right away and start a family, but Ben Shalom believes that there is not enough community support to foster this.
She noted that while the Jewish community is focused on fighting antisemitism, “we’re not putting enough effort into building the future. Singles are our future, and building couples and relationships creates a greater community.”
Left photo: Aleeza Ben Shalom with fellow matchmaker Shira Tjong Alvarez, who set up Sara Esther and Yishai, at the young couple’s engagement party on July 3. Right photo: Aleeza Ben-Shalom and Sara Esther Guigui.
Aleeza Ben Shalom addresses participants at an international matchmaking conference in Jerusalem in January. Jamie Gordon Photography
69% of religious hate crimes in US target Jews
By JNS Staff
Of the 2,942 religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024, 2,041 (69%) offenses targeted Jews, according to new data that the federal law enforcement agency released in its crime data explorer tool.
The next largest anti-religious bias type last year was the 256 offences targeting Muslims, which made up about 9% of all religion-based biased incidents. That means Jews were about 660% likelier than Muslims to be victims of anti-religious bias offenses in the United States last year.
From January 2019 until December 2024, Jews were victims of 8,376 religion-based bias offenses, or about 62% of the 13,424 religionbased bias offenses. From October 2023 — the month of Hamas’s terror attack in southern Israel — until December 2024, Jews were targeted in 3,051 offenses, 71% of the 4,279 religionbased hate crimes.
Since October 2023, Muslims in America have been the targets of 395 offenses, 9% of all religion-based bias incidents.
The FBI data in its crime data explorer tool differs from data that it published in downloadable tables about its new statistics. JNS used the explorer tool, which found 2,041 anti-Jewish offenses. The tool doesn’t say if it used offenses or incidents, but a note on the chart refers to “offense counts.”
The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee stated in releases that there were 1,938 incidents that targeted Jews in 2024. That number, and the others that the ADL and AJC used, come from a chart that is downloadable on the FBI website. According to that chart, there were 2,137 anti-Jewish offenses in 2024, which targeted 2,237 victims and which involved 1,043 known offenders.
Neither the 1,938 nor the 2,137 number
on the FBI chart appears to correspond to the 2,041 number on the FBI explorer tool. (JNS sought comment from the FBI.)
The FBI explorer tool states that it used offense counts that are “updated to be consistent with the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program offense counting rules.”
“Previously, crimes against persons offenses were counted as one for each offense type (e.g., one aggravated assault offense for an incident in which multiple victims were assaulted),” it states. “The updated chart reflects one crime against persons offense for each victim (i.e., the number of aggravated assault offenses will match the number of victims of aggravated assault).”
“Crimes against property and crimes against society are unaffected by this update,” it states.
Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, stated that “leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on.”
“Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events,” Deutch said. “With the added climate of rising polarization and fading trust in democracy, American Jews are facing a perfect storm of hate.”
“Whether walking to synagogue, dropping
their kids off at school, sitting in restaurants, or on college campuses, Jews are facing a climate where fear of antisemitism is part of daily life,” he said. “This is unacceptable. The targeting of Jews is not a Jewish problem. It is a society-wide issue that demands a societywide response.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the AntiDefamation League, stated that “as the Jewish community is still reeling from two deadly antisemitic attacks in the past few months, the record-high number of anti-Jewish hate crime incidents tracked by the FBI in 2024 is consistent with ADL’s reporting and, more importantly, with the Jewish community’s current lived experience.”
“Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Jewish Americans have not had a moment of respite and have experienced antisemitism at K-12 school, on college campuses, in the public square, at work and Jewish institutions,” Greenblatt stated.
“Our government and leaders must take these numbers seriously and enact adequate measures to protect all Americans from the scourge of hate crimes,” he added.
The ADL keeps its own counts of incidents. It documented 9,354 incidents of Jew-hatred in 2024, which it said was a 5% increase over the prior year, “and the highest number on record since ADL began tracking such data in 1979.”
It added that assaults, the most serious type of incident, were up 21% in 2024.
“As concerning as the FBI data is, it is likely that the number of religiously motivated and anti-Jewish incidents is actually greater, as hate crimes are widely underreported across the country,” the AJC said. “Since many major cities continue to not report hate crimes, the true state of antisemitism in the US is likely much worse.”
Crime scene tape during a Sept. 25, 2019, mass-casualty exercise at the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Va. FBI
mountsinai.org/southnassau
WINE AND DINE
Don’t rush winter. Enjoy these summer tarts!
When I think of pies, I think of a warm winter kitchen and the cozy perfume of a cinnamon spicy apple pie. Pies remind me of cold, short days and longer, cold nights warmed by the hot pie and some steaming coffee.
I know winter will be here in due course but I intend to hold it off as long as possible so I can enjoy the summer and all the great desserts that summer can offer. Many of those desserts, besides ice cream and frozen yogurt, are fruit based, and my favorite summer dessert is a fruit-based tart.
Tarts are summer fare.
There is no top crust to keep the fruit blanketed with flakiness. A tart is open, like summer, to show off the rich colors and glory of the summer fruits and vegetables. A good fruit tart is light enough for summer but substantial enough to eat with a tall, iced tea; the sweet, buttery crust cradling the fruit is mellow against tart, juicy filling and the overall effect is perfect summer; Fresh, light, not too much kitchen or oven time and beautiful to look at.
But summer tarts are not just for dessert!
Fresh vegetables are the perfect start for a savory, summery, vegetable tart. Add a salad and some delicious bread and you have a perfect light meal for dinner on the deck. Garden
sweet tomatoes, zucchini, sweet onions, beets, almost any delicious vegetable can be made into a light summery tart for dinner. The list is as endless as your imagination.
Tarts are perfect for summer, so make the summer last with some great treats from the kitchen. All you need are some great fresh summer fruits or veggies and your imagination. Let kids choose and place their own favorite veggies for a veggie tart dinner. Follow with a delicious blueberry tart and ice cream for dessert.
It’s great summer eating. Enjoy!
Fresh Blueberry Tart (Pareve)
Best made the day before serving. Also, I cook the sauce first and let it cool while I assemble the rest of the tart.
PASTRY:
• 1-1/2 cups flour
• 6 Tbsp. pareve margarine (or butter for a dairy tart)
• 2 Tbsp. solid vegetable shortening
• 1-1/2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3 Tbsp. ice water
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In food processor bowl, combine flour, margarine, shortening, sugar. Pulse until consistency of coarse meal. Add ice water slowly through feed tube. Pulse until dough holds together. Usually less than 3 tablespoons is enough. Remove dough from the bowl and knead on a well-floured surface for several seconds.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate 45 to
60 minutes. If you don’t have a food processor, you can mix this with a large fork and your hands. The results are the same.
Place the dough onto a well-floured surface. Roll out to an 11-inch circle and press into and up the sides of a slightly greased 9-inch quiche pan or pie pan. Flute the edges and prick the bottom with a fork. Refrigerate for an hour.
Place a parchment circle on the bottom of the tart crust and fill with dried beans or rice to keep the bottom from rising. Place the crust in the lower third of the oven at 400 degrees. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and carefully discard the paper and beans or rice (the beans or rice get very hot,so be careful). Return the crust to the oven and bake for another 3-5 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.
NOTE: If this sounds too daunting, use the quick, frozen crust method. Use a frozen Pareve crust and follow the baking directions above.
GLAZE:
• 1/2 cup apricot, seedless raspberry, strawberry or peach preserves.
• 1 to 2 Tbsp. fruit liqueur like apricot or peach OR
• 1 to 2 Tbsp. Orange or other fruit juice.
I like to use apricot preserves, apricot nectar and apricot liqueur. I also add a splash of lemon juice for brightness
Blend all the glaze ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth and a bit thick. Add only as much liquid as needed. Apricot and peach usually need a little more liquid than does the raspberry. Brush the glaze on the cooled tart shell and let sit for 10 or so minutes.
FILLING:
• 2 to 3 cups large fresh blueberries. Washed and dried thoroughly. (Set the washed berries on a rimmed baking dish that is lined with several sheets of paper towels. Shake a bit to dry then out.) Place them evenly into the tart shell.
SAUCE:
• 3 cups blueberries
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar (depends on tartness of berries)
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 3 Tbsp. red currant jelly
• 1-1/2 tsp. cornstarch
Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Continue to cook, stirring almost constantly, for ten to fifteen minutes or until mixture thickens. It will coat the spoon when done.
Let cool till just warm then refrigerate and chill until just cool. Don’t let it get cold or it will set.
Spread the cooled sauce evenly over the berries. Chill the tart for several hours or overnight. It is delicious with vanilla ice cream for a dairy treat. Serves 6 to 10.
Your Favorite Fruit Tart (Dairy)
CRUST:
• 1 cup flour
• 1 stick butter, chilled (I use unsalted, but you can use salted)
• 2 Tbsp. sugar (scant)
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 Tbsp. ice water
Mix the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until the mixture is like corn- meal. Add the ice water slowly through the feed tube adding just enough to let the dough stick together to form a ball. Do not add too much water. Wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper and refrigerate for about an hour.
Roll out the dough and place over a 9-inch tart pan. Press into the pan and crimp the edges, cutting off the extra. Dough should be about 1/4 inch higher than the top of the pan. Prick the bottom and place in the freezer for an hour or up to overnight.
FILLING:
• Choose one kind or several kinds of fruits that can be sliced, such as nectarines, peaches, apricots, etc.
• 6 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 stick butter
• 1-2 Tbsp. apricot liqueur (optional)
• About 1-1/2 pounds of fresh, very ripe fruit
Slice the fruits and place them in a pretty overlapping design around the tart shell. Sprinkle the sugar over and dot with butter. Drizzle the liqueur over the fruit and bake in a 375-degree oven for about one hour, until golden and the fruit looks softened.
See Don’t rush winter on page 14
Kosher Kitchen
JoNI SchocKETT
Jewish Star columnist
Fresh Apricot Almond Tart Tatin.
Fresh Blueberry Tart.
Joni Schockett
Don’t rush winter. Enjoy these summer tarts…
Continued from page 12
GLAZE:
• 1 cup apricot preserves
• 2 Tbsp. apricot or raspberry liqueur
Mix the preserves and the liqueur in a food processor until smooth. Heat in a small saucepan until just boiling. Remove from heat and let cool for about 10 minutes. Spread the glaze on the tart and serve warm or chilled.
VARIATIONS: For a cold tart with fresh fruit, bake the shell at 400 degrees until golden. Double the glaze recipe and use half to glaze the bottom and sides of the tart shell. Fill with sliced fresh fruits such as peaches, kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, etc., in a creative design. Paint with the rest of the glaze and refrigerate.
Summer Tomato Basil Tart (dairy)
• 1 package frozen puff pastry
• 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 30 to 40 very ripe red and/or yellow cherry tomatoes
• 1 bunch fresh basil
• Oregano
• Freshly ground salt and pepper
• Gruyere cheese
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic
Thaw the puff pastry and cut out 8, 4- to 5-inch circles. Take the remaining puff pastry and roll it into a thin string, about 1/3-inch in diameter. Place a strip around each circle and press gently to form a rim around each tart. Place on a well-greased cookie sheet and refrigerate until needed.
Place the garlic, half the olive oil, salt and pepper into the food processor and pulse 2 to 3 times.
Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and set aside.
Grate the cheese into a small bowl so you have about 2/3 to 3/4 cup. Set aside. Tear the remaining basil leaves into small pieces and set aside. Do this right before assembling so the basil will remain fresh.
ASSEMBLY:
Place a spoonful of the garlic/basil mix into each tart and spread it evenly over the bottom. Sprinkle some cheese in each tart. Add some of the cut tomatoes and sprinkle with more basil leaves. Drizzle the remaining olive oil over each tart. Season with salt, pepper and oregano.
Bake in a pre-heated 375-degree oven for about 15 minutes or until puffed and golden. Serve warm.
NOTE: You can substitute zucchini for the tomatoes or use some of each summer veggie. You can also substitute freshly grated Parmesan cheese for the gruyere.
Fresh Apricot Almond Tart Tatin (Dairy)
A tart tatin is marked by a caramelized syrupy filling that is cooked in a skillet, covered with dough and finished in the oven. It is then flipped onto a platter.
CRUST:
• 1-1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 6 Tbsp. chilled, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and re-chilled
• 1 Tbsp. confectioners’ sugar
FILLING:
• 6 to 7 Tbsp. sugar
• 2-3 dozen fresh apricots, cut in half, pits removed
• 1/3 cup ground almonds
• 3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp. pure almond extract
Cut the butter into small pieces and re-chill for about 10 minutes. Place the flour, chilled butter and confectioners’ sugar in a food processor and pulse until the dough begins to hold together. Remove and quickly shape into a disc. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for about an hour.
Mix the ground almonds, extracts, 3 tablespoons of butter and the sugar in the food processor until it just comes together. Scrape it
Sommer Tart with Zucchini, Tomatoes, Corn, and Feta (Dairy)
• 1 sheet puff pastry
• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 2 shallots, very thinly sliced
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic, finely minced, divided
• 1 small yellow squash
• 1 small zucchini
• 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 cup fresh corn kernels
• 1/2 red onion, very thinly sliced, slices cut into quarters
• 1 to 2 Tbsp. fresh parsley, finely minced
• 1 tsp. fresh oregano, finely minced
• 2/3 to 1 cup Feta cheese
Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out to pastry to fit in a quarter sheet pan (9-1/2x13). Place the puff pastry in the sheet pan and bring up the sides to form a 1-inch raised rim. Prick the pastry all over with a fork about 1-inch apart. Bake the pastry until it is puffed and golden, 25 to 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.
into a bowl and mix until it is the consistency of a thick paste.
Use a large oven-proof skillet for the tart filling.
Cut the apricots in half and place a dollop of the almond filling in each half. Place on a plate and set aside.
Place the sugar in the skillet and caramelize it by heating over medium heat and leaving it alone except to swirl the pan until the sugar turns light golden. Watch carefully as it turns a bit darker. Careful, it can burn very quickly. Remove from the heat and carefully place the apricots, filled side up tightly in the pan in concentric circles. You can have a double layer in the center.
Roll out the dough so it is a bit larger than the diameter of the skillet and place the dough over the apricots. Tuck the dough into the inside of the skillet over the fruit.
Place in a pre-heated 375-degree oven for 35 minutes until the crust is golden. Remove from the oven and let cool. Run a knife around the crust to loosen it. Place a large platter over the skillet and invert the tart onto the platter. Serve with whipped cream. Serves 6 to 8.
Raspberry, Blackberry, Blueberry Tart (Dairy)
• 3 cups mixture of berries
• Splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 to 3 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 2 extra-large egg yolks
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 4 Tbsp. Kirsch or other berry liqueur
• 3 Tbsp. granulated sugar
• 1 frozen 9-inch pie crust
Bake the pie crust as directed until golden brown.
Place the berries in a large saucepan and heat with 2-3 tablespoons of sugar, the extract and a splash of fresh lemon juice. Heat for about 3 to 4 minutes, just to soften the fruit and melt the sugar. Remove from the heat. Taste and add a bit more sugar if the fruit is very tart.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, yolks, cream and liqueur.
Place the fruit and any liquid in the cooled pie shell in a single layer. Pour the cream mixture evenly over the fruit and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes until set but so that the middle is still a bit jiggly. Serve warm or cold. Serves 6.
While the pastry is baking, prepare the vegetables. Thinly slice the shallots and mince the garlic. Add the oil to a small skillet and when shimmery, add the shallots. Cook until translucent. Add the garlic and mx for 30 seconds. Remove from the heat.
Spread the shallots evenly over the tart and let cool. Thinly slice the yellow squash and the zucchini. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, cut the kernels off the husk and thinly slice the red onion.
Spread the zucchini and yellow squash over the shallots. Scatter the cherry tomatoes evenly over that and do the same with the corn. Sprinkle the red onion, as much as you like, over the veggies and place in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven, lower the temperature to 350 and crumble the cheese evenly over the veggies. Do the same with the parsley, remaining garlic, and oregano. Place back in the oven for an additional 10-15 minutes, until the veggies look cooked and the cheese has a few golden spots. Remove from the oven, let cool a few minutes, and cut into squares. Serves 2 to 4.
NOTE: You can use sliced mushrooms, eggplant, broccoli almost any veggies you like will work with this. You can substitute ricotta or parmesan for the Feta.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Raspberry, Blackberry, Blueberry Tart. onlycrumbsremain.com
Sommer Tart with Zucchini, Tomatoes, Corn, and Feta. thekitchn.com
Summer Tomato Basil Tart. bellyfull.net
Kosher ‘Free Palestine’ meals served on Iberia
By Canaan Lidor, JNS
Jewish passengers aboard a flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid encountered the phrase “Free Palestine” scribbled on their kosher meals on Tuesday, an Argentine Jewish group said.
DAIA, the umbrella group of Jewish communities in Argentina, wrote on X that one Jewish passenger aboard flight IB0102, Salvador Auday, received the full phrase written in black ink on the label of his kosher meal, whereas others had only the initials, “FP” written on it.
“We condemn this discriminatory act and have contacted the airline’s authorities to demand explanations and immediate actions,” wrote DAIA, which also called the case a “serious antisemitic incident.”
In a statement, Iberia confirmed that some passengers on the flight had reported “handwritten pro-Palestinian messages” on their meal packaging, the AFP news agency reported. Iberia said it was looking into the circumstances that led to this.
“The Iberia crew documented the incident and took action to assist those affected. The captain personally approached them to apologize on behalf of the airline,” AFP quoted the statement as saying.
The kosher meal incident closely follows the controversy around a flight by Vueling, a Spanish low-cost airline, in which 44 French-Jewish teenagers and eight adults were taken off a flight from Valencia to Paris, allegedly because they had sung in Hebrew.
The airline claimed the teenagers were being disruptive, but witnesses disputed this. An instructor of the teenagers, who were returning from a Jewish summer camp experience, was handcuffed and arrested on the boarding bridge. While she and
others said that the real reason for the disembarkation was antisemitism, Vueling denied this.
Spain’s government is leading one of the most virulently anti-Israel policies within the European Union. Its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, in May called Israel a “genocidal state” and his country has imposed a blanket arms embargo on the Jewish state.
In recent weeks, several cases have been reported in which Israelis were harassed, intimidated and even assaulted in Spain.
On July 8, Israeli tourists were chased out of a restaurant in the Spanish city of Vigo. Also in July, a group of Israelis said they had been followed and intimidated outside their hotel near Barcelona.
A group of men had stalked the three Israeli tourists, who said they were threatened several times during their vacation until, at a certain encounter, the perpetrators, armed with sticks, chased the Israelis on the street in Lloret de Mar, the Israelis said. The tourists made it back to their hotel safely, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported.
Earlier in July, Spain’s Observatory against Antisemitism — an entity co-founded by the country’s Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) — published its annual report for 2024, in which it documented 193 antisemitic incidents — a record tally that constitutes a 321% increase over 2023 and an increase of 567% over 2022.
Most of these acts documented were linked to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the report said.
A kosher meal labeled “Free Palestine” aboard a flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid on Aug. 5. DAIA
Jewish Star Torah columnists: Rabbi Benny Berlin, spiritual leader of BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach; Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native; Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem; Dr. Alan A. Mazurek, former ZOA chair, retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida.
Contributing writers: Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l, former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of British Commonwealth; Rabbi Yossy Goldman, president South African Rabbinical Association; Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus.
Five Towns Candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY
Scarsdale Candlelighting: From the Young Israel of Scarsdale, Scarsdale, NY
Scarsdale candles: 7:14 • Havdalah: 8:14 rabbi Sir
A treasured people, our numbers are small
There is a statement made towards the end of Parshat Va’etchanan that is so inconspicuous we can miss it, but it is a statement with such far reaching implications that it challenges the impression that has prevailed thus far in the Torah, giving an entirely new complexion to the biblical image of the people Israel:
The L-rd did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you are the fewest of all peoples. Deut. 7:7
This is not what we have heard thus far. In Bereishit, G-d promises the patriarchs that their descendants will be like the stars of the heaven, the sand on the sea shore, the dust of the earth, uncountable. Abraham will be the father, not just of one nation but of many.
At the beginning of Exodus we read of how the covenantal family, numbering a mere seventy when they went down to Egypt, were “fertile and prolific, and their population increased. They became so numerous that the land was filled with them” (Ex. 1:7).
•Three times in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses describes the Israelites as being “as many as the stars of the sky” (Deut. 1:10, Deut. 10:22, Deut. 28:62).
•King Solomon speaks of himself as set among “the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number” (1 Kings 3:8).
•The prophet Hosea says that “the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted” (Hos. 2:1).
In all these texts — and others — it is the size, the numerical greatness, of the people that is emphasized. What then are we to make of Moses’ words that speak of its smallness?
Targum Yonatan interprets it not to be about numbers at all but about self-image. He translates it not as “the fewest of peoples” but as “the most lowly and humble of peoples.” Rashi gives a similar reading, citing Abraham’s words “I am but dust and ashes,” and Moses and Aaron’s, “Who are we?”
Rashbam and Chizkuni give the more straightforward explanation that Moses is contrasting the Israelites with the seven nations
Nations are not judged by their size but by their contribution to the human heritage.
they would be fighting in the land of Canaan/ Israel. G-d would lead the Israelites to victory despite the fact that they were outnumbered by the local inhabitants.
Rabbenu Bachya quotes Maimonides, who says that we would have expected G-d, King of the Universe, to have chosen the most numerous nation in the world as His people, since “the glory of the king is in the multitude of people” (Prov. 14:28).
G-d did not do so. Thus Israel should know they are a people extraordinarily blessed that G-d chose them, despite their smallness, to be His am segulah, His special treasure.
Rabbenu Bachya finds himself forced to give a more complex reading to resolve the contradiction of Moses, in Deuteronomy, saying both that Israel is the smallest of peoples, and also “as many as the stars of the sky.” He turns it into a hypothetical subjunctive, meaning: G-d would still have chosen you, even if you had been the smallest of the peoples.
Sforno gives a simple and straightforward reading: G-d did not choose a nation for the sake of His honor. Had He done so He would undoubtedly have chosen a mighty and numerous people. His choice had nothing to do with honor and everything to do with love. He loved the patriarchs for their willingness to heed His voice; therefore He loves their children.
Yet there is something in this verse that resonates throughout much of Jewish history.
Historically Jews were and are a small people: today less than a fifth of one per cent of the population of the world. There were two reasons for this.
First is the heavy toll taken through the ages by exile and persecution, directly by Jews killed in massacres and pogroms, indirectly by those who converted — in fifteenth century Spain and
nineteenth century Europe — in order to avoid persecution (tragically, even conversion did not work; racial antisemitism persisted in both cases). The Jewish population is a mere fraction of what it might have been had there been no Hadrian, no crusades, and no antisemitism. The second reason is that Jews did not seek to convert others. Had they done so they would have been closer in numbers to Christianity (2.2 billion) or Islam (1.3 billion).
In fact, Malbim reads something like this into our verse. The previous verses have said that the Israelites are about to enter a land with seven nations, Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
Moses warns them against intermarriage with them, not for racial but for religious reasons: “They will turn your children away from following Me to serve other G-ds.” Malbim interprets our verse as Moses saying to the Israelites, “Don’t justify outmarriage on the grounds that it will increase the number of Jews. G-d is not interested in numbers.”
There was a moment when Jews might have sought to convert others (to be sure, there was one instance when they did.
The Hasmonean priest-king John Hyrcanus I forcibly converted the Edomites, known as the Idumeneans. Herod was one of their number).
The period in question was the Roman Empire in the first century. Jews numbered some 10 per cent of the empire, and there were many Romans who admired aspects of their faith and way of life.
The pagan deities of the Hellenistic world were losing their appeal and plausibility, and throughout the center of the Mediterranean, individuals were adopting Jewish practices. Two aspects of Judaism stood in their way: the commandments and circumcision. In the end, Jews
chose not to compromise their way of life for the sake of making converts.
The Hellenistic people who sympathized with Judaism mostly adopted Pauline Christianity instead. Consistently throughout history, Jews have chosen to be true to themselves and to stay small rather than make concessions for the sake of increasing numbers.
Why have Divine Providence or human choice or both, eventuated in the sheer smallness of the Jewish people? Could it be, quite simply, that through the Jewish people G-d is telling humankind that you do not need to be numerous to be great.
Nations are not judged by their size but by their contribution to the human heritage. Of this the most compelling proof is that a nation as small as the Jews could produce an ever-renewed flow of prophets, priests, poets, philosophers, sages, saints, halachists, aggadists, codifiers, commentators, rebbes and roshei yeshivot; that they could also yield some of the world’s greatest writers, artists, musicians, film-makers, academics, intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople and technological innovators.
Out of all proportion to their numbers Jews could and can be found working as lawyers fighting injustice, economists fighting poverty, doctors fighting disease, and teachers fighting ignorance.
You do not need numbers to enlarge the spiritual and moral horizons of humankind. You need other things altogether: a sense of the worth and dignity of the individual, of the power of human possibility to transform the world, of the importance of giving everyone the best education they can have, of making each of us feel part of a collective responsibility to ameliorate the human condition, and a willingness to take high ideals and enact them in the real world, unswayed by disappointments and defeats.
Nowhere is this more in evidence today than among the people of Israel in the state of Israel: traduced in the media and pilloried by much of the world, yet still, year after year, producing human miracles in medicine, agriculture, technology, the arts, as if the word “impossible” did not exist in the Hebrew language.
When, therefore, we feel fearful and depressed about Israel’s plight, it is worth returning to Moses’ words:
The L-rd did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you are the fewest of all peoples. Small? Yes. Still surrounded, as the Israelites were then, by “nations larger and stronger than you.”
But that small people, defying the laws of history, outlived all the world’s great empires, and still has a message of hope for humanity. You don’t have to be large to be great.
If you are open to a power greater than yourself, you will become greater than yourself. Israel today still carries that message to the world.
Reframed story: What it means to be comforted
Shabbos Nachamu is a turning point. After three weeks of mourning and reflection culminating in Tisha B’Av, we are suddenly invited to hear a new message.
The Haftorah begins with the words of the prophet Yeshayahu, “Nachamu Nachamu Ami,” which means, “Be comforted, be comforted, My people.” It is a call from G-d to console His nation. The shift is immediate. Just days ago, we sat on the floor recalling destruction, exile, and tragedy. We mourned the Beis HaMikdash, but also the full sweep of Jewish suffering across history.
Now we are told to feel consoled. But what has changed? The Temple has not been rebuilt. The wounds of history still ache. Even today, the Jewish people face fear, vulnerability, and isolation. What comfort can possibly be offered?
To answer that, we need to understand what the word nechama actually means.
In modern language, it is often translated as comfort, but in Torah its meaning goes deeper.
In Sefer Bereishis, when humanity had become corrupted, the Torah tells us that G-d reconsidered having created man. The word used there is VaYiNachem. It describes a shift in thought, a reevaluation of direction. In other words, nechama is not only about emotional comfort. It is about perspective. It means learning to see something familiar in a new way.
This is the core message of Shabbos Nachamu. The call to be comforted is not based on external changes. The invitation is to shift how we see ourselves, our story, and our future. Tisha B’Av teaches us to acknowledge pain. Shabbos Nachamu teaches us not to become trapped by it.
The Jewish people have experienced unimaginable suffering. From the burning of the Temples and the massacres of the Crusades to the expulsions, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of October 7th, the pain is real and deeply etched in our collective
memory. And it is not just memory.
We are living in a moment of deep uncertainty and fear. We see rising antisemitism not only in the streets and on college campuses but even in the halls of Congress. Just last week, a resolution was introduced in the Senate calling for the United States to stop selling arms to the State of Israel. This was not just about foreign aid. It was a proposal to sever and detach the alliance. The vote did not pass, but the fact that it reached the floor at all is unsettling.
We are witnessing a world in which bloodshed, captivity, and confusion have become daily realities. The exile has not yet ended. And yet, at the very same time, we are also seeing clear signs of geulah (redemption). Miraculous victories. Surges of Jewish pride. A nation awakened from spiritual sleep.
Perhaps Hashem has shown our generation
hints of redemption not only to comfort us, but to awaken us. To remind us that the current state of brokenness is not how things are supposed to be, and not how they need to remain.
The historian Salo Baron once warned against telling our story through a lachrymose lens, a narrative focused only on tragedy. And he was right. Our pain is real, but it is not our only truth. Alongside destruction, we have built. Alongside exile, we have returned.
Shabbos Nachamu gives us permission to see the full picture. It does not ask us to forget. It asks us to remember differently. Not only to count the losses, but also to name the blessings.
We are not only a people who suffered. We are a people who endured. We are not only mourners. We are builders. We are not only shaped by what has happened to us. We are shaped by what we choose to do now.
May we all be granted the strength to see with fresh eyes. Nachamu Nachamu Ami. Be comforted, because our future is still unfolding.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH Jewish Center of Long Beach.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
After woes, we find strength that brings solace
Transformation! It’s a popular word used today in many different contexts, and we are now experiencing it in our Jewish calendar.
On Sunday, we marked Tisha B’Av, the national day of Jewish mourning and the saddest day of the year. But now, the mourning period is behind us. Weddings are permitted, and joyous occasions await. This coming Shabbat has a special name derived from the opening words of the Haftarah, Shabbat Nachamu, a Sabbath of comfort and consolation.
This is symbolic of the strength and resilience of our people. The ability to bounce back from tragedy and start again is a character trait that typifies who we are as a nation. And we have seen
it in abundance after Oct. 7.
In Israel today, we are witness to so many unbelievable real-life stories of heroes and heroines who are picking up their shattered lives to rebuild their families and their future.
Just last week, a news item went around the world on social media and captured my attention. It was an engagement announcement for Hadas Loewenstern, widow of Israel Defense Forces hero, Elisha Loewenstern, who sacrificed his life in Gaza, and Hod Reichart, whose wife, Chagit Reichart, passed away after giving birth. They will now merge their families. May G-d grant them a lifetime of happiness.
Ayear ago, Ben Binyamin and Gali Segal got married. They were both survivors of the Nova massacre, and both lost their right legs there. To see the video of them walking to their chuppah together and Ben breaking the glass with his right foot brought tears to thousands. The courage and resolve of all these holy souls are inspirational and humbling to mere
mortals such as I.
To pick ourselves up, again and again, no matter what, this has surely been one of the great secrets of survival of the Jewish people throughout the centuries.
The truth is, while there are many of these heroic, inspiring and exceptional human beings, the whole nation of Israel are heroes — indeed, superheroes.
To live through the last 22 months of hell, with no day and no night, running to shelters at all hours with small children at a moment’s notice, is nothing short of heroic. And how many hundreds — nay thousands — of families have
been bereaved and lost loved ones, including so many young, beautiful people in the prime of their lives? Yet they continue with remarkable resilience, and I, for one, am in awe of every one of them.
It is said that what applies to Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, also applies to Reb Yisrael, the individual Jew.
There are times in our personal lives, too, when we need to find that inner strength that we all possess but that often lies dormant somewhere in our subconscious.
When we experience loss and bereavement, G-d forbid, or other types of personal tragedy or illness, G-d forbid, we also need to dig deeply into our psyche to discover the very same strength and resilience that is part of our national character and distinctiveness.
How do we respond to misfortune and heartbreak in our own lives? Some struggle and take a while to recover. Sadly, some never quite recover.
Disconsolation, discontent on Shabbat of comfort
This week, after spending the past three weeks memorializing and mourning the past catastrophes which befell our people over the course of our long history, we all are offered consolation at the hands of Prophet Isaiah. In the haftarah, which serves as the climax after the reading of this week’s Torah portion, VaEtchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11), we are asked to be edified by the eloquent words which only Isaiah was capable of articulating: Comfort, comfort, My people — these are your Gd’s words — speak to Jerusalem’s heart and call out to her that her term is served, her guilt appeased,
that she has received at the Lord’s hand twice over for all her sins. A voice calls out: “Clear the Lord’s way in the desert: smooth across the arid plain a road for our G-d.” Every valley will be raised, each hill and mountain leveled; the twisted road will be made straight; the mountain ranges, open land, to let the Lord’s Glory be revealed. (Isaiah 40: 1-5)
These reassuring words are meant to console and comfort a people who have suffered severely and repeatedly over many centuries, nay millennia. One wonders, however, if it is realistic to attempt to allay the profound pain of victims of unspeakable terror with mere words, eloquent as they may be.
After all, when Jacob was first informed about his favorite son’s Joseph’s supposed fate, he declared, “A wild animal must have eaten him! Josef has been torn limb from limb!” And then we read, “… he mourned for his son for many days. All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, ‘I will go down to the netherworld mourning for my son.’”
(Genesis 37:33-35)
To say the least, Jacob was disconsolate, inconsolable, dejected. Is it only fair to ask, “If our patriarch Jacob would not yield to the words of comfort extended him by his own immediate family, how can we be expected to easily recover
from the agonies of our heart-rending history?”
Or consider the example of Jacob’s cherished wife, Rachel. This time, I refer to the words of the Prophet Jeremiah: “A sound is heard in Rama: wailing, bitter weeping. It is Rachel, weeping for her children. She refuses to be consoled for her children, for they all are gone.” (Jeremiah 31:14)
Note that both Jacob and Rachel refuse to accept comfort, to be consoled. They adamantly choose to remain disconsolate, inconsolable, dejected.
How are we, then, to blithely dismiss the emotions of recent weeks, laden as they were with sadness, fasting, and heartfelt lamentations? Can we deftly transmute Shabbat Chazon and the elegies of Tisha B’Av into Shabbat Nachamu and no less than seven weeks of joyous inspiration?
Or, to focus on our contemporary circumstances, surrounded as we are with widows and orphans of soldiers killed in battle, can we not empathize with those who “refuse still to be consoled?” Can traumatized individuals conceivably be soothed by comforting words, however inspiring they may be?
To address this question, and hopefully to provide some food for thought for those of my contemporaries who still feel perplexed and sty-
mied by the horrors of the Holocaust, and more recently by all that has ensued since October 7, 2023, allow me to refer to two rabbinic sources as well as draw upon my own training in the psychological treatment of trauma.
The first source is from Rabbi Shimon Schwab’s Maayan Bais HaSho’evah. He reflects upon this verse: “As a man is consoled by his mother, just so shall I comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13).
He asks, why a “mother” rather than a “father,” and why a “man” rather than a “child”? He answers that it is the mother who went through the difficulties of pregnancy and the pangs of childbirth, and all of the consequent difficulties of child rearing, especially during adolescence. During that entire time, she did not experience the full joy attributed to having a child. It came with all sorts of tribulations and disappointments. But now that her son was a mature man, she could conclude that it was all worth it. She could assure her grown child, who was going through his own tests and challenges, that he will reach the point of being able to be consoled and indeed to accept his current difficulties from a fresh perspective, just as she has now that she raised him.
S. African Rabbinical Assn.
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OPINION COLUMNISTS
Mitchell Bard, foreign policy analyst, authority on USIsreal relations; Ben Cohen, senior analyst, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Stephen Flatow, president, Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi and father of Alisa Flatow, murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995; Yisrael Medad, Americanborn Israeli journalist and political commentator; Rafael Medoff, founding director of David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies; Fiamma Nirenstein, Italian-Israeli journalist, author of 13 books, leading voice on Israeli affairs, Middle Eastern politics and antisemitism; Melanie Phillips, British journalist; Moshe Phillips, national chairman, Americans for a Safe Israel; Thane Rosenbaum, Distinguished University Professor at Touro University (published by Jewish Journal); Jonathan S. Tobin, editor-in-chief, Jewish News Syndicate.
Fighting media bias: Bibi’s mission impossible
JONATHAN S. TObIN
JNS Editor-in-Chief
The contrast was glaring. A week after the New York Times put a horrifying yet completely misleading picture of a Palestinian Arab child in Gaza on its front page to illustrate a story that lent weight to the false claim that Israel was deliberately starving people in Gaza, it had an opportunity to put an equally awful photo in the same spot.
Hamas released a video depicting two of the remaining Israeli hostages they are still holding and who look as if they are actually starving, in addition to other mistreatment at the hands of their kidnappers.
But the Times chose not to highlight this atrocity on their front page, though it was frontpage news in Israel as well as in the New York Post, one of the few pro-Israel daily newspapers in the United States.
While it was shown in a Times piece about the emaciated men that was published online, that story was not considered significant enough to warrant inclusion in the print edition of the paper. Nor did it mention that the video showed one of the Israelis being forced to dig what was said to be his own grave. It also cited such criminal abuse of hostages solely as part of an argument claiming that most Israelis believe that their plight was somehow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault, rather than that of Hamas.
The treatment of these two images is not an isolated example.
It not only demonstrates the editorial judgement that the Times employs when covering the conflict, but it is typical of most legacy print,
Persuading the world to stop believing blood libels circulated by Hamas cannot be Israel’s top priority.
broadcast and cable outlets in the United States and throughout the West. Such bias shows their determination to mimic Hamas talking points and to trash Israel and its government, even when the story’s main focus is the atrocious behavior of the Palestinians.
Does it matter?
But outside of the way such slanted reporting raises the blood pressure of supporters of Israel, does this sort of thing really matter?
To most Israelis who have long believed that it should be considered beneath their dignity as well as a waste of time to try to explain themselves to a hostile world, the answer seems to be “no.” Understandably, they think that winning the war against Hamas terrorists on the ground in Gaza — like the successful battles they have recently fought against Iran and its Hezbollah auxiliaries in Lebanon — should be their main focus.
There is a long tradition in Israeli culture of dismissing the opinions of an indifferent world and instead emphasizing the creation of Zionist facts on the ground. That dates back to founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who famously dismissed the United Nations and its role in founding the Jewish state by saying: Only the daring of the Jews established the state, not some decision by that Um-shmum.
A long succession of Israeli leaders has not done much to improve the situation, despite the pleas of those who think this is vital to the country’s survival.
There have been different variations on indifference to the issue. Shimon Peres, who at various times was prime minister, foreign minister and president of Israel, did more than anyone to champion the peace process. He believed that Israel didn’t need better public relations (hasbara in Hebrew) or a sophisticated public information policy because he believed good policies — and by that, he meant trading “land for peace” to end the conflict — would solve the problem.
Unfortunately for Israel, giving the Palestinians what they said they wanted didn’t work either. As the failure of his Oslo Accords proved, their goal was Israel’s destruction, not a Palestinian state living in peace beside it.
Netanyahu is personally the focus of much of the smears and attacks directed at Israel in the last generation, as well as getting a lot of the blame for failures in the information war.
He may be Israel’s best spokesperson since he can speak to the world in intelligent and eloquent American English. But he appears at times to be insensitive to Diaspora concerns about the unpopularity of his policies and the need to create better hasbara. He often acts as if he has long since discarded any delusion that anyone not already predisposed to support the Jewish state will listen to what he has to say. The rest of his administration takes its cues from that attitude.
That may also be reflected in the news that, while most of the world thinks the opprobrium directed at Jerusalem necessitates a retreat on its part, Netanyahu is considering ordering the Israel Defense Forces to completely occupy the Strip. That would include sending the IDF into areas such as Gaza City and the camps in central Gaza, which it has largely avoided during the 22 months of conflict.
With Hamas refusing to negotiate seriously for a ceasefire-hostage release deal and the world already having fallen for Hamas propaganda talking points, the rationale for holding back from a complete occupation of Gaza may be gone. That will likely generate another round of invective and attacks on Israel and may well heighten its isolation.
And it will be one more reminder that, regardless of whether anything that is published or
posted online about the war in Gaza by Hamas, its sympathizers and enablers is true, they are dominating commentary about the war in the press and on social-media platforms. Israel is losing the information war, but that realization doesn’t elicit the same sense of urgency from Israelis that other threats generate.
Costs to the Jewish state
As Hamas savors its propaganda victory in convincing world opinion and mainstream media that the Jewish state really is deliberately starving innocent Palestinians and committing “genocide,” Netanyahu’s critics are asserting that this is no longer merely a matter of bad public relations. As Haviv Rettig Gur recently wrote in the Free Press, the global perception that Gaza is experiencing a famine is — regardless of whether the reports are dead wrong, merely exaggerated or primarily the result of biased reporting — costing Israel on the field of battle as well. It’s the main reason why Israel was forced to adopt temporary ceasefires to allow more aid into Gaza — something that gives Hamas’s remaining forces in Gaza vital respites that enable them to keep fighting.
It’s also true that the shift in American public opinion against Israel can’t be denied.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Christian conference in Jerusalem on April 27. Chaim Goldberg, Flash90
Backroom politics behind Starmer’s
One year after being elected as Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer looks increasingly isolated and alone.
His positive approval ratings in the wake of his victory have sunk to their lowest level so far amid a slew of domestic crises and social issues — around immigration, cuts in benefits, unrest in the National Health Service, sluggish economic growth, a deteriorating law and order situation, and much else.
But during what the London Times has described as the prime minister’s “summer of pain,” Starmer has faced his one of his biggest challenges on an issue that makes literally no difference to the paychecks of British voters, the quality of the schools their children attend, the efficiency and responsiveness of their health service, or any other aspect of their daily lives. That issue is the war in Gaza.
Sad to say, this is likely the first time that a foreign war with no British boots on the ground has become a wedge issue in domestic British politics. Other, more terrible wars past and present — such as the current Russian aggression against Ukraine, the most pressing security threat and moral challenge facing both
Israel’s fate should not be held hostage to domestic fissures in other countries.
the United Kingdom and European continent — have led to furrowed brows and handwringing, but they haven’t really impacted voting intentions.
The fundamental reason for this difference — that the aggressors in this case are smeared as “Jewish colonists” ethnically cleansing an indigenous non-Jewish population — will probably be the subject of a future column. Why are so many voters in Britain and elsewhere vexed and angry about the plight of children in Gaza, ignoring the fact that Hamas uses them as human shields while skillfully exploiting the images of their suffering, yet shamefully silent on the fate of the thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Vladimir Putin’s regime?
But back to Starmer. His anxiety that his continuing refusal to label Israel’s war against Hamas a “genocide” will cost him support was a major factor in his ill-advised announcement that the United Kingdom will recognize a Palestinian state by the time the UN General Assembly meets in September, unless Israel declares a unilateral ceasefire and gets on board with a two-state solution (which, in these febrile conditions, isn’t going to happen.)
Since that announcement, much attention has been paid to the international context around it. Of special importance here is France’s decision to recognize an independent Palestinian state, which prodded Starmer in the same direction, as well as the leaders of other countries from Canada to Malta.
Less attention has been devoted to the more immediate circumstances around Starmer. Despite him taking action against the antisemitism that plagued his ruling Labour Party under his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, including turfing Corbyn out of the party’s ranks, its “Palestine First” wing has become increasingly assertive over the past year.
Over the last fortnight, the noise from this crowd has swelled against the background of viral images of hungry children in Gaza, buoyed further by polls showing that more than half of British voters oppose Israel’s “aggression” and that nearly half want the creation of a Palestinian state.
Growing numbers of cabinet ministers pushed Starmer to announce British recognition, with one of them inadvertently acknowledging the emptiness of the gesture by telling the Guardian, “We say that recognizing Palestinian statehood is a really important symbol that you can only do once. But if not now, then when?”
As more than 100 Labour members of parliament signed a cross-party letter to Starmer urging the same, media coverage of the issue depicted the premier as an outlier morphing into an outcast, struggling to impose his view that “Palestine” should only be granted recognition as part of a peace process with Israel. With the scent of rebellion in the air, one Labour Parliament member told Politico that Starmer was “all words — no action, no further sanctions.” Another claimed, presciently as it turned out, “I don’t think people will settle for anything less than recognition now.”
See Cohen on page 22
Jew-hate: Rest stop assault, parliament ovation
Just days after a Jewish father and his sixyear-old son were assaulted by a mob at a Milan-area rest stop simply for wearing kippot, the Italian Parliament rolled out the red carpet for Francesca Albanese, the United Nations “expert” whom the United States has declared persona non grata over her repeated antisemitic rhetoric.
Albanese, whose record includes grotesque claims that Israeli soldiers deliberately shoot children in the head and genitals, was warmly welcomed on July 29 by members of Italy’s leftwing political bloc.
Her appearance wasn’t a debate — it was an anointment. For her admirers, she’s not a researcher or legal scholar; she’s a movement — a standard-bearer for the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish agenda cloaked in the language of “human rights.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been at war — on the battlefield and in the court of global opinion. From Hamas and Iran to Qatar and Turkey
In Italy, antisemitism is legitimized from the floor of the highest democratic institution in the land.
and their backers in Moscow and Beijing, Israel’s enemies are betting that the tide of anti-Israel sentiment will break the Jewish state.
Francesca Albanese, who serves as the UN’s special reporter for Palestinian rights, is part of that campaign. Her notoriety and platform have grown in tandem with the surge in antisemitism across Europe and beyond.
In her new UN report presented to the Italian Parliament, Albanese refers to “genocide” 57 times in just 38 pages — a staggering claim that deliberately ignores the reality of Hamas’s human shield strategy and Israel’s unprecedented efforts to protect civilians, even in the midst of urban warfare.
She makes no mention of the tunnels beneath Gaza or the hostages still held within them. Instead, she echoes Hamas leaders who describe Palestinians as a “people of martyrs” and portrays Israel — a state founded by a millennia-old indigenous people — as a colonial oppressor.
The consequences of her rhetoric are not theoretical. Macron is now pushing Palestinian statehood at the UN European institutions are moving to cut Israel out of key scientific partnerships. The message is clear: Jews who once couldn’t defend themselves are no more welcome when they can.
The Italian lawmakers who invited Albanese — Laura Boldrini of the Democratic Party, Angelo Bonelli of the AVS alliance, and others from the Five Star Movement — have embraced her narrative. In her telling, the Jewish lobby controls America, Israel is the new Nazi regime, and IDF soldiers are war criminals. This is not reasoned criticism of Israeli policy. It is demonization.
Meanwhile, Hamas propaganda continues to dominate international headlines. Casualty numbers come straight from Hamas-run agen-
cies, inflating civilian deaths and masking terrorist combatants as victims. As experts and analysts have repeatedly shown, Hamas systematically inflates death tolls, reports the same fatalities multiple times, and uses broad definitions (such as classifying anyone under 18 as a “child”).
Israel, by contrast, has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent civilian deaths — issuing warnings, urging evacuations, and canceling strikes. It does so while under fire from a terrorist regime that hoards humanitarian aid and
turns hospitals into command centers. Even now, Israel’s message remains clear: return the hostages, and the war can end. Yet Albanese has never called for their release. Not once. In a time when Jewish musicians are ejected from restaurants for speaking Hebrew, when schoolchildren are expelled from planes, and when public institutions equate Jewish identity with guilt, the world should take note of what happened in Rome. A nation’s parliament gave a platform to a voice that dehumanizes Israelis,
See Nirenstein on page 23
A banner hung over the side of London’s Westminster Bridge during rush hour on June 3, 2024. Henry Nicholls, AFP via Getty Images via JNS
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, greets pro-Palestinian protesters in front of Palazzo Montecitorio, seat of the Chamber of Deputies in Rome where she presented her report, “From an Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide,” on July 29. Simona Granati-Corbis, Corbis via Getty Images via JNS
It’s ok to ask: Is Trump a modern-day Cyrus?
DR. ALAN MAZUREK
The Midnight Hammer operation against Iran, successfully orchestrated by President Trump in June, has invited comparisons to Koresh, the ancient Persian King Cyrus.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Dr. Hagi ben Artzi, compared Trump to Cyrus: He was the first world leader to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the first to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the first to declare that the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are legal. Now he is preparing to go further and relocate the Gazan refugees to other countries thereby dealing with the core issue, the problem of the “so-called Palestinian refugees.”
Why would an ancient Persian king be compared to a modern American president who wreaked destruction on Persia (today called Iran)? Isn’t that the very definition of irony? (Iran-y?)
Cyrus and Trump, in their roles as non-Jewish leaders of incredible power and importance, benefited the Jewish people in extreme ways. Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city walls, to prepare for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple; Trump destroyed the nuclear existential threat to the State of Israel. Let us look deeper into the historical, biblical and Talmudic sources that make these comparisons viable.
Cyrus the Great lived around 600–530 BCE. He became king — really emperor — of the Per-
sian and Medean empire that spanned the ancient Near East, encompassing most of western and central Asia, the largest empire in history at that time. Cyrus was approximately 70 or so years before Achashverush, usually identified with the Persian king Xerxes I (Xerxes the Great, 519–465 BCE), who as we know ruled over 127 provinces, from India to Ethiopia, (Megillat Esther 1:1).
But we heard about Cyrus 140 years before that, in a prophetic reference in the book of Isaiah:
Ko amar Hashem l’mishicho, l’Koresh (thus said Hashem to His anointed one, to Koresh) (45:1).
Koresh is called the anointed of Hashem and he is enjoined by Him to first return all the exiled lost tribes Israel and then rebuild the Holy Temple (Yeshayahu 45:1-7, Ezra 1: 2–3, see masechet Megillah 12a).
Cyrus, a non-Jewish king, is called mishicho, the Moshiach, the anointed of Hashem, and is supposed to do what traditionally we believe our Jewish Moshiach is supposed to do?
Understandably Chazal and the meforshim are troubled by this, and a clearer reading of the pesukim indicates that l’mishicho (His anointed one), means Cyrus is chosen for a special purpose as stated above. But the gemara in Megillah 12a tells us that Cyrus did not fulfill that directive. If we examine the verses cited above in Yeshayahu and Ezra and the commentary from Megilla 12a, we get a better understanding of what this all means:
Rav Nachman bar Rav Chisda expounded this verse in Yeshayahu: “Thus said Hashem, to His anointed, to Cyrus, ‘Was Cyrus actually
anointed? Was he actually mashiach — anointed, with the same oil as the kings from the house of David?’ Rather says Rav Nachman, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, Blessed be He, said to the real Messiah, “I complain to you about Cyrus. I told him to rebuild My house and gather My exiles” (Yeshayahu 45:13). But he didn’t; instead, he invited everyone to return Jerusalem and rebuild but, he failed to involve himself personally” (masechet Megillah 12a).
As the Rashba (1235–1310) explains on these verses, Hashem is lamenting the fact that Cyrus did not do all he was supposed to do, for had he done so, the final Geula would have arrived. So instead, we must wait for the “real Moshiach.”
Having said that, how does this relate to Trump? Like Cyrus, he is the most powerful leader of his day. He gave Israel the weapons they needed to defeat their enemies. He gave them a green light to finish the job and quickly. He provided the state of Israel the greatest political and military support and backing in every arena — and despite tremendous pressure from all quarters, he continues to do so.
Is he the new Cyrus? Is he a Moshiach? Before your brain explodes, it is clear that he is no more the Moshiach than was Cyrus the Great. We are still waiting the true Moshiach’s
arrival. But is President Trump a modern-day Cyrus?
Back on June 23, Israel’s Minister of Communications, Shlomo Karhi made the assertion that Trump is “greater than Cyrus.” It could be argued that rather than passively allowing things to occur as did Cyrus, Trump actively participated in the subterfuge leading up to the attack on Iran and supervised the attack itself. One could argue Trump, because he has Jewish grandchildren, has a personal stake in the survival of the Jewish people, unlike Cyrus the Great, who had no Jewish lineage lineage or kinship.
Now before you purchase a red “Trump the Great” baseball cap online, recall that another president who preceded Trump was also compared to Cyrus. That was President Harry Truman, who officially recognized the state of Israel in 1948, 11 minutes after the state was declared by Ben Gurion. Truman announced to his Jewish friend Eddie Jacobson: “I am Cyrus! I am Cyrus!” That is because with this act, he realized that he breathed life into the first Jewish Commonwealth in the Holy Land in almost 2000 years.
So there you have it — one a Democrat (Truman), one a Republican (Trump). Each a modern-day Cyrus. Neither one Moshiach, but perhaps Hashem is tantalizing us with the very real possibility that what seems so out of reach, almost impossible, is really possible. That the true Moshiach really is at our doorstep. It just depends on our fulfillment of Hashem’s will for us and our willingness to make it happen. Shabbat Shalom.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
The enduring Zionist legacy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky
With these words, historian and pundit Victor Davis Hanson began the essence of his 2025 commencement address at Hillsdale College in Michigan:
“So, today, I would like to reflect on these three sometimes-forgotten American virtues — honor, tradition and optimism.”
Although he was speaking of American ideals, these virtues resonate powerfully in the life and legacy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the towering Zionist leader whose death we commemorate this August — 85 years since he passed away in Hunter, NY, in 1940.
For Jabotinsky, these three values were not abstractions. They were demands — practical, moral and political — that were woven into the consciousness of the then stateless Jewish people striving for rebirth in their ancient, indigenous homeland. He sought to build a generation of Jews defined not by exile and victimhood, but by self-respect, service and hope. These virtues formed the foundation of
There could be no national revival without moral and physical strength, and no lasting peace without respect — earned through resilience and integrity.
the Brit Trumpeldor youth movement, the Revisionist Zionist vision and Jabotinsky’s militant spirit that helped forge the Jewish state.
Honor, for Jabotinsky, was a matter of national dignity.
In an era when Jews were seen by others (and too often by themselves) as passive and powerless, he preached self-defense and selfrespect — or what he called Hadar.
Whether organizing Jewish self-defense units in Odessa, advocating for a Jewish Legion to fight alongside the Allies in World War I or forging Jewish youth in Jerusalem in the 1920s into a trained fighting force, Jabotinsky worked to instill a sense of pride and obligation. Jewish honor, he believed, meant not waiting for rescue but taking personal responsibility for Jewish destiny.
This commitment to honor explains why Jabotinsky broke from the mainstream Zionist movement when he felt it was compromising on fundamental principles. It’s why he insisted on clarity about Jewish rights in all of historic Eretz Yisrael. For him, there could be no national revival without moral and physical strength, and no lasting peace without respect — earned through resilience and integrity.
Tradition was the cultural and historical spine of his worldview.
Although Jabotinsky was a modernist in many respects — European, cosmopolitan — he had a profound reverence for the Jewish past. He understood that Zionism was not merely a political revolution but a national renaissance. The Hebrew language, Jewish customs and biblical memory were all essential tools in this process. A Jewish state had to be Jewish — not just demographically or geographically, but spiritually and historically, recalling biblical heroes such as David and Samson in his poetry and fiction.
He engendered this understanding in Brit Yosef Trumpeldor — the Betar movement, which he founded in 1923. The Zionist youth movement’s uniforms, rituals, songs and literary education were designed to revive Jewish identity in a way that was proud, disciplined and forward-looking, while always conscious of the sacrifices and glories of Jewish history. Tradition, to Jabotinsky, was not a museum. It was a foundation for growth and freedom. Most strikingly, Jabotinsky was a prophet of optimism
In a world darkened by antisemitism, statelessness and approaching catastrophe, he dared to believe in — and work for — a bright
and profoundly Jewish future. His belief in a sovereign Jewish state with a Jewish army and a flourishing Hebrew culture was seen by many of his contemporaries as fanciful or extremist. Yet he charged forward.
His 1923 essay, “The Iron Wall,” argued that only by establishing an unbreakable Jewish presence in the Land of Israel could peace eventually be achieved with the hostile surrounding Arabs. Though criticized in its time, the core insight — that strength and security are prerequisites for peace — has since been vindicated. It was this realism infused with hope that made him such a pow-
The world gangs up to deal with a ‘bad’ Israel
Let’s start with a simple truth: If humanitarian organizations truly cared about Palestinians, there would have been one unyielding demand every single day for more than 600 days: Release the hostages. That simple, urgent truth should have been the rallying cry of every world leader, echoing from every newspaper and every television screen. Instead, more than 100 NGOs issued a statement condemning Israel that conspicuously fails to mention Hamas, terrorism or the 50 hostages, dead and alive, that stew in Gaza as their families agonize. This staggering omission reveals their true priorities — not Palestinian dignity or Israeli security, but performative outrage tailored to blame only one side. The war could have ended months ago if these groups had exerted pressure on Qatar to force its Hamas allies to release the captives. Their silence is a betrayal, prolonging the conflict and deepening the very suffering they claim to alleviate. This is not neutrality. It is complicity. Many humanitarian groups are enablers
Facts no longer matter. This is a moment of political faith, not of reason.
of Hamas’s propaganda machine. They know that every word they utter and every action they take is contingent upon the goodwill of terrorists who weaponize the subsequent opprobrium heaped on Israel. The deceitfulness of organizations like UNRWA that allowed their facilities to double as terror bases should have irreparably tarred their reputations; instead, they remain cloaked in a halo of undeserved righteousness.
Israel has made critical missteps in this war. It backed itself into a corner, believing that the world would tolerate a siege on Gaza long enough to work. It misjudged Hamas’s grip on the population and misunderstood how thoroughly Gazans have been indoctrinated or intimidated into submission. It misread global sympathy, assuming that the horrors of Oct. 7 would not be so quickly erased from public memory.
Instead, the world has moved on, thanks in no small part to a media ecosystem that has willingly served as Hamas’s press office.
We’ve seen this movie before, from the fabricated story of a mutilated baby in the First Lebanon War to the al-Dura hoax of the Second Intifada. Today’s version features viral images of “starving” children, one later exposed by a journalist as a child with cerebral palsy whose healthy family was cropped from the shot, another suffering from a genetic condition flown from Israel to Italy for treatment.
These examples do not negate all Palestinian suffering. Still, they expose a media ecosystem that is not just biased but actively manufacturing a narrative at the expense of the truth.
We are in a Cartesian moment where the world thinks Palestinians are starving; there-
fore, they are. Israel’s siege strategy — legal under international law — was undermined not by its military effectiveness but by Western leaders’ squeamishness. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump both short-circuited Israel’s attempt to break Hamas through a blockade. Biden wasn’t willing to watch innocent Gazans suffer and forced Israel to end the policy before it had time to be tested. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reimposed the siege, believing Trump had less empathy, but he, too, proved unwilling to stomach the op-
tics of Palestinian hunger and did not want European governments to seize the narrative and undermine his self-styled role as a peacemaker.
Hamas’s intransigence in hostage negotiations ruined Trump’s repeated promises that a deal was around the corner. He decided to back Netanyahu’s goal of destroying the group, but not at the expense of the images running on daily newscasts and occupying the front pages of the major newspapers. So, for the second time, a U.S. president has
Israeli President Isaac Herzog attends a memorial ceremony for Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on July 24. Chaim Goldberg, Flash90
A visitor at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on July 30. Miriam Alster, Flash90
Fighting media bias: Bibi’s mission impossible
Tobin continued from page 18
As we saw last week, the majority of Senate Democrats, including some who heretofore identified as friends of Israel, are now willing to vote against aid to Israel during wartime. That’s because they either believe the genocide and starvation smears, which their allies in the media have mainstreamed, or they think that it would be politically dangerous to refute them and defy their party’s increasingly anti-Israel and antisemitic left-wing base.
There’s also some evidence of slippage from the other end of the spectrum. President Donald Trump and most Republicans remain on Israel’s side. But the platforming of antisemitism by the likes of former Fox News host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson has encouraged others on the far right — like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former congressman Matt Gaetz — to turn on Jerusalem and begin mimicking the “genocide” smears of the left.
Whether that influences Trump to change his stance, which remains the only one in the GOP that counts, remains to be seen. If it did, that would be a catastrophe for Israel.
False narratives
What makes all of this so frustrating for friends of Israel is that they know the narratives about genocide and starvation are false. And they find it hard to accept that an Israel that is so good at fighting wars is so bad when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of the global community.
The truth is that the current conflict is between a beleaguered Israeli democracy whose army operates under strict ethical guidelines and a genocidal Palestinian national movement that seeks to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet and is guilty of heinous atrocities against Jews and their own people.
Yet, like the thousands of other examples of media bias, the Times’ dishonest bolstering of the starvation narrative demonstrates how public opinion in Europe and the United States is being persuaded to believe that Israel is intentionally committing genocide and the Palestinians are merely downtrodden victims only seeking to live in freedom.
Hamas, which has largely manufactured
Goldman…
Others are hardier. They are tough “troopers” who seem to handle life’s difficulties with amazing aplomb.
This week’s Torah reading, Vaetchanan, tells us that Moses didn’t get his own personal prayer answered. He would not enter his beloved Promised Land. As devastating as this was for him, he accepted it. He didn’t bear a grudge against G-d. My late in-laws, Rabbi Zalman and Shula Kazen of Cleveland, were of the latter variety. They lost two children in their lifetime, their eldest daughter and their youngest and only son. But I never saw them become angry or bitter. They believed that everything was part of the greater heavenly plan and that each had achieved their life’s mission. Indeed, both children were very accomplished. Esther Alpern was a legend in São Paulo, Brazil, where she was a dynamic rebbetzin and educator, and Yosef Yitzchok Kazen was the founder of the Chabad.org website. With strength, courage, faith and trust in a Higher Power, we can find the wherewithal to continue with life after tragedy strikes.
Over my years of pastoral experience, I’ve had quite a few congregants who, at the end of their shiva week of mourning, asked me if they could spend another week at home clustered in the warmth and embrace of their loving family, friends and community. They felt
the food crisis in Gaza as a strategic initiative to smear Israel, is clearly winning the battle for international public opinion even as it has been routed in the actual fighting against Israel. And the more anger the talk of genocide and deliberate starvation generates against the Jewish state, the more Hamas digs in its heels and refuses to seriously negotiate a ceasefire and the hostage release deal that Israelis long for.
So, can the Israeli government do a better job of explaining its policies to the world?
Of course, it can. And at times it has.
After the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, it appeared that Jerusalem had mobilized a group of people to do just that as well as doing more to respond quickly and effectively to answer Hamas’s lies.
Stop whining about smarter hasbara and, instead, unabashedly support Israel’s efforts to rid the world of antiWestern Islamists.
That was illustrated by the rapid Israeli response to big lies, such as the claim in the opening weeks of the conflict and even before the IDF entered Gaza that it had bombed the Ah-Ahli Hospital and killed 500 persons, a story that was published by the New York Times and much of the mainstream media. It soon turned out that the rocket that hit the facility was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad; it landed in its parking lot and injured relatively few people.
That demonstrated how establishment media, even in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, were acting as Hamas’s stenographers.
That’s an unfortunate abandonment of journalistic ethics that continues to this day, as the starving child picture hoax demonstrated. Many, if not most, outlets continue to use Hamas-supplied statistics on casualties and spin on the food shortage, and who deserves
so safe and secure in that nurturing comfort zone, and weren’t ready to leave the cocoon and go out to face the music of a busy, noisy and insensitive world.
I explained to them that the very same Torah that tells us to mourn, now tells us to move on. We sit shiva, but then shiva ends, and we must pull ourselves together, get up and go.
Thankfully, we have a halachic directive to end that intense first week of mourning. Otherwise, how could we ever stop mourning for our loved one? It would feel disrespectful. Of course, they are never forgotten, and a scar remains forever. But we move on in our lives, and we learn to function and progress.
My late mother told me how she struggled after her own father’s passing. My zayde lived with us after my grandmother died, and she was his only daughter. And even though time was moving on, she still wasn’t finding comfort. Until a psychologist shared some strong words with her. She was told that her father was OK up in heaven, so who was she crying for? Herself? How long can one wallow in self-pity? And that actually helped her snap out of it.
The secret of survival of the collective Jewish people is also the secret for each one of us in our times of loss and need.
May we feel bereft no more. May each of us experience nachamu, a time of comfort, consolation, solace and simcha. May our Holy Temple be rebuilt, and may we succeed in rebuilding our own lives, too.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
blame for it. And no Israeli spokesperson or communications policy — no matter how wellcrafted, sophisticated or truthful — seems to be able to do anything about it.
Mission impossible?
Under these circumstances, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that any Israeli government, no matter who was leading it or how smart or articulate its spokespeople were, is facing a “mission impossible” with respect to winning the information war.
That doesn’t mean they should give up. Nor should the rest of the Jewish world. And an outlet like JNS, which provides news and opinion about the Middle East and the Jewish world without the anti-Israel biased filter of the corporate press, is now more important than ever.
But even those engaged in this daily struggle should not be laboring under the delusion that clever media strategies are the answer.
An international press that is heavily influenced by the bizarre red-green alliance of European Marxists and Islamist immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa isn’t interested in honest journalism about Israel. That’s just as true of American outlets like the Times and other legacy media, whose staffs have been indoctrinated in toxic leftist ideas such as critical race theory, intersectionality and settlercolonialism that falsely label Jews and Israelis as “white” oppressors always in the wrong, and Palestinians as “people of color” always in the right.
The reason why they are so quick to buy Hamas’s lies is that they have already largely abandoned journalism for activism. No amount of devoted media monitoring is going to convince them to correct their mistakes or to acknowledge their bias and change their ways.
Those in charge of Israel’s information policy and Jewish organizations in the United States should forget about futile efforts to reform the Times, the Washington Post, CNN or MSNBC. It’s a wasted effort. What they should be concentrating on is getting their message to alternative media and going directly to the public on social media.
More importantly, they should be direct and unapologetic about asserting Jewish rights, rather than talking only of security concerns when it comes to Israel.
Weinreb…
Another approach is offered in an essay by Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, author of the Seridei Aish. He reflects upon his own Holocaust experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto before he escaped from it. He writes: “That is the manner of the experience of suffering. It has a way of creating a new soul-energy in the person, “softening his sins,” as the Talmud puts it. A new and revived soul enters the fray. New powers emerge from the subconscious and transfors one’s previous existence.”
Rabbi Weinberg’s approach is very close to that of one of my mentors in the field of recovery from trauma. I refer to Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, author of the book “Trauma and Recovery.” In the introduction to her book, she writes: The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. … Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of the psychological trauma.
She emphatically asserts that the process of healing from trauma takes quite a long time, often even many years. But it reaches a point when the person achieves what she calls “reconnection.”
Thus, Dr. Herman continues, “the simple statement — ‘I know I have myself’ — could stand as the emblem of my own recovery. … Her task
Nor should they shy away from labeling their Palestinian opponents as adherents of an eliminationist form of Jew-hatred that has a great deal in common with the Nazis out of fear that this will turn off those who think them helpless victims with no agency for their atrocious conduct and repeated rejections of peace.
Victory matters most
That won’t win Israel many friends at the United Nations or among those on the editorial boards of liberal news organizations. But it will have the ring of truth and be readily understood by those who understand the same outlets slant the news about other issues.
Whatever they do, they need to stop laboring under the delusion that there is some magical strategy that will sell the cause of the survival of the Jewish state to a world audience already predisposed by antisemitism and ideology to be swayed by even the cleverest appeal.
As Netanyahu has demonstrated while leading Israel since Oct. 7, what still matters the most is defeating Israel’s enemies, not sweet-talking the media or holding back from taking decisive military action in the hope of currying favor abroad.
Hamas terrorists are holding on because they believe that Western public opinion will save them. The only way to thwart that heretofore successful strategy is to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, even as much of the world tells Jerusalem it can’t be done. Accomplishing that would make sympathy for the terrorists a lot less important. And it’s the only way to prevent future massacres and keep Israel secure.
It’s also the best way of firming up the alliance with those Americans and Europeans who haven’t succumbed to the woke swindle. A victorious Israel will still be largely isolated on the international stage and assailed by the leftist press, but it will be in a stronger position to protect its interests and its people.
Those who care about the Jewish state need to stop whining about smarter hasbara or how unfair the smears against Israel have been, and instead, unabashedly and loudly support its efforts to rid the world of anti-Western Islamists. And they should do so even if that makes them unpopular, too.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
now is to become the person she wants to be!” In my own thinking, I’ve adopted a slightly different terminology. All who suffer have, as the author of Tehillim puts it, a “broken heart.” But with time, inner work, a supportive environment, and well-meaning consolation, there comes a “breakthrough.” It is a sense of a mission and new life purpose which is freeing, sundering the bonds of victimhood and relieving the burdens of anger and anxiety.
It is a freedom that we call nechama and geula, comfort and redemption. Such is the mood of Shabbat Nachamu, and such should be the mood of the next seven weeks of consolation culminating in the wonderful New Year which lies ahead, a year of healing and recovery, of calm and true peace, of a “breakthrough” to new and lasting achievements as individuals and as a totally unified nation at last.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Cohen…
Continued from page 19
Outside of Labour, Starmer faces a threat from the “Green Left” coalition of Islamists and Socialists, most immediately through the Independent Alliance, a parliamentary grouping formed by Corbyn following his expulsion from Labour.
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Alongside Corbyn are five other independent MPs, all elected last year and all of them Muslim, whose platforms centered on the war in the Gaza Strip and alleged Islamophobia inside the Labour Party. The grouping is now focused on becoming a new far-left political party, having been joined by Zarah Sultana, originally elected as a Labour MP, whose antisemitism-inflected barbs against Israel are widely covered in British media outlets.
According to the Times, the new formation “has the potential to do real damage to Labour.”
Why? “The Corbyn pitch is simple — the ‘mass redistribution of wealth and power’ and an end to the ‘genocide’ in Gaza,” the paper argued. “For those on the left disenchanted with Starmer after the compromise of a hugely challenging first year in power, it may prove to be irresistible.”
Nigel Farage, the roguish leader of the rightwing populist Reform Party, certainly hopes so; if a far-left party is “able to organize sufficiently and field large numbers of candidates, it will help us enormously,” he said.
The notion that Israel’s fate should be held hostage to the domestic fissures within other countries is offensive on its face and is another good reason to dismiss the mudslide of Palestinian state recognition as performative nonsense that will never sway Israel nor feed a single child in Gaza. If it has any importance at all, that lies in what it tells us about the influence on British politics, and perhaps the domestic politics of those other countries that have opted to reward Hamas by recognizing a Palestinian state, of Hamas apologists.
Yet in the case of Britain, there is an additional, historical consideration.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment of a Jewish “national homeland” in what was then Mandatory Palestine — one of the greatest and most consequential moves in British diplomatic history — is now seen by many as an additional mark of shame on Britain’s imperial legacy. In many ways, Starmer’s move is compensation for that document, which is held up by Hamas supporters as “Exhibit A” in what they present as the Zionist “colonization” of Palestine.
The apologia surrounding a decision more than a century old feeds the notion that Israel is an illegitimate state, the reward given to Jewish colonizers by a devious, manipulative empire run from London.
The irony here is that, for all the opprobrium that Starmer has understandably attracted from supporters of Israel, he remains a bulwark against the more extreme positions advocated by members of his cabinet and backbench Labour parliamentarians, such as expelling the Israeli ambassador and imposing sanctions against the Jewish state. Israeli diplomacy and Israel’s advocates abroad must therefore confront the same strategic dilemma: should they try to influence Europe, which has long seemed like a losing battle, or should they concentrate efforts on keeping the United States on board?
How that is resolved will impact Israel’s global standing for the coming decade, at least.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Nirenstein…
Continued from page 19
vilifies Jews, and empowers those who seek their destruction.
Francesca Albanese may wear the badge of “UN expert,” but make no mistake: her legacy is already written. She is a megaphone for Hamas talking points, and her presence in democratic halls signals a dangerous erosion of the moral clarity once taken for granted in the West.
To the father and son wearing kippot in Milan: The violence you endured was not random. It was licensed and legitimized — by applause and a standing ovation in the Chamber of Deputies in Rome.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Phillips…
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erful motivator of young Jews. He knew the road would be hard but believed victory was possible.
Jabotinsky’s optimism was not naïve. It was a moral obligation. To despair, he believed, was to betray future generations. He understood that the Jewish people had survived for millennia not by accident, but through determination, vision and faith.
Eighty-five years after his untimely death on Aug. 3, 1940 (at 60 years old), Jabotinsky’s legacy remains not only relevant but urgently needed. In Israel today, as in Jewish communities worldwide, the virtues he championed face erosion — from ideological confusion, historical amnesia and external threats. Honor, tradition and optimism are under pressure everywhere — in education, culture and civic life.
Yet these are precisely the virtues that can sustain Jewish identity and ensure the strength of the Jewish state. They are the building blocks not just of Zionism but of all healthy nations. That an American thinker like Victor Davis Hanson would select these same values in addressing young citizens shows just how universal and enduring they truly are.
Jabotinsky died before seeing the fulfillment of his vision. He did not live to witness the founding of the State of Israel or the heroic battles fought by the generation he helped train. But his influence was undeniable. From the underground Irgun and LEHI fighters to Israeli prime ministers like his spiritual heirs, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, Jabotinsky’s ideas shaped history.
For decades, his remains stayed in New York, per his will, which stipulated that they should not be moved to Israel unless requested by a Jewish state. Israeli founding father and first prime minister David BenGurion, his longtime political rival, refused that request. Only in 1964 did Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol reverse that policy and formally approve the transfer.
Jabotinsky was finally reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem — his resting place now standing beside the very nation he helped bring into reality.
On this 85th anniversary, let us remember not only Ze’ev Jabotinsky as the leader, writer and soldier, but Jabotinsky the teacher of values. Let us re-embrace the virtues he taught: the honor of self-respect, the tradition of shared memory and the optimism that fuels perseverance.
These are not just Zionist values; they are Jewish values. They are not just relics of some distant past but signposts for the future of the Jewish people.
Jabotinsky knew it. Hanson reminds us. The challenge now is to live them.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Bard…
Continued from page 21
killed the Israeli siege strategy.
This was a strategic disaster for Israel. Hamas is strengthened, the hostages remain captive, and global anger at Israel, including the United States, is growing. A new Gallup poll found American approval of Israel’s military action in Gaza at a new low of 32%. This is driven by Democrats’ abandonment of Israel; only 8% stand with Israel compared to 71% of Republicans (up from 66% last September). Netanyahu’s gamble — that Republican backing and Trump’s return to power would protect US-Israel relations — has mostly paid off. Still, the cost may be high
should Democrats regain control of the White House and Congress.
Meanwhile, many progressive Jews and the ever-present “AsAJew” chorus rush to condemn Israel to signal their virtue. Like French and British leaders, they are also jumping on the two-state hobby horse, unconcerned that flooding Gaza with aid is throwing a lifeline to Hamas, rewarding it with legitimacy and proving that terrorism does pay.
Palestinians are not required to make any sacrifices, not even releasing hostages, to receive the gift of statehood. Ultimately, the prize is meaningless since there is no land on which this state can exist without Israel’s assent.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer may see rhetorical support of a state as a sop to quiet their progressive bases, but it will do nothing for the Palestinians. The 147 countries that have recognized “Palestine” haven’t brought that state one inch closer to existence. It remains as fictional as Narnia, Wakanda or Westeros, except potentially far more lethal.
True supporters of Israel are not fairweather friends who abandon their ally out of fear of what their friends will think of them or the need to feign moral superiority. Israelis are not children in need of a public scolding from the Diaspora. They need solidarity, not sanctimony.
Still, given the unpleasant reality, the proIsrael community is caught in a quandary. They know the truth: that claims of a famine in Gaza are a grotesque exaggeration, that Hamas diverts and steals aid, and that Israel, despite the lies, is not targeting civilians. Yet the facts no longer matter. This is a moment of political faith, not of reason.
Many critics justifiably blame Israeli hasbara, or PR, which is abysmal. Where are the American ambassadors who, in past conflicts, regularly made Israel’s case on cableTV news? Some of the most articulate voices
were sidelined over political disputes, while some current government officials make incendiary remarks that give ammunition to Israel’s enemies.
Regardless, PR has its limits. If you’ll excuse the treif metaphor: You can’t put lipstick on a pig. Only Israeli officials must defend their government’s actions. The rest of us must put issues in context.
The problem is that the facts debunking the claims of famine and the evidence of Hamas stealing aid and sabotaging the Israel-backed aid distribution system are falling on deaf ears. We are in a Cartesian moment where the world thinks Palestinians are starving; therefore, they are.
Israel’s critics ignore the paradox they have created. Israel’s willingness to allow aid into Gaza, to facilitate humanitarian corridors, and to support international relief efforts destroys their accusation of genocide. Genocidal regimes don’t allow food trucks to roll in or hospitals to be supplied to sustain their purported victims.
The PR battle was lost on Oct. 8 when the massacre faded from headlines and the images of Palestinian suffering took its place. But that does not mean we must surrender to this narrative.
Instead of jumping on the bandwagon to assuage guilty feelings, Jews need to show backbone and stop worrying about what the goyim and their progressive friends will think.
It is past time for the “AsANon-Jews” to speak for the hostages who have been starving for more than 600 days. Let the UN, Doctors Without Borders, WHO, Oxfam and the rest of the hypocrites organize aid and medicine for the 20 Israelis clinging to life in far worse conditions than any endured by Gazans. Until then, their silence on the hostages will continue to speak louder than their condemnations of Israel.
