TheJewishStar.com
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Dec. 5-11, 2025 • Vayishlach • 15 Kislev 5786 • Vol. 24, No. 39
Killing AIPAC would silence Jewish voices
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and give Jew-haters free reign mICHA DAnZIG Attorney
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very few weeks, a new wave of performative outrage washes across social media and op-ed pages about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — AIPAC is destroying our democracy … AIPAC is buying Congress … AIPAC is subverting America.
The strangest thing about this supposed moral panic is not how hysterical it is, but how selectively hysterical it is. If the concern were truly “foreign influence” or “money in politics,” the loudest AIPAC critics would be shouting from the rooftops about Qatar, China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates — and the tens of billions of dollars that they pour into American universities, think tanks, media outlets and lobbying operations.
AIPAC’s primary mission is to advocate for Israel in Washington, but it also furthers its mission by mobilizing American Jews. Among the more than 15,000 who attended its 2019 convention in Washington were students (like these from HALB’s Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls in Hewlett Bay Park) who came to hear AIPAC’s message and then themselves lobbied on Capitol Hill Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
They would be demanding hearings on the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the Iranian-American lobby. They would be calling out the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the Turkish Coalition of America and Beijing’s sprawling influence networks. Instead, they have only one boogeyman: the Jewish one. very major diaspora community in America has lobbying arms, many of them far better funded than AIPAC. The Indian-American lobby, the Armenian National Committee, the Hellenic-American Council, the Cuban-American National Foundation, Iranianand Arab-American groups, the Turkish lobby and the Chinese Communist Party’s many influence platforms all pour money into Washington. Yet only AIPAC is treated as a threat to the republic. The far-left’s favorite line — “AIPAC is a dark-money foreign lobby!” — collapses under one basic fact: AIPAC does not take foreign money. Its donors See War on AIPAC on page 4
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Temple Emanu-El, a Reform congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, set a Guinness World Record on Nov. 21 for its “Big Shabbat” that drew 2,761 people.
Record-breaking Shabbat dinner By Anna Rahmanan, JNS On Wednesday night, Nov. 19, antisemitic protesters blocked worshippers from entering Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and called for violence against Jews. Two days lat-
er, Temple Emanu-El, a Reform congregation four blocks away, hosted a Friday night dinner which drew so many people that it set a new Guinness World Record. Seated for dinner were 2,761 people — 439 See 2,761 at Shabbat meal on page 14
Dual loyalty? Wandering, wondering Jews RAbbI YoSSY GolDmAn
S. African Rabbinical Assn.
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ow long have we been the “wandering Jews?” I imagine ever since Abraham, the first Jew. And the wandering Jew has also been the wondering Jew. We’ve been forever
wondering about who we are and how we fit in with the countries we’ve migrated to over the centuries. It’s been one of the ongoing dilemmas of our people, a tension between our personal, spiritual identity and our nationality. When we lived in the glorious days of preInquisition Spain, were we Jewish or Spanish? The question persisted through our journeys across the continents — whether in Europe or Asia, Morocco or Mexico. And today, are we
American Jews or Jewish Americans? Are our brethren living in Israel are Israelis or Jews? My friend Rami Sherman was one of the heroic commandos of the legendary Entebbe rescue mission of 1976. He told me that he was raised in a secular kibbutz, and that until he went on the mission to Entebbe and saved more than 100 Jews from Israel and all over the world, he never appreciated a sense of Jewish peoplehood. In Rami’s own words, “I flew to Entebbe an Israeli. I returned a Jew.”
It has never been easy to balance our personal spiritual identity with our national identity, our Jewishness with our nationality of the day. he anti-Israel protesters and boycotters of the past few years accuse American Jews of dual loyalties while they are busy burning the American flag. How’s that for ultimate hypocrisy? What is going on now is beyond belief. The insecurity of the Jewish community (not only in See Dual loyalty? on page 8
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