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Shlock Rock hits Mobile! August 21-27, 2026 • Ki Teitzel • 8 Elul 5786 • Vol. 25, No. 25

By Jessica Russak Hoffman, JNS Lenny Solomon of the Jewish music group Shlock Rock stepped off a plane in Mobile, Ala., on Monday to perform in the city for the first time. In 1987, he released the song “Minyan Man,” which is set in the city. “Of all the things left for Shlock Rock to do, this was one of them,” said Solomon, who lives in Israel. “I had played Birmingham, I had played Montgomery, but I had never played Mobile.” The song, which found a cult following at Jewish summer camps in the 1990s, is told from the perspective of a Jew, who “stepped off the bus in Mobile, Ala.” when “Shabbos was an hour away.” The man wanders the town and finds a fellow Jew, who invites him to be the 10th man in a minyan. Solomon told JNS that when he arrived in Mobile, he started crying, thinking of the song’s lyric, “When I make this trip through Mobile once every year, I remember the men who prayed here.” Robin Meyerson, founder and director of the Shabbat Project Arizona and the Meis Mitzvah Project, which works to ensure Jews opt for burials instead of cremation, invited him. Meyerson, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., told JNS that she was searching for her uncle, Donald, 90, because he “went off the grid, and the family lost touch with him.” The family located him in a Jewish-owned nursing home in Mobile. “I told my kids where I found him, and my daughter-in-law started singing ‘Minyan Man’,” she said. “What are you singing?” Meyerson asked. Her daughter-in-law told her, “Well, we always used to sing this song in camp every Friday before Shabbat would come in.” Meyerson was inspired to invite Solomon to play for the residents of the nursing home. “His music touches the soul,” she said. On Monday, Solomon played for nearly two hours. “My uncle remembered all of the Jewish songs from when he was a little boy,” Meyerson said. “It all came back to him.” She brought her uncle a kiddush cup and a tallit. Meyerson told JNS that after she located her uncle, she contacted a local Chabad rabbi, who began visiting him, bringing him challah and helping him put on tefillin. “One mitzvah ripples,” she told JNS. “I was trying to find my uncle, and now he’s reconnected with his family. He’s putting on tefillin. He’s saying prayers.”

FROM ‘MINYAN MAN’ I stepped off the bus in Mobile, Alabama The sun was slowly setting on the bay It was 6 o’clock on a summer Friday afternoon, Shabbos was an hour away. I walked around the town wondering what to do ‘Cause Shabbos is no time to be feeling blue See Minyan on page 2

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Lenny Solomon arrives by plane (not bus) and then performs for Jews in Mobile, Alabama.

Courtesy Robin Meyerson

Mamdani and the rabbis Speak truth to power or fall in line? YISRAEL MEDAD

s you may have read last week, a group of rabbis recently met with Mayor Zohran Mamdani. While City Hall did not release an official list, JNS reported that there were nine rabbis and one lay leader present (she represents herself as a rabbi nevertheless) with an overrepresentation of the liberal-oriented synagogues. The New York Times noted 10 rabbis. The New York Board of Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of America, representing many hundreds of more Orthodox rabbis, were not invited. According to Jewish Insider, the previous week, the mayor had met with leaders of the anti-Zionist Satmar community based in Williamsburg. A JTA report quoted Rabbi Jonathan Leener of the Modern Orthodox Prospect Heights

Mamdani has the rabbis right where he wants them.

Shul as saying, “There were certainly moments of tension and passion, particularly as people tried to convey how isolated and vulnerable many Jewish New Yorkers feel right now.” The Times decided to characterize the meeting with a headline that the rabbis had been “pleading” with Mamdani to gather and talk. (If there is a way by which that newspaper can twist and turn a story upside-down if it relates to Israel, it will do so.) I have a concern that what they were doing was bleating, instead of speaking truth to power and making demands. Mamdani has succeeded, in a fairly short time, in instilling a sense of fear into the Jews of New York. or his part, Mamdani expressed the feeling that the conversation was “candid and productive” and that he “appreciated hearing from them.” In the words of Satmar Rebbe Zalman Leib Teitelbaum of Williamsburg (his brother, Aaron Teitelbaum, lords over the Chassidic haven of Kiryas Joel upstate) very much revolves around the element of fear. According to a quoted Yiddish recording, he condemned attacks by Orthodox Jews against Mamdani. “We must remember that we are in exile,” he said during his annual address at the yahrzeit of his uncle, Yoel Teitelbaum. “To denounce the mayor and brand him an antisemite constitutes a true provocation against the nations.” Interestingly, one of the main Haredi news

websites in Israel, Kikar Shabbat, headlined its story on the speech on Aug. 10 in a very inyour-face fashion as “The Satmar rebbe is for the antisemitic mayor of New York.” The summary reads: “Recently, we have seen a terrible ‘provocation of nations’ [a reference to Rav’s dictum to his son, Hiyya at Tractate Pesachim 113A] by ultra-Orthodox Jews — the provocation against the mayor of New York. We know that we are in exile. … Fearful and peaceful Jews should behave according to the ways of the Torah and accept the decrees of exile. By shouting against it and labeling it with antisemitism, we are only expressing true provocation. It is not enough that there is provocation of nations in the Land of Israel, but they are bringing the provocation of nations here to America as well.” hat is obvious is that Mamdani has the rabbis right where he wants them. Both supporters and semi-opponents are coming to him, trying to soothe and placate his rough approach. They aren’t demonstrating. They didn’t issue an agreed-upon summation for the media. Their political maneuverings, including the buffer-zone legislation to protect schools and synagogues, have been low-key. Were they pleading, as the Times published, or were they bleating in a cowering fashion? And how did the general public, especially those unfavorably inclined towards the Jews See Mamdani on page 2

August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786 THE JEWISH STAR

Mission accomplished! Great Neckers have arrived By Rebecca Szlechter, JNS Their parents fled Iran decades ago to build a comfortable life in the United States. Now, seven families from what one of the olim described as a “very, very, very tight-knit” community in Great Neck have arrived in Israel, leaving Long Island behind to build their futures in the Jewish state. An eighth family is expected to arrive soon. In Great Neck, Mashadis live with generations of relatives nearby, creating a close-knit extended family that provides many of the comforts and institutions of Jewish life, according to Jordan Karmily, 42. “It’s a bit of an earthquake in our community, because people don’t leave,” he said. Karmily was born and raised in Great Neck and has lived there his entire life. He and his wife, Joyce, 37, have six daughters, ages 2 to 14. His family and others in Great Neck trace their roots to Mashhad, Iran. His parents’ generation came to the United States some 50 years ago, before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and built what has become a community of more than 7,000 people. Great Neck “has everything a community offers,” he said. Karmily’s parents, siblings and cousins live within walking distance. For years, he and others had discussed moving to Israel, but the idea remained

more of a dream than a concrete plan. “It was always a topic of conversation,” he said. “Like most life plans or big life plans or ideals, we kind of just keep it at arm’s distance.” That began to change after Oct. 7, 2023. Karmily said he became consumed by the events unfolding in Israel and found it difficult to focus on his life in New York while Israelis were facing rocket attacks. “Oct. 7 definitely kicked a nerve,” he said. “I felt like I was missing out on everything that was going on.” The families also received assistance from Nefesh B’Nefesh, which helped take the prospective immigrants on a pilot trip to Israel. They visited schools and met with municipal officials, giving them a chance to experience the practical realities of living in the Jewish state. Karmiliy said that the trip helped turn the idea of immigration into something more tangible. The families made aliyah with the assistance of Nefesh B’Nefesh, in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael and Jewish National Fund-USA. They rented homes in the same neighborhood, plan to send their children to the same schools and will pray at the same synagogue. “We’re approaching this as a com-

Last week’s front page featured the Great Neckers at JFK airport as they prepared to board an El Al flight to Israel.

munity project,” he said. Raising his six daughters in Israel is a central part of the decision. “I never had a dream of retiring in Israel. I wanted to raise a family there,” he told JNS. “I wanted my future offspring, G-d willing, to be planted in Israel.” He acknowledged Israel is not perfect, and the move will come with chal-

lenges, but said that he believes it offers something he wants for his children. Karmily hopes other Persian families in Great Neck who have considered making aliyah will see it is possible. “More than Israel needs money, more than Israel needs to be supported from afar, I think the Jewish people, they need us,” he said. “We lack nothing here” he said, re-

ferring to life in Great Neck. “We have community, we have our family, we have parks and schools and it’s safe and everything is good.” “But it’s not where we’re supposed to be,” he told JNS. Chaim Broyde, mayor of Ra’anana, welcomed the families and praised their decision. “We warmly welcome the new families joining our community and are deeply moved by this inspiring step, which embodies Zionism and faith,” he said. “Raanana is proud to be one of Israel’s leading cities in the absorption of new immigrants, serving as a home to olim from dozens of countries and bringing together diverse communities.” Looking ahead, Karmily hopes his children will understand that their parents made a deliberate choice to build their family in Israel. “As long as they know that there was someone in their lineage, one of their parents, grandparents, who didn’t need to move but chose to move,” he said. Ultimately, he believes the moment for Jews to return to Israel should not be viewed as something that will happen only in some distant future. “It’s time for the Jews to come home,” he said. “Those days that we waited for and prayed for have come, and we just need to open our eyes and hear the call.”

Frum 6’-7” baketball player heads to Division 1 By Rebecca Szlechter, JNS Chaim Galbut, a 6-foot-7 Miami native, will join the Duquesne University Dukes this fall after spending the past year studying Talmud at a Jerusalem yeshiva, aiming to become the first observant Orthodox Jewish man to complete in four years of Division I college basketball. Galbut’s commitment to Shabbat has already affected his college recruitment. He said last year that prospective programs had rejected him after learning that he would not play on Shabbat. “I don’t play on Shabbos,” he said on the Yeshiva League Pass Tip Off podcast. “They’re like, ‘Well, we don’t want you.’” Duquesne, a private Catholic school in Pitts-

Mamdani…

Continued from page 1 and Israel, perceive this development?

The real question, albeit one that lies under the surface, is: Who were the rabbis talking to? Mamdani? His Jewish aides? The Jewish community? (We’ll wait for those sermons.) They definitely weren’t talking to the press in any unified fashion. Instead, they slunk away and allowed themselves to be selectively quoted from phone conversations or email. Have they convened a joint press conference, even at

‘Minyan Man’… Continued from page 1

burgh, opted to take the unusual circumstances into account. Assistant coach Chase Goldstein discovered Galbut through a viral highlight video of him throwing down dunks and advocated for the program to recruit him. Head coach Dru Joyce III told the New York Post that the school knew accommodating Galbut would not be easy but saw an opportunity for both the player and program to grow. The recruitment came after Galbut graduated from Miami Country Day School in 2025 without a Division I offer. He spent a gap year studying in Israel while continuing to develop his basketball skills. His exposure grew through JDS Elite, a Jew-

this late date? Indeed, with many equally represented rabbis and synagogues that could have been included in that meeting, who speaks for the city’s Jewish community? Has Mamdani successfully divided, split up and disunited the Jews on one of the most crucial matters of attention: their political, social and economic future?

ne participant in that “private” discussion, Rabbi Ellen Lippmann of the progressive Kolot Chayeinu house of worship, rejected the idea of groupthink. As noted, she “challenged the idea of a consensus on the impact of Mamdani’s Israel messaging.” No surprise there, as Lippman is a Mamdani supporter involved in

Then I saw a man who looked the same way too I was quite relieved to find a fellow Jew. I asked the man I saw, “How many Jews in this town?” He said to me, “There used to be a minyan around But one of us passed away and we’ve been feeling down Yet now it seems as though another Jew has been found. Won’t you stay with us for Shabbos, minyan man?” We walked down Winston Avenue, a block then two more

ish day-program school AAU program, and showcase events before his highlight videos brought him to Duquesne’s attention. Now in Pittsburgh, Galbut is already structuring his college life around basketball and Jewish learning. He reportedly wakes before 7 am for morning prayers, attends practices and classes, then studies Talmud at a local kollel from 3 to 6 pm before returning to the gym. His day ends with additional Torah study and evening prayers. He has also found support from other Orthodox Jewish basketball players. During his year in Israel, Galbut sought advice from Ryan Turell, the former Yeshiva University star who went on to play professionally in the NBA G League.

his transition team, and her synagogue has hosted the mayor.

Mamdani is dividing and conquering. Rabbi Jonathan Leener, also at the roundtable and who leads an “open” Modern Orthodox synagogue, commented afterwards that the mayor “needs to be aware of how [his language] … creates an environment that I think a lot of Jews feel vulnerable in.” The new school year will start soon, as will the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to attend the annual General Assembly in September. The pro-Palestine camp will not be pa-

And went into a shop that read ‘Closed’ on the door. There was a minyan in the back of a hardware store, Nine men waiting for one more. We ushered in the Shabbos with a beautiful song The Chazan had a voice that was clear and strong. We sang out as one all Shabbos long Then Maariv came again; I had to be moving on Now that was 20 years ago, but the vision is clear

tient. The radical left will increase its pressure. Mamdani can lean on the Satmars and on radical anti-Zionist Jews rallying at Gracie Mansion just before the Shavuot holiday this spring, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, New York Jewish Agenda, Bend the Arc and Jewish Voice for Peace. As I have previously written, Mamdani and his Jewish allies are pushing anti-Zionism as a replacement theory in America. We are witnessing, in New York City, a realignment of political forces — a new Jewish establishment. What will the rabbis say to their flocks then? Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

And I think about it now and then ’cuz the place is still dear And when I make this trip through Mobile once every year I remember the men who prayed here. Now the Minyan is gone, a few died, some moved on But the back of the store still remembers this song. The nine men who waited, the one came along… How Shabbos was carried on a song.

THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

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Finances cloud the joy of great Jewish education By Mike Wagenheim, JNS Several Jewish groups told JNS that they are ready to help, as Jewish Americans, like all Americans, are struggling with price increases. Some 55% of Americans say affordability is the main issue as Election Day approaches in November, according to a recent Gallup poll. “There’s no real middle class anymore in the community,” said Baruch Niebloom, founder of the financial tech nonprofit frum. finance, which works with Orthodox Jews. “So many people are getting tuition discounts from schools, because they don’t have the income.” “It’s not only people who are struggling. It’s people who are wondering if they’re OK to retire, if they can afford a house, if they’re just starting out, if they’re newlyweds, first job, whatever it may be,” Stacey Zrihen, a financial planner who volunteers with the Orthodox Union’s Living Smarter Jewish program, told said. Zrihen trains a team of about 100 volunteer coaches, and she deals with a community that doesn’t tend to have a written budget. Financial planning “hasn’t historically been taught in schools,” she said. “I think parents, who are doing a great job educating their kids Judaically, are not always doing a great job educating them financially,” she said. Both those in their mid-40s and 50s and younger couples, “who are just starting out, who don’t have a great blueprint for what it looks like,” are having difficulty, according to Zhiren, who said that the OU program gets thousands of annual requests. “The clients that we’re working with are struggling more than in the past,” she said. “When I got married 33 years ago, the costs of our home, our car, those costs have multiplied

A woman reviewing financial paperwork.

— some of them even tenfold.” Even as nearly every household now needs to bring in two incomes, there is a limit to revenue, and families ought to focus on cutting costs, according to Zhiren. “I call it the household black hole category,” she said, of purchases from stores like Amazon, Target, Walmart and Costco, which she said often go beyond necessities. “I think there are people who are taking vacations, because it’s something that we do and we’d like to do,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thing if you can do it, but I don’t think that has to be something that’s considered a necessity.” “If it is, the way that it’s done might look a little different if you’re trying,” Zhiren said. She said other areas, like hiring cleaners, sleep-away camp and dining out, can be cut back if necessary. Rabbi Shalom Goodman, co-founder and ex-

Vlada Karpovich, Pexels

ecutive director of Collective Kindness, formed in 2023 to support Jewish families navigating financial challenges, said that he left a Wall Street Journal editorial role in 2024 after seeing the Jewish communal struggles. “I heard about a family around Passover that did not have enough food, and I just asked around, ‘Who wants to help out’?” he said. “I got around $5,000 in under half an hour.” “If you help out a guy, it always ends up with you helping others,” Rabbi Goodman said. “It evolved.” The project went from aiming to give families a little extra money to Rabbi Goodman realizing that families earning $80,000 or more could be underwater. Debt appeared to him to be the primary culprit, so he paired families with financial experts who could help dig them out of debt. But then he found that some in that field were dishonest

and prioritized making money off those in debt rather than helping them get out of debt. He isn’t sure if the debt problem in the Jewish community has worsened of late, but Collective Kindness has expanded its operations. As its services become better known, “a lot of people are opening up. ‘Hey, I’ll be honest, I do have high APR debts’,” he said. People who register for his nonprofit’s Kosher Debt Help initiative report average credit card debt of more than $60,000, with average interest rates over 23%. One-time emergency help is a specialty of the Jewish community, Rabbi Goodman said, but debt can be an endless cycle that calls for deeper solutions. Niebloom, of frum.finance and a former senior software engineer at HubSpot, said that “what we found is a lot of other organizations are focused on either putting out the fire directly or on very short-term planning of just how to do cash flow, which leaves a lot of gaps.” Many Orthodox Jews fear that increasing their incomes will lead to losing government benefits that they need, but Niebloom tells them that they can avoid that by making the right financial decisions. The goal of frum.finance is to “take away this pattern we see, this general anxiety” and help formulate long-term goals on paper, getting them down to defined numbers, “instead of them being like these nebulous ideas in the back of their heads,” he said. Of more than 1,000 members affiliated with frum.finance, including 300 families involved in deep planning, he hasn’t seen increased stress and anxiety from the current economy, he said, “because I feel like people were almost maxed out before things were rough.”

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THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

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Camp Simcha ‘Disneyland’ for seriously ill kids By Howard Blas, JNS When more than 700 cyclists from around the world crossed the finish line and entered Camp Simcha in Sullivan County on July 30 — after riding up to 180 miles over two days in the annual Bike4Chai fundraiser — they were greeted by hundreds of cheering staff, volunteers and family members — and, most important, children battling cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. The riders knew that Camp Simcha’s worldclass programs and specialized medical care are made possible by the funds they raise each year. “This isn’t about crossing a finish line on pavement; it’s about arriving for children who need us,” said Rabbi Simcha Scholar, CEO of Chai Lifeline. “Every mile ridden and every dollar raised helps ensure that families facing serious illness have a community standing beside them. When our riders arrive at Camp Simcha, they see exactly why they ride. They’ve helped create hope.” Rabbi Scholar said that Chai Lifeline assists 6,000 families each day through offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel, benefiting an estimated 35,000 people. “The entire family suffers where there is illness,” he said. “We assess needs and offer a holistic, practical approach, from something as simple as providing dinner to arranging an appointment with a top doctor.” For Rabbi Scholar, Camp Simcha’s greatest achievement is creating a place where children from every background can simply be children. “It is the only place left in this world where peyot and ponytails meet — and are very happy with each other,” he said. “We don’t have different divisions, titles, political parties or philosophies. We have one philosophy called ‘loving our fellow person.’”

Israeli campers arrive at Camp Simcha in upstate Glen Spey, for a two-week summer session. Chai Lifeline

Camp Simcha serves children battling cancer as well as those living with lifelong illnesses. “Cancer has a beginning and an end, which is sometimes great and sometimes tragic. Children with lifelong illnesses — we have to teach them how to be regular kids,” Rabbi Scholar said. The camp cares for children with more than 80 different medical conditions each summer. “We don’t use the word ‘disability’ at Camp Simcha,” Rabbi Scholar added. “We use the term ‘different ability.’ We all have different abilities. Some run to get to a destination, some walk and some roll.” He describes Camp Simcha as “Disneyland in New York,” with a level of medical support unmatched by most summer camps. The camp is staffed by doctors and nurses, provides transportation free of charge, maintains an ambulance on site and can arrange emergency helicopter transport to a hospital if necessary.

Each summer, up to 90 campers from Israel attend Camp Simcha for a two-week session. Rabbi Scholar noted that overnight camping is less common in Israel than in North America. Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, that mission has taken on even greater significance. Many of the Israeli campers come from communities near the Gaza border and northern Israel that have endured years of rocket attacks and, more recently, the trauma of war. “So camp is a reprieve,” Rabbi Scholar said. “It is therapeutic. It is a lifeline for them. It gives them a sense of hope and a future.” For two weeks, he said, children can set aside hospital visits, medical treatments and the stresses of daily life and simply enjoy being kids. For Shimon Yarbiv, a 23-year-old yeshiva student from Bnei Brak, Camp Simcha has become much more than a summer camp. After undergoing chemotherapy for cancer

discovered in his shoulder, Yarbiv recently returned home from his third summer at Camp Simcha. “At camp, you’re a VIP for two weeks,” he said. His days were filled with swimming, boating and sports, while special activities included baking, making Havdalah candles and mezuzot, and evening performances by well-known Jewish entertainers. One highlight was performing on stage with singer Avraham Fried. Yarbiv also appreciated the special attention given to the Israeli delegation, including a shopping trip to the American Dream mall in New Jersey, the second largest in the US after the Mall of America in Minnesota. With a laugh, he recalled that the Israelis quickly made their presence felt. “We made the most balagan,” he said, using the Hebrew word for “chaos.” “When everyone else was sitting on chairs, the Israelis were jumping off them and dancing.” For Scholar, stories such as Yarbiv’s are the reason Camp Simcha exists. “Our job is to make them normal,” he said. “To take a child going through this difficulty, and a family going through this crisis, and help them return to their regular lives.” Through Chai Lifeline’s year-round programs, families receive emotional, medical and practical support before, during and after treatment. For the cyclists who completed Bike4Chai, the cheering crowds at the finish line in Glen Spey, NY, were more than a celebration of endurance. They were a reminder that every mile ridden and every dollar raised helps children like Yarbiv — and thousands of other families around the world — find hope, healing and, if only for two weeks, the chance to simply be children again.

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August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786 THE JEWISH STAR

HEALTH, MIND & BODY

Why can’t Israel kick its tobacco addiction? By Tania Shalom Michaelian, JNS Israel is known worldwide for medical innovation. It has a world-class, digitized healthcare system and leads the way in emergency medicine. Yet beneath this high-tech success lies a stubborn, decades-old public health failure that the country cannot seem to shake. The latest data show an entrenched smoking crisis that is rapidly capturing a new generation of kids. The true scale of the problem came to light recently when the Minister of Health’s Report on Smoking in Israel was submitted to the Knesset. The findings offer a harsh reality check for a society already dealing with immense existential and psychological strain over the last three years. According to the report, over 23 percent of adult Israelis — nearly one in four — smoke. That figure has barely budged in over a decade despite endless public health campaigns. To understand the human cost, tobacco-related illnesses claim an estimated 12,386 Israeli lives every single year — or 33 people each day. That outpaces almost every other preventable cause of death in the country. It is a bizarre contradiction at the heart of Israeli culture. This is a society that fiercely protects its people and mourns every fallen soldier as its own child. Yet it somehow tolerates a massive, entirely preventable loss of life year after year. The most dangerous front in Israel’s tobacco battle is no longer traditional cigarettes. Instead, it is the largely unregulated rise of e-cigarettes among teenagers and middle schoolers. Flavored vapes are brightly colored, look like tech gadgets, and sit on the counter of almost any neighborhood kiosk. They have completely warped the landscape of addiction, undoing decades of anti-smoking education. The new metrics from the Ministry of Health show a historic and alarming shift in how kids behave. For the first time, the percentage of elementary-school-age students who have tried e-cigarettes is higher than those who have tried regular cigarettes. An entire generation is getting hooked on nicotine through high-potency synthetic vapes before they ever even think about lighting a match.

An illustrative photo of a inhalation device filled with a mixture of propylene glycol, glycerin and nicotine, used to replace cigarette smoking. Nati Shohat, Flash90

The statistics show how quickly casual experimentation turns into an actual chemical dependency. Around 20 percent of Israeli students report trying an electronic cigarette, compared to 19 percent who tried regular cigarettes. Even worse, about 17 percent of elementary-schoolage children reported vaping at least once in the past month. This means it is a consistent habit for nearly a fifth of these young kids, not just a one-time trial. Furthermore, the crisis is growing horizontally across different cultural communities. Between 2023 and 2025, vape experimentation surged among both Jewish and Arab boys, as well as among Arab girls. The epidemic does not care about religious or socioeconomic borders. “Repeatedly, the data proves it: Israel is in the midst of a nicotine epidemic among children and youth,” Shira Kislev, CEO of Smoke Free Israel (The National Initiative to Eradicate Smoking), told JNS. “Electronic cigarettes have become the primary gateway to addiction. The age of initial exposure continues to drop, and meanwhile, a new generation of young people is being dragged into an addiction that will accompany many of them for the rest of their lives.” Health officials point out that the trauma of recent regional conflicts exacerbates the situation significantly. Constant rocket sirens, displacement, and pervasive anxiety drive teens

toward nicotine and other addictive substances. The step from middle school vaping to heavy smoking on military bases is a seamless, socially accepted pipeline. The tragedy here is not a lack of strong laws. On paper, Israel actually has some of the strictest anti-smoking legislation in the democratic world. The state banned tobacco ads, outlawed smoking in public indoor spaces, and forced all companies to use uniform, unattractive darkbrown packaging to destroy brand appeal. There is also an August deadline requiring graphic warning labels on all tobacco and vape products to meet strict global transparency standards. But public health advocates argue that these laws are meaningless without real enforcement on the ground. Walk into almost any Israeli supermarket, convenience store, or gas station, and you will see vapes displayed right at eye level, often right next to candy and chocolate bars. This is a direct violation of current marketing laws. Disposable vapes with flavors such as bubblegum are sold to minors without anyone checking IDs. Meanwhile, black markets thrive on apps like Telegram and Instagram, where age verification is completely missing. “The central challenge today is not just new legislation, but enforcement and supervision,” Kislev explained. “Although the law prohib-

its the advertising and marketing of smoking products, exposure to these products at points of sale is still widespread. At the same time, supervision over the supply chain of tobacco and nicotine products does not provide an adequate response to the changing and expanding market of electronic cigarettes.” The Ministry of Health does not deny the ugly facts in this report, but critics say its actual response lacks teeth because of political shifts and missing budgets. Health Minister Haim Katz stated that smoking remains a major risk factor for public health, adding that the data requires the state to act decisively to protect children while tightening prevention and enforcement. Yet as the Knesset reviews these findings, anti-smoking groups agree that the Ministry of Health cannot win this fight alone. To stop this epidemic, the government must treat tobacco enforcement as a major national priority. It requires coordination between the Ministry of Education, local city inspectors, and tax authorities, rather than treating it like a minor bureaucratic issue. Kislev insists the state must stop just writing reports and start taking aggressive action. “The time has come to move from words to actions,” she said. “We must limit the availability of smoking products, ban flavors that are effectively designed to attract young people, strengthen enforcement and market supervision, and invest significantly in prevention.” The financial stakes are massive for a country facing major economic stress. Because Israel funds healthcare through universal health funds, the cost of treating over 12,000 terminal tobacco patients every year falls squarely on the taxpayer. That drains a tight wartime budget that should be going toward defense and rehabilitation. “When smoking claims more than 12,000 victims a year in Israel, this is not just a health issue,” Kislev concluded. “It is a policy failure that demands immediate rectification.” Health advocates are waiting to see whether the new visual warnings and parliamentary debates change anything. But for a country fighting for its survival, advocates argue that protecting the health of Israel’s kids from this internal threat is just as critical.

Cancer-sniffing dogs train for early detection By Etgar Lefkovits, JNS KIBBUTZ HAMA’APIL, Israel — Man’s best friend may soon become a revolutionary M.D. A New Jersey-based medtech company founded in Israel is training beagles to detect cancer from breath samples. The aptly named startup, SpotitEarly, seeks to target the world’s second-leading cause of death by merging innate animal intelligence — the canine’s extraordinary sense of smell — with artificial intelligence. Beagles have one of the most powerful senses of smell in the animal kingdom. While human beings have about 5 million scent receptors, beagles possess about 250 million, making them top-notch sniffers. Founded by a group of tech entrepreneurs and former IDF canine commanders, the company is pioneering a non-invasive method for cancer screening by using beagles to analyze breath samples and improve early detection of the disease.

“We took on a mission to use the ability of dogs and transform it into a marketable product that can save many lives through early detection,” Udi Bobrovsky, co-founder and COO of SpotitEarly, told JNS. The joint human-canine venture envisions people breathing into a high-tech mask similar to an N95, ordering it online and then sending it back to the company’s laboratories for canine analysis. A clinical trial last year showed 94% accuracy in the dogs’ detection of lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancers, Bobrovsky said, with two follow-up studies now underway. The biotech company plans to launch its estimated $250 cancer screening test in the second half of 2027, with its initial focus on breast cancer.

‘If anyone can detect it, they can’

The dozen beagles — male and female, ranging in age from 2 to 4 and a mix of Floridians,

Europeans and native Israelis — eagerly rush into the laboratory testing room one at a time with their handler at the central Israeli kibbutz that serves as ground zero for the company’s R&D. They begin screening six different samples and are closely monitored from a separate room by technicians and staff. Happy at their work, they inspect each specimen to sniff out the cancer odor — which even their handler does not know the location of — and are sometimes, but not always, rewarded with a snack if they get it right. “The scent of dogs is absolutely extraordinary and is unmatched by all the AI technology in the world,” said Irit Gazit, the company’s canine production manager, who has worked with dogs for three decades. “If anyone can detect it, they can.” The company’s dog handlers are former Israeli soldiers from the elite canine unit. “This is a type of dream job,” said Ehud Cappon.

A cancer-sniffing beagle trained by the Israeli startup, SpotitEarly, on Kibbutz Hama’apil. SpotitEarly

Opening doors to care for mental health on LI

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devastated the peninsula. “I still remember the hospital being one of the only buildings with electricity,” Slowik said. “People came seeking shelter, and many are still processing that trauma today.” He said the hospital continues to treat patients with post-traumatic stress disorder connected to Sandy, while the pandemic intensified feelings of isolation, particularly among adolescents. “We have never seen so many younger patients with depression, social anxiety and suicidal ideation,” Slowik said. “Many teenagers struggled socially after Covid because they were isolated for so long.” The hospital has responded by expanding access to care. Telehealth appointments help patients who face transportation barriers, interpreters are available for patients who speak languages other than English, and financial counselors assist residents whose insurance has lapsed or who need help accessing charity care. “We don’t turn anyone away,” Singer said. “Whether someone needs help with insurance, medication orvlanguage services, we work to remove those barriers.” The behavioral health program also offers home-based crisis intervention for children, care coordination services, collaborative care with primary care physicians, medication-assisted treatment, family counseling and afterhours crisis support. For patients requiring hospitalization, St. John’s operates two inpatient psychiatric units with a combined 43 beds, providing aroundthe-clock care for adults experiencing serious psychiatric illnesses. Dr. Jessy Colah, chief of psychiatry, said the hospital has invested heavily in expanding services because behavioral health needs continue to grow throughout the region. “We have built a comprehensive system of care,” Colah said. “Patients receive a therapist, a psychiatrist and access to individual therapy, group therapy, family counseling and addiction services. We want people to know help is available.” Colah noted that coordinated care has improved outcomes by allowing behavioral health providers, primary care physicians and social workers to communicate more effectively under one roof. Patients leaving inpatient care are introduced to their outpatient treatment team before discharge, improving continuity of care and reducing missed follow-up appointments. Singer, Slowik and Colah emphasized that stigma remains one of the greatest barriers preventing people from seeking treatment. “The earlier someone reaches out, the better,” Singer said. To learn more about behavioral health services or to schedule an appointment, visit www.ehs.org

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By Melissa Berman, LI Herald As anxiety, depression and substance use disorders continue to rise across the Five Towns and Rockaways, Episcopal Health Services — which operates St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway — is expanding its behavioral health programs to ensure that residents receive treatment before they reach a crisis. Many people with a mental illness never seek treatment because of stigma, limited awareness of available services, worries over cost or difficulty accessing care, EHS said. To help address those challenges, EHS has centralized its behavioral health services in the new Walsh Ambulatory Pavilion opposite the main hospital building in Far Rockaway. The pavilion’s second floor houses both the Community Mental Health Center, with care for children, adolescents and adults, and the Wellness and Recovery Center, serving people 18 and older with a higher level of out-patient support. The expansion is part of a broader effort to integrate behavioral health with primary care while reducing the stigma often associated with seeking psychiatric treatment. “I think it just normalizes that mental health is part of health,” said Dr. Andrew Singer, an adult and pediatric psychiatrist who has treated patients at EHS for more than two decades. “Patients are coming into the same building for primary care, pediatrics and behavioral health. It reinforces that this is all part of taking care of yourself.” Singer, who grew up in North Woodmere and maintains a private practice in Woodmere, said the types of conditions he sees have changed dramatically during his 21 years with the organization. “When I first started, I saw a lot more attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,” he said. “Now, by far, the most common conditions are anxiety and depression.” Singer added that he’s also seen an increasing number of children and teenagers struggling with suicidal thoughts and anxiety disorders. St. John’s Episcopal Hospital works to identify concerns early by screening pediatric patients for depression and anxiety during routine medical visits. Behavioral health clinicians also visit schools and community organizations to educate families and encourage residents to seek help before problems escalate. “We know that early intervention can change the trajectory of a child’s life,” Singer said. “If you help a child early, you’re helping the entire family.” Behavioral health leaders said the Rockaway peninsula faces unique challenges that contribute to mental illness, including poverty, housing instability and the lingering impact of Hurricane Sandy and the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Piotr Slowik, medical director of outpatient behavioral health services, arrived at the hospital in 2012, just before Hurricane Sandy

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The Walsh Ambulatory Pavilion at 19-20 Brookhaven Ave. in Far Rockaway.

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Rabbi Dee makes the ‘business case’ for Israel By Steve Linde, JNS Israel is the best long-term investment a Jew can make, not only financially, but morally, strategically and spiritually, Rabbi Leo Dee argues in his new book. “The goal of this book is not merely to build a business case for investing money in Israel,” he said. “It is to build a business case for investing our lives in Israel as well.” A British-born Israeli educator, rabbi and former venture capitalist whose wife, Lucy, and daughters Maia and Rina were murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack in the Jordan Valley on April 7, 2023, Rabbi Dee discussed his book, “The Business Case for Israel: Can You Afford Not to Be There?” with JNS. Rather than making a purely religious or ideological appeal for aliyah, Rabbi Dee analyzes Israel as he once evaluated companies for investment, examining its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and long-term prospects. He concludes that Israel is uniquely positioned for sustained economic, demographic and cultural growth. Before becoming a rabbi and immigrating to Israel, Dee spent a decade in London’s financial sector, rising to become a director of a billion-dollar private equity fund. He said the analytical framework he once used to assess companies inspired him to evaluate Israel in much the same way. “If we looked at Israel as a company, what would be the market? What would be the product? What would be the management? What would be the employees? What would be the SWOT [strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats] analysis?” he said. “What surprised me is what comes out of it is actually

pretty compelling.” Rather than encouraging investment capital alone, Rabbi Dee’s goal is to persuade Jews to invest their lives in Israel. He believes many Diaspora Jews continue viewing Israel through an outdated lens dating back to the country’s early decades. “When we were growing up, Israel was a third-world country,” he said. “Now Israel is really probably the most dynamic country in the world. Our minds are still set in that 1980s and 1990s scenario.” He recalled arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport decades ago, when visitors disembarked into a modest terminal surrounded by open land before traveling to Jerusalem on a narrow highway. Many Jews abroad, he argued, still picture that Israel, despite its dramatic transformation into a global center of innovation and entrepreneurship. Asked whether the Oct. 7 attacks made Israel a riskier place to build a future, he argued that they demonstrated precisely the opposite. “I think the product of a country is its youth,” he said. “What we’re producing here is an incredible next generation.” He contrasted the willingness of young Israelis to serve in the IDF with the anti-Israel demonstrations that erupted on university campuses across the West after Oct. 7, arguing that Israel’s younger generation has developed an unusually strong sense of national purpose. He said investors should focus less on current headlines and more on long-term trends. “Great investors spend less time analyzing the past and more time identifying the trends

Rabbi Leo Dee holds up a copy of his new book. Steve Linde

that will shape the future,” he said. He argued that because Israel has long faced security and economic pressures, its entrepreneurs have learned to create products that solve essential problems rather than merely convenient ones. The final chapters of the book return to Dee’s religious roots, arguing that the Torah presents the Land of Israel as the natural

home of the Jewish people. “The message is that the Jewish people belong in Israel,” he said. And for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, a majority of the world’s Jews live in the Jewish state, he said. Rabbi Dee traces the movement of the Jewish people over the past 3,500 years — from Egypt to Babylonia, the Roman Empire, Spain and the United States — observing that Jews have historically gravitated toward the world’s leading powers. He leaves readers with a question rather than a definitive answer: Did Jews settle in those countries because they were already powerful, or did Jewish talent and enterprise help make them great? His message to Diaspora Jews is unequivocal. “There is no future for your children or your grandchildren in the Diaspora,” he said. “Those who are considering moving here — for themselves, for their assets and for their family’s future — should not leave it too late.” He argued that aliyah will only become more difficult as Israel’s economy continues to strengthen and demand for housing rises. For Dee, though, the case for Israel transcends economics. Whether viewed through the lens of venture capital, demographics, Jewish history or Torah, he believes the same conclusion emerges: The future of the Jewish people is being written in Israel. Overall, the book challenges Jews around the world to reconsider where their family’s future is best served. “The goal of this book is to help people look at Israel with new eyes,” he said.

What did Rabbi Bashevkin read over Shabbos? By Jessica Russak Hoffman, JNS In 2020, Rabbi David Bashevkin was asked on the “Meaningful People” podcast how many books he had read. His answer? Perhaps 10,000. That, however, didn’t survive his nephew’s math. “There’s no way I have read 10,000 books,” Bashevkin writes in the introduction to his new book, I Read This Over Shabbos: Reading Jewish History in the Parasha, which comes out on Sept. 1. “He’s right. I am just very bad at math.” Bashevkin began posting his weekly reads on Twitter, now X. On Saturday nights, he’d post, “I read this over Shabbos,” with a photo of a book. Social-media users joined in, posting about books but also about reading the backs of cereal boxes and Febreze instructions. “I redt this over Shabbos,” one social-media user wrote, using the Yiddish word for “matchmaking.” Bashevkin welcomed what he called the narishkeit. “You don’t make it culturally until people are making fun of you,” he told JNS. “When I visit communities, people ask, ‘What are you reading this Shabbos?’” he said. “That’s the best part. That’s when you see the stickiness of culture unfold in real time.” Bashevkin, 41, lives in Teaneck, N.J., with his wife, Tova, and their three children. He is the founder and host of 18Forty, a Jewish media organization, and a clinical assistant professor of Jewish values at Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business. The posts turned social media into a place to exchange ideas and literary suggestions, and offered Jews of varied backgrounds a low-barrier way to participate in Shabbat. “I thought one

stay focused, how to learn, how to read.” At 540 pages, the book is “a harder lift, literally, and an easier lift metaphorically,” Bashevkin said. “This is much more about teaching people how to fall in love with the Jewish people.”

‘Ode to the community’

David Bashevkin.

thing that could unite everybody is Shabbos is a great time to read,” he said. “I want people to build the muscle memory that Shabbos is a time to learn. To remember what it means to have deep reading, deep learn-

Courtesy

ing on Shabbos,” Bashevkin said. “If you want to read this book, if you want to do Daf Yomi, if you want to read comic books. Shabbos is a time for us to preserve that muscle memory of deep learning. The whole world’s forgetting how to

Bashevkin told JNS that this tome is “an ode to the community that we have formed online” and “a love letter to the communities where I gave over Torah.” Koren Publishers approached him two years ago. “I’m especially grateful because they allowed me to use the native transliteration I’m most comfortable with, which is Shabbos instead of Shabbat,” Bashevkin told JNS. “I’ve got no beef to pick with the Shabbat community, but I was grateful they were flexible.” Organized according to the weekly Torah portion, his book pairs Torah themes with Jewish historical events and personalities. Its subjects include Israel; German reparations; mixed seating in synagogue; the philosophical writings of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz; and the reactions to the death of Talmudist and philosopher Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Each chapter concludes with the recommended books and articles, titled “Shabbos Reads,” that informed the essay. “What I think makes it unique is I am trying to show people how the themes and concepts of the portion reverberate through Jewish history into our contemporary lives,” Bashevkin told JNS. “It’s not about reading Torah into our lives, but it’s reading our lives into the Torah.”

For 24 years, kosher and fat free.

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NEWS BRIEFS Amar’e Stoudemire scores Hall of Fame honor By JNS and other sources From NBA superstar to Israeli champion, Amar’e Stoudemire has added basketball’s biggest honor to his résumé. The American-Israeli former Knicks star was inducted Sunday into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Stoudemire, who became an Israeli citizen in 2019 and completed his conversion to Judaism in 2020, used his induction speech to spotlight the spiritual pull that eventually took him to Israel. “At the end of it all, I wanted to go back to a place where I had a special connection,” he said. The six-time NBA All-Star scored 15,994 points during his 14-year NBA career before playing for Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv. He won Israeli league championships in 2017 and 2020. “I finished my career with a championship and the finals MVP,” Stoudemire said.

Vandal targets museum sculpture in Philadelphia

Philadelphia police are hunting for a man who allegedly scrawled an “offensive message” on the “OY/YO” sculpture outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. Police said surveillance video captured the suspect approaching the artwork at about 8:11 pm on Aug. 13 before boarding a train at a nearby station about five minutes later. No arrests have been made, and detectives are investigating whether the vandalism constitutes a hate crime.

The Smithsonian-affiliated museum was also targeted nearly a year ago, when a vandal spraypainted its facade, plaza and an Israeli flag. Andrew Goretsky, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior regional director, told ABC 6 that the latest incident was “incredibly frustrating” but “not surprising.”

NY Mag ‘Habibi City’ storm

New York Magazine is taking heat over its “Habibi City” package, with critics accusing the publication of using an issue that celebrates the city’s Arab and Muslim communities to marginalize Jewish and Israeli identities. The edition explores New York’s Southwest Asian and North African communities. One article says those New Yorkers face “xenophobia, Islamophobia and Zionism,” while another refers to Israel as “the land mass currently called Israel” and describes its actions in Gaza as “genocide.” Critics also faulted the package for discussing Oct. 7 without mentioning the Hamas-led massacre that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage. The magazine said it takes criticism from the Jewish community “seriously.”

Survivor scam alarm

New York officials are warning Holocaust survivors and their families to beware of a potential compensation scam. The state’s Financial Services Department said apparent scammers identifying themselves as the “Jewish Holocaust Claims Center” have contacted

survivors and relatives about submitting compensation claims. The department said it “cannot verify the identity, services or legitimacy” of the group and urged families to use caution. After learning of the unsolicited correspondence, the agency referred the case to inspectors general in New York and New Jersey and the US Postal Service. It also issued a consumer notice and contacted affected consumers and advocacy groups. New York has an official office that processes Holocaust claims, and the Claims Conference is a legitimate organization assisting survivors.

El Al clips Hanoi route

El Al has scrapped its planned Vietnam service just months before takeoff, citing security concerns. The airline had planned to begin flights to Hanoi in October, but said Israeli security officials, acting under directives from the Shin Bet, could not grant the necessary approval to operate the route with Israeli aircraft and crews. The cancellation comes six months after El Al announced the service after receiving initial security clearance. Passengers already holding tickets can receive full refunds or rebook on connecting service through Thailand, the airline said. Israeli rival Arkia continues to fly to Vietnam.

Israir jets back to NY

Israir is muscling back into the New York market, with the Israeli airline aiming to launch daily flights to JFK by Oct. 19. The carrier is awaiting final FAA approval and says it could move up takeoff if the green light comes sooner. Tickets are expected to go on sale next week, with economy, premium and business fares. The move would give travelers another nonstop option on a pricey Tel Aviv-New York route now dominated by El Al. Arkia, United and Delta also are expected to offer competing service. Travel consultants predict the extra seats could help knock down stubbornly high fares. Israir last flew the transatlantic route from 2004 to 2008, when soaring fuel prices forced it out.

Hate posts stay live

Report it — and it still might stay up. More than 80 percent of antisemitic socialmedia posts examined in a World Jewish Congress study remained online despite efforts by Jewish communities across Europe to flag hateful content. Researchers found 613 of 754 posts reported between February 2025 and April 2026 were still accessible in May. Even more alarming, 151 of 232 posts containing direct calls to harm Jews remained online. The study said those included calls to murder Jews and ISIS publications urging attacks on synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods. TikTok stood apart, removing 64 percent of reviewed content. Every other major platform removed less than 15 percent. The WJC called on social-media companies to tighten enforcement and urged European regulators to scrutinize how platforms handle antisemitic content.

’Frisco Jew-hate surges

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Hate crimes are dropping in San Francisco — but Jews are taking a growing share of the hits. Of 14 hate crimes recorded from Jan. 1 through June 30, six involved religious bias, according to police data. Every one targeted Jews. That means anti-Jewish incidents accounted

for nearly 43 percent of the city’s hate crimes, even though Jews make up about 2 percent of the metro-area population, according to Pew Research Center data. Three incidents targeted schools, while another hit a synagogue. All six involved graffiti. “It’s deeply troubling that the Jewish community continues to be disproportionally targeted,” said Marc Levine, the Anti-Defamation League’s central Pacific regional director. Last year, 10 of San Francisco’s 45 recorded hate crimes targeted Jews.

Rotary antisemitism uproar

A former Irvine mayor’s rise to Rotary leadership has ignited a furious backlash over social-media posts Jewish groups call antisemitic. Farrah Khan became president of the Rotary Club of Orange County LA in May despite posts in which she allegedly referred to Israeli officials as “pedophiles” and “cannibals.” Several Jewish organizations have protested to Rotary, arguing that Khan’s posts clash with the service group’s ethical standards. Khan has said her comments targeted Israeli government officials and the military, not Israelis generally. Rotary International said individual clubs control their own leadership decisions. “The Rotary Club of Orange County LA has disgraced itself,” Los Angeles attorney Sam Yebri said. Rotary International, the local club and Khan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jews targeted as hate dips

America saw fewer hate crimes last year — but Jews remained dramatically overrepresented among the victims. The FBI recorded 10,606 hate-crime incidents in 2025, down about 7 percent from 11,404 in 2024. Of 2,572 religion-based hate crimes last year, however, 1,647 — 64 percent — targeted Jews. Anti-Jewish incidents accounted for roughly 15 percent of all hate crimes, despite Jews making up about 2.4 percent of the US population, according to Pew Research Center estimates. The FBI recorded 1,818 offenses against Jews, including more than 1,000 involving vandalism or property destruction, 541 involving intimidation and 169 assaults. The trend has continued into 2026: Available FBI data show Jews targeted in 829 hate crimes, representing 57 percent of religion-based incidents recorded so far.

Team from Israel’s i24News attacked in Belfast

An Israeli television crew documenting antisemitism in Europe found itself in the story after a man attacked the journalists in Belfast. i24NEWS reporter Yonatan Raveh and cameraman Nadav Abbas were interviewing people in a popular bar district Sunday when a man emerged from a bar, shouted “F**k Israel” and hurled a glass object at them, the network reported. The object struck Abbas in the head, causing a superficial cut. The man also tried unsuccessfully to grab the crew’s expensive camera equipment, according to i24NEWS. The Anti-Defamation League condemned the attack. “Two journalists were targeted in Belfast for being Israeli while documenting antisemitism in Europe,” the ADL wrote. “The story they were documenting became their own.” It was unclear whether a police complaint was filed.

The result was that a mother in Boro Park could qualify for WIC, walk into a grocery store with her benefits and still walk out empty-handed because not one formula on the list was permitted in her home. The barrier came down to one-tenth of a milligram of iron. Cholov Yisroel formulas already existed, but the products previously considered fell 0.1 milligrams short of the USDA’s minimum iron requirement. That tiny gap kept every Cholov Yisroel option off New York’s WIC list and left frum families without a single approved choice. “No mother should have to choose between keeping Cholov Yisroel and feeding her baby,” Greenfield said. “This may look like one more item on a government list. For the families affected, it is life-changing. It means a benefit they were always entitled to will finally work for them.” The issue first surfaced at the annual convening of Met Council’s Kosher and Halal Food Network in early 2023, when a member agency reported that WIC-eligible mothers were leaving stores without formula because nothing on the approved list met their religious requirements. Met Council’s Food Programs and Policy teams spent the next three years working with the Department of Health, WIC advocates and formula manufacturers to find a solution. In 2025, Hannah Lupien, Met Council’s Managing Director of Food Programs, identified a Cholov Yisroel formula that met the USDA’s iron standard. Met Council brought it directly to the state with a simple message: this product meets the federal requirements, so put it on the list. Met Council was uniquely positioned to

Met Council CEO David G. Greenfield, at the Met Council legislative breakfast in Manhattan on June 1. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

lead this fight. It operates the largest kosher food pantry network in America, feeding more than 350,000 people every year, and runs the largest public policy and advocacy operation in the Jewish community dedicated to fighting poverty. That combination, feeding the community every day while fighting for it in Albany and Washington, is what turned one agency’s complaint into a statewide solution. “This is what effective government looks like,” Greenfield said. “Governor Hochul and Commissioner McDonald heard that families were being left behind, reviewed the solution we brought them and took action. We are grateful to them and to the Department of Health team for making sure WIC finally works for every New York family.”

This victory builds on Met Council’s successful advocacy to create the USDA’s Kosher Foods in TEFAP webpage and increase the number of kosher products available through the federal emergency food program to 13. Met Council will continue pressing local, state and federal agencies to remove barriers that keep families from fully using WIC, SNAP, school meals, emergency food assistance and other benefits for which they qualify. “There are still too many government programs that work on paper but fail families in practice,” Greenfield said. “Our job is to find those gaps and keep pushing until they are fixed, so that every family receives every benefit they qualify for.” Reported by Met Council.

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For the first time ever, frum families in New York will be able to use WIC to purchase Cholov Yisroel infant formula. The New York State Department of Health has confirmed that it will add the first Cholov Yisroel formula to the state’s WIC formulary later this month. The historic change is the culmination of a three-year campaign led by Met Council and a decision made under the leadership of Governor Kathy Hochul and State Health Commissioner Dr. James V. McDonald. The change will benefit tens of thousands of frum families across New York, including families in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Flatbush, Crown Heights and Far Rockaway, as well as growing kehillos such as Monsey and Kiryas Joel. In the years ahead, as more children are born and new families enroll in WIC, this one fix will help generations of New Yorkers. “This is a tremendous victory for frum families, and it happened because Governor Hochul’s administration listened and acted,” said David G. Greenfield, CEO of Met Council. “I especially want to thank State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald for taking this issue seriously and working with us to get it fixed. For years, mothers were told that WIC would help them buy formula for their babies, but not a single approved product was Cholov Yisroel. Met Council identified the problem, found the solution and kept pushing until New York fixed it.” WIC, the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children, is administered by each state, with every state determining which infant formulas its program will cover. As of early 2026, New York’s formulary included more than 40 formulas. Many carried kosher certification. Not one was Cholov Yisroel.

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NYS now covers Cholov Yisroel formula in WIC

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WINE AND DINE Polanco Social is an Upper West Side delight Kosher Dining

Meat • Mexican • Waiter Service 476 Columbus Avenue, Manhattan PolancoSocial.com • 646-480-0585 National Kosher Supervision (NKS) Rabbi Aaron Mehlman

NATI BURNSIDE

For The Jewish Star

osher dining has become increasingly sophisticated over the last several years, but it has also become increasingly familiar. There are now plenty of beautiful restaurants with dim lighting, polished cocktail menus and upscale interiors designed to compete directly with Manhattan’s broader dining scene. That alone is no longer enough to stand out. The challenge now is originality. Not reinvention for the sake of reinvention and not gimmicks disguised as creativity. Diners want restaurants with a genuine point of view — places that feel distinct from the growing number of concepts that inevitably begin borrowing from the same handful of successful ideas. That’s what makes Polanco Social feel refreshing. Located on the Upper West Side in the former Thyme & Tonic space, Polanco Social comes from the same ownership group but introduces a very different culinary identity. The restaurant takes its name and inspiration from Polanco, the heavily Jewish neighborhood in Mexico City known for its vibrant dining culture and longstanding Jewish community. From the beginning, the concept feels far more intentional than simply “Mexicaninspired kosher food.” Instead, the menu thoughtfully blends authentic Mexican flavors with familiar Jewish comfort dishes in a way that feels natural rather than forced. That distinction matters. Fusion concepts can sometimes feel like cuisines sharing a plate without sharing a purpose. Here, the crossover feels rooted in something real. Jewish cuisine has always reflected migration and adaptation, and Polanco Social leans into that idea confidently without overexplaining itself.

Sunday: 10am–3:30pm, 4:30–9pm Monday and Tuesday: 4:30–10pm Wednesday and Thursday: 4:30–11pm Saturday: 9pm–1am

he space itself remains largely recognizable from its Thyme & Tonic days, and honestly, that works in the restaurant’s favor. It still has the atmosphere of a trendy Manhattan spot people naturally gravitate toward after work, for a date night, or for a late dinner with friends. The bar remains one of the focal points of the room, creating the kind of lively energy that encourages people to stay awhile. Some kosher restaurants continued to struggle to create a genuinely social atmosphere. Polanco Social feels effortless in that regard. The menu itself also clearly understands how people actually want to eat in a setting like this. Dishes feel designed for sharing, conversation, and lingering at the table. hen I was invited to Polanco, I began with the Ahi Tuna Tostada, which immediately established the restaurant’s approach to balance and texture. Served on a crispy tortilla with avocado and salsa macha, the dish combines freshness, richness, heat, and crunch in a way that feels composed from the very first bite. The ahi tuna itself is clean and buttery, while the avocado softens some of the smoky spice coming from the salsa macha. Meanwhile, the tostada underneath provides the structural crunch that keeps the dish from becoming overly delicate. What works especially well is that evSee Burnside on page 17

Ahi Tuna Tostada.

Butcher’s Cut Steak.

Garlic Citrus Chicken Tacos.

Striped Bass Tacos.

15 THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

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At rooftop café, opps for autistic young adults By Steve Linde, JNS A five-course vegetarian dinner prepared and served on the rooftop of Jerusalem’s Clal Center celebrated the first six months of Agalala, a social coffee-cart cafe that employs young adults on the autism spectrum. The project’s name is a playful twist on the Hebrew word agalah (cart), reflecting both the coffee cart itself and its warm, community-oriented spirit. The Agal-Gala event on a cool Jerusalem evening brought supporters, partners and community members to Muslala’s rooftop center on Jaffa Road for food, music, personal stories and a presentation of the project’s approach to inclusive employment. The Agalala team prepared a kosher tasting menu that included gazpacho, fresh-corn polenta, watermelon salad with fakous cucumber, sumac, honey, pistachios and jibneh cheese, and stuffed onion served on tzatziki. Matan Israeli, co-founder and CEO of Muslala, said the coffee cart had completed a vision that the Jerusalembased urban art and sustainability collective had spent more than a decade developing. Muslala has spent 12 years transforming the roof of the Clal Center into a cultural, ecological and community space — “piece by piece, we have assembled a puzzle,” he said. The cafe was “the missing piece of

Agalala coffee-cart cafe on the rooftop of Jerusalem’s Clal Center.

the puzzle,” enabling visitors to experience the rooftop through healthy food, warm hospitality and personal encounters. Muslala CEO/Director Moran Bash Danon said the coffee cart brings together two groups with distinct but complementary missions. Muslala focuses on art, culture and sustainability, while Gal College specializes in vocational training and employment resilience for people facing barriers to entering the workforce. Drawing on American sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the “third place,” Bash Danon described the rooftop as a space that is neither home nor work, but a welcoming setting in which people meet and communities form.

Liam Forberg

“A third place can be a garden, a hair salon, a public library, a cafe or a rooftop,” she said. “For me, Muslala’s rooftop is first and foremost such a place. It is a meeting place — open, inclusive, diverse, cultural, sustainable and social.” The rooftop sits in the center of an increasingly dense urban environment where opportunities for spontaneous human interaction are becoming scarcer, she said. Ruti Tal, vice president for professional affairs at Gal College, said the 45-year-old organization helps people acquire skills, enter the workforce, remain employed and develop professionally. It operates programs at 12 locations across Israel and began working

in Jerusalem about three years ago. Tal said its activities in the capital began after a mother representing parents of young adults on the autism spectrum asked the college to create a program for participants completing national service who had no clear path into employment. The organization initially struggled to find an affordable location in the capital. A referral eventually led Tal to Israeli and Muslala. “I immediately knew this was what I wanted for us: a connection to a community,” she said. “I sensed that there was something here much greater than simply a place to house our program.” Muslala brought the concept and community setting, while Gal College provided the professional experience required to train and support the workers. “This is not another machine in another sheltered workshop,” Tal said. “It is something larger — creative, innovative and rooted in the community.” She said the project reflects a broader understanding of employment inclusion that emphasizes strengths and what Gal College calls “ExtrAbility,” rather than defining people according to disability. “It is this combination of ecology, art, society and extra abilities,” she said. “Together, they generate light every day.” Tal praised Segal’s “gentle and humane” leadership and said Agalala allows graduates of Gal College’s pro-

grams to practice workplace skills while developing relationships with customers and colleagues. Arik Grebelsky, president of the Jerusalem Foundation, said Muslala represented a form of social entrepreneurship increasingly associated with the capital. He said the rooftop could not be defined solely as an environmental, cultural, social or coexistence initiative. “That is precisely its beauty and magic,” he said. He contrasted the city’s cultural and social initiatives with the perception among some overseas visitors that Jerusalem offers little beyond its religious and political institutions. “Come with me for one day and see what a special city Jerusalem is,” he said. Grebelsky cited Muslala and other independent cultural venues in the city center as evidence that Jerusalem is becoming a leading center for social entrepreneurship and cooperation between communities. For Israeli, the evening demonstrated the potential of the project, which he hoped would be expanded and replicated in other locations. “The ability to host people here and allow them to experience this place through the pleasure of meeting and eating together is a great privilege,” he concluded.

BURNSIDE: Polanco Social is an UWS delight… Continued from page 14 ery ingredient contributes something distinct. Nothing feels decorative. The textures and flavors build off one another naturally. hat same attention to detail carries directly into the next thing that I’d recommend, the Machaca Chicken Taquitos. The taquitos are perfectly crisp, filled with flavorful shredded machaca chicken, but what really elevates the dish are the supporting components around it. The pickled red onions bring brightness and acidity that cut through the richness of the fried exterior, while the vegan cotija cheese adds a salty creaminess that rounds everything out. Then there’s the tomatillo salsa, which ties the dish together with freshness and just enough tang to keep every bite balanced. It’s an appetizer with a lot happening on the plate, but none of it feels excessive. Every element has a clear role, and together they create a dish that feels layered without becoming complicated. he taco section of the menu may ultimately be the clearest representation of the restaurant’s larger concept because they showcase how effectively the kitchen handles flavor combinations. he Striped Bass Tacos are bright, fresh, and extremely well-balanced. Served with cabbage, pineapple, and habanero sauce, they manage to combine sweetness, heat, acidity, and texture without overwhelming the fish itself. The pineapple brings freshness and a subtle sweetness that contrasts beautifully with the habanero sauce, while the cabbage provides crunch and keeps the tacos feeling light. Most importantly, the striped bass remains the centerpiece throughout. The toppings enhance the fish rather than covering it up, which is where many fish tacos tend to lose focus. he Garlic Citrus Chicken Tacos move in a slightly richer direction but are equally successful. Topped with pico de gallo and salsa verde, the tacos layer savory garlic flavor

T T T

Chicken Schnitzel.

Machaca Chicken Taquitos.

with citrus brightness in a way that feels vibrant and balanced rather than heavy. The salsa verde adds acidity and freshness that keeps the dish lively from beginning to end. What Polanco Social does particularly well across both taco dishes is restraint. Nothing feels overloaded. The flavors are confident enough not to compete with each other. oving on to main course options, the Chicken Schnitzel may actually be one of the smartest dishes on the menu. At first glance, schnitzel on a Mexicaninspired menu might sound unexpected, but within the larger philosophy of the restaurant, it makes perfect sense. The entire concept is rooted in the intersection of cultures and culinary traditions, and the schnitzel quietly becomes one of the clearest examples of that idea working successfully. The focus here is entirely on the breading, which is outstanding. Perfectly crispy and deeply flavorful, it incorporates Mexican spices that immediately separate it from a standard schnit-

zel. Instead of tasting heavy or one-dimensional, the seasoning gives the crust warmth, depth, and complexity while still maintaining the comfort and familiarity people expect from the dish. The creamy lemon dill aioli alongside it works especially well because it doesn’t overpower the schnitzel, though it adds a creaminess if you’d like to temper the spice. The citrus notes subtly complement the spices in the breading, adding brightness and balance to each bite. Paired with hand-cut french fries, it becomes one of those dishes that feels both comforting and unexpectedly refined at the same time. Finally came the Butcher’s Cut Steak. The very present coating of ancho chili and honey glaze bring smokiness and warmth rather than aggressive spice, while the honey adds just enough sweetness to create contrast and depth. Sweet-and-spicy combinations can sometimes become overpowering if handled too aggressively, but this glaze feels carefully controlled and exceptionally balanced. More importantly, the glaze enhances the steak rather

Inside Polanco Social.

than masking it. The richness of the meat still comes through clearly, while the sweetness and smokiness simply elevate the natural flavors already there. That overall sense of balance is what Polanco Social consistently gets right. The restaurant clearly wants to bring something fresh and distinctive into kosher dining, but it never sacrifices comfort or approachability in the process. The menu is creative without becoming inaccessible. The atmosphere is trendy without feeling performative. And the concept feels rooted in something authentic rather than simply chasing whatever happens to be popular at the moment. In a kosher dining landscape where many restaurants inevitably begin blending together stylistically, Polanco Social succeeds because it genuinely feels like it has its own identity. And increasingly, that’s exactly what diners are looking for.

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Here’s a remarkable Jewish story of Costa Rica MICHAEL FREUND

Wandering Jew

ebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican Jew, emerged on July 30 as the early frontrunner in the first informal UN Security Council poll to select the world body’s next secretary-general. A former vice president of Costa Rica, Grynspan received 10 “encourage” votes from the council’s 15 members, one more than her nearest rival. The poll was nonbinding and more rounds are expected, but if Grynspan ultimately prevails, she would become both the first woman and the first Jew to lead the United Nations. Her candidacy casts an intriguing light on the history of the Central American nation’s tiny Jewish community. Grynspan’s parents were Polish Jews who fled Poland before World War II. After surviving the war, they attempted to reach the Land of Israel but were detained by the British in Cyprus. They met there and married, later settling in Costa Rica. The family initially ran a small store in the countryside before moving to the capital of San José, where Grynspan’s parents established a textile factory. Nearly a century ago, the Polish Jews who laid the foundations of the modern Costa Rican Jewish community were far removed from national office or international diplomacy. They arrived in the late 1920s and 1930s with little money, almost no Spanish and few useful connections. Most came from a handful of Polish towns, especially Żelechów and Ostrowiec. Some had planned to continue to Argentina or Brazil but remained after landing at the Caribbean port of Limón. Others followed relatives or townspeople who had written home saying that it was possible to make a living in the region. ne of the earliest arrivals was Max Teitelbaum. He fled Poland in 1928 to escape military conscription. His ship was forced to stop in Limón, and while waiting in San José, he decided to stay and began selling door to door. Many Jewish newcomers followed the same path. They bought clothing, fabric and household goods on credit in San José and carried them into smaller towns and rural areas. Some walked; others traveled by horse or mule. They knocked on doors, displayed their wares and allowed customers to pay in installments. Costa Ricans came to call them polacos. In Spanish, the word simply means “Poles.” But Polish Jewish immigrants became so closely identified with door-to-door installment sales that their national label was gradually transferred to the occupation itself. A polaco came to mean not only someone from Poland but also an itinerant peddler, whether or not he was Polish. The usage became so deeply embedded that

From peddlers to power, Jews have been woven into the fabric of the nation’s life.

Rebeca Grynspan speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Jan. 18, 2017.

the Royal Spanish Academy still defines polaco in Costa Rica as an itinerant seller, particularly one selling clothing in rural areas. It also records the verb polaquear, meaning to sell from house to house, generally on credit. The work was hard, but it gave the newcomers a foothold. It also allowed rural families to purchase goods they could not otherwise afford. In time, many of the peddlers opened stores, import businesses and small factories, particularly in clothing and textiles. They were not, however, the first Jews to reach Costa Rica. ome historians believe that conversos — Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal — arrived during the centuries of Spanish rule, starting in the 16th century and ending with independence in 1821. Many settled around Cartago, Costa Rica’s first capital. Over time, their descendants assimilated into the local population. Hungary had wanted her dead. Costa Rica gave her work, freedom and a future for her three sons. In the 19th century, Sephardic merchants arrived from Curaçao, Jamaica, Panama and other Caribbean ports. They participated in trade but established few lasting Jewish institutions. It was Polish immigrants who built the institutions on which today’s community rests. But as they prospered, resentment grew. During the 1930s, Costa Rica tightened Jewish immigration, while politicians and newspapers accused Jewish merchants of unfair competition and sought to restrict peddling and other commercial activity by foreigners. Antisemitism intensified amid the political upheaval of the 1948 Costa Rican civil war. In 1952, nationalist activists promoted measures that would have restricted commerce to native Costa Ricans, and Jewish homes and institutions in San José were targeted. The following year, however, President José Figueres Ferrer publicly affirmed that Jews were entitled to the

same constitutional rights as other citizens. By then, Jewish communal life had become firmly established. he country’s first Jewish cemetery opened in 1931. The Centro Israelita Sionista de Costa Rica became the central organization for religious life, education, charity and youth programs. Its principal synagogue, Shaarei Zion, followed Orthodox practice even though levels of personal observance varied widely. Education became central as well. The Dr. Chaim Weizmann School, officially the Instituto Dr. Jaim Weizman, opened in 1960. Students followed the national curriculum while also studying Hebrew, Jewish history and tradition. After the Holocaust, survivors arrived to join relatives already living in the Central American country. One of them was Magda de Davidovich, a Hungarian Jew who survived Nazi persecution, fled Communist Hungary in 1956 and reached Costa Rica the following year. She later spoke with deep affection about the country that had taken her in. Hungary, she said, had wanted her dead. Costa Rica gave her work, freedom and a future for her three sons. “We didn’t just survive,” she said. “We multiplied.” Others followed relatives or townspeople who had written home saying that it was possible to make a living in the region. Over the decades, Costa Rican Jews moved from peddling into academia, government and diplomacy. They served in the legislature and cabinet, and attained some of the country’s highest offices. The organized Jewish community has also maintained strong Zionist ties and a close identification with Israel. Remarkably, four Costa Rican Jews have been elected vice president. Grynspan served from 1994 to 1998, followed by Astrid Fischel from 1998 to 2002. Luis Fishman was elected second vice president in 2002, while banker and economist Luis Liberman served as second

Boris Baldinger, World Economic Forum

vice president from 2010 to 2014. For a Jewish community generally estimated at only a few thousand people, that is an extraordinary record. osta Rica’s ties with the Jewish state have been significant. It recognized Israel in 1948 and later maintained its embassy in Jerusalem for decades, one of only a handful of countries to do so. The embassy was moved to Tel Aviv in 2006. But in May 2026, shortly after taking office, President Laura Fernández Delgado expressed her willingness to upgrade Costa Rica’s diplomatic representation in Jerusalem to a full embassy. At the same time, Jewish life has spread beyond San José. Israelis and other Jews have settled in Pacific beach towns such as Jacó, Uvita, Manuel Antonio and Santa Teresa, where Hebrew signs and Israeli restaurants have become increasingly common. Chabad now maintains a permanent presence in Santa Teresa, where Friday-night meals can attract more than 100 people during the high season. Jewish life in Costa Rica today bears little resemblance to the world those first Polish immigrants encountered. The community has established schools, synagogues and institutions; entered public life at the highest levels; and expanded beyond San José to new centers along the Pacific coast. Still, one of the most unusual reminders of its beginnings remains hidden in plain sight. The word polaco began as a description of Jewish immigrants from Poland who made their living as itinerant salesmen. Over time, Costa Ricans came to use it for the trade itself. Nearly a century later, that usage remains a small but revealing testament to how deeply those Jewish newcomers became woven into national life. Michael Freund is founder and chairman of Shavei Israel, an organization that assists descendants of Jews and the Lost Tribes to reclaim their roots. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

By Josh Hasten, JNS In a ceremony at Jerusalem’s City of David National Park, Guatemala dedicated a commemorative plaque recognizing the City of David — the site of biblical Jerusalem — and the millennia of history uncovered there as part of the cultural heritage of the Guatemalan people. The plaque, dedicated by Guatemalan President César Bernardo Arévalo de León, bears his name alongside that of Guatemala’s ambassador to Israel, Ava Atzum Arévalo de Moscoso, who unveiled it on the president’s behalf. Guatemala is the third country to recognize the City of David archaeological site as part of its national heritage, following similar declarations by the United States in 2021 and Argentina in 2025. Both countries also dedicated commemorative plaques at the site highlighting their historical and cultural ties to Jerusalem. Speaking to JNS, Arévalo de Moscoso said she was honored to dedicate the plaque, describing the City of David as a symbol of the deep historical and cultural connection between Guatemala and Israel. During the ceremony, she said the plaque represented far more than a ceremonial gesture, calling it a reaffirmation of the enduring friendship between the two countries. Calling it “a great honor” to represent Guatemala at the unveiling, she said Jerusalem has always held “profound historical and spiritual significance” for the Guatemalan people. “From this day forward, Guatemala becomes part of this remarkable place,” she said, adding that the plaque permanently links her country to the City of David and reaffirms “a friendship that has endured through time and will continue to grow stronger for generations to come.” Arévalo de Moscoso also praised the City of David Foundation for preserving “one of Jerusalem’s most remarkable historical treasures.” Marking 78 years of diplomatic relations, she noted that Guatemala was the second country to recognize the State of Israel in 1948, describing the relationship as one built on “mutual respect, cooperation and a sincere friendship that has endured for nearly eight decades.” She concluded by recalling Guatemala’s support for Jerusalem at the United Nations in 1947. “Today, standing on its oldest ground, we reaffirm the enduring friendship between Guatemala and Israel and our profound respect for Jerusalem’s history, heritage and significance to humanity,” she said. Guatemala further underscored its ties to Jerusalem by becoming the second country, after the United States, to relocate its embassy there in May 2018. President Arévalo also has personal ties to Jerusalem. He studied sociology at the Hebrew

Panoramic view of the Tower of David fortress in the City of David in Jerusaem, in 2018. RPBmedia, Adobe

Guatemala’s Ambassador to Israel Ava Atzum Arévalo de Moscoso (center), flanked by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, unveils a commemorative plaque at the City of David in Jerusalem, recognizing the archaeological site as part of Guatemala’s national heritage, July 24. Josh Hasten

University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew. His father, former Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo, served as Guatemala’s ambassador to Israel after the country recognized the Jewish state in 1948. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said the dedication reaffirmed that the Jewish people’s history, heritage and connection to the Land of Israel “can never be taken away.” He accused the Palestinian Authority and its supporters in international institutions of attempting to rewrite history. “They are trying to fabricate an entirely

false narrative, erasing and denying the Jewish connection to this land,” he said. Sa’ar pointed to the Palestinian Authority’s campaign at UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee meeting in Busan, South Korea, seeking recognition of ancient Sebastia in Samaria — identified in the Bible as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel — as a Palestinian heritage site. “Like the City of David, it bears witness to the kings of Israel. It holds the evidence of our people’s deep historical roots in this land,” he said. Thanking Guatemala for standing against

what he called campaigns of distortion, Sa’ar added: “You are affirming that facts still matter. Our history remains written not only in our books and in our prayers, but in the stones beneath our feet.” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Guatemala’s decision to “put its own flag at the City of David” reflected not only a historical connection but a spiritual one. “Just as the US has discovered that we have roots here, so Guatemala has discovered and now is unafraid and unashamed to say to the world, Guatemala has roots here as well,” he said. Huckabee added that Jerusalem — using the Hebrew name, Yerushalayim — is the Jewish state’s only capital, calling it “the united, indigenous, forever indivisible city” of the Jewish people. He said Guatemala had joined the 10 countries that now recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. David Be’eri, chairman of the Ir David (City of David) Foundation and an Israel Prize laureate, welcomed guests from atop what he identified as King David’s palace, joking that his nearby home was “only 2,800 years old.” He said excavations beneath his home have uncovered what he believes was King David’s sanctuary, where, according to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant rested before Solomon built the First Temple on Mount Moriah. Be’eri said excavations are continuing in search of inscriptions and other archaeological evidence that he believes further demonstrate the Jewish people’s ancient connection to Jerusalem. Like Sa’ar, he criticized UNESCO for what he described as efforts to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, arguing that archaeology provides tangible evidence to the contrary. He noted that about 10,000 schoolchildren participate in excavations at the City of David each year and predicted that millions more visitors would eventually come to see what he described as archaeological proof of biblical Jerusalem. Ze’ev Orenstein, director of international affairs at the City of David Foundation, told JNS it was remarkable that, within a few years, the United States, Argentina and now Guatemala had all recognized the City of David’s significance to their own heritage and national identities. “This recognition is not about honoring Israel and the Jewish people specifically, but about connecting themselves and their nations to Jerusalem and her story,” Orenstein said. “The heritage we are uncovering every day here in the City of David carries enduring relevance to billions of people around the world, just as it has for 3,000 years — and will continue to do so for generations to come.”

Outrage over online ‘mapping’ of Jewish Italy By David Isaac, JNS An online campaign calling on people to surveil and report the whereabouts of Jewish and Israeli tourists, or anyone suspected of having ties to “Zionists,” has sparked anger among Israeli diplomats, local Jewish leaders and Italian politicians. The anonymous campaign, focused in Milan and spread via social media and messaging apps, involved a link that opened to a Google document. It asked questions to identify the exact locations of Jewish and Israeli individuals, including specific hotels, vacation rentals, and commercial establishments, to create what it called “a mapping of Zionist tourism.” The information would be used for unspecified future initiatives, the form said. “This form is intended to record cases of Zi-

onist tourism, property purchases, and, more generally, Zionist neo-colonization in Italy,” according to the document. “The data collected will be received by the Global Sumud Movement and will remain protected and confidential.” The Global Sumud Movement, which organizes anti-Israel activities in Europe, including the recent flotillas to the Gaza Strip, denied any involvement in the campaign following the backlash. “I think we’re going back to the 1930s, to the hunt for Jews,” Milan Jewish Community President Walker Meghnagi said. “Mapping where Jews are is extremely serious.” He called on the judiciary to intervene and for all parties to take a stand against the campaign. Undersecretary of State to the Presidency of

the Council of Ministers, Alessandro Morelli, a member of the conservative League Party, a junior partner in Italy’s ruling coalition, condemned the form as “abhorrent,” harking back to “the dark ages of Nazi-Fascism.” He also called for the unanimous political condemnation of the “racist initiative.” “We’re essentially talking about blacklists. We’re returning to the extremely dangerous climate that preceded the racial laws,” said Italian Senator Graziano Delrio of the Democratic Party, the main opposition party, referring to a series of antisemitic and segregationist decrees enacted by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime between 1938 and 1943. Israeli Ambassador to Italy Jonathan Peled posted to X on Sunday, “The initiative to map Zionist tourism in Italy is an abominable action

that highlights the alarming growth of antisemitic hatred in Italy and reveals, once again, the extremist and discriminatory drifts of the ProPal movement.” The European Jewish Congress, the main umbrella organization for Jewish communities across Europe, said of the questionnaire, “Presented as a ‘mapping of Zionist tourism,’ the initiative effectively encourages the identification and targeting of individuals based on their actual or perceived Jewish identity or nationality. “Such attempts to single out individuals based on their identity create fear, fuel hatred and place Jewish communities at greater risk. The Italian authorities must act swiftly to ensure those responsible are held accountable and that such dangerous practices are stopped immediately,” it added.

THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

City of David is part of Guatemala’s heritage

‫כוכב של שבת‬

August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786 THE JEWISH STAR

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. To submit commentary, inquire at: Editor@TheJewishStar.com. Contact our columnists at: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com.

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Five Towns Candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY Scarsdale Candlelighting: From the Young Israel of Scarsdale, Scarsdale, NY

How to understand the parameters of justice RABBI SIR JONATHAN SACKS ZT”L

n Deuteronomy 24, we encounter — for the first time — the explicit statement of a law of far-reaching significance: Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for parents. A person shall be put to death only for his own sin. Deut. 24:16 We have strong historical evidence as to what this law was excluding, namely vicarious punishment, the idea that someone else may be punished for my crime: For example, in the Middle Assyrian Laws, the rape of an unbetrothed virgin who lives in her father’s house is punished by the ravishing of the rapist’s wife, who also remains thereafter with the father of the victim. Hammurabi decrees that if a man struck a pregnant woman, thereby causing her to miscarry and die, it is the assailant’s daughter who is put to death. If a builder erected a house which collapsed, killing the owner’s son, then the builder’s son, not the builder, is put to death. Nahum Sarna, Exploring Exodus, p. 176 We also have inner-biblical evidence of how the Mosaic law was applied. Joash, one of the righteous kings of Judah, attempted to stamp out corruption among the priests, and was assassinated by two of his officials. He was succeeded by his son Amaziah, about whom we read the following: After the kingdom was firmly in his grasp, he [Amaziah] executed the officials who had murdered his father the king. Yet he did not put the sons of the assassins to death, in accordance with what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, where the L-rd commanded: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins.” II Kings: 14:5-6 he obvious question, however, is: how is this principle compatible with the idea, enunciated four times in the Mosaic books, that children may suffer for the sins of their parents? “The L-rd, the L-rd, G-d compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and truth, extending kindness for thousands of generations, forgiving sin, rebellion, and error, but who does not acquit the guilty, holding descendants to account for the sins of the fathers, children, and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.”

Vicarious punishment is simply unjust.

decreed this, but G-d Himself. What do the Sages mean? hey mean — I think — this: the concept of perfect justice is beyond human understanding, for the reasons already given. We can never fully know the degree of guilt. Nor can we know the full extent of responsibility. The Mishnah in Sanhedrin (4:5), says that a witness in capital cases was solemnly warned that if, by false testimony, a person was wrongly sentenced to death, then he, the witness, “is held responsible for his [the accused’s] blood and the blood of his [potential] descendants until the end of time.” Nor, when we speak of Providence, is it always possible to distinguish punishment from natural consequence. A drugaddicted mother gives birth to a drug-addicted child. A violent father is assaulted by his violent son. Is this retribution or genetics or environmental influence? When it comes to Divine, as opposed to human justice, we can never reach beyond the most rudimentary understanding, if that. Two things are clear from G-d’s words to Moses. First, He is a G-d of compassion but also of justice, for without justice there is anarchy, but without compassion, there is neither humanity nor hope. Second, in the tension between these two values, G-d’s compassion vastly exceeds His justice. The former is forever (“to thousands [of generations]”). The latter is confined to the lifetime of the sinner: the “third and fourth generation” (grandchildren and great-grandchildren) are the limits of posterity one can expect to see in a human lifetime. What Jeremiah and Ezekiel are talking about is something else. They were speaking about the fate of the nation. Both lived and worked at the time of the Babylonian exile. They were fighting a mood of despair among the people. “What can we do? We are being punished for the sins of our forefathers.” Not so, said the prophets. Each generation holds its destiny in its own hands. Repent, and you will be forgiven, whatever the sins of the past — yours or those who came before you. Justice is a complex phenomenon, Divine justice infinitely more so. One thing, however, is clear. When it comes to human justice, Moses, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all agree: Children may not be punished for the sins of their parents. Vicarious punishment is simply unjust.

Ex. 34:7; see also Ex. 20:5; Numbers 14:18; Deut. 5:8) The short answer is simple: It is the difference between human justice and Divine justice. We are not G-d. We can neither look into the hearts of wrongdoers nor assess the full consequences of their deeds. It is not given to us to execute perfect justice, matching the evil a person suffers to the evil he causes. We would not even know where to begin. How do you punish a dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of people? How do you weigh the full extent of a devastating injury caused by drunken driving, where not only the victim but his entire family are affected for the rest of their lives? How do we assess the degree of culpability of, say, those Germans who knew what was happening during the Holocaust but did or said nothing to help? Moral guilt is a far more difficult concept to apply than legal guilt. uman justice must work within the parameters of human understanding and regulation. Hence the straightforward rule: no vicarious punishment. Only the wrongdoer is to suffer, and only after his guilt has been established by fair and impartial judicial procedures. That is the foundational principle set out, for the first time in Deuteronomy 24:16. However, the issue did not end there. In two later prophets — Jeremiah and Ezekiel — we find an explicit renunciation of the idea that children might suffer for the sins of their parents, even when applied to Divine justice.

Here is Jeremiah, speaking in the name of G-d: In those days, people will no longer say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes — his own teeth will be set on edge. Jeremiah 31:29-30 And this, from Ezekiel: The word of the L-rd came to me: “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: ‘The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? “As surely as I live,” declares the Sovereign L-rd, “you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to Me, the father as well as the son — both alike belong to Me. The soul that sins is the one who will die.” Ezekiel 18:1-3 The Talmud (Makkot 24a) raises the obvious question. If Ezekiel is correct, what then happens to the idea of children being punished to the third and fourth generation? Its answer is astonishing: Said R. Jose ben Hanina: Our master Moses pronounced four [adverse] sentences on Israel, but four prophets came and revoked them … Moses said, “He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” Ezekiel came and declared: “The soul that sins is the one who will die.” Moses decreed: Ezekiel came and annulled the decree! Clearly the matter cannot be that simple. After all, it was not Moses who

RABBI YOSSY GOLDMAN S. African Rabbinical Assn.

his week’s Torah reading contains a passage that bothered me for many years. It hasn’t in recent times, though that’s not necessarily good news. In parshat Ki Seitzei, we read about a boy who is stubborn, rebellious, a glutton, a drunkard, deaf to the appeals and pleas of his father and mother. Eventually, his parents haul him before the elders of the city. If the court finds against him, that’s it — the death penalty for

being, essentially, a badly behaved teenager with an insatiable taste for meat and wine. If that’s the law, then half the bar mitzvah boys I’ve met over the years would be in serious trouble. Naturally, this bothered our sages as well. If you open the Talmud in Sanhedrin 71a, you can read how the rabbis of the Talmud were practically wrestling this law to the ground, examining every last detail. And the more they dug, the stranger it got. This boy must be past 13 years old but not yet showing a beard — a window of maybe a few months, if that. He must steal specifically from his father to buy meat and wine in very specific amounts. Both parents must bring the charge together — and here’s my favorite part

Nature and teenagers abhor a vacuum. — the law requires that the mother and father sound alike, look alike and stand the same height! By the time the rabbis are done, Rabbi Yehuda throws up his hands and says: This never happened, and it never will. Lo haya v’lo atid lihyot. Case closed — such a son never existed and never will. So why on earth is it written in the Torah at all? Rabbi Yehuda has a beautiful answer: “Expound it and receive your reward.”

tudy it. Grapple with it. That’s the point — not that anyone was ever actually stoned in a town square for finishing too many hotdogs too quickly. A brilliant thought experiment, though not very practical. These days, however, I must tell you with a heavy heart that I’ve had to change my mind. Here’s how it looks today. A young man — a good kid, from a good home — is offered a taste of something for free (once, maybe at a party just to try it). And somehow, almost before anyone notices, it’s not “once” anymore. It’s a habit, and it’s an expensive one — far more than any teenager’s allowance could ever cover. So he starts to steal to pay for this new habit. See Goldman on page 26

Ki Seitzei: Internalizing 2 voices of the shofar RABBI BENNY BERLIN

Jewish Star columnist BACH Long Beach

e have been hearing the shofar every morning through the month of Elul, and I always find that it creates this looming feeling that the Yamim Noraim are coming. Uru yesheinim mishinaschem, the Rambam writes, describing the wordless message of the shofar. Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep (Hilchos Teshuvah 3:4). There is something about that sound that does exactly that. It wakes

me up. It makes me think about what matters, what I have been spending my time on, and what I want the coming year to look like. But whenever I feel that pull, I also remember standing in a shul once on Rosh Hashanah and watching the makri. He seemed completely unmoved by what was happening. He was staring at his watch, carefully tracking the length of every blast to make sure it met the halachic requirements, and when enough seconds had passed, he motioned to the baal tokeah to stop. I am not, chas veshalom, minimizing the importance of getting the halachah exactly right. A mitzvah performed sloppily is not somehow more meaningful because it is heartfelt. But I remember watching him and wondering if getting

Wake up to what you already know. the sound exactly right is the entirety of what this mitzvah asks of us. av Yosef Dov Soloveitchik raises almost the same question through a story about his father, Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, recorded in “Halakhic Man.” Rav Moshe was once standing on the bimah on Rosh Hashana, guiding the sounding of the shofar, when the baal tokeah, a deeply religious man, began to cry. Rav Moshe turned to him

and asked quite simply why he was crying. Do you cry when you take the lulav? Why cry when you blow the shofar? Aren’t they both mitzvos of Hashem? It sounds like a surprisingly cold question, but I think that is exactly what makes it so powerful. Why do we expect the shofar to move us? If Hashem commanded us to hear a certain series of sounds, then perhaps our job is simply to make sure we hear them correctly. Why should there be tears? The Rav found something remarkable in the language of the Rambam. In his introduction to “Hilchos Shofar, Sukkah VeLulav,” the Rambam describes the mitzvah as lishmoa kol shofar See Berlin on page 26

Eicha v’Ayeka Yisrael: How and Where are you? DR. ALAN MAZUREK

Jewish Star columnist Boynton Beach / Jerusalem

e are roughly at the halfway point in sefer Devarim, about to complete this Shabbat the sixth parsha, Ki Tetzei, with five more to go. It is noteworthy that four of the first five parshiyot of Devarim explicitly contain the Hebrew word eicha. The fifth occurrence is in parshat Haazinu, the penultimate parsha. No other sefer in the Torah contains this word. We associate the word eicha with Tisha B’Av. Twice we lost our Holy Temples and Jerusalem, to different enemies hundreds of years apart.

Eicha opens the prophet Yirmiyahu’s painful Lamentations. While speaking of the loss of Bayit Rishon, it came to identify all of tragedy and the mourning our great nation has experienced — from the sin of the spies in the midbar to the Holocaust, and more recently the catastrophe of October 7. That is almost 3,500 years of Jewish history. And at times, it feels like nothing has changed. Every year, Shabbat Chazon falls on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, so Eicha is read in parshat Devarim (1:12) and in the haftara (Yeshayahu 1:21), followed by the reading of Yirmiyahu’s “Megillat Eicha — Lamentations” on Tisha B’Av. Yet after Tisha B’Av, the seven haftarot through Shabbat Shuva are called the shiva d’nechemta, the seven haftarot of comfort. Some comfort, when we keep hearing that word: Ei-

The anger and frustration is bitter and real. cha! What does it mean? seemingly prosaic word, it means “How?” as in, “How did this happen?” The word itself is neutral. Nevertheless, its Jewish context is overwhelmingly negative. Yet Hebrew offers a remarkable transformation. Eicha is spelled with four letters: aleph-yudkaf-heh. Vowelize those same letters differently, and eicha becomes ayeka: “Where are you?” Famously, that was Hashem’s question to

Adam HaRishon after he ate from the forbidden eitz hadaat, the tree of knowledge. Clearly the Master of the Universe, who knows and sees all, was not asking Adam’s location. It was a deep, introspective question. Scholars throughout the ages have written about the relationship between eicha and ayeka. Rav Yosef Dov Ber Soloveitchik, the Rav, taught that Hashem’s question to Adam was rhetorical, challenging him for hiding after his sin — distancing himself from Hashem like a fearful child afraid to approach an angry parent. The Rav says this distancing from Hashem also defines the tragedy of eicha. When we sin, as we did leading to the loss of the Batei Mikdash and Yerushalayim, we distance ourselves from Him. We sever the intimate relationship, the See Mazurek on page 26

Gentle message as we approach Rosh Hashana RABBI DR. TZVI HERSH WEINREB Orthodox Union

or the past several weeks, in anticipation of the upcoming Days of Awe, I have devoted this column to the topic of teshuva, repentance. Many of us find this topic quite scary. Confessing our sins of the past year and committing ourselves to improving our religious conduct threatens to undermine our self-confidence and self-esteem. For my most recent columns, I have focused on the teaching of that sector of the Mussar Movement known as Nevardek. One of this movement’s

major adherents was Rav Yosef Yoisel Horovitz zt”l, who established his yeshiva in the town in Lithuania by that name. Popularly, he was called the Alter, or “Old Man,” of Nevardek. He and his numerous students and followers advocated a relatively extreme program for attaining ethical and spiritual perfection, particularly with reference to teshuva. I was first exposed to the Nevardek methodology when I studied with a tutor in my adolescence. I was later influenced by another Nevardek alumnus named Rav Chaim Zeitchik whose lectures I was privileged to hear and whose copious writings I still study, especially at this time of year. Suffice it to say that Nevardek demands a lot from those who choose to follow its path. It expects its adherents to have great self-control, meticulous conformity to halachic stringencies, and absolute bitachon, trust, in the Almighty.

Time for teshuva. And for spiritual growth. Several of you have given me feedback after reading those recent columns of mine. They felt, understandably, that the examples I presented of the Nevardek approach set the bar too high. Some insisted quite vigorously that Nevardek’s standards were too harsh and unrealistic for most. o, in today’s column, I will present several examples of Nevardek’s “gentler” messages, drawn from two of Rav Zeitchik’s essays on this week’s Torah portion, Ki Seitzei (Deuteronomy21:10–25:19). As a first example, I suggest that we focus on a passage in this week’s parsha that is, at first

glance, quite harsh. It reads: “If man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Thereupon the men of his town shall stone him to death…” (ibid. 21:18-21). Rabbi Zeitchik is troubled by the extreme punishment meted out for what seems to be minor delinquency. He is somewhat encouraged, however, by the ruling cited in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 88b), which insists, “The wayward and defiant son whose parents wish to forgive him may do so.” Thus, they can prevent his terrible See Weinreb on page 26

THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

In Torah, a son who never was. Until he was.

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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.

When we see Islam’s Trojan horse for what it is, we must respectfully decline the gift THANE ROSENBAUM

Touro University

hristopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster film “The Odyssey” has inspired legions of fans who never gave a thought to ancient Greece and its contribution to Western culture. That’s a positive outcome if reviving the canon of classical literature is important to you. Humanities majors, rejoice! But the film also serves as an important object lesson for both classical liberalism and modern Europe, one that may be less cinematic but should not be left on the cutting room floor. The Trojan horse — the most haunting metaphor from the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” — applies to its more contemporary deployment In Nolan’s film (though not in Homer’s text), Odysseus, the wily warrior who conjured the Trojan horse scheme, is left traumatized by its aftermath — the slaughter of all those Trojan men, women and children. We’re told never to look a gift horse in the mouth. Yet, the craftsman of that ultimate equine gift, Odysseus, knew that it’s probably good practice to more heavily scrutinize a gift. One never knows whether it contains a surprise from which the beneficiary may never recover. Contemporary Europeans know a little something about booby-trapped gifts. The West has been led to believe for well over a century that immigration is a national gift to give and receive. The mass infusion of talent and energy, the innate quest to seek the opportunities that free nations offer, to join in the service of nationbuilding and self-improvement, can only enhance the collective experience of the country. But Europeans, and perhaps soon Americans,

Do Muslim immigrants intend to respect the Western way of life?

now know that immigration can also make a country worse. If the new arrivals are not properly vetted; if their arrival was not motivated by the pursuit of happiness but rather a mission of conquest; if they flash a grateful, friendly face at the border that changes into one more fierce at the local mosque, a national threat materializes, internally, without the mess that military invasions produce. Trojan horse can come in many shapes and sizes, and from various possible directions. This was bound to happen with Islam, which is both a religion and a political movement; “political” in its determination to both govern Islamic societies and conquer other lands to extend Islam’s influence. Taking an honest look at Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and Nigeria, it seems clear that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Muslim Brotherhood and Boko Haram are much more focused on spreading violence, terror and conquest than on the spiritual health of their people. It is difficult to deny that the politics of Islam, which are military in nature, often overshadow its religious pretensions. Indeed, the spreading of Sharia law throughout the world, especially in Western nations, is not a benign theological, hypothetical exercise. It is nothing like the study of Talmud or a faithful

reading of Christian scripture. Devout Christians don’t necessarily believe that Jesus walked on water, and most Jews attend synagogues without holding fast to the signs and wonders of Moses parting the Red Sea. But Islam is different. The literal translation of its name is “submission.” Choosing how one practices the Islamic faith is not an option. Unlike other world religions, Islam has resisted any attempt at reform. And most Muslims believe that “submission” must also apply to “infidels” because, as the world’s youngest religion, Islam represents the final word, one that must supersede all others. No society can be expected to accept religion on such uncompromising terms. ut there is something else that tells you everything you need to know: Muhammad is a prophet with a side hustle. The prophet may be his public persona, but his preferred occupation is warlord and supreme commander of the armies of Islam. The presumption is that prophets never have blood on their hands. But that is not true in the Islamic faith. Muhammad appointed no one else to lead Muslims into battle to extend Islam’s influence over other nations. When the Quran speaks of caliphates and the warfare required to create

them, it isn’t kidding around: •“When the sacred months have passed, kill the polytheists wherever you find them.” (Quran, Sura 9:5) •“Fight those who do not believe in Allah.” (9:29) •“Fight them until there is no more persecution and religion is devoted entirely to Allah.” (8:39) •“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims fight against the Jews, and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide behind a stone or a tree. The stone or tree would say: ‘O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.’” (Sahih Muslim 2922) Nowhere in either Tanach or the Christian Bible can such language be found. Long before there was terrorism, there were conventional wars launched largely by invading Muslim armies into Europe. Terrorism is only the most contemporary iteration of Islam seeking to kill infidels and claim hegemony over Christian lands. It goes back as far as the invasion of Spain in 711, then the Battle of Tours (also called the Battle of Poitiers) in 732. This was followed centuries later by the Crusades (1096–1291), the Siege of Malta in 1565, the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Battle of Vienna in 1683 and the Great Turkish War (1683–1699). The Russo-Turkish Wars spanned the 18th and 19th centuries, followed by the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). (There are other Islamic-Christian wars I have omitted.) Islam has been busy fighting Christians and Jews for nearly its entire existence. This is the “religion of peace”? srael is not the problem but the pretext. The real target — the true trophy for Islam — is Christianity and Western civilization. Surely, not all Muslims are a threat to the Western world. But there are two billion Muslims. Polling by the Pew Research Center has indicated that a majority of Muslims worldwide believe in a strict adherence to Sharia law. (In some nations, it is as high as 90%.) That means that such Muslims accept that it is permissible to rape female infidels, take Muslim child brides, torch homosexuals, kill apostates and dismemSee Rosenbaum on page 26

WARREN COHN

ull disclosure: Chai Lifeline is a client. I have spent years telling their story professionally, placing coverage of the camps, the crisis teams, the volunteers who show up when a family hears the worst sentence a doctor can say. I thought I knew the organization. Then I joined a WhatsApp chat, and I realized I had only known the press releases. I should back up. Before the summer, I was in a slump. Not a crisis, nothing dramatic, just that flat stretch every founder knows when the work that usually energizes you starts feeling like a treadmill. I was hanging out with a friend before we both left for the season, and I admitted it to him. His answer surprised me. When I feel that way, he said, I give more. It sounds counterintuitive. When your tank feels empty, the last instinct is to pour out what is left. But he insisted that the math works backwards: Giving is the thing that refills you. Around the same time, that WhatsApp group was sitting quietly on my phone with more than 1,000 members. What flows through it is not what you would expect. A request appears, posted anonymously on behalf of a family with a child fighting an illness. And then,

Anonymous giving and people who believe in good causes.

A member of the IDF visits a Chai Lifeline kid at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. Chai Lifeline

within five minutes, 10 at the most, a collective of anonymous strangers covers it. Completely. Every time. have watched this group buy hats for an entire neighborhood of kids so that a child starting chemotherapy would never feel like the only one wearing one. I have watched it fund a night out for a couple whose child is in long-term treatment because a marriage needs oxygen as well, and parents of sick children almost never give themselves permission to breathe. I have watched it pay for a choir for a child in treatment who finds joy in singing, and for cleaning help for a mother who is spending her days in a hospital

chair, and for a hundred other requests that no grant application on earth has a checkbox for. That is the genius of it. Institutional philanthropy funds programs. This funds moments. The requests are specific, human and small enough that no single giver carries them alone, which is exactly why they get covered at the speed of a group text. Our tradition saw this coming. The Rambam taught that among the highest forms of tzedakah is giving where the donor does not know the recipient and the recipient does not know the donor. For eight centuries, that ideal required intermediaries, communal funds and paperwork.

t turns out it also runs beautifully on a group chat. Matan b’seter, “giving in secret,” is not a relic of another era. It is a thousand phones lighting up at two in the afternoon, and a family’s burden lifting before dinner, with no plaque, no donor wall and no name attached in either direction. So I took my friend’s advice and changed one habit. Instead of just watching the chat for great stories and the professional reflex, I started giving every time something posted: $100 here, whatever I could there, in the middle of ordinary workdays, between calls and deadlines. He was right. It became something close to an addiction, except the kind you would wish on everyone. There is a particular feeling in stopping mid-afternoon, sending money to a family you will never meet and watching the request close before your coffee is cold. The slump did not survive it. There is a lesson here for those of us who work in and around Jewish philanthropy, and I say this as someone whose job is to get attention for good causes. e spend our conferences debating donor pipelines, engagement strategies and how to reach the next generation of givers. Meanwhile, the most powerful giving vehicle I have ever seen is not a gala or a matching campaign or an endowment. It is a group chat where 1,000 people have quietly agreed on a single premise: When a family carrying the unimaginable asks for something, the answer arrives in minutes, and no one takes credit for it. Zero friction, total trust, instant impact. Every institution asking how to make giving feel alive again should study why this works: The ask is concrete, the response is communal, and the reward is immediate. That is not a technolSee Warren on page 27

A Bibi defeat in Israel will not slow the hatred GLOBAL FOCUS

BEN COHEN

n six weeks, Israelis will go to the polls to elect a new government. They will be doing so for the first time since the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, brutally transformed the political landscape for both Israelis and the increasingly beleaguered Jewish communities outside the Jewish state. The lives, security and communal fortunes of Diaspora Jews have never been so closely bound up with events in Israel and the wider region as they are right now. As I wrote last week, any Israeli decision to resume war against Hamas in Gaza over its refusal to disarm will likely ignite an even more intense wave of antisemitism on a global scale. That will be the case whether that decision is taken by current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or, should he lose the ballot, by his successor. For Israelis, there are myriad painful issues, as well as critical social and political cleavages, that will inform how they vote. We shouldn’t forget (though it feels like ancient history now) that on the eve of Oct. 7, Israelis had been looking mainly inward, finding themselves bitterly divided over Netanyahu’s judicial reform program. The issue remains alive, while the burning question of whether and how to pull Haredim who evade military service into the Israeli Defense

After Netanyahu, a new “Global-Villain-in-Chief.”

Forces will be a key determinant of votes. But for pro-Israel Diaspora Jews, many of whom regard Netanyahu negatively (among American Jews, 56% according to a Pew survey in July), or who respect him and his achievements but feel it’s time for change, the anxieties surrounding the election are more basic: Can Israel survive? And can we? don’t think I’m unearthing any great truth when I say that the replacement of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition by a centrist Zionist government will make little difference to how Israel is perceived by its adversaries. Israel is not vilified solely because of Netanyahu, just as America was not vilified during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars solely because of George W. Bush. At most, Netanyahu, like President George W. Bush before him, became a powerful symbol of that hatred, not the source of it. From the International Criminal Court in The Hague to the keffiyeh mob in Manhattan, those who fling the accusation of “war criminal” in his direction would have done the same had Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid or Gadi Eisenkot led the Israeli response to the Hamas atrocities. Their hatred runs far deeper. The Bush era saw a massive revival of ideological anti-Americanism around the world, which ebbed during President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, and then surged again when Donald Trump won his first term in 2016. This pattern suggests that changing leaders can produce slight, temporary improvements to international public perception. Nevertheless, the fundamental discourse of America as a greedy, resource-devouring, global hegemon that was so important to the anti-war movement during the 2000s has remained intact. So will it be for a new Israeli prime minister.

From left: Effigies of the late Israeli prime minister and president Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister and prime minister Ehud Barak carried by members of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, as they march during a rally marking the 13th anniversary of the so-called Al-Aqsa uprising (or Second Intifada) in Nusairat, in the central Gaza Strip, on Sept. 27, 2013. Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash90

f Netanyahu is replaced, his successor may well find that diplomacy will be less strained — until, of course, the next crisis hits. But for the pro-Hamas movement, whose noxious beliefs have poisoned everything from media coverage of the conflict to municipal elections in Europe and North America, it will be business as usual from the off. No antisemitic thug is going to refrain from throwing a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue because Netanyahu is no longer prime minister. The same logic applies to the crazy-eyed, blue-haired pundits on social media and the podcast world, and — at a time when the New York Times carries outlandish allegations about the IDF using dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners — even the more refined souls in the legacy

media. Indeed, Netanyahu’s potential successors would be advised to start mentally preparing themselves now to take on the role of “GlobalVillain-in-Chief.” When the demonstrators start burning images of Bennett or Eisenkot, instead of Netanyahu, or representing them in puppet form at their protests with grotesquely antisemitic imagery, their real target will remain Israel itself. When journalists tell their audiences that Netanyahu’s successor is not much different from the current prime minister as far as the Palestinians are concerned, that will be presented as a consequence of Jerusalem’s supposed “apartheid” policies, rather than the selection of any particular leader. See Cohen on page 27

THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

The fastest 10 minutes in Jewish philanthropy

August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786 THE JEWISH STAR

The search that gripped, and duped, a nation RUTHIE BLUE

hen Israel Police representative in Latin America Walter Alejandro Kogan boarded a bus in Argentina and approached Mali Yahalomi, 50, and her daughter Liel, 23, he didn’t demand to know why they’d caused an international search operation. Nor did he lecture them about the resources that had been expended trying to locate them. Instead, he introduced himself and told them, politely, that everyone had been very worried about them. Some of us would’ve been less delicate, to put it mildly. For a full week, Israeli and foreign authorities had been trying to determine what had happened to the two women after they disappeared in Europe while supposedly on vacation. Their families had been frantic. Their employers had been left wondering what had happened. And all Israelis initially feared that the duo had fallen victim to a terrorist attack, abduction or other forms of foul play. Each scenario, given the current climate, with jihadists and fellow-traveler antisemites acting out their hatred on a daily basis, appeared to be plausible. As it turned out, however, none of the above applied. ali and Liel were neither missing nor endangered. They’d apparently decided to leave their lives behind — for reasons

In ditching their lives in Israel, Mali and Liel Yahalomi created a crisis.

Mali and Liel Yahalomi after being located in Argentina.

about which speculation is rampant — and had gone to considerable lengths to make sure that nobody knew where they were. Including Mali’s siblings, former husband and son. The saga began on Friday, Aug. 7, when the mother and daughter from the Modi’in area were in Vienna after traveling from Tel Aviv to Prague. They’d remained in contact with relatives, even sending a smiling selfie, but communication subsequently ceased. Because the two are Orthodox Jews who observe Shabbat, their family didn’t expect to hear from them until Saturday night. But when they couldn’t be reached after that, panic set in, particularly when they never boarded their scheduled return flight to Israel. The investigation therefore expanded rapidly. The Israeli embassy in Vienna issued an appeal for information, while Austrian police and Israeli counterparts began working together to trace the women’s movements. The

Israel Police Spokesperson’s Unit

Israel Police’s Lahav 433 and Intelligence Division became involved, operating at home and abroad in cooperation with Europol and other foreign law-enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, the women’s behavior provided an increasingly unusual set of clues. Among these was the fact that they checked out of their lodgings, with their luggage in tow, on Shabbat. The significance of this was that it was out of character for them, and deviations from someone’s conduct and long-established routine are always relevant to investigations of this sort. But this was only one of the anomalies of the case. ccording to reports published after the women were located, they’d apparently been planning their “escape” for about a month. Police allegedly found evidence that they’d consulted Google’s Gemini chatbot

about how to pull off the maneuver without being traced; how to purchase an unidentifiable phone; and how to disable applications from devices that could detect their whereabouts. More disturbing was their use of material designed to mislead their nearest and dearest. For example, they sent out a video they’d recorded in Vienna after leaving, to create the false impression that they were still there. That’s when they got rid of their original phones and continued moving. As it became clear to police that the women had acted voluntarily, the department obtained a gag order on the inquiry, so as not to tip them off and cause them to change their plotted course. They remained the focus of the probe until found safe and sound on Aug. 14 on a bus in Buenos Aires. Israel Police spokesman Aryeh Doron said of the encounter that it was “emotional,” with the women hugging Kogan. He deserved the embrace, but they certainly didn’t. Still, because they weren’t under suspicion of having committed a criminal offense, they were questioned and released. That in itself is a bit odd. ali and Liel had every right to abandon loved ones and seek a fresh start, though doing so isn’t very honorable or empathic. But orchestrating a wild goose chase should have consequences, including legal ones. At the very minimum, they should reimburse every shekel and euro spent as a result of their scheme. Their family at least had the decency to announce that the money raised through crowdfunding to assist in the hunt (some 260,000 shekels, the equivalent of approximately $88,000) would be returned. Questions remain, which will or won’t be answered at some stage. What isn’t debatable is that while Mali and Liel Yahalomi are off in pursuit of a fantasy hideout, they ought to be hiding their heads in shame. Write: Columnist@TheJewshStar.com

Finding rays of inspiration in antisemitic hate RABBI AVI SHAFRAN

ecades ago, when I was in my 20s, I published a book of short essays. The final one was titled “The Beauty of Anti-Semitism.” That provocative phrase was meant to embody the idea that Jew-hatred is just so varied in the forms it has taken and so ubiquitous — spanning centuries, continents and cultures — that it must reflect something unique about Jews. Some of the guises Jew-hatred has assumed have been cultural (ancient Greece); others, religious (the Crusades and European pogroms); others, racial (Nazi Germany); and others still, nationalistic (Palestinian radicals). The mark, however, has always been the same: Jews. The ancient Greek may have dedicated himself to science, art and beauty; he hated the Jew. The Crusader may have championed the messages of his faith (peace and love of humankind, no less); he hated the Jew. The Nazi may have been striving for racial exclusivity; he hated the Jew. The militant Arab may oppose what he calls Zionist colonization; but it is, once again, the Jew

There will be those who hate Jews simply for being Jews.

whom he hates. o an antisemite, of course, the Jews’ uniqueness is a function of the delusion that we descendants of Jacob are nefarious actors, bent on fomenting wars, manipulating media, persecuting others (to white supremacists, whites; to black ones, blacks), undermining financial markets, uprooting populations. But those of us who know that there are no conspiratorial Elders of Zion, no Jewish ritual drinkers of Christian (or Muslim) children’s blood, no desire to hurt or displace innocents, and no Jewish designs on world domination know that the Jewish uniqueness lies elsewhere. One possibility may have to do with what the late historian Paul Johnson, in the epilogue of his “A History of the Jews,” writes about his subject: “To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life, and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience … of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice … [of] monotheism.” Johnson, in that judgment, was preceded by U.S. Founding Father John Adams, who called the Jews “the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.” ould it be that introducing civilizing ideas over the course of history so rankled a pagan and unfettered world that parts of it, consciously or not, came and come to resent the messengers, and absorb an inchoate hatred that has manifested itself in all manner of ways over many generations? It’s possible. There certainly is ample evidence, even today, of antisemitism spewed by

decidedly amoral and unethical characters — people who, consciously or not, resent the limits that ethics and morality place on their behavior. But we heirs to what happened at Sinai know that ultimately, the deepest roots of antisemitism’s singularity lie elsewhere. “It is a well-known halachah that Esav hates Yaakov,” contends a well-known midrash. Esau there, of course, does not refer to Jacob’s twin brother alone but to all his spiritual descendants: Esau-ites, so to speak. And the use of the word halachah, “Jewish law,” unusual in this context, refers not to a ritual law but rather to a law of

nature, so to speak — a law of human nature. n other words, there will always be those who hate Jews, simply for being Jews. Their hatred may take any number of forms and manifest itself in an assortment of ways. If one “reason” for hating Jews eludes the haters, they will find another. And the hatred will test the limits of preposterousness. Like, today, in accusing Israel, for her attempt to destroy a declared genocidal sect, Hamas, of “genocide” and of targeting children with bombs. It’s not very comforting. But the persistence See Shafran on page 27

HAROLD STEINBERG The author wrote this in 1995, after visiting Israel with his wife and children — ages 13, 10 and 6. It is excerpted from a piece originally published in the Long Island Jewish World, where the author penned a column for many years. He is now a resident of Riverdale. ater and dust. Dust and water. There were moments when it seemed like the entire country was composed of only these two elements, baked by a fiery and unrelenting sun. Climbing up and down rocky hills, ducking in and out of caves, we toted our water bottles and drank up our past. We bathed in the natural pools of Gan Sachne in the Lower Galilee, frolicked in the water park of Luna Gal on the Kinneret, and hurled ourselves into the waves at Tel Aviv’s Gordon Beach. As refreshing and welcome as the water was, we returned to the sand and the stones. They had their own stories to tell. If you listened hard enough, you heard them. We reconnected with our past. We gazed out over Emek Haelah and visualized young David’s brazen encounter with Goliath, the Philistine Schwartzenegger. We clambered over dozens of armored vehicles and aircraft at Latrun, a control point on the road linking the coastal plain to the Jews under siege in Jerusalem in 1948, and Hatzerim. At Mevo Horon we imagined Joshua imploring G-d for more time to complete his mission and the Maccabees lying in wait to ambush their Syrian-Greek foes. At Machon Ayalon we examined a mandate-period armaments factory

I was knocking at heaven’s door.

On a family trip in 1995, our columnist discovered that there’s more to Israel than the Kotel and McDonalds.

which had been cleverly disguised as a bakery and laundry facility to conceal it from the British as statehood neared. We examined actual Roman milestones and the remains of stepped roads and explored the bell-shaped caves of Beit Gurvin and the labyrinth network of cisterns beneath Maresha. Jerusalem’s turbulent and storied past was made vivid by tours of the City of David and the enormous (underground) portion of the Kotel. Gradually, our eyes became trained to distinguish among the stones of different eras, dismissing those which were a mere 400 years old. We came to admire the foresight and shrewd-

ness of Hezekiah, King of Judea, and that monarch of 2,500 years past became something of a hero to us. t the ruins of Susyah, Qazrin and Beit Alphah we viewed the synagogues of our ancestors. As I marveled at the simple beauty of their ancient mosaic floors, I could almost hear their voices addressing my G-d, their G-d, the G-d Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Our presence in the Jewish state is living proof that those prayers did not go unanswered. We studied the handiwork of their everyday lives: The olive and wine presses, the cisterns, the columbaria (shelters for domesticated pi-

Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

geons). I am on more intimate terms with my ancestors now. It is almost like having rummaged around in a relative’s attic or flipped through the pages of the family album. But for all the fascination that the various places on our itinerary held out for us, there was (for me) no more striking a place than the site known as the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem. The vista of the old city from this vantage point in Talpiot is breathtakingly magnificent. In the soft, buttery, late-afternoon Shabbat sunlight. the eye skims northward over the Arab villages of Abu Tor and Silwan and finds its way See Steinberg on page 27

At site of a Nazi massacre, Jews are forgotten FIAMMA NIRENSTEIN

ormer Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s speech at Sant’Anna di Stazzema shows how the Palestinian cause is becoming a political and moral rallying point for parts of the European left. Conte is an especially interesting case in the antisemitic tsunami now engulfing much of the world. The former prime minister and current leader of the left-wing populist Five Star Movement is a key ally of Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein and a potential candidate to lead Italy again. Italian media are already portraying his political moves with an eye toward a future contest for leadership of the left-wing coalition. Increasingly, Conte appears to be using the Palestinian cause as a moral glue for the electorate he hopes to assemble, much as New York politician Zohran Mamdani has done in the United States. That is what made his appearance this week at Sant’Anna di Stazzema so significant.

Conte invokes Gaza while ignoring the antisemitic hatred behind the Oct. 7 massacre.

Sant’Anna is not simply another Italian village with a tragic wartime history. It is one of the most powerful symbols of Nazi-Fascist barbarism in Italy. On Aug. 12, 1944, soldiers of the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division “Reichsführer-SS,” aided by Italian Fascist collaborators, descended on the Tuscan village and surrounding hamlets and massacred hundreds of civilians. The official commemoration last Wednesday marked the 82nd anniversary of the slaughter, in which 560 people were killed, including more than 100 children. Women, old people and children were slaughtered. The youngest victim, Anna Pardini, was just 20 days old. What was ostensibly an operation against partisans became a bloodbath of defenseless civilians. talian writer Adriano Sofri has compared the massacre to Srebrenica. The comparison is understandable. But there is another massacre, far closer to us in time, that should have been impossible to ignore at Sant’Anna: Oct. 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and carried out a mass slaughter of Jews in kibbutzim, towns and at a music festival, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 to the Gaza Strip. Why should Oct. 7 have been remembered at Sant’Anna? Because the defining ideological crime of Nazism was the persecution and extermination of the Jewish people. The SS did not merely terrorize Europe. It was a central instrument in the machinery that murdered 6 million Jews. On Oct. 7, an ancient ideological hatred ap-

The memorial ossuary monument to the victioms of the Nazi-fascistr massacre in Sant’Anna di Stazzema, Italy. Federico Neri, Adobe

peared once again in its most bloodthirsty form: the mass murder of innocent Jews, accompanied by an explicit determination to destroy their state. Yet Conte, who delivered the official commemorative address at Sant’Anna on Wednesday, did not make that connection.

Instead, he spoke of the need to fight NaziFascist ideology as the enemy of democracy, constitutional government and equality. That is, of course, legitimate. Sant’Anna is rightly regarded in Italy as a symbol of the values on which the postwar republic and its Constitution were built. See Fiamma on page 27

THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

Personal reflection: To Israel and back in 1995

August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786 THE JEWISH STAR

ROSENBAUM: Rejecting Islam’s Trojan horse…

Continued from page 22 ber, behead or lash wives or daughters whose only crime may have been listening to music, learning to read or showing a strand of hair in public. All of this is in service of accelerating the date of the next caliphate. You don’t need two billion Muslims to give the West an unwanted makeover instantly. Tens of millions will do. Just look at the hundreds of Sharia courts throughout Europe, the “nogo zones,” the public calls to prayer on public streets in nation after nation, the many allowances made for Islam, the forsaking of law enforcement, all on account of either genuine fear or misguided tolerance. The complete dismissal of Islam’s political, militaristic ambitions due to Western naiveté, paternalism, white guilt, multicultural excess and unenforced immigration laws is folly. Leaving aside terrorism, Muslims with Islamist inclinations are now both office holders and running for office, often under the facade of “socialism,” but caliphates, covertly, lurk behind, waiting patiently in pole position. e have a prime example in New York City. Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor on a “socialist” platform. If you hadn’t read his previous posts and videos about Israel — “Globalize the intifada!” — you may have been surprised by his unrelenting focus on Israel. Immediately upon taking office, he discarded the International Holocaust Remembrance Alli-

ance’s now standard definition of antisemitism. That maneuver allowed violent protests outside of synagogues and incitement that has led to multiple attacks against Jewish New Yorkers. The ostensible political agenda here does not encourage debates over public policy. It resembles the submission demanded by Islam as a fait accompli: Rich white people are all racists and “Islamophobes”; property owners must be stripped of their rights; Israel is an illegitimate state; and all Israelis deserve to die. Since Mamdani won’t denounce the slogan “Globalize the intifada!” he must wish the same fate for New York Jews, his own constituents. Islam is not much different from the Trojan horse. Governments have failed to perform the necessary due diligence to understand the hidden intentions of uninvited guests. Men wrapped in tubular keffiyehs and women whose entire bodies, including their faces, are covered up are difficult to read. This is a Trojan horse shaped by humanitarian gestures and misguided policy. Such blindness to duplicity can prove to be as lethal as cannon fire, ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons — rendering an entire continent as traumatized as Nolan’s Odysseus after the Trojan War. We’re dealing not merely with Manchurian Candidates but ticking time bombs that aim to implode Western nations from the inside out. he United States may be relatively new to all this, but the signs are everywhere. Once the first American flag was torched in Dear-

Goldman… Berlin…

Continued from page 21 From whom? His own parents, of course. Mom can’t find her jewelry and assumes that it must be the cleaning lady. Dad can’t account for the cash missing from his wallet. Meanwhile, right under their own roof, it is their own Mark or Kevin, Stacy or Samantha. I am not exaggerating. Why do you think every community now has rehab centers? Why are there rabbis whose full-time work is helping Jewish families whose children have become drug addicts — kids from wonderful homes with wonderful parents who did everything right? he ben sorer u’moreh (“stubborn and rebellious son”) is no longer a legal curiosity from a dusty page of the Talmud. It is a warning label the Torah stuck on the box 3,000 years ago, and we’re only now reading the fine print. It’s not only Hollywood celebrities or stars of the stage with lives of excess that die of overdoses. It is happening in our own backyard. So here is my plea to you, and I say this as someone who used to think this could never happen to “people like us.” Keep your eyes open. Trust your children (please, trust them), but don’t over-trust. Know where they are and who they’re with. And the moment something feels off, don’t wait for it to sort itself out: Step in, and, if necessary, get professional help immediately. Remember: When you take away the high, you can’t just leave a space where it used to be. Something must fill that vacuum — something positive, something spiritual, something with real meaning. Nature and teenagers abhor a vacuum. Was the stubborn and rebellious son a case that never existed and never will exist? I wish I could still say yes with the same confidence I once had. I pray that it never happens to any of us or to anyone we love. And if, G-d forbid, it ever does, may we have the wisdom to catch it early and the courage to act on it. May G-d watch over our children and may we never have reason to know this story firsthand. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 21 be’echad beTishrei (to hear the sound of the shofar on the first of Tishrei). But when the Rambam actually begins the halachos, his language changes. Mitzvas asei shel Torah lishmoa teruas hashofar beRosh Hashana (there is a Torah commandment to hear the teruah of the shofar on Rosh Hashana) (Hilchos Shofar 1:1). There is kol shofar, the actual sound that must be heard on a particular date. That sound has rules. It has measurements. It needs to be long enough and shaped correctly. Sometimes it needs someone standing there with a watch. But there is also teruas shofar. There is something inside the sound, a cry that is supposed to awaken something inside the person hearing it. The mitzvah begins with the ear, but it is not supposed to end there. The shofar can awaken us to realities if we allow it. It can shatter illusions and awaken tefillos that words cannot express. he Rav once described what it means to suddenly wake up from an illusion in one of the most painful passages he ever wrote. Shortly after his wife Tonya died, he awoke during a thunderstorm on the seventh day of Pesach in 1967. Half asleep, he remembered that a window had been left open downstairs near where his wife slept. Worried that the cold air could harm her in her weakened condition, he rushed downstairs and closed it. Then he turned around. The bed was empty. The couch was neatly covered. His wife had died the previous month. For a brief moment, he had forgotten. He had been living in the world as it used to be, the world in which his wife was still downstairs sleeping. Then he turned around, and everything came rushing back. In some sense, that is the sound of the shofar itself. Tekiah, shevarim, teruah. A simple sound becomes broken and piercing. The shofar forces us to confront realities we may know intellectually but spend much of our lives avoiding. or a few seconds, if we let it, something breaks through. Maybe that is what the Rambam means when he hears the shofar saying, Wake up. Not learn something new.

born, Mich., less than two years ago — followed by the Islamic ditty “Death to America!” — Islamists within the United States essentially said, “Game on!” Dearborn is the only city in America with a Muslim majority, a Muslim mayor and a city council that is comprised entirely of Muslims. No surprise: Dearborn is within the congressional district of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), known for anti-Israel sentiment. Not long after that American flag was set aflame, Mamdani was elected to govern New York City. Islamists may soon claim several congressional seats and a place in the United States Senate. Candidates like Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El Sayed, who is running for a Senate seat, and aspiring congresspersons Adam Hisham Hamawy from New Jersey and Aisha Wahab from California may join incumbents Tlaib, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) and Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.). These candidates and elected public officials are not just Muslims. They are hardcore Islamists who have cleverly leveraged our democracy against us. They mobilized Muslim voters with a wink and deceived the rest with diversions such as “affordability” and universal healthcare. The ultimate destruction of the democratic, liberal, meritocratic order is mischievously missing from their platforms. The Greek army realized it would never be able to scale the massive wall that surrounded Troy. Muslims came to realize that in winning all

those wars initiated by Islam, Europe had succeeded in creating a moat that Islam would not be able to cross unless they were invited in. What is to be done to stop the replacement of constitutional democracy with Sharia law? Most importantly, existing criminal and immigration laws that already exist must be enforced without fear of an “Islamophobia” charge or a ricocheting hate crime. Horendous crimes can’t be excused because of marijuana use or chalked up to “cultural differences.” The West should not degrade its civility simply to appease its Muslim populations. An honest conversation must be had with a nation’s Muslim citizens and asylum seekers: Are you committed to obeying Sharia law over the secular, constitutional law of this land? Do you really want to be here, learn the language, live in harmony with neighbors, and show mutual respect, tolerance and good citizenship? Are you willing to embrace religious pluralism and, in the United States, become a part of the American Experiment? If not, you don’t really belong here, and you know it. Your heart and loyalty lie elsewhere. Islam, we are afraid, has consistently been headed in the wrong direction, aiming for a rebirth of the Dark Ages, when caliphates were more common. We see your Trojan horse for what it is, and we respectfully decline the gift. This piece is excerpted from White Rose magazine. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Wake up to what you already know. Remember what matters. Remember how quickly a year passes. Remember the people you love. Remember the person you wanted to become. Remember that you are standing before G-d. The shofar does not give us a speech because sometimes words actually get in the way. It gives us a cry. And maybe that means I misunderstood the makri with his stopwatch all those years ago. The stopwatch and the emotion were never competing with each other. We need the stopwatch. Halachah gives the shofar its form and tells us exactly what Hashem asks us to do. But once the sound is right, another question begins. Did we actually listen? We can hear the kol shofar and fulfill a mitzvah on the first of Tishrei, and that itself is precious. But we can also allow that same sound to become teruas shofar, a wordless tefillah, a moment when everything else becomes quiet enough for us to remember what we knew all along. The shofar, in other words, has two voices. One is the sound that reaches our ears. The other is the cry that is meant to reach our hearts. This Rosh Hashana, the question is not only whether we will hear the shofar. The question is whether, even for a few seconds, we will truly listen. Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach. www.bachlongbeach.com. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

flict between the charedi population and the rest of the Jewish citizenry. Israeli journalist and commentator Amit Segal described the painful conflict between those who serve in defense of the nation and those who don’t: “The young soldier knows that once he is discharged, he will be called up for reserve duty again and again. He cannot see his future.” In the more than 1,000 days since Oct. 7, soldiers are serving repeatedly, anywhere from 300 to 400 days in some cases, disrupting careers, businesses, education and family life. I personally know many of these soldiers and their families. The anger and frustration is bitter and real. This issue is tearing the country apart. We read parshat Ki Tetzei la’milchama this Shabbat — “If you go out to war…” These words are not directed solely at dati leumi or chiloni Jews, but to the charedi as well. They must serve, in whatever capacity they can, to defend klal Yisrael. At the same time, the army and government must accommodate their needs to the best of their ability, protecting religious sensibilities involving kashrut, interaction with women and other contentious issues. We all must find a solution to this self-destructive and self-inflicted problem. This is the achdut — unity — Hashem desires of us. Our first step is teshuva and seeking dveikut, closeness to Hashem. He is asking all of Israel, individually and collectively, “eicha” — how did you let this happen? And “ayeka” — where are you? Where are you in fixing it? Shabbat shalom. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Mazurek…

Continued from page 21 dveikut, that was the purpose of our creation. Conversely, when we do teshuva, as we are compelled to do during Elul leading to the Yomim Noraim, we re-establish that closeness. Interestingly, eicha does not appear in parshat V’etchanan, recited on Shabbat Nachamu. That parsha is about dveikut, loving attachment to Hashem: “v’atem ha’dveikim ba’Shem Elokeichem, chaim kulchem hayom (but you, who remain attached to Hashem, your G-d, are all alive today)” (Devarim 4:4). Beyond the personal message, these ideas have practical applications for Israel. One of the greatest problems facing the country is the con-

Weinreb…

Continued from page 21 punishment. Rabbi Zeitchik then shares a powerful question raised by the Chassidic Rebbe of Sochachov, author of Shem MiShmuel: We are taught that the wayward son is not punished merely for disobeying his parents. Rather, he is punished so severely because of what his behavior will ultimately lead to. Al shem sofo — because of his eventual end — his Continued on next page

Continued from page 25 to Har Habayit, the Temple Mount. It is a place to be savored, its windswept beauty engraved in my mind’s eye. hild rearing is like farming. One prepares the soil, sows, irrigates, nurtures and hopes for the best. I want a love for the land of Israel to take root in my children and blossom, and objective that is more elusive than it would seem. Their very familiarity with the idea of Israel functions as a kind of force field which repels true intimacy. How does one smash through the platitudes and superficialities so that the place touches them deeply? How does one elevate Israel in their minds as being something more than one big Jewish national theme park? The best way, perhaps, is simply to have them experience the texture of everyday life in a place where the Hebrew of the siddur and Tanach is found on the streets, over radio and television airwaves, in newspapers and on road signs. I ache for them to realize that all this is theirs. Surely, they must take Israel for granted. It

is here, it thrives and, by the way, when do we get a chance to actually eat in the kosher McDonalds? At their tender ages they are in no position to appreciate just how miraculous all this really is. For them, notions of refuge and independence are alien. These children, thank G-d, have not experienced first-hand degradation and second-class status. They haven’t absorbed the epithets and blows that were routinely directed at earlier generations. They live in a comfortable, nonthreatening suburban setting and feel fully a part of America. Israel, as both an antidote to persecution and alienation and a catalyst to Jewish creativity, is still little more than a subject for classroom discussion. It remains to be absorbed and felt. I urged upon myself patience; let the places, the atmosphere, the feel of it all work its subtle magic on them. Like a time capsule, Israel would have to be given time to become for them the imperative it is for me. Slow down, I reminded myself, it won’t happen overnight.

This trip need not produce any epiphanies. It is a time for planting seeds. he Kotel. My relationship with this massive testament to Herod’s Idumaean insecurity, his Greco-Roman sensibilities and, yes, his Jewish pride, is complex and beyond even my own understanding. As a religious/national symbol it is a paradox as great as the individual stones that comprise it. It represents our only remaining tangible link with Judaism’s only truly sacred edifice and yet is not a remnant of the beit hamikdash itself but only a part of the wall that enclosed it. It has long been regarded as a holy place and yet was built by one of Jewish history’s most profane and ruthless personages. It stands today as an austere and simple monument of our faith and yet 2,000 years ago it was an integral part of a grandiose endeavor that was, according to the Talmud and Josephus, one of antiquity’s architectural marvels. It is a magnet for Jews wishing to pray, yet I routinely

shun it and its raucousness in favor of the quiet, understated solemnity of the synagogue of the Ramban located nearby in the Jewish Quarter. When I first visited the Kotel, three years after its liberation from Arab hands, I wanted to feel so much; truth to tell, I felt little and was disappointed in myself. Numerous subsequent visits yielded no change. It was simply another obligation to be discharged. Until a year and a half ago and then again this time. I approached the smooth, massive stones and rested my head and arm against them and sighed. Tears welled in my eyes and then flowed as I tried to talk to G-d. I wanted, needed, so badly to find Him. Especially there. Especially then. Why did I cry these times and not before? Was I grieving over a loss of innocence? It seemed comforting to find myself at some fixed, incontrovertible point. Questions hung unanswered in the arid air. I was knocking at heaven’s door. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from previous page seemingly minor misconduct is expected to turn him into a murderous bandit and a danger to society. If the purpose of the punishment is to protect society, what right do his parents have to forgive him? Rabbi Zeitchik’s response is nothing less than delightful! He argues that the parents forgive him because they know their son better than anyone else. They believe he can change. They see his better self — his capacity not only to overcome his waywardness and defiance, but to grow into an exemplary adult, perhaps even a blessing to society. he “gentle” message here is twofold, with implications for child-rearing and with a theological teaching as well. For childrearing, Rabbi Zeitchik makes us aware that parenting involves not only knowing the child as he or she is at any given moment. Rather, it entails the ability to see, and to help shape and direct, the child’s potential. Don’t judge your children as who they are, but rather as who they can become. The theological teaching is Navardek’s gentle message for those of us who, especially at this time of year, struggle with the process of teshuva. We are often paralyzed by guilt, by the recognition of our shortcomings and failures, which lead to despair, to the surrender of the possibility of self-improvement. Rabbi Zeitchik assures us with these words: “Only the merciful Holy One Blessed Be He, who created and sustains the human heart and knows its dark secrets, who searches out our hearts on the Day of Judgment, who uncovers our hidden strengths, who espies hidden potential, can thereby acquire ‘servants’ of whom He can take pride.” A second example of Nevardek’s “gentler” message in this week’s parsha is drawn by Rabbi Zeitchik from these two passages: “You must fulfill what has crossed your lips and perform what you have voluntarily vowed to the L-rd your G-d, having made the promise with your own mouth (ibid. 23:24).” “For this applies to all mankind: that G-d will call every creature to account for everything unknown, be it good or bad (Ecclesiastes 12:1314).” Rabbi Zeitchik eloquently expresses what he derives from the above two passages. He writes: “Just as the L-rd judges Man for the evil that lies within him, unconscious motivations and passions of which he is unaware, so too does the L-rd consider the good which lies within Man, the suppressed light which he does not reveal, the great potential which he fails to develop. Man is responsible to ferret out his evil propensities, and, perhaps even more so, he must search in himself for the good within him of which he is

barely aware and never activates.” The second “gentle” message, as I understand it, is this: Each of us has both a yetzer hara and a yetzer tov — dark urges and motives, as well as noble and compassionate ones. We are often unaware of their presence, let alone their influence on our conduct. Teshuva calls for introspection and self-searching: uncovering the hidden forces within us, including those that are undesirable or even harmful. But even more important is the task of discovering the hidden resources that can help us grow ethically, morally, and spiritually — for our own fulfillment and for the benefit of others, perhaps even all humankind. A New Year is approaching. Let us greet it with these gentle messages in mind. Many more are available, if only we open ourselves to hear them. Shana Tova! Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

last week, Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s foreign minister, described Israel as a “threat to the entire Muslim world” before denouncing it as an “illegitimate state” whose origins lay in the British government’s Balfour Declaration of 1917. For the history buffs among us, this was more than a little amusing given that Pakistan — a corrupt, poverty-ridden failed state — was itself a British imperial creation that went on to commit a real genocide when East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, tried to separate in 1971. But we are long past the time when scoring points is of any use. When it comes to Israel especially, there is a marked tendency to believe what you want to believe, rather than what happens to be true. As Diaspora Jews observe Israeli Jews vote in October, they should bear Asif’s words in mind. Nearly 80 years after the creation of the modernday Jewish state, the foreign minister of a U.N. member state — one, to boot, that possesses nuclear weapons and touts itself as a US ally — can publicly wish for its destruction with no material consequences. In such an environment, elections aren’t fundamentally about taxation bands or increasing school choice. They are about the best methods of securing the very survival of the country and the nation. For Israel in 2026, that means peace through strength, and strength before peace. Write: Columnist@TheJewshStar.com

Fiamma…

Warren…

Continued from page 23 ogy insight. That is a design insight, and it is portable. The opportunity was staring at me from my phone the whole time. I suspect one is staring at you, too. Find a chat like this in your community or join ours. Start with a slump if you have one; it won’t last long. Stop in the middle of your day, send $20 and change the shape of someone’s week. My friend was right about the counterintuitive math. The fastest way out of an empty stretch is to fill someone else’s. Warren H. Cohn is the founder of RocketshipPR and media adviser to the American Middle East Press Association. Write:Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Cohen…

Continued from page 23 srael’s elections, then, are of critical importance to Israelis — and Jews, in general — because the result will determine who leads Israel in the coming years during a period when the threat from Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, remains live, while Jew-hatred shows no sign of abating. But for Israel’s detractors, who runs the country makes no difference. They want to see it gone from the map. No state in the world faces as much rhetorical opposition to its existence as Israel does. Just

Shafran…

Continued from page 24 of Jew-hatred has been demonstrated tragically over centuries, indeed millennia. The same ancient tradition, though, that predicts Jew-hatred also reveals a Divine plan that culminates with the defeat of evil and a world suffused with peace. That assurance must keep us from despondency. In the meantime, though, until that final chapter of history, we Jews will continue to be singled out — irrationally but persistently — as targets of hatred. And that is why, incongruous as it may seem, antisemitism, while it should greatly concern us, should also, since it reminds us of what the Jewish religious tradition teaches, inspire us and strengthen our faith. A version of this essay was published in “Ami Magazine” in 2024, where the author is editor-atlarge. Rabbi Avi Shafran was for many years the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America. Write: Columnist@TheJewshStar.com

Continued from page 25

But something essential was missing. Conte forgot — or chose not to remember — that antisemitism and the extermination of the Jews stood at the heart of the Nazi project. And when Jews did enter his speech, they appeared not as the quintessential victims of Nazi ideology, but in the form of Israeli soldiers accused of perpetrating atrocities. peaking at the site of the Nazi-Fascist massacre, Conte declared that opposing fascism today requires condemning what he called the “horror” in Gaza, where, he claimed, “over 20,000 defenseless children have been massacred by the Israeli army.” These are not isolated words. Conte has repeatedly used Gaza and accusations against Israel in parliament and on the campaign trail. His rhetoric has turned increasingly sweeping and accusatory, presenting Israel not simply as a country whose government or military policies may be criticized, but as an engine of war, horror and extermination. And now this propaganda has been brought to Sant’Anna di Stazzema. That is what gives this very Italian story a much broader meaning. Across the West, the Palestinian cause has increasingly become a political identity marker, particularly on the left. Politicians have discovered that attacking Israel can serve as a shorthand for moral virtue and as a means of mobilizing a particular political constituency. But at Sant’Anna, the contradiction is especially grotesque. Here was a politician standing at a place soaked in the blood of victims of an army belonging to a regime whose defining racial obsession was the destruction of the Jews — and using the occasion not to recall the latest mass murder of Jews, but to portray the Jewish state as the perpetrator of contemporary horror. Memory is not merely about remembering that a crime occurred. It is about understanding what produced it. If we commemorate Nazi-Fascist massacres while removing antisemitism and the attempted annihilation of the Jews from the center of the Nazi worldview, then we are not preserving history. We are reshaping it for present political purposes. Sant’Anna deserves better. Was this really how its victims should have been commemorated — as another opportunity to hunt for pro-Palestinian votes, whatever the cost? Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

THE JEWISH STAR August 21-27, 2026 • 8 Elul 5786

STEINBERG: Thinking about Israel in 1995…

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