The Jewish Star 03-19-2026

March 20-26, 2026

2 Nissan 5786

Vayikra

Vol. 25, No. 9

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When Islam calls, the West should hang up.

Those who believe Israeli teens deserved to be gangraped, infants set aflame and others beheaded will shrug off the attempted murder of 140 Jewish daycare children

THANE ROSENBAUM

Distinguished

University Professor Touro College

The baby steps we have been taking toward the Islamization of the West is hitting full stride. And if you’re Jewish and living almost anywhere you should be feeling run over by now.

Editor’s Note

These are challenging times. To survive the chaos we require the merciful help of Hashem, confidence in ourselves and in our heritage, and a dose of truth.

Torah is true. But what passes for news and commentary in partisan publications and algorithmically-driven social media feeds is not.

Each week, The Jewish Star works to make a positive contribution to necessary conversations in our communities. Not every article will be “on the money,” but our efforts are honest and, to the best of our abilities, Torah true.

We hear regularly from readers in the communities we serve — from the Five Towns to Great Neck, Kew Gardens Hills to Riverdale to Scarsdale. Please let us know what you think.

Ed Weintrob, Editor & Publisher Editor@TheJewishStar.com

If you’re not, if you have somehow misjudged the jihadist calling cards — firebombs and vans filled with explosives, hailstorms of bullets and, of course, the defiant intolerance of religious pluralism — you’re either dead or braindead.

Over the past several weeks, Islamists have declared open hunting season on Jewish houses of worship worldwide.

Synagogues in New York, Los Angeles and Miami were targeted with vandalism or arson; the same with synagogues in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver; and in such far-flung jihadist destinations as France, Germany, Chile, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Italy and the outback urban centers of Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.

In Holland, an explosion at an Orthodox Jewish school in Amsterdam. Hours earlier an arson attack at a Rotterdam synagogue. Four teenage Islamists belonging to The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right claimed responsibility.

In Norway, in the city of Trondheim, an armed Islamist conducting reconnaissance outside a synagogue was arrested after a high-speed car chase.

A bomb was set off in a synagogue in Liège, Belgium. The Belgian Jewish community has been especially besieged as of late. Since

2024, a nation otherwise known for chocolate has seen a surge of antisemitic incidents owing mostly to its large Muslim population. According to a recent poll in Brussels, where 20 percent of the population is Muslim, nearly half the city believes that Jews dominate banking and manipulate markets.

In Azerbaijan, police foiled terrorist plots against a synagogue and the Israeli Embassy in Baku.

Three synagogue shootings took place in Toronto, Canada, all within 10 miles from one another. Bullets shattered the glass entrance at Beth

Avraham Yoseph with two maintenance workers inside. A half hour later shots were fired at the entrance of Shaarei Shomayim. Days earlier another synagogue and a Jewish restaurant were pelted with gunfire.

Rosenbaum: Just say ‘no’ to call of Islam…

Continued from page 1

In the United States, an armed Islamist rammed a truck filled with explosives into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit. At the time, 140 children were inside the synagogue’s preschool. One of the largest synagogues in the United States, and of the Reform denomination, chances are that most congregants at Temple Israel were nominally critical of Israel’s war in Gaza.

No matter. All the Lebanese-born assailant with terrorist ties to Hezbollah needed to know was that there were Jews inside the synagogue. (One TV news analyst insisted that having the name “Temple Israel” makes it “an Israeli temple.”) No matter their age, or whether they were even Zionists, it was a target-rich environment for any self-respecting Islamist.

The New York Times — and morons on social media — were quick to come to the terrorist’s defense. After all his two brothers, one a Hezbollah commander and the other a mere henchmen, were recently killed, along with their children, in an Israeli airstrike.

Jews living in the diaspora must realize that Israel’s defense of its homeland will, from now on, serve as a pretext for permissive antisemitism worldwide. “Resistance by any means necessary” means Jews, living anywhere — and regardless of age, gender or ideology — be-

If we refuse to pay attention to Islam’s organizing principle of absolute submission, our destiny is to one day recall, with deep regret, that there was a time when it was not too late to reclaim the West.

come justifiable targets.

If you believe that Israeli teenage girls should be gangraped, infants set aflame and others beheaded, then of course 140 Jewish daycare children in Detroit deserve to die because Israel struck terrorists in Beirut.

That’s the kind of perverse moral judgment that has become the coin of the realm these days among antisemites and self-hating Jews, alike.

Back in January, in the Deep South of Jackson, Mississippi, an Islamist set fire to the Beth Israel Congregation. When asked his motive for committing the crime, the Islamist, without any recognition of irony, replied: The synagogue had “Jewish ties.”

The targets have not all been synagogues.

•A Jewish man was beaten in San Jose, California for speaking Hebrew.

•A spate of bias crimes targeted Jews in Teaneck, who were fired upon by jihadist teenagers shooting gel pellet guns.

•In New York City, two Muslim teenagers

scrawled 73 swastikas on a playground in a Jewish neighborhood. A rabbi was assaulted on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Yet another Islamist rammed his car into an entrance of the Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn.

Since Mayor Zohran Mamdani has brought the Religion of Peace to City Hall, antisemitic incidents have spiked by 182 percent.

These signature acts of violence straight from Hamas handbooks are not always directed at Jews. Anyone with a whit of common sense surely knows by now that Islamists are merely testing the resolve of Western nations by persecuting its Jews first. How obtuse and unsuspecting can democracies possibly be?

The Islamic Rapture is only achieved by shattering Western Civilization and JudeoChristian solidarity.

•There was the gunman in Austin, Texas wearing a “Property of Allah” T-shirt. He wasn’t aiming at Jews.

•Last week we saw a convicted ISIS-support-

er yell, “Allahu Akbar,” before opening fire at an ROTC classroom in Old Dominion University, killing the instructor.

•Two Pennsylvania teenagers, radicalized online by ISIS, threw homemade explosive devices at a rally protesting the Islamic takeover of New York City. It took place outside of Gracie Mansion, where Mayor Mamdani and his wife, Lady Macbeth, live.

Why the sinister Shakespearean reference? Well, we have since learned that immediately after the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel, the future First Lady of NYC responded enthusiastically to social media postings celebrating the carnage and glorifying the terrorists. She seemingly Loved a post referring to the “mass rape hoax.”

While celebrating Eid al-Fatir, the end of the Ramadan fast, she and her husband hosted the leader of Columbia University’s pro-Hamas protests — at Gracie Mansion! Taxpayer funds spent on a terrorist sympathizer who the Secretary of State is in the throes of detaining and deporting from the United States.

No wonder Mamdani was more agitated by constituents protesting lawfully outside Gracie Mansion than he was with jihadists from Philadelphia hurling bombs.

Days later, on Al Quds Day, the anti-Israel event established by the Ayatollah in 1979, hundreds gathered in Times Square chanting, “Death to America; Death to Israel!” and “We support Hezbollah and Hamas here!” and, “Khaybar, khaybar, O Jews,” which is always a prelude to antisemitic violence.

The call to prayer these days is looking more like a call to arms.

If we refuse to pay attention to Islam’s organizing principle of absolute submission, our destiny is to one day recall, with deep regret, that there was a time when it was not too late to reclaim the West. Our freedoms could have been preserved. Our traditions salvaged.

Islamophobia is no misnomer. Islam deliberately instills fear in the hearts of infidels. The feeling is not prejudice. It’s a suppressed survival instinct — shamed and ignored.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Trump’s counterterror man hits Jews and quits

By Andrew Bernard, JNS

The director of the US National Counterterrorism Center — who was criticized as an antisemitic conspiracy theorist following his contentious nomination by President Donald Trump — resigned on Tuesday in protest against the Iran war. He blamed Israel and “its powerful American lobby” for dragging America into decades of conflict leading up to the current one.

Joe Kent, a former US Army Ranger who served 11 combat tours and whose previous wife was killed in the line of duty in Syria in 2019, wrote in his resignation letter to Trump that Iran “posed no imminent threat” to the United States.

“It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote. “Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”

Kent blamed “high-ranking Israeli officials” and “influential members of the American media” for creating a “misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war senti-

ments to encourage a war with Iran.”

“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory,” Kent wrote. “This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war

that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

ISIS killed Kent’s wife, Shannon, in a suicide bomb attack in Manbij, Syria, where she was deployed with the US Navy as part of counter-ISIS operations and to support Syrian Kurdish forces. He said that conflict was also being “a war manufactured by Israel.”

Ilan Goldberg, senior vice president and chief policy officer at J Street, wrote that while he would normally welcome the resignation of an official over a war he disagreed with, Kent’s blaming of Jews for repeatedly taking America into conflicts was unacceptable.

“The antisemitic stuff in here blaming Israel for the Iraq war and a secret conspiracy of the media and Israelis to deceive Trump into going to war with Iran is ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes,” Goldberg said. “Donald Trump is the president of the United States and he is the one ultimately responsible for sending American troops into harm’s way.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) wrote that the letter from Kent, the most senior Trump administration official to resign over the war in Iran, was proof that he should never have been in office.

“Good riddance,” Bacon said. “Antisemitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government.”

Before joining the administration Kent previously ran for Congress in Washington state in 2022 and 2024 as a Republican, before he became chief of staff to Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence. The Senate con-

firmed him as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in July.

Democrats at the time accused him of being an “unqualified conspiracy theorist” on the basis of his congressional campaigns.

“Joe Kent also has a track record of peddling conspiracies and attacking law enforcement, from saying our country is at war with ‘leftist cabal,’ or calling to completely defund the FBI and ATF, agencies that keep Americans safe from foreign and domestic threats, or pushing the offensive and false conspiracy that the Jan. 6 insurrection was somehow a deep state plot,” stated Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

“There is no place in public service for traffickers of antisemitic tropes such as Mr. Kent,” Arie Lipnick, chair of the US advisory board of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, told JNS. “For generations to come, the world will be a safer place as a direct result of the decisive military actions that have been taken by the United States and Israel.”

Prominent anti-Israel conspiracy theorists welcomed Kent’s letter on Tuesday.

“May American troops take his lead and look into conscientious objection to Bibi’s red heifer war,” wrote Candace Owens. “Goyim stand down.”

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Paint won’t mar legacy of a Japanese diplomat

Sydney, Australia

When I saw an image on social media of red paint sprayed across the face of a bronze statue of Chiune Sugihara in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, my first thought was not about politics. It was of anger.

How dare the perpetrator desecrate the image of the brave individual to whom I owe my life!

I thought about my grandparents — people who had fled persecution and left their parents in Warsaw only to learn five years later, they had been murdered in gas chambers. I thought about my father — ripped from a warm and nurturing environment at the age of 11 and on the run for his young life.

A thin sheet of paper — a Japanese transit visa — was the only thing that differentiated his future from that of his Jewish classmates, who were rounded up and exterminated. That sheet of paper made my own life possible.

And I thought about how this vile act will allow me to educate more widely by publicizing it.

Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who was stationed in Kaunas, Lithuania, from 1938 to 1940.

As the German Nazis took over Europe, thousands of Polish Jews, including my grandparents and father, poured into neighboring Lithuania seeking refuge. What they found instead was antisemitism on a level even greater than that they were escaping.

They were desperate to leave by any means. And so, Sugihara requested permission from his superiors to issue visas to them.

In response, he was instructed by Tokyo not to. But as he and his wife started witnessing hundreds of Jews assembling daily at the gates of the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania, he again asked for permission but was denied.

So he chose to take matters into his own hands.

For weeks, Sugihara wrote transit visas by hand, forming the intricate, Japanese characters in ink; working tirelessly, through exhaustion and illness, up to 18 hours a day, knowing he was saving lives. He issued 2,139 visas that covered 6,000 individuals. Even as he was leaving his post, he continued signing documents from his hotel room and, according to survivors, from the train platform until the moment he boarded his train and it pulled away.

Along with thousands of other thankful survivors who traveled across the Soviet Union to Japan and, ultimately, to Australia and other nations

were my grandparents and my father.

From Kaunas, Sugihara was sent to open a consulate in Königsberg (today, Kaliningrad) and then to Bucharest. When he returned to his country of birth in 1947, he was dismissed from his posting within Japan’s foreign service.

Sugihara lived in relative obscurity for decades. He only learned of the number of individuals his visas had saved when a survivor located him in 1968. Sugihara passed away on July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. His only surviving son, Nobuki Sugihara, frequently speaks about his father’s actions in rescuing thousands of Jews during World War II. For his efforts, he was designated a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.

Thanks to Sugihara, my father lived to 87, dying of natural causes instead of in a concentration camp like his contemporary, Anne Frank, born within weeks of him in 1929. She died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945 at age 15.

If not for this diplomat, I would not have been born. And I would never have penned my book that honors him, which was just published in the United States. It follows a young woman and her grandmother, who travel back to Japan to thank the man to whom they owe their lives.

Those who defaced his statue may believe they were making a statement about Israel or about contemporary conflict. Protest is a democratic right. Anger at governments, including Israel’s, is part of public life. But merging the heroic actions of a rescuer of Holocaust refugees into present-day political grievance diminishes both history and argument.

Sugihara was not a symbol of state power. He was simply an individual who defied his own government and, with moral clarity, a consular stamp and an ink pen, altered the course of thousands of lives, resulting in the existence of as many as half a million descendants.

Moral courage is rarely loud, usually costly and lingers for time immemorial, especially to those whose lives it has touched.

Paint can be removed. The bronze can be polished back to its original condition. What any act cannot tarnish is the fact that hundreds of thousands, including me, are alive because of one man. You cannot undo that with taunting words on a social-media post, chants at rallies or a red blotch of paint.

I’m living proof of that.

Linda Margolin Royal is a Sydney-based writer, author of the 2024 Australian bestseller, “The Star on the Grave.” Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Small fry are matzah makers at HANC EC factory

At HANC HS, colorful costumes come out for Purim

By Abigail Saldin ‘26

The simcha of Adar doesn’t end with Purim. HANC HS students were gathered for a Shushan Purim Chagiga when Color War 2026 was announced.

The teams this year were revealed to be Blue, representing ora. and Black, representing simcha

After a commencement speech by Rabbi Eli Slomnicki, the students participated in teamwork activities, including collecting pompoms throughout the school, tic-tac-toe relay races, spike ball, chess and more.

Players from both teams went head-to-head in a thrilling basketball tournament, with their respective teams cheering them on from the sidelines.

The morning of the finale began with insightful shiurim followed by a school-wide game of musical chairs, and the closing ceremony, featuring exhilaratingly choreographed STOMP performances by both teams, student-written poems, and funny student-produced commercials for imaginary Shark Tank products.

After all the points amassed by each team had been tallied, the entire school sang Acheinu together.

The students waited in suspense before it was announced that the Blue team had won and would have their team name engraved on a WWE-style belt to be displayed in the school long after all team members have graduated.

mountsinai.org/southnassau

Antisemitism is something to snack on in China

In China, antisemitic tropes have begun to appear not only in discourse but as snack foods.

In November, after Israel’s two-year war with Hamas had largely faded from China’s public discourse, an online store calling itself “Youtairen Official Snack Foods Shop” began selling shredded squid products across major Chinese e-commerce platforms.

The store’s name, Youtairen, is a homophone of the Mandarin word for “Jews,” rendered through deliberate character substitution involving youyu (“squid”) and ren (meaning “person,” it also refers to an edible kernel or seed core). The human reference alludes to being displaced into consumable form without being stated directly. The addition of the word “official” in the store’s name further normalizes the brand.

Soon after the Gaza war, “squid” was already circulating on Chinese internet as a euphemistic stand-in for Jews — recognizable to insiders yet indirect enough to evade explicit naming. Against this backdrop, the brand name does not invent a new association but activates an existing one.

The snack foods themselves are real products: priced, delivered, repurchased, reviewed and promoted through verified accounts.

The brand also operates through a formal collaboration with a well-known online influencer, Xiaodao Deutsch, is both the endorser and livestream presenter. His public persona in Chinese digital culture is closely associated with German-language performance and stylized imitations of Hitler speeches — a reputation well established among his audience.

While no explicit political message appears on the packaging the product is sold as shredded squid under the brand name “Xihai,” which sounds like “Sieg Heil.” In English-language marketing materials, however, the phrase is glossed as “say hello” or “say hi to shredded squid,” translations that preserve the rhythm while stripping away historical reference.

Compounding the ambiguity, the Chinese typography used for the word “shredded” visually resembles the stylized form of the Nazi SS symbol — close enough to invite association, yet imprecise enough to deflect direct attribution. The resemblance remains on display, inviting recognition without naming what is being recognized.

Livestream performance then advances the process from recognition to participation. The brand name Xihai — phonetically identical to the Mandarin phrase for “West Sea” — is structurally ambiguous; unlike “East Sea” or “South Sea,” it lacks a fixed geographic meaning.

This looseness allows sound to take precedence over meaning. In livestreams, hosts list other seas while leaving Xihai suspended. Heard rather than read, its cadence approximates Sieg Heil — never spoken, but acoustically available.

The pleasure lies in hovering at the edge of articulation: recognizing the resonance without naming it, sharing implication without responsibility.

The result is a functional transformation. A phrase historically associated with a Nazi slogan is reduced to a repeatable sound pattern that can be circulated playfully, laughed through and dismissed as a coincidence. For attuned audiences, the reference remains legible; for critics, it is rendered deniable.

While this case is situated in China, the mechanisms involved — commercialization, deniability, participatory normalization — are not unique to China. They are increasingly visible across digital cultures worldwide.

At a certain point, ambiguity stops being a container for meaning and becomes a method for producing it. Interpretation is not left to chance. It is guided through repetition and interaction.

An image circulating on the Chinese internet — separate from the official packaging — illustrates the first stage. A cartoon cat with a Hitlerstyle moustache and bangs reaches toward the shredded squid snack food. The moustache and hairstyle anchor the historical frame; the gesture suggests appetite and possession. The squid itself is already cooked and edible, yet the cat is drawn not to the food but to the package promising shredded squid inside.

The image functions as an interpretive primer: It does not argue, but demonstrates how to see.

This matters because what I previously described as “Antisemitism 3.0” spreads less through persuasion than through recognizability. Meaning need not be declared; it must simply be easy for insiders to recognize and difficult for outsiders to contest.

Additional cues provide moral insulation.

A handwritten sign reading Das war ein Befehl (“That was an order”) appears during livestream promotions. In postwar narratives of the Nazi period, the phrase signals evasion of responsibility. Paired with self-descriptions of taste testers as niuma (“ox-horse”), the broadcast stages a posture of dehumanized obedience: action without agency.

The sequence culminates with the word Verräter (“traitor”) paired with the phrase fan le ta (“overthrow it”), compressing command, execution and purification into a lighthearted skit.

What matters is not any single cue in isolation, but accumulation. Separated, each element can be dismissed. Together, when repeated, they teach audiences how to interpret, when to laugh and how to deny. Interpretation becomes routine, and routine becomes infrastructure.

A promotional raffle card marks a further escalation. One prize category reads Youtai Jizhong Ying, a deliberate homophonic substitution in which Youtai (“squid-related”) replaces Youtai (“Jewish”) and ying (“to win”) replaces ying (“camp”). The phrase therefore echoes “Jewish concentration camp” while remaining deniable at the level of written characters.

What had previously circulated as an implied reference is transformed into a participatory mechanism. The Holocaust-related phrase is no longer something merely to recognize or joke about; it structures how users engage, click and compete.

Even more consequential is the inclusion of soap as a prize. In some Chinese online subcultures, soap serves as a cue linked to the allegation that Jews were turned into soap during the Holocaust. The point is not whether the claim is historically true or false, but how it functions symbolically: Once placed inside a raffle structure, recognition becomes an incentive.

In this way, antisemitic tropes become embedded not only in imagery or language but in the mechanics of gamification itselfy.

The escalation did not stop with snack foods.

In December, only weeks after the shredded squid products appeared, the brand introduced “Million-Mark Toast,” responding directly to audience requests during livestreams. What

began as an online joke was rapidly converted into a purchasable good, illustrating the speed and efficiency of China’s fan-driven online commercial culture.

The form of the product matters as much as its name. Marketed as whole-wheat, crustless toast and promoted as a healthy breakfast substitute, “Million-Mark Toast” is framed not as novelty merchandise but as an everyday food. In China, bread occupies a liminal space — neither staple nor treat but a convenient meal replacement. This positioning allows the historical reference to enter daily routines without demanding attention.

The symbolism extends into pricing. The toast is sold as a two-box package (480 grams per box) priced at 50 yuan, repeatedly framed through wordplay as wu shi Million-Mark bread. In livestream promotions, the influencer emphasizes wu shi as an archaic phrase meaning “I eat,” while also echoing the No. 50.

Hyperinflation is thus reenacted through numerical contrast: a product labeled “millionmark” becomes a bargain.

During livestream promotions, a slogan repeatedly surfaced: “Bread will come, and soap will come.” Adapted from a familiar Chinese political phrase promising material security, the line collapses economic catastrophe and mass atrocity into consumer anticipation. History is not denied; it is neutralized through routine delivery.

The timing of these developments is revealing. The commercialization documented here did not coincide with the peak of discourse in China about Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza but followed its retreat.

Such boundary testing did not begin with food. Antisemitic tropes had circulated for years through consumer items such as “Adolph shampoo,” discussed in my essay in “The Diplomat.” Those precedents normalized the attachment of antisemitic references to everyday goods without consequence.

What is different now is the speed and scale of commercialization.

Repeated acknowledgments by both the influencer and the snack brand that the content is “frequently reported” suggest that scrutiny is anticipated and strategically folded into the campaign’s appeal. Provocation and denial now operate in tandem: recognizable symbols generate in-group recognition, while claims of misunderstanding provide insulation.

Being reported no longer deters participation; it confirms that the boundary has been successfully tested.

From this perspective, top-down explanations are insufficient. Nothing in the timing or rapid iteration of these products suggests orchestration from Beijing. The dynamics are horizontal: audience demand, platform incentives, commercial experimentation and affective resonance.

The emergence of a secondary Bilibili account in late December 2025 — Xihai Wushe — underscores this shift. Reprising the same sound-based logic echoing Sieg Heil, the parallel account signals expansion rather than retreat.

What we are witnessing is not the beginning of antisemitism in China. It is the beginning of its routinization.

Yang Meng is an assistant professor at Peking University, where she founded a course on Jewish civilization and created the country’s first university-level Yiddish course.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Antisemitic tropes in China,

Influencers who fight for Israel wind up in war

By Adi Nirman, Israel Hayom

Four days before the joint US-Israel strike on Iran, with tensions at an all-time high, a delegation of influencers and content-creators from around the world made its way to Israel.

Seventeen participants in the Jews Talk Justice Influencers Lab arrived to experience Israel up close. What they did not anticipate was that they would also experience an Israeli reality — war.

Participants at the media lab, run by Hen Mazzig, a veteran Israeli advocacy activist and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute for Combating Antisemitism, were content creators, each working to debunk false narratives about Israel, particularly since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Their focus was obtaining factual, evidencebased information about the conflict and discussing the best ways to fight the delegitimization of Israel in the world, especially among Gen-Z,

which consumes its news from social media.

Just as they were preparing to take their Israeli experience back to their home countries, “Operation Roaring Lion” (Israel) and “Epic Fury” (US) against Iran began, adding an unexpected layer to the workshop: firsthand experience of Israeli reality during wartime.

In addition to Israelis and Diaspora Jews, participants included non-Jewish, non-Israeli influencers.

These participants — from countries whose governments are hostile to Israel, such as Spain — are creating pro-Israel content and openly supporting the Jewish state in a way that runs counter to the mood among many of their peers. And no, no organization is paying them to do so.

“It’s like you’re in a movie,” says Spanish activist Issac Moraleja, who has been creating content fighting against anti-Israel rhetoric since Hamas’ at-

tack on Israel on Oct. 7. “Tel Aviv reminds me of my city, Barcelona. Everything is so cool, young people all around, I love it. Then all of a sudden, you turn a corner, and you see a destroyed building.”

“I’m happy about my time in the bomb shelter,” Issac said. “When we saw that the ayatollah had been killed, hundreds of people were all shouting and celebrating in the shelter. We were experiencing history here in Israel.”

‘It’s incredible how the media and the world portray everything related to Israel in a completely different way than what is really happening here,” he said. “They [Spanish leadership] blame Jews for everything they are involved in,” he said.

German activist Karoline Preisler, who holds silent counter-protests at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, found herself caught up in the war with Iran.

“Today I slept through the night for the first time since leaving Israel,” she said, after manag-

ing to return to Berlin. “How do Israelis manage to endure it? They have been threatened, shelled, and plagued by mass murderers since Israel’s founding. I only now truly understand the psychological strain on Israeli society.”

Though she had visited Israel before, Preisler shared her experience against the backdrop of the Iranian missile attacks. “Every minute, I felt grateful for the Iron Dome. In the shelter, I also made many new friends and grew to love Israel even more.”

She said the way Israelis cope with war surprised her and deepened her appreciation for the country and its people.

“In World War II, the Germans exterminated more than six million Jews. Their children and grandchildren have just given me protection in Israel and made my return home to my children possible,” she said. “The boundless love overwhelmed me.”

WINE

AND DINE

Here’s to an easier, simpler, healthier Pesach

We no longer eat the way my grandmother cooked. No gribenes, no schmaltz, maybe no chopped liver. And we certainly do not serve the dozens of dishes that she served every Pesach. I remember lots of things from those years, including fish swimming in ice cold water in the bathtub. My mother followed suit when my grandmother could no longer cook for 30 people. She served course after course of food until there was no room on the table and the platters were placed in the server she felt she had to buy to hold all the food.

Like any good Jewish hostess, when it came my turn, I not only wanted to honor my grandmother and my mother, but I also wanted to introduce my own Pesach recipes. It was an enormous undertaking which began weeks in advance and required lots of freezer room, so we bought an extra freezer! Eventually, with 3 kids, we needed it, but back then I had one infant and my husband thought it was an extravagance.

Over the years, the guest lists grew and the crowds seemed to love what I made. It was exhausting, but also it filled me with memories and gratitude that I could do this for family and friends. And then? The kids grew up and, sadly, older relatives, passed away, others moved to Florida and there was no need to empty the living room to make room for those extra tables and chairs. Food trends changed, people began to think more and more about nutrition.

First it was low fat, then low carb, then low sugar. I tweaked the menu year after year, but somehow, kept the number of dishes about the same.

However, each year since the Pandemic, I have cut a dish or replaced it with something healthier. So far, no one has complained. Six desserts? Nope, I have cut it to three, mostly because of allergies of some of my guests and because my husband loves my mandel bread and my kids insist on a flourless chocolate cake.

The bottom line is that this glorious feast of freedom, does not have to consist of dozens of dishes so that we have enough food to provide us — and all our kids — with leftovers for the whole week.

In this age of eating healthier, we can still have a wonderful meal without consuming 3500 calories by the end of the night.

So please, of course, make your family’s favorite dishes, enjoy those delicious Pesach delicacies, and make those decadent molten chocolate cakes. But also think about healthy eating, vegetarian dishes and making one or two fewer dishes this holiday. No one will miss the extra food– in fact, some may thank you!! And just maybe, you won’t be as exhausted!!

Have a wonderful zissen Pesach.

Shallot Parsley Vinaigrette (Pareve)

I have not bought salad dressing in many years. They are so easy to make and so fresh and delicious without any chemical preservatives, stabilizers, gums, and more.

This is perfect for Pesach and uses up all that extra parsley.

• 1/2 cup olive oil or vegetable oil

• 3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

• 1/2 to 1 tsp. sugar

• 3 cloves minced shallots, about 1 to 2 tsp.*

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1 small clove garlic, finely minced

• 3 Tbsp finely minced fresh parsley

• OPTIONAL: A splash of fresh lemon or orange juice to brighten the flavor.

*I usually start with one teaspoon of the shallots and then taste the dressing. If it is not strong enough, add more as needed. Mix all ingredients together. Adjust sugar, salt and pepper to taste.

NOTE: If the dressing is too strong, add a spoonful or two of cold water to dilute it a bit.

English Tea Room Dressing (Pareve)

This is a sweeter dressing that kids love. A little drizzle goes a long way so use sparingly and the sugar content won’t be an issue.

• 3/4 to 1 cup sugar (less to taste)

• 1/2 cup cider vinegar

• 1 tsp. salt

• 1 onion, minced fine

• 1 tsp. paprika

• 1/2 tsp. celery seed

• 1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Grapeseed oil

In a saucepan, combine the sugar and vinegar. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add salt, onion, paprika, and celery seed. Pour into a jar and mix well. Refrigerate. When cold, add oil and shake well just before serving. Makes about 2 cups.

Spring Salad (Pareve)

• 1 package baby spinach (4 oz)

• 1 package spring mix or baby lettuce leaves, (4 oz.)

• Other greens such as arugula, iceberg lettuce, Romaine, etc.(4 to 8 oz.)

• OPTIONAL: 2 cups shredded purple cabbage

• 1 cup KLP dried cranberries

• 2 cans, mandarin orange segments (drained, juice reserved)

• 1 to 2 pears or apples, sliced and cut into small pieces

• OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup walnuts, almonds or other nuts (I like KLP glazed pecans) Gently toss all ingredients together, except the orange segments. Add the Shallot Vinaigrette the or English Tea Room Dressing, toss well and top with the orange segments. Serves 6+.

Salmon with Herbs and Vegetables and Fig Balsamic Glaze (Pareve or Dairy)

This is a great dish for a meat-free Seder or during Chol Ha’Moed when everyone is tired of matza. Using orange juice adds a nice sweet flavor to this dish. Lime adds a bit of a Mexican kick and lemon adds a fresh, bright taste. You can easily double or triple the ingredients and use a big salmon fillet to feed a crowd.

• 4 to 8 (6 oz.) salmon fillets

• 8 sprigs fresh dill OR basil, about 2 inches long

Joni: To an easier, simpler, healthier Pesach…

from page 11

• 8 sprigs fresh parsley, about 2 inches long

• 4 Tbsp. chopped shallots, divided

• 2 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon, lime or orange juice or a mixture

• 2 scallions, sliced into small pieces

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1 to 2 medium zucchini julienned

• 2 carrots, julienned

• Olive oil or butter

GLAZE:

• 4 cloves garlic, finely minced

• 1/2 cup honey

• 1/3 cup KLP “soy” sauce

• 2/3 cup fig spread or jam

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup KLP balsamic vinegar

• OPTIONAL: Slices of lemon, lime or orange for additional flavor and color; A drizzle of honey with the lemon or orange.

NOTE: This is really a recipe made by taste, so taste and adjust ingredients as you like.

Line a rimmed baking pan with foil and then parchment. Brush the parchment lightly with olive oil. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Place the salmon filets, skin side down, on the parchment. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

Julienne the carrots and zucchini either in a food processor or with a sharp knife. Evenly distribute the zucchini and carrots over each piece of fish. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish, brushing with the glaze once more.

Remove from the oven, transfer the fish to serving platter and drizzle the remaining.

• 1-1/2 cups sugar

• 2-1/4 cups cake meal

• 3/4 cup finely ground almonds or almond flour

• 4 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 1-1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

JAM FILLING:

• 1 jar (18 oz. each) apricot preserves and raspberry preserves

• 3/4 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon or orange juice

• 1/2 cup finely chopped almonds (you can use lmond flour or ground almonds)

• 1/2 cup slivered, blanched almonds

NOTE: You can use any kind of jam you like.

Sweet & Sour French Roast

• 1 French roast, 4 to 6 lbs.

• 4 large onions, thinly sliced

• 1/3 cup olive oil

• 4 to 6 cloves garlic, finely minced

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Generously grease a 9X13 brownie pan. Set aside. Place margarine eggs and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat until well-blended. Add the vanilla and lemon juice and beat until wellblended. Remove from the stand and add the cake meal and almond flour.

• 2 to 3 lbs. carrots, peeled and sliced

• 2 cups beef stock or chicken stock

• 2 cups dry red wine

• 1 cup KLP ketchup

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup KLP vinegar

• OPTIONAL: 2 lbs. very small baby potatoes

Mix well with a fork until evenly blended. Press all but 1-1/2 cups into the prepared pan, pressing about 1/2 inch up the sides. Set the 1-1/2 cups aside. Place in the oven and bake for 25 to 35 minutes until golden. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Heat a large skillet and add 2 tbsp olive oil. Sear the meat on both sides so that you have a medium crust on both sides. Remove to a deep Dutch oven or tightly covered roasting pan. Add the rest of the oil and the thinly sliced onions. Cook until golden brown (but not caramelized).

Meanwhile, mix the apricot and raspberry jam with the lemon juice or orange juice to loosen it a bit. Spread each over half the base and set aside.

Mix the remaining dough with the chopped almonds and scatter evenly over the jam. Scatter the blanched almonds over the top and place back in the oven for an additional 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool before cutting. Makes 24 to 36 bars.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Add the minced garlic and cook for 1 minute, until fragrant. Scrape the onions over around and under the meat. Scatter the carrots around the meat.

Return the pan to the heat and add the stock, wine, ketchup, sugar and Vinegar. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Mix well and taste to adjust flavors. Pour over the meat and carrots and over tightly.

Roast at is done. for 1 hour. Reduce heat to 300 and roast for 4 to 6 hours. Check at 2 hours and add potatoes and some water or chicken or beef broth if there is not a lot of liquid. Place back in the oven and cook until the potatoes are soft and the meat easily shreds with a fork. Remove from oven, let cool, and refrigerate overnight or serve.

Apricot and Raspberry Almond Bars (Pareve or Dairy)

These are quick and easy and go well with tea or coffee through the week.

COOKIE BASE:

• 3/4 lb. butter or Passover pareve margarine, softened

• 3 extra-large eggs

HEALTH, MIND & BODY

New radiation oncology center opens in Far Rock

By Aidan Warshavsky, LI Herald

For over a decade, the Rockaways has been without direct access to radiation oncology services. Now residents can be cared for close by, at Episcopal Health Services’ new cancer center at the Walsh Ambulatory Pavilion.

Opened on Feb. 26, the center, spanning 50,000 square feet across five floors, is the first specialty service in the building. In addition to radiation oncology, the $18 million addition to the EHS network will continue to offer medical oncology services, while its neighbor across the street, St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, will continue providing surgical oncology.

“By investing in advanced technology, new facilities, and expert physicians, we are strengthening our ability to diagnose, treat and support patients through every phase of their cancer journey,” said Donald Morrish, EHS’s president and chief executive officer.

The center, capabile of treating

nearly 30 types of cancer, ends a 14year absence of radiation oncology service in the Rockaways, since the closing in 2012 of Peninsula Hospital Center.

The state Department of Health ranks cancer as New York’s secondleading cause of death, behind heart disease. In 2024, EHS identified 14 types of cancer, including colorectal and pancreatic, that had higher rates locally than those in New York City.

The new center boasts a new TrueBeam linear accelerator, an advanced radiotherapy system that targets tumors while minimizing the effects on healthy tissue. It also features a PET and CT scanner, as well as infusion therapy.

Dr. Mark Ashamalla, chief of radiation oncology at EHS, said the arrival of TrueBeam will provide an effective method of treatment without disturbing a patient’s daily life.

“This expansion strengthens our ability to provide timely care and im-

proves continuity throughout the treatment process,” he said.

Ashamalla joins Dr. Marc Warshawsky, EHS’s chief of hematology and oncology and Dr. Sheldon Genack, chairman of EHS’s Department of Surgery.

Warshawsky said that receiving a cancer diagnosis influences every part of a patient’s life, and added that the center would help support everyone in the community.

“Having our medical, radiation and surgical oncology teams under

one roof significantly enhances patient care by fostering better communication, collaboration, and efficiency,” he said. “We are able to meet frequently about our patients, share knowledge and coordinate seamless care more effectively.”

Hadassah presses on Jew-hate, US-Israel ties

By Andrew Bernard and Mike Wagenheim, JNS

About 200 leaders from Hadassah, America’s largest Jewish women’s Zionist volunteer organization, met with more than 100 members of the House and Senate on Tuesday as part of the group’s annual “Day of Impact” advocacy day on Capitol Hill.

Carol Ann Schwartz, national president of Hadassah, told JNS that its volunteers, representing chapters from across the country, shared personal stories and policy priorities with lawmakers, urging them to strengthen the US-Israel strategic alliance, confront antisemitism and protect women’s health.

“In the United States, one out of nine Jewish women is a member of Hadassah, and we look at that as, yes, it’s wonderful, but it’s also a responsibility to make sure we’re representing all of those members,” Schwartz said of the nearly 300,000-person organization. “We were out in full force.”

One bill designed to help address Jew-hatred, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism into law, but has been stalled in the Senate for more than a year.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have objected to the IHRA definition over claims that it

chills legitimate criticism of Israel or might restrict the ability of Christians to say that Jews killed Jesus.

The legislature in New Jersey recently killed a similar bill to adopt the IHRA definition at the state level, reportedly over fears among incumbent Democrats that it could leave them open to primary challenges from the anti-Israel left.

Schwartz said her message to lawmakers worried about that kind of political calculus is that Jews vote, too.

“We’re trying to get down to the root of why they’re making the objections,” Schwartz said. “If it’s just because, ‘Well, I’m going to lose votes,’ you’re going to lose votes if you don’t approve it as well.”

“How can you have another group define what is antisemitic to the Jewish people?” she asked. “You have to have the Jewish people making that definition.”

Among Hadassah’s other congressional priorities are increased funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, support for US-Israel

medical partnerships and expanded federal investment in women’s health research.

Schwartz pointed to cutting-edge research at the Hadassah Organoid Center that uses adult stem cells to fight cancer, as well as Hadassah’s experience running medical centers under wartime conditions.

“Every hospital has so much glass,” Schwartz said. “How do you board it up when a ballistic missile is coming? And you can look at it and say, well, ballistic missiles aren’t coming to the United States — we know Iran was trying to expand its reach.”

“We’re sharing this knowledge because we know there will be a time that will come that the hospitals in the United States are going to need to have this information as well,” she said.

Schwartz stressed the non-partisan nature of Hadassah’s outreach efforts to strengthen the USIsrael relationship, fight antisemitism and expand women’s healthcare access in advocating on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

“We really wanted to get a broad-brush stroke of meeting with people who we already know are our friends and those who aren’t our friends anymore,” Schwartz said. “Aren’t our friends yet, I should say.”

Petach Tikvah hospital gifts ‘Roaring Lion’ newborns

Newborns at Rabin Medical Center’s Beilinson Hospital received blue and white outfits featuring the logo of “Operation Roaring Lion” against Iran, the Petach Tikvah hospital said.

A photo of one of the babies was tweeted at Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, accompanied by a message in Persian.

“While you listen to the sound of American and Israeli Air Force jets above Tehran, we are listening to this sweet roar here at Rabin Medical Center,”

the hospital wrote, adding, “This is our true picture of victory.

“What picture do you have to show the world?” the hospital asked the Iranian president in the X post, which was subsequently taken down.

Among the pictures posted by Beilinson Hospital were photos showing IDF soldiers holding the newborns, which it explained symbolized “connection between the front lines and the home front.

“Every baby born here is a reminder of what we are fighting for, life itself. In these difficult days for the country, seeing newborns wrapped in blue and white is our true picture of victory,” Beilinson said in the statement.

“The people of Israel continue to bring life into the world, and that is the strongest answer to anyone who threatens us,” he added. “Every child who comes into this world is part of light overcoming the darkness.”

HaEmek Medical Center in the northern city of Afula said on Thursday that since the beginning of Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury on Feb. 28, more than 60 babies were born in its delivery rooms, which are protected against Iranian and Hezbollah missile and suicide drone attacks.

Some of the births took place in the hospital’s new protected operating rooms, through planned and emergency cesarean sections, it added.

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 March 20 / 2 Nissan

Vayikra

Five Towns candles: 6:48 • Havdalah: 7:58

Scarsdale candles: 6:49 • Havdalah: 7:49

Fri March 27 / 9 Nissan

Tzav • Shabbos HaGadol

Five Towns candles: 6:56 • Havdalah: 8:06

Scarsdale candles: 6:56 • Havdalah: 7:57

Wed April 1 / 14 Nissan

Erev Pesach • First Seder

Five Towns candles: 7:01 • Scarsdale: 7:01

Thu April 2 / 15 Nissan

Second Seder

Five Towns candles: 8:03 • Scarsdale: 8:02

Fri April 3 / 16 Nissan

Five Towns candles: 7:03 • Scarsdale: 8:13

Scarsdale candles: 7:03 • Havdalah: 8:05

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

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

Our history sits between destiny and chance

The third book of the Torah is known in English as Leviticus, a word deriving from Greek and Latin, meaning, “pertaining to the Levites.” This reflects the fact that in Judaism the priests — all direct descendants of Aaron — were from the tribe of Levi, and that the ancient rabbinic name for the book was Torat Kohanim, “the law of the Priests.” It is an appropriate title.

Whereas Shemot and Bamidbar are shot through with narrative, the book between them is largely about sacrifices and the rituals associated, first with the Tabernacle and later with the Temple in Jerusalem. It is, as the name Torat Kohanim implies, about the priests and their function as guardians of the sacred.

By contrast, the traditional name Vayikra, “And He called,” seems merely accidental. Vayikra just happens to be the first word of the book, and there is no connection between it and the subjects with which it deals. The truth, I will argue here, is otherwise. There is a deep connection between the word Vayikra and the underlying message of the book as a whole.

To understand this, we must note that there is something unusual about the way the word appears in a Sefer Torah in this particular instance. Its last letter, an aleph, is written small, almost as if it barely existed. The standard-size letters spell out the word vayikar, meaning, “he encountered” or “he chanced upon.” Unlike vayikra, which refers to a call, a summons, a meeting by request, vayikar suggests an accidental meeting, a mere happening.

With their sensitivity to nuance, the Sages noted the difference between the call to Moses with which the book begins, and G-d’s appearance to the pagan prophet Bilaam, which does not use the same form of the word. This is how the Midrash puts it:

What is the difference between the prophets of Israel and the prophets of the pagan nations of the world? … R. Hama ben Hanina said: The Holy One blessed be He reveals Himself to the pagan nations by an incomplete form of address, as it is said, “And the L-rd appeared to Bilaam”, whereas to the prophets of Israel He appears in a complete form of address, as it is said, “And He called to Moses.”

Rashi is more explicit: All [G-d’s] communications [to Moses], whether they use the words “speak” or “say” or “com-

mand” were preceded by a call [keri’ah] which is a term of endearment, used by the angels when they address one another, as it is said, “And one called to the other” [vekara zeh el zeh, Isaiah 6:3). However, to the prophets of the nations of the world, His appearance is described by an expression signifying a casual encounter and uncleanness, as it says, “And the L-rd appeared to Bilaam.”

The Baal HaTurim goes one stage further, commenting on the small aleph: Moses was both great and humble, and wanted only to write Vayikar, signifying “chance”, as if the Holy One blessed be He appeared to him only in a dream, as it says of Bilaam [vayikar, without an aleph] — suggesting that G-d appeared to him by mere chance. However, G-d told him to write the word with an aleph. Moses then said to Him, because of his extreme humility, that he would only write an aleph that was smaller than the other alephs in the Torah, and he did indeed write it small.

Something of great significance is being hinted at here, but before taking it further, let us turn to the end of the book. Just before the end, in the sedra of Bechukotai, there occurs one of the two most terrifying passages in the Torah. It is known as the tochachah (the rebuke: the other appears in Devarim 28), and it details the terrible fate that will befall the Jewish people if it fails to keep its covenant with G-d:

As for the survivors, I will bring such insecurity into their hearts in their enemies’ lands that the sound of a windblown leaf will make them run as if they fled the sword; and they will fall, though no one is chasing them. They will stumble over one another as if fleeing the sword, when no one chases them. You will have no power to stand before your enemies. You will perish among the nations; your enemies’ lands will devour you. —Lev. 26:36-38

Yet despite the shocking nature of the forewarning, the passage ends with a note of consolation:

I will remember My covenant with Jacob; and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Avraham I will also remember, and I will remember the land. … Yet even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them nor despise them and annihilate them, will not break My covenant with them, for I am the L-rd their G-d. —Lev. 26:42-44

The keyword of the passage is the word keri It appears exactly seven times in the tochachah, a sure sign of significance. Here are two of them by way of example: If, despite all this, you still do not listen to Me — if still you walk contrary to Me — then I, in My fury, will walk contrary to you. I will punish you seven times more for your sins. —Lev. 26:27-28

The history of the Jewish people testifies to the presence of G-d in their midst. It is not mere chance.

What does the word keri mean? I have translated it here as “contrary”. There are other suggestions. The Targum reads it as “harden yourselves,” Rashbam as “refuse,” Ibn Ezra as “overconfident,” Saadia as “rebellious.”

However, Rambam gives it a completely different interpretation, and does so in a halachic context:

A positive scriptural command prescribes prayer and the sounding of the alarm with trumpets whenever trouble befalls the community. For when Scripture says, “Against the adversary that oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets” the meaning is: Cry out in prayer and sound an alarm. … This is one of the paths to repentance, for when the community cries out in prayer and sounds an alarm when threatened by trouble, everyone realizes that evil has come on them as a result of their own wrongdoing … and that repentance will cause the trouble to be removed.

If, however, the people do not cry out in prayer and do not sound an alarm but merely say that it is the way of the world for such a thing to happen to them, and that their trouble is a matter of pure chance, they have chosen a cruel path which will cause them to continue in their wrongdoing, and

thus bring additional troubles on them. For when Scripture says, “If you continue to be keri towards Me, then in My anger I will be keri towards you”, it means, “If, when I bring trouble upon you in order to cause you to repent, you say that the trouble is purely accidental, then I will add to your trouble the anger of being-left-to-chance.” —Mishneh Torah, Taaniyot, 1:1-3

Rambam understands keri to be related to the word mikreh, meaning “chance.” The curses, in his interpretation, are not Divine retribution as such. It will not be G-d who makes Israel suffer, rather it will be other human beings. What will happen is simply that G-d will withdraw His protection. Israel will have to face the world alone, without the sheltering presence of G-d. This, for Rambam, is simple, inescapable measure-for-measure (middah kenegged middah).

If Israel believe in Divine Providence, they will be blessed by Divine Providence. If they see history as mere chance — what Joseph Heller, author of “Catch-22,” called “a trash bag of random coincidences blown open by the wind”— then indeed they will be left to chance. Being a small, vulnerable nation, chance will not be kind to them.

Recalling importance of what we carry within us

The only time my wife’s grandfather, Akiva Yosef Weinberger, ever spoke about his experience during the Holocaust was at the Pesach Seder.

During the war, Akiva Yosef hid his tefillin and carried it with him even in Mauthausen.

On one of the death marches, the Nazis discovered the tefillin. They beat him and threw the tefillin into a pit of fire filled with burning human corpses.

Without thinking, he jumped in after them.

He lay among the burning bodies and somehow miraculously survived. After liberation in 1945, he had the tefillin checked by a sofer. They were found to be completely ko-

sher. He wore them every day until he passed away in 1999.

That story is the deepest commentary on Parshas Vayikra.

The word korban, usually translated as sacrifice, does not really mean to give something up. It comes from the root Karov, meaning to draw close. When the Torah commands a person to bring a korban, it is not asking that person to lose something. It is asking them to use that act to come closer to Hashem.

The Pasuk (Vayikra 1:2) states, “Adam Ki YaKriv MiKem Korban LaHashem (when a person brings an offering to Hashem).” The grammar is unusual. It should have said that a person brings a korban from among the people. Instead, the Torah says MiKem, from within you.

The commentators note this phrasing. The Alshich explains that the Torah is teaching that the offering must come from within the person bringing it. The animal on the altar is only the outer act. What Hashem truly desires is the inner offering of the one bringing the Korban.

The sacrifice must come from somewhere deep inside the human being.

When a person stood in the Mishkan and watched their offering rise in smoke, the external act was meant to mirror something internal. The korban on the altar represented the Korban within.

The Sfas Emes explains that the purpose of the Korban was not the animal itself but the inner movement of the person bringing it, the act of drawing one’s own heart closer to Hashem. The animal could be replaced. The inner movement could not.

We no longer have the Mishkan. We no longer bring animals to an altar. But the capacity for mi kem has never disappeared. The ability to reach into the deepest part of ourselves and draw it closer to Hashem remains

available in every generation. Akiva Yosef did not bring his korban on an altar. He brought it in a pit.

The tefillin were the future.

In a few years, my son Akiva Yosef will, G-d willing, stand before the Torah and wrap around his arm the same tefillin his greatgrandfather carried with him through Mauthausen. He will say the same bracha his greatgrandfather said every morning after walking out of that pit.

The Torah tells us that a korban must come mi kem, from within you.

Some people carry that truth so deeply inside themselves that even fire cannot take it away.

And sometimes the purest korban a person can bring is the refusal to let go of a pair of tefillin, of a past, of a future, and of the bond that connects them all.

Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach, www.bachlongbeach.com.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Looking at the bottom line: Where’s the money?

There is no doubt that Jews are among the most charitable people on earth, and there are surveys and statistics to prove it. But if that’s the case, then why are so many Jewish nonprofits, schools and other organizations struggling to balance their budgets?

Well, it’s not going to become the fifth question at the Passover seder, but I’m afraid that the answer is all too obvious — and depressing. Most Jewish philanthropists give the bulk of their charity to non-Jewish causes.

While the Talmud does teach to support nonJewish charities together with Jewish causes, there is no doubt that our first priority must surely be our own. Who else can we expect to do so? Non-Jews who support Jewish charities are few and far between. They are the rare exception, rather than the rule. If we won’t, who will?

This week, we began reading the third of the Five Books of Moses, Vayikra. The first chapters are all about sacrifices. In days of old, people would donate animals to the altar in the sanctuary for a variety of reasons — sin and guilt offerings for purposes of atonement, peace offerings for happy occasions and to express gratitude, etc.

Animals were worth a significant amount of money. As such, those offerings were substantial contributions to the House of G-d. Today, we write a check, pull out our credit card or even Venmo a contribution. Then, the people gave animals.

Charity today is what sacrifices were yesterday. So let’s talk about donations and giving.

Some years ago, a well-known American Jewish billionaire lamented the fact that, despite there being more Jewish billionaires than ever before in history, less and less of their charity is going to Jewish causes.

According to various measures by Forbes, six of the world’s 10 richest individuals are Jewish. Sadly, though, among mega-rich Americans, donations to Jewish causes represent but a very

small percentage of their giving.

Yes, we can be proud that we are the most philanthropic people. But where does Jewish money go? The vast majority goes to non-Jewish causes.

Why? Mainly because of ignorance, as in a lack of knowledge, and assimilation.

Jewish institutional life simply doesn’t feature in their diaries or anywhere near their list of priorities. It is just not an issue in their lives. Jewish day schools? No. Yeshivahs? Definitely not. Perhaps their own synagogue or temple might feature, if they belonged to one.

Various studies indicate that the overwhelming majority of Jewish philanthropists give to universal, rather than Jewish, organizations and causes. Statistically, Jewish mega-givers made fewer than 10% of their gifts to Jewish or Israeli

organizations.

Years ago, while chatting with the head of New York’s Jewish Federation, he told me how proud he was that he had gotten a $1 million donation for Israel from a super-wealthy Jewish businessman. (At the time, $1 million was indeed a lot of money, less so now.) Until he opened the New York Times the next morning and saw that the same man had just donated $9 million to Columbia University, which is a contemporary hotbed of antisemitism and antiIsrael sentiment.

There is no doubt whatsoever that if we all observed the 10% law of tithing to Jewish charities, no Jewish organization would be in the red!

In recent times, the rise of antisemitism has had a definite effect on Jewish philanthropy. Even secular Jews are feeling the onslaught against Israel and the Jewish people globally. Thankfully, Israel is now on their map. And so are local communal security needs.

When Harvard and other Ivy League universities infamously spoke in December 2023 about Jew-hatred depending on the “context” — just

See Goldman on page 22

Courtesy and privacy: Vanishing Jewish values

Here are two complaints that are heard frequently nowadays: “There is no such thing as privacy anymore.” “There are no secrets anymore.”

We live in a world of cell phones and e-mails, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. We have no privacy, for almost anyone can reach us wherever we are, whatever we happen to be doing, at all times of the day. And we can have no secrets, because anyone who knows anything about us can spread it to the entire world in a matter of seconds.

How often have I sat down for a moment of private time, for study or contemplation, or just to “chill out.” only to have the silence disrupted by a stranger who managed to obtain my cell phone number? How many dozens of e-mails and blogs fill up the space of my inbox with communications that, at best, are of no interest to me and often are offensive and obnoxious?

We once felt entitled to privacy and courtesy, but they no longer seem achievable.

Often, we write a confidential note to a trusted friend, sharing a message that we would rather others not know, only to discover that the note is now circulating in cyberspace, accessible to literally everyone. Sometimes, it is the friend’s betrayal that has made our secret public. Often, it is simply misjudgment or carelessness on his part. But frequently, it is an unwanted error, a mistaken pressing of “send” instead of “delete.”

We once expected confidentiality and discretion, but they too no longer seem possible.

Our contemporary society has lost what once was among its primary values. “A man’s home is his castle” once meant that decent citizens respected the “fences” around another individual’s personal space and would not casually trespass those boundaries.

The value of trusting in the discretion of another, once a cornerstone of human interaction, is now in danger of being relegated, along with other once-cherished values, to the oblivion of “old-fashionedness.”

The right to privacy and the ability to assume confidentiality are universal human values. It is important to know that they are primary Jew-

ish values as well. Sources for these values in our tradition include this week’s Torah portion, Vayikra.

This might come as a surprise to you, because you know that this week’s portion is the introduction to Leviticus, the biblical book which focuses upon sacrifices and Temple ritual. This week’s portion especially seems limited to the comprehensive and complex details of sacrificial offerings. Where is there even a hint of these contemporary concerns, courtesy and confidentiality?

Chapter one, verses one and two, say it all, albeit between the lines:

The L-rd called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying: “Speak to the Israelite people and say to them…”

The rabbis of the Talmud saw in these simple and direct phrases two subtle messages.

First of all, the L-rd called to Moses first and then spoke to him. He didn’t surprise Moses. He didn’t intrude on Moses’ pri-

vacy and autonomy. First, He called to him. He knocked on Moses door, as it were, ringing the bell first, asking to be invited in. No unwanted intrusion, even from the L-rd Almighty, to his favorite prophet!

This observation is made by the rabbis in the Talmudic tractate Yoma. In a less well-known Talmudic source, the Tractate Derech Eretz, the rabbis find that the Almighty’s courteous concern for the privacy of his lowly creatures did not begin with Moses. It goes back to the way He treated the very first man, Adam.

Genesis chapter three, verse nine: “The L-rd G-d called to Adam and said to him: Where are you?” Here too, even when the L-rd wishes to rebuke Adam, He first “calls to him,” signaling the uncomfortable conversation which is about to ensue.

G-d respects Adam’s privacy, and He doesn’t just “barge in” on Moses. Surely a lesson in human values.

On the same page in Tractate Yoma, the rabbis find another message in the deceptively simple opening verses of our Parsha — “saying, ‘Speak to the people and say to them’…” From the redundancy here (“say,” and “speak,” and

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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.

victimhood narrative, America’s future

JONATHAN S. TObIN

JNS Editor-in-Chief

It was a tumultuous one for New York, its mayor and its Jewish population. Over several days, the city was confronted with events that, in a different era, might have been considered deeply shocking, and have immediate and serious consequences.

Reporting about the fact that Rama Duwaji, the wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had liked social-media posts celebrating the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and denying the rape of Israeli women, was followed by the news that the city’s first couple had hosted two well-known terror supporters at their Gracie Mansion official residence.

But before the public had a chance to absorb any of that, the mayor and most of his media cheering section sought to downplay and then confuse the public about the fact that Islamist terrorists, apparently inspired by ISIS, had attempted to bomb an anti-Mamdani demonstration.

Taken as a whole, it painted a dismal picture of how the mayor and his supporters were not only doubling down on support for terrorism against Israelis and Jews while treating domestic Islamist terror as a minor issue.

The fact that these events were generally treated as not that big of a deal says volumes about where Americans are as a society. And that, as much as anything else, is something that ought to be sounding alarm bells for Jews and everyone who cares about the consequences of cultural decline, as well as tolerance for antisemitism and violence.

The mayor’s popularity Mamdani’s ability to shrug off these incidents while being proclaimed by the New York

Times as “one of America’s most popular politicians” is an indication not only of how left-wing media and the Democratic Party have his back. Like his election victory last year, it’s also a sign that American society may be at a tipping point when it comes to tolerance for antisemitism.

Anyone who thinks that won’t have an impact on Jewish life and the country as a whole hasn’t been paying attention to what has been happening in recent years.

At such a time, it’s essential to remember that when Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City last year, optimists told everyone not to be too upset about it.

It’s true, they conceded, that the 34-year-old was a longtime opponent of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and a supporter of the discriminatory BDS movement. It’s true that he was a founding member of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bedouin College, a campus group that routinely traffics in Jew-hatred. And it’s true that his brief political career was rooted in activism targeting Israel and its Jewish supporters. He’s also backed left-wing economic and cultural doctrines associated with some of the worst horrors of the 20th century and the collapse of liberalism in the 21st.

But, everyone was told, having a mayor with such repugnant views wouldn’t really affect Jewish life in New York, let alone impact what goes on in the rest of the United States or its foreign policy. The mayor would be too busy trying to run the country’s largest city to do any real harm to the Jews or anyone else. In fact, he would soon sink under the weight of the costly and misguided boondoggles that his long-discredited socialist policies would create.

Some of that is true.

The most hysterical predictions on social media of what his arrival at Gracie Mansion would entail were overwrought and inaccurate.

New York in 2026 is not Berlin in 1939. Jews are not being rounded up; anything even remotely like that is not possible. Jewish life in all its complexity and vibrancy continues, and there’s

no reason to believe that’s about to come to an end.

Still, as the Times asserts and polls confirm, Mamdani is viewed favorably by most New Yorkers, illustrating shift in public opinion about Jews in the city with the largest demographics outside of Israel.

Spinning terror support

Mamdani has tried to spin his opinions about the Middle East as support for the “Palestinian cause,” though he is opposed to terrorism. But even a cursory look at his conduct and statements demonstrates that his views are no different from those of his wife, who both cheered for and also denied the victimization of Jewish women, and even the kidnapping of Jewish children. Whether his media fans admit or not, they are Hamas supporters.

His unwillingness to condemn the social-media posts endorsed by his wife, even as he tried to say her opinions were not necessarily his own, spoke loudly about his stance. And by inviting in those who also cheered for the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, they also

demonstrated that in Mamdani’s New York, such sentiments are not only considered within the bounds of acceptable opinion but are actually laudable.

Just as with his qualified encouragement of a siege of a Manhattan synagogue last fall, in which he sought to argue that Jewish support for Zionism “violates international law,” the new mayor has laid down a marker that has normalized Jew-hatred.

Perhaps even more ominous, however, was the way the mayor and much of the media reacted to the terror attack that took place on March 7 outside of Gracie Mansion. On that day, two Muslim Americans from Pennsylvania threw bombs (fortunately, they didn’t explode) at demonstrators who had come to protest Mamdani.

Two groups had gathered outside the Upper East Side landmark — one composed of right-wing demonstrators protesting an alleged “Muslim takeover” of New York, and another supporting Mamdani and the influx of Muslim immigrants. In a scene that can only be described as surreal, one of the terrorists came up behind a

Ethnostate illusion: Reviving antisemitic myths

mELANiE pHiLLipS

British journalist

There’s been growing concern in America over the increasingly mainstream belief that Israel drags it into foreign wars, a belief given rocket fuel by the war against Iran.

This belief not only ignores demonstrable reality — the thousands of Americans who have been killed by Iranian-backed terrorists or militias for almost half a century; the accelerated progress by Tehran towards nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that could reach the United States; and the Iranian regime’s implacable goal of destroying America (the “Great Satan”) as well as Israel (the “Little Satan”).

It also channels the odious image of warmongering Jews straight out of the ancient antisemitism playbook. It’s an image reflecting the belief embedded in Western culture of the demonic, cunning Jews acting covertly in their own interests to put others in danger.

This belief was formerly confined to cranks and nut jobs on the fringes of society. No longer. Mainstreamed by the Tucker Carlson faction, it’s cutting a swath across the ranks of conservatively minded, mainly young Americans.

Last week, Brian McGinnis, a veteran US Ma-

Jews have to stand up for themselves in the right way. Until now, we’ve been doing it wrong.

rine, burst into a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington and yelled: “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel!”

In the United States, this belief has been fueling a widening division in Republican circles.

And it’s erupted in Britain, too. It’s based on a refusal to accept that Jewish and British or American interests actually coincide.

Why has this trope of sinister Jewish power surfaced now in such volume and with such traction? Those listening carefully to such people discover they are telling us the reason — they believe their culture is being taken away from them.

In Britain, they have watched mass immigration transform their neighborhoods and their country out of all recognition. UK and the US, they have watched the progressive destruction of social and moral norms, and the hijacking of language itself — producing the whole grisly gamut of intersectional bullying and Soviet-style denial of reason and reality.

And they view the Jews as being the cause of this because it’s the agenda of the left, and they see many prominent Jews on the left.

There is, however, another element in this complaint that gives it an even more savage edge. The charge — and it’s toxic — is that the Jews who have destroyed the West are themselves immunized from the effects of this because they have the State of Israel to go to.

The Jews, say such people, maintain that it’s right and necessary for them to have a state for themselves, yet they are denying that privilege to the rest of us. They have a home of their own to go to; we don’t anymore.

They say bitterly that the Jews have something they themselves aren’t allowed to have: an “ethnostate.” The left uses this to demonize Israel; the right wants one of its own.

Britain was never an ethnostate. On the contrary, Britishness is an umbrella concept that allows immigrants to become equal citizens even if they don’t correspond to its white, Christian or dominant English culture.

America, the nation of immigrants with a large black African-heritage population, was never an ethnostate. And nor is Israel, where 20% of its citizens are Arabs, and a majority of Jews aren’t white-skinned Europeans but brown-skinned or black descendants of Jews from ancient Middle East communities.

Of course, it’s always the case that the deeper the trouble a society is in, the more it will turn

on the Jews. And the charge of warmongering is inescapably and profoundly antisemitic.

Yet it’s impossible not to hear the genuine cry of pain — the justified sense of existential isolation, abandonment and betrayal shared by millions who haven’t gone down the antisemitism rabbit-hole, but simply want their nation and its historic culture back.

Jews of all people should be sympathetic to this. After all, the ancient Israelites were the earliest pioneers of the nation-state. More than any other people, Jews understand that in order to have a future, a people must connect to its past

Phillips on page 22

World Cup beckons Iran’s national soccer team

The following question has been posed on several occasions in recent years, but no more so than now, as the US and Israeli combined attack on the clerical regime ruling Iran continues apace: Which Iran do Iranian soccer players play for?

Last week, the Iranian women’s soccer team was about to depart for home, having been defeated in the Asian Cup that is currently being hosted in Australia. By the time they reached the airport, no less than seven members of the squad had opted to accept the Australian government’s offer of asylum.

The offer was not mere point-scoring by the Australians. Having designated the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization in September, following two Iranian-orchestrated attacks on Jewish targets in Sydney and Melbourne during 2024, Australia is pretty clear-eyed when it comes to the threat posed by Tehran and its proxies. The government knew that since the Iranian team had refused to sing the Islamic Republic’s anthem ahead of their match against South Korea, the players would be in danger upon their return home.

Politics has a place in sports, whether we like it or not.

The episode in Australia is important on its own terms, but it carries added weight because the World Cup will be hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July. Iran has qualified for the coveted tournament for the sixth time since 1998, when they famously defeated the United States 2-1 in a match in the French city of Lyon.

Some might argue that the precedent of banning Russia from global sports should also be applied to Iran. To do so, however, would overlook the critical fact that in Iran — where fans who attended a match at Tehran’s cavernous Azadi Stadium the day after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in Israel chanted none-too-subtly, “Stick the Palestinian flag up your ass!” — soccer has frequently functioned as a tool for mobilizing opposition to the regime.

Strikingly, that opposition has been led by players and coaches, as well as the fans themselves. As far back as 2010, Iranian players were bravely making political statements, donning green armbands at a match in Seoul in solidarity with the protest movement that crystallized that year following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent victory in Iran’s presidential election.

One of the players to have conspicuously stuck his neck out is Ali Daei. Among soccer-obsessed Iranians, Daei, who played in both his own country and in Germany, is a legend on par with Leo Messi or Robin van Persie. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which coincided with the wave of “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran, Daei turned down an official invitation to attend.

He explained to his supporters that he preferred to “be by your side in my homeland and express my sympathy with all the families who have lost loved ones these days.” He also pointedly told the ruling mullahs, “Instead of suppression, violence, arrests and accusing the people of

Iran of being rioters, solve their problems.”

Just as the Iranian women’s team refused to sing the Islamic Republic anthem while in Australia, the men’s team did the same in Qatar, as did the U-23 team when they played a match this past January against the background of a mass protest movement that resulted in more than 30,000 Iranians slaughtered by the regime.

In the same month, Iranian striker Mehdi Taremi scored a vital goal for Athens side Olympiakos in the Greek league but refused to celebrate. “I know that Olympiakos fans would like me to be happy, but I don’t celebrate the goals, in

solidarity with what the Iranian people are going through,” he stated afterwards. That anti-regime sentiment is equally visible among Iranian fans. At international matches in particular, the white, red and green colors of the Iranian flag are on display; however, the lion that once adorned the Iranian monarchist flag is a far more common sight than the regime’s Islamist “G-d is Great” symbol. Should Iran’s team make it to the United States to participate in the World Cup, we can confidently predict that Team Melli’s supporters will opt for the former

Carnegie Hall’s unexpected love letters to Israel

KAREN LEHRMAN BLOCK

White Rose Magazine

he last time I went to Carnegie Hall to see something Jewish, it didn’t go well. In October, I went to hear the Israel Philharmonic but was denied entry because my pocketbook was “too big.” Security had nothing to say about the hundreds of protesters screaming, spitting and throwing stuff at the Jews in line.

Recently, holding the tiniest bag I could find, I looked at the heavy police presence from across the street with a group who were there to see a performance of traditional Japanese arts. “Why so many cops?” one woman asked. “Well, there’s also a show about Jews and Israel,” I told her. She shook her head, “I’m so sorry you have to deal with this.”

It was the voice of a moral conscience — a voice we’ve been waiting for but rarely came. And the perfect prelude to a truly incredible evening of pride, resilience and hope.

The New York premiere of “Letters, Light and Love,” sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York, featured an all-star cast who brought to life letters written about Israel across centuries by leaders and thinkers such as Maimonides, Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, Golda Meir, Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein, interwoven with powerful personal stories.

Co-produced by Sarah Sultman and Michal Noé, the letters highlight the historic link be-

After two years of hell, the show nourished our souls.

tween the Jewish people and the land of Israel, spanning thousands of years.

“This show seeks to restore context and emotional continuity. Our story is ancient, human, complex and still unfolding. It did not begin in 1948, and it does not end with our narrative hijacked by others,” read the beautifully designed program.

The one-night-only performance was the second showing of the play, which ran in London’s West End in 2024. The idea came to Sultman, who is the co-founder of the Gesher School in London, in early November 2023, while on a solidarity mission to Israel.

While visiting a number of kibbutzim, Sultman had the idea of using letters to tell our story.

“I suppose it was driven by the pervasive narrative that Jews are white colonizers from Poland,” she said. “That our connection to Israel [began] in 1948. For me, Judaism and its connection to Israel are inextricably linked and always have been.”

After the trip, Sultman began working with the National Library of Israel, digging through archives and accumulating hundreds of letters. “We have a 3,000-year-old history. We have letters from across time. [We created] a performance, interwoven with music, that tells our story in a way that is educational, soulful and moving. It’s also purposeful. It should be used as a project of regrowth in Israel.”

Woven together with beautiful music and songs, the letters form a sacred, deeply human narrative expressing Jewish unity and Israel’s enduring spirit, resilience and purpose.

To cast the play, Sultman and Noé only wanted to include actors and musicians who are “proud of their Judaism and Zionism.” For the New York City show that included Mark Feuerstein, Noa Tishby, Julianna Margulies, Matisyahu, Debra Messing, Jonah Platt, Amy Schumer, David Schwimmer, Lawrence Bender, Emmanuelle Chriqui, David Draiman, Tovah Feldshuh, The Maccabeats, Rona

Lee Shimon and Ariel Stachel.

Divided into three chapters — Our Journey, Our Arrival, Our Land — the show opened with the reading of a letter written by Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon to his professor, seeking guidance on “man’s purpose in life.” It closed with excerpts from a letter written by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in 2001, telling Jews that each one is a “letter in the scroll.”

Other readings included notes written by Maimonides to Rabbi Yaphet bar Eliyahu the Judge, in the 12th century; Stephen Norman, the only grandchild of Theodor Herzl, on his first visit in the years before Israel’s statehood was declared; Esther Cailingold, who was mortally wounded defending the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem during Israel’s war of independence; and a final letter

written by Elkana Wiesel to his family, just before he fell in battle in the Gaza Strip in January 2024.

“Words have immense power,” wrote Robert Messick, the director, in the program. “Right now, it feels that power is being weaponized against our community with devastating and dangerous results. But in ‘Letters, Light and Love,’ we look at how that power can be used for good. How letters have been used to reach out through the darkness of fear, isolation and hatred to dispel the shadows and to bring in the light.”

What made the evening magical was the music — our music. David Draiman singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence”; Cantor Azi Schwartz of Park Avenue Synagogue; the Maccabeets; “Over the

See Bloch on page 22

Buenos Aires ’92: Iran terror came for my family

DANIEL

CARMON

Israeli Diplomat

This month we mark 34 years since the murderous bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which left 29 dead — Israelis, Argentines and nationals of other countries — dozens of wounded, and bereaved families who carry the scars to this day.

Two-and-a-half years later, the Argentine capital was struck by another terrorist attack, this time at the AMIA (the country’s main Jewish community center), which exacted an even greater toll — 85 dead and more than 300 wounded.

Two similar attacks: the same city, the same method — a car bomb — and the same architects: Iranian direction, Hezbollah execution. The investigations conducted since, primarily by Israeli authorities led by the Mossad, established beyond any doubt the initial suspicion that Iran — by decision of its highest leadership — «commissioned» the acts of terror, financed, trained and assisted the perpetrators; and Hezbollah, its proxy, served as the operational contractor. A classic partnership between a state sponsor of terror and its agents, designed to

obscure the fingerprints.

One was the largest attack ever carried out against an Israeli target abroad; the other was the largest attack against any Jewish target outside Israel’s borders. These terrorist attacks were a devastating blow to Israel, to its intelligence and diplomatic security apparatus, and to the Israeli foreign service. They tore open deep wounds that shook Argentine society as well — a country physically and emotionally remote from the bloodshed of the Middle East, separated by some 12,000 kilometers (7,460 miles) from Jerusalem to Buenos Aires.

Day everything changed

For me, as a diplomat at the embassy, this was not merely an illustration of the concept of “the front line of the diplomatic battle.” It was a personal encounter with bereavement. In 1989, we arrived in Argentina – my wife Eli (Eliora), our four children and I – to serve at the embassy in Buenos Aires. Not long afterward, our fifth daughter was born there. The city became a warm home. Those were good and beautiful years, personally and professionally.

More than once I wondered whether among those “diplomats” there were also members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Twice — in New York and later while serving as Israel’s ambassador to India — I found myself sharing a

Thirty-four years after the Israeli Embassy bombing that killed my wife, the fight against the regime behind it continues.

hotel elevator with the Iranian foreign minister and his entourage. Each such “encounter” stung to the core and was a reminder of how difficult it is for the world to look the danger of a religious revolutionary regime that sponsors terrorism squarely in the eye.

Once I could no longer restrain myself. At a large gathering at the UN General Assembly focused on “victims of terror,” the Lebanese representative declared that Hezbollah was the best thing that had ever happened to his country. For

me that was the cue to deliver the speech that had been quietly forming in my mind for a long time, and to present “personal testimony” about Hezbollah. I am glad the words resonated in the hall and beyond.

Probe led to Iran

Over the years I followed the progress of the investigation into both attacks, in Israel and in Argentina. As more details emerged, the picture

See Carmon on page 22

Proudly Jewish.

Zionist.

Sacks: History between destiny and chance…

Continued from page 16

We are now in a position to understand the remarkable proposition linking the beginning of Vayikra to the end — and one of the most profound of all spiritual truths. The difference between mikra and mikreh — between history as G-d’s call and history as one event after another with no underlying purpose or meaning — is, in the Hebrew language, almost imperceptible.

The words sound the same. The only difference is that the former has an aleph while the

Goldman…

three months after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 20203, some hefty billionaires pulled their funding and instead redirected it to Jewish causes. Finally, a welcome realignment started to take shape.

They tell of a rich miser who died, and at the pearly gates, was told to take the elevator down. He was shocked. “Do you know who I am? I’m the richest man in my town. Surely, I deserve a place in heaven!”

“Yes, sir,” said the angel. “But you never gave any charity, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go downstairs.”

“What? Charity? Wait! I remember a long time ago stopping on the street and giving 50 cents to a beggar asking for a handout.”

The angel checks in the heavenly records and, sure enough, he did indeed once give a beggar 50 cents. The case was referred to the Almighty Himself, and the answer came ringing back, “Give the guy back his 50 cents, and let him go to hell!”

I’d like to ensure that my readers go to heaven. So please, get your priorities right. By all means, support general causes, but remember who you are and where your main responsibilities lie.

There is little less than two weeks before Passover. It is a time-honored tradition to help support the needy with the additional substantial costs involved in preparing for this beautiful but expensive festival.

May we always help each other. And may our people and our communal infrastructures be well looked after always.

Charity today is what the sacrifices were yesterday. And we need to prioritize.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Weinreb…

from page 17

“say”) the rabbis derive the lesson that when someone tells you something, you are forbidden to share it with another unless you are given explicit permission to do so.

Moses was not permitted to re-tell even the divine message that he heard until G-d Himself told him that it was okay to “say it over.”

The medieval Rabbi Moses of Coucy actually enumerates this admonition for utter confidentiality as one of the prohibitions comprising the 613 commandments of the Torah.

As I have reflected upon these specific teachings over the years of my personal parsha study, I have come away with several conclusions. Firstly, there is much that is implicit in the Torah; much that lies beneath the surface. The long and complicated ritual laws that confront us as we read this week’s parsha are contained in a context that teaches us more than the surface lessons. Our rabbis of old were particularly expert at digging out these unexpected but precious nuggets.

Secondly, these nuggets are often of astound-

latter does not (the significance of the aleph is obvious: the first letter of the alphabet, the first letter of the Ten Commandments, the “I” of G-d).

The letter aleph is almost inaudible. Its appearance in a Sefer Torah at the beginning of Vayikra (the “small aleph”) is almost invisible. Do not expect — the Torah is intimating — that the presence of G-d in history will always be as clear and unambiguous as it was during the Exodus from Egypt and the division of the Red Sea. For much of the time it will depend

ing relevance for our contemporary condition. What can be more relevant than a reminder about the values of courtesy and confidentiality?

Finally, these lessons are not merely abstract teachings or bits of wisdom for us to ruminate upon as we relax in our armchairs. Rather, they are calls to arms. They are challenges.

It is difficult indeed to combat the value system that is foisted upon us by the technology which pervades the world in which we now live. Very difficult. But very necessary. If we lazily submit to the pernicious influence of modern convenience, we risk the ultimate loss of our very humanity.

A culture devoid of courtesy can turn into a culture of callousness and cruelty. A world where one cannot trust his confidante is a world where authentic friendship is impossible.

Troubling thoughts? Yes, indeed. But they are thoughts which we ignore at our own peril. How fortunate are we that these thoughts are available to us, subtly embedded in the opening verses of this week’s Torah portion!

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Phillips…

Continued from page 19

and maintain its historic culture.

Jews have benefited hugely from the civilized society that allowed them to prosper in America and Britain. So they have a duty to lend their voices to the defense of the West against Islamization and cultural takeover.

Unfortunately, virtually the only Jewish voices to be heard are those demonizing this as “white supremacy,” racism and “Islamophobia.”

This is very wrong in itself. But it’s also guaranteed to make resentment of the Jews even worse by appearing to prove the charge that the Jews “don’t care about the rest of us.”

“So what?” many Jews would say in response; “antisemitism lies beyond reason and it’s eternal, so there’s no point even trying to fight it.”

This is simply wrong. As I say in my new book, published this week, “Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege,” there’s plenty that can and should be done to combat it.

True, antisemitism can never be defeated, but Jewish passivity makes it worse. Failing to produce arguments and evidence to show that claims of Jewish power over US policy are groundless reinforces the belief that they are true.

Jews have to stand up for themselves in the right way. The Jewish world has consistently been doing so in the wrong way, and then wonders why it hasn’t gotten anywhere.

In my book, I set out a strategy for both individuals and community leaders that turns many of these flawed assumptions upside down. Community leaders should start speaking truths that Jews shy away from, such as the prevalence of Muslim antisemitism or Israel’s legally watertight claim to the land. Individuals should use difficult encounters about Israel as an opportunity to surprise their foes and so open their minds by at least a crack.

Even in today’s poisonous climate, this can have a remarkable effect. In any event, Jews

on your own sensitivity. For those who look, it will be visible. For those who listen, it can be heard. But first you have to look and listen. If you choose not to see or hear, then Vayikra will become vayikar. The call will be inaudible. History will seem mere chance.

There is nothing incoherent about such an idea. Those who believe it will have much to justify it. Indeed, says G-d in the tochachah: if you believe that history is chance, then it will become so. But in truth it is not so.

The history of the Jewish people — as even

— who have an obligation to stand up for truth against lies — should take on those foaming right now about “war-mongering for Israel” simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 19

flag over the current one, especially in Los Angeles, the center of the Iranian diaspora, where they have two matches scheduled against New Zealand and Belgium.

Indeed, the debate about Iran’s participation has even reached the White House. Speaking to Gianni Infantino, head of the international soccer body FIFA, as the attack on the Tehran regime was midway through its second week, Donald Trump reportedly said that Iran was “welcome” to play.

There will always be those who say that politics has no place in sports. The reality is that it does, whether we like it or not. We couldn’t ignore politics at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, when Palestinian terrorists massacred 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. We couldn’t ignore politics at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, when the final was played in a stadium a stone’s throw from a detention center where the military regime was torturing dissidents. And we couldn’t ignore politics at the last World Cup in Qatar, when matches were played in stadiums constructed by foreign slave labor — modern-day pyramids that cost the lives of more than 6,000 migrant workers.

Iran should therefore be encouraged to play at this year’s World Cup, especially as the regime is now openly talking about withdrawing from the competition in a transparent bid to both underline its victim status and head off the prospect of Iranian fans using the matches as platforms to oppose the Islamic Republic.

Should the regime quit, that won’t dent the pride with which ordinary Iranians, whether inside or outside the country, regard their team. That support is an expression of their national identity, rather than any love for the monsters presently in power.

You might even say that when Iran plays soccer these days, it does so against the regime, rather than in its favor.

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non-Jews such as Pascal, Rousseau, and Tolstoy eloquently stated — testifies to the presence of G-d in their midst. Only thus could such a small, vulnerable, relatively powerless people survive, and still say today — after the Holocaust — Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish people lives. And just as Jewish history is not mere chance, so it is no mere coincidence that the first word of the central book of the Torah is Vayikra, “And He called.” To be a Jew is to believe that what happens to us as a people is G-d’s call to us — to become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

said Noé. “Throughout the centuries, when faced with hate, our response is always to focus on the light and to look forward and rebuild, and we are honored to be a conduit for people to come together and take comfort and joy in our eternal story.”

The evening honored our creativity, non-conformity, and most importantly, our eternal bond with Eretz Yisrael. Looking around at the tears, laughter and joy after two years of hell, the show was able to not just touch but nourish our souls. Because it is our souls — why we respond so powerfully to Hebrew letters, Stars of David, photos of Jerusalem — that foster the bravery and resilience needed right now.

Fittingly, the show ended with Sacks. In December 2023, IDF soldiers serving on the front lines were given a booklet featuring a letter from his book, “Radical Then, Radical Now”:

“This, then, is our story, our gift to the next generation. I received it from my parents, and they from theirs across great expanses of space and time. There is nothing quite like it. It changed and still challenges the moral imagination of mankind.

“I want to say to you and Jews around the world: Take it, cherish it, learn to understand and to love it. Carry it, and it will carry you. And may you, in turn, pass it on to future generations.

“For you are a member of an eternal people, a letter in their scroll. Let their eternity live on in you.”

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grew clearer. The relentless effort by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, of blessed memory, to investigate the attack on the Jewish community center resulted in 22 international arrest warrants being issued against senior Iranian officials. The conclusion of the investigation in Israel allowed access to verified intelligence that aided diplomatic, media and intelligence efforts to rally international partners in the fight against global terror — with a particular focus on the Iranian variant. The findings of the Israeli investigation also foiled additional attacks planned by Iran and Hezbollah.

Rainbow”; Matisyahu ending with “One Day.”

Only one presenter received a standing ovation: Eli Sharabi, the former resident of Kibbutz Be’eri who was kidnapped by Hamas and held in Gaza for 491 days. In an emotional speech, Sharabi thanked American Jewry for its support. Proceeds from the play will go toward rebuilding Be’eri.

The presentation “is a celebration of not just the shared history and heritage of our people but of the beauty and resilience that we find together,”

I am not a man of vengeance. I take no pleasure in the death of my enemies. But I will confess honestly that the deaths of Imad Mughniyeh (Hezbollah’s military commander), Qasem Soleimani (commander of Iran’s Quds Force), Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah’s secertary general) — and most recently Ali Khamenei — did not grieve me. How symbolic that the opening of the campaign against Iran, the day of Khamenei’s death, fell on the 12th of Adar — the anniversary of the embassy bombing.

In the shadow of the war, this will be the first year in 34 years that our family will not gather on March 17 at Har HaMenuchot (Jerusalem’s main municipal cemetery), at the grave of our Eli. A painful reminder that the struggle is not yet over — but also an expression of a fierce determination to look toward the future with hope. Daniel Carmon is a former Israeli ambassador to India.

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Tobin: Mamdani’s narrative, America’s future…

Continued from page 18

Mamdani supporter speaking through a bullhorn about the need to welcome everyone to the city and shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

He then hurled the explosive device with anti-personnel shrapnel over his shoulder. After another failed attempt to explode a device in the midst of the anti-Mamdani group and a brief scuffle with police, the assailant and his accomplice were arrested.

Muslim victimhood narrative

What is key about this incident is the way that most media in New York and nationally, as well as the Mamdani administration, sought to blame the violence on the peaceful demonstrators, who were the terrorists’ intended victims.

It’s true that the initial scene was confusing, but for days, leading media outlets and leading left-wing commentators, like CNN’s Ana Navarro and Abby Phillip, have continued to obfuscate the truth about which side the terrorists were on. The same was true of most New York City politicians, including Mamdani, who, as the Times diplomatically put it, “chose his words carefully” when speaking about what happened in an effort to deflect the blame for the crime on his critics, rather than those who shared his enthusiasm for the “cause” of attacking Jews and

other opponents of political Islam. This was disgraceful in and of itself. But it also showed the commitment of the mayor and much of the liberal media to a narrative of Muslim victimhood in which the real problem is “Islamophobia,” rather than the troubling support for Islamist hate and terror.

Had the violent culprits been those extremists who had turned out to oppose Mamdani, no one can doubt that the condemnation of their conduct and their ideas from both the mayor and the liberal media would have been unqualified and vehement. Instead, the crime was depicted as mainly the result of the allegedly bad opinions and behavior of the victims.

So successful was this media campaign to spin the incident as an attack on Mamdani that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro actually called him to sympathize and ask if he was alright. Shapiro was the intended victim of a firebombing at his official Harrisburg residence last year during Passover. He has sought to push back against growing tolerance for antisemitism within the Democratic Party that he hopes to lead in 2028 and has criticized Mamdani for his stands. But even he is vulnerable to being influenced by a narrative in which Islamophobia is the real threat, rather than the Jew-hatred and rhetorical support for Islamist violence that Mamdani and

others have promoted.

That there is a direct connection between this and Mamdani’s attempts to depict the unspeakable orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction of Oct. 7 as primarily the fault of the Jewish victims.

The mayor would, no doubt, prefer it if Muslims did not toss bombs, whether they explode or not, in the vicinity of his residence. Still, the effort to portray him as a victim of anti-Muslim intolerance, rather than as someone who gives his official seal of approval to those who applaud such actions when Jews are the victims, isn’t merely outrageous. It essentially normalizes and distorts the debate about anti-Jewish hate.

A dystopian scenario

The main takeaway from this story must be a realization that the dystopian fantasies about the consequences of a Mamdani mayoralty are already starting to come true. Had his opponents in the 2025 election said that if he were elected, Islamist thugs would be tossing bombs aimed at their critics on the streets of New York, they would have been denounced as hysterics trying to foment anti-Muslim hate. Yet that is what has happened, and the response from much of the media has been to do everything they can to twist the discussion about it to one about the awful-

ness of the mayor’s political opponents.

At the moment, there is little that New York’s Jews or anyone else can do about the mayor, who continues to enjoy the enthusiastic backing of his party and its leading media outlets like the Times. But they can draw conclusions from these incidents and act accordingly.

At the very least, no self-respecting member of the Jewish community or anyone else with claims to a moral compass should accept an invitation from Mamdani as long as he hosts those who cheer for Jew-killers and condones his wife’s pro-Hamas stands.

The normalization of Mamdani’s conduct may be inevitable in a political culture where antisemitism has become fashionable orthodoxy on the political left. The costs of that attitude will become increasingly apparent in a city and a national culture where tolerance of hate for Jews is regarded as either nothing out of the ordinary or an acceptable opinion.

A city where people like Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji are not held accountable for supporting the atrocities of Oct. 7 and Jew-hatred in general is one in which, sooner or later, Islamist violence will not only occur but be tolerated, rationalized and excused in the same manner as Hamas’s crimes.

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