The Jewish Star 01-29-2026

Jan. 30-Feb. 5, 2026

12 Shevat 5786

Beshalach Vol. 25, No. 2

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‘Zionist millionaires’ in Riverdale control Ritchie Torres, rival says

By The Jewish Star and JNS

Seeking to unseat Rep. Ritchie Torres in this year’s Democratic primary, Jose Vega released a campaign video last week alleging that Zionists in Riverdale “bought and controlled” Torres and are keeping the Bronx poor.

Torres, whose district includes both Riverdale and poorer Bronx neighborhoods, has been a bold advocate for Israel and the fight against antisemitism, as well as various progressive causes.

In the video, Erik Warsaw, a conspiracist who traffics in assertions that cast Jews in a poor light, asked Vega how is it that “the Bronx is one of the poorest districts in America, but also has some of the richest Zionist millionaires in America too.”

“Because rich people like to live in areas where they can buy the politicians easily, like Ritchie Torres, who is bought and controlled by Zionist influencers and millionaires who all live in Riverdale,” answered Vega, noting that beyond Riverdale, “this district, being one of the poorest congressional districts, has the lowest voter turnout rate. So the less people that vote, the easier it is to buy a politician.”

Torres responded to the video: “My opposition sees antisemitism not as a tragedy, but as a strategy.”

He added that “no amount of defamation or disinformation will ever shame me out of representing every community in my district. We are One Bronx, and no amount of Jew-hatred will divide us.”

Rubio’s remarkable rise: How former Trump rival became his foreign policy powerhouse

On March 24, 2025, the Atlantic exposed one of the biggest scandals in American national security history, a field not unfamiliar with scandal. Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, described how Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump’s national Security adviser, had mistakenly added him to a Signal group called “Houthi PC small group” — a group that included 18 senior administration officials.

Goldberg watched in real time as senior administration officials received briefings on a military strike against the Houthis in Yemen, includ-

ing targets, weaponry, timing and sequence of operations. None of them knew a senior journalist was in the group. Waltz paid the price and was moved to the position of UN ambassador.

The person appointed to the position of national security adviser in Waltz’s place was Marco Rubio, who simultaneously served as Secretary of State. He thus became the first person after the mythological Henry Kissinger to hold both positions simultaneously. Rubio’s senior status with Trump is particularly surprising if you go back about a decade to the two men’s contest in the Republican Party primaries, that sometimes deteriorated into ugly mudslinging.

Just over three weeks ago, on Jan. 3, Delta Force fighters burst from the darkness into the hiding place of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. At the end of the operation, the two landed on US soil and were transferred to a secure prison in Brooklyn. At a press conference, Trump declared that the United States would “manage” Venezuela. In a post a few days later, he responded to someone who called Rubio “the de facto president of Venezuela” by writing, “Sounds good.”

Everything from above Rubio (54, married and father of four) was

born in Miami to parents who emigrated from Cuba shortly before it fell to communism in the 1950s. His father worked as a bartender, his mother as a housekeeper, and the “American Dream” was for him a biography, not a slogan. In the family living room, politics was not an abstract concept but a living memory — stories of lost freedom and a regime that turned millions into refugees. This was his first political education.

His faith is one of the defining factors of his character and his politics.

“His faith, his Catholicism has really defined his political life,” a senior State Department official

Marco Rubio, the foreign policy powerhouse…

Continued from page 1

who has worked alongside Rubio for more than two decades told Israel Hayom. “It is the base, the foundation of who he is.” Last March, Rubio appeared in a Fox interview with an ash cross on his forehead, as is Catholic custom on Ash Wednesday, the day that opens the fast days before Easter.

But here too, there is complexity. Rubio underwent a stormy spiritual journey — born Catholic but baptized as a Mormon as a child, he returned to Catholicism, and in the 2000s was drawn to a Baptist megachurch in Miami. To many, his speech style recalls the sermons of an evangelical preacher, and he himself is staunchly opposed to abortion. In a way, he represents a union of the central religious conceptions in American public life.

In his farewell speech from the Florida House of Representatives in May 2008, Rubio addressed his faith.

“G-d is real,” he declared fervently. “I don’t care what courts across the country say. I don’t care what laws we pass. G-d is real. You can’t pass a ruling that will distance G-d from this building. He doesn’t care about the Florida Supreme Court. He doesn’t care about the US Supreme Court.”

He continued, “G-d loves every person on the face of the earth, whether you’re passing through and whether you’re behind bars. He doesn’t care if you have a visa to be here legally. He loves you. He doesn’t care if you committed the most abhorrent act that violated human laws. He loves you.”

‘Small hands’

Rubio’s political ascent was rapid. In his 20s and 30s, he advanced in Florida politics — city council member, state House member and at age 35 was already House Speaker, the youngest and first Hispanic in the position. Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and son of the 41st president, was his mentor and saw him as the party’s future.

In 2010, he was elected to the Senate on the wave of the “Tea Party” — a conservative populist movement, a harbinger of the MAGA movement — that opposed the expansion of the federal government after the 2008 economic crisis. In Washington, he built a profile as a serious legislator on foreign and security issues, was considered a brilliant speaker and was perceived as a natural candidate for Republican Party leadership.

In 2016, Rubio ran in the Republican presidential primaries. His polished image, political professionalism and conservative ideas clashed head-on with Donald Trump, the populist comet that blazed through American political skies. Rubio called him a “con man,” warned he was “unfit to be president” and described him as a “danger to the conservative movement.” Trump didn’t remain indebted. He gave Rubio the nickname “Little Marco” and described him as a “lightweight” and an “establishment puppet.”

The exchange of blows between Trump and Rubio was violent, even by Trump’s standards and even by those of the ugly 2016 primaries. Rubio took upon himself the war against the populist candidate that the Republican establishment didn’t know how to deal with. In a February debate, he hurled at Trump, “If you hadn’t inherited $200 million, you’d be selling watches.”

At a campaign rally, he went below the belt, mocking Trump’s hands. “He’s taller than me, so I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone 1.57 meters ]5 feet 2 inches] tall,” said Rubio. “And you know what they say about men with small hands — you can’t trust them,” he added. Trump, unaccustomed to defending himself, was forced to respond at a Detroit debate. “Look at these hands, are they small? If they’re small, something else is probably small. I guarantee you there’s no problem,” he said.

In another part of a debate, the two clashed over foreign policy. When Trump boasted he could negotiate with the Palestinians, Rubio interrupted him, “The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald.” Trump replied, “You can’t negotiate. With your thinking, you’ll never bring peace.”

On March 15, Rubio lost his home state of Florida and announced his withdrawal from the race. “I’m not going to be anyone’s vice presi-

dent,” he told reporters with visible disappointment. “I will finish my term in the Senate and in January I will be a private citizen.”

That painful moment passed, and the political bug wouldn’t let Rubio retire.

“He put his head down, he did the hard work as a senator, and he learned to adapt and be patient and, you know, support the party and figure out how his, you know, foreign policy beliefs fit into a new era of the Republican Party under Trump,” the senior official told Israel Hayom. “He could have walked away from … public life, like a lot of people did that were beaten by Trump.”

Instead of disappearing from political life, Rubio joined the winners, in his own way. The neoconservative conceptions he championed — American dominance, war against hostile regimes, free market, projection of force — became a dirty word in the new Republicanism that advocated isolationism and ending the “endless wars.”

Rubio became a “translator” of the old party to the new world. Instead of “spreading democracy,” he spoke of “protecting national security”; instead of ideological intervention, war against “drug cartels poisoning the American people and the middle class.” The goals remained similar — toppling a communist and hostile regime in America’s backyard — but the language changed.

The same senior official added: “I see the happy warrior that I met, you know, in his 20s, it’s still the happy warrior in his 50s that he is today. In his nature, he is hopeful, he’s optimistic, he’s funny.”

Confrontation with Witkoff

The beginning of his path in the administration was, as mentioned, difficult, and more precisely, boring. Steve Witkoff, the real estate billionaire and Trump friend from Manhattan, expanded from his small office at the State Department his areas of responsibility, from Gaza and Iran to the war in Ukraine. It appeared this man, who had never dealt with diplomacy, was the de facto secretary of state. Witkoff flew on his private plane to meetings with Putin and senior Arabs and scheduled meetings with leaders without updating Rubio.

In late November and early December, Witkoff hoped to restart talks to end the war in Ukraine, after the success in Gaza. Already then, his proRussian tendency was a topic of conversation, and eyebrows were raised when he arrived at a Kremlin meeting without his own interpreter and relied on translation services the Russians were happy to provide.

The plan was leaked to the media, and its tilt toward Putin sparked a global storm. Bloomberg obtained a conversation in which Witkoff offered his Russian counterparts the chance to coordinate a phone call between Trump and Putin just before Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s planned visit to the White House — a move the Russians hoped would strengthen their bargaining position.

In a panicked manner, it was decided to hold talks with Ukrainian representatives in Geneva. According to NBC, at that time, Rubio was pre-

paring for the wedding of acquaintances in North Carolina, where his two daughters served as bridesmaids, when he learned that Witkoff was already on his way to Geneva. Without him. This wasn’t the first time.

In April, before talks in Paris, Witkoff scheduled a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron without informing him. The French Foreign Ministry informed his people they needed Witkoff’s approval for Rubio to join — a humiliating moment for the secretary of state.

Rubio left quickly and managed to arrive on time. In Geneva, he succeeded in changing many of the harshest demands on Kyiv that Witkoff had included in the proposal. That diplomatic effort to bring an end to the war in a way that would put Ukraine at a disadvantage was thwarted. This was a live demonstration of the difference between “Trumpist” diplomacy — businesslike, direct, impatient with protocol, often hostile to allies — and that of Rubio.

“Rubio harnessed the experience he accumulated in the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees to translate Trump’s instincts into foreign policy. He became a factor that balances between the isolationists in the party and the need to project force,” explained professor Udi Zomer, head of the Barak Center for Leadership at Tel Aviv University.

Rubio’s rising power did not escape the eyes of the tweeters. One meme became particularly popular. In February, during the stormy confrontation between Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House, Rubio was photographed sinking into the couch in the Oval Office, his hands folded and his face frozen, as if asking to be swallowed so as not to witness American diplomacy shatter into pieces. The cameras were riveted to the impolite collision between the world’s most powerful man — and his deputy, JD Vance — and the Ukrainian president, who was accused of “ingratitude” and expelled from the White House.

Over time, this photo actually became a joke about his rising power. Internet meme creators dressed him in the clothing of Venezuela’s president, an Iranian ayatollah, an Eskimo in Greenland, and Fidel Castro, Cuba’s mythological and late ruler. All these symbolized, as it were, the series of positions he would hold when the United States took control of these countries. Another satire site joked that “the White House announces that a million new jobs were added in December — all filled by Marco Rubio.”

Regarding Cuba, Rubio is not in a joking mood.

“There’s no way that Marco Rubio leaves being secretary of state with the regime in Cuba intact. My eyes would be on Cuba next. It’s personal for him,” the State Department official told Israel Hayom. At the press conference after Maduro’s capture, Rubio said, “If I lived in Havana and was in the government, I’d be worried.”

However, meanwhile, and even more so this week, it appears American diplomacy has sailed again, from Rubio’s warm breeze to Greenland’s

frost, as it is led by the president’s old-new desire to take control of the Arctic island, and as is known, the president even refuses to rule out military action to achieve it.

Rubio has already tried to calm the situation. In a conversation with French Foreign Minister JeanNoël Barrot, he ruled out the possibility that “what happened in Venezuela will happen in Greenland,” according to the latter’s statement to local radio. But how much will Rubio succeed in deterring the president from pursuing the goal, whose achievement seems to endanger NATO’s existence?

“He’s doing his best to rein in Trump’s worst impulses,” a European foreign minister told the New Yorker. “He understands what’s at stake. He whispers in Trump’s ear, but there’s also a limit to his influence.”

Inheritance battle

Three years before the end of Trump’s second term, the president has already marked his two heirs, and not just once. In May, he mentioned Rubio before Vance when asked who would continue the MAGA movement. In August, he said Vance is “likely” the heir but added that Rubio “might connect with JD in some way.”

Vance, unlike Rubio, is the natural and undisputed heir to the movement’s leadership. The 41-year-old vice president was born into poverty in a crumbling town in Ohio’s Rust Belt, to a mother addicted to drugs and a father who disappeared from his life. He described his childhood in a memoir that became a Netflix film (“Hillbilly Elegy”) and a key to understanding Trump’s voter base. While Rubio is a graduate of the old Republican Party who learned to speak in MAGA language, Vance is, as it were, the embodiment of the movement itself. He is the people for whom globalization, grand dreams of free markets and the “end of history” didn’t work.

For his part, Rubio is doing everything he can to shake off the expectation that he will compete head-to-head against Vance for the position and for the soul of the Republican Party. In an interview with Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-inlaw, he said Vance “would be a great candidate if he decides he wants to do it. … He’s a close friend, and I hope he intends to do it.” Rubio added he would be satisfied with the secretary of state position as “the peak of my career,” but added that “you can’t know what the future holds, you never rule things out. … Things change very quickly.”

For Israel, a battle between the two could be fateful as ever, especially in light of the almost complete loss of Democratic support.

“They represent two opposing approaches,” said professor Zomer. “Rubio embodies the current that sees Israel as a vital strategic asset and a critical component in containing Iran and China — a Nixonian approach advocating active American involvement and broad military and diplomatic support as part of global hegemony. In contrast, Vice President Vance leads the America First line, which seeks to reduce American involvement in the world.”

Vance, he said, “may lead to an era of support from afar. As he expressed before the 2024 elections, if Israel wants to fight Iran, it can do so, but it’s their decision and they’ll have to bear the consequences.”

Vance gave an ominous sign during his recent appearance at a conservative conference in December, which took place amid a “civil war” being waged between conservatives, as represented by figures like Ben Shapiro on one side and influencers like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, whose statements range from open antisemitism to burning anti-Israelism, on the other.

“I didn’t bring with me a list of conservatives to condemn or boycott,” he said.

Finally, it appears everything depends on Trump himself. When the source who spoke with Israel Hayom was asked to assess who would win in a political battle between the two, he said, “Who knows? You know, six months is a lifetime in politics.

A lot of it depends on the economy. And of course, it’s up to Trump. You know, if he wants to endorse anybody, then it’s game over.”

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Caviar, casinos, Israelis in shah’s golden age

By Nava Silvera, Israel Hayom

Less than 50 years ago, Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport served as the departure point for one of the most sought-after, modern, and accessible destinations for Israelis — Iran.

This wasn’t just a neighboring country, but “the big sister” and the advanced one, a place where women in miniskirts strolled wide boulevards, alcohol flowed in glittering nightclubs, and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi worked to transform his kingdom into the Persian version of France.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Tehran didn’t look like a city in the heart of a conservative Muslim country. It was a thriving metropolis undergoing accelerated Westernization under the sponsorship of the shah’s White Revolution. This was a series of reforms designed to rapidly modernize the country through land redistribution, expansion of education and women’s rights (which also increased internal opposition and created tensions that laid the groundwork for the Islamic Revolution).

Tourists from Europe and the United States saw Iran as the perfect combination of Eastern exoticism and Western infrastructure.

On Pahlavi Street in Tehran, you could find movie theaters screening the latest Hollywood films simultaneously with their US release. Boutiques displayed collections from Parisian and Milanese haute couture designers, and the local elite was educated and French- and Englishspeaking.

Tehran’s clubs were famous for live performances by international singers alongside Persian pop stars such as Googoosh. The famous Caspian caviar was served on silver platters alongside premium vodka, and the atmosphere was one of endless celebration.

Googoosh wasn’t just another pop singer — she was the greatest cultural icon of modern Iran, the Madonna and Édith Piaf of the Middle East simultaneously. In the period before the 1979 revolution, she represented everything that was glamorous, liberal and cosmopolitan in Iranian society.

You can’t discuss tourism in pre-1979 Iran without mentioning 1971. The shah decided to celebrate 2,500 years of the Persian Empire with an event still defined as “the most expensive party in history.”

At the ancient site of Persepolis, in the heart of the desert, a manic tent city was erected. These weren’t camping tents, but royal suites made of silk.

Heads of state, kings and presidents (including an honored Israeli delegation) were invited for two days of sensory intoxication.

Food was flown in on special flights from Paris, and the entire event was designed to show the world that Iran was a global superpower. For the average Western tourist, this was the signal that Iran was the place to be.

Iran offered geographical diversity almost unparalleled in the region.

In the Alborz Mountains, north of Tehran, Dizin, one of the world’s best ski resorts was established. The snow there is considered exceptionally high-quality, and the resort was a pilgrimage site for ski enthusiasts from Europe seeking an alternative to the Alps.

The old cable cars, manufactured in France and Germany before the 1979 revolution, still creak their way up, carrying a new generation of young Iranians. For them, Dizin is a bubble of freedom. Here, far from the watchful eyes of the modesty patrols in the capital, large sunglasses and helmets blur the boundaries.

The shah dreamed of turning Kish Island in the Persian Gulf into a competitor to Monte Carlo. A luxurious casino was established there, along with luxury hotels and even an airport adapted for landing the supersonic Concorde

aircraft. This was the playground of the Gulf and Western elites.

Kish Island underwent a fascinating transformation. If before 1979 it was the exclusive playground of the shah and world aristocracy, today it has become the Iranian version of Eilat combined with Dubai — a free trade zone, a mass domestic tourism hub and a bubble of relative liberalism in Iran.

Isfahan and Shiraz provided the cultural-historical aspect. Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, with its stunning blue mosques, was mandatory for any architecture enthusiast.

At the heart of Shiraz, the city of poets and wine, lies the crown jewel of Persian gardens — Eram Garden (Bagh-e Eram). A place where royal architecture meets Iran’s wild nature, creating a reflection of paradise as described in the Quran.

In those years, Iran was the preferred destination for many Israelis — for business and for pleasure.

El Al operated regular, direct flights between Ben-Gurion Airport and Tehran. Israelis didn’t need complicated entry visas, and the reception was exceptionally warm.

Tehran was home to a large Israeli community of thousands — engineers, military personnel, businesspeople and their families. They established Israeli schools there, social clubs, and even a branch of the Solel Boneh construction company that built grandiose projects throughout the country.

Israelis used to fly to Tehran to buy authentic Persian carpets, gold jewelry and caviar at laughable prices. For the average Israeli of the 1970s, Tehran was abroad in the full sense of the word — bigger, richer and more spectacular than the small Tel Aviv of that era.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini didn’t just change the face of politics, it erased a thriving tourism industry overnight.

Movie theaters were burned, nightclubs closed and the casino on Kish Island became an abandoned building (later transformed into a “modest” shopping center). The women who were forced to cover themselves with hijabs were the same women who, just months earlier, had modeled the latest fashion on Tehran’s streets.

The revolution erupted as a massive popular eruption already in 1977 and gained tremendous momentum during 1978. It included liberal students, communists, intellectuals and secularists — many of whom didn’t want a theocratic state at all, but simply the end of the shah’s authoritarian rule as his government became more autocratic.

Today, many young Iranians look at photos of their parents from the 1970s — in swimsuits on the Caspian Sea shore or dancing in clubs — with longing for days of freedom and openness.

Public Notices

OF TAX LIENS ON REAL ESTATE

Notice is hereby given that commencing on February 17th, 2026, will sell at public online auction the tax liens on certain real estate, unless the owner, mortgagee, occupant of or any other party in interest in such real estate shall have paid to the County Treasurer by February 12th, 2026 the total amount of such unpaid taxes or assessments with the interest, penalties and other expenses and charges against the property. Such tax liens will be sold at the lowest rate of interest, not exceeding 10 percent per six-month period, for which any person or persons shall offer to take the total amount of such unpaid taxes as defined in Section 5-37.0 of the Nassau County Administrative Code.

Effective with the February 2019 lien sale Ordinance No. 175-2015 requires a $175.00 per day registration fee for each person who intends to bid at the tax lien sale. Ordinance No. 175-2015 also requires that upon the issuance of the Lien Certificate there is due from the lien buyer a Tax Certificate Issue Fee of $20.00 per lien purchased. Pursuant to the provisions of the Nassau County Administrative Code at the discretion of the Nassau County Treasurer the auction will be conducted online. Further information concerning the procedures for the auction is available at the website of the Nassau County Treasurer at: https://www.nassaucou ntyny.gov/526/CountyTreasurer

Should the Treasurer determine that an inperson auction shall be held, same will commence on the 17th day of February 2026 at the Office of The County Treasurer 1 West Street, Mineola or at some other location to be determined by the Treasurer.

A list of all real estate in Nassau County on which tax liens are to be sold is available at the website of the Nassau County

Treasurer at: https://www.nassaucou ntyny.gov/527/AnnualTax-Lien-Sale

A list of local properties upon which tax liens are to be sold will be advertised in this publication on or before February 05th, 2026.

Nassau County does not discriminate on the basis of disability in admission to or access to, or treatment or employment in, its services, programs, or activities. Upon request, accommodations such as those required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will be provided to enable individuals with disabilities to participate in all services, programs, activities and public hearings and events conducted by the Treasurer’s Office. Upon request, information can be made available in Braille, large print, audio-tape or other alternative formats. For additional information, please call (516) 571-2090 ext. 1-3715.

Dated: January 22, 2026

THE NASSAU COUNTY TREASURER

Mineola, New York

TERMS OF SALE

Such tax liens shall be sold subject to any and all superior tax liens of sovereignties and other municipalities and to all claims of record which the County may have thereon and subject to the provisions of the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts. However, such tax liens shall have priority over the County’s Differential Interest Lien, representing the excess, if any, of the interest and penalty borne at the maximum rate over the interest and penalty borne at the rate at which the lien is purchased.

The Purchaser acknowledges that the tax lien(s) sold pursuant to these Terms of Sale may be subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or may become subject to such proceedings which may be commenced during the period in which a tax lien is held by a successful bidder or the assignee of same, which may modify a

Purchaser’s rights with respect to the lien(s) and the property securing same. Such bankruptcy proceedings shall not affect the validity of the tax lien. In addition to being subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts, said purchaser’s right of foreclosure may be affected by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA),12 U.S.C. ss 1811 et seq., with regard to real property under Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) receivership.

The County Treasurer reserves the right, without further notice and at any time, to withdraw from sale any of the parcels of land or premises herein listed. The Nassau County Treasurer reserves the right to intervene in any bankruptcy case/litigation where the property affected by the tax liens sold by the Treasurer is part of the bankruptcy estate. However, it is the sole responsibility of all tax lien purchasers to protect their legal interests in any bankruptcy case affecting their purchased tax lien, including but not limited to the filing of a proof of claim on their behalf, covering their investment in said tax lien. The Nassau County Treasurer and Nassau County and its agencies, assumes no responsibility for any legal representation of any tax lien purchaser in any legal proceeding including but not limited to a bankruptcy case where the purchased tax lien is at risk.

The rate of interest and penalty at which any person purchases the tax lien shall be established by his bid. Each purchaser, immediately after the sale thereof, shall pay to the County Treasurer ten per cent of the amount for which the tax liens have been sold and the remaining ninety per cent within thirty days after such sale. If the purchaser at the tax sale shall fail to pay the remaining ninety per cent within ten days after he has been notified by the County Treasurer that the certificates of sale are ready for delivery,

then all amounts deposited with the County Treasurer including but not limited to the ten per cent theretofore paid by him shall, without further notice or demand, be irrevocably forfeited by the purchaser and shall be retained by the County Treasurer as liquidated damages and the agreement to purchase shall be of no further effect. Time is of the essence in this sale. This sale is held pursuant to the Nassau County Administrative Code and interested parties are referred to such Code for additional information as to terms of the sale, rights of purchasers, maximum rates of interest and other legal incidents of the sale. Furthermore, as to the bidding,

1. The bidder(s) agree that they will not work with any other bidder(s) to increase, maintain or stabilize interest rates or collaborate with any other bidder(s) to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the random number generator in the event of a tie bid(s) on a tax certificate. Bidder(s) further agree not to employ any bidding strategy designed to create an unfair competitive advantage in the tiebreaking process in the upcoming tax sale nor work with any other bidder(s) to engage in any bidding strategy that will result in a rotational award of tax certificates.

2. The tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) bid, will be arrived at independently and without direct or indirect consultation, communication or agreement with any other bidder and that the tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) to be bid, have not been disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder, and will not be disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder prior to the close of bidding. No attempt has been made or will be made to, directly or indirectly, induce any other bidder to refrain from bidding on any tax certificate, to submit complementary bids, or to submit bids at specific interest rates.

3. The bids to be

Saudi’s delicate dance: Israel at arm’s length

Analysis by Shachar Kleiman, Israel Hayom

Something has been happening in Saudi Arabia. Recently, the kingdom has adopted an overtly harsh tone toward Israel. Against this backdrop, a question arises — is the kingdom we knew, as a sworn enemy of the Iranian regime and the prime candidate for normalization, going to change direction?

The answer lies primarily within the kingdom itself. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman identifies many opportunities in Israel, but one major risk.

Alongside the diplomatic, economic and security fruits from relations with Jerusalem, he is aware that this is an explosive issue in Saudi Arabia that could damage his standing.

Within the Saudi royal house exists an entire wing that strongly opposes establishing official relations with Israel. This reluctance is not only connected to the Palestinians, who serve mainly as a diplomatic excuse.

It is primarily connected to their perception of Israel as a factor competing with them for regional hegemony. From their perspective, this is a zero-sum game.

The figure who symbolizes this line is former intelligence chief Prince Turki Al Faisal. The 80-year-old prince is one of King Faisal’s sons. While his father opposed even the partition plan, Prince Turki conditions relations with Israel on acceptance of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (proposing full Israeli withdrawal from “occupied territories” in exchange for recognition).

This initiative includes Israel’s withdrawal from all of the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, and east Jerusalem, and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Prince Turki is the one who has raised the nuclear weapons issue over the years and complains about Israeli influence in Washington. After Crown Prince Mohammed’s recent visit to the White House, he praised the cancellation of the bias in favor of Israel regarding trade in advanced weapons.

Normalization for the crown prince carries one major risk. The anti-Israel faction is not a small wing. It is enough to mention that today, thousands of princes live in Saudi Arabia and abroad who are descendants or relatives of the state’s founder, Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, aka Ibn Saud.

In this sense, the clichéd expression “a figure in the Saudi royal house” loses its value. After all, not everyone among them holds a position of influence. Some of them can be businesspeople and nothing more. Nevertheless, they constitute a power group whose mood the ruler must take into account.

Since the outbreak of the regional war triggered by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been perceived by them as a power whose hand is in everything — from involvement in

placed by the Bidder will be made in good faith and not pursuant to any direct or indirect, agreement or discussion with, or inducement from, any other bidder to submit a complementary or other noncompetitive bid.

Syria, through recognition of Somaliland, to Lebanon and Yemen. They do not see Jerusalem as an ally, but as a competitor.

Beyond veteran princes such as Turki, there is also the religious establishment. Despite Mohammed’s attempts to weaken the clerics from the conservative Wahhabi (ultra-orthodox Sunni) stream, while promoting reforms in women’s status, opening the economy and removing constraints from cultural life in the kingdom, in Mecca you can still hear that same old refrain.

In Friday sermons, the imams still preach against “the Jews” and for “victory for Palestine from Allah.” Their traditional antisemitism has not gone anywhere. In the kingdom, incidentally, they do not try to hide this and broadcast the speeches on television channels and social networks.

The third group Mohammed must consider is the young generation — a significant power base in his view. In the social media era, Israel became a pariah state during the Gaza war.

Despite attempts by Saudi channels to present a more balanced picture than Qatari channels, Israel is still perceived as the main culprit in Gaza’s destruction, and not Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations. If there is good news, it is that in 2025, there has been a certain reversal of this trend. From here, the crown prince must navigate between his personal positions and the kingdom’s political landscape.

In this environment, it is convenient for him to present himself as an adversarial factor to Israel in the diplomatic arena, a diplomatic player leading a wave of recognition of a Palestinian state in the West, and competing with Jerusalem as Washington’s main ally in the Middle East.

From his perspective, there is no rush regarding relations with Israel. A factor that maintains the “existing order” in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan, and does not seek to change it. Moreover, the crown prince presents a model of “active conservatism.”

4. If it is determined that the bidder(s) have violated any of these bid requirements then their bid shall be voided and if they were the successful bidder the lien and any deposits made in connection with said bid shall be forfeited.

Dated: January 22, 2026THE NASSAU COUNTY TREASURER Mineola, New York 157891

Challenge to Mamdani’s targeting Israel Bonds

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JNS

A fight over whether New York City should invest in Israel has brought into stark relief a conflict between two of its most powerful elected officials: the mayor and the comptroller, who is charged with managing $294.6 billion in pension funds on behalf of some 750,000 teachers, firefighters and police officers.

Big Apple comptrollers have, for the past five decades, invested in Israel Bonds, which are issued by the Israeli government through the Development Corporation for Israel. Mark Levine, the city’s new comptroller, said during his 2025 campaign that he would restore the city’s investment in the bonds, which lapsed under his predecessor.

At a press conference last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani told a reporter that “I’ve made clear my position, which is that I don’t think that we should purchase Israel bonds.”

“We don’t purchase bonds for any other sovereign nation’s debt, and the comptroller has also made his position clear,” Mamdani said. “I continue to stand by mine.”

The mayor has long been a proponent of the movement to boycott Israel. The city’s prior comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish and progressive and was a key ally of Mamdani’s during the latter’s campaign, is running for Congress in the city’s 10th congressional district against Rep. Dan Goldman, who is pro-Israel.

During Mamdani’s campaign for governor, Lander served as a critical bridge between the Muslim, longtime anti-Israel activist and progressive Jewish communities, many of which supported Mamdani in the 2025 election.

When Lander took office as New York City comptroller in 2022, the city had nearly $40 million invested in Israel Bonds. By the time he left the office, the bonds had matured and the city did not reinvest the proceeds in Israel.

Goldman’s campaign noted in a recent “fact check” of Lander that the latter, as comptroller, said that the city raised pension fund investments in Palantir — which contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and the Israeli weapons company Elbit, since “no one would want a situation where what I was doing was using my own personal politics to decide what companies we were and weren’t going to invest in, like that would be a violation of fiduciary duty and a bad way to construct a portfolio.”

“Brad Lander justifies his investments in ICE contractors and Israeli weapons manufacturers by citing his fiduciary duty as comptroller, which requires him to keep his personal politics out of financial decisions,” Goldman’s campaign

REPORTER WANTED

stated on Jan. 14. “Yet when he runs for political office, he touts his decision to divest from Israel bonds and fossil fuels, as he has repeatedly done. Which one is it?”

At issue in New York City is a tiny fraction of the pension funds invested by the comptroller, perhaps as important symbolically as they are financially.

In fiscal year 2025, the New York City comptroller had $294.6 billion in assets under management, representing the pension funds of city teachers, firefighters and police officers.

“The fact that the first pension-related position advanced by Mayor Zohran Mamdani would unwind more than 50 years of Israel Bond investments — while similar investments remain commonplace among public pension

systems across the United States — cannot be ignored,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told JNS.

The decision whether to invest in Israel Bonds sends an important message, according to Greenblatt.

“Policy evolution is legitimate. Policy exceptionalism aimed solely at the Jewish state is not,” he told JNS. “We hope this decision does not signal a shift toward discriminatory BDSaligned investment policies that create a toxic environment for all Jewish New Yorkers.”

Levine, the current comptroller, has focused on the pragmatic benefit of investing in Israel Bonds. “Israel bonds have performed very well and they continue to be investment grade rated,” he told the Financial Times, so his “fiduciary responsibility is to make investment decisions based on that record of performance.” (JNS sought comment from Levine.)

According to the paper, Israel’s 10-year dollar bonds, which have higher risk, yield about 5.2%, compared with roughly 4.2% for US Treasury Bonds.

“For nearly five decades, apart from the last four years, New York City has consistently invested in Israel bonds as a strong and steady investment and a smart financial decision,” Dani Naveh, president and CEO of Israel Bonds, told JNS.

“Over the past two years, we have seen a significant surge of more than $1 billion in Israel Bonds investments by local governments and municipalities nationwide, reflecting strong bipartisan support and broad confidence in this sound choice,” Naveh said. “We look forward to the resumption of these investments by New York City.”

In 2025 Israel Bonds sold more than $2 billion globally, it has said.

is looking to add a full-time reporter to our team as we expand our coverage of local news that’s important to Modern Orthodox communities on LI and in Queens, Riverdale and Westchester.

is looking to add a full-time reporter to our team as we expand our coverage of local news that’s important to Modern Orthodox communities on LI and in Queens, Riverdale and Westchester.

Position offers expert mentoring, a starting salary of $36,400 to $39,520, and a menu of benefits including all Jewish holidays.

Salary ($35,000–$38,000) offers a menu of benefits including all Jewish holidays.

Candidates who have reporting and news-writing experience (professional or collegiate) are invited to email a resume with clips or links to Jobs@TheJewishStar.com.

Candidates who have reporting and news-writing experience (professional or collegitate) are invited to email a resume with clips or links to Jobs@TheJewishStar.com

Unseen pain and our ability to make a difference HEALTH, MIND & BODY

Analysis By Israel Kasnett, JNS

In the wake of a recent tragedy that has shaken our community and left many searching for meaning, we are forced to confront how suddenly life can fracture, how little we sometimes know about the inner worlds of those around us, and how irreversible the consequences of unseen pain can be. While circumstances differ, the underlying reality is often the same: suffering went unnoticed, and words went unspoken.

This specific inconceivable loss stands as a stark reminder that hidden struggle is not abstract or distant, but present among us, demanding greater attentiveness and courage to reach one another before silence becomes final.

We often assume that suffering declares itself, that pain naturally reveals who is hurting and requires warmth. We wait for visible signs to alert us that something is wrong.

But some of the deepest pain in life is inaudible and invisible. It does not interrupt conversations or announce itself in dramatic ways. Instead, it lives quietly inside those who continue to show up, care for others, work and meet expectations. They smile, laugh and reassure others that everything is fine. From the outside, nothing appears amiss.

Inside, however, they carry profound loneliness, relentless exhaustion or deep despair. Life can feel unbearably heavy, leaving them with a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. It is easy to miss because it is cautiously carried and concealed.

But life’s difficulties accumulate: Personal and professional failures, strained relationships, financial worries, debt, health issues, depression, anxiety, struggles with identity or purpose all add layers. Sometimes, it is one reason; sometimes, it is many combined.

Over time, the effort of holding everything together becomes exhausting, and a person sinks into despair, feeling isolated even in the presence of family and friends. They worry about burdening or disappointing others, being judged or misunderstood.

One of the most profoundly painful and difficult truths we encounter through loss is the realization that love and closeness do not always reveal suffering. People can be deeply connected and still not fully know what another is carrying. With the sudden, devastating death of a loved one, we are often faced with deep shock and immense grief, as well as many unanswered questions.

Yet such unfathomable loss also offers some-

thing else: a call to live with greater awareness, softness and intention. It is a catalyst to engage in deeper listening, greater attentiveness to the silent struggles of those around us and renewed commitment to interact with those we love. It urges us to look beyond outward appearances and to strengthen the bonds of family, friendship and community while we still can.

Consider Psalm 34:18–19: “The [righteous] cry, and the L-rd hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The L-rd is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

These verses speak to a profound hope, yet lived experience often reminds us that such deliverance does not always come. Pain persists; people remain hidden in their suffering. The promise of Divine rescue, while inspiring, cannot replace human effort. It falls to us — friends, family, neighbors — to step into the spaces where help is needed. In the absence of guaranteed divine intervention, it is our presence and our actions that can truly make a difference.

For those carrying such pain, you don’t need to have the right words or a clear explanation before you reach out. It is enough to say that you are overwhelmed or that you need company. To allow yourself to be seen, even in fragments, is not weakness but courage. Being human was never meant to be endured in solitude; we are, at times, each other’s deliverance.

If you know or suspect that someone close to you is struggling, reach out. Sit with them. Listen deeply without judgment. Offer your pres-

ence more than advice, your attention more than solutions. The greatest comfort can come simply from knowing that someone is willing to stay and listen.

At the same time, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Many people are simply hiding their pain. Let this awareness guide us to more intentional closeness: to make time, to pause our distractions, to speak with warmth, to hold the space for honesty and vulnerability.

Life is fleeting in ways we rarely appreciate until we are forced to — or until it’s too late. What remains is knowing that we made the effort toward a strong and meaningful connection. What matters is whether we listened, whether we chose closeness over distraction.

We cannot always see one another’s struggles. But we can choose to live as if every person we love is carrying something fragile.

The truest measure of a life is not its achievements, but the moments when someone felt less alone because we were there. We may never know the weight another person is carrying or the moment our presence mattered most. But every call made, every text sent, every conversation held and every shared moment has the power to build a bridge back toward life. Let us build those bridges more often, leaving fewer people standing at the edge of their pain.

And perhaps even one moment of presence or a single caring gesture will help guide a loved one back from the abyss of despair before it is too late.

Lone soldier mental health is a national cause

Israel understands that a strong army relies on more than weapons and training: It relies on the strength of its people. And for lone soldiers, those who serve without family support in Israel, wartime exposes a quiet truth we can no longer afford to ignore: when home isn’t available or accessible, the soul is more vulnerable.

Lone soldiers who left their homes behind, both from abroad and within Israel, serve without the most basic safety net Israelis take for granted. They carry the weight of distance from their home country, challenges of language and culture, and a daily reality in which “going home” may not mean mom’s food, the comfort of a childhood bedroom or someone to notice a change in their eyes.

And these gaps only widen during wartime.

Some lone soldiers, like others who serve, carry a preexisting emotional load: childhood trauma, abandonment, loss or years of instability. Once they experience combat, they may also experience complex post-traumatic stress. When a soldier is already alone, repeated shocks only deepen loneliness, insecurity and hardest of all: the feeling that asking for help is not an option.

Israel began to place mental health higher on the national agenda in 2025 — and rightly so. An August 2025 report published by the IDF Manpower Directorate found that 16 soldiers died by suicide in the first nine months of the year. This included both regular-service soldiers and reservists.

We know there were additional cases after the report came out. While we do not have an authoritative, verified breakdown of how many were

lone soldiers, we know of two IDF lone soldiers who took their own lives in November 2024, and another did so while still in basic training.

The numbers we do have should stop every one of us in our tracks.

The absence of a precise breakdown does not reduce the urgency because lone soldiers carry a unique set of risk factors that should alarm us precisely in a period like this: isolation; fewer people noticing deterioration in real time; reduced support during crises; and a frightening gap between outward functioning and inner collapse.

When war stretches on, when repeated deployments pile up and when a soldier does not have family support, the danger is no longer theoretical. It is quite real.

The country was shaken in the past few days by the deaths of two American lone soldiers: Joshua Boone from Idaho and Ari Goldberg from Virginia. Sadly, much of the public conversation initially defaulted to a terrifying assumption: They were suicides. This did not come out of nowhere. Rather, it reflected an awareness that lone soldiers face heightened risk, especially af-

ter combat and hundreds of days of reserve duty.

With both incidents, family and friends publicly pushed back on the suicide narrative. Ari was found dead in his Dimona apartment just days before his scheduled discharge, the result of a tragic accident. Joshua’s death was ultimately found to have resulted from a drug overdose.

Perhaps most alarming is the speed with which the country assumed that these recent deaths were suicides. This should not only give us pause but force us to again confront the mental, emotional and social vulnerabilities of lone soldiers during wartime.

Every case is tragic and human, regardless of whether they are or were lone soldiers. Lone soldiers do not commit suicide because they are lone soldiers, yet the increase in risk is why there needs to be an increase in awareness and services.

Treating mental health is not a luxury. It is a necessity for functioning, for survival, and for rebuilding. In the past year, The Lone Soldier Center dramatically expanded services for mental-health support, adding thousands of hours of professional emotional therapy. In addition, we established dedicated resilience centers for lone reservists who lack family support, in partnership with Hozrim LaChaim, the national trauma treatment network of Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer.

These centers provide free emotional and professional support to reservists who have served since Oct. 7, 2023, and are coping with post-traumatic symptoms. Since opening in August, more than a dozen people have been assessed, and many have begun the therapeutic process. More reservists are expected to sign up for services in 2026, as they are still in survival mode and not yet emotionally ready to begin treatment.

But systems and therapy hours, as essential as they are, are not the whole story. When it comes to suicidality, our approach begins earlier

and deeper. The first thing is to see them.

We cannot afford to wait until they ask for help. Nor can we assume they’re fine just because they appear to be functioning. We need to be there to notice the small shifts: the silence, the numbness, the withdrawal, the eyes that return from Gaza not only tired but different.

For immigrant soldiers, therapy has a stigma that is perceived as shameful or threatening. That is why what saves lives is often consistent, courageous human holding — a presence that insists, “You don’t have to carry this alone.”

Our coordinators do this work every day. Real connection makes it possible to catch a crack before it becomes a break. They can identify distress while it can still be processed and before it becomes nearly impossible to fight alone.

The mental health of lone soldiers is not a private matter. It is a shared responsibility. We can choose to see, listen and act in time through early identification, accessible treatment and communal courage to remove the shame of seeking help.

I am writing about this not because there are many lone soldiers committing suicide, but because the distress we have seen in recent years is relevant to all of us. For lone soldiers, the intensity of loneliness and the complexity of life can add additional challenges that we all need to be aware of.

This is where public support comes in. Whether donating money, volunteering time, hosting meals or strengthening the community around these soldiers, these are key ingredients of a practical and emotional safety net — one that converts loneliness into connection, hesitation into action and invisible distress into something others see early enough to treat.

In other words, it saves lives.

Amit Tendler, a licensed social worker, is director of guidance and navigation at the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center in Israel. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

It’s a night of learning at MTA’s Leil Chazarah

MTA brought the entire yeshiva together for a powerful Leil Chazarah, filling the Beis Medrash with focused learning, energy, and a strong sense of achdus. As talmidim joined together in serious learning, rebbeim circulated among the students, reinforcing the goals of chazara and helping foster an atmosphere that balanced intensity with excitement. The Beis Medrash buzzed with Torah as the yeshiva learned together late into the evening.

Adding to the momentum were raffles and prizes from gift cards and individual sefarim to larger prizes such

as a sports jersey, AirPods, Mishnah Berurah, and even a full set of Shas.

The Leil Chazarah was held in honor of Rabbi Bernard Siegfried z”l, whose life and career reflect the values the night embodied. Rabbi Siegfried graduated Yeshiva University High School for Boys in 1983 before continuing his studies at YU. He returned to MTA in 1997 as a rebbe and teacher, becaming a model of Torah u’Madda for generations of talmidim.

The event reaffirmed what lies at the heart of the yeshiva: learning, connection, and growing together as one community.

HALB’s bot battle YCQ hosts melave malka in J’salem

HALB’s eighth grade boys built and coded robots to battle each other in STEM class, designing them strong enough to attack but not too heavy to drive. They coded them and competed to try to knock the other robot off the board or knock down their ping-pong. They loved the experience of coding and seeing their designs and coding bring the robots to life.

led by the world-famous Jewish musician Chaim

Jerusalem.

Alumni studying in yeshiva and those who have made aliyah joined together with families visiting for winter break for a truly special event.

The evening featured a night of reconnecting with one another, words of chizuk from Rabbi Mark Landsman and uplifting kumzitz

YCQ extends it thanks to everyone who joined and it offers a special thank you to Rabbi Aloni Russek for coordinating and planning every detail.

It was heartwarming to witness the enduring bond of alumni so many years after graduation.

The evening served as a touching reminder that no matter where.

Brandeis celebrates Hebrew language day

Brandeis Hebrew Academy celebrated Hebrew Language Day with activities that highlighted the beauty, history and vitality of the language across all grade levels.

The event is observed on the birthday of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the visionary leader credited with reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language and helping establish it as the official language of the State of Israel.

Grades 7 and 8 took part

in a Hebrew Language Escape Room experience. The activity fostered teamwork, critical thinking, and enthusiastic engagement with Hebrew in a fun and dynamic setting. Grades 3 through 6 participated in a Hebrew Amazing Race which incorporated audiovisual elements, creative clues, and Hebrew vocabulary tasks. The school welcomed families who joined their children to celebrate Hebrew.

10th graders start a unique semester in Israel

By Howard Blas, JNS

Twenty-five 10th graders from Orthodox day schools across the United States and Canada have joined a program in Israel that aims to change how American Jews understand and relate to Israel.

These pioneers — including students from the SAR in Riverdale and HANC in West Hempstead — will spend six months learning, exploring the Jewish state, and socializing with Israeli peers and their families.

After participating in the Nelech program, which began Jan. 20, the 13 girls and 12 boys will return to their communities to complete their high school studies and serve as ambassadors for Israel.

Their Hebrew fluency and nuanced understanding of the Jewish state will underpin their future relationship with Israel, which may or may not include future aliyah

Students from the New York metro area include Yonah Lalehzari from West Hempstead, who attends HANC, and Aliza Pollack of White Plains, who attends SAR in Riverdale.

Tamar Krieger Kalev, executive director of Tzemach David, a foundation supported by funder David Magerman, said the program grew out of discussions with the heads of Jewish schools.

“They were looking for out-of-the-box solutions for people who wanted to stay in Israel after their gap year,” she said.

By the time they complete their post-high school year in Israel, they have often committed to universities in the US, she said. “One crazy idea came up (in our focus groups) — come to Israel earlier and experience it earlier!”

Krieger Kalev observed that “so much of the American high school experience is focused on resume building, taking AP (Advanced Placement) courses and getting into college.”

Participating in the Nelech program, which will run for a semester in its pilot year and ultimately operate as a year-long program, may expand the thinking of students and families about post-high school and ultimately future options. These may include studying in Israeli universities, serving in the army and ultimately making aliyah

The name for the program, Nelech, which means “let’s go” in Hebrew, comes from the first chapter of the book of Joshua. The Israelites ask Moses if they could remain on the other side of the Jordan River. He told them they had to first be chalutzim (pioneers) and only go back after the rest of the nation settled in Israel.

They never went back — they kept their promise to Moses and said, “Wherever you send us, nelech; we will go!”

The program is headed by Rabbi Rick Schindelheim, a recent American immigrant with extensive experience in Jewish education, Jewish camping and school psychology.

Before moving to Israel with his wife and four children in August 2024, Schindelheim said he was considering jobs in education but “was not totally sure what to do.” Many colleagues had cautioned that, as an Orthodox Jewish educator, he would “need to choose between aliyah and staying in Jewish education in America.”

He noted that, unlike his dentist wife, for whom career options in Israel were clear cut, he was committed to Jewish education and said, “Let me see what I can do.”

He began teaching English as a second language in an Israeli school and teaching classes for the Tikvah Fund. While Schindelheim admitted that teaching English “was not my passion,” the experience taught him that he could connect with Israeli students.

Before he knew it, he said, “An opportunity to run a program came my way. David Magerman had a dream of American kids becoming more rooted in Israel.”

Schindelheim said he was excited about the job, which involves “taking the big idea and applying it to the real world.”

In addition to arranging top-notch speakers, planning trips and creating opportunities to interact with Israeli peers, he will be responsible for such day-to-day tasks as making sure the dorms and meals run smoothly and that there is a plan in place when school is cancelled on short notice.

He added, playfully, “My job is to take 25 midyear students and figure out how to get credit for school and continue without missing a beat.”

Schindelheim and Tzemach David are partnering with Ohr Torah Stone, a network of 32 educational institutions headed by Rabbi Kenneth Brander, who serves as its president and rosh yeshiva. The formal learning for the Nelech students takes place at two schools in Gush Etzion that are part of the Ohr Torah Stone network.

The girls are studying at Ulpanat Neve Channah in Givah Tzehuba, near Alon Shvut, while the boys are learning at Yeshivat Neve Shmuel in Efrat. Both schools are ranked as top 10 high schools in the country.

Brander said he was pleased that more than 100 youngsters applied for the inaugural year of the Nelech program. He foresees an impact of the North Americans on their Israeli peers as well as on their schools.

“In a world in which there are so many challenges, to have young people go back with firsthand experience and serve as ambassadors will help us in Israel,” he told JNS. “I hope they will look at Israel to continue their post-high school experience!”

The students and parents who accompanied them were visibly excited and a bit nervous about starting their pioneering experience.

Amalia Strosberg, 15, from Nashville and a student at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, shared, “I chose Nelech because it will allow me to be part of the Israeli high school experience and challenge me academically. I’m really excited to meet the other girls and to build meaningful friendships. Most of all, I hope this year helps me grow in my learning and strengthen my connection to Hashem and the land of Israel.”

Saul Strosberg was pleased that his daughter “gets to join this cohort of Jewishly motivated high schoolers for what promises to be a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to immerse in an IsraeliZionist school in the Gush.”

Laeya Zaila, 15, of Phoenix and a student at Shearim Torah Academy, said she chose Nelech “because there aren’t many programs that integrate you into Israeli society as this one does.”

She said she was looking forward to forming relationships with Israeli peers, growing Jewishly and becoming more independent, though she acknowledged, “I’m slightly nervous about living away from my family and friends.”

Laeya added, “I know that as much as I will miss them. I’m going to be having an incredible six-month experience in the Land of Israel and I’ll see them when it’s over.”

Her mother, Randi Zaila, shared Laeya’s enthusiasm. “The perspective is exactly who our family is, which in our educational community of Phoenix has been difficult to find a perfect

match for in high schools. We are so excited for this experience for her and how it will direct her future.”

Her father, Sam Zaila, added, “We are genuinely looking forward to the next six months as she grows in her connection to Israel, deepens her spirituality and matures through this incredible experience.”

For Magerman, the funder of the initiative, the key to the program is to expose participants to Israel in a meaningful way before they have committed to universities, when it is difficult to consider changing course.

In an interview with JNS, Magerman said, “People are getting turned on to Israel as a destination late in their thought process — when they are already accepted and ethically bound to attend college.”

He cautioned that those who stay in Israel after already accepting college offers for American universities would hurt the day schools.

“Universities will be less likely to accept future students if current students don’t honor their commitments. I want to get parents and day schools on board at the middle school level,” he said.

Magerman suggested that the students who return to North America afterwards, deeply committed to Israel, would have a positive impact both on their peers and their schools.

“If the social leaders in day schools are the basketball players or love Gemara, their peers notice,” he said. “I want to create a set of advocates for Israel. I am hopeful they will be like rock stars. They will go into their junior years and talk about it and influence this generation of high school graduates and it will trickle down.”

Meanwhile, the pioneering cohort of Nelech students are off and running. They went straight from Ben-Gurion Airport to the Kotel in Jerusalem and are already immersed in their semester of learning and experiencing Israel.

Let’s bring out the fruit, Tu B’Shvat is here

We’ll be celebrating Tu B’Shevat this Sunday night, Feb. 1, and Monday, Feb. 2.

When I was a kid, if anyone asked me what the holiday was, I would tell them what I learned in Hebrew School — it was the birthday of the trees. It meant that each week for ten weeks before the holiday, I brought in 10 cents to buy a stamp which formed another leaf of a tree which, when completed would be sent to Israel. A few weeks later, I would get a certificate that stated that a tree had been planted in my name in Israel. I believed that if I ever went to Israel, I would see a tree with a huge plaque that had my name on it!

Well, I did go to Israel and I did see a plaque about the trees that were planted by children from America, but, alas, my name was not there. I had realized, long ago, that my name would not be on any tree, but I was thrilled nevertheless, to see the beautiful trees — forests in fact — that were planted as a result of all the donations over all the decades. It was a testament to the power of a simple idea — plant a tree.

Tu B’Shevat specifically calls to us to take note of our natural surroundings and celebrate trees. This tenet of Judaism and this holiday come together to remind us that we can celebrate joyously here, replant trees destroyed by wildfires and floods and those removed to make way for buildings.

During this holiday we partake of all the seven species — from fruits to grains. We are blessed that we can access these foods so easily and, thus, fully celebrate the holiday. We can also continue our tradition of planting trees in Israel. We are truly blessed.

Two-Way Tart with Pomegranate Glaze (Pareve, Dairy)

I place the tart pan on a rimmed cookie sheet so as not to accidentally push on the bottom and create a kitchen disaster!

1. Chocolate Tart.

CHOCOLATE COOKIE CRUST:

• 15 to 20 chocolate cream filled cookies

(you can find pareve ones)

• 1/4 cup melted butter or pareve, transfat-free margarine

• Pinch salt

Process the cookies in a food processor until you have fine crumbs. Add the melted butter and salt and pulse until the mixture is the consistency of wet sand. Remove from the stand and press into the tart pan. Set aside.

CHOCOLATE GANACHE FILLING:

• 1 can full fat coconut milk

• 9 oz bittersweet chocolate, 66 to 72% cacao, finely chopped

• 1 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa

• 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. sugar, to taste

POMEGRANATE GLAZE:

• 2 cups pomegranate juice

• 1/4 cup sugar

• Seeds from one pomegranate, about 3/4 to 1 cup

Grease a 12-inch tart pan with a removable bottom and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, while the crust is baking, pour the coconut milk into a large, heavy saucepan. Chop the chocolate and add to the pan. Add the vanilla and cocoa and whisk to blend. Heat over medium-low heat until the chocolate is melted and the mixture thickens, begins to steam, and just barely bubbles. Do not let it boil as it will separate. Remove from the heat and add the sugar, mixing constantly until the sugar is melted.

Pour the chocolate into the crust and spread evenly. Place in the refrigerator to set.

Place the pomegranate juice and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer gently until the juice thickens and reduces by at least half. Let cool.

Once the chocolate is set and the glaze cooled a bit, pour the glaze over the tart and spread evenly with an offset spatula. Sprinkle the arils over the glaze and refrigerate until serving or overnight. Serves 8 to 12.

2. Vanilla Tart with Vanilla Pastry Cream (Dairy)

VANILLA CRUST:

• 1 cup butter or pareve, trans-fat-free margarine, melted

• 6 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. sugar

• 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 2 cups unbleached flour

• 1/2 cup finely ground almond flour

VANILLA PASTRY CREAM:

Substitute this vanilla pastry cream for the chocolate cream.

• 2 cups whole milk

• 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 3 large egg yolks

• 1 large egg

• 1/4 cup sugar

• 2 Tbsp. cornstarch

• 3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened.

CRUST:

Melt the butter or margarine in a microwave safe bowl. Pour into a large bowl and add the sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Add the flours and mix well until well incorporated. The mixture may feel a bit greasy, but the will disappear with baking. Press firmly into the tart pan and up the sides. Prick the bottom with a fork and place on a cookie sheet in the oven. Bake for 25 to 40 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool.

PASTRY CREAM FILLING:

Place the milk and vanilla in a medium heavy sauce pan over low heat. While the milk is heating, mix the egg yolks, egg, sugar and cornstarch in a bowl and whisk until smooth. When the milk begins to steam and bubble, remove ir from the heat and pour about half of it in a very slow, thin stream into the egg mixture, whisking vigorously while you por. When half the milk is in the eggs, place the milk pan back on the medium heat and add the eggs to the milk, whisking constantly.

Heat over low heat until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon such that when you run your finger though it, the streak stays clear. Remove from the heat and add the butter and whisk vigorously. Pour into a nonreactive, heat safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap immediately so that the wrap rests directly on the custard. Let cool and then refrigerate until chilled. Spoon into the prepared tart shell and spread evenly.

Time to bring out the fruit, Tu B’Shvat is here…

Continued from page 12

GLAZE:

Make the glaze as above, but let cool to room temperature before spreading over pastry cream. Pour the pomegranate glaze over and spread gently and evenly. Sprinkle with the arils. Serves 8 to 12.

Seven Species Salad (Pareve)

My favorite food to make on Tu B’Shevat is a salad that incorporates most, if not all of the delicious seven species. It’s so simple, so beautiful, and goes well with any meal you make. In fact, you can add some soup and a delicious bread and have a healthful, nutritious meal to celebrate the holiday. The slight bitterness of the arugula and spinach pairs well with the beets, sweet dried fruit, pomegranate arils and sweet/salty dressing.

• 4 to 6 cups baby spinach and spring mix cut into bite sized pieces

• 1 to 2 cups arugula

• 1 cup sliced celery

• 1 cup diced cooked beets

• 1 cup shredded carrots

• 1 cup thinly sliced scallions

• 1 cup grape tomatoes, cut in half

• 1 cup diced cucumbers or zucchini

• 1/2 cup shredded purple cabbage

• 1/2 cup diced purple onions

• 1/2 cup snipped figs

• 1/2 cup snipped apricots

• 1/3 cup quartered green or red grapes

• 1/2 cup pomegranate arils

• 1/3 cup sunflower seeds

• 1/3 cup cooked cooled wheat berries

• 1/3 cup cooked cooled pearled barley

Toss all ingredients together in a large salad bowl. Add dressing just before serving. Serves 6 to 8.

Sweet and Savory Silan Salad Dressing (Pareve)

This dressing is more about tasting and adjusting than measuring. I love the sweet salty tangy flavor, but you can make it more or less sweet or more or less pungent. Taste and adjust as you go along!

• 1/4 cup date syrup/silan, to taste

• 2 to 3 cloves garlic, to taste

• 2 tsp. Dijon mustard, to taste

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. tamari sauce or yellow miso, to taste

• 1 to 2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, to taste

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place all ingredients except the olive oil in the bowl of a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Add the olive oil in a drizzle while the processor is on to emulsify. Add salt and pepper to taste and adjust flavors. Makes about 1 cup.

Raisin Carob Truffles (Pareve)

• 1/4 cup raisins

• 2 Tbsp. orange juice

• 1/4 cup slivered almonds

• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds

• 10 pitted dates

• 1/4 cup carob powder (you can use cocoa powder or a mix of both)

• 1 Tbsp. tahini

• 1 tsp. grated orange peel

• 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon

• For rolling: cocoa powder, carob pow-

der, shredded, unsweetened coconut

Soak the raisins in the orange juice for about 10 minutes.

Place the almonds and sunflower seeds in a food processor and pulse until finely ground. Add the next six (6) ingredients, including the orange juice, and pulse until desired consistency, from a paste to a bit chunky. Scrape into a bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Place the carob powder or coconut in a shallow bowl.

Use a melon baller and scoop out small balls of the chilled dough. Drop into the coconut and roll to coat. Place on a plate and repeat until all the dough is used. Makes about 20.

Mediterranean Garlic Olive Dip (Pareve)

• 10 cloves garlic, finely minced

• 1/2 cup finely minced green olives

• 1/4 tsp. finely grated lemon peel

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 1 Tbsp. dried parsley flakes

• Freshly cracked black pepper to taste

OPTIONAL: Oil-packed, sun-dried tomatoes, grated cheese, crumbled feta cheese or goat cheese, fresh herbs

Place the garlic and olives in a food processor and pulse until finely minced. Add the olive oil and pulse once or twice. Scrape into a small bowl and add the parsley and pepper and mix well. For a nice touch, heat gently in a pan just until warm. A skillet heats quickly and evenly. Makes about 1 cup.

Nutty Green Wheat Berry Salad (Pareve)

You can add almost anything to this and it will be delicious!

• 3 cups cooked wheat berries

• 1 cup sunflower seeds

• 1 bunch scallions, chopped

• 3 stalks celery, sliced

• 1/2 to 3/4 cup pomegranate arils

• 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

• 1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro

• 4 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

• 3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Prepare the wheat berries according to the package directions. Drain and let cool. Place all ingredients in a large bowl and toss to mix. Serves 6 to 10.

Barley Salad (Dairy)

A simple, plain salad that lets the nutty flavor of the barley come through. Adapted from Siegelbaum, Chana Bracha. “The Seven Fruits of the Land of Israel with their Mystical & Medicinal Properties,” Jerusalem, Menorah, 2014.

• 3-1/2 cups cooked barley

• 1/4 to 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves

• 2 cloves finely minced garlic

• 1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese

• 1/4 cup sliced black olives

• 1/2 to 3/4 cup pine nuts

• 1/3 cup chopped arugula

• Juice of half a lemon, or to taste

• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cook barley as directed. Drain any excess liquid, transfer to a large bowl and let cool.

Process olive oil, basil and garlic in a food processor until smooth. Pour over cooled barley and mix well. Add the rest of the ingredients and toss to mix. Season with salt and pepper. Serves 6 to 10.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Minnesota Chabad feeds 300 on diverted flight

After a New York-bound Delta Air Lines flight from Tel Aviv was diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as a result of the winter snowstorm that swept through the United States over the weekend, a Chabad center stepped in to make kosher food for 300 stranded travelers.

“I’ve joined local Chabad reps and volunteers cooking up a storm,” posted Rabbi Tzemach Feller, co-director of Chabad of Macalester-Groveland, the Chabad on campus for Jewish students and faculty in the twin city of St. Paul.

“The Rebbe taught us that our mission is to help our fellow Jews, materially and spiritually.”

Feller said his father, Rabbi Menachem Feller, coordinated the effort. Volunteers started working at about 1 p.m. and cooked until 7 pm. The food was then delivered by the senior Feller and other volunteers to the airport and six hotels nearby.

On the menu were chicken, rice and pasta with sauce. The younger Feller said they worked with Kosher Spot in St. Louis Park to get additional food, including rye bread, bagels, 30 pounds of cold cuts, instant soups and pastries.

One traveler wrote to the Fellers: “Thank you so much for arranging the dinner. My family and I enjoyed it immensely. After a very long day of travel, it was incredible to enjoy some tasty, home-cooked food. It was truly heartwarming to be welcomed to your community like that. And a true mitzvah, as we felt very overwhelmed landing in a place we didn’t

know, without easy access to food or transportation to get anything for ourselves. … We are on our way back to New York now.”

Dan’s Deals, which aggregates consumer deals on travel and everyday purchases with

a focus on the Jewish community, wrote on Instagram: “It’s not often that you see a flight diverted over 1,000 miles from its destination. But one thing you can be sure of is that Chabad will be there to help when it does.”

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.

תבש לש בכוכ

Fri Jan 30 / 12 Shevat

Beshalach

Five Towns candles: 4:52 • Havdalah: 6:02

Scarsdale candles: 4:51 • Havdalah: 5:54

Fri Feb 6 / 19 Shevat

Yisro

Five Towns candles: 5:00 • Havdalah: 6:11

Scarsdale candles: 5:00 • Havdalah: 6:02

Fri Feb 13 / 26 Shevat

Mishpatim • Shekalim • Shabbos Mevarchim

Five Towns candles: 5:09 • Havdalah: 6:19

Scarsdale candles: 5:08 • Havdalah: 6:10

Fri Feb 20 / 3 Adar

Terumah

Five Towns candles: 5:17 • Havdalah: 6:27

Scarsdale candles: 5:17 • Havdalah: 6:18

Five Towns Candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY

Scarsdale Candlelighting: From the Young Israel of Scarsdale, Scarsdale, NY

What is it to be a leader of the Jewish people?

The Song at the Sea was one of the great epiphanies of history. The Sages said that even the humblest of Jews saw at that moment what even the greatest of prophets was not privileged to see. For the first time they broke into collective song — Az Yashir, a song we recite every day.

That day, the L-rd saved the Israelites from the Egyptians. And when the Israelites … witnessed the wondrous power the L-rd had unleashed against the Egyptians, the people were in awe of the L-rd, and they believed in Him, and in Moshe, His servant.

And then Moshe and the Israelites sang this song to the L-rd. ——Exodus 14:30-15:1

There is a fascinating discussion among the Sages as to how exactly they sang. On this, there were four opinions. Three appear in the tractate of Sotah:

Rabbi Akiva expounded: When the Israelites came up from the Red Sea, they wanted to sing a song. How did they sing it? Like an adult who reads the Hallel and they respond after him with the leading word. Moses said, “I will sing to the L-rd,” and they responded, “I will sing to the L-rd.” Moses said, “For He has triumphed gloriously,” and they responded, “I will sing to the L-rd.”

Rabbi Eliezer, son of Rabbi Jose the Galilean, said: It was like a child who reads the Hallel and they repeat after him all that he says. Moses said, “I will sing to the L-rd,” and they responded, “I will sing to the L-rd.” Moses said, “For He has triumphed gloriously,” and they responded, “For He has triumphed gloriously.”

Rabbi Nehemiah said: It was like a schoolteacher who recites the Shema in the synagogue. He begins first and they follow along with him. —Sotah 30b

According to Rabbi Akiva, Moses sang the song phrase by phrase, and after each phrase the people responded, I will sing to the L-rd — their way, as it were, of saying Amen to each line. According to R. Eliezer

There is no one Torah model of leadership.

son of R. Jose the Galilean, Moses recited the song phrase by phrase, and they repeated each phrase after he had said it.

According to Rabbi Nehemiah, Moses and the people sang the whole song together. Rashi explains that all the people were seized by Divine inspiration and miraculously, the same words came into their minds at the same time.

There is a fourth view, found in the Mechilta:

Eliezer ben Taddai said, Moses began and the Israelites repeated what he had said and then completed the verse. Moses began by saying, “I will sing to the L-rd, for He has triumphed gloriously,” and the Israelites repeated what he had said, and then completed the verse with him, saying, “I will sing to the L-rd, for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and its rider He hurled into the sea.”

Moses began saying, “The L-rd is my strength and my song,” and the Israelites repeated and then completed the verse with him, saying, “The L-rd is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation.”

Moses began saying, “The L-rd is a warrior,” and the Israelites repeated and then completed the verse with him, saying, “The L-rd is a warrior, L-rd is His name.” —Mechilta Beshallach Parsha 1

Technically, as the Talmud explains, the Sages are debating the implication of the (apparently) superfluous words vayomru lemor, “they said, saying,” which they understood to mean “repeating”. What did the Israelites repeat?

For Rabbi Akiva it was the first words of the song only, which they repeated as a litany. For Rabbi Eliezer, son of Rabbi Jose the Galilean, they repeated the whole song, phrase by phrase. For R. Nehemiah they recited the entire song in unison. For Rabbi Eliezer ben Taddai they repeated the opening phrase of each line, but then completed the whole verse without Moses having to teach it to them.

Read thus, we have before us a localized debate on the meaning of a biblical verse.

There is, however, a deeper issue at stake. To understand this, we must look at another Talmudic passage, on the face of it unrelated to the passage in Sotah. It appears in the tractate of Kiddushin, and poses a fascinating question. There are various people we are commanded to honor: a parent, a

teacher, the nasi (religious head of the Jewish community), and a king. May any of these four types renounce the honor that is their due?

Rabbi Isaac ben Shila said in the name of Rabbi Mattena, in the name of Rabbi Hisda: If a father renounces the honor due to him, it is renounced, but if a rabbi renounces the honor due to him it is not renounced. Rabbi Joseph ruled: Even if a rabbi renounces his honor, it is renounced. … Rabbi Ashi said: Even on the view that a rabbi may renounce his honor, if a nasi renounces his honor, the renunciation is invalid. …

Rather, it was stated thus: Even on the view that a nasi may renounce his honor, yet a king may not renounce his honor, as it is said, “You shall surely set a king over you,” meaning, his authority should be over you. —Kiddushin 32a-b

Each of these people exercises a leadership role: father to son, teacher to disciple, nasi to the community and king to the nation. Analyzed in depth, the passages make it clear that these four roles occupy different places on the spectrum between authority predicated on the person and authority vested in the holder of an office. The more the relationship is personal, the more easily honor can be renounced. At one extreme is the role of a parent (intensely personal), at the other that of a king (wholly official).

Isuggest that this was the issue at stake in the argument over how Moses and the Israelites sang the

Song at the Sea. For Rabbi Akiva, Moses was like a king. He spoke, and the people merely answered “Amen” (in this case, the words “I will sing to the L-rd”).

For Rabbi Eliezer, son of Rabbi Jose the Galilean, he was like a teacher. Moses spoke, and the Israelites repeated, phrase by phrase, what he had said. For Rabbi Nehemiah, he was like a nasi among his rabbinical colleagues (the passage in Kiddushin, which holds that a nasi may renounce his honor, makes it clear that this is only among his fellow rabbis).

The relationship was collegial: Moses began, but thereafter, they sang in unison. For Rabbi Eliezer ben Taddai, Moses was like a father. He began, but allowed the Israelites to complete each verse.

This is the great truth about parenthood, made clear in the first glimpse we have of Abraham: Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. —Bereishit 31:11

Abraham completed the journey his father began. To be a parent is to want one’s children to go further than you did. That too, for Rabbi Eliezer ben Taddai, was Moses’ relationship to the Israelites.

The prelude to the Song at the Sea

states that the people “believed in G-d, and in His servant Moses” — the first time they are described as believing in Moses’ leadership. On this, the Sages asked: What is it to be a leader of the Jewish people? Is it to hold official authority, of which the supreme example is a king (“The rabbis are called kings”)? Is it to have the kind of personal relationship with one’s followers that rests not on honor and deference but on encouraging people to grow, accept responsibility and continue the journey you have begun? Or is it something in between? There is no single answer.

At times, Moses asserted his authority (during the Korach rebellion). At others, he expressed the wish that “all G-d’s people were prophets.”

Judaism is a complex faith. There is no one Torah model of leadership. We are each called on to fulfil a number of leadership roles: as parents, teachers, friends, team-members, and team-leaders.

There is no doubt, however, that Judaism favors as an ideal the role of parent, encouraging those we lead to continue the journey we have begun, and go further than we did.

•A good leader creates followers.

•A great leader creates leaders. That was Moses’ greatest achievement — that he left behind him a people willing, in each generation, to accept responsibility for taking further the great task he had begun.

Every sheep matters: The power of small deeds

It is hard to fathom Pharaoh’s stubbornness.

After everything Egypt endured, Pharaoh harnesses his chariot, takes 600 choice chariots along with the rest of Egypt’s forces, and pursues the Jewish people to the Yam Suf. Egypt is shattered. Its economy is destroyed. Its firstborn have been struck. And yet Pharaoh cannot let it go. The Torah itself records his bewilderment:

What is this that we have done, that we have

sent Israel away from our service? —Shemos 14:5.

The Chidushei HaRim explains that this was not simply Pharaoh chasing the Jews to reclaim his workforce. He was fighting to preserve an entire worldview that was collapsing before his eyes. To understand that ideology, we must look back to last week’s parsha and the final exchange between Pharaoh and Moshe.

After the devastation of the ninth plague, Pharaoh appears to finally surrender. He tells Moshe that the people may go. But Moshe Rabbeinu responds with what seems like an unreasonable demand: “Our livestock too shall go with us … not one hoof shall remain” (Shemos 10:26). Pharaoh refuses, and that refusal sets the stage for the final plague.

Pharaoh is willing to let every man, woman,

‘Not one hoof shall remain.’

and child go. Why does Moshe insist on taking every animal? In truth, this is not a logistical disagreement, but a clash of ideologies, two fundamentally different ways of seeing the world.

There is a single line in this exchange that, according to the Chidushei HaRim, contains one of the most foundational principles of Judaism. Moshe says, “Va’anachnu lo neida mah na’avod es Hashem ad bo’einu shamah (We do not know with what we will serve Hashem until we arrive there).” (Shemos 10:26).

The Chidushei HaRim explains that Moshe is speaking to each of us, in every generation. We do not know what Hashem will ultimately consider meaningful in our service of Him. We do not know which action, which moment, which quiet decision will carry the greatest spiritual weight.

We tend to assume that what matters most is what is visible and public. Judaism teaches the opposite. The smallest act can transform worlds. We simply do not know how Hashem weighs our actions.

A moment of self-control when anger is rising. Extra patience with a child. Choosing not to engage in gossip. These moments rarely draw attention, yet we have no idea what they accomplish.

From liberation to redemption: Past, present, future

January 27, the day on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by Soviet forces in 1945, is commemorated by the United Nations and many nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. For Jews, the Shoah is remembered on multiple sacred dates — Tisha B’Av, Asara B’Tevet, and officially in Israel on Yom HaShoah — the 27th of Nisan.

This year marks the 81st anniversary of that liberation, and the Shabbat that follows January 27 this year is that of Parshat B’Shalach, a Torah reading that speaks of our redemption, our escape from Egyptian oppression under Hashem’s mighty outstretched hand.

Our forebears left Egypt with riches and jubilation, only to be confronted days later by a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: the Yam Suf. They were distraught and angry, accusing their leader, Moshe Rabbeinu, of leading them into the desert to die. But we know the rest of the story — they saw miracles (Hashem’s salvation) that would never be seen again.

Just as in Egypt, with the plagues Hashem wrought to force Pharaoh to release the Chil-

dren of Israel, they did not have to lift a finger to bring about their redemption. They did not even have to pray — just move. As Hashem said to Moshe: “Why cry out to Me? Speak to the Children of Israel and let them journey forth!”

There was one exception. As the midrash tells us, Nachshon bravely jumped into the Sea, demonstrating extraordinary emunah. Otherwise, the rest of the Children of Israel were decidedly passive.

That changed when they reached the Land

of Israel. As we know from Tanach, they had to fight to conquer the land under Yehoshua’s leadership. Later, as we see in the Haftarah for our parsha, they fought a tremendous battle against their oppressive adversary, the Canaanites. This victory, though fought by Barak, was accomplished through the efforts of two women — the prophetess and judge Devorah, and the brave and resourceful Yael, who killed the opposing general, Sisera.

This has clear parallels to the victory generations earlier at the Yam Suf, where Miriam celebrated the salvation with her song, accompanying that of her brother Moshe, just as Shirat Devorah celebrated Barak’s victory.

Prose to poetry in Beshalach’s ‘Song of the

Teaching young children has always been a joy for me. One of teaching’s special advantages is the clarity that emerges from conversation with people under the age of ten. A cute and oft-told story describes the reaction of one fourth grader to the lesson in which he first learned the difference between poetry and prose.

He remarked, “Wow! I have been writing prose all of my life and didn’t even know it!”

It was in the fourth grade when I first learned the distinction between prose and po-

etry, and when I became aware not only that I was writing prose, but that much of what I was studying in Jewish day school was prose, not poetry.

We were taught that prose is ordinary writing, language which portrays everyday events. Poetry, on the other hand, is the language of the extraordinary. Poems are for special events and rare emotions.

Poetry is a song, and we only sing when special feelings well up within us.

In this week’s parsha, Beshalach we finally encounter poetry. From the beginning of the book of Genesis until this week’s portion, we have been reading prose.

Surely, much of what we have been reading has not been ordinary, and we have even read about some miracles. But the language, with the possible exception of Jacob’s blessings to

his children, has been prose. It is only in this week’s narrative of the crossing of the Red Sea that the poetic bursts forth.

One of the lesser differences between poetry and prose is that the words of the former are surrounded on the page by much blank space. Prose, on the other hand, consists of written or printed words with a minimum of space between them.

Also in the Torah scroll, the prose of all of Genesis and of Exodus until this week’s portion consists of words written by the scribe with

Sea’

only minimal space between them. Look at a Torah scroll for this week’s portion, and you will see large white spaces between groupings of the holy written words. These white spaces (in different formats) are found wherever the language of the Torah or of the Prophets makes use of poetry and song. It has been said that these blank spaces are symbolic to feelings so deep and inexpressible that they cannot be reduced to words of black ink and are, instead, wordlessly conveyed in the white empty spaces.

It is with the crossing of the Red Sea that the powerful feelings of the redemption experience emerge from the hearts of the former slaves. Words of poetry come to the surface. Song and music demand expression. These feelings have no precedent in all that has come before in the biblical narrative.

Opposing a booming symphony of global insanity

Rashi interprets with an “outstretched hand” — “And the Children of Israel were going out [of Egypt] triumphantly with an outstretched arm.” — to mean “with proud and prominent valor.” Triumphantly, indeed. The Israelites left Egypt openly and proudly, with their heads held high. I sometimes wonder: Whatever happened to that pride and strength that were characteristic of our people back then? Over the centuries of Jewish life in the diasporas of the world, we seem to have lost that sense of pride, punishing ourselves

rather unmercifully.

Even the comedians joke about it. The legendary Jackie Mason would say, “I know what’s gonna happen after this show. The gentiles will love it, and the Jews will say, ‘Nah, too Jewish’!” Why are we such masochists, forever demeaning ourselves?

For too many Jews, the standard of excellence is determined by one factor: “Would the non-Jews like it?” I’m not Sigmund Freud, but I would suggest that Jews suffer from an inferiority complex. How ironic that the non-Jews accuse us of being elitist, condescending and throw the whole “Chosen People” bit at us, while the truth is that we ourselves tend to feel inferior rather than superior.

There are defeatists in the Knesset, and apologists in New York. There are too many Jewish university students afraid to raise their voices, or wear a kippah or a chai necklace, or affix a mezu-

zah to their residences on campus. There are too many Jews in the capitals of the West who today wear baseball caps instead of yarmulkes. I understand that many are afraid of being attacked by antisemites, but at some point, we have to stand up and be counted.

With all the delusional cries of genocide, we must state proudly and defiantly that Israel is fighting a defensive war against countries and terror groups committed to its total destruction. The Israel Defense Forces is a correct name. The old cliché remains true. “If the Arabs put down their arms, we would have peace, but if Israel put down its arms, there would be no Israel.”

And if there have been occasions when Israel conducted a pre-emptive strike, like in the Six-Day War of 1967, it was because Egypt had mobilized the entire Middle East in a joint military effort to “drive Israel into the sea.” And had they been given half a chance, they would have done exactly that.

The United Nations, the European Union, the New York Times, the Guardian, and other international agencies and media outlets may cry foul and castigate Israel for its defensive measures, but they are no beacons of morality. We have our own Talmudic teaching that puts it bluntly: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a).

Self-defense is moral and correct. Saving lives is paramount in our value system, but if the only way to save the lives of innocent would-be victims

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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.

The world must stop mourning the Holocaust while it supports the genocide of living Jews

JONATHAN S. TObIN

JNS Editor-in-Chief

What does it say about a country where some rudimentary knowledge about the Holocaust is commonplace, but where misleading analogies about it are a routine occurrence in public discourse?

You can ask the same question about the use of the most important term to come out of the Shoah.

The word “genocide” was coined in its aftermath to describe the systematic mass slaughter aimed at the extermination of a single people. But in a country where it is estimated that about three-quarters of American K-12 students get lessons on the murder of 6 million Jews by the German Nazis and their collaborators, it is regularly misapplied to the efforts of the descendants of the survivors of the Holocaust to defend themselves against an attempted genocide.

What’s been taught?

As the world commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day this week on Jan. 27, the most important question that needed to be asked was not so much how to expand education programs devoted to the subject — but whether Americans are being taught anything that will help them to understand the subject or what it means today. Even more to the point, it may be necessary to acknowledge that much of what is being taught in schools or said at the ceremonies may actually be doing more harm than good.

As a result, the reaction of the Jewish community to the fuss made about the date ought

not to be gratitude for the undoubted efforts of many educators and public officials for keeping the memory of the Six Million alive. Rather, it should be to doubt not only the value of these efforts, but to tell many of them that we’d appreciate it if they simply stopped talking about it.

The point being: Those who cry crocodile tears about the suffering of dead Jews who were slaughtered by their persecutors more than 80 years ago, while smearing live Jews with false charges of genocide, have forfeited their right to speak about the subject.

One fact that should be noted is that the Jewish people have still not recovered demographically from the disaster of the Holocaust, during which approximately one-third of all Jews alive in 1939 were murdered. Today, the global Jewish population is still far smaller by a factor of about 3 million people than it was in 1939, with half the Jews alive today living in Israel.

Yet many of those who publicly beat their breasts on Jan. 27 in sorrow about the Six Million are effectively neutral or even in support of the war that Palestinians — backed by much

of the Arab and Muslim world, and fashionable opinion elsewhere — are waging against Jews. Rather than joining them alongside political leaders, journalists, scholars and celebrities who have been part of a growing effort to demonize the one Jewish state on the planet, the response of the community to such events should be a loud and emphatic, “No, thank you!” Honoring the memory of the Holocaust is a sacred obligation. Yet it cannot be done effectively or have any real meaning in a context divorced from the current struggle for Jewish survival against a rising tide of bigotry, hatred and violence.

Denial, false analogies

It is entirely true that Holocaust deniers are not only still among us, but that their visibility and ability to reach the ignorant and ever-gullible consumers of conspiracy theories is greater than ever. For that, the internet can be thanked for the way it has enabled fringe figures once confined to the fever swamps of public discourse to be visible to large audiences. The willingness of podcasters, like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, to mainstream hateful figures like faux

As much as the promotion of these hatemongers’ lies about the past remains problematic, far too much discourse is distorted among those who don’t believe such falsehoods but still decide to traffic in Holocaust language and references.

Meanwhile, far too much of what passes for Holocaust education is rooted in an attempt to universalize it — to render it not merely more understandable to contemporary audiences but to separate it from its context and the history of antisemitism. In that way, some otherwise well-meaning educators have sought to use it to teach everyone to be nicer to each other and to avoid slipping into racial or religious prejudices. But as scholar Ruth Wisse has taught, antisemitism is not a garden-variety form of hate or intolerance. And it is not merely the oldest hatred. Rather, it is specifically used as a political weapon over and above the way imperfect human beings are prone to slip into unkind or even mean behavior.

Cost of universalizing

The universalization of the Holocaust and the way students are taught a slimmed-down summary of this chapter of history has had unforeseen consequences. It has led to something that survivors, whose numbers are fewer every year, never envisioned when they began the campaign to spread knowledge of their experiences.

The Holocaust has become a metaphor for anything that people dislike.

The predilection to treat anyone with whom we strongly disagree as if they were Hitler is not just a product of the hyperpartisan tone of 21stcentury politics or the extreme polarization of the Donald Trump era. It is also the result of the way it has been universalized to the point where many, if not most, ordinary people think it was just a bad thing that happened a long time ago — not the specific result of millennia of Jewhatred and the powerlessness of nearly an entire people.

Equally unfortunate is the way much of the educational establishment has embraced toxic

The Shoah is no longer past, it’s with us now

It’s become a ritual phrase — “Never again” — repeated solemnly on Holocaust Remembrance Day and then set aside, like a relic from a distant and incomprehensible past. But the Shoah is not behind us. It is already among us. And today, only the existence of the State of Israel stands as a barrier against a renewed and global attempt to eliminate the Jewish people.

Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer once warned that the extermination of the Jews was almost beyond language. That fear has come true in a different way. The words remain, but their meaning has drained away.

“Never again” is spoken while Jews are silenced, expelled, attacked, boycotted and murdered — often with the quiet acquiescence of the societies around them. Those who speak most earnestly about the importance of remembrance are not the ones shaping the present. History is being shaped by those who fight now.

Friedländer showed that Nazi antisemitism did not begin with gas chambers. It began with silence, with polite detachment, with neighbors looking away.

German-Jewish scholar Victor Klemperer described meeting a once-friendly policeman in December 1938 who passed him without acknowledgment, staring straight ahead. “That man,” Klemperer wrote, “represented 79 million Germans.”

Today, that look — cold, distant, complicit — has multiplied into the billions. A Jew meets an old acquaintance, sits at a table with longtime friends, and enters a shop in Rome, Vicenza, Paris, New York or Toronto.

The world averts its eyes. Newspapers report Jewish murders in Manchester or Bondi, the hunting of Israeli athletes in Amsterdam, expulsions from universities, assaults in the

streets. Among friends and colleagues, there is silence. A barely concealed distance. Antisemitism is understood, excused and normalized.

Are you Jewish? Be quiet. You know how it is. You’re a Zionist. A genocidaire. Since Oct. 7, 2023, social environments, institutions and the media have been mobilized. Victims have been transformed into executioners. Jews are called “Nazis.” A red-green-Islamist alliance has deployed a wealthy, sophisticated propaganda machine that has poured billions into spreading hatred of Jews. Its goal is not ambiguity. It is elimination.

“Kill the Jews.” “Death to the Jews.” “From the river to the sea.” The language is explicit. This is not carried out today by a centralized, scientific machinery issuing orders from above. It proceeds from below, through society itself, through a pervasive international network of indoctrination.

Human rights are weaponized to justify madness: Israeli actors assaulted in the street; police explaining that shouting threats is protected speech; violence excused by a doctrine that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed, where revenge is not only permitted but morally required.

Gays persecuted by Islamist regimes are told they must hate Israel, the only state in the region that protects their equality. Women are excluded from feminist movements. Scientists are barred from research centers. Artists are expelled from theaters. A vast mass of Jews and Israelis is erased. This is a Shoah.

The siege is global. Once, Jews fled Nazi Europe to America. Today, the United States itself is a theater of antisemitic violence. In the Middle East, the war is fought with terrorism. Elsewhere, it is fought socially, culturally and institutionally. You can only fight to defend yourself.

This did not happen overnight. Mein Kampf was not written in a day. Years of preparation preceded the Holocaust. Today, documentation shows how international operations, coordinated with vast resources, mobilized institutions — from the United Nations to courts, universities, film festivals and trade unions — to transform the “Palestinian cause” into a human-rights banner, despite its explicit negation of human rights.

Hollywood, Venice, Princeton, Turin, La

Time to transform memory into responsibility

This year, International Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed against the backdrop of a global surge in antiJewish and anti-Israel hostility not seen in decades. From Chile to South Africa and London to Madrid, nations and cities worldwide have experienced a two-year wave of protests, open incitement, and acts of violence and terror directed at Jews and Israelis.

When leaders are permitted to lament the sins of the past without bearing any cost in the present, then the day risks being hollowed out, losing its moral significance and the original intent of those who established it.

Rather than serve as a warning against the dehumanization that led to the industrialscale murder of the Jewish people in Europe, the opposite is happening. It’s turning into a systematic attempt to rewrite history so that Jews again become convenient scapegoats for the world’s various ills.

When speeches about human rights serve as a cloak for an excuse to exhibit hatred and bigotry toward Israel, we must ask ourselves:

Is the world truly commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz, or is it simply trying to ease its conscience so it can continue to turn its back on the Jewish people?

In this light, there is a genuine concern that for some world leaders, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has become little more than lip service. They remember the Jews who suffered in the past but remain willfully blind to those who suffer today.

The erosion of the Holocaust’s lessons is no accident. It stems from deliberate efforts by populist forces at both ends of the US political spectrum. On the far right, open sympathy grows for Nazis, racial theories and even Adolf Hitler himself. Conversely, on the extreme left, a systematic Holocaust inversion unfolds, with terms like “genocide” and “Nazism” weaponized against the victims themselves: the people of the State of Israel, a good number of them survivors of the German Nazi Holocaust in the mid-20th century.

Professor Deborah Lipstadt, the US envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in the Biden administration, long ago identified this U-turn, where the extremes of both major parties converge. Though their ideological mechanisms differ, the outcome is identical. Right-wing populism questions historical facts to fuel an “us-versus-global-elites” narrative; left-wing populism sacrifices Jewish safety on the altar of selective “social justice.”

To keep International Holocaust Remembrance Day from devolving into a hollow ritual, we need sustained, multifaceted education and ethical commitment. This mission must engage a broad audience — from educational leaders and community figures to public opinion shapers and influencers.

We must demand that schools worldwide

adopt curricula immersing students in the history of World War II and the Holocaust (and the decades that led to it), blending research with rigorous discussion of morality, responsibility, human rights. We must encourage museums and memorial sites to launch interactive exhibitions highlighting the human and social dimensions of these events.

And we must insist that the international community enforce clear standards against the rewriting of history and the renewal of antisemitic propaganda. Only such concrete actions will transform the meaning behind

Jan. 27 into a genuine warning, not an empty ceremonial frame.

In this spirit, the World Jewish Congress continues to lead educational, advocacy and community initiatives that preserve Holocaust memory while transforming it into a catalyst for civic awareness and engagement.

Within Israel, WJC Israel works to integrate advocacy programs and support initiatives bridging the generational gap, keeping the past’s lessons alive in daily life. On the

Amidst all of the hub bub, let’s not forget Iran

The pace and range of President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy initiatives is simply dizzying.

In keeping with Trump’s keen sense of drama, honed through his years spent in television, observers of his decisions can pivot from elation to fear and from the heights of hope to the depths of despair, all in a single 24-hour period. From Venezuela to Greenland to Syria and beyond, the Trumpian juggernaut has, in quick succession, ploughed through the norms and conventions that have governed international security for the last 80 years. And it’s only January.

Yet none of the developments of the last few weeks, as vitally important as they are, approach the historic significance of the protests in Iran. If it wasn’t already clear from the protests of 2019 and 2022-23, as well as the previous waves stretching back more than a decade, there is no room for doubt now on two matters.

There is truly a historic opportunity. Don’t squander it.

First, the large majority of Iranians want to overthrow the Islamic Republic, not reform it. Second, the Islamic Republic will show no restraint in the brutality of its response. The killings so far of thousands of protesters attest to that. According to the London-based Times, medical staff on the ground say that “at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured, most of them in

Tiananmen

The events are separated by 36 years, but they could be the same moment.

In Beijing in 1989, a lone man stood before a column of tanks after the Chinese Communist Party slaughtered unarmed students demanding freedom. In Tehran in December 2025, civilians demanding dignity, food and basic rights stood before armed security forces after Iran’s regime deployed force against its own people.

Different flags. Same script.

Then and now, authoritarian regimes confronted peaceful protest not with reform but with bullets, batons and armored vehicles.

Tiananmen 1989

In June 1989, China’s Communist Party declared student demonstrators a threat to “social order.” Tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. Machine guns followed. While the true death toll remains unknown, estimates range from several hundred to several thousand.

The world watched in horror. Then it moved on.

Western governments imposed brief sanctions. Corporations paused, then returned. Universities stayed largely silent. Business resumed.

China learned the lesson: crush hard, blackout information, outlast outrage. That playbook has since been perfected.

Tehran, 2026

Beginning in December 2025 and continuing into the new year, Iranian citizens poured into the streets as inflation soared, food shortages worsened, and corruption became impossible to ignore.

with non-kinetic measures such as cyberattacks, restoring access to the internet after the regime closed it down and a new layer of sanctions.

But as is often the case when Trump issues threats, an exit strategy for the Iranian regime was embedded in his tough talk. After he declared himself satisfied that the ruling mullahs were not going to execute some of the detained protesters, he abruptly pulled away from further intervention.

The jury is still out on whether Trump actually backed down or whether this was a temporary shift in his tactics. As of this writing, the US Navy’s Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is wending its way toward the Middle East, suggesting that the dark clouds hanging over the Iranian regime have not lifted.

two days of utter slaughter in the most brutal crackdown by the clerical regime in its 47year existence.”

For more than a week, it appeared that the United States would follow through on Trump’s pledge to aid the protests through a combination of kinetic attacks on the regime’s repressive infrastructure, along

That regime is weaker than at any point since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The combined effects of heavy sanctions and the extensive Israeli airstrikes last June, joined by the United States in their final days, have left the ruling ayatollahs paranoid about internal security. As the value of the Iranian rial cascades downward, with a congruent rise in the price of foodstuffs and other basic goods, the regime is unquestionably teetering. But if the Islamic Republic is to end up in the trash dustbin of history, it still needs one firm push over the edge.

At the global level, the end of the regime would signal a welcome setback for its backers in Russia and China, as well as its anti-Western allies around the world from Colombia to South Africa.

to Tehran, regimes crush the people

Protesters chanted not for war, but for life. The regime responded with live ammunition, mass arrests, internet shutdowns and state-issued death tolls designed to minimize the carnage. Witnesses reported that bystanders were killed. Families were threatened into silence.

It is Tiananmen with turbans instead of uniforms.

•In 1989, there were no smartphones. In 2026, there are millions and yet the moral response is weaker.

•There are no campus encampments for Ira-

nian victims.

•No celebrity marches for murdered protesters.

•No faculty petitions demanding sanctions on Tehran.

•Universities that mobilize instantly for Gaza fall silent for Iran.

Why?

Because Iranian protesters do not fit the fashionable narrative. They are not “anti-colonial.” They are not attacking Jews. They are not useful. They are inconvenient.

After Tiananmen, the United Nations issued statements. China kept its seat. After Tehran, the United Nations issued statements. Iran keeps its diplomatic standing.

When regimes that massacre civilians remain legitimate global actors, “repression becomes policy — not crime.” The lesson tyrants learned from Tiananmen was not restraint. It was how to survive condemnation. Why does the “Tank Man” photograph still haunt Beijing?

•Because it proves something terrifying to tyrants:

•One unarmed citizen can expose the lie of the state.

•That is why Iran shut down the internet.

•That is why China erased Tiananmen from textbooks.

•That is why images from Tehran are disap-

In confronting Jew-hate, don’t argue theology

With the surge in public expressions of Jewhatred emerging from some quarters of the American Christian right, a familiar impulse has resurfaced, especially among wellintentioned Jews and Christian allies. The reflex is to treat antisemitism as a theological problem that can be solved by refuting supersessionism (also known as “replacement theology” by detractors and “fulfillment theology” by champions).

The logic is straightforward: If supersessionism historically contributed to hostility and violence against Jews, then defeating it theologically should weaken antisemitism at its source. This instinct is sincere but counterproductive.

Some context on this internal Christian dispute: Supersessionism holds that biblical references to “Israel” apply spiritually to the church rather than to the Jewish people as a continuing covenantal nation — a view long present in Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant and some Reformed traditions.

By contrast, dispensationalism, which rose to

The task before us is not to take sides in doctrinal arguments or play amateur philosopher in traditions that are not our own.

prominence in 19th-century Protestantism, and is most common among evangelicals and nondenominational churches, maintains that G-d’s covenant with the Jewish people remains distinct and ongoing. Both frameworks have been debated for generations; neither is monolithic, and adherents of both can be found across denominations and political orientations.

Supersessionism is not mere theological oversight waiting to be corrected by better prooftexting. It’s not a matter of poor reading comprehension. It’s a durable interpretive framework nearly 2,000 years old, debated by sophisticated thinkers invoking the same scriptures for as long as those scriptures have been read.

No New Testament verse recited by an Israeli diplomat, no angry exegesis by a Twitter warrior, and no self-soothing interfaith conference of Jewish and Christian Zionists is going to settle a question that has never been settled because it cannot be — at least not on textual grounds.

Nor is theology a reliable indicator of intent or danger. Supersessionists are not all hostile to Jews and Israel, just as dispensationalists are not all friendly. Treating theological camps as moral litmus tests thus obscures more than it reveals and produces both false confidence and misplaced alarm based on labels, rather than conduct.

There’s also a more basic problem that rarely gets stated plainly.

Most Jews engaging in these debates lack depth in their own religious background, let alone mastery of the texts and interpretive traditions they aspire to refute. At the same time, few on the Christian side — whether arguing for or against a continuing covenantal relationship between G-d and the Jewish people — can actually read the verses they cite in the original languages. Instead, both sides rely on layers of translation, paraphrase and inherited

talking points, often many removes away from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic originals, and filtered through centuries of polemics.

Smugly quoting a handful of verses is thus worse than pointless. It’s a lousy communications strategy, poor public relations, as well as a good way to alienate friends and inflame enemies.

Which is why neither observant nor secular Jews should be in the business of arguing for a Christian dispensationalist reading of the Christian Bible. We don’t share Christian theology, hermeneutics or exegetical traditions. We don’t accept the premises or authorities of those debates, and pretending otherwise for tactical convenience is easily exposed as intellectually dishonest and strategically reckless.

Telling Christians that they don’t understand

their own scripture when it comes to the Jews is no more productive than being told by Christians that Jews don’t understand ours when it comes to Jesus. It raises hackles and almost always reinforces the most hostile interlocutors. Christian rebuttals to dispensationalism have existed for generations, just as rebuttals to supersessionism have. Nothing new is being introduced and no minds are being changed when the challenger is a Jew. The result is predictable: hardened positions, deepened resentment and the empowerment of those who thrive on dispute and division. The entire approach misses the real issue.

Antisemitism does not primarily function as a theological disagreement. It functions as a conspiratorial mode of thinking — a

Ballabon on page 23

Docs fast to condemn Israel look away from Iran

Medical organizations that were previously shouting allegations about Israel denying Palestinians basic medical care have become oddly silent regarding attacks by the Iranian government on hospitals. This selective mutism reveals that these organizations are not really concerned about the safe delivery of medicine, as they are in trying to score points against the State of Israel.

Just last year, the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Sue Kressley, wrote on behalf of her organization to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, raising alarms about the denial of pediatric medical care in Gaza. In particular, she objected to the detention by Israeli forces of Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, expressing concern that children in northern Gaza would no longer have access to pediatric emergency care or to Abu Safiya.

Kressley failed to note that Hussam Abu Safiya was also a colonel in Hamas and that Kamal Adwan was a military hospital, giving Israeli forces reason to detain Abu Safiya amid a military conflict.

Fast-forward to present-day Iran, and doctors are being detained by military forces, but

There’s an anti-Israel pathological obsession among medical elites.

this time, the doctors and the hospital are clearly civilian in nature. According to the news source ME24, “the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence raided Milad Hospital in Isfahan, abducting several doctors who had been providing medical assistance to injured protesters. Their lives are now in serious danger.”

In the city of Ilam in Western Iran, IranWire reports that “security forces repeatedly entered the hospital compound, breaking down doors and attempting to seize wounded protesters. And Radio Farda, which is operated by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has been told by a doctor in southern Iran that “security forces have stormed hospitals and executed wounded protesters amid a brutal state crackdown on nationwide anti-establishment protests.”

And Kressley’s response? Complete silence. Somehow, detaining a Hamas colonel in a military hospital compelled the head of the largest association of pediatricians to write to the US secretary of state, but Iranian forces raiding several hospitals to kill and abduct wounded protesters — and arrest doctors caring for them — is not so troublesome.

Other medical organizations similarly suffer from this selective mutism. The international group, Doctors Without Borders, has condemned Israel for committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip and maliciously attacking hospitals without military justification. The group “demands the immediate protection of medical workers and health facilities, the immediate release of detained health workers, and full respect for international law.”

But when it comes to Iran, Doctors Without Borders has nothing to say other than that it “runs programs to assist marginalized groups who often face barriers when seeking health care, including refugees, migrants, sex workers and people who use drugs.”

Apparently, Iranian security forces attacking wounded protesters in hospitals and detaining doctors are not among the barriers to health care they wish to address.

Leading medical journals, such as the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), ran several editorials condemning Israel and demanding protection for health-care providers in Gaza.

One Lancet piece asserted: “Health-care workers, hospitals, ambulances and water systems have been repeatedly and deliberately targeted [by Israeli forces].”

A NEJM piece deplored “Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza’s health system.”

Leaving aside that these accusations of genocide by Israel and intentionally targeting Palestinian health care are completely false, where are the string of pieces in these leading medical journals condemning the very real assault on hospitals and doctors by Iranian forces? Perhaps they are yet to be published, but no one should hold their breath.

The reason not to expect from leading medical associations and journals denunciations of Iran commensurate with those they’ve issued against Israel should be fairly obvious.

There is a pathological obsession among many medical elites with leaping to condemn the Jewish state that transcends any concern for the consistent application of standards for behavior. If these medical organizations did not have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.

Jay P. Greene serves as the director of research of Do No Harm. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar. com

Tobin: Stop mourning Shoah while Jews die…

Continued from page 18

leftist ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. So-called “progressive” teachings have largely captured primary, secondary and higher education to the point where a generation of Americans has been indoctrinated into believing not merely in concepts that exacerbate racial divisions, but ones that promote the idea that Jews and Israelis are “white” oppressors.

What they have also done is to appropriate the word genocide, which Holocaust survivor and lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined to describe the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish people. Their claim that Israel’s just war of self-de-

Berlin…

Continued from page 17

There is a Gemara that captures this idea powerfully. Rav Yosef, the son of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, became gravely ill and later recovered. When his father asked him what he saw, he replied, Olam hafuch ra’isi (I saw an upside-down world),” where that which people considered great in this world was small there, and that which people dismissed as insignificant was revealed to be truly great. (Pesachim 50a).

This is the core difference between Moshe and Pharaoh. In Moshe’s worldview, every sheep matters. Every detail matters, because we do not know how significant our actions are until “we get there.” In Pharaoh’s worldview, people are fixed in place, locked into a rigid hierarchy. The pyramid never moves. Human choice and transformation are irrelevant.

That is why Pharaoh cannot let the sheep go. And that is why he cannot let the people go either in our parsha. This is about acknowledging that small things matter, that destiny is not fixed, and that people can rise and become more than they were. In Pharaoh’s world, slaves cannot break out of their assigned places in the social pyramid. Their actions cannot affect any destiny other than what was predetermined for them.

Pharaoh reveals this mindset when Moshe first approaches him. He responds with contempt: “Who is Hashem that I should listen to His voice?” (Shemos 5:2). This is not merely defiance. It is a worldview. Pharaoh recognizes no authority higher than his own, and he cannot imagine a reality in which obedience, faith, and divine service could alter a person’s place in the world.

In Pharaoh’s mind, power is fixed, hierarchy is permanent, and slaves remain slaves. The idea that a nation of slaves could transform its destiny through serving Hashem is simply inconceivable.

This idea appears in the laws of Pesach. Even the smallest crumb of chametz is forbidden. A mashahu, something almost invisible, still matters.

This same principle sustained our people even in their darkest hour.

In 1945, in Czernowitz, the Skulener Rebbe managed to procure a small amount of wheat and bake matzah for Pesach. He informed other leaders that he could provide three matzos per Rebbe so they could hold communal sedarim. One week before Pesach, Rabbi Moshe Hager, the son of the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, approached him and said, “My father is requesting six matzos.” The Skulener Rebbe hesitated, knowing how scarce the supply was, but ultimately agreed.

On Erev Pesach, Rabbi Moshe returned and asked the Skulener Rebbe whether he personally had any matzah for his own seder. Embarrassed, the Skulener Rebbe answered that he did not. “How could I,” he said, “when so many others needed it?” At that moment, Rabbi Moshe took out three matzos and explained that his father had anticipated this outcome all along.

fense against Hamas terrorists is “genocide” is a blatant lie. If applied to any other conflict, it would mean that every war that has ever been fought, including the one waged by the Allies against the Nazis, would be considered genocide. That not only drains the word of its actual meaning. It is, like the libelous efforts to smear Jews as Nazis, a classic trope of antisemitism.

Our answer to them and others who are either silent about the misappropriation of the Holocaust or join in the blood libels against living Jews while lamenting the fate of dead Jews must be unequivocal.

Prioritize living Jews

We must tell those who misappropriate the

This is what the argument between Moshe and Pharaoh is truly about. Not sheep and cattle, but the meaning of human action. Judaism insists that every detail matters. Every thought, every choice, every quiet effort counts. Pharaoh insists that small acts are irrelevant and that destiny is fixed.

We do not know what will matter until we arrive there. Until then, we live with faith that no sincere effort is ever wasted. May we learn to recognize the eternal significance hidden within the smallest deeds, and may that awareness guide how we live, choose, and serve Hashem every day.

Benny Berlin is the rabbi of BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach. Visit: bachlongbeach.com

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Mazurek…

Continued from page 17

So we have three episodes of deliverance — the initial geula from Egypt, the liberation from oppression under Devorah, and the liberation from a murderous regime of unimaginable horror in 1945 — all being recalled on the same Shabbat.

In the first instance, we were delivered passively; Hashem did all the work. In the second, He required us to be active; we had to fight for victory. In the third, we were tragically in no position to fight, and our liberation was achieved passively, at tremendous cost.

But the title of this piece is “Past, Present and Future.” Where does that leave us?

Just six years ago, when we marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of AuschwitzBirkenau, 40 world leaders came to Jerusalem to honor the memory of those kedoshim murdered by Hitler in the Shoah and to decry rising antisemitism. There were kings from Belgium, Spain and Holland; princes, including thenPrince Charles of the UK; presidents, vice presidents and prime ministers.

It was a beautiful expression of solidarity with the Jewish people and a fulfillment of prophecy — Zechariah 14:16, following the war of Gog u’Magog:

And it shall come to pass, that everyone who remains of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, Hashem, Master of Legions.

And Micha 4:1–2, describing the End of Days: And many nations shall go and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Hashem, to the House of the G-d of Jacob, that He may instruct us in His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for from Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem.”

Alittle more than three years later, after Oct. 7, everything changed. We again suffered terrible devastation — the worst since the Shoah — but now there is no solidarity with the Jewish people, no decrying antisemitism. Instead, many run from any association with Jews or with Israel and actively promote and foment antisemitism.

Belgium, Spain and Holland, which six years

memory of the Six Million, or utter such falsehoods about genocide, that Holocaust commemorations should be off-limits to them.

The same applies to global organizations like the United Nations, which in 2005 voted to establish International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945. These agencies that claim to speak for human rights and justice for all countries in the world have become cesspools of antisemitism and engines of the war against the Jewish state.

For too long, members of the Jewish community have treated the promotion of Holocaust education or ceremonies honoring the dead as

ago sent their kings, today would not send a dog catcher. The UK, where Jew hatred is rampant, is certainly not sending King Charles. The one nation that has stood by us then and now is the United States. For this we must be grateful.

A generation after the Shoah, we have come to realize that Hashem wants us to take an active role in our redemption. Just as when we conquered the Land under Yehoshua, fought under Devorah, and later under David HaMelech, we are required to act.

We must fight.

We must build.

We must do mitzvot.

We must learn and teach Torah. We must learn to get along with one another. We cannot be passive. Hashem is not going to do it for us.

The one free ride we received was at our infancy as a nation — Yetziat Mitzrayim, the redemption from Egypt. Now He expects us to act as grown-ups, to take responsibility and initiative. We must all be a Nachshon and jump into the Sea.

Baruch Hashem, over the past two-plus years we have seen leaders, soldiers, rabbanim and scholars — and women of incredible strength and valor who rival Miriam, Devorah and Yael — rising to the challenge.

That, to me, is the best and finest commemoration of the Shoah — for ourselves and for the world — on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

We are passive no more.

Shabbat Shalom.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 17

Today, many of us live lives of prose. Day fades into the night, and even years seem to march along uneventfully with only rare episodes of drama. Few of us sing, and even fewer would feel capable of poetry.

That is what is so amazing about the Song of the Sea in this week’s Torah portion. Everyone sang. All of Israel joined in the expression of poetic exultation. Our sages tell us that even the “lowly maid servant on the sea saw more than the prophet Ezekiel” and sang!

Moses led the all the men in the song, and Miriam, all the women.

Perhaps it was the contrast between centuries of oppressive slavery and the sudden experience of utter freedom that evoked song in everyone. Perhaps it was the release from the deadly fear of the approaching Egyptian army that gave vent to unanimous poetry. Or it might have been the sight of the hated and dreaded enemy drowning under the waves that inspired all present to sing out triumphantly. Most likely, it was all of the above.

As readers of the weekly Torah portion, each of us struggles to relate what we study to our daily lives. It is, therefore, important that we use this week’s narrative to nurture our own poetic urge.

more important than efforts to defend the living.

It’s also true that, as important as teaching young Jews about the Shoah is, it must be linked to learning about the importance of Israel, as well as the life-affirming nature of their heritage and faith.

Above all, we must stop allowing the memory of what happened 80 years ago on Europe’s soil to be used by those who support or are neutral about those seeking to carry on the Nazi project of Jewish genocide. The failure to call an end to this misuse of Jewish history will only contribute to more tragedy.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

The Talmud compares the miracle of the Red Sea to quite ordinary processes, such as finding a spouse and earning a livelihood. The Talmud does this to inspire us to see the miraculous even in everyday events.

Our sages realize the importance of poetry and soul and wish to motivate us to respond with poetry and song even to mundane events. They want us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Of all the many Torah portions that we have read this year, beginning with Genesis and continuing until Beshalach, no biblical text is fully incorporated into our daily liturgy. Finally, from this week’s portion, the Song of the Sea was made part of the daily Jewish liturgy, recited every single day of the year, weekday or Sabbath, ordinary day or holiday.

The message is clear: Poetry and song are vital for you. They are evoked by the experience of something very special. Every living moment is very special.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Goldman…

Continued from pag 17

is to take the life of the perpetrator, then so be it.

Believe it or not, Jews are pacifists by nature and by conscience. We don’t go picking fights with people or nations. Our neighbors in the Middle East would have a much better life and standard of living if they were prepared to live in peace with Israel.

In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat famously tried. He even addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem. His reward? Assassination by his own people. And so, Arab despots who might consider making peace are petrified to try because they know they will be next on the hit list.

My dear fellow Jews, please do not allow yourselves to be influenced by the media madness or symphony of insanity emanating from around the globe. The utter and absolute hypocrisy of protesters against Israel has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by their abhorrent silence on the Iranian revolution taking place right now. Tens of thousands have been murdered by the ayatollah’s bomb squads, and where are the words of protest from those oh-so-moral international agencies and media outlets. Some of the nations that shout the loudest against Israel are strangely silent on Iran — South Africa included.

Jan. 28, 10 Shevat, marks the yahrzeit of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson. As the leader of Russian Jewry, he fought Stalin and the KGB and nearly lost his life in the process. He was sentenced to death for his activities and work in keeping Judaism alive in Communist Russia. Miraculously, he survived. He was defiant until the end and eventually helped build Jewish life in the United States. Meaning, he wasn’t shy to speak out.

It’s time that we, too, left Egypt and the slave mentality behind.

And the Children of Israel were going out (of Egypt) triumphantly with an outstretched arm. Let us do it proudly and boldly.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Nirenstein…

Continued from page 19

Sapienza, and even a pizzeria in Naples expelling Israelis. All are nodes in a network that has trapped the world in the lie of genocide, a lie disproved in seconds by the most basic facts.

As with the Nazis, this phase begins with expulsions, isolated murders and economic and cultural persecution. It aims not yet at industrial extermination from above, but at disappearance from below: frightened communities withdrawing, emigrating, silenced into submission. Synagogues are attacked. Cemeteries desecrated. Jewish neighborhoods invaded.

From Rome to Berlin, Melbourne to Lakewood, Obninsk to Rouen, arson, threats and violence have become routine. Think twice before praying, antisemitism warns. Death waits around the corner — knives, bullets, cars.

Israel fights on one front; Jews everywhere fight on another. The attack targets soldiers and singers, athletes and students, workers and worshippers. Jews are eliminated from campuses, from professions, from politics, from public life. Children tell their parents not to speak Hebrew. Wearing a kippah is dangerous. A Star of David invites assault. Remembering Auschwitz is no longer enough. Wake up. We are in the phase of mass antisemitic attack. The explosion of “incidents” is not only a Jewish problem; it is a European and American catastrophe. In France, attacks rose by 1,000 percent after Oct. 7. In the United States, they reached 10,000 in a year. Canada and Australia are engulfed. Murder follows rhetoric.

This is the most profitable algorithm in the West: antisemitism gains votes, sells papers, recruits followers. Trade unions strike for Hamas. Universities host courses on “genocide” while expelling Jewish students. Politicians dismantle antisemitism laws. The Oscars reward anti-Israel propaganda. A woman in New York screams, “I’m gonna kill you Jews,” as a car plows into Orthodox pedestrians.

This is the new Shoah: to confine Jews, one by one, into fear and isolation. It was in a discussion with American-Israeli journalist Elli Wohlgelernter that I first understood how this Shoah is advancing from below, through society itself, unlike the Nazi extermination plan imposed from above.

I have spent my life writing about antisemitism. Warning about it. Describing it. It was not enough. Do not say “never again” this Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. It has become empty. Say instead: I will fight for Israel. That has meaning now.

Iran’s ayatollahs, like Hitler’s Germany, reveal antisemitism for what it is: an obsessive system of thought, a simplification of reality, a worldview that defines existence as violence. Destroy Israel. Destroy the Jews. This is Iran’s declared aim and that of Islamist terror, allied in the West with radical leftist movements.

Israel, however, fights back. Every time Jews stood at the edge of annihilation, an inner force compelled them to resist. Even in the Warsaw Ghetto, facing certain death, young people fought, laying the foundations for Zionist resurrection. Israel’s strength today is not only Jewish self-defense; it is a pillar in the global struggle against autocracy, terror and the collapse of democratic civilization.

The war against Jews is always a war against civilization. The Canadian scholar, Ruth Wisse, was right. Jews have learned to fight. And since Oct. 7, not only Jews but their allies must remember: the Shoah did not destroy only the Jewish people. It devastated the entire world.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Getsztain…

Continued from page 19

international stage, WJC continues to combat antisemitism by pressing governments and leaders to protect Jewish communities’ rights. And within the global Jewish world, it strengthens the vital bond between Israel and the Diaspora — our lifeline amid rising hatred.

For nearly a decade, the World Jewish Congress has led #WeRemember, which works to raise awareness across new media and traditional channels, urging people worldwide — from cultural figures to political leaders — to photograph themselves holding #WeRemember signs and share them online.

The goal is to ensure that messages of human dignity and moral responsibility remain alive in the global public sphere, and to draw a clear red line that while criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate, denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their sovereign state constitutes antisemitism.

Only through such proactive endeavors and a vigorous, year-round struggle can International Holocaust Remembrance Day fulfill its true purpose — not as a day of mourning alone, but as a call to action and moral commitment.

Speeches, ceremonies and gestures are no longer enough if Jews fear wearing a kippah on the streets of New York and European cities. This year, more than ever, memory must become responsibility.

Hadassa Getsztain is chairperson of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) Israel.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Cohen…

Continued from page 20

At the regional level, the regime’s demise would be a further blow to its terrorist proxies from which they might never recover.

And at the local level, the defeat of Iran’s apparatus of repression — rooted in the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — would allow Iranians to inhale the scent of freedom after nearly 50 years of theocratic dictatorship. The desire for freedom has manifested across all 31 of Iran’s provinces, confirming that this is truly a national movement for regime change.

As is invariably the case with sudden — in this case, revolutionary — change, it would be naive to expect smooth, linear progress in the aftermath of the regime’s demise. To begin with, there is no obvious, organized opposition waiting to take the reins of power.

The stock of Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, has risen against the background of the protests, with many of those in the streets chanting his name and waving the pre-Islamic Republic Iranian flag. But the return of the monarchy cannot be said, at this stage, to be a consensus position among Iranians agitating against the regime.

Nor would the regime’s removal end the threat of radical Islamism in the Middle East. As Iran’s power has plummeted, Turkey’s has soared. Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is arguably the main threat to Israel in the region, though his current focus is nearer home, as he supports the brutal offensive led by Syrian President Ahmad alSharaa’s forces into areas held by the Kurdish allies of the United States. And, unlike Iran, Turkey is still regarded as a component of the Western alliance, despite Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy.

Neither of these considerations is justification for the continued survival of the ayatollahs. Were they to do so, their focus would be exclusively on rebuilding their capabilities.

‘Zionist millionaires’…

Continued from page 1

Deborah Lipstadt, former US special antisemitism envoy, agreed with Torres’ assessment.

“Once, if someone said something antisemitic and it became public, they apologized. Sometimes profusely,” she said. “Recently, they just shrug their shoulders and deny it is antisemitism (‘Oh, it’s only criticism of Israel’). Now, as Ritchie Torres correctly notes, it’s become a strategy.”

“It takes a lot of chutzpah for someone who wants to represent significant black and Jewish communities to link up with a neo-Nazi,” Yaakov Kaplan, vice chair of Brooklyn Community Board 12, said of Vega collaborating with Warsaw on the video. Warsaw’s Jew-baiting includes his assertion that Israel played a role

If they are still in power a year from now, it is reasonable to expect that a major effort to reconstitute the nuclear facilities badly damaged in last June’s war would be underway, with precious little oversight from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), frequently denounced in Iranian official media as an agent of Israeli interests.

A similar effort would be mounted with regard to Iran’s ballistic-missile arsenal, which last year proved its ability to strike inside Israel on more than one occasion. That could lead to a situation, as was the case last June, in which Israel is forced to again strike Iran, but at a time when an exhausted protest movement is unable to mobilize in the way that it has done this past month.

There is truly a historic opportunity here. If we give the regime yet another chance — and if the United States is again entrapped in negotiations that serve only to buy the ayatollahs more time — then we will squander it.

Above all, we will send a message to the Iranian people that their lives are mere bargaining chips, despite all our noble rhetoric, and that they are on their own.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Greenwald…

pearing in real time.

•Dictatorships fear one thing more than crowds — witnesses.

What changed and what didn’t 1989

•China massacres students

•The West condemns, then trades •Campuses protest apartheid, not Beijing 2026

•Iran suppresses civilians

•The West condemns, then negotiates •Campuses protest Israel, not Tehran

The names change. The pattern does not.

Iran’s regime does not merely oppress its own people. It exports terror. It arms Hezbollah. It funds Hamas. It threatens Israel openly.

Every Iranian civilian beaten or silenced in the street weakens the world’s most dangerous theocracy.

Their fight is not separate from ours. It is upstream from it.

When Tiananmen presented the world with a test, the world chose stability over justice. Tehran now presents the same test. Do we reward regimes that deploy armored forces against their own people? Or do we finally admit that silence is complicity? There is still time to answer differently. But not much.

Jonathan S. Greenwald is executive director of the Greenwald Family Impact Foundation. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

in the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Only four Jews died at the World Trade Center because the Jewish community had advance knowledge of the attacks, Warsaw has said. In fact, at least 200 Jews are believed to be among those who died.

“Israel owes an apology and reparations,” Warsaw has said. “Sept. 11, never forget, never forgive, and put the blame where the blame is really due. … We have a common enemy, we all need to see that.”

“They want to keep the conversation away from the ugly fact that Ritchie Torres was made the congressman to keep the War Party in place, and the Bronx poor,” Vega said. “And he works for the people that want to keep the Bronx poor, period.”

Continued from page 21

psychotic pathology that treats Jews not as ordinary moral agents but as a malevolent force operating behind events, power and history. Christian theology can supply language for this impulse, just as nationalist, progressive, socialist, racist or Islamist narratives can. But it’s not the engine that drives it. That engine runs just as easily in secular, revolutionary or post-religious movements.

This is why arguing theology is futile. You are engaging on terrain where your interlocutor is entrenched, rehearsed and unconcerned with persuasion. Worse, you reinforce the premise that Jewish existence itself is a problem to be adjudicated, rather than a reality to be respected. The current moment, properly understood, is not religious; it is civilizational, cultural and political.

The response, therefore, must be practical and pragmatic, instead of theological or theoretical. In fact, it is better not to treat it as a “debate” at all; a debate must presume shared premises and a common standard of resolution. Neither exists here. What does exist is the collapse of a shared societal value set; a vacuum that is fueling social pressures, incentives, fears, anger, ambitions and power dynamics. Understanding those forces — and reframing relationships, accordingly — is far more effective than attempting to adjudicate ancient interpretive disputes.

This is where conspiracy thinking becomes central.

Going down conspiracy theory rabbit holes is not only philosophically or morally wrong; it’s self-defeating. It has never advanced truth, protected communities or strengthened societies. It distorts priorities, undermines credibility and invariably harms those who embrace it.

Periods of upheaval always produce a glut of manipulators. When fear is high and trust is low, scapegoating becomes easy and even profitable. Unsurprisingly, we are now awash in voices exploiting the current moment. Inflaming suspicion and anger is far easier than grappling with difficult and complex reality.

And this warning is not primarily for Jews. It is for society itself.

Scapegoating Jews has been tested for millennia. It benefits predators, grifters and demagogues in the short term, but devastates every society that succumbs to them. Every civilization that turned Jews into a symbolic explanation for its failures believed it was solving a problem. None survived the solution.

The resurgence of Jew-hatred is America’s early warning signal. The task before us is not to take sides in doctrinal arguments or play amateur theologians in traditions that are not our own. It is to deny legitimacy — to stigmatize — the demagoguery of those who would demonize and dehumanize “the Jews” by making us the avatar of their own fears and failures. That is where antisemitism lives, and that is where it must be confronted

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com