The Jewish Star 02-12-2026

Feb. 13-19, 2026

26 Shevat 5786

Mishpatim

Vol. 25, No. 4

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A member of Trump’s antisemitism panel rips Zionism, calls Jews killers

By JNS and The Jewish

Amidst testimony about challenges facing Jews in America, the US Religious Liberty Commission, meeting in Washington on Monday, became a forum for antisemitic talking points.

The Jew-bashing was platformed by commission member Carrie Prejean Boller, one of 13 panel members appointed by President Donald Trump. She repeatedly baited witnesses with expressions of antiZionism and descriptions of Jews as killers over two-millennia — from the death of Christianity’s founder to the killing of Palestinians by Israelis during the Gaza war.

“Jews killed Jesus,” Boller said, adding that because of her Catholic faith, she “does not support Zionists.”

In social media posts, Boller, a former Miss California who is a right-wing activist and commentator, has accused Israel of “deliberate starvation” and “murdering

children” in Gaza. She has also attacked Christian Zionists.

In recent months her social media posts have been dominated by defenses of the right-wing com-

mentators Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, repeatedly accused of Jew-hatred. She returned to those defenses on Monday.

“I would really appreciate it if

you would stop calling Candace Owens an antisemite,” Boller told Seth Dillon, CEO of the satirical Babylon Bee. “She’s not an antiSee Member on page 2

Long Beach first responders learn the power of 7 minutes

Would you know what to do in the first seven minutes of an emergency?

That was the reality a man in Ramla faced during a terror attack in Israel. He had been stabbed in the leg; the bleeding was severe and life-threatening.

When Magen David Adom paramedic Aryeh Myers arrived, a bystander had already stepped in. The person had no medical background (only a first-aid course from 20 years earlier) and no tourniquet available. Using a belt as an improvised tourniquet, the bystander controlled the bleeding until professional teams arrived. The civilians’ quick, decisive action saved a life.

That principle is at the heart of “The First Seven Minutes,” a lifesaving training program developed by Magen David Adom and brought to communities in the United States by American Friends of Magen David Adom AFMDA.

“The project is called ‘The First Seven Minutes’ because that’s the average time it takes for first responders to reach an emergency,” said Aryeh Myers, a senior paramedic with Magen David Adom.

On Feb. 4, AFMDA brought this training to Long Beach, partnering with the Long Beach Fire Department to host a specialized training program for

emergency professionals serving Long Island’s South Shore.

More than 45 fire chiefs, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs and health professionals attended, representing departments within the 2nd Battalion Fire District, which includes Baldwin, Freeport, Island Park, Long Beach, Oceanside and Point Lookout-Lido.

The 2nd Battalion Fire District receives one of the highest numbers of emergency calls on Long Island, making preparedness a constant priority. The training, led by Myers, emphasized practical, lifesaving actions that anyone on the scene can take immediately in a mass casualty situation, from active shooter attacks to large-scale accidents, before ambulances and additional resources arrive.

The event was born when AFMDA supporter and Fire Commissioner Alan Greenfield, MD, decided to combine his two passions for a meaningful cause. Believing there is no better teacher than someone who has lived through these kinds of emergencies, Greenfield, who attended medical school in Tel Aviv, spearheaded the program to bring firsthand lifesaving experience to Long Island.

Drawing on Magen David Adom’s experience re-

This is what a US attack on Iran would look like

Explainer by Avner Vilan for Israel Hayom

In negotiations, one concept is particularly important: ZOPA, the Zone of Possible Agreement, the range of outcomes in which both sides can reach a deal. When the ZOPA is empty, no matter how many rounds of talks take place, an agreement is simply impossible.

A clear look at the differences between the US and Iran after the latest round of talks points to an unmistakable conclusion: there is no ZOPA.

The US launched the current round of escalation in an attempt to undermine the Iranian regime and encourage protests, which for now have faded. Alongside military threats, the Americans signaled a willingness to negotiate. Iran, for its part, has said it is willing to discuss only the nuclear issue.

Even if Washington were to make a dramatic retreat and limit the talks strictly to the nuclear file, it is hard to see a scenario in which it would allow uranium enrichment on Iranian soil. Conversely, Iran, deeply suspicious of the Trump administration, will not agree to anything less than the capabilities it had under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. As a result, the current talks are essentially a stalling tactic. No good or even reasonable agreement can emerge from them.

No agreement? What happens

Another key concept in negotiations is BATNA, the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. In other words, what is the alternative if there is no deal?

From Iran’s perspective, the alternative is a continuation of the status quo under sanctions that have been intensified with the activation

of the snapback mechanism. Over the medium and long term, this offers no good news for the regime as the Iranian economy continues to deteriorate. In the short term, however, the regime knows how to survive, especially after demonstrating to its own population a willingness to use brutal repression without restraint. The Americans say the military option is on the table and have moved significant forces into the region. Although they have been on the brink of a strike, it has not yet taken place. The delay is likely due to a combination of insufficient operational readiness and uncertainty about the desired outcome: either the attack would not cause enough damage, or it could

drag the US into a prolonged war it does not want.

There are also more prosaic reasons for postponement, such as waiting until after the Super Bowl. Iran, for its part, has already declared that any attack would be treated as a full-scale war and would be met with missile strikes on all US bases in the Middle East and on Israel. We know how this would start; we do not know how it would end.

4 possible scenarios

First scenario: A new nuclear agreement in exchange for sanctions relief and the removal of the threat of attack. The chances of this are

slim, and if such an agreement were signed, it would be a bad one.

Second scenario: Endless stalling. With negotiations or without them, it makes little difference. Pressure on Iran would continue, and in the absence of a political horizon, a new wave of protests or another internal threat to the regime’s survival could emerge. It is also possible that time and nature will take their course, and that under a different Iranian leader, some options could reopen.

Third scenario: A token strike, perhaps even coordinated with the Iranians. Trump would declare victory and shift his attention elsewhere. The Iranian problem, of course, would not disappear.

Fourth scenario: A significant US attack. For it to be effective, its goal would have to be a serious destabilization of the regime, up to and including its collapse. To achieve that, the strike would need to include the elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (or at least be an action on a comparable scale) Such an event would shake the regime to its core.

In the meantime, Iran still has about 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, not under effective oversight and sufficient to produce ten nuclear bombs. Tehran now understands more clearly than ever that nuclear weapons are the only insurance policy for the regime’s survival.

All that remains is to hope that Israeli intelligence monitoring is good enough, because once Iran becomes a nuclear state, the strategic calculus will change completely.

Avner Vilan is a former senior official in Israel’s security establishment and an expert on Iran.

Member of antisemitism panel turns on Jews…

Continued from page 1 semite. She just doesn’t support Zionism, and that really has to stop. I don’t know why you keep bringing her up, and Tucker.”

“Because they’re the two most famous antisemites,” Dillon replied.

“There you go again,” Boller said. “I guess everyone’s an antisemite.”

Long Beach…

Continued from page 1

sponding to mass casualty incidents in Israel, the training addressed not only violent attacks, but also fires, building collapses and other large-scale emergencies. Hands-on simulations reinforced the program’s central message: in an emergency, early action can save lives.

Scott Kemins, deputy fire commissioner for the City of Long Beach, said the program provided valuable insights for those who regularly respond to emergencies.

“The first 7-minute training program is an excellent resource for the public,” he said. “It is crucial for individuals to be aware of their surroundings and to understand how to respond to potential shooting incidents, including the appropriate protocols to follow.”

By partnering with local fire departments, such as Long Beach, AFMDA continues its mission to bring MDA’s lifesaving expertise to communities beyond Israel, strengthening preparedness in schools, houses of worship, and community institutions.

As Myers emphasized, the “first seven minutes” matter.

Reading this article takes a few minutes, often less time than it takes for professional responders to arrive. In that brief window, knowledge, calm and decisive action can turn ordinary bystanders into lifesavers.

Reporting by AFMDA

Boller, who Jewish Insider observed appeared to be wearing a Palestinian pin, said she listens to Owens every day.

Boller asked Shabbos Kestenbaum, a prominent young Jewish activist, “Since we’ve mentioned Israel a total of 17 times, are you willing to condemn what Israel has done in Gaza?”

Her lines of questioning drew booing from the audience several times and seemed to exasperate the commission’s chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican.

“I’m going to interrupt the discussion,” Patrick said. “This is not a commission on defining religions or calling out any theology. This is not the commission for that.”

“This could be another discussion on another day, and you two can have coffee,” Patrick said, of Boller’s questions of Kestenbaum.

“Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know,” Boller told the panel. “I want to be clear on what the definition of antisemitism is. If I don’t support the political state of Israel, am I an antisemite, yes or no?”

At the hearing, the commission’s only Jewish member, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel, said Boller’s statements misrepresented both Jewish and Catholic perspectives.

“This is an incredibly diverse country, and the one thing we should be careful about is speaking on behalf of all members of a religious community, even if one is a member of that religious community,” Rabbi Soloveichik said.

“I certainly wouldn’t claim to speak for all Jews on all subjects. We’re not known for agreeing on everything, and that certainly should be said for speaking about Catholics in America.”

Soloveichik quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “who also happens to be a very devout Catholic,” who has spoken about the Jewish people’s connection to the land of Israel.

JNS asked Kestenbaum what he expected, when he woke up in the morning, would happen at the hearing.

“Not to get in a foreign policy debate about Israel,” he said. “In fact, I’m so often accused about being ‘Israel first,’ being a ‘Zionist shill,’ which is why in the hearing today and in all the hearings that I’ve spoken at, I deliberately do not mention Israel.”

“I want to get the point across that what is happening at American universities is happening to American students, and it’s an affront to American values,” he said. “The fact that a commissioner would bring in a foreign conflict, that was not part of my narrative, demonstrates that there was an agenda.”

“She decided that this should be a debate on Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which I’m not entirely sure how that affects American students being discriminated against,” he said.”

Kestenbaum added that it was curious that Boller said that Catholics don’t support Israel “given that there are hundreds of millions of Catholics, including some who are on this commission, speaking at this commission today, who would vehemently disagree with such a grandiose assertion.”

At one point, after Rabbi Ari Berman, Yeshiva University president, said that it is antisemitic to say that Israel cannot exist as a Jewish state while not also objecting to the many Christian and Muslim states, Boller said that Islamophobic statements shouldn’t be acceptable at the hearing.

Berman told her “G-d forbid” that anyone would say something anti-Muslim.

“If your reaction to the fact that Christianity is outlawed in Saudi Arabia is to blame Islamophobia, you’re not seriously engaging with the political and religious issue,” Kestenbaum said later of the exchange.

The takeaway that Berman hopes viewers will emerge with is that there is a need to incentivize universities teaching American values.

“I think the government should be funding those universities that see themselves as repositories of cultural inheritance and of a Western tradition that undergirds what America stands for,” he told JNS. “Faith-based universities are a great examples of that.” Patrick, the commission chair, told JNS that Boller’s spirited questions “didn’t surprise me.”

“Organically, it took a life of its own that I think led to some really great discussion on a number of issues,” he said. “Everything from where the Catholic Church stands to Zionism to anti-Zionists.”

“There was so much great testimony and so many great quotable moments, it’s hard for me to — I’m going to go back and watch this,” he said.

“I think just that the general recognition that we have no room in this country whatsoever for anyone to give any type of foothold on this antisemitism that is going around.”

“We have to all stand together, all denominations, all faiths. We have to all get together and say, ‘This will not stand in America’,” he said. “I think maybe that’s the key.”

The commission is tasked with drafting a report to President Trump on how to promote religious liberty.

Other members of the panel include Cardinal Timothy Dolan; Pastor Franklin Graham; Pastor Paula White, a senior adviser to the White House Faith Office; Allyson Ho, partner at Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher; Kelly Shackelford, president and EDO of First Liberty Institute; writer, speaker and radio host Eric Metaxas; Dr. Phil McGraw; Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Genter; and Bishop Robert Barron. Dr. Ben Carson is vice chair.

JNS spoke with Bruce Pearl, former coach of the Auburn Tigers men’s basketball team and founder of the Jewish Coaches Association, who testified at the hearing.

See Trump on page 7

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REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED

West Hemp hears how to raise empowered kids

By Madison Gusler, LI Herald

The Hebrew Academy of Nassau County teamed up with the West Hempstead School District for a presentation on raising empowered children through positive discipline.

Dozens of people attended the on Feb. 2 event at the HANC Reinstein Family Campus in West Hempstead.

Rabbi Shimmy Trencher, a licensed social worker who is a child and family therapist specializing in behavior, defined self-esteem and how to instill it in children. He also provided a framework for understanding misbehavior.

“We’re living in a moment where self-esteem, resilience and healthy discipline are not just timely topics, they’re essential,” Rabbi Ouriel Hazan, HANC’s head of school, said. “We’re all looking for that magic space where we can connect to our children in a healthy way.”

Rabbi Trencher emphasized that while frameworks are available to guide parents, they may not work for every child or family.

“Parenting is a real challenge,” he said. “From moment to moment, from day to day, we try things,” he said, adding that while some things don’t work, “our children are resilient. Tomorrow is a new day to try some new things.”

He began by explaining the difference between self-efficacy and self-esteem. Self-efficacy is one’s belief in their ability to successfully perform a specific task or behavior, while self-esteem refers to a person’s confidence in their worth, value and competence.

“We ideally want our kids to have strong selfefficacy, to feel like they can do something,” Rabbi Trencher said, “but to also have a high-level of self-esteem, to feel good about themselves.”

Discipline isn’t just about a triggering incident, but about teaching the child, he said. “It’s about allowing them to develop their level of responsibility. We’re training our kids to become

productive, responsible adults.”

Rabbi Trencher discussed nine methods to raise an empowered child by building self-esteem and using positive discipline.

These methods included respecting developmental stages — encouraging parents to be aware of what is considered normal behavior for the child’s age and abilities so they don’t discipline their child for developmentally appropriate behaviors — and using encouragement instead of praise, focusing on the child’s effort and instilling a trust of themselves by highlighting their internal validation over your external praise.

He encouraged parents to offer “genuine encounter moments” (GEMs) and show their children unconditional love.

GEMs, coined by psychologist Dorothy Briggs, refer to moments of real connection between children and parents. By giving a child one’s full attention — listening to them, engaging with them, and sharing experiences — a parent builds trust and emotional security with

the child, he explained.

“There’s so much going on, and it’s so hard for us to focus, which is why doing this consciously and choosing to make time for this goes a long way,” Rabbi Trencher said.

He also discussed the four misdirected goals of behavior. According to psychologist Rudolf Dreikurs, children’s misbehavior is often aimed at meeting an underlying need.

Children seeking power may feel they must be in control to belong, and may argue or defy requests. This may make their parents angry and feel challenged, but to address the behavior, parents should present their children with choices so they feel in charge of the outcome, he said.

Children may exhibit attention-seeking behavior to engage an adult’s focus, Rabbi Trencher said. When a parent is busy, the child may feel irritated or annoyed but the parent can express love for the child without attention, such as showing physical affection, he said.

If children feel hurt or rejected, they may

become intentionally hurtful and seek revenge through their words, actions or withdrawal. This may cause their parents to feel hurt, offended, shocked or personally attacked, but they must validate their children’s feelings and work to maintain their relationship, he added.

Parents may feel inclined to rescue their children or lower expectations, but instead of being discouraged, they should break things down into smaller steps.

Here are Rabbi Trencher’s nine methods to raise an empowered child by building self-esteem and using positive discipline:

• Respect developmental stages

• Set clear boundaries and follow through

• Offer “genuine encounter moments”

• Teach children to repair mistakes

• Tell children what to do, not what to don’t

• Be firm and kind

• Use encouragement instead of praise

• Show unconditional love

• Allow your children to be valuable to you

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BACH teams with Yachad

The Bach Jewish Center in Long Beach has partnered with the Orthodox Union’s Yachad to host a Shabbaton filled with social, educational and spiritual activities in honor of Jewish Disabilities Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month.

The month, established in 2009, highlights each individual’s unique abilities and strengths within the framework of Jewish faith and tradition. This year’s weekend retreat emphasized the value of listening, empowering and including every member of the community, inspired by the weekly Torah reading of Parshat Yisro.

Rabbi Benny Berlin of BACH shared divrei Torah with the group, highlighting the lesson from Yisro, that just as Yisro empowered Moses by helping him share

the responsibilities of leadership, every member of the community has a unique gift to contribute and every voice matters.

“Yisro taught Moses the value of empowering others, hearing their unique perspectives and creating systems that allow everyone to contribute according to their abilities,” Rabbi Berlin said. “In the same way, our communities are strongest when we recognize the talents and strengths of every individual, including those with disabilities. Inclusion is a way of building a community where everyone belongs, everyone participates and everyone’s voice matters. By empowering each member, we strengthen the entire community and bring the Torah’s vision of justice and unity to life.”

REPORTER WANTED

Trump antisemitism panel…

Continied from page 2

“I thought it was great,” he said. “Even if you’re referring to when it got a little tense, I actually thought it was good. … She basically said, ‘So if I’m anti-Zion, is that antisemitic’?”

“I think that the committee was able to explain to her that, ‘Yes, it was’,” he said. “Not calling her an antisemite [but] these are antisemitic thoughts, because we try to connect the Jewish faith to the State of Israel and our Bible and our history and our culture and our everything. That doesn’t make me any less American.”

“I think we should have these discussions,” he said. It was “explained, ‘These views are antisemitic,’ because if you don’t believe Jewish people have a right to return to our ancestral home, this is our religious belief. It kind of gets in the way of our religious liberties.”

His main takeaway was about higher education.

“There was a lot of discussion about American universities and what is being taught, and what is being allowed, and some of the hypocrisies,” he said. “We have to teach the truth, and we have to teach the good versus evil even though it may well be uncomfortable.”

“I don’t think universities should stay institutionally neutral,” he added. “There’s a difference between freedom of speech and moral clarity, and I think that was pointed out very clearly today.”

Suing the panel

Just as the hearing was getting under way at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, a coalition of religious groups filed suit against the Trump administration and the commission in federal court in New York for allegedly excluding non-Christians and lacking ideological diversity in violation of the law.

“No members of the commission represent other minority religions, such as Islam, Hinduism or Sikhism, and none of the members on the commission represent an interfaith organization, despite the commission’s mandate to celebrate America’s history of religious pluralism,” the lawsuit states. “Its members, consisting of almost exclusively Christians with one Orthodox Jewish rabbi, represent the narrow perspective that America was founded as a ‘Judeo-Christian’ nation and must be guided by Biblical principles.”

The plaintiffs, who include Interfaith Alliance, Muslims For Progressive Values, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Hindus for Human Rights, argue that the commission, as structured, violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires such presidential commissions to be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view.”

JNS asked Patrick, the commission chair who is also the Texas lieutenant governor, about the lawsuit after the hearing was over. He declined to comment.

Key election deadline Saturday night

The deadline to change your party affiliation in time for the June primary election is motzei Shabbat at 11:59 pm. You can do it online.

Jewish advocacy organization are urging voters in New York City to be sure they are registered as Democrats so they can vote in primary contests that

may be contested by radical candidates whose positions conflict with those of the Jewish community. Being a registered Republican or independent in NYC is like not voting, since the Democratic primary in NYC typically decides the election. You can change your party again after the primary.

Grounded in values that endure

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

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‘Every community has its unsung

heroes.

For the Jewish community, that person is Mark Goldfeder.’

By Menachem Wecker, JNS

Ten minutes into a conversation with JNS, Mark Goldfeder, director of the nonprofit National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC), offered a tip on how to title this article.

“I like to describe this story as how the Rivash stopped the terrorist attack in 2025,” said the lawyer and rabbi, who directs the Antisemitism Law Clinic at Touro University, where he is an assistant clinical law professor. “That’s my headline for it.”

The acronym refers to the Spanish rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (1326-1408), who led the community in Saragossa. Some 625 years ago, the Rivash wrote in responsum No. 387 (of 518 he penned) that Jewish settlement in Israel “isn’t only a mitzvah for the moment, but rather a commandment that applies forever and for all Jews.”

Goldfeder and colleagues cited that remark in a footnote in a July 24, 2024, complaint filed against Codpink, Palestine Youth Movement and Wespac Foundation in the US.District Court for the Central District of California. The month prior, protesters attacked Jews outside Adas Torah, an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles.

“Bear-sprayed worshippers. Jews assaulted, intimidated and threatened. Bloodied members of the Jewish community, whose only transgressions were to attend synagogue,” Goldfeder and colleagues alleged. “The images that emerged from the antisemitic riot outside Adas Torah synagogue on June 23, 2024, are outrageous.”

They wrote that “deplorably, those images also are no longer surprising” but “are emblematic of an increasingly common occurrence: organized riots that violently target the American Jewish community.”

The defendants, they alleged, “prevented congregants from attending an event” that “not only involved prayer but also sought to educate Jewish congregants about housing opportunities in Israel that would fulfill the religious commandment to ‘make aliyah’.”

They cited the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a federal law known for its acronym FACE, which “ensures that worshippers may practice their respective religions free from persecution, interference and intimidation.”

On Page 14, the plaintiffs quote the Babylonian Talmud and Sifrei, part of the midrash, which state that living in Israel “is equivalent to all of the other commandments in the Torah.” They add, citing the Rivash, that “the preparations to make aliyah, including educating oneself about the options for doing so and then buying a home, are also considered at least a partial fulfillment of the commandment.”

Goldfeder said that after the “pogrom” outside Adas Torah, “everyone said the right things, from the mayor to the president, but no one did anything.”

So he and colleagues brought the FACE Act case.

“It’s an abortion clinic act. There’s a paragraph two, which nobody reads,” he said. “This is probably the biggest professional accomplishment I’ll ever have, which is the whole goal of NJAC — literally to expand the toolbox of available options.”

After Oct. 7, Goldfeder realized that cases brought under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars “national origin” discrimination, didn’t work.

“Literally nobody has ever lost their funding because of Title VI. Even the cases you’re reading now in the Trump administration, they’re not actually Title VI cases,” he said. “Trump is very clear in all the briefs. This is not Title VI, because they don’t want Title VI. It doesn’t work.”

“Our biggest accomplishment to date probably in terms of practicality is now when Park East happens, everyone from the Department of Justice to every major Jewish organization says, ‘This is obviously a FACE Act thing,’” he said. “We made that up.”

On Jan. 8, protesters blocked Jews from entering a pro-Israel event at Park East Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A spokeswoman for Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that synagogues shouldn’t host events that violate international law.

When Democrats sought to pass the FACE Act in the 1990s, they wanted to get Republicans to sign on, so they allowed a sentence that said that protesters can’t obstruct houses of worship, in addition to abortion clinics.

The law bars “intentionally injuring, intimidating or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate or interfere, any person by force, threat of force or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” It also bans “intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a place of religious worship.”

After protesters disrupted a church service in Minnesota, the state attorney general, Keith Ellison, told former CNN host Don Lemon — who now faces federal charges in connection with the protest — that it wasn’t a violation of the FACE Act.

“The FACE Act … is designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights. … You cannot use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers,” Ellison said. “So how they are stretching either of these laws to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior, or the perceived behavior, of a religious leader is beyond me. But they don’t mind stretching these days.”

Goldfeder said that the protest was “an unbelievably clear FACE Act violation.” Ellison “hasn’t read the fine print,” he said. “That’s how unknown this part of the bill was until very recently.”

The event at Adas Torah in Los Angeles was about aliyah

“So they responded and said, ‘This is not a religious event. This is a real estate event where they’re selling real estate. Nothing religious here,’” Goldfeder said.

He told the court that the Talmud considers aliyah a religious commandment that is shakul

from a “line of rabbis” on his mother’s side, if Talmudic training really helps for law school. He says the answer — in Talmudic fashion — is yes and no.

In the Talmud, there is never a wrong answer, according to Goldfeder.

“There’s an answer that’s 70% right and 30% wrong, and one that’s 30% right, and so you go with the 70% one,” he said. “But you’re always aware, too, that it might shift and then that 30% becomes the standard.”

The Talmud also goes through all the wrong answers (hava aminahs) before arriving at the correct one. “By the time you get to the bottom, you’ve explored every other option,” which is also how his legal practice works, Goldfeder said.

“I was a rabbi before I became a lawyer, which informs a lot of my worldview, and I also worked in the beit din system as a rabbinic judge for a little while, so I spent a lot of time studying inside the Jewish world then also outside the Jewish world,” he said.

k’neged kulam (equal to all other commandments in the Torah, and “according to these many early commentators, including Rivash section 387, hechsher aliyah, preparing to make aliyah, is also considered a partial fulfillment,” he said.

Goldfeder said he had remembered a relevant discussion in the Talmud that, in certain circumstances, one can sign documents to buy land in Israel on the Sabbath, but not that the commentator was Rivash. He looked up the sources on the website of either the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project or Sefaria.

“The judge basically said, ‘I don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole. That’s where the law and religion training melded with the rabbinic training,” he said. “This is clearly not a made-up thing, and courts aren’t allowed to say, ‘I do’ or ‘do not think this is a good religious belief’.”

But courts are allowed to test sincerity.

“If I could string cite 15 rishonim, it’s a sincere belief,” he said. “We’re not making it up.”

Esther Panitch, the only Jewish member of the Georgia state legislature, said that “every community has its unsung heroes — the people who don’t wait for applause, who don’t chase headlines, who simply put their heads down and do the work.”

“For the Jewish community, that person is Mark Goldfeder. I have had the privilege of working alongside Mark as his partner in passing Georgia’s antisemitism definition bill and as a board member of the National Jewish Advocacy Center he built from the ground up,” she said. “I have watched him answer the call at every hour, for every Jewish student afraid to walk across campus, for every family targeted for loving Israel, for every community that felt abandoned.”

“He never says no. He never walks away,” Panitch continued.

“Mark fights for us in the courtrooms, in the halls of Congress, state capitols and in the quiet moments no one ever sees,” she said. “He is the person Jewish families call on their worst day, and he shows up — every single time.”

Goldfeder grew up in a Modern Orthodox home in Brooklyn and moved with his family, when he was 10, to Monsey. His parents sent him to schools to the right of Modern Orthodoxy, which he thinks was a good idea.

“There were periods of my life post-high school where I was studying literally 15 to 16 hours a day talmudically, and I think that that helps.” People often ask Goldfeder, who comes

His doctorate focused on religious liberty, and in the first part of his career, he worked on First Amendment free-speech issues. In the last decade, more and more people came to him with their antisemitism problems. He was teaching at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, where he ran the religious liberty clinic.

“I got a lot of hands-on training teaching the next generation, and all of these would be pieces that would later come into play when I started doing more communal work back in 2016,” he said. “I was asked to help draft some of the anti-BDS bills around the country, and I did because I’d been developing a secondary specialty in international law.”

Joe Sabag, then at the Israeli-American Coalition for Action and now working for Goldfeder, did the asking, and Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and executive director of its Middle East and international law center, was also involved.

In 2018, Goldfeder penned what became the model for state bills nationwide recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred. After the bill passed, he went to seven states and talked to legislators about it. He said he wrote down every question they asked him about the bill, which became the basis of his 2023 Penn State Law Review article “Codifying Antisemitism.”

The bill has now passed “in some form or fashion in over 35 states,” he said. “That was the beginning of NJAC.”

Goldfeder says he is optimistic about the future, even as the antisemitic competition, now staffed by a second generation of lawyers, is putting up more of a fight.

“The first generation was really bad at the game,” he said. “Motivated by hate, it would seem like. Nowadays, I’m not saying they’re not motivated by hate, but they do a much better job of thinking strategically.”

“The nice part about useful idiots is that they’re still idiots, and they make idiot mistakes,” he said. “Like in the FACE Act case. They advertised, ‘Let’s go block a synagogue,’ and then they said, ‘Hey, look, we’re blocking a synagogue’,” he said. “Then they bragged about blocking a synagogue.”

Protesters who hand out pro-Hamas literature can’t help themselves, according to Goldfeder. “The first generation of lawyers was more along those lines,” he said. “This generation is better, and they’ve done things that I have to admire from an artistic point of view.”

One innovation is the “entire invention of the category of anti-Palestinian racism.”

In the wake of a 300% spike in Jew-hatred after Oct. 7, antisemitic organizers identified what they called a 600% increase in Islamophobia.

“Have you ever seen an anti-Islamic encampment? I haven’t, because they don’t exist. So what did they do? I think it’s evil, but I have to say that it wasn’t a bad strategic move.

“They basically told all of their followers, ‘Look. Every time someone complains about antisemitism, that itself is Islamophobic and also anti-Palestinian racism’,” he said. “Literally overnight, a 300% increase in antisemitism became a 600% increase in Islamophobia, to the point that they got that to the White House level, where people were quoting that made-up number.”

Not only did lawyers on the other side create numbers whole cloth, according to Goldfeder, but they started filing “sister briefs” to everything he and his colleagues did.

The nonprofit would file a complaint with the US Education Department’s civil-rights office about widespread Jew-hatred on campus.

“They would respond by filing a copy of that brief with the terms inverted,” he said. The National Jewish Advocacy Center would identify an antisemitic encampment, and the other side would admit that there was an encampment, but would say that complaining about it was Islamophobic.

The Education Department, under the former administration, didn’t act and “basically threw up their hands and said, ‘Oh, well. You know, both sides.’ And they allowed them to muddy the waters,” Goldfeder said. “That muddying of the waters is a brilliant legal tactic. If you can muddy the waters enough to let it slide, then you’ve essentially won the game.”

The second generation of lawyers targeting Jews and Zionists is more talented, but Goldfeder said that “I believe, thank G-d, we’re still ahead of the game.”

“I don’t know if I should say out loud, but this litigation is kind of our national sport as a Jewish people,” he said. “Thank G-d, we have a lot of good people working really hard.”

One of the nonprofit’s victories was in a ruling, in which a judge found that attacking a Jew for any aspect of the person’s faith, including wearing an Israeli flag, is antisemitic and antithetical to US values.

Afew years ago, when Goldfeder testified in Congress, a Democratic member asked him if antisemitism was worse on the right or the left. Goldfeder told the congressman that both are bad, but that the left was more dangerous.

“You can’t in polite society say, ‘I’m a Nazi, and I hate Jews,’ but

Responsa of the Rivash, the Spanish rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (1326-1408). Soncino, 1546-47, which was part of a

you can in polite society say, ‘I support Hamas, and I hate Zionists’,” he said at the time. “Turns out I was wrong. You can now say in polite society, ‘I’m a Nazi’.”

That’s why Goldfeder was one of the first to leave the Heri-

tage Foundation, after the head of the conservative think tank defended former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has repeatedly made antisemitic and anti-Israel comments.

“I think you need to draw lines,” Goldfeder said.

The law won’t change antisemitic hearts and minds, but Goldfeder thinks that at encampments, some 90% of participants don’t know which river and which sea are referenced in the slogan “from the river to the sea,” and are just there for the pizza.

“Many of them have been genuinely misled into thinking that they are on the right side of history,” he said. “That 10% you’re never going to change. But the 90% of our future congressmen, senators, presidents, citizens, our kids’ classmates — whatever it might be — you might save them if you get a court to explain to them that you don’t realize this, you’ve been in bed with Hamas.”

Maybe some of that 90% walks away, “and that kind of thing, I think, could save our country,” he said. “We’re never winning in all of these cases. You have to calibrate what winning looks like. It’s not like ‘Law & Order,’ and it’s not neat, and it’s not quick, but there are real steps along the way that I think can have demonstrably important effects on our entire community broadly.”

That doesn’t mean that he thinks that things will ever get back to the way they were before Oct. 7, “but I’m confident we can get back to a point where people are comfortable walking in public wearing a yarmulke, which they’re not always now, even in New York City,” he said.

“I think that we are addressing head-on this lie that we’ve allowed to fester for too long, that you can attack a Jewish person because of a real or perceived connection to the State of Israel and just claim that it was politics,” he added.

When he meets with legislators, he asks them if it would be ethnic discrimination to attack a Chinese person over the country’s trade policies or a Russian person because its president, Vladimir Putin, attacked Ukraine. The lawmakers say, “of course.”

“If I attack a Jew, because I hate Netanyahu or because I hate Israel, is that?” he asks. “No. That’s politics,” he is told.

“One guy actually said to me that he doesn’t think a swastika should be antisemitic. He said, ‘Young man, show me where in the Torah of the Talmud it says anything about a swastika. You shouldn’t be so sensitive,’” Goldfeder said. “I said, ‘I’ll give you 6 million reasons why, and a million-and-a-half were children.’ Then he called me ‘condescending.’”

“The person who says to me, ‘No, that’s politics,’ I’m not getting their vote. Doesn’t make a difference what I say to them. Logic plays no part here,” he said. “Let me focus on the people I might be able to talk to and help.”

WINE

It’s time to prepare for our Purim-filled feast

Not only do we eat hamantaschen on Purim, we are also supposed to have a raucous and joyous feast.

When I was very little my grandma told me she always made a huge meal for Purim with homemade kreplach, potato knishes that were shaped like triangles, and hamentashen. Mostly she made them with mohn filling which I did not like, but I did like the ones she made with apricots and dates.

My mother never followed that tradition. We were in too much of a hurry to get into our costumes and get to temple for the costume parade and the hamantaschen there. So our dinners were rushed and often just a bowl of cereal — at our insistence.

That tradition continued with my own kids as we struggled with costumes and hurried to get to temple in time for the festivities there. But we did try to incorporate some of the triangular and hidden foods that are traditional to eat on Purim. I would make them grilled cheese sandwiches in an old contraption called a Toast-ite that totally enclosed the filling inside the bread. My kids loved those.

•We eat triangular foods to “dispose” of Haman and his three-cornered hat.

•We eat kreplach or other stuffed, hidden foods to symbolize the hidden hand of G-d in the Purim story.

•We eat vegetarian foods because Esther hid her Judaism by declaring herself a vegetarian and eating only vegetables, fruits and legumes. (Yes, also eat meat in this feast.)

Did you know that in some families it is customary to make a very long, thin challah to symbolize the long ropes that Haman intended to use to hang Mordechai? Let the kids help make long rope-like challot, perhaps with raisins hidden in the braids.

And finally, there is the dessert of delicious hamantaschen. I fill mine with raspberry jam and mini chocolate chips, Nutella, Apricot jam, walnuts,and more. Fill your hamantaschen with your favorite filling and have a wonderful Purim feast.

Spicy Roasted Chickpeas (Pareve)

You might want to make several of these in different flavors. Will stay in a tightly closed container. If you like, you can crisp them in the oven before serving.

• 2 to 3 cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained and placed on paper towels to dry

• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil or canola oil

• 1/2 to 1 tsp. kosher salt

• Any of the following spice/herb blends you like:

• 1 Tbsp. garlic powder, 1tbsp. onion powder, 1 tsp. dried chives

• 2 tsp. cumin, 1 tsp. chili powder, 1/4 to ½ tsp. cayenne

• 1 Tbsp. tamari sauce, 1 tbsp. finely minced garlic, 1 tsp. sugar, 1/4 tsp. cayenne

• 1 Tbsp. tamari, 1 tsp. toasted sesame oil, 1 tsp. finely grated garlic, 1 tbsp. sesame seeds

• 1 Tbsp. sage, 1 tbsp. tarragon, 1 tbsp.

finely minced parsley

• 2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar, 2 tbsp. finely minced garlic, 1/2 tsp. cayenne

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Set aside.

Drain and thoroughly rinse the chickpeas. Place them on several sheets of paper towels to dry. Place some towels on tops and press gently to dry them.

Place the chickpeas in a bowl and add the oil, salt and kosher salt. Place on the prepared pan in a single layer and place in the oven. Let roast for about 30 minutes, shaking the pan every 10 minutes or so.

Mix the spice ingredients for any of the combinations you like in a small cup or bowl. Remove the chickpeas from the oven and let cool for about 5 minutes. Carefully spoon the chickpeas into a bowl and add the spice mixture. Toss gently, pour back onto the pan and place back in the oven for an additional 10 to 15 minutes until golden. Remove from oven and let cool. Makes about 4 to 5 cups.

It is spicy and delicious and you can make it even spicier if you like by serving with some Schug or Harissa!

• 3 to 4 quarts water

• 1 large pullet, cut in quarters

• 4 (more to taste) large garlic cloves

• 3 medium onions, left whole

• 1 small bunch parsley, chopped

It’s time to prepare for our Purim-filled feast…

Continued from page 11

• 1 bunch fresh coriander, chopped

• 1 Tbsp. Cumin, less to taste

• Large pinch ground cardamom

• Large pinch turmeric

• 1 tomato, grated

• Small zucchini

• 3 potatoes, peeled, cubed

• Various vegetables (I use celery, leeks, parsnips, carrots, frozen corn niblets and frozen peas)

• Salt and pepper, to taste

Place the water in a very large soup pot (12 quarts). Bring to a boil. Add the onions and chicken. Reduce heat to a strong simmer and cook until chicken is cooked through, 2 hours. Add the spices, diced potatoes and other hard vegetable of your choice. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 90 minutes. Skim fat when necessary. Add more water if necessary.

Add zucchini and other soft vegetables of your choice. Cover and simmer for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, adding more water if necessary. One half hour before serving, grate the tomato over the simmering soup with a hand grater. The skin will stay on the grater. If you don’t have a grater, peel, seed and dice the tomato. Season with salt and pepper.

Honey Apricot Ginger Chicken (Meat)

This is a delicious chicken dish that recalls that old “finger licking good” phrase. The sweet pungent sauce is great

• 2 chickens cut into 8 pieces each

• 3 to 4 small onions, finely chopped

• 4 to 6 garlic cloves, finely minced, you can use more

• 3 Tbsp. (generous) finely grated fresh ginger

• 3/4 tsp. cinnamon

• 1/4 cup orange juice

• 1/2 cup apricot jam

• 1/4 cup honey

• OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup white wine

Heat a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Add the Canola oil and add the onions. Sauté until translucent and just starting to turn golden brown. Add the chicken pieces skin side down. Brown for several minutes and then turn. Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes.

In a small bowl, mix the garlic, ginger, cinnamon, orange juice, apricot jam and honey. Pour over the chicken and heat and cover. Add the wine, if you like, after about 20 minutes of cooking. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is cooked thoroughly. Serves 6 to 8.

NOTE: You can make an easier oven version of this. Place the chicken pieces in a roasting pan. Sauté the onions, add the garlic, then the orange juice, cinnamon, honey and jam in the same frying pan. Pour over the chicken pieces and bake at 375 until the chicken is cooked through, about 45 –60 minutes.

Honey and Red WineBraised Short Ribs (Meat)

• 8-10 whole black peppercorns

• 1 to 2 dried chilies

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste

• 1/2 tsp.black pepper, plus more to taste

• 6 to 7 lbs. short ribs,

• 3 Tbsp. canola oil

• 2 large onions, chopped

• 5 to 10 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

• 4 large carrots, peeled, trimmed, and chopped (about 3 cups)

• 3 celery stalk, trimmed and chopped (about 1 cup)

• 4 Tbsp. tomato paste

• 1 750 ml. bottle dry red wine

• 3 cups low sodium beef stock

• 3/4 to 1 cup honey

• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar

• 3 Tbsp molasses

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wrap peppercorns, chilies, and bay leaves with cheesecloth, tie and set aside. Season short ribs on both sides with salt and pepper.

Heat the oil in a large skillet and sear the ribs until they are browned on both sides. Remove the ribs to a large roasting pan.

Add more oil to the skillet of needed. Add the onions and cook until golden. Add the carrots and celery and cook until softened. Add the garlic and cook one minute, until fragrant. This should take about 20 to 30 minutes total time.

Make a hole in the middle of the veggies and add the tomato paste. Leave it until it begins to sizzle and the edges turn brown. Mix with the veggies and add the wine. Mix well. Add the spices in the cheesecloth and bury them in the liquid. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half. Taste and adjust seasonings including, honey and tomato paste, salt and pepper.

Add the beef stock, honey, brown sugar and molasses and mix well. Simmer until reduced by half, another 15-20 minutes.

Pour the liquid over the ribs and cover the pan with a double layer of foil, sealing the edges very tightly. Place in the oven and roast for 2 to 4 hours or until the ribs fall off the bone and are easily pulled apart with a fork.

Remove the meat to a platter, remove and

discard the cheesecloth and spices, and reduce the liquid further to about 2 cups. You can strain it, put it in a blender or serve as is. I prefer the liquid as is.

You can pull the meat off the bones and discard the bones or serve the ribs intact with the gravy. It is great with rice, noodles or mashed potatoes.

Mushroom Baked Rice (Parve or Meat)

• 4 large onions, diced

• 1 lb. sliced white mushrooms, or a mix of many kinds of mushrooms

• 2 to 10 cloves garlic, to taste, you can even leave it out if you hate garlic

• 4 to 6 Tbsp. Canola oil, more as needed

• 1 quart Kosher no chicken or chicken stock, more as needed

• Water, as needed

• 2 pkgs. onion soup mix

• 3 cups long white rice, (you can use brown rice, just add more liquid and cook longer.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 3or 4-quart glass or ceramic baking dish. Cut the onions in half and thinly slice them. I run them through the food processor, but cutting by hand works, too.

Heat a large, deep skillet over medium high heat. Add the Canola oil. When shimmery, add the onions. Cook, stirring often, until they are deeply golden brown and lightly caramelized, up to 35 minutes. If the onions begin to stick, add water by the spoonful and scrape up stuck bits with a wooden spoon or silicon spatula. Reduce heat as they brown, so they won’t burn. Remove the onions to a bowl and add the mushrooms. Cook them until they exude their juices. Continue to cook until the liquid begins to evaporate just a bit. Add the garlic, mix well and cook for 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Add the caramelized onions and mix well. Turn off the heat.

Rinse the rice and place in a large pot. Add the amount of liquid as directed on the rice package, using the stock and additional water as needed. Add the dry onion soup mix and one additional cup of water. Add one tablespoon Canola oil and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer, stir, and cover.

Cook until the rice is almost done, but still hard in the center. There will still be liquid in the pot. Add the onions and mushrooms. Mix and pour into the prepared baking dish. It should have some visible liquid.

Smooth the top, cover tightly with foil, and bake for 35 minutes. Remove the foil, check for liquid. If the rice is still hard, add more liquid. Bake for another 10 minutes, until the rice is cooked through, but not mushy. Serves a crowd.

NOTE: You may need to add some additional water during the baking process.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

It’s ‘6-7’ day at HALB

If you can’t beat them, join them, right? First grade students at HALB celebrated the 67th day of school with writing and math activities.

YCQ milestone ‘starter’ siddurim

Kindergarten students at the Yeshiva of Central Queens reached a milestone when they received “starter siddurim” which will help with tefillah readiness, equipping them with the skills needed as they transition toward using a formal siddur. The starter siddur was a collaborative effort, compiled by Early Childhood Director Morah Shana Weiss, Judaic Studies Director Morah Mashie Kopelowitz, and the Kindergarten morot. Their goal is to instill a sense of kedu-

shah and excitement about tefilah from an early age. The siddur includes tefilot paired with illustrations for the students to color. This enables students to build a relationship to the text as they engage with each page. Through this hands-on approach, they learn practical skills, such as how to correctly handle a siddur and which direction to open it, while discovering the spiritual significance of the words and pictures within. May Hashem always hear their tefilot!

Grandparents join Tu B’Shvat fest at Zucker in 5 Towns

HAFTR

7th grade at Anne

HAFTR seventh graders visited the Anne Frank exhibit at the Center for Jewish History, bringing Jewish memory, identity and core HAFTR values to life.

In their lashon classes, students have been learning about Anne and her diary as the voice of a Jewish girl not so different from themselves. Through her words, they’ve explored hope, fear, courage and the quiet strength of holding onto one’s identity even in the darkest times.

At the exhibit, students viewed artifacts, images and recreations of her story. The trip was a step in the students’

ongoing journey of Holocaust education. Next year, they will have the opportunity to participate in the Names, Not Numbers program.

This exhibit helped students build a more personal connection so that future encounters with survivors’ stories will be approached with greater sensitivity, understanding and respect for the dignity of every individual.

Students will revisit this period in greater depth in social studies classes later this year. Those lessons will be layered with the emotional understanding that

Frank exhibit

comes from having “met” Anne.

Throughout the trip, the seventh graders showed maturity, thoughtfulness and care for the material and for the sacred responsibility of engaging with Jewish history. They asked meaningful questions, reflected deeply and honored the space with the seriousness it deserved.

Anne Frank’s diary is often described as a story of tragedy, but it is also a story of the enduring human spirit. HAFTR students are learning to remember, to feel and to carry the Jewish people’s story forward with pride, empathy and purpose.

In honor of of the Tu B’Shvat holiday, students at Zucker Jewish Academy Five Towns celebrated themes of growth and family by honoring a grandparent or another special person in their lives.

The celebration included a festive brunch, painting plant pots and planting seeds such as sunflowers, green beans or thyme and other herbs.

Students also enjoyed a custom Tu B’Shvat bingo game, making the day both meaningful and fun.

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 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: 6:180

Fri Feb 27 / 10 Adar

Tetzaveh • Zachor

Five Towns candles: 5:25 • Havdalah: 6:36

Scarsdale candles: 5:25 • Havdalah: 6:26

Mon March 2 / 13 Adar • Ta’anis Esther Tue March 3 / 14 Adar

Purim

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

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

G-d, like the beat of our lives, is in the details

rabbi Sir

On the opening phrase of Mishpatim: “And these are the laws you are to set before them” (Shemot 21:1), Rashi comments:

Wherever the word “these” is used, it signals a discontinuity with what has been stated previously. However, where the term “and these” is used, it signals a continuity. Just as the former commands were given at Sinai, so these were given at Sinai.

Why then are the civil laws placed in juxtaposition to the laws concerning the altar? To tell you to place the Sanhedrin near to the Temple.

You should not think, “I will teach them a section, or law, two or three times until they know the words verbatim, but I will not take the trouble to make them understand the reason and its significance.” Therefore the Torah states “that you shall set before them” like a fully laid table with everything ready for eating. (Rashi on Shemot 21:1)

Three remarkable propositions are being set out here which have shaped the contours of Judaism ever since.

The first is that just as the general principles of Judaism (Asseret HaDibrot means not “Ten Commandments” but “Ten Utterances” or “Ten Overarching Principles”) are Divine, so are the details.

In the 1960s the Danish architect

Arne Jacobson designed a new college campus in Oxford. Not content with designing the building, he went on to design the cutlery and crockery to be used in the dining hall, and supervised the planting of every shrub in the college garden.

When asked why, he replied in the words of another architect, Mies van der Rohe: “G-d is in the details.”

That is a Jewish sentiment. There are those who believe that what is holy in Judaism is its broad vision, never so compellingly expressed as in the Decalogue at Sinai. The truth however is that G-d is in the details:

“Just as the former were given at Sinai, so these were given at Sinai.”

The greatness of Judaism is not simply in its noble vision of a free, just, and compassionate society, but in the way it brings this vision down to earth in detailed legislation. Freedom is more than an abstract idea. It means (in an age in which slavery was taken for granted — it was not abolished in Britain or the United States until the nineteenth century) letting a slave go free after seven years, or immediately if his master has injured him. It means granting slaves complete rest and freedom one day in seven.

These laws do not abolish slavery, but they do create the conditions under which people will eventually learn to abolish it. No less importantly, they turn slavery from an existential fate to a temporary condition. Slavery is not what you are or how you were born, but something that has happened to you for a while, and from which you will one day be liberated. That is what these laws — especially the law of Shabbat — achieve, not in theory only, but in living practice. In this, as in virtually every other aspect of Judaism, G-d is in the details.

The second principle, no less fundamental, is that civil law is not secular law. We do not believe in the idea “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to G-d what belongs to G-d” — we believe in the separation of powers but not in the secularization of law or the spiritualization of faith.

The Sanhedrin or Supreme Court must be placed near the Temple to teach that law itself must be driven by a religious vision. The greatest of these visions, stated in this week’s sedra, is:

Do not oppress a stranger. You know what it is to be a stranger, for you yourselves were strangers in Egypt. (Shemot 23:9)

The Jewish vision of justice, given its detailed articulation here for the first time, is based not on expediency or pragmatism, nor even on abstract philosophical principles, but on the concrete historical memories of the Jewish people as “one nation under G-d.”

Centuries earlier, G-d has chosen

Without the vision, law is blind. Without the details, the vision floats in heaven.

Abraham so that he would “teach his children and his household after him to keep the way of the L-rd, by doing what is right and just” (Bereishit 18:19). Justice in Judaism flows from the experience of injustice at the hands of the Egyptians, and the G-dgiven challenge to create a radically different form of society in Israel.

This is already foreshadowed in the first chapter of the Torah with its statement of the equal and absolute dignity of the human person as the image of G-d. That is why society must be based on the rule of law, impartially administered, treating all alike — “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.” (Shemot 23:2-3)

To be sure, at the highest levels of mysticism, G-d is to be found in the innermost depths of the human soul, but G-d is equally to be found in the public square and in the structures of society: the marketplace, the corridors of power, and courts of law. There must be no gap, no disso-

ciation of sensibilities, between the court of justice (the meeting-place of man and man) and the Temple (the meeting-place of man and G-d).

The third principle - and the most remarkable of all - is the idea that law does not belong to lawyers. It is the heritage of every Jew.

Rashi wrote “Do not think, I will teach them a section or law two or three times until they know the words verbatim, but I will not take the trouble to make them understand the reason and significance of the law. The Torah states ‘that you shall set before them’ like a fully laid table with everything ready for eating.” This is the origin of the name of the most famous of all Jewish codes of law, Rabbi Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch.

From earliest times, Judaism expected everyone to know and understand the law. Legal knowledge is not the closely guarded property of an elite. It is — in the famous phrase — “the heritage of the congregation of Jacob” (Devarim 33:4).

Already in the first century CE Josephus could write that “should any one of our nation be asked about our

laws, he will repeat them as readily as his own name. The result of our thorough education in our laws from the very dawn of intelligence is that they are, as it were, engraved on our souls. Hence to break them is rare, and no one can evade punishment by the excuse of ignorance.”

That is why there are so many Jewish lawyers. Judaism is a religion of law — not because it does not believe in love (“You shall love the L-rd your G-d,” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”) but because, without justice, neither love nor liberty nor human life itself can flourish. Love alone does not free a slave from his or her chains.

The sedra of Mishpatim, with its detailed rules and regulations, can sometimes seem a let-down after the breathtaking grandeur of the revelation at Sinai. It should not be. Yisro contains the vision, but G-d is in the details.

Without the vision, law is blind. But without the details, the vision floats in heaven. With them the Divine Presence is brought down to earth, where we need it most.

Our lenders are not Shylocks.

Was he a villain or a victim?

While a variety of interpretations focus on Shakespeare’s infamous Shylock character in the play, “The Merchant of Venice,” there can be no doubt that the mythical, greedy Jewish moneylender became a classic symbol for damaging depictions of Jews to this very day.

Despite the sympathetic interpretations of some commentators, the malicious image of a greedy loan shark extracting his “pound of flesh” became a virulent and regular resource for antisemites over the ages.

In the Middle Ages, with Jews barred from land ownership, membership in trade guilds and many other professions, lending money was one of the few livelihoods accessible to them. That didn’t stop Shakespeare or many others from portraying the victim as a villain.

So, what is the truth about Jews and moneylending? Let’s look at a famous verse in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim:

When you will lend money to My people, to

the poor among you, do not act toward him as an (overbearing) creditor; do not place interest payments upon him (Exodus 22:24).

The rabbis derived many laws from this one verse.

It is a mitzvah to lend money to those in need. We may not charge fellow Jews interest. We should be tolerant of borrowers who are struggling to pay their debts.

•Jews are not allowed to charge each oth-

er interest.

•Non-Jews do charge us interest, so we may charge them.

That’s equitable and reasonable.

The word gemach is a shortened form of gemilus chesed, literally “bestowing kindness.” It covers a wide variety of good deeds in the realm of welfare and helping those in need. A gemach usually refers to an interest-free loan association, where people can get necessary amounts of cash at favorable repayment terms. But it can also range from household items and medical equipment to wedding dresses and baby gear.

Jewish communities usually have more than one such organization. In Johannesburg, there are two large such associations that lend substantial sums, interest-free. One is more than 100 years old, and the other is younger but very active. In my own synagogue, I was privileged to have helped start such a fund, albeit smaller in scope, and I know other shuls have them as well.

In my own family, the idea of a gemach is deep-rooted. When I was growing up, my Zayde ran such an organization from our house. He did it all virtually singlehandedly until his passing in 1969. At that time, he was lending $1 million annually.

See Goldman on page 22

Snow falls, laws speak: Pathways to divine love

It has been freezing outside. Mounds of snow still line the streets. As we bundle ourselves against the wind and make our way down icy sidewalks, a question comes to mind. Is there any connection between this harsh winter weather and Parshas Mishpatim, with its detailed civil laws and ethical codes?

At first glance, the answer seems to be no. What could snow possibly have to do with our parsha? Yet I once heard a moving insight from Rabbi Larry Rothwachs that opened up a surprising connection, one that grows out of words we say every single morning.

The source is Tehillim 147, part of Pesukei D’Zimra. There, we describe Hashem’s control over the forces of nature — “He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. He

hurls His hail like pebbles, who can withstand His icy blast? He sends His word and melts them, He blows His wind and water flows.” And then the focus shifts — “He reveals His word to Yaakov, His statutes and His judgments to Israel.

That change is hard to miss. In one breath we are talking about snow, ice, frost, and hail. In the next, we are talking about Torah, Chukim, and Mishpatim. Why does this Kapitil of Tehillim move so quickly from weather to divine law?

Rabbi Rothwachs explained that this reflects two different paths through which a Jew can come to love Hashem. We are commanded in the mitzvah of Ahavas Hashem, to love G-d. But how does a person actually grow into that love?

The Rambam addresses this in two places and seems to point in two different directions.

In Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, the Rambam teaches that when a person reflects on the natural world and recognizes the wisdom and greatness of its Creator, this awareness leads to love, awe, and a desire to know Hashem more deeply.

One path to loving Hashem begins by looking outward, at the wonder of creation. That beauty

is obvious in spring and summer, but it is no less present in winter, when fresh snow quietly covers the ground outside.

Yet in Sefer HaMitzvos, when the Rambam discusses the mitzvah of loving Hashem, he takes a different approach. There, he writes that love of Hashem develops through Torah and Mitzvos. The path to love runs through learning, observance, and living with divine wisdom.

So which is it? Do we come to love Hashem through nature or through Torah? The answer is both. Rather than contradicting himself, the Rambam is showing us two complementary channels through which a person can develop a real and lasting love for Hashem.

We actually see this duality every day in our tefillah. In the blessings before Shema, the first Brachah, Yotzer Ohr, focuses on the natural world. We speak about light and darkness, the luminaries, and creation. Immediately afterward,

Ahavah Rabbah turns to Torah, to the gift of Mitzvos, and to the privilege of studying Hashem’s word. This juxtaposition is not random. Nature and Torah stand side by side as two ways of building a relationship with the Ribbono Shel Olam.

Sometimes, though, we split these worlds apart. A Mishnah in Pirkei Avos (Perek 3, Mishnah 7) points to this danger.

Rabbi Shimon teaches that if someone is walking along the road learning Torah and stops his learning to say, “How beautiful is this tree,” he has done something seriously wrong. One explanation is that the problem was not noticing the tree’s beauty, but feeling he had to stop learning in order to see Hashem in nature. If the same G-d gave the Torah and created the tree, then both reveal Him simultaneously.

The mistake is closing the Sefer as if we must choose between these two ways of encountering Hashem.

This idea appears at the beginning of Parshas Mishpatim. The parshah opens, “V’eileh HaMishpatim (And these are the laws).”

See Berlin on page 22

A life lesson: What insurance do you have?

As a physician, one of the questions I detested was the question that is the title of this week’s column.

I remember when a prospective patient would call the office and the first inquiry from office staff would be, “what is your name” or “who referred you” or “what is the problem you’re having?” But for many years the first exposure that most patients have to a new physician is “What insurance do you have?”— meaning how do I get paid! This was emblematic of what medicine had become, a business rather than a profession, and I decided this was not why I went into medicine.

Of course, the doctor never asked the question, do so would be too gauche. But this is the

absolute wrong way to greet a new patient and encourage trusting, caring and reassuring medical care.

But doesn’t everyone who works deserve to get paid? Of course, but maybe doctors, since they are performing a mitzvah, sometimes even pikuach nefesh, should do it for the sake of the mitzvah. How do we know doctors are even allowed to charge, according to Jewish Law? The answer is in our parsha, Mishpatim.

In a verse that would make lawyers jealous, we have a b’feirusha pasuk, an explicit verse in the Torah that doctors are required to be paid. In the section dealing with an individual who has been attacked and injured (21:18,19) we see the words “v’rapo yerapeh” (“he will surely be healed” or “he [the attacker] shall provide for healing.” Rashi, quoting Onkelus and the Gemara in Baba Kama (75a), says, he shall pay the cost of the doctor.

The Gemara there (83a) derives from these pesukim that the attacker is responsible for five things: nezek (damage), tzaar (pain and suffer-

ing), ripui (medical care), shevet (loss of wages) and boshet (embarrassment). No discussion of insurance.

This is the right and proper thing to do and is foundational for a functioning society. An attacker is responsible for his or her actions, not just for punishment purposes, but to make some form of restitution, compensation and healing.

Reading this shows us again that the Torah doesn’t just deal with theological and philosophical matters, it deals with real life, the minutiae of the conduct and consequences of our behavior. That is why halacha literally guides us as we walk through every facet of life. And if someone can’t walk, due to the actions of another, the perpetrator is personally responsible. This used to be self-evident, but it’s been for-

gotten or considered unacceptable in 21st century America.

Reflecting on this, I thought back about my over 40 years in medicine. As a Torah observant Jew, I remember reading and studying the Rambam, scholar and physician extraordinaire. He didn’t have prescription meds, modern surgical or immunological techniques, genetic insertion therapy or AI — but he knew what contributed to real healing.

Writing in his Mishnah Torah, he recommended moderation in diet, regular exercise (both mental and physical) and the importance of quality sleep. These are the three things I mention most in my regular talks on how to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease.

In Pirkei Avot (4:28), Rabbi Elazar Hakapar is quoted: “Jealousy, lust and glory remove a man from the world.” How much happier and healthier we would all be if we didn’t fall to the temptations of jealousy, didn’t lust for money or power or physical pleasures or run after kavod

See Mazurek on page 22

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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. Published weekly except during certain religious and civil holidays by The Jewish Star LLC New York City office: 5676 Riverdale Ave Suite 311, Bronx NY 10471 • LI office: 2 Endo Blvd, Garden City NY 11530 Here’s how to reach The Jewish Star — Write: Editor@TheJewishStar.com. Call: 516-622-7461 ext 291

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Time to confront the West’s pragmatic fallacy

When people are called pragmatic, it’s meant to imply reasonableness and the ability to compromise, occupying the sensible middle ground.

While that compliment is often justified, pragmatism has also been the West’s progressive undoing.

President Donald Trump is an arch pragmatist. His “art of the deal” is based on beating down the other side through negotiations in which he plays a superior hand.

This approach characterizes his foreign policy. Over both Iran and Gaza, however, it’s currently threatening to derail his intention to restore respect for American power — not to mention his much-desired legacy as the world’s principal peacemaker.

At the time of writing, a negotiation process still seems to be underway between the United States and the Iranian regime as an alternative to war. Trump’s terms include the regime giving up its nuclear program, ballistic missiles and sponsorship of terrorism — a demand for nothing less than surrender, to which the regime will never agree.

If Trump attacks Iran, we’ll finally know that he realizes that deal-making among nations has its limits. The fact that he keeps being persuaded to continue with these talks, however reluctantly, has created fears that he’s being played by the world’s supreme masters of tactical concessions, delay and manipulation.

In Gaza, where Trump prevented Israel from finishing off Hamas and forced the Israelis into a negotiated ceasefire, Hamas has regrouped and strengthened, daily breaking the

ceasefire by attacking Israeli troops.

Although Hamas refuses to demilitarize, Trump is moving ahead with the second stage of his Gaza peace plan, which he originally said was dependent on total demilitarization. The concession is another example of choosing pragmatism over principle.

This reveals a fallacy that Trump shares with his liberal universalist foes, who form the majority of mainstream diplomats and for whom “conflict resolution” rather than war is an article of faith.

This is based on the iron belief in the efficacy of negotiation and compromise, which relies in turn on the fallacy that everyone in the world, like the West, is governed by shorttermism and self-interest.

To such pragmatists, the idea that Islamists believe they are doing divine work in murdering and conquering unbelievers is too absurd to be taken seriously.

They therefore fail disastrously to realize that Tehran’s agenda is totally and irrevocably non-negotiable. They also fail to grasp that Hamas similarly views negotiated concessions as a sign of weakness, which galvanizes them to redouble their infernal efforts.

Last week, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, told the president that Hamas will demilitarize “because they have no choice.”

“They’re going to give it up. They’re going to give up the AK-47s,” he said. Why? What incentive do they have?

Moreover, Britain’s Telegraph reported last month that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, had been “hammering the phone” with Witkoff and other officials pushing for Hamas to be allowed to retain AK-47s and other personal weapons.

To break the deadlock, Powell was suggesting, just abandon the demand for demilitarization. Simple!

The sinuous Powell, who is highly influential in Washington, has a long record of pragmatic engagement with terrorists. His connections with IRA leaders during Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence in the 1980s and 1990s led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and 28 years of peace in the province.

The British are constantly thrusting this agreement down the the throats of the Americans as a genius strategy to end world conflicts.

Last year, Robert Ford, a former US ambassa-

dor to Syria, revealed that in 2023, Powell’s NGO Inter Mediate, which provides a bridge between diplomats and terrorists, had introduced Ford to the Al-Qaeda terrorist Mohammed al-Jolani, now known as Ahmed al-Sharaa and, since last January, Syria’s president.

Powell was thus instrumental in prompting Ford to help transform al-Jolani into a “moderate” statesman who said he had renounced his earlier extremism. Yet last month, after having slaughtered Alawites, Druze and Christians, alSharaa’s army smashed the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and captured swathes of Kurdish territory, inflicting atrocities in Rojava.

A ceasefire deal brokered by the Americans delivered the Kurds into al-Sharaa’s control. This has caused the Kurds to feel bitterly betrayed by the West, having previously acted as its invaluable allies against Islamic State, the terrorist group to which al-Sharaa once belonged.

Using the Good Friday Agreement as a global “conflict resolution” template is a category error. The IRA merely wanted a united Ireland, a reasonable if contested aspiration. Islamists, however — with their fanatical, absolute and non-negotiable agendas to destroy Israel, the Jews and the West — don’t suddenly become convinced of the benefits of pragmatism. Instead, they become convinced of the endless gullibility or amoral cynicism of Western diplomats bent upon making concessions which these implacable foes rightly perceive as weakness.

Pragmatism involves dismissing or even denying the importance of virtue and its opposite, evil. This is the hallmark of today’s Western world.

That’s why Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile financier whose copious files were dumped into the public arena last weekend — revealing the staggering scale and depth of his depraved influence — was not an aberration but the monstrous apotheosis of the culture. He was a spider spinning an enormous global web of financial, sexual and political corruption. People were drawn into it in huge numbers because he was a passport to money, sexual license and political influence. That was because all the West’s normative moral rules had broken down. Hyper-individualism had made licentiousness the order of the day. Absolutes such as truth or objectivity were abolished in favor of subjective opinions and the primacy of feelings and emotion.

Taking a Jewish stand on Super Bowl Sunday

When it comes to the hatred of global Jewry, unnecessary roughness is not a penalty but rather pay dirt. Many receive great satisfaction treating Jews as tackling dummies — blaming and besmirching them; resenting their success; cheering their losses. Antisemitism comes with a scorecard, and the smart money is always betting against the Jews.

Along with watching the action on the field, many Super Bowl viewers paid pay equal attention to the commercials. They cost more to air and tend to be more slickly produced than a typical TV ad — recall the dystopian “1984” for Apple; fashion models guzzling Pepsi-Cola or devouring Carl’s Jr.; celebrities working the drive-thru at Dunkin’ Donuts; Clydesdales hocking Budweiser.

Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, is a proud Jew who started a foundation to combat antisemitism. For the past three years, he has showcased his own Super Bowl commercial to address the spike in antisemitism — largely coinciding with Israel’s war in Gaza.

This year’s ad, which debuted the week before the game, features a Jewish boy walking the halls of his public high school, self-consciously mindful that his fellow classmates are snickering at him. He finally realizes that someone had affixed a sticky note to his backpack that reads: “DIRTY JEW.”

Out of nowhere comes a tall African-American teenager, possibly a popular jock, who says:

“Do not listen to them. They’re not worth it, bro.” The Jewish teen is befriended and talked out of fighting back. The ad ends with this takeaway: “2 in 3 Jewish teens have experienced antisemitism.”

The ad cost Kraft $15 million — a pricey gamble for 30 seconds of TV time. His motivation is admirable. Many Jewish titans of industry and finance have sat in the cheap seats and watched as the unkosher pigskin of antisemitism has bounced around in schools, universities, and mainstream media.

But is this TV commercial, righteous, sentimental and well-intentioned though it might be, the right remedy for these times? Will it make a difference for the 66 percent of Jewish teenagers who claim to have been bullied by Jew-hating juveniles?

Many took to social media, and to their own newsletters and columns, to debate the utility of the ad. Some felt it was inspiring and that Kraft’s

Kraft’s ad reflects the antisemitism of the 1950s — cold shoulders, hushed tones, country club restrictions, college quotas. Now it’s soaked with Jewish blood.

goodwill and largesse should be commended.

Others saw it as a predictably insipid surrender to contemporary Cossacks. Why not instead show the audience an ad for the derring-do of the IDF — the “Fauda”-styled rescues; the ingenious detonation of head-separating cell phones; the aerial wizardry that turned grounded missiles into wreckage in Lebanon and decimated Iran’s air-defense systems and nuclear capability?

Or, we could just have Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman gulping Gatorade, winking at the audience, then thrusting her arm forward while stating: “I am just the tip of this Jewish spear.”

No one seemed to pick up the ad’s central piece of misdirection, however. In what public high school in the United States would an African-American jock come to the aid of an ostracized nerdy Jewish boy? The BlackJewish alliance of the 1960s is no longer a footnote. Blacks are going the way of Kanye West (sorry, apology not accepted), Bobby Vylan, Kyrie Irving, Candace Owens, Tamika Mallory, Alice Walker, Stephen and DeShawn Jackson, Marc Lamont Hill, Nick Cannon, Ice Cube, and, of course, Louis Farrakhan.

The number of celebrity African-Americans who stand with Jews are few: Charles Barkley, Amar’e Stoudemire, Chris Rock, Van Jones and Tiffany Haddish (who is Jewish). Those names

do not a full roster make.

Pro-Zionists Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin would be appalled. If you’re a European Jew, Kraft’s Super Bowl ad is laughable. Snickering by a bunch of harmless white kids? That’s your hardship? In France, three children were shot dead by an Islamist outside their Jewish day school in Toulouse. A 12-year-old Jewish girl was dragged inside a shed and gangraped by three Muslim boys. A teenager nearly had his hand sawed off by a gang of Islamists. A college-aged student was tortured and burned alive by an Islamist group shamelessly called the Gang of Barbarians. These nightmares are not confined to France. In London, cars circle Marble Arch and blare out, “Rape Jewish daughters!” In Copenhagen, a Muslim gunman, aiming for a girl in the midst of her bat mitzvah, killed the synagogue’s security guard.

Sorry to sack this Super Bowl commercial, but what Kraft is showcasing doesn’t quite convey the x’s and o’s of the modern-day pogrom playbook. He’s still in the single T formation. Jews must mount a stronger goal line stand. He might as well be promoting saccharine because what he is describing is both fake and too sugary. It reflects the antisemitism of the 1950s — cold shoulders, hushed tones, country club restrictions, college admission quotas. October 7 demonstrated that Islamists don’t mind getting their uniforms dirty with Jewish blood while “progressives” — whose preferred epithet is “dirty Zionist” rather than “dirty Jew” — cheer maniacally from the sidelines.

Schoolyard antisemitism in the Middle East is much worse! The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education issued a report on the textbooks assigned to children in the West Bank. News flash: They are not being taught to simply harass Jews with sticky notes.

Fourth graders learn math by calculating the number of dead Israelis killed by suicide bombers on buses and inside shopping malls. By 14, they discover explosive belts and knives used to

See Rosenbaum on page 22

Francesca Albanese is a farce, but not for laughing

Humanity, we are told, now has a “common enemy.” That enemy, according to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special reporter on the Palestinian territories, is Israel — the Jewish state itself.

Albanese delivered this revelation Saturday night via video link at an Al Jazeera forum in Qatar, during a panel titled “The Palestinian Cause in a World Moving Toward Multipolarity.” She appeared on the same conference program as Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. This setting alone should have disqualified any claim to neutrality or moral authority.

Israel, Albanese explained, is the force destroying the world, peace and the lives of all humanity. It is the “common enemy” against

When a UN official becomes a megaphone for Hamas, international law and morality are turned upside down.

which the global community must now unite. A familiar accusation, recycled endlessly through history, merely stripped of its older theological language and repackaged in the jargon of international law.

This is not an analysis; it is a caricature. Israel is a country of roughly 10 million people — seven million of them Jews — so small it barely fits its name on a map. It is surrounded by states that have spent decades and billions of dollars attempting to erase it.

Those states have failed to produce a fraction of Israel’s scientific, agricultural, technological and democratic achievements. To Albanese, this is proof not of vitality or resilience, but of diabolical intent.

She invokes, approvingly, the language of Iran’s supreme leader, who has openly called Israel a “cancer” that must be removed, while financing Hamas and Hezbollah, building nuclear weapons and firing missiles at Israeli cities. Iran, she suggests, should not distract us with its own crimes — tens of thousands of Iranian citizens killed for demanding freedom. No, the Jews are worse. They are the universal enemy.

This is not accidental rhetoric. It is ideological training. Albanese presents herself as the authoritative voice of truth, speaking “in the name of the United Nations,” urging audiences to expel Jews — from schools, workplaces, social life and, ultimately, from Israel itself. The familiar progression is there for anyone willing to see it.

Israel’s repeated offers to share the land are dismissed as propaganda. The Oslo Accords, the withdrawal from Gaza, the

steady growth of the Palestinian population — none of this matters. Israel’s real crime, in Albanese’s telling, is that it is still alive.

Her appearance in Doha was particularly revealing. Sharing a platform with Hamas’s leader and Iran’s foreign minister, she condemned countries that maintain relations with Israel or engage in arms trade with it, accusing the West of amplifying a “genocidal” narrative. Yet she insisted that this moment also presents an “opportunity,” because, she claimed, international law has been “stabbed in the heart.”

What Albanese calls the last “peaceful toolbox” for freedom is, in practice, the weaponization of international law against the Jewish state. It is law drained of evidence, context

and moral clarity, deployed selectively to justify terror and absolve those who celebrate it. No, Francesca Albanese. The common enemy of the West — and of all those who genuinely seek peace — is not Israel. It is those who abuse international law to launder propaganda for Hamas, who distort the Holocaust, who deny documented atrocities, and who sit comfortably alongside jihadist leaders and Iranian officials while pretending to speak for human rights.

History has seen this story before. What is new is not the accusation, but the brazenness with which it is now delivered — under a UN title, on a Qatari stage, to applause. That is what should worry us all.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Better ways to fix immigration mess

PETER KING

Retired Congressman

The raging debate over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s policies and practices has potential long-term consequences for the nation that transcend the political partisanship of the moment.

Let me say up front that I support ICE, and believe it serves an important national purpose. I also believe that constructive changes can be made in those policies and practices that will not undermine the agency’s underlying mission to enforce America’s immigration laws.

As a grandson of immigrants who grew up in an immigrant environment, I strongly support legal immigration, which I believe is the lifeblood of our nation and has made us unique in the world. I emphasize “legal” because, especially in today’s world of drug cartels and violent gangs, it is vital that we know who it is we are inviting to live among us. There is also the reality that a country without borders isn’t really a country.

It is generally accepted that the Biden administration allowed at least 10 million immigrants to enter the country illegally. If only 1 percent of that number were bad actors, it would mean that at least 100,000 potential drug dealers, sex traffickers and gang members

ICE remains an essential component, but there is no longer a need for dragnet-style raids.

are loose on our streets and in our neighborhoods.

Some historical perspective: President Obama determined that 5 million undocumented immigrants in the country constituted a crisis, and during his administration more than 3 million were deported. Not only was there little or no media hysteria about Obama’s reliance on ICE, but it was actually hailed.

CNN, which now runs anti-ICE stories almost 24/7, not only supported ICE, but had star reporter Pamela Brown accompany ICE agents on raids as they broke into homes in a sanctuary city in the dark of night to apprehend undocumented immigrants. While ICE remains an essential component of immigration enforcement, raids no longer need to be as extensive. President Trump’s strict border-enforcement policies have brought illegal immigration to the lowest levels in decades. It is virtually nonexistent.

While the law must be enforced, however, there is always room for reasonable discretion. There is no longer the need for dragnet-style raids. The time has come for a more surgical strategy, focusing almost entirely on criminal elements.

Trump’s designation of border czar Tom Homan to oversee ICE operations in Minneapolis is a major step in that direction. Administration officials like Stephen Miller setting arbitrary quotas of apprehensions makes no sense and is inevitably counterproductive.

In dealing with Minneapolis, however, it must be noted that almost no other city or state where ICE is operating has seen these kinds of disturbances, primarily because other elected leaders, and local and state law enforcement, cooperate with ICE. At a minimum, that means keeping demonstrators from getting in the faces of ICE agents or interfering with their operations.

Also, Minnesota, and Minneapolis, must agree to honor ICE detainers and turn over undocumented criminals in their prisons and jails before their release. This minimizes the possibility of fatal interactions. (It is slanderous and irresponsible for officials and critics to describe ICE agents as “murderers.” While investigations are ongoing, the reasonable interpretation of the multitude of videos we’ve all seen is that, at worst, there were heat-of-the-moment reactions to unexpected incidents.)

Various “reforms” of ICE are being suggested, and I’m sure a number of them, such as the use of body cameras, will be accepted and implemented. But I would strongly oppose any requirement that ICE agents remove their masks.

Despite the hysterics of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others who shamelessly label ICE agents “Nazis” and “Gestapo,” wearing masks has become absolutely essential for them. There are well-organized, systematic efforts to

See King on page 22

Hamas solidarity movement done?

GLOBAL

With the war in Gaza fading from the headlines, at least for now, where does that leave the global solidarity movement with Hamas?

After more than two years of college encampments and mass demonstrations, accompanied by a dizzying rise in antisemitic hate crimes, fissures in the movement are increasingly discernible.

On the one hand, you have what might be called the traditional solidarity movement — long in the tooth organizations whose actions over the last twoand-a-half years have commanded the support of assorted celebrities and politicians. On the other, you have a more radical wing that, in addition to lionizing Hamas and Iran, is increasingly brazen when it comes to expressing hatred of Israel in openly antisemitic terms.

What unites these two wings is still far greater than what divides them.

•Both endorse the libel that the war in Gaza was

Worries continue, given the historic tendency of some anti-Zionist activists to embrace terrorism.

a “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs.

•Both denounce Zionism as a form of racism and eagerly push the myth that the Zionist movement “collaborated” with the Nazis during the Shoah.

•Both actively support the so-called BDS movement that calls for boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel.

•Both advocate a “solution” to the conflict that would replace the sovereign, democratic Jewish state with a single Arab state stretching “from the river to the sea.”

•Both regard the Islamic Republic as a force for progress, angrily opposing Israeli and US military action against a regime that in the last month has murdered more than 30,000 of its citizens.

Readers react to last week’s front page ICE column

Last week The Jewish Star featured a column by Yeshiva University senior Yechiel Amar, a resident of Woodmere, urging Orthodox Jews to speak out against abuses by ICE in the current immigration crackdown.

The feedback we’ve received has been divided between those thanking us for publishing the column and those upset that we ran it.

The only letter submitted for publication is the one below, by a resident of Woodmere who asked that his name not be published.

We invite further discussion.

Whatever one’s view of the current immigration mess [please see former Rep. Peter King’s commentary on this page], we consider it our duty as Jewish journalists to present an open discussion on this and other issues of importance to our Orthodox communities, something most Jewish media regrettably are not willing to do. We hope that you will continue to support us in this endeavor.

—Ed Weintrob, Editor and Publisher

To the editor,

I have to admit, I admire Mr. Amar’s passion in his piece “how long will we be silent.” I just wish he would use facts instead of mainstream media hyperbole.

Mr. Amar argues that ICE arrests people purely on the basis of race or ethnicity. This is patently false — a charge promulgated by farleft Democrats who hope to use this for political advantage. ICE uses databases (such as the National Crime Information Center Database), mobile biometric devices, mapping applications and local law enforcement (when they cooperate).

Every illegal alien who DHS serves administrative warrants (known as I-205) has had full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge.

For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have recognized the propriety of administrative warrants. ICE agents currently use these warrants to enter an illegal alien’s residence only after the alien has received a final order of removal from an immigration judge.

Where they part company, at least to some degree, is on the knotty question of the Jews.

In the traditional movement, attacking Jews as Jews is still seen as a counterproductive tactic; hence the deployment of “Zionist,” along with the pejorative “zio,” both of which essentially function as code words.

Additionally, the traditional movement has always made a great show of the handful of Jewish activists whose backing it has won, parading them as “Exhibit A” when countering claims of antisemitism. When it comes to the fate of the Jews gathered in Israel, the general consensus has been that they should become citizens of “Palestine,” rather than being expelled outright.

A large part of the reason why stems from the origins of the Palestinian solidarity movement in the radical ferment of the late 1960s. Many left-wing opponents of Zionism in Europe and North America highlighted the influence of Matzpen, a tiny group of Israeli Trotskyists mainly living abroad, whose rhetoric about severing the Israeli Jewish working class from its Zionist overlords in favor of unified, socialist Palestine chimed with the then zeitgeist.

The 2020s are different, however. While socialists are again raising their red flags, they are less careful, compared to their antecedents, about distinguishing between Jews and Israelis, and utterly disinterested, to the point of contempt, when it comes to the various divides within Israeli society.

That shift in attitude has opened a space for a newer and more extreme version of the Palestinian solidarity movement. Often led by second- or thirdgeneration Palestinians born abroad, without refugee status but with citizenship of their countries of residence, they include such groups as “Within Our Lifetime” in the United States and the newly formed

Mr. Amar depicts ICE agents as masked thugs without providing the context of why these agents have been forced to wear masks — to avoid being doxed and threatened for doing their jobs.

ICE doesn’t kidnap or “disappear” people. Everyone in ICE currently is accounted for, and you can search the Online Detainee Locator System to find someone.

Have ICE officers made mistakes? I am sure some have. But most of these agents are dedicated to finding, detaining, and deporting murderers, sex offenders, gang members and terrorists. Instead of receiving our disapprobation and censure, perhaps a thank you would be more appropriate.

What is particularly regrettable is Mr. Amar’s incredulous claim that the entirely legal effort to deport illegal immigrants is somehow similar in any way to the horrors of the Holocaust.

The argument that somehow offering $2,600 and a free flight or even expatriating illegal immigrants amounts to a “state-run campaign of persecution we now refer to collectively as the Holocaust” is not only defamatory; this claim grants a permission structure to those who are obstructing law enforcement and physically attacking ICE officers. This outlandish allegation is an insult to any of us who lost family in the genocide of our people.

Finally, this administration and DHS are simply upholding the law. Perhaps there should be some grand bargain that allows illegal immigrants to obtain some sort of legal status after a period of time.

If that is your argument, then fight to change the law. Don’t fight the brave men and women who are upholding the law against violent agitators, many of whom are funded by some of the same sources that fund anti-Israel causes.

400-year-old lesson from Jamaica’s first rabbi

Ifound myself last week standing in a spot on the outskirts of Kingston that most Jamaicans have never visited, and one which most people don’t know even exists. It was the Hunt’s Bay Jewish cemetery, one of Jamaica’s oldest burial grounds and the oldest still-existing Jewish cemetery in the Americas.

With thanks to Douglas Reid, president of the United Congregation of Israelites, I joined a small group of dedicated volunteers who work to preserve Jamaica’s 15 historic Jewish cemeteries, some of which date back more than 300 years. A number of these sites have yet to be restored or fully documented, yet each one holds an essential chapter of Jamaica’s history.

One of those chapters involves Jamaica’s first rabbi, Yoshiyahu (Josiah) ben David Pardo, whose grave we visited.

Standing at that site was chilling. And the synchronicity of events that led to that moment is something words can’t really describe.

I had recently received a phone call from Rabbi Dovid Weitman of São Paulo, Brazil, a colleague of my father-in-law and a publisher of rare, medieval Jewish writings. In the course of his research, he came across the teachings of Rabbi Pardo from 1671 and noticed that the author was listed as being buried in Jamaica. When he realized that this year marks the 400th anniversary of the rabbi’s birth, he asked me if I knew

Standing at that site was chilling.

where he was buried.

I reached out to Reid, who told me there was going to be a gathering of historians and community members at the very cemetery where Rabbi Pardo was buried. In the days leading up to the meeting, I familiarized myself again with his story.

Rabbi Pardo was born in Amsterdam in 1626 to a line of well-renowned Sephardic rabbis. At the time, Jews were slowly readopting their religious practices after centuries of persecution in Spain and Portugal. Like many others of his era, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in the Caribbean, serving the Jewish communities in Curaçao and then in Jamaica at Port Royal, the busiest and most important port in the New World.

He was a spiritual leader who helped establish Jewish life in the Caribbean, yet over time, his legacy was forgotten and the location of his grave lost. However, in 2008, a group of volunteers with the Jamaican Jewish Cemeteries Preservation Fund rediscovered his gravesite in the Port Royal cemetery, bringing attention to this key figure in history.

His tombstone, like many others from that era, contains a skull and crossbones. This is not, as many might assume, the Jolly Roger of the pirates, but rather, a symbol of death and mortality.

The rabbi’s writings took a similar path, which were unknown and unpublished throughout the centuries, only to be rediscovered and published in 2014 — by Rabbi Weitman.

Standing at Rabbi Pardo’s gravestone, I shared a short reflection from his own teachings. We recited a prayer for the deceased and sang a song for peace. Then we read the words carved into the stone: Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pardo “never turned right or left from the path of G-d” (2 Kings 22:2).

That sentence felt like it was directed toward me. Not only because it was a beautiful descrip-

tion of the holy rabbi’s life, but also because it was a message for everyone today.

In a world so full of noise, pressure and constant distractions, the message was clear: Stay on your path. Do not lose yourself chasing every shiny object or distraction. Don’t turn right or left when your conscience says to keep moving forward.

I had encountered this very same message in last week’s Torah portion, Yisro, which speaks of Moses’s father-in-law. He had explored every be-

lief system of his day before finally recognizing the truth of one G-d.

The verse records him saying “Blessed be G-d” for the first time in the Torah, which leads to an interesting question from the rabbis. This verse was said by many others before in history, so why was it that when Yisro, a spiritual seeker who converted to Judaism, said it, it was recorded?

The answer is that as someone who had lived

See Raskin on page 22

History repeats: Lessons from Menachem Begin

Among the fascinating factors of maintaining offices in Metzuzat Ze’ev (Ze’ev’s Fortress) on King George Street in Tel Aviv is how often Jewish history repeats itself.

The building started as a Betar club, long served as the ideological and administrative headquarters of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s movement, including Revisionist Zionism, Betar and the Herut/Likud. It now houses the Jabotinsky Institute, including a museum that is currently under a major renovation and slated to reopen in the fall; the Etzel Museum; the Betar Worldwide movement; and various national institutions of the Likud Party.

Sitting there recently reviewing archives, I came across words of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a Betari and the most devoted disciple of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who wrote: “I believe the lessons of the Holocaust are these…

•“First, if an enemy of our people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him. Don’t doubt him for a moment. Don’t make light of it. Do all in your power to deny him the means of carrying out his satanic intent.

ing themselves.

•“Sixth, there is a pattern to Jewish history. In our long annals as a nation, we rise, we fall, we return, we are exiled, we are enslaved, we rebel, we liberate ourselves, we are oppressed once more, we rebuild, and again we suffer destruction, climaxing in our own lifetime in the calamity of calamities, the Holocaust, followed by the rebirth of the Jewish state.

“So, yes, we have come full circle, and with Gd’s help, with the rebirth of sovereign Israel, we have finally broken the historic cycle: no more destruction and no more defeats, and no more oppression — only Jewish liberty, with dignity and honor. These, I believe, are the underlying lessons to be learned from the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust.”

And yet, every day sitting in the Jabotinsky Institute, we realize in so many ways how our people don’t remember and follow history. Today, too, terrible things will befall our people. And as much as we try to work and educate, we still see where the world is going and the dangers for the Jewish people.

•“Second, when a Jew anywhere in the world is threatened or under attack, do all in your power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world will think or say. The world will never pity slaughtered Jews. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.

We see where the world is going.

•“Third, a Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever threat looms.

•“Fourth, Jewish dignity and honor must be protected in all circumstances. The seeds of Jewish destruction lie in passively enabling the enemy to humiliate us. Only when the enemy succeeds in turning the spirit of the Jew into dust and ashes in life can he turn the Jew into dust and ashes in death. During the Holocaust,

it was after the enemy had humiliated the Jews, trampled them underfoot, divided them, deceived them, afflicted them, drove brother against brother, only then could he lead them, almost without resistance, to the gates of Auschwitz. Therefore, at all times and whatever the cost, safeguard the dignity and honor of the Jewish people.

•“Fifth, stand united in the face of the enemy. We Jews love life, for life is holy. But there are things in life more precious than life itself. There are times when one must risk life for the sake of rescuing the lives of others. And when the few risk their own lives for the sake of the many, then they, too, stand the chance of sav-

As Begin said in a speech at the grave of Jabotinsky:

We heard you calling diaspora liquidate the diaspora before the diaspora liquidates you. In those days, on the threshold of those awful days, you told us, your pupils, your children: A day will come when our people will call upon you to conduct their affairs, to take responsibility for their future. That day has come.

We believe in the vision of Jabotinsky — strong, proud Zionism — aliyah and standing up. We must continue to work for it, even as we know much darker days await the Diaspora community.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Goldman… Mazurek…

Continued from page 17

As a teenager, I remember helping him prepare his bank deposits at our dining-room table. One night, the check deposit didn’t balance. He was something like 25 cents out. It was already 11 o’clock at night, and I was tired, so I said, “Zayde, here’s a quarter, I’m going to bed.” Nein! Es muz shtimen! he countered in Yiddish. “No! It must balance!”

After him, my father (very ably assisted by my mother) took it over, and it became much bigger. My father would tell the story of a fellow who called him at 2 am to request a loan. He said, “Do you know what time it is?” The man replied, very calmly, “Yes, but I can never get hold of you during the day.” Believe it or not, he got the loan. Since their passing, my brother-in-law has assumed leadership, and it has grown exponentially.

These are all Jewish organizations that fulfill the commandment from this week’s Torah portion. There are also untold numbers of individual Jews who lend their own money privately to people in need.

In fact, the Talmud states that lending money interest-free is in many ways a greater kindness than charity.

•Firstly, charity is for the poor, while a gemach serves not only those who are poor but also businessmen who may require some bridging of their finances.

•Second, there is less compromise to the dignity of a recipient in taking a loan as opposed to charity.

•Third, extending a loan may help prevent the recipient from becoming a charity case.

And certainly, the fact that this resource exists saves the bitter bite of loan sharks, where high, compounded interest rates devour borrowers.

So, are Jews Shylocks? Are we greedy moneylenders — bloodsuckers grabbing money from unfortunates in desperate situations?

Far from it. We are, in fact, a noble people following the directives of our holy Torah in giving up interest that we could be earning in the bank by sharing our wealth with others.

May you never need to borrow money. But if you do, check out your local gemach Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 17

While these are truths are self-evident, I’m not saying it’s easy — but we know in our hearts that all these words of Torah are true.

No wonder Mishpatim was given to us at Har Sinai, right after we received the Luchot. It’s our prescription for real life. No charge. No insurance necessary.

As once again, Pirkei Avot (5:26) informs us, “Ben Bag Bag omer: v’hafach ba, v’hafach ba, d’kula ba (Ben Bag Bag says: turn it over and over, for everything is within it).”

Shabbat shalom.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Phillips…

from page 18

The nuclear family was smashed. Sexual morality gave way to a lifestyle free-for-all. Non-judgmentalism was mandatory. Young people now learn codes of sexual behavior from pornography.

For the West’s elites to be clutching their pearls over Epstein piles hypocrisy upon moral collapse.

In Britain, the Epstein scandal is threatening to bring down Starmer, who in 2024 appointed Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. It’s now been revealed that Mandelson appears to have received money from Epstein while sending him market-sensitive, secret information about the government’s responses to the financial crash in 2008.

Starmer has been forced to admit that when he sent Mandelson to Washington, he was aware that his new ambassador had continued his friendship with Epstein after the financier’s conviction in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Starmer appears to have taken the pragmatic view that Mandelson’s stellar political abilities made it worth the gamble. With the gamble now blowing up in Starmer’s face, it turns out that pragmatism was a losing bet.

Pragmatism is fine within the guardrails of normative morality. But if it tears out those guardrails and throws them into the trash, then it goes belly-up.

Pragmatism has corrupted the West and exposed it to grave danger in one particularly graphic example. Qatar, an Islamist Muslim Brotherhood state, works to destabilize and ultimately conquer the West for Islam.

Last week, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens delivered the “State of World Jewry” address at the 92nd Street Y in New York. He called the tens of millions of dollars spent annually fighting antisemitism a failure. He even suggested dismantling the ADL. Better that the money be spent strengthening Jewish education and cultural institutions.

A recent book by Benjamin Kerstein, “Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto,” calls for a more aggressive style of offense against antisemites, which includes not statistics-gathering but “selfdefense techniques [and] weapons handling.”

The problem runs much deeper than any one Super Bowl ad can hope to capture. The highlight reel is too violent — even for football diehards. And too gory for TV audiences gorging on nachos and pizza.

The Super Bowl clock will wind down on the scoreboard and confetti will rain down from the sky. The Most Valuable Player will announce, “I’m going to Disney World.” Everyone will leave the field.

Jews, however — at least the sentient ones — will know that the gladiatorial gridiron allows no exit for them. They must stay alert. And avoid sudden death.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

identify and “dox” ICE agents and their families. In cases of their alleged improper actions, they can be identified for investigation by numbers on their uniforms.

Now that the border is secure and the crisis is past, our elected officials should make reasonable immigration reforms. Those who are undocumented, but were brought to our country as children and have lived here for a specified period of time without incident, should be given a path to citizenship. There should be no attempts to track down undocumented people who are living here without bothering anyone. They should be urged to register and, after a certain period, be allowed to apply for residency.

It is to everyone’s benefit, and society’s gain, for people to be brought out from the shadows. With proper leadership and cooperation, we could be approaching a reasoned resolution of this divisive crisis.

Published in the LI Herald.

Rashi explains that the opening vav connects Mishpatim to Parshas Yisro and the revelation at Sinai. Just as the Aseres HaDibros came from Sinai, so too all the civil laws that follow. Business ethics and financial honesty are not separate from spiritual life. They are themselves Avodas Hashem and both flow from the same divine source.

A person might be very careful in shul or while learning, yet act dishonestly at the office. Mishpatim reminds us to avoid that inconsistency. The G-d we meet in tefillah and learning is the same G-d who demands honesty, fairness, and compassion in our everyday dealings.

We can watch snow blanket the earth and feel our hearts open a little more to the Creator. That same person can open a Gemara, struggle through a Tosafos, and feel that love deepen. These are not two relationships but one, not two G-ds but one Ribbono Shel Olam, revealing Himself through both creation and command.

As we say every morning in Tehillim, Hashem spreads the snow like wool, and in the same breath, He reveals His statutes to Israel. Both the frozen landscape and the ancient laws are ways Hashem speaks to us. We don’t have to choose between them.

We can hold both together, letting nature and Torah work side by side, guiding us toward a life filled with love for the One who created the world and entrusted us with His Torah.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Accordingly, over the decades, it has insinuated itself into America and Britain, turning their universities into Islamic propaganda factories and buying up countless individuals in politics and the media.

As a result, instead of viewing Qatar as an enemy, America has treated it as a valuable ally. It used Qatar — the sponsor of Hamas — as an honest broker in the Israeli hostage negotiations, which is why they dragged on at the cost of countless hostages’ and Israeli soldiers’ lives.

And now, Qatar has pride of place on Trump’s Board of Peace — and is using all its influence to stop Trump from destroying the Iranian regime.

You might say that Qatar is the Jeffrey Epstein of world politics.

Dealing with the devil never ends well. Abandon principle for pragmatism, and everything goes smash. It’s a lesson the West clearly has yet to learn.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

in the British health-care system, Rahmeh Aladwan, who has been arrested on more than one occasion for her online rants against “jewish (sic) supremacy.” Last November, Aladwan was suspended from practicing medicine over her antisemitic posts.

Alongside Aladwan is David Miller, a professor who was fired from Bristol University for his harassment of Jewish students. Miller has been a key player in what can legitimately be described as the “Nazification” of the pro-Palestinian movement. His social-media feed is infested with barbs against “the Jewish Empire” and “pax Judaica.”

He has harshly criticized other pro-Hamas figures, among them former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and current New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for being insufficiently attuned to the fact that “Jewish supremacy” lies at the root of the conflict in the Middle East. A fanatical supporter of Iran, he loudly cheered the regime’s campaign of repression against the latest wave of protests.

Even more worryingly, many parents of children attending Jewish schools in the United Kingdom have been revulsed by Miller’s creepy postings about the imperative to target these and other Jewish institutions as Zionist interlopers.

Miller and Aladwan were due to appear on Feb. 8 at the official launch of the Anti Zionist Movement in the city of Birmingham, whose police force banned fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv last November. At the last moment, the organizers were forced to seek another venue after their chosen location wisely opted to cancel the event.

The decision was an ideal opportunity for the Anti Zionist Movement to argue that this was yet more proof that Britain is also “Zionist-occupied” territory. One of their scheduled speakers, Press TV reporter Latifa Abouchakra, blamed the “Zionist lobby” for the decision, adding pointedly: “But we’re Palestinians, we’re used to fighting Jewish supremacists.”

The Anti Zionist Movement is a natural partner of Palestine Action, the violent group recently designated as a terrorist entity by the British authorities. Both share a similar political outlook and impatience with more established groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Given the historic tendency of some anti-Zionist activists to embrace terrorism — from the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s to the Democratic Socialists of America supporter who last year murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington — there is every possibility that the radical wing of the Palestine solidarity movement will follow suit, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

be learning the more insidious side of the eternal war against Jews.

“Anti Zionist Movement” in the United Kingdom.

Led by the shamelessly antisemitic PalestinianAmerican agitator Nerdeen Kiswani, “Within Our Lifetime” — so named because its supporters believe that they will still be alive when the State of Israel is destroyed — has played a central role in the violent demonstrations outside synagogues in several cities, ostensibly protesting events that market and sell property in Israel.

On its website, the group explains that its “antiZionism” is what informs its opposition to any form of “normalization” with Israel, Israelis and their sympathizers.

“The liberation of Palestine requires the abolition of zionism (sic),” it declares. At worst, this is a call for the elimination or expulsion of every single Jew in Israel, as well as the proscribing of Zionist and pro-Israel organizations outside. At best, it consigns those Jews who remain in historic Eretz Israel to the status of a depleted, hated minority.

This antisemitic program has been eagerly developed by “Within Our Lifetime’s” cousins across the ocean. Some of the individuals involved with the “Anti Zionist Movement” in the United Kingdom have already achieved notoriety for their screeds on social media, as well as their frequent appearances on Iranian propaganda channels like Press TV.

One of its leaders is a Palestinian doctor working

in confusion and wandering, he understood and appreciated his spiritual truth more deeply. He knew for sure that this was correct.

That same truth applies to us: Those of us who have known darkness and despair appreciate the light in a much more profound way.

Reflecting upon the stories of the loss and rediscovery of Rabbi Pardo’s tombstone and writings, as well as his legacy of moral and upright living, brought me a sense of peace and joy for the future.

The Old Jewish Cemetery at Hunt’s Bay is on Jamaica’s list of National Heritage Sites. It is among the oldest burial sites on Jamaican soil and represents how the Jewish presence on this island is deeply woven into the country’s economic, cultural and spiritual fabric.

I applaud Jamaica’s heritage institutions for recognizing that this site is not a relic of the past, but a living reminder of who we are and where we come from. As Bob Marley famously sang: “If you know your history, then you would know where you’re coming from.”

Sometimes, the most powerful lessons we can learn are not taught through instruction alone, but discovered when we encounter history face to face — when ancient tombstones whisper to us, letting us know that we’re on the right path. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com