The Jewish Star 02-26-2026

Feb. 27-March 5, 2026

10 Adar 5786

Tetzaveh • Shabbos Zachor

Vol. 25, No. 6

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A blizzard of happiness

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JNS

The 4,500 Jewish teenagers from throughout the world — from Australia to Slovakia to Singapore to Brazil to France to Los Angeles — came to Brooklyn for an extended

Ah

weekend of inspiration and learning through the Chabad movement, intending to head home on Sunday. The blizzard that paralyzed the city had other ideas.

Instead, teens who had never

seen snow before had friendly snowball fights outside 770 Eastern Parkway, headquarters of the international movement, and competed in teams to see who could shovel the most snow off of Crown Heights

freilichen Purim!

sidewalks and crosswalks on Monday.

Two feet of heavy snow had fallen on New York City. Local Lubavitchers, who had opened their homes to the teens, extended their

(But it’s not all fun and games)

stays, and thousands more meals were quickly organized to feed the 2,000 stranded teens, who ate in shifts at Beth Rivkah, the neighborhood’s girls school.

They had come for the 18th annual CTeen Shabbaton, which began with just 18 teens in the living room of Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky’s parents.

CTeen runs year-round programming worldwide, in addition to the Shabbaton. The unexpected extension has added about $500,000 in expenses to the already-budgeted $4 million event, Rabbi Kotlarsky, chairman of CTeen International, told JNS.

What had been planned to last from Thursday to Sunday night had to be quickly extended to last a week. “It’s turned into a full on retreat experience,” he said.

To cover the unplanned costs, “I opened my prayerbook and am calling our donors,” added Rabbi Kotlarsky, who has several leadership roles at Chabad’s central office, including organizing the annual Crown Heights gathering of thousands of emissaries.

The CTeen program included a Times Square takeover after Shabbat ended on Saturday night, with Israeli musicians and thousands of Jewish teens singing and dancing.

It concluded at the Nassau Coliseum — more than 100 buses were rented to convey the kids to the arena — which drew 8,000 people, including locals.

Teens from Sydney, who experienced the Bondi Beach Chanukah attack, were honored, as were teens who did exceptional things.

“We highlighted teens, who had faced challenges without compromising their identity,” Avi Winner, a CTeen spokesman, said.

One of those who was happily and temporarily stuck in Crown Heights was Jaxson Ignelzi, 15, of Port St. Lucie, Fla. He is one of just four Jewish kids in his public high school of 4,000 students, he said. See Chabad Teens on page 4

mountsinai.org/southnassau

Huckabee grace meets Carlson’s ‘Gish Gallop

As expected, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee wiped the floor with Tucker Carlson — the “floor” in question being that of Ben-Gurion International Airport’s VIP lounge, since the hero of the woke right never actually ventured beyond the Tel Aviv terminal during his quick in-and-out publicity stunt.

Carlson’s method throughout the two-and-ahalf-hour interview — conducted on Feb. 18 and aired on Feb. 20 — was textbook “Gish Gallop”: a torrent of half-truths, selective history and outright falsehoods, frequently packing multiple allegations into a single question.

The aim of the interview from Carlson’s perspective wasn’t journalistic illumination, of course. The goal was to exhaust and push Huckabee into a defensive position.

Huckabee’s discipline lay in declining the trap. Instead of chasing every dart, he elegantly rejected the framing.

Before the sit-down was broadcast, Carlson appended a lengthy, pre-recorded prologue, complaining not only that he and his crew had been detained and interrogated by Israeli airport security, but that those who blasted him on social media for purposeful distortion were simply trying to defame him.

It was a ridiculous tantrum on his part, since anybody who enters Israel, including Huckabee, faces routine questions about the purpose of the trip. Nevertheless, Carlson made standard procedures and passport screening sound like evidence of Israeli paranoia and suppression. Typical Tucker.

Ditto for his portrayal of Israel as thuggish before Huckabee even appeared on screen, leaving the ambassador no choice but to refute the intro, post-interview, on X.

As for the content of the one-on-one itself: Since it’s impossible to list every outrageous assertion by Carlson framed disingenuously as a query, or to recap Huckabee’s fact-based replies, let’s zero in on the topic preoccupying the minds of most Israelis at the moment — a potential US strike on the Islamic Republic.

In this segment, Huckabee’s composure was particularly notable. You know, considering Carlson’s warped worldview and equally egregious formulation of it.

This involved layering insinuations about Jerusalem’s manipulation of Washington, casting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppet master nudging America toward war with and regime change in Iran for the Jewish state’s benefit.

Huckabee refused to stoop to Carlson’s level or let himself get ruffled by being interrupted repeatedly. Instead, he pivoted to Tehran’s record: 47 years of chanting “Death to America,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ terror footprint around the globe and a documented history of targeting Americans.

By anchoring the exchange in Islamist conduct, Huckabee stripped the argument to its essentials. For instance, asked by Carlson what it cost the United States to “move the fleet off Iran into the Persian Gulf,” the ambassador replied, “A lot less than it would to bury a lot of Americans if [the ayatollahs] ever got a long-range ballistic missile. A lot less.”

He also pointed out that if Carlson cares so much about America, he should be concerned that Iran’s proxies are already “deeply embedded” in the Western Hemisphere.

This back-and-forth was among many fronts in the rhetorical battlefield of Carlson’s crazed conspiracy-theory arena, however. It might even have been the sanest section of the Q&A.

The looniest was his casting of aspersions on the authenticity of Netanyahu’s Jewish roots, since the prime minister’s family hails from Eastern Europe, and sneering suggestion that Israelis might need DNA tests to prove their biblical connection to the land.

Other jibes were just as jaw-dropping, beginning with his impugning of a brief meeting Huckabee had with Jonathan Pollard after the death of the latter’s wife; declaring that Jeffrey Epstein was known to be connected with the Mossad (adding a lie about Israeli President Isaac Herzog having been a guest on the pedophile’s island — for which he later apologized but may still be sued); citing fabricated statistics about Israel’s persecution of Christians; and besmirching Israel Defense Forces behavior in Gaza. Oh, and insisting that Israel provides free abortions courtesy of US aid.

It’s no wonder, then, that Carlson, who’s built a following among Israel-bashing antisemites, remains a groyper favorite.

It has to be said, though, that Huckabee knew what he was in for with Carlson. The pair had been sparring publicly on social media, which led to Huckabee’s challenging his former Fox News colleague to “come talk to me, instead of about me.”

Because of Huckabee’s naturally cheerful demeanor and impeccable manners, the interview concluded on a cordial note, with his extending an invitation to Carlson to return to Israel and attend his church. It was a magnanimous gesture, to be sure.

But the rest of us would prefer that Tucker Carlson never darken our doorstep — or VIP lounge — again.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

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Gatekeepers locking the marketplace of ideas

THANE ROSENBAUM

It’s been a rough few weeks for the spoken word. Many reminders of things better left unsaid. Cringeworthy statements uttered without rebuttal. What passes for public debate nowadays is coarsened, debased and filled with falsehoods.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was in Munich showing off her foreign policy bona fides by scolding the Germans for supporting Israel and its “genocide” of the Palestinian people. Clearly, Germans needed a crash course on mass murder taught by a failed bartender.

Predictably buffoonish and tasteless, it never occurred to Ocasio-Cortez that she brought the wrong message to the one country with a moral duty to defend Jews. With the Holocaust perpetually on their collective conscience, Germans (except for nearly one million Syrian refugees with their stowaway antisemitism) saw October 7, 2023 for what it was: an attempt to finish the job that Hitler started.

Back home in the United States, the freedom-to-write human rights group, PEN America, retracted an earlier public statement condemning the cancellation of Israeli stand-up comedian Guy Hochman’s shows in New York (protesters blocked the entrance) and Beverly Hills (the venue was targeted with threats of violence).

The Beverly Hills performance could have been salvaged had Hochman been willing to publicly condemn his country. He refused. PEN initially supported his stance, stating that “placing a litmus test on someone to appear on stage” violates the very essence of free expression. Soon thereafter, however,å the organization had a change of heart, demonstrating that free speech absolutists are not as categorical as they once were.

PEN decided that before taking the stage, the Israeli comedian would have to undergo a thorough self-debasement and a complete disavowal of his homeland.

PEN’s moral and institutional downfall was foreshadowed in February 2024, when 500 writers signed a letter demanding that PEN condemn Israel for “murdering writers” in Gaza. Yes, when people think of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they immediately conjure images of Faulkner and Fitzgerald.

Back in 2015, PEN bestowed its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the surviving cartoonists of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Several hundred PEN members opposed giving the prize — effectively siding with terrorists over cartoonists.

Nearly the entire staff of Charlie Hebdo was slain by terrorists as punishment for mocking Islam and its Prophet, on exactly seven covers of the magazine. Over a decade and nearly 550 covers, Catholicism was satirized 21 times. And yet the Vatican didn’t issue a Christian fatwa to murder artists packing pencils and inking pens.

open to all authors now maintain an unspoken anti-Jewish blacklist. Neutral sites are afraid of the backlash from allowing a proIsrael author to take its stage. I know this firsthand as the author of “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”

The marketplace of ideas has ceased to be fully stocked because all ideas are no longer welcome. So much for Jews controlling Hollywood, mass media and book publishing.

So much for Jews controlling Hollywood, mass media and book publishing.

Imagine if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints took the same barbaric umbrage over “The Book of Mormon.”

All of this was reminiscent of the UCLA campus during the 2023 academic year. Israel had gone to war against Hamas in Gaza. Qatari-funded professors incited keffiyehmasked, slogan-chanting, hooky-playing students into antisemitic orgies that clearly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — if civil rights applied to Jews in America, which they apparently did not. Students “glorified the martyrs” by preventing Jews from getting to class unless they publicly renounced any fealty for Israel.

Such is the present condition of free speech, which often protects vulgarity, trounces viewpoint diversity and penalizes truth. The First Amendment has been degraded, and the censorship of Jews is an all-too-common occurrence.

Bookstores have quietly refused to carry books by Jewish authors. Speaking venues

Georgetown Law School hired a new dean, Liz Magill, who lost her old job as president of the University of Pennsylvania soon after her atrocious testimony before Congress concerning allegations of antisemitism at her school. When asked whether calling for the “genocide of Jews” violated Penn’s antiharassment policy, she infamously remarked that it was “a context-dependent decision.”

Translation: If one frames speech as an attack against Israel, Israelis or Zionists, and in support of Palestinians, one can say and do almost anything and get away with it at Penn — including advocating for the killing of Jews on campus.

Would calling for the lynching of Blacks also be “context-dependent”?

I assume that Georgetown, as a Jesuit University, asked Magill whether she now has a more humanistic understanding of the First Amendment? (She wasn’t even correct on the law, a more troubling aspect of this appointment.) Jesuits, after all, are known for their common decency, a quality apparently anathema to Magill.

With New York City digging itself out of its signature black snow — the amalgamation of urban grime and canine poo — Nerdeen Kiswani, a pro-Palestinian Islamist, added to the list of objections her religion has toward Western ways.

This time: dogs as household pets.

She wrote, “Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. … Like we’ve said all along, they are

unclean.” She later claimed it was a joke.

Florida’s Republican Congressman Randy Fine instantly took to X and responded, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

An ugly retort if there ever was one. On the other hand, the crude congressman is referring to a woman who on October 8 glorified and justified everything Gazans had done to Israelis the day before — the gangrapes, beheadings and torching of infants. Her entire American existence is dedicated to supporting terrorism, spreading hatred of Zionists, denouncing America and Israel, and silencing victims of sexual assault — both Jewish and Muslim.

There are vulgarities in both directions.

We are surely not living through the Golden Age of political discourse. President Trump calls his many enemies “losers.” The once high art of witty put-downs has long lost the argument to guttural trash-talkers.

In Europe, which has fewer free speech protections, the congressman’s remark would rightly be taken as hate speech, although many Europeans have sympathy for Fine’s intended meaning:

Wherever there is Sharia law, public streets are overtaken by “no-go zones” and calls to prayer, Sharia courts usurp secular ones, grooming gangs roam in predatory fashion, and “immodestly” dressed women are hassled.

Now we see kicking man’s best friend to the curb all because dogs, too, offend Muslims. What, specifically, doesn’t offend Muslims?

That’s the point Secretary of State Marco Rubio more elegantly made at the Munich Security Conference — a far cry from AOC’s abysmal oratorical pratfall. Rubio said that Europeans should spend less time fretting about being accused of xenophobia and Islamophobia, and more time reclaiming national sovereignty and cultural heritage. To do otherwise is to doom Western Civilization, and honest, truthful, civilized speech.

Published in Jewish Journal.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar

Chabad Teens enjoy a blizzard of happiness…

Being Jewish there can feel isolating, Ignelzi said, and he has faced antisemitism multiple times. At a parade supporting Palestinians in the town, which may be best known as the home of the spring training camp for the New York Mets, he and friends loudly played music by Jewish rapper Nissim Black as they drove by. Parade participants yelled “Get out of here, dirty Jews,” at them, Ignelzi recalled. “I felt hurt.”

There are more Jews in the high school that Deena Cohen, 15, attends in Sydney, but it feels to her like there are few in her area who share her religion. The terrorist shooting at a Bondi Beach park on the first night of Chanukah last year, in which 15 people were killed and 40 injured, shook her deeply.

“In Australia the Jewish community feels so small,” Cohen said, as she spent time on a cold, snowy day at the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights.

After the Bondi attack, “I realized antisemitism is so real and so hard,” she said. “I am such a small part of the world. Why are they all targeting us?”

“Coming on the CTeen Shabbaton, I realize there are so many of us. They’ve taught me such strength and how to deal with this hate,” she added. “It really helps me stay strong.”

A Jewish day most Jews have never heard of

On Tuesday, Feb. 24, most Jews went about their day unaware that it marks a remarkable date on the Jewish calendar: Zayin Adar, the yahrzeit of Moses, the greatest Jewish leader in history.

At the very end of the Torah (Deuteronomy 34:5-6), we are told something extraordinary. Moses was not buried by family, disciples or any members of his beloved people. He was buried by G-d Himself.

From that singular act flows one of the most sacred and least known institutions in Jewish life: the chevra kadisha, or Jewish burial society.

The chevra Kadisha imitates that Divine act of kindness. Just as God cared for Moses at the moment of his passing, members of the chevra Kadisha care for their fellow Jews in death with humility, gentle care and reverence. That is why Zayin Adar has become a day of reflection and recognition for these quiet volunteers, who perform what Jewish law calls chesed shel emet (the truest form of kindness).

The chevra Kadisha is almost always made up of volunteers: doctors, teachers, attorneys, retirees — ordinary people who step away from daily

‘Zayin Adar’ affirms Judaism’s unwavering reverence for the sanctity of the human body.

life when their phone buzzes. Often, even their closest friends do not know they serve in this role.

My introduction to it began as a child. I remember the phone ringing at our dinner table. I would hear the word tahara, though I didn’t yet understand what it meant. I knew only that a Jew had died, and that my mother or father would quietly get up and leave to help.

The chevra Kadisha prepares a Jew for burial through a process that is both physical and deeply spiritual.

First, the body is gently returned to its most natural state. Anything external — medical devices, bandages, makeup, even nail polish — is carefully removed. The goal is simplicity. We enter this world unadorned, and we return unadorned.

Then comes washing, performed with modesty and respect. Only the area being cleansed is uncovered at any time. There is no casual conversation. The atmosphere is reverent.

Next is the tahara itself, a ritual purification in which water is poured continuously over the body (or, when possible, the body is immersed in a mikvah, a natural body of water associated in Jewish life with profound transitions). There is no greater transition than moving from this world to the next.

Finally, the deceased is dressed in tachrichim, traditional Jewish burial shrouds. They are a full set of clothing — pants, shirt, outer garment, belt, and head and face covering — made of natural fibers such as linen or cotton. They are plain and white, symbolizing purity. There are no pockets or ornamentation since wealth and status do not accompany a person beyond life. What endures are deeds, character and our choices.

The casket used is a simple pine box, ideally without metal or any lining (the simpler, the better) allowing the body to return naturally to the earth. A small amount of earth from Israel is placed inside, linking the deceased to the land

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and people of Israel.

As a nurse for decades, I have stood in operating rooms with living patients under anesthesia while background music played and weekend plans were discussed. The first time I witnessed a tahara, I was struck by the contrast. There was no extraneous speech. Jewish tradition teaches that while the body has died, the soul — the essence of the person — remains present and aware.

Those performing the tahara are mindful that the individual before them is at a vulnerable moment of transition. They even pause to ask forgiveness if they have not acted with sufficient gentleness or respect.

I was also struck by the parallels to birth. I’ve been a nurse in labor and delivery, and when a child enters this world, we quickly clean, dress and swaddle the baby before returning them to their mother. At the other end of life, the chevra Kadisha cleans, dresses and prepares the person for their next journey with efficiency and the same tenderness.

In an era when cremation rates continue to rise, the Jewish approach to caring for the de-

ceased stands in sharp contrast to modern trends. Cremation is often presented as poetic or environmentally friendly. But it is neither gentle nor natural. It involves intense heat and industrial processes that incinerate the body and release pollutants into the air. It is also fundamentally at odds with a core Jewish mandate: the mitzvah to bury the dead.

In Jewish tradition, holiness is not burned. Even a Torah scroll — the holiest physical object in Judaism — when it becomes unusable is not destroyed by fire. It is buried with reverence. History has shown us who burns holy objects: our enemies. From the Nazis in the 1930s to Hamas in 2023, the desecration of sacred objects and bodies has been a weapon of humiliation and erasure.

Judaism responds differently. We bury what is holy. And every human being is considered infinitely more sacred than a Torah scroll.

Zayin Adar is not merely a date. It is a reminder that how we care for those who have died matters deeply. It is an act of kindness that affirms that life has meaning beyond its final breath.

The chevra Kadisha does its work quietly, behind closed doors, without applause. But their message is profound: Every human deserves to be cared for with gentleness and ultimate respect.

In a world that often measures value by productivity and visibility, this idea reminds us of something enduring: that quiet kindness may be the most powerful kind of all and that how a person is treated after death matters for the soul who has departed and for the living who remain.

Dignity for those who have died is not a formality or mere tradition; it is a declaration of belief in the innate sanctity of every human being.

Yael Davidowitz is the director of Last Kindness, a division of the National Association of Chevra Kadisha (NASCK). Learn more at: lastkindness. org. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

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

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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.

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Reviving an ancient Macedonian-Jewish bond

The relationship between Macedonians and Jews is one of history’s lesser-known but most profoundly significant connections. Stretching back more than 2,000 years, this bond has its roots in the crossroads of civilizations, where Jewish life once flourished under Macedonian rule.

These days, as both populations navigate the challenges posed by an increasingly complex world, there is a pressing need to rediscover and strengthen these ancient ties.

The Jewish presence in the territory of modern-day North Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, dates back to antiquity. The conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great in the fourth-century BCE opened new horizons for Jewish communities, allowing them to integrate into the vast network of Hellenistic cities and trade routes.

Alexander himself is celebrated in Jewish tradition. In the Talmud, he is referred to as Alexander Mokdon (“the Macedonian”) and is portrayed in a positive light. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma 69a) recounts a meeting in Jerusalem between Alexander and the Jewish high priest Shimon HaTzaddik, who had gone out to greet him in his full priestly garments. Alexander bowed before Shimon HaTzaddik, explaining to his men that he had seen this figure in a dream before his battles, predicting his victories.

In gratitude, Alexander spared Jerusalem and allowed the Jews to practice their faith.

Subsequently, many Jewish boys born that year were named Alexander, which became a common Jewish name. Clearly, the Jews welcomed him as a benevolent ruler who respected their traditions.

This Talmudic account reflects more than just an interesting story. It symbolizes the deep and enduring respect between the Jewish people and Macedonians. As the cradle of Alexander’s empire, Macedonia thus occupies a special place in Jewish memory as a gateway to a world where Jewish identity and civic participation could coexist.

Archaeological discoveries in North Macedonia, a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, further attest to this ancient bond.

Among the most important is the synagogue unearthed at Stobi near the Vardar River in the center of the country. Dating from the third or fourth century CE, the Stobi synagogue is one of the oldest ever discovered in the Balkans. Its mosaic floors — featuring Jewish religious symbols such as the menorah and the shofar — remain a testament to a vibrant Jewish com-

munity that lived, traded and prayed there. The synagogue’s existence is a living echo of the intertwined histories of the Jewish and Macedonian peoples.

Stobi was a major urban center in Roman Macedonia, a melting pot of cultures and religions. That Jews established a synagogue there — and that it thrived — is no coincidence. It reflects the relative tolerance of the region. The survival of these remnants of the distant past serves as a powerful reminder: Jewish history in Macedonia is not marginal, but deeply woven into the fabric of our two peoples.

Nevertheless, modern political and cultural ties between North Macedonia and the Jewish people, especially the global Diaspora, remain underdeveloped, and more needs to be done to cultivate and raise awareness about them.

Many Jews took part in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against Ottoman rule in 1903, struggling side by side with their Macedonian compatriots.

Decades later, when the Germans invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, some Macedonian Jews took up arms and joined the partisans to fight the Nazis. These included Estreya Haim Ovadya, a Jewish woman from Bitola, who served in the Seventh Macedonian Brigade and was heroically killed in combat in late August 1944.

Sadly, most of the Jewish community of Macedonia was murdered during the Holocaust, when nearly all the Jews of Bitola, Skopje and Štip were deported by the Bulgarian occupiers and then murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. After the war, the tiny community that remained struggled to rebuild; today, only a few hundred Jews live in North Macedonia.

Yet memory endures, and along with it, so does the possibility of renewed friendship.

In recent years, North Macedonia has made commendable efforts to honor its Jewish heritage. The Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia in the capital of Skopje stands as a testament to this commitment. It is one of the most significant Holocaust mu-

seums in the Balkans, preserving the memory of Macedonian Jewry and educating future generations. It serves not only as a place of remembrance for the 98% of the Jewish population killed during the Holocaust, but also as a venue where regional politicians can negotiate and foster understanding.

Moreover, successive Macedonian governments have taken steps to safeguard Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and other heritage sites, recognizing their importance not only to Jews but to the Macedonian national story.

But much more can be done to deepen the ties between Macedonians and Jews around the world. Cultural exchange programs, academic partnerships, investment forums and tourism initiatives focused on Jewish heritage and interfaith dialogue could serve as platforms for strengthening bonds. North Macedonia could also benefit from building stronger relationships with Jewish communities in the United States, Israel and Europe, opening avenues for economic cooperation, innovation partnerships and diplomatic support.

An example of such potential was the firstof-its-kind parliamentary delegation to Israel last month, led by Parliament member Rashela Mizrahi, chair of the Israel-North Macedonia Parliamentary Friendship Committee and the country’s first Jewish minister. Supported by the American Jewish Committee, the visit focused on practical cooperation in IT, agronomy, tourism, cyber security, water management, health care and transportation.

For the extended Jewish community, embracing the Macedonian connection offers a profound opportunity to honor an ancient chapter of Jewish history. And in a world increasingly divided by ignorance and extremism, reviving ancient bonds of respect and mutual recognition is more important than ever. Supporting Jewish life in Macedonia, helping preserve its historical sites and fostering Jewish tourism to the country are not merely acts of nostalgia; they are investments in a future where Jewish history is not just remembered, but lived and celebrated.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Barbados: Little island, long Jewish memory

By Michael Freund

Awhole host of places in the Diaspora Jewish historical imagination loom large: Berlin, Vilna, Warsaw, Marrakech and others. And then there are places that seem, at first glance, unlikely repositories of Jewish history: remote, sun-drenched outposts where the past unfolded far from the great centers of power. Barbados is one of them.

This small Caribbean island, just 166 square miles in size and home to fewer than 300,000 people, sits closer to Venezuela than to Florida. Palm trees sway as winds blow gently, and tourists arrive seeking sand and surf. Yet beneath the postcard serenity lies an often overlooked chapter in the Jewish story — one that speaks not only of exile and survival, but of ingenuity, resilience and the quiet shaping of the modern world.

The Jewish presence in Barbados dates back to the mid-17th century, possibly as early as the late 1620s and certainly established by the mid-17th century. Its origins lie in one of the most traumatic upheavals of Jewish history: the Iberian expulsions.

Amid Spain’s expulsion of its Jews in 1492 and Portugal’s forcible conversion of 1497, many Jews became conversos — outwardly Christian but secretly Jewish. For generations, they lived double lives under the shadow of the Inquisition, always searching for a place where they could finally breathe as Jews again.

Some found it across the Atlantic.

By the 1650s, a group of Sephardic Jews — many of them refugees from Dutch Brazil after the Portuguese reconquest in 1654 — made their way to Barbados, then an English colony. The English, eager to develop the island economically, were willing to tolerate Jewish settlement in ways Catholic empires rarely were. And so, in a world that offered Jews few safe harbors, Barbados became one.

They did not arrive as passive victims of history. They arrived as builders.

The Jews of Barbados contributed important commercial and technical knowledge, drawn from experience in Brazil, to the development of the island’s sugar economy. In doing so, they participated in the economic model that would define the Caribbean for centuries. These former refugees became agents of economic transformation in a new land, not through conquest but through knowledge.

In 1654, they established the Nidhe Israel synagogue, among the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados. For generations, its walls witnessed Jewish life unfolding thousands of miles from Europe: weddings and brit milahs, prayers for rain and for peace, merchants discussing trade routes alongside rabbis discussing Torah.

Here was a Jewish community living openly, legally and confidently in the Americas decades before Jewish emancipation in Europe, reaching nearly 300 people by the late 1600s, and peaking at around 800, about 4% of the white population, by the mid18th century.

Barbados offered something rare in Jewish history: normalcy.

Jews owned property. They traded internationally. They were not confined to ghettos. They could bury their dead in consecrated ground without fear that gravestones would be smashed overnight. Their cemetery, with Hebrew inscriptions weathered by centuries of salt air, remains a silent testimony to lives lived with dignity in an era when such dignity was often denied elsewhere.

And yet the story did not end on the island’s shores.

From Barbados, Jews moved onward to Suriname, Curaçao, Jamaica, and eventually, North America. In this way, the island became a bridge between Sephardic exile and American Jewish life. Some of the earliest Jewish commercial networks in the New World passed right through Bridgetown’s harbor before stretching toward Newport,

RI; Charleston, SC; and New York.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a part of American Jewish history began in Barbados.

By the 20th century, however, the once-thriving community had dwindled, affected by shifting trade patterns and emigration, leading to the synagogue’s sale in 1928. Then history intervened once more.

As Nazi persecution tightened its grip on European Jewry in the 1930s, doors across the world slammed shut. Immigration quotas hardened, conferences produced sympathy, but few visas, and desperate families searched maps for any place, no matter how small, that would admit them as human beings rather than statistics.

In that dark hour, Barbados again became a refuge.

Beginning in the late 1930s, starting with arrivals like Moses Altman in 1931, the island admitted a modest number of Jewish refugees, primarily from Germany, Austria and Poland, including about 40 Polish Jewish families totaling 100 to 120 people by 1941. They arrived stripped of professions and property — doctors forbidden to heal, lawyers forbidden to practice, shopkeepers robbed of livelihood. They did not come to build fortunes; they came to escape annihilation.

The British colonial authorities imposed restrictions, and some refugees were initially classified as “enemy aliens,” a bitter irony for victims

of Hitler. Yet they were alive. No deportation trains reached Bridgetown. No ghettos were sealed there. Children went to school, families prayed again, and German accents joined English and Bajan voices in the streets.

The island that had once sheltered Jews fleeing the Inquisition now sheltered Jews fleeing Auschwitz. It did not save thousands. It saved dozens.

But Jewish history is not measured only in numbers. Every visa in the 1940s preserved a private universe: families, descendants and futures that would otherwise have been murdered. Some refugees later moved on to America or Israel; others remained, adding their memories to a community already centuries old.

Thus, Barbados became something extraordinary: a meeting point of two exiles, Sephardic and European, separated by 400 years but united by the same search for safety.

Today, the Jewish community in Barbados is tiny, numbering fewer than 100. For a time, the synagogue stood abandoned, reclaimed by sand and memory. But history has a way of resurfacing, sometimes literally.

When the site was excavated in 2008, archaeologists uncovered a mikvah buried beneath centuries of earth, its steps descending into still water, waiting. Dating to roughly 1650 to 1654 and fed by a natural spring, it is believed to be among the oldest ritual baths in the Americas. Nearby lies the synagogue cemetery, where roughly 400 graves — many from the 17th century, etched in Hebrew and worn by salt and time — form one of the earliest Jewish burial grounds in the Western Hemisphere.

In recent decades, the synagogue has been restored, the cemetery pre-

served and the story retold as part of a UNESCO-protected World Heritage historic district. Visitors now walk its grounds and discover something quietly profound: Jewish history is not confined to the great capitals. It lives wherever Jews carried Torah, memory and stubborn hope. Barbados reminds us that Jewish survival has never depended solely on numbers or power. Sometimes, it depended on trade winds, on tolerance born of economic pragmatism and on refugees who refused to surrender their identity.

We often imagine Jewish history as a march across continents driven only by catastrophe. But occasionally, it is also a story of opportunity, of communities that flourished in unexpected places and, in doing so, helped shape the modern Jewish world.

On a coral island in the Caribbean, Jews found freedom centuries before emancipation reached Europe, and refuge when Europe collapsed into barbarism. They built institutions, forged commerce and preserved tradition. And from that unlikely shore, their legacy quietly flowed outward into the Americas.

The beaches of Barbados may erase footprints within minutes. But the Jewish imprint there has lasted for nearly hundreds of years and is still going strong.

The English tolerated Jewish settlement in ways Catholic empires rarely did.

SCHOOLS

Wintery mix at HALB: Hot cocoa and a day of history

HAFTR uses art, therapy to bond with IDF

HAFTR eighth graders participated in a “Letters of Light” program facilitated by The 8 Project, founded by Tomer Peretz, a former IDF officer and ZAKA volunteer. The 8 Project uses art as a pathway to

healing, supporting former IDF soldiers as they navigate physical injuries and trauma after their service.

Through residencies, workshops, exhibitions, and community programs, the orga-

nization empowers survivors, soldiers and artists to transform pain into creativity and connection.

For this project, HAFTR students were guided in a hands-on workshop, painting and decorating repurposed military uniforms with messages and images of strength, gratitude, emunah, Israel and hope. As they worked on each piece, students understood that these were tangible expressions of both hakarat hatov and solidarity.

This experience gave students the opportunity to personally contribute, transforming feelings of care and tefillah into action. It helped them feel closer to the chayalim who have remained at the forefront of their hearts and prayers over the past two years. Through creativity and compassion, the students were able to bridge the distance with dignity.

HAFTR Middle School has consistently stepped forward through davening, creating, organizing and acting on behalf of Am Yisrael.

The Hebrew Academy of Long Beach held its ninth annual HALB History Day on Feb. 9, part of the National History Day program that challenges students across the country to think deeply about the past and its impact on the present.

Yeshiva of Central Queens (YCQ) hosted a Melave Malka last Motzei Shabbat. This year’s event centered around tefilah. From creative Asher Yatzar plaques to an inspirational story from Amit Yaghouhi, it was an evening of reflection and inspiration. The program concluded with performances by the 4th grade girls, led by Morah Tali

For five months, 102 eighth grade students immersed themselves in this year’s theme: Revolution, Reaction, Reform. They did more than research events, they stepped inside them, asking what forces ignite change, who resists it, and which reforms reshape society. Working with primary sources, students debated interpretation, analyzed evidence, and crafted arguments that reflected both intellectual rigor and personal investment. Walking through HALB History Day felt like moving through time. In one room, students transported visitors to the streets during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, confronting impossible choices and extraordinary courage, while others explored Holocaust history through deeply personal connections to family memory and identity. In another, guests stood at the gates of Disneyland, examining how one bold vision transformed American leisure. Around the corner, the concrete barrier of the Fall of the Berlin Wall symbolically crumbled, and nearby students traced how Branch Rickey helped integrate Major League Baseball, demonstrating how reform often begins with moral courage.

Students presented their work in one of three formats: documentary, website, or exhibit. Each required extensive research, clear argumentation, and confident public presentation, blending scholarship with creativity and technology. The top three projects in each category advance to Long Island History Day at Hofstra University on March 22, where HALB students will compete among some of Long Island’s most accomplished young historians.

First Place Exhibit: “ ‘Tear Down This Wall,’ A Revolution in Berlin,” by Jonah Brown, Eitan Englander, Alex Sinnreich, Eitan Sokol, and Jacob Spector.

First Place Documentary: “A Rhythm Revolution: The Birth of Rock n’ Roll,” by Aliyah Amar, Aviva Aryeh, Ella Frenkel, Ariel Spitz, and Layla Schwartz.

First Place Website: “Branch Rickey’s Baseball Revolution: From Farm Systems to Breaking the Color Line,” by Yoni Fischbein, Rafi Levine, Sam Medetsky, Daniel Sacks, and Kobe Stern.

Vandals hit

Paris kosher

Vandals doused the inside of a kosher restaurant in Paris with acid last week, in what authorities suspect was an antisemitic attack, the Le Parisien daily reported.

Employees of the Kokoriko restaurant in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, an upscale district with many Jewish residents, found the corrosive substance on tables and seating areas at the entrance when they came into work on Friday morning, the paper reported, based on information received from the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.

Damage to the establishment is estimated to be about $176,000, according to the report.

The same restaurant was the target of suspected antisemitic vandalism on Oct. 9. The perpetrators were not identified. Attacks against kosher establishments in France are widely reported in the media. In 2016, a jihadist murdered four Jews at a kosher supermarket on Paris’s eastern edges. In 1982, Palestinian terrorists and their collaborators murdered six people in a bombing at the Chez Jo Goldenberg kosher restaurant in Paris.

According to the French Ministry of the Interior’s “Acts Antireligious — Trends 2025” report, which was published earlier this month, the overall tally for antisemitic acts last year was 1,320 incidents.

Antisemitic attacks accounted for a little over half of all documented hate crimes targeting a religious group that year. The overall number of hate crimes against a religious group remained roughly the same as in 2024, the interior ministry’s document said, but antisemitic incidents decreased by 16% from 2024. — JNS

Anti-Israelism surges in Finland

By Amelie Botbol, JNS

Anti-Israel sentiment is like a virus, Chaya Votkin, president of the Jewish Community of Helsinki, told JNS — and it’s on a sharp rise in Finland.

Following Oct. 7, 2023, this was manifested through online hate, antiIsrael demonstrations, boycotts of Israeli products in supermarkets, the exclusion of Israeli speakers from universities and efforts to halt arms deals with Israel.

“I see a lot of it — anti-Israel actions, boycotts and BDS. It’s like a virus,” she said.

Helsinki’s synagogue was forced to increase security and remain on high alert, she said.

“Every day following Oct. 7, we had a demonstrator near the synagogue standing there and yelling ‘Genocide’ and ‘Child murderers,’” she said.

Because freedom of speech is strongly protected in Finland, Votkin said authorities were able to move the protester several meters away but did not arrest him.

“The children and parents pass him twice a day. It’s really tiring,” she said.

then-President Tarja

(front row left) and her spouse Pentti Arajarvi listen Gideon Bolotowsky, then-chairman of the community, as the Jewish Community of Helsinki celebrates the 100-year-old Helsinki

AFP via Getty Images via JNS

sponsible for anything Israel does,” she said.

The animosity, Votkin said, stems from three main groups — left-wing communities rooted in Soviet-era ideology, rightwing neo-Nazi movements and segments of the Muslim community. She added that because much of the media leans left and journalists are often trained in left-wing institutions, those affinities are reflected in coverage.

“They don’t bring any sort of neutrality. In the past, they showed interest in Jewish holidays and Jewish life. Now they are only interested in Jewish deaths,” she said. “They speak about the Holocaust for a day, and they covered the Bondi Beach Chanukah terror attack for a day. They are interested in death, when Judaism is all about life.”

Votkin takes her responsibility to sustain Jewish life for future generations seriously.

The Jewish Community of Helsinki has 850 registered members, though not all Jews in the city or across the country are registered. Votkin estimated the total Jewish population of Finland at approximately 2,000.

Finland functioned as an autonomous grand duchy under the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1917. The first Jews arrived as soldiers in the Russian army who remained in Finland after completing their service. While the community remains small, it now includes Israelis and American Jews, spanning the religious spectrum from secular to Orthodox.

The community operates a synagogue, a kindergarten and a school. The school follows the state-approved Finnish curriculum and includes Jewish studies, Jewish history and Hebrew instruction. The kindergarten and preschool serve about 40 children daily, while the school educates 80 students from grades one through nine.

Votkin said media coverage in Finland has been particularly harsh toward Israel, while more sympathetic toward Palestinians.

“It’s been very hard for young people at universities. There have been many demonstrations, and it’s been very tiring. Other communities don’t constantly have to explain themselves. When it comes to Jews, we are always held re-

“It’s business as usual. We celebrate holidays, educate children, we just opened a café, and we are planning to open a bar and restaurant in the future. We will have a Jewish hub in Helsinki,” she said.

“We will raise awareness about antisemitism. We need to educate our own community, but also the Finnish people, about Judaism. In that regard, we also have a very good relationship with the government,” she added.

“While left-wing parties are not so friendly, other parties are, and we have great cooperation with the government, members of parliament and members of the European Parliament as well. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I addressed 160 government officials. They help ensure our security, and we are grateful for that.”

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Remarkable Purim: Celebrating no hostages

Monday night we’ll be celebrating Purim, a joyful holiday akin to a Jewish Mardi Gras, a day to pretty much “let loose.” As we know, it tells the story of a king (Ahasuerus), his Jewish queen (Esther), a determined uncle (or, some say, her cousin, Mordechai) and an evil minister (Haman).

Not unlike the regime of Iran today, Haman aimed to remove all Jews from the kingdom — in a single day.

Haman’s downfall was, in part, brought about through the copious amounts of wine drunk at a meal hosted by Queen Esther, where she shared the machinations of Haman with King Ahasuerus.

So there’s every reason to celebrate with feasting, costume parades, drinking and joy. But at its heart, Purim is the story of courage and triumph, an inspiration to cheer the survival of our people against all odds.

This year, Purim is especially meaningful. After 843 days, the remains of the last hostage taken during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were brought out of the Gaza Strip and returned home to Israel.

The body of 24-year-old Ran Gvili, a staff sergeant in the Yasam unit of the Israel Police, was handed over to Israeli authorities on Jan. 27 — making this the first Purim since 2014 that no Israeli has been held captive by Hamas or any other terrorist organizations.

To avoid eating non-kosher food, Queen Esther ate only a vegetarian diet, dishes based on fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, legumes and dairy products, all abundant in ancient Persia. To honor Queen Esther, seudat dishes are often based on vegetables.

These days, we have so many choices in markets for “on the run” families. Fresh produce is prepared ready for the pot, good-quality broths are time-saving, and the variety of nuts and grains is endless.

Butternut Squash and Cashew Soup is inspired by my friend Janie, who once whipped it up using carrots for Shabbat dinner. I use precubed butternut squash and spices to flavor. Armeko, a Sephardic onion tomato stew from the Greek islands, can be thinned down with broth to make a tasty soup. And Wheat Berry

Salad, where the whole grains are soaked overnight, is an inexpensive source of protein.

Years ago, on my first visit to Tel Aviv, I was served Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms at a Purim Seudat. I never forgot the delicious melding of textures and herb flavors. And with skyrocketing prices for brisket, consider Piquant Meat Balls. Adapted from a recipe in an old cookbook, “Love and Knishes” by Sarah Kasdan, this tasty dish is quick, easy and a year-round favorite.

Foods of vengeance are boundless. Haman’s Fingers, a Moroccan Purim “revenge” food, is especially easy for kids. Flattened the bread, spread it with peanut butter and jelly, and toast to “eating the enemy.”

Of course, it couldn’t be Purim without hamantaschen. Included below is the oft-requested recipe for Hasty Hamantaschen, the triangular pastries symbolic of Haman’s three-cornered hat, along with a recipe for prune filling, or lekvar. For a savory filling, think outside the box. Consider feta cheese and dill, artichoke and Swiss, or lox and tomato.

Hosting a seudah? Think potluck, where everyone can bring a favorite Purim dish to add to some of the recipes below.

Butternut Squash and Cashew Soup (Pareve)

Cook’s Tips: • May substitute a one-pound bag of prepared baby carrots instead of butter-

nut squash. Reduce broth to 3-1/2 cups. •Will have to blend this mixture in two batches. •If too thick, add vegetable broth as desired.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. margarine

• 1 (20-oz.) container of cut-up fresh butternut squash (5 cups cubed)

• 1 cup orange juice

• 4 cups vegetable stock

• 1 cup cashews

• 2 cups water

• 1 tsp. cardamom

• 1/2 tsp. curry powder

• salt and white pepper to taste

Directions:

In a large pot, melt the margarine. Add the squash, orange juice and vegetable stock. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover and reduce heat to simmer until the squash is soft, about 25 minutes. Cool slightly.

While squash is cooking place the cashews and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook until cashews are soft, about 15 minutes. Drain well and stir into the squash.

Ladle cooled mixture into blender. Blend until completely smooth. Pour into a large bowl. Add the cardamom and curry powder. Mix well. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve hot or at room temperature. Serves 6 to 8.

Armeko (Pareve)

Cook’s Tips: •Substitute fresh parsley or dill for cilantro.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium onions, halved and sliced

• 1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1/2inch dice

• 1 large green bell pepper, cut into 1/2inch dice

• 1 (14-1/2 oz.) can Italian-style stewed tomatoes

• 1/3 cup long-grain rice

• 1/2 cup water

• 1 tsp. cumin

• 2 Tbsp. coarsely snipped cilantro, dill or parsley

Directions:

In a medium saucepan, combine all ingredients except cilantro. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

Reduce heat, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until rice is tender, about 20 to 25 minutes. Stir in cilantro, dill or parsley. Serve warm or hot. Serves 4 to 6.

Wheat Berry Salad (Pareve)

Cook’s Tips: •Jicama is a brown, paperyskinned root vegetable. Crisp, sweet and crunchy, it’s a perfect addition to salads.

See Hofman on page 14

Hofman: Remarkable Purim with no hostages…

•Wheat berries are the unprocessed kernel of the wheat plant, a nutritious whole grain. They are available in markets like Whole Foods.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup wheat berries

• 1-1/2 Tbsp. red-wine vinegar

• 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

• 1 Tbsp. warm honey

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

• 1-1/2 cups diced jicama

• 1/2 cup coarsely snipped cilantro or parsley

• 1/2 cup dried cranberries

• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions:

Place the wheat berries in a bowl and add enough cold water to cover them by about an inch. Refrigerate and soak overnight. Drain the wheat berries.

Place in a saucepan with two cups of cold water. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cover and cook until chewy, for about 20 minutes. Drain well. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the vinegar, mustard and honey. Whisk in the oil gradually until blended. Add the wheat berries, jicama, cilantro and cranberries. Toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve at room temperature. Serves 4 to 6.

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms (Pareve)

Cook’s Tips: •Clean the mushrooms with a damp paper towel or rinse quickly under cold water. Dry immediately with a paper towel.

•Za’atar is a savory Middle Eastern spice blend, usually made up of sumac, toasted sesame seeds and dried herbs like thyme. It is always good to keep some on hand.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup, plus 2 Tbsp., of matzah meal

• 1/3 cup finely chopped cilantro or parsley

• 3/4 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

• 4 mushroom stems, diced

• 1 tsp. za’atar spice

• 1/2 tsp. cumin

• 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

• 4 to 5 Tbsp. dry white wine

• Freshly ground pepper and salt to taste

• 4 Portobello mushrooms

• Olive oil to spray

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and spray with nonstick baking spray.

Prepare the stuffing. In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients except the mushrooms, adding enough wine to make the mixture come together.

With a spoon, fill the mushrooms with equal

amounts of the stuffing. Press to flatten slightly. Place on the prepared baking pan.

Lightly spray with olive-oil spray. Bake in a preheated oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve warm. Serves 4.

Piquant Meat Balls (Meat)

Cook’s Tips: •May substitute ground turkey or chicken for beef.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds lean ground beef

• 1 egg, lightly beaten

• 3 Tbsp. matzah meal

• 1 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper

• 1 (12-oz.) bottle chili sauce

• 1/2 cup grape jelly

• 3 Tbsp. fresh-squeezed lemon juice

• Chopped parsley to garnish (optional)

Directions:

In a medium bowl, combine the beef, egg, matzah meal, salt and pepper. Shape into walnut-sized balls. Set aside.

In a large saucepan, heat the chili sauce,

On a board, roll bread slices to flatten. Spread each with a thin layer of peanut butter, then jelly. Roll up tightly.

Brush them with the melted butter or margarine and then roll them in cinnamon-sugar. Bake in a preheated oven for 15 minutes or until nicely browned. Serves 6.

Hasty Hamantaschen (Pareve)

Makes 10

Cook’s Tips: •Store-bought poppy seed or prune filling and refrigerated biscuits make this quick and easy.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup store-bought poppy seed or prune filling

• 1 Tbsp. grated lemon zest

• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

• 1 (12-oz.) package refrigerated biscuits

• 2 Tbsp. warm honey or confectioners’ sugar

Directions:

grape jelly and lemon juice, stirring to blend.

Add the meatballs. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook for 5 minutes longer, stirring often to prevent sticking.

Sprinkle with parsley (optional). Serves 4 to 6.

Serve hot over fluffy rice or noodles.

Haman Fingers (Dairy or Pareve)

Cook’s Tips: •May toast in an air fryer. •Toast crusts, process in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. Store in a tightly covered container.

Ingredients:

• 6 slices of white or brown bread, crusts removed

• 3 Tbsp. peanut butter

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. jelly

• 4 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted

• 1/3 cup cinnamon-sugar

Ingredients: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking pan with foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a large baking sheet with aluminum foil. Do not grease. Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine poppy seed or prune filling with lemon zest and cinnamon. Mix well and set aside.

Separate biscuits. On a lightly floured board, flatten each biscuit into a round about 2-1/2 inches in diameter.

Place a rounded teaspoonful of filling in the center of each biscuit. Dampen edges with water.

Fold edges up over filling to form a threesided pyramid, leaving some of the filling uncovered. Place on the prepared cookie sheet, about a half-inch apart.

Bake in preheated oven 10 to 12 minutes, or until puffed and golden.

Brush with warm honey or, when cool, dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Prune Filling (Pareve)

Makes 1-1/2 cups

Ingredients:

• 1 (12-oz.) package pitted prunes

• 1 cup orange juice

• 1/3 cup sugar

• 1 tsp. allspice

Directions:

Place prunes in a medium saucepan. Add the orange juice and enough water to barely cover.

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until about one-quarter cup of liquid remains, about 10 minutes.

Stir in the sugar and allspice.

Transfer to the food processor and pulse to a coarse paste.

Cool completely before using.

Teach our children the moral reckoning of Oct. 7

JACK SIMONY

Hamas carried out a massacre against Israeli civilians. Israel has both the right and the obligation to defend its citizens and dismantle the organization responsible. The global surge in antisemitism that followed must be confronted clearly and without equivocation.

I believe these things without hesitation. I am teaching them to my children.

But alongside those certainties sits a harder question: How do we transmit vigilance without transmitting permanent rage? How do we ensure that justified anger does not harden into identity?

I grew up close to my grandparents, both Holocaust survivors. From them, I learned that Jewish survival is never accidental. It depends on strength, solidarity and a refusal to outsource our safety. The events of Oct. 7 reinforced that lesson.

As director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, I think about how historical memory shapes moral judgment. Holocaust education is not only about preserving the past; it is about forming ethical reflexes in the present.

Several years ago, our foundation began filming a documentary exploring whether trauma must pass intact from one generation to the next. As part of that project, we brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to Auschwitz to meet our chairman, Simon Bergson. Both were born in Austria in 1947. Schwarzenegger’s father had been a member of the Nazi Party. Bergson’s parents met in Auschwitz after surviving the Holocaust.

Their conversation did not attempt to equalize history or soften its facts. It demonstrated something more modest and more demanding — that individuals are not bound to replicate the moral failures of those who came before them. History shapes us, but it does not own us.

I brought my son Julian to witness that encounter. I wanted him to see that inherited trauma need not dictate inherited hatred.

After Oct. 7, that lesson felt more fragile. The scale of violence and the ongoing captivity of hostages created an atmosphere defined by urgency: defend, dismantle, deter. Reflection can feel secondary when security is at stake.

Yet the question remains. If this generation of Jewish children is marked by Oct. 7 as my grandparents’ generation was marked by Auschwitz, what emotional inheritance will follow?

As part of the same documentary project, we

recently facilitated a meeting between former Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot, who survived 738 days in Hamas captivity, and Moumen Al Natour, a Palestinian civil-rights lawyer who was imprisoned and threatened by Hamas for his dissent. Al Natour and his family now live in Europe under asylum.

The meeting was not staged as a reconciliation, nor did it blur moral lines. Bohbot did not dilute his suffering. Al Natour did not excuse Hamas. Instead, they spoke candidly about how Hamas had constrained and reshaped their lives.

Bohbot’s last encounters with Gazans before his release were as captors. Resentment would have been understandable. Al Natour grew up in a society where Hamas controlled education, media and public discourse. Silence would have been safer. He chose dissent.

What emerged was not symmetry, but clarity. Hamas is both an external military threat to Israel and an internal authoritarian force within Palestinian society. It suppresses opposition, narrows thought and punishes independence. The ideology that fueled Oct. 7 has also limited the prospects of Palestinians who reject it.

Recognizing that distinction does not weaken Israel’s security imperative. Israel retains the responsibility to dismantle Hamas and prevent another potential attack. Justice

and self-defense require it.

But defeating Hamas does not require internalizing its worldview. Extremism thrives on collective blame and categorical thinking. It reduces individuals to abstractions and justifies cruelty through dehumanization.

At Auschwitz, we teach that genocide begins long before killing. It begins when people are reduced to categories, and moral boundaries erode. That lesson is not theoretical.

For Jewish parents, the responsibility now is twofold. We must teach our children that Jewish survival is nonnegotiable and that Israel must be strong enough to defend its citizens. We must also teach that strength is inseparable from moral boundaries.

Anger after Oct. 7 is justified. The question is whether anger becomes the organizing principle of identity.

My son did not grasp every political nuance of the meeting he witnessed. But he saw something enduring: a man who survived prolonged captivity refusing to let that experience define his humanity, and a man raised under authoritarian rule refusing to inherit its hatred.

Those images may matter more than any argument.

Jack Simony is director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF).

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 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 • Taanis Esther

Tue March 3 / 14 Adar

Purim

Fri March 6 / 17 Adar

Ki Sisa • Parah

Five Towns candles: 5:33 • Havdalah: 6:43

Scarsdale candles: 5:33 • Havdalah: 6:34

Fri March 13 / 24 Adar

Vayakhel-Pekudei • Shabbos Mevarchim

Five Towns candles: 6:41 • Havdalah: 7:51

Scarsdale candles: 6:41 • Havdalah: 7:42

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

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

Different but complimentary: Prophet, priest

The sedra of Tetzaveh, as commentators have noted, has one unusual feature: it is the only sedra from the beginning of Shemot to the end of Devarim that does not contain the name of Moses. Several interpretations have been offered.

The Vilna Gaon suggests that it is related to the fact that in most years it is read during the week in which the seventh of Adar falls: the day of Moses’ death. During this week we sense the loss of the greatest leader in Jewish history — and his absence from Tetzaveh expresses that loss.

The Baal HaTurim relates it to Moses’ plea, in next week’s sedra, for G-d to forgive Israel. “If not,” says Moses, “blot me out of the book you have written” (Ex. 32:32). There is a principle that “The curse of a sage comes true, even if it was conditional” (Makkot 11a). Thus, for one week his name was “blotted out” from the Torah.

The Paneach Raza relates it to another principle: “There is no anger that does not leave an impression.”

When Moses, for the last time, declined Gd’s invitation to lead the Jewish People out of

The distinction between priestly and prophetic consciousness is fundamental to Judaism.

Egypt, saying “Please send someone else,” G-d “became angry with Moses” (Ex. 4:13-14) and told him that his brother Aaron would accompany him. For that reason, Moses forfeited the role he might otherwise have had, of becoming the first of Israel’s priests, a role that went instead to Aaron. That is why he is missing from the sedra of Tetzaveh, which is dedicated to the role of the Kohen.

All three explanations focus on an absence. However, perhaps the simplest explanation is that Tetzaveh is dedicated to a presence, one that had a decisive influence on Judaism and Jewish history.

Judaism is unusual in that it recognizes not one form of religious leadership but two: the

Tand Kohen, the prophet and the priest.

he figure of the prophet has always captured the imagination. He or she is a person of drama, “speaking truth to power,” unafraid to challenge kings and courts or society as a whole in the name of high, even utopian ideals. No other type of religious personality has had the impact as the prophets of Israel, of whom the greatest was Moses.

The priests, by contrast, were for the most part quieter figures, a-political, who served in the Sanctuary rather than in the spotlight of political debate. Yet they, no less than the prophets, sustained Israel as a holy nation. Indeed, though the Children of Israel were summoned to become “a kingdom of priests” they were never

called on to be a people of prophets.

Let us therefore consider some of the differences between a prophet and a priest:

•The role of priest was dynastic. It passed from father to son. The role of prophet was not dynastic. Moses’ own sons did not succeed him; Joshua, his disciple, was chosen instead.

•The task of the priest was related to his office. It was not inherently personal or charismatic. The prophets, by contrast, each imparted their own personality. “No two prophets had the same style.”

•The priests wore a special uniform; the prophets did not.

•There are rules of kavod (honor) due to a Kohen. There are no corresponding rules for the honor due to a prophet. A prophet is honored by being listened to, not by formal protocols of respect.

•The priests were removed from the people. They served in the Temple. They were not allowed to become defiled. There were restrictions on whom they might marry. The prophet, by contrast, was usually part of the people. He might be a shepherd like Moses or Amos, or a farmer like Elisha. Until the word or vision came, there was nothing special in his work or social class.

•The priest offered up sacrifices in silence. The prophet served G-d through the word.

•They lived in two different modes of time. The priest functioned in cyclical time — the day (or week or month) that is like yesterday or tomorrow. The prophet lived in covenantal (sometimes inaccurately called linear) time — the today that is radically unlike yesterday or tomorrow. The service of the priest never changed; that of the prophet was constantly changing. Another way of putting it is to say that the priest worked to sanctify nature, the prophet to respond to history.

See Sacks on page 22

Purim, certainly joyous, also a serious holiday

Purim is a serious holiday. Joyous, yes, but serious too. With that in mind, I bring to your attention the gifted author and lecturer, Rabbi Evan Hoffman, and his wonderful and learned essay, “Purim and the Struggle Between Nationalists and Moderates.”

“Over the past few years my focus has been on the late Second Temple period and the early rabbinic period (200 BCE to 250 CE),” he told me in an interview several years ago. “I really enjoy examining and researching rabbinic literature as prime source material in the study of Jewish his-

tory. It is a very sensitive subject inasmuch as not all passages can be taken at face value or even presumed to be accurate depictions of the past. The key is to understand why the sages, or an individual sage, said what they did in the proper historical and chronological context.”

I asked about his Purim essay. What was the nature of that struggle and how does it affect the way we observe Purim today?

“Purim postdates the Torah. Considering the commandment not to add or to subtract from the Torah, it was a serious question in antiquity whether or not a new holiday could be added to the Jewish calendar.

“Furthermore, some of the characters in the Purim story do not conduct themselves as religious Jews should. The heroine is involved in intermarriage. The story is very secular, with the total absence of the name of G-d in the Book

of Esther, the Megillah. There are those who questioned the historicity of the whole story.

“All of these ‘obstacles’ had to be overcome before the holiday could be firmly established as a religious feast on the Jewish calendar with the Book of Esther included in its rightful place in the canon of the Bible.”

Rabbi Hoffman, spiritual leader of Congregation Anshe Sholom in New Rochelle, continues with more telling observations:

“However, the most serious obstacle facing Purim was the fact that it glorifies anti-gentile violence and advocates a robust military response by Jews to the threat of anti-Semitism.

Some of the politically moderate rabbis of the Mishnaic era were a bit squeamish about promoting such lessons. The nationalistic rabbis doubled down on their support of Purim and increased the number of observances associated with the holiday. Ultimately, the nationalists won.

“Purim as we know it incorporates the erasure of Haman and the cursing of enemies. Throughout our history there have been moments when Purim revelry got out of hand and brought danger to the Jewish community. In certain times and places the gentile authorities set limits on the kind of celebrations we could conduct. This episode, too, deserves closer study in the years ahead.”

A version of the column was previously published.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

It’s

time to reclaim the sacred purpose of Purim

In the frenzy of Purim preparations, costumes half sewn, mishloach manos baskets overflowing, children perfecting their grogger technique, we risk missing something profound. The sages teach that Purim carries the sanctity of Yom Kippur itself. The Zohar (Acharei Mos 67b) famously reads Yom HaKippurim as Yom K’Purim, a day like Purim, implying that even Yom Kippur is only “like” Purim and that Purim touches an even deeper spiritual dimen-

sion. That is a stunning claim. What could possibly be sacred about a day when we dress up, make noise, and run around like we have lost all sense of order?

The Gemara in Megillah 14a asks why we do not recite Hallel on Purim as we do on other festivals. The Bavli offers several answers, but the Yerushalmi (Megillah 3:7) gives a striking response: the reading of the Megillah itself is the Hallel. In other words, the public recounting of Hashem’s hidden salvation is itself our song of praise.

Those 30 or 40 minutes in shul, half distracted, one eye on wandering children, silently hoping the reader moves just a little faster, those are our songs of praise. This is not a story we endure on the way to celebration. This is the celebration. It is our annual opportunity to

witness Hashem’s hidden hand.

Unlike Pesach, where seas split and miracles announce themselves with thunder, Purim unfolds quietly. A royal party. Years of silence. Esther unsure why she is in the palace.

A sleepless night. A book opened “at random.”

The gallows built for Mordechai hang Haman instead. The ring that sealed destruction seals salvation. Esther’s orphanhood becomes the very circumstance that saves her people.

That is our Hallel. Not only Esther’s story,

but ours. Where have we seen something painful become necessary? Where have events unfolded slowly, only for the pattern to emerge years later? The Megillah trains us to see what we would otherwise miss.

Then come the mitzvos Haman calls us “Am Mefuzar U’Meforad,” scattered and separated (Esther 3:8). Esther responds, “Lech K’Nos Es Kol HaYehudim,” gather the Jews together (Esther 4:16). Survival begins with unity.

So the rabbis designed mitzvos that reverse Haman’s indictment: Matanot La’Evyonim and mishloach manot. Gifts to the poor. Gifts to friends. The mitzvos themselves are the answer to the threat. Unity is not peripheral to Purim. It is Purim.

Bobbing and weaving through the slalom of life

Idid not watch the Winter Olympics. That doesn’t mean I was unaware of them — it’s impossible to avoid the highlights. I simply wasn’t “sitting down to watch.” Still, one event stayed with me: the downhill slalom, a race down a winding course filled with obstacles.

Every time I hear the word “slalom,” my mind converts it to shalom (peace). As a Jew and an Israeli, that’s how I’m wired. Once, the word

shalom evoked comfort and warmth. Today, its absence triggers foreboding.

As monumental world events unfold and the storm clouds of a broader war gather, it is hard to think of shalom. Peace feels elusive, almost unattainable. Our children continue to fight and fall in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Far fewer than before, thank G-d, and the war has achieved extraordinary gains, even miraculous ones. But they have come at terrible cost.

Hamas refuses to surrender its weapons, feverishly regrouping and plotting to destroy us another day, like the Amalekites who sought our destruction in ancient times. In Lebanon and Syria, Israeli soldiers maintain a fragile nonbelligerency. In Judea and Samaria, troops work

daily to uproot terror and reassert sovereignty, while preventing violence that threatens both Jews and Arabs.

The promise of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords — which not long ago seemed within reach — has receded. Meanwhile, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred metastasizes across the globe, from elite academic circles to the streets.

And looming over all is Iran, ancient Persia, a land once home to a great Jewish community yet also to Haman.

As we approach Parshat Zachor, in which we are commanded remembrance of Amalek, we must not to forget what Amalek tried to do to us at our nation’s dawn. Haman tried again centuries later. Hitler followed. Now another generation rises with similar intent. This is not hyperbole. The possibility of wider war is real. America stands at Israel’s side, supplying weaponry, defensive systems and intelligence. China and Russia support Iran. Satellite images document constant movement — air defenses, cargo transport, personnel. We can see everything in real time, and yet we understand so little. Is America posturing? Is Iran bluffing? Are

Get connected: Bridging the finite and infinite

How would you translate Joe Shmo into Yiddish? Yossel the Shlemiel? Not sure? Well, to be perfectly honest, neither am I.

At any rate, your average Joe (or “average Yossel”) usually has a somewhat limited perspective on matters of faith, theology and spirituality. I mean, he’s not exactly a philosopher, right?

So what does our average Yossel think about the rather substantial number of commandments Judaism expects us to fulfil?

Frankly, not much.

“Rabbi, why on earth did G-d give us so many

obligations? Why do we need so many commandments? Non-Jews have a grand total of seven, and we Jews need 613?! Gimme a break!”

I suppose that is a fair and reasonable question. I just don’t like Joe’s tone, which could use some respect and humility. Still, I get it.

From dear Joe’s perspective, a mitzvah is just a commandment, an obligation, a duty and an unwanted burden. So, who needs so many obligations? It’s a yoke around his neck. But what if there were a different perspective entirely? Then I believe that even he might look at things very differently.

What if a mitzvah were not a burden but an opportunity? What if I told you that every mitzvah is nothing less than a bridgebuilding exercise that can transport mere mortals to a heavenly space? That while G-d seems so far away, distant and unreachable, a mitzvah actually

closes the gap and is a bonding agent, bringing us closer to G-d.

I wonder if all the Joes out there knew that the word mitzvah doesn’t only mean “commandment” but also “connection.” They might well have a totally different approach to all these socalled burdensome and tedious “obligations.”

A mitzvah is not only a commandment or just another responsibility. It’s not a load or a liability, G-d forbid. Etymologically, the word mitzvah — from the Hebrew tzavta — means “connection” or “bonding.” A mitzvah is a means of connecting and bonding the Jew to G-d. It binds the commanded to the commander.

All thinking human beings who ever reflect or ponder on the purpose of life, in particular, and the purpose of the Jewish way of life, would surely be inspired to learn that a mitzvah is not just another job on G-d’s “to do” list. Instead, it is the chance to connect to G-d.

If we think about it, how can a mere mortal of flesh and blood possibly connect to the immortal and infinite One Above? The gap is so vast and seemingly unbridgeable. It would seem impossible.

And so, G-d gave us mitzvahs

And every one of them has a specific purpose to refine our character in one way or another.

•Kashrut trains us to be disciplined.

Shabbat gives us precious family time, when we can become humanized again after a week of pressures from everyone and everything (technology included).

Zachor: From Beit HaLevi, a prelude to Purim

This Shabbat, we read the weekly portion known as Tetzaveh — but since it is the Shabbat before Purim, we add a supplemental reading known as Parshat Zachor, describing the hostile attack against the people of Israel, then wandering in the wilderness, by Amalek. Haman, the villain of Purim story, was a descendant of Amalek.

In dedicating this week’s column to the upcoming festival, I will primarily draw from one teaching of the 19th century sage, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, author of the multi-volume

masterpiece, Beit HaLevi.

This teaching, as far as I can tell, is not to be found in the standard publication of Beit HaLevi but in a recently published collection that includes precious material which does not appear in Beit Halevi.

The editor of this collection is an eminent scholar in his own right — Rabbi Yosef Shimon Presser.

The verse in question is to be found in Megillat Esther 2:5. It is at this point that we first encounter the hero. It reads, “Ish Yehudi haya B’Shushan HaBira (There was a Jewish man in the Great City of Shushan).” That’s pretty much all we are told about him. We are not told that he was a “prominent Jew,” “a master of Torah,” “a pious man,” “a leader of his people.” He is, simply, “a Jewish man.”

Yes, we learn that he was a refugee exiled from

Jerusalem and that he generously raised his orphaned cousin Hadassa, better known as Esther. But was it unusually praiseworthy for a displaced person in an alien land to adopt a homeless waif, and a close relative to boot?

In dealing with this question the Beit HaLevi asks us to consider the following verse in Isaiah 44:5: “This one says, ‘I am the L-rd’s’; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand ‘the L-rd’s’; but they all bear the name ‘Israel’!”

The Beit HaLevi says this, in my own rough translation:

“In the future, all will come to realize that

most worldly matters are trivial, ‘vanity of vanities.’ Only Torah and mitzvot have significant value. Then, in that distant future, many types of Jews will be present.

“One will say, ‘I am the L-rd’s,’ having always kept Torah and mitzvot and having been a devout, G-d-fearing person.

“Others, having spent their lifetimes in pursuit of what they now recognize as insignificant, begin to introspect and dredge up memories of mitzvot that they did perform, long ago and perhaps only once in a lifetime. An example would be a son who one day remembers to recite Kaddish on the yahrzeit of his long-deceased father, Jacob. That’s the second category who ‘call themselves by the name of Jacob.’

“And then there is a third category: those who never recited Kaddish. They too will call upon a

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Alively debate is underway in the Jewish world about whether Jews are wise to present themselves as victims.

Rabbi Amitai Fraiman has written in Jewish Journal that Jewish victimization is now an outdated paradigm. Jews are no longer seen as vulnerable and marginal; since Israel’s iconic victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, they’ve been associated with force, power and agency.

The Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, may have slaughtered innocent people, says Rabbi Fraiman, but this was met by a “ferocious response from a Jewish army.” Portraying it as a story of pure victimhood is therefore “a conceptual failure.”

At the beginning of this month, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued in an address at New York’s 92nd Street Y that antisemitism isn’t just a prejudice but a neurosis that can never be eradicated.

So rather than engaging with it, he suggest-

ed, Jews should ignore it. The millions of dollars that community leaders had devoted to fighting it had been mostly wasted and would be better spent on reinforcing Jewish education, culture and identification.

Both Fraiman and Stephens said that Jews shouldn’t expect people to feel compassion for them. It was wrong to assume that if the world was reminded of Jewish suffering, moral clarity would follow. Nor would Jewish virtues or successes move hearts; constantly seeking to prove ourselves worthy to win the world’s love was a fool’s errand.

Victimhood has certainly figured hugely in the way Diaspora Jews have viewed themselves. In America, where Jews are less focused on synagogue life and religious observance than they are in the United Kingdom, the Shoah has become a central pivot of Jewish identity with an explosion of Holocaust memorials, museums and educational tools.

Jews reflexively depict Israel as having been the permanent target and victim of the Arab and Muslim world ever since the rebirth of the Jewish state in 1948. They also point to the antisemitism that mars the West itself, and which has been around for as long as there have been Jews in the world.

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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.

ment now rampant in their societies.

This onslaught has been fueled by the demonization of Israel through wall-to-wall lies and vicious distortions. These have been widely believed to be true, and because of that, have cast Israel and its supporters as the worst people in the world.

Clearly, none of these indisputable facts has prevented the current tsunami of hatred and bigotry from inundating the West. Diaspora Jews are being abused, harassed, vilified, intimidated and attacked — targeted over their identity, whether this is couched in the exterminatory language of anti-Zionism or in the paranoid tropes of Jew-hatred.

Jews in Britain, Australia and Canada are being accused of “killing babies” in the Gaza Strip. Groups of “anti-racists” are going from house to house in British cities, writing down the names of anyone who refuses to support a boycott of Israeli goods to create “Zionist-free” zones.

People shrug aside chants for the death of Jews on Western streets. After brief periods of performative shock when Jews were gunned down on Sydney’s Bondi Beach or at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, nothing serious was done by the Australian or British governments to address the anti-Jewish incite-

The driving force behind all this is the Islamists, who have mounted a globally organized and funded campaign of propaganda and psychological warfare.

The acceptance of this malicious and false narrative, however, rests upon far deeper Western cultural pathologies about the Jews and Jewish suffering.

This was obvious in the reaction to the Oct. 7 attacks, with a widespread refusal to acknowledge the depraved, sadistic and psychopathic way in which the Israelis were slaughtered, raped, tortured, kidnapped and otherwise abused.

The obvious reason for that is that any evidence of Jewish victimization by Palestinian Arabs gets in the way of the default narrative of Western liberals that the State of Israel is the colonialist oppressor and the Palestinian Arabs are its victims.

But there’s a still deeper reason — the widespread resentment that the Jews are considered victims at all

Jewish antisemite returns to spew more hate

GLOBAL FOCUS

The current row involving the Belgian foreign minister, the Israeli foreign minister and the US ambassador to Brussels over the ongoing Belgian police investigation into three mohels reveals a great deal about how antisemitism functions these days.

In a torrid social-media exchange, both Bill White, Washington’s envoy to Belgium, and Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, told Belgium’s top diplomat, Maxime Prévot, that the episode reeked of Jew-baiting. Prévot responded indignantly, reeling off a list of reasons why Belgium — where more than 1,600 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2023, most of them after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel — is actually a safe and welcoming place for Jews.

Largely unnoticed in Prévot’s response was his observation that the police probe into the mohels “was initiated following a complaint by a member of the Jewish community itself, concerning a specific medical practice.” (That practice, incidentally, is known as metzitzah b’peh, and it involves sucking the blood from the penises of newly circumcised baby boys, potentially exposing them to infections like herpes. The Belgian mohels, corroborated by eyewitnesses, deny carrying out this practice at the brit milahs of eight-day-old male infants that they performed.)

Who, then, was the Jew who submitted the complaint? What was he trying to achieve by drawing attention — at a time of rising antisemitism rippling across the world — to a ritual long abandoned by the vast major-

ity of Jews and only practiced by a small number of Chassidic sects? Is he regarded by his fellow Jews, as Prévot asserted, as a “member of the Jewish community”?

The answers to those questions shed critical light on this troubling episode.

His name is Moshe Aryeh Friedman. Born in Brooklyn, into the community of Satmar Chassidim, Friedman has been resident in Europe for more than 20 years. He pretends to be a rabbi, but there is no record of his ordination.

The headline with Friedman is that, despite his side curls, his kippah and his traditional dress code, he is a vile Holocaust denier. He became briefly famous in 2006, when he attended the notorious Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran and was photographed engaging in what looked like a passionate kiss with then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Standing alongside such luminaries as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and the late French Nazi sympathizer Robert Faurisson, Friedman preposterously claimed that the figure of 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis was

‘Anti-Judaism’ recycles Christian and Muslim libels against Jewish practices they deem uniquely evil.

Haredim

Rin fact a prophecy announced decades before the Shoah by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. The true figure of Jewish dead, he said, was closer to 1 million.

“Politically and historically, the land of Palestine doesn’t belong to the Jews and should be returned to Palestinians,” Friedman then declared, underlining his anti-Zionist credentials as well as his antisemitic ones.

Less than a year later, he had the temerity to turn up at the site of the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. While there, he was spotted by a group of Chassidim visiting from Israel. They gave him a good beating, removing his coat and hat so that he would not appear to others as a devout Jew.

If Friedman possessed an ounce of humility, he would have taken the beating as a sign to remove himself from public life. But his desire to remain in the public eye was overwhelming, as his antics over the next decade demonstrated.

In 2009, he cynically attempted to make amends with the Orthodox community but was rebuffed. He then moved to the Belgian city of Antwerp, where a significant Chassidic community lives, and found himself ostracized. His response, of course, was to lash out again at the Jewish community, leveling an accusation in 2013 that the murder of an Orthodox Jew in the city nine years earlier was the result of a conspiracy by Antwerp’s Jewish leadership. In an interview the following year, Friedman compared the Orthodox Jewish community to ISIS, claiming that Antwerp’s Jewish schools were churning out graduates to go and fight with the IDF in Gaza. Then, in 2018, he made the headlines again over his close association with Kaoutar Fal, a Moroccan woman deemed a national security risk by Belgian intelligence. Given this appalling record of lies and fantasies, it beggars belief that, in 2026, the Belgian

See Cohen on page 23

run an autonomus state inside Israel

iots by Haredi extremists over the presence of female soldiers in Bnei Brak are a distilled reflection of the gaping chasm between the State of Israel and the Haredi autonomy that has grown within its very heart. This is yet another expression of a head-on collision between the Jewish state — whose citizens, for the most part, serve in the army, carry the tax burden and have buried their dead throughout the war — and a community that lives as an autonomy of its own design in every value-based and practical sense.

Except, of course, when it comes to utilizing the state’s resources and budgets.

These events are the direct result of a Haredi worldview that sees the state as just a tool for strengthening and preserving the Haredi ghetto. This is the worldview that Israeli Prime Minister

Haredim regard the State of Israel as a ‘paritz’ — a ruthless and tyrannical overlord.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset member Boaz Bismuth seek to enshrine in law through the draftevasion bill they are advancing in the Knesset.

In the heart of Israel, there is a Haredi extraterritorial zone. One statement — nothing less than astonishing — illustrates this. While trash bins on Bnei Brak’s streets were burning and police vehicles were being overturned, the district police commander declared that “the female soldiers entered Bnei Brak without coordinating with the police.” As if Bnei Brak were a neighborhood in Jenin, rather than a city in the heart of Israel.

The Haredim have created their own shield of deterrence against law enforcement. For months now, the police have refused to arrest Haredi draft dodgers, so as not to trigger riots and road blockades.

This autonomy did not arise overnight, and it is not just a reaction to recent efforts to draft Haredim. Its roots lie in an ideological Haredi conception that regards the State of Israel as a paritz (a ruthless and tyrannical overlord). Therefore, as a matter of principle, Haredim bear no responsibility toward the state.

And yet, in their own eyes, they have full legitimacy to exploit to the fullest whatever can be extracted from that overlord: the Israeli taxpayer. In accordance with this outlook, over recent decades, the Haredim have used their political power to fortify the ghetto walls and expand their autonomy into a state within a state, cynically leveraging Israel’s resources. They have built an autonomous Haredi welfare system that recasts Israeli law as a series of rec-

ommendations, while state resources — health care, education, infrastructure, security — are the oxygen pipeline that sustains it. Israeli memory is short, but it is enough to look back at the COVID years to see how this process has steadily intensified. Even at the height of the pandemic, when Health Ministry directives required a full lockdown and the closure of educational institutions, the Hare-

dim carried on as though these matters did not concern them. The results were disastrous for the Haredim — morbidity and mortality were higher than in the rest of Israel — but also for the rest of Israelis because of the added overload on the health-care system.

That is how it was during the pandemic, and that is how things are conducted now in almost

Persecution of Christians in Islamic Middle East

JOSEPH PUDER ITAI

Islamophobia is a hate crime in the United States and in the West, in general, with even non-offenders of Islam dreading an accusation of Islamophobia. Conversely, in the Muslim majority states, particularly in the Middle East, Christians have been persecuted, discriminated and abused. The judicial system in most of these states actually encourages anti-Christian persecution.

In Western capitals, where religion has become an individual matter and multiculturalism a virtue, Muslims have taken control of the streets in London, Paris, Rome and Berlin. Yet one would be hard-pressed to find any instances of Christians parading in the name of Christianity in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Gaza, Istanbul, Tehran, Doha or Riyadh.

Western politicians seem to be ignoring the suffering of Christians in the Middle East. Christian persecution is characterized by a “threshold-genocide” status, resulting from a combination of extremist violence, legal discrimination and mass displacement. Christians in the Middle East were 12.7% of the region’s population in 1900 but only 4.1% in 2025.

Fearing to offend authoritarian Arab regimes and feeling colonial guilt, Western states have done little to alleviate the situation.

• There is a long history of persecution and violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt, especially in the Minya governorate.

• In Iraq, the Christian population has plummeted from approximately 1.5 million in 2003 to roughly 150,000 today. While ISIS has been largely defeated, its “aftershocks” remain, and many families are unable to return to destroyed homes in the Nineveh Plains.

• Iran’s Christians, especially those who have converted from Islam, are treated as “national security threats.” As of early 2026, many continue to be sentenced to long prison terms for “propaganda” or practicing their faith in underground house churches.

• In Syria, the fall of Bashar Assad in late 2024, Christians face heightened insecurity. The transitional government’s reliance on Islamist factions is creating risks of targeted violence and societal and religious marginalization. Key examples include the 2025 bombing of a major church in Damascus and intimidation by armed jihadists.

• Turkey was ranked 41st among the 50

countries where Christians face the most challenges in practicing their faith, by Open Doors World Watch List.

Regarding Turkey, this year’s findings highlight a troubling mix of cultural, legal and social challenges that continue to marginalize the Christian population, which includes the deportation of foreign Christian workers considered to be a “security threat.” In 1915, Turkey perpetrated a genocide by murdering 1.5 million Christian Armenians. More than a century later, Turkey’s current Islamist dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, still holds Christians in dangerously low regard.

Christians in the West Bank and Gaza face significant persecution and hardship that has resulted in a dwindling population (less than 2% in the West Bank, around 1,000 individuals in Gaza as of 2025).

• In Gaza, Christians experience violence and coercion to convert. In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, Christians made up the majority until the late 1980s. Today, Christians account for less than 10% of the population.

I interviewed the Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, in 1991 and asked him where the Christian population was. He responded by pointing his finger westward and said, “Santiago de Chile.”

• Qatari Christians, living inside the country, must use extreme caution when gathering for worship, while Christians who are not citizens must worship in a government-controlled compound that is closed to Qatari citizens. About 65% of the country’s population is composed of foreign workers, mostly Filipinos. Foreign Christians in Qatar have been deported for evangelistic activities among native Qataris.

Palestinian constitution slams door on peace

The Palestinian Authority’s recent draft of a shiny new constitution is meant to mollify Western nations who demand an end to the PA’s obsession with killing Jews and destroying the Jewish state. But anyone who’s ever uttered the words “Middle East peace” will surely be disappointed with the make-over.

Apparently, the Palestinians can’t help themselves: Their new constitution simply recommits them to the same old jihad they’ve waged for 78 years against Israel. Indeed, the Palestinians’ new document issues no call for peacemaking with Israel — in fact, it doesn’t mention Jews or Israel at all.

This constitution is more like a declaration of war, reaffirming four belligerent policies that have blocked “two states for two peoples” for decades:

1) Insistence on the fictional “right of return” to Israel of millions of refugee descendants who have never set foot in Israel.

2) Continuation of the Palestinians’ terrorist incentive program — “pay for slay” — that handsomely rewards murderers of innocent Jews;

3) Declaration of Jerusalem as the Palestinians’ eternal capital, though it has never been the capital of a Palestinian nation, nor even a

It is more like a declaration of war.

Muslim or Arab capital; and

4) Uninterrupted support for [armed] “resistance” against [Israeli] “occupation” of the Palestinian “homeland,” which mentions no sharing of territory with Israel or the Jewish people.

While the new constitution does make promises about introducing some civil liberties for Palestinians, these sops to liberality are like decorative icing on a rotten cake, nullified by the constitution’s commitment to Islamic supremacy.

If the Palestinians really want acceptance from Israel, the United States and the rest of the Western world, they will need to reform — throwing out and thoroughly condemning the goals and policies that deny every possibility for peace with their Jewish neighbors. This means affirming reality by renouncing the “right of return,” acknowledging 3,000 years of Jewish history and heritage in the land of Israel, accepting the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their indigenous homeland and renouncing terrorism.

Unfortunately, given new Middle East poll results showing that 91% of Palestinians oppose recognition of Israel, any constitution that approves peaceful relations with the Jewish state will face tough Arab opposition.

The “right of return” equals Israel’s destruction. Article 12 of the new Palestinian constitution mandates “ensuring the right of return for refugees according to international legitimacy resolutions.” This is basically a call for Israel’s destruction, as the “right of return” means flooding present-day Israel with as many as 6 million descendants of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees, which would nullify the country’s Jewish majority, and therefore, the Jewish state itself. Fact: Actual Arab refugees from Israel’s war of independence still

living number only about 30,000 to 50,000 — not their millions of descendants often cited by the PA and the UN Relief Works and Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The fact that the new Palestinian constitution insists on a “right of return” indicates that the Palestinians still want to destroy Israel, and thus have no interest in peace.

Enshrining terrorist “pay for slay.” Article 24 of the new Palestinian constitution requires that the “State of Palestine” care for the “families of martyrs” and “victims of genocide.” Neither the United Nations nor any other respected body interpreting international law has found that Palestinians have suffered genocide or that Israel intentionally committed it. This is slander.

Perhaps more importantly, Articles 24 and

44 mirror the PA’s long-standing “pay for slay” program, which provides stipends to families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned for murdering Jews. The Palestinians have long been under pressure by the West to end this practice. Rather than end this practice, however, the Palestinian constitution enshrines it. As long as Palestinians are paid to murder Jews, there will never be peace, let alone a two-state solution.

Apartheid Jerusalem. Article 3 of the new constitution proclaims that “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine” and that “the state is committed to preserving its religious character and protecting its Islamic and Christian sanctities.” There is no mention of Jerusalem’s Jewish holy places or 3,000-year

See Puder on page 23 See Sinkinson on page 23

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Phillips: Stop playing victim and fight back…

Continued from page 18

In the world of “intersectional” victim culture that has created overlapping categories of “the oppressed,” Jews are viewed as oppressors because they are seen as capitalists in key positions in finance, the media, the law and other professions. Ludicrously, as a result of the special status afforded by Western society to the Holocaust, the Jews have also been accused, in this writer’s hearing, of “sucking up all the victimhood in the world, leaving none for us.”

This is closely allied to resentment at the very idea of antisemitism. People believe the Jews use the claim of Jew-hatred not only to sanitize the “crimes” of Israel. They believe Jews also use it to sanitize themselves by making it impermissible to express “legitimate” dislike of Jews as hateful, devious, grasping and the embodiment of other classic antisemitic canards.

They are baffled by, as well as jealous of, the Jews’ conspicuous and disproportionate success.

Sacks…

Continued from page 16

•Thus the priest represents the principle of structure in Jewish life, while the prophet represents spontaneity.

The key words in the vocabulary of the Kohen are kodesh and chol, tahor and tamei (sacred, secular, pure and impure). The key words in the vocabulary of the prophets are tzeddek and mishpat, chessed and rachamim (righteousness and justice, kindness and compassion).

The key verbs of priesthood are lehorot and lehavdil, to instruct and distinguish. The key activity of the prophet is to proclaim “the word of the L-rd” The distinction between priestly and prophetic consciousness (torat kohanim and torat nevi’im) is fundamental to Judaism and is reflected in the differences between law and narrative, halachah and aggadah, creation and redemption.

The priest speaks the Word of G-d for all time, the prophet, the Word of G-d for this time. Without the prophet, Judaism would not be a religion of history and destiny. But without the priest, the Children of Israel would not have become the people of eternity. This is beautifully summed up in the opening verses of Tetzaveh: Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives, to keep the lamp constantly burning in the tent of meeting, outside the curtain that is in front of the Testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening to morning. This is to be a lasting ordinance among the Israelites for the generations to come.

Moses the prophet dominates four of the five books that bear his name. But in Tetzaveh for once it is Aaron, the first of the priests, who holds centre-stage, undiminished by the rival presence of his brother. For whereas Moses lit the fire in the souls of the Jewish people, Aaron tended the flame and turned it into “an eternal light.”

Since they can’t understand the source of this unsurpassed record of achievement, they assume the Jews must have hidden powers. Israel’s very real military power confirms them in the paranoid view that the Jews embody some kind of demonic cosmic force.

In other words, the Jews make them feel frightened. And people who frighten them, they think, can’t themselves be victims of anyone.

This is all obviously a form of cultural derangement. So how should Jews deal with it?

It’s certainly beyond foolish to believe that the world will ever feel sorry for the Jews because of their victimization. But that’s not a reason for remaining silent about the abuses they are facing.

Jews have a duty to stand up for truth over lies and for justice over injustice. It would also be insane for them not to protest against the systemic incitement and indifference that is turning them into sitting ducks for genocidal fanatics roaming the streets of Western cities.

comfort zone. For children, especially, this is transformative. Who in your class might not receive many? Which teacher quietly made a difference? Which neighbor have we never properly met? Purim teaches us to see beyond our natural orbit.

There is a striking Halachah in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 694:3: Ein Medakdekin B’Ma’os Purim. On Purim we do not scrutinize those who request charity. Anyone who extends a hand is given. The Mateh Moshe (Inyan Purim) writes that this open-handed generosity arouses Rachamim above, for Hashem conducts Himself with us measure for measure.

When a Jew opens his hand below without interrogation, Heaven responds in kind and receives that Jew’s Tefillos with unusual generosity. The Bnei Yissaschar (Ma’amarei Chodesh Adar) likewise describes Purim as a day of expanded Divine compassion flowing in response to expanded human giving. It is therefore regarded as an Eis Ratzon, a time of divine favor.

So if you are already in shul for the Megillah, carve out ten extra minutes. Step into a quiet corner. Speak honestly. On Yom Kippur, prayer feels natural because the day is structured around it. On Purim, to find stillness amid the noise, to access Kavannah while chaos swirls around you, that is accessing the Yom Kippur within Purim.

Plan now. Whom will you visit? Which neighbor could use a smile? Which child needs to feel seen? Support the organizations that distribute generously, but do not lose the human exchange. Do not lose the knock on the door, the eye contact, the shared laughter.

The sages did not create random chaos. They created sacred disruption. The noise quiets defenses. The costumes lower barriers. The laughter opens doors routine keeps closed. All of it moves us from scattered to gathered, from isolation to connection.

Listen to the Megillah as your Hallel. Give Matanos La’Evyonim generously. Use Mishloach Manos to cross boundaries you normally would not cross. And in the midst of it all, stand before Hashem with open hands.

If we do that, Purim becomes a day worthy of being called Yom K’Purim, a day like Yom Kippur itself.

And it’s essential for the safety and security of everyone to call out the moral bankruptcy of inverting victim and oppressor — the mind-twisting obscenity at the core of the demonization of Israel.

Plenty of people in the West aren’t anti-Jew, but they might tumble down this rabbit hole unless they’re hauled back from it by Jews sounding the alarm.

Similarly, Jews themselves must be prevented from believing such lies, which is causing increasing cultural demoralization as well as turning so many young Jews against both Israel and Judaism.

Antisemitism and anti-Zionism need to be fought, but harder and better. Diaspora Jews have never combated them properly. They’ve assumed the default position of exile — the nervous belief that they exist at the pleasure of their host community, which must therefore be appeased and never challenged.

el, though uninvolved in the Iraq conflict, was struck by more than 40 Scud missiles, cited this text and suggested redemption might be near. He famously said, in paraphrase, that Moshiach had been revealed, though not yet arrived.

The Talmud in Yoma 10a and Avodah Zarah 2b states that Moshiach ben David will not come until Persia falls at the hands of Rome. Tosafos comments that Persia will fall to Rome, and Rome will rule the world for nine months before redemption.

The Yalkut Shimoni, commenting on Isaiah, describes a final confrontation: the king of Persia provokes the king of Arabia, who seeks counsel from Edom — traditionally identified with Rome, later Western civilization. Persia attempts to destroy kol ha-olam (all the world). The nations panic. Israel cries out, “Where shall we go?” And G-d responds: “Ba’nai, do not fear. I have done this for you. The time of your redemption has arrived.”

Whether one reads these passages literally, metaphorically or cautiously, they resonate.

The Gemara in Rosh Hashanah 11a teaches: “B’Nisan nigalu, u’b’Nisan atidin l’higael (In Nisan they were redeemed, and in Nisan they are destined to be redeemed).”

We now stand in Adar, on the cusp of Purim, the holiday of Haman’s downfall in Persia.

I am no prophet. I am perplexed, confused and frightened by this slalom of shalom. The twists and turns of this course can trip even the most skilled athlete.

The Jewish people have been skiing this treacherous path for millennia, with breathtaking victories and heartbreaking losses.

When you begin a slalom run, you need two things: training and a guide.

Our training and guide are Torah and mitzvot. As Proverbs 6:23 teaches, “Ki ner mitzvah v’Torah or (For a mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light).”

As a result, their stand has always been defensive. Sucked into arguing on the ground designated by their tormentors, Jews have found themselves struggling to answer accusations that are so preposterous they are innately unanswerable — and then they wonder why they always lose.

As I explain in my new book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege, to be published next month by Wicked Son, Jews must go on the offensive and take the fight to the enemy.

Jewish history teaches that the ancient Israelites did precisely this — fighting and defeating their enemies with a clear-sighted understanding that anything short of doing so decisively would lead to the extinction of their people.

Israel today similarly fights its enemies on the battlefield of kinetic war. Diaspora Jews must fight their own enemies with equivalent tenacity and courage on the battlefield of the mind.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 17

•Mourning laws bring us comfort and a level of bereavement therapy.

And so on and so forth.

But every mitzvah also has a common denominator: It is a bonding agent. Yes, a mitzvah is an opportunity to reach the infinite! How? Because, as far as we may be from each other, by performing a good deed asked of us by our Creator, a connection between us has now been established.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (18801950) once gave an illustration to demonstrate this point. Please forgive me for taking some editorial license here.

What relationship is there between the smartest person on earth and the simplest? For an example, let’s use a great professor, perhaps Albert Einstein, and the newspaper delivery boy on the streetcorner. They appear to have nothing in common. What connection or relationship can they possibly have? Could they engage in a conversation? What would they discuss?

Yet Einstein wants to buy a newspaper and this simple boy has one. Suddenly, a relationship is born. This lad, who has never even heard of the Theory of Relativity, can meet a need of this brilliant individual. And a connection has been made. How much more so is the gap between a finite human being (even an Einstein) and the Infinite Supreme Being! It is infinitely wider than the gap between the professor and the newspaper boy.

But just as Einstein’s desire for a newspaper established a relationship between them, likewise, a mitzvah G-d asks us to perform establishes a connection between us, too. We are fulfilling not only His command but His desire, His wishes for us. The gap between mortal and immortal, finite and infinite, is suddenly bridged. We are actually bonding with G-d!

Continued from page 17

Here is where the chaos becomes sacred permission.

On a random Tuesday night, would you knock on the door of an elderly neighbor you barely know and hand them cookies? Probably not. Would you walk into a nursing home just to sing? It would feel unusual. But on Purim, it makes perfect sense. The day is your invitation. The costume is your permission slip. The noise is your cover.

We all live within concentric circles: close friends, acquaintances, familiar faces. That is natural. But Purim pushes us further. It gives us a socially sanctioned moment to stretch beyond our

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 17

Russia and China signaling or preparing? The gathering of three superpowers, armed with enough force to devastate the world many times over, is reason for sober contemplation. Thirty-five years ago, during the first Gulf War, I first heard of a midrash in the Yalkut Shimoni. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, noting that Isra-

Rav Nison Alpert, zt”l, in his work Limudei Nison, writes that one who travels at night through darkness relies on flashes of light to avoid snares, thorns and danger. These flashes are Torah and mitzvot. They determine whether we arrive at our destination in sh’leimut (wholeness) or ne’edar (lacking).

The words shalom and sh’leimut share the same root. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is completeness. It is arrival.

As we descend this slalom of shalom, twisting around obstacles we did not choose, we steady ourselves not with ski poles but with Torah scrolls. We lean not into fear, but into faith. The gates rush toward us; the course narrows; the stakes are high. Yet we have traveled this path before.

And we know that the light — however flickering — still burns.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Purim.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

So Yossele, please don’t look at a mitzvah as just another job or burden. This is a golden opportunity to bond with G-d as no other on earth. You don’t have to escape to the mountain tops of the Himalayas to find spirituality; stay home and do a mitzvah. And you will become spiritual and more godly.

This week’s Torah portion gets its title from the opening line, V’atah Tetzaveh, “And you, (Moses) shall command the Children of Israel to bring you pure olive oil to kindle the Menorah” in the sanctuary.

Moses, as the great spiritual leader of the Israelites, is not only commanding them but connecting them. Moses was the Divinely appointed agent to help link Jews with G-d. How? Via the mitzvahs that he taught them, including this one. Our saintly leaders down the generations have always followed in Moses’s footsteps and guided the people of Israel. May we heed their calls, do the mitzvahs and get connected.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Weinreb…

Continued from page 17

long-forgotten mitzvah One may recall his bar mitzvah day, when he wound tefillin round his hand for the first, and last, time. Or another will remember how he once reached out with his hand to extend charity to a poor fellow. That category is described by Isaiah as ‘they who will inscribe upon their hand that they are the L-rd’s.’

“There is yet another category,” suggests the Beit HaLevi, “Jews who lived their entire lives as gentiles. They never recited Kaddish, never donned tefillin, and never even knew of Jewish charity. But they too can point to the fact that they never agreed to baptize themselves. They defined themselves as totally secular atheists, but they to resort to popular jargon — identified as Jews and would never convert to another religion.

“The concluding words of Isaiah’s verse sums it up: ‘They ALL will take the name Israel.’ Every category is numbered as a Yehudi, a Jew.

“Therefore,” concludes the Beit HaLevi, “the verse the Book of Esther need not describe Mordechai with any of his deserved titles or allude to his degree of religiosity. It need only say, Ish Yehudi, he was a Jew. That is all that matters.”

Rabbi Presser footnotes the above analysis of the Beit HaLevi by sharing a similar approach given about a century earlier by the Gaon of Vilna, the Gra, to be found in Sefer Aderet Eliyahu in Parshat VeZot HaBeracha.

There the Gaon writes: “Even if a person has no claim other than that he calls himself a Jew, the name of Israel is upon him, and he is grasped by and connected to Klal Yisroel.”

I close with a humorous but penetrating anecdote told by Rabbi Yechiel Yakov Weinberg, author of Seridei Aish. He was once present at a conference discussing the age-old question, “Who is a Jew?”

Various professors, sociologists, and Jewish political figures each delivered long-winded speeches declaring who was, and who wasn’t, Jewish.

In the audience was a member of Rabbi Weinberg’s synagogue, who was a devout but unsophisticated Yiddish speaking individual. He asked for the floor and, after dismissing all the various discourses given by the “experts,” exclaimed, “Ah Yid iz ah Yid (A Jew is A Jew)!”

May every Jew have a joyous and inspirational Purim festival, and may all the Yehudim know only orah v’simcha, sasson v’Yekar (light and joy, happiness and honor) and I would add shalom, peace!

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Cohen…

Continued from page 19

authorities would deem Friedman’s complaint against the mohels credible enough to launch a police investigation.

The reason for that goes far beyond Friedman himself.

Antisemitism has always been a composite of distinct but interrelated elements. One of these is “anti-Judaism,” which recycles Christian and Muslim libels against aspects of Jewish belief and practice deemed uniquely evil.

In post-Enlightenment Europe, it was these aspects that were held up by secular and religious antisemites alike as proof of Judaism’s supposedly backward, anti-gentile essence.

Both shechita and the commandment of circumcision for infant Jewish males have, as a consequence, undergone regular attacks in public debates notable for the fury directed at those defending halachah, Jewish law.

Commenting on the 2012 call signed by 600 German doctors urging a ban on circumcision as an inhumane practice, Dieter Graumann, the former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, pointed out that the “circumcision debate sometimes turned very hostile, which was not rationally explicable. Nowhere else in the

world was this issue debated with such sharpness, coldness and sometimes brutal intolerance.”

Belgium, too, has shown similar levels of intolerance, as evidenced by its effective ban on shechita in 2017, on the grounds that preventing an animal from being stunned prior to its slaughter caused it unnecessary suffering. That decision created an environment ripe for exploitation by charlatans like Friedman, who take advantage of pre-existing suspicions around Jewish law to level their defamatory claims.

It’s therefore not surprising that Prévot accepted Friedman’s charges against the mohels at face value, ignoring the years he spent in attempts to endanger a Jewish community which, rightly, no longer accepts him as a member.

As ambassador White correctly pointed out, circumcision is performed in all “civilized countries” as a legal procedure. “It’s 2026, you need to get into the 21st century and allow our brethren Jewish families in Belgium to legally execute their religious freedoms,” he emphasized.

The alternative is to allow moral criminals like Friedman to set the terms of the debate, thereby ensuring that Jewish life outside Israel becomes even less secure.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Friedman…

every arena where there is a clash between the state and the Haredi autonomy that has arisen within it.

Asubstantial share of the blame for this situation falls on the state. In the face of Haredi intransigence, the state has for years displayed a lack of enforcement and oversight. Thus, for example, even when it is clear that Haredi institutions deceive the Israeli Ministry of Education and do not teach core curriculum subjects, the state continues to funnel budgets to them and turns a blind eye to the plundering paritz industry the Haredim have developed.

Or take another Haredi industry, the gemachs charitable loan and mutual-aid funds that moves hundreds of millions without proper supervision. There, too, the state drags its feet on tightening regulatory requirements under Haredi pressure.

The proposed draft law is not just a bad law that will not enlist a single Haredi man. Its true and grave meaning is de facto recognition of the Haredi autonomy. Instead of integrating this sector of the population, it will only fortify the ghetto walls.

The law’s original sin lies in shifting the duty of conscription from the individual to the community. Instead of the state exercising its sovereignty and obligating the young Haredi man to enlist as an equal citizen with equal rights and duties, it delegates responsibility to the Haredi autonomy.

The danger inherent in the draft law, as well as in the existence of a Haredi autonomy that lives at Israel’s expense but not according to its laws, is not only moral and administrative. It is existential.

The demographic data is clear: Haredim already constitute 14% of Israel’s population. One in three first-graders in the Hebrew-language education system is Haredi. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, within four decades, a full one-third of Israelis will be Haredi.

When a third of Israelis live in an autonomy outside the state’s legal and governing framework, the State of Israel will have no possibility of continued existence.

The question of Haredi conscription has long transcended “sharing the burden” and partnership in standing against the enemy. It has become a historic decision point: Will Israel continue to exist as a single state, or will a Haredi autonomy continue to grow within it — an autonomy that will change Israel’s character and ultimately lead to its collapse?

Shuki Friedman, Ph.D., is director-general of JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Puder…

Continued from page 20

• Saudi Arabia severely restricts Christian practice and bans public worship, churches and proselytizing. Those who openly practice or convert from Islam are at risk of arrest, detention and deportation. Christians, especially converts, face surveillance, discrimination and potential mistreatment.

The demise of ideologies, such as panArabism and secular socialism in the Arab world, opened the door for Islamism to thrive once again. Radical Islamism in Iran and Yemen made Christian life in these states virtually impossible.

While the situation in the rest of the Muslim Middle East is not much better; the mixture of hatred for the West, which is identified with Christianity, has placed the decreasing number of Christians in the region at risk. Fearing to offend authoritarian Arab regimes and feeling colonial guilt, Western states have done little to alleviate the poor condition of Christians in the region.

Ironically, Western guilt has also manifested itself by allowing millions of Middle Eastern Muslims to come to Europe and America, rather than being absorbed in the vast oil-rich lands of Saudi Arabia, Libya and Algeria.

While antisemitism in the Muslim Middle East is rife, hardly any Jews are left in the region. So, the next best target for the Islamist regimes? Christian believers.

It is high time for the United States and its Western allies to settle on reciprocity. Treat jihad-inclined Muslims in the West as Christians are being treated in the Middle East.

Joseph Puder is founder and director of the Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel (ITAI).

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Sinkinson…

Continued from pag 20

heritage. In fact, there is no mention of Jews at all, either in this article or any other part of the document.

Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Muslim or Arab entity, let alone a Palestinian state, which has never existed. The city has, however, been the capital of several Jewish commonwealths, and is now the capital of the modern-day State of Israel.

Western powers, including the European Union and the United States, have consistently urged the Palestinians and Israelis to recognize each other’s heritage in the holy city. While Israel has long acknowledged the sanctity of the city for all three Abrahamic faiths, the Palestinians’ new constitution reaffirms a continuing refusal to acknowledge the Jewish heritage of Jerusalem or accept Jewish sovereignty over any part of it.

Declaring war rather than calling for peace. The Palestinians’ new constitution accuses Israel of “colonial settlement occupation,” “displacement and ethnic cleansing,” and “genocide,” and calls on Palestinians “to pursue the perpetrators of these crimes,” echoing PLO charters and current educational curricula promoting “resistance,” behaviors that Western powers decry as glorifying terrorism. Islamic supremacy supersedes liberal democratic values in the “State of Palestine.” The new Palestinian constitution masquerades as enshrining liberal democratic values, but in fact, mandates Islamic supremacy. Article 4 establishes Islam as the official religion and “the principles of Islamic Sharia” as “a primary source for legislation.” This is consistent with current Palestinian self-rule, where Sharia overrides civil and democratic rights, even though such rights are already codified in Palestinian law. In effect, the new Palestinian constitution merely formalizes the status quo without liberalization.

To achieve peace, Palestinians must reject failed policies and principles. This means 1) renouncing the right of return; 2) acknowledging and accepting Jewish history and heritage in Jerusalem and the rest of Israel; 3) recognizing Jews’ right to self-determination in their native land; 4) demonstrating Palestinians’ commitment to liberal democracy by codifying governance according to rule of law and civil liberties; and 5) renouncing terrorism and ending the pay-for-slay program that rewards terrorists.

The new Palestinian constitution simply doubles down on the decades-old failed policies and principles that have left the Palestinians stateless and destitute for nearly eight decades.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com