So much is being made about James Talarico’s manhood. Yes, I know this is just a clumsy initial attempt by his opponents to define him - and distract from skyrocketing prices, a senseless war and the fact that their US Senate nominee is the most corrupt politician in America not named Trump.

And it’s laughable that the man called Tala-freak-o’s manhood is being questioned by, of all freak-os, Stephen Miller1, whose rabbi accused him of being a Hebrew School delinquent. He never made it to Bar Mitzvah. If Miller never had the guts to stand before the congregation and say, “Today I am a man,” who is he to question the manhood of others?2

I think the “Talarico is a vegan” line of attack is especially laughable, reminiscent of the best-selling 1980’s book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, which parodied masculinity.3 What the hell does manhood have to do with eating a French savory tart?

Aside from being false, the “vegan” rumor will have little potency for an electorate that’s too exhausted trying to make ends meet to obsess over a candidate’s testosterone level. And it’s hard for the GOP to hang its hat on manhood when their Trump-picked candidate, Unkempt Ken, whose wife divorced him on “biblical grounds,” sounds like a sullen bully hurling insults on the playground. If we’re going to discuss models for manhood, let’s bring back the full line of Ken dolls introduced in the primaries by Ken’s opponent John Cornyn, complete with accessories. My faves are “Mortgage Fraud Ken” and “Cheating Ken.”

America has had too much of toxic masculinity. It’s enough that we have to bear the sight of the White House lawn turning into a cage-fighting arena. Yet, desperate Blutos that they are, seeking to pummel any spinach-eating Popeye they can find, the faux-machos of MAGA have resorted to picking on Talarico’s supposedly vegan girlfriend, and based on Brianna Menard’s family history,4 which places her among Texas royalty, they are picking on the wrong damsel to distress.

Even though Talarico isn’t a veggie, maybe it’s time to stand up for those of us who are5. I’m vegetarian, though not vegan - I eat dairy and eggs and wear leather. Regardless, I’m a man. A mensch. In fact. I even wrote a book explaining why menschlichkeit, as it’s called in Yiddish, is the best model for manhood.

So why the hell does it matter what a person eats? Even if I were carnivorous, I would still be kosher, so sorry, I’d have to skip a good portion of the BBQ when campaigning in Texas. Does that mean I can’t run for the Senate there? Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro keeps kosher too. Does that disqualify him from the national ticket? Did it disqualify Joe Lieberman in 2000? You’re no less a man if your not a pork-avore.

When European Jews said they wanted their kid to grow up to be a “mensch,” they understood the term to mean someone very different from the musclebound “Übermensch” of German mythology; one whose manhood is measured in his conquests, particularly of women, and the number of WWE notches on his belt. For Jews, the ideal model of a man is not an intimidator who uses antlers in all of his decorating. 6 Rather, it’s someone who dated Jessica Lange in drag7.

When I traveled to Berlin, it amused me how certain popular Yiddish expressions take on very different meanings when seen in the original German.

In Yiddish, a real “mensch” is someone who is kind and caring, a person of integrity and honor, someone who might occasionally even eat quiche…unless he’s a vegan, in which case he would not eat dairy and eggs.

Incidentally, although in German the term mensch clearly refers to males and connotes masculinity (or, in the case of Nietzsche, uber-masculinity), for Jews it is not gender-specific — a woman can be a mensch, too.

And since I agree with Talarico’s old postings that there are up to half a dozen genders, would that put a stain on my manhood? Absolutely not. In fact, my faith tradition - one of the oldest in the world - indeed posits that there are six genders. Along with male and female, four other categories are suggested in ancient Jewish sources, reflecting the real-life world of the rabbis, a world of gender fluidity where some people possessed androgynous physical features. It’s in the Talmud,8 which makes it part of Ken Paxton’s beloved Judeo-Christian tradition.

Paxton has said, “In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up.”

Well, go ahead, Kenny, make my day - and make sure, in each classroom, to check off all the commandments you’ve broken (with not a hint of remorse). One for each Ken doll. Conservatively, I think you’ve made a mockery of …all ten.

Maybe what should be posted on Texas school walls is this passage I wrote in Mensch-Marks:

In the Talmud, Hillel the sage states, “In a world that lacks humanity, be human (literally, be a man).” In a world as dehumanizing as ours has become, simply being a kind, honest and loving person, a man or woman of integrity, has become a measure of heroism – and at a time when norms of civility are being routinely quashed, it may be the only measure that matters.

Here’s what matters. That we embrace kindness and truth, justice and love. That we protect children, like the child abused by the Waco man whose sentence Paxton corruptly cut down to one day9. We work for reconciliation with neighbors and recognize the power of a few kind words. We fearlessly engage with the world - the world of ideas, the world of science and the world of faith, and we see it all coming together in an underlying unity.

That’s what a real man does.

My mensch-hood highlights a brand of Judaism not obsessed with its own survival but with reaching out to others. And ironically, the willingness to look beyond ourselves is precisely what will ensure Jewish survival - and Israel’s as well.

You know, in Israel, one of the first Hebrew hashtags for #MeToo was “Gam Anachnu,” which means literally “US too.” Perhaps the key to the kind of cultural transformation that #MeToo imagines is for us to think a little less about the “me” and a little more about the “too.”

That’s our task now. Highlight the hate and present a new model of love. Masculine love. Years ago, when I circumcised my own son, the first time I had ever performed a bris, it helped me to understand an essential lesson about fatherhood, that the knife transforms the father not into a sculptor, but, paradoxically, into a shield. I wrote, “The breast provides, but the knife protects. It channels a father’s natural anger and jealousy into one controlled cut. He takes off one small part in order to preserve – and love – the whole.”

I appeal to men not to fall for this MAGA, Ken Paxton Übermensch nonsense. America is better than that.

Now is the time to prove it, by taking back the mantle of mensch-hood. This midterm is all about seizing control of the narrative about masculinity - and in doing so, to take back all of religion.

For what we heard this week are the first shots not of a revived culture war, but of a brand-new war to define what it means to be religious in America, a war that could at last send MAGA’s faux faith spiraling. This spiritual rumble pits Talarico, the Presbyterian seminarian against Paxton, the serial sinner. In this epic battle of meanness vs. menschiness, I’ll take my chances on the seminarian any day.

May the best mensch win!

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1

Miller:

3

Read the whole book here. A sample:

4

Methinks they’ve picked the wrong damsel to distress.

5

See the JewishVeg website. Here are some relevant Jewish quotes pertaining to veggieness, for those who are interested:

8

Six Sexes in the Talmud

9

Senator Cornyn put it best in this Tweet:

One year after first delivering this sermon, as we again reach the Torah portion of Beha’alotcha (in Israel this Shabbat, in the diaspora next week…don’t bother asking why, it’s complicated). I’m sending it along again because it might even be more needed now, given how beaten down we’ve become. I’ve edited the written transcript (below) to focus a little less on my own journey while retaining the parts about my seven-year-old “Miracle Dog,” Casey, who, God willing (ptu ptu ptu), will soon pass the two year mark since he was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer that was supposed to have taken him from us within weeks. The vet tells us that his case is “not in any of the literature.”

Two years! And he literally dances a jig every time he sees a new human. He dives into his food bowl for every morsel and even pees with relish. At the veterinary hospital they cheer him when he comes in and parade him around the waiting room as a beacon of hope for all the sicker dogs. They say he breakdances as they bring him in for exams.

This week, while he was on one of his vigorous walks near the beach, a car slowed down to take a look at him (my dog has now become an an Eagles lyric) and a woman rolled down the window and shouted, “What a happy dog!” People stop in their tracks to comment on him all the time.

His poodle hair fell out during chemo, but has now grown back as jet-black puppy hair, a jarring contrast to his greying litter-mate sister. It falls like a mop over his forehead - making him look less like an Eagle and more like a Beatle.

Both his sibs are much more jittery. Not Casey. He seems to know how lucky he is, or he senses that we know it. And, like all dogs, he is just seizing the hell out of each moment he’s alive and strutting down the street seemingly barking out the verses of Celine Dion’s “I’m Alive.”

And now we are one year beyond that first No Kings Day, when the streets of Washington were lined with tanks. We survived that. But now the Kennedy Center is in ruins and Arlington Cemetery may soon be desecrated by a gargantuan arch. And I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt, when speaking of “The Man in the Arena” imagined the front lawn of the White House being turned into one - and the East Wing is a garbage dump.

Casey presents a lesson here for those of us so beaten down by the steady stream of corruption, hate and violence afflicting our nation and our world. And there’s a lesson for all of us facing the burdens of love and loss and physical and emotional pain from aging and disappointment.

Seize the hell out of each moment of life! If we do that, and embrace the task at hand, 2026 will be a very good year.

Enjoy this sermon and by all means, share it with someone you love.

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On Borrowed Time: Me, My Dog, and America

Originally delivered on June 13, 2025

At times like this, we are reminded not to take anything for granted. Not our future as a democracy. Not the future of Israel, for that matter, or the security of Jews in this country.

There is an intensity about being alive right now. Think about it. What might end up being one of the top ten air disasters in the history of the world happened in India yesterday and it barely makes the front pages. And so many of those existential stories are still playing themselves out. In the streets of Los Angeles and tomorrow all over the country, in the courts in California and elsewhere, in the skies over Iran and Israel, and on the ground in Gaza. And coming soon to a Home Depot near you.

A lot has happened since I last stood here exactly a year ago this coming week. And much of it has helped me to grasp the urgency of this moment – and indeed of each moment - not to take anything for granted…

…You might recall that my dog Casey struggled with ACL surgeries on both hind legs before I left. Well, when we got home after my final Friday night service – and I never made it to the back to the social hall for those delicious desserts - well, when we got home, Casey had had accidents all over the place. Two weeks later we got the devastating news that he had in incurable, aggressive lymphoma in his stomach. When we brought him to Cornell veterinary hospital, the doctor told us that he had about two months, but with an intensive regimen of chemo we might be able to squeeze a few more months of quality life. We were so shocked and he was so young still – just 6 - that we weren’t ready to give up on him. So, we went for it. Intensive treatments week after week, month after month. He lost two thirds of his body weight, and most of his hair, which for a poodle can be pretty gruesome.

But a few months later, we noticed that not only was he holding up well under the treatment, but he was beginning to join in with Cassidy and Cobie when they played. And he didn’t just run, he skipped. His fur began to grow back – as puppy fur, jet black, like a kid again. The picture of Doggian Gray. When we brought him to Cornell, he would light up the waiting room, befriending the ailing dogs and their owners.

Casey became a service dog for the other dogs.

I knew one of my kids would become a rabbi. I just didn’t know he’d have four legs. And when they brought him to the back at Cornell to poke and prod him, they said he would break dance.

Jennifer Skiff, author of The Divinity of Dogs, wrote, “Dogs, for a reason that can only be described as divine, have the ability to let go of the past and live each day joyously. It is something the rest of us strive for.”

No dog we’ve had has ever embraced life more than Casey. His cancer is still officially incurable, but after another clean ultrasound a week ago, Casey will in a few days pass the one-year mark since his diagnosis. The doctor can’t explain it. She told us it’s not in the literature. She said, and I quote, “Casey should have been dead months ago.” She thought he’d be dead by now.

So, when my prostate tests kept getting more and more foreboding last winter, I was prepared – I was already living my life on Casey time. Borrowed time – but in the good sense. Borrowed time is precious time. Take-nothing-for-granted time. Nothing. Walking, breathing, peeing – especially peeing.

Borrowed time – but in the good sense. Israel is on borrowed time – And so is America. And so is democracy. And so is the rule of law. The time we’ve had with all of them is precious, because we know that the time we have left may be limited. It may be quite limited. We must take nothing for granted. Nothing lasts forever.

This week’s portion of Beha’alotecha chronicles the Israelites’ adventures in the Wilderness, with the running theme that carries us through the rest of the book, and indeed throughout the rest of Jewish history to this day: “They came, the kvetched, then they conquered,” or as Julius Caesar famously put it in Latin, “Veni, Vidi, Kvetchi.” For every step forward - and there were many - there were two kvetches backward. And a total disregard for how precious their newfound freedom was.

In fact, most of the kvetches had to do with a longing for those imagined bygone days in the shackles of Egyptian slavery. They were slaves - but man, the watermelon in Egypt was delicious! And the fish! Seriously. Numbers 11:5. It’s almost uncanny in its anticipation of America’s later slide into a nostalgic stupor in selective memory and racism. It’s the Song of the South. We forget the pain. We ban the trauma from our minds and our libraries. We strum and whittle on the porches of the plantations. “Frankly Miriam, I don’t give a damn!”

But nostalgia is not the only culprit at play here. There is also envy. In describing the manna, the Torah makes manna seem like the tastiest thing this side of Entenmann’s crumb doughnuts - the glazed ones. Yet even that was not good enough for the Israelites. Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, a 17th century sage from Krakow, notes that the Torah is trying to make a statement about human nature here. People will not be satisfied even with a daily dozen of Entenmann’s crumb doughnuts - if their neighbors are enjoying the same thing.

In order for people to feel fulfilled, they have to have more than their neighbors. It’s sort of the opposite of Dayenu. It’s never enough, unless I have more than the guy next door.

We should be living a life of Dayenu. We should be living on Casey Time, but we are never satisfied.

The Great Gatsby was published 100 years ago this past April - the Great American novel, which was barely noticed while its author was alive. When F Scott Fitzgerald died in Hollywood in 1940 at the age of 44, unsold copies of the first edition were still gathering dust in Scribner’s warehouse. But this past year there were not one but two Broadway musicals of Gatsby produced. The book resonates now more than ever, because it holds up a mirror to who we are as Americans - to our obsessions with class and race, and possessions - as one main character shouts, “Things. I want lots of things!”

This portion teaches us that the so-called American dream is not that different from the Jewish dream, and it’s not about having more, being better or reinventing oneself inauthentically. Those dreams are doomed to go up in flames or to be beaten back by relentless tides of disappointment. The only enduring dream is one where people come together in communities that care about one another, where individuals take nothing for granted. Sanctity is discovered in the everyday acts of eating and working and loving. Salvation is attained through commitment to something larger than ourselves, and dedicating every moment toward that end.

We cannot take any of this for granted. We’ve been given so many gifts. None of them are coming to us. We have to hold and cherish them. People fought for the rights we have as Americans. So many have died defending our democracy here, and while forging the Jewish, democratic state we cherish. We’ve been gifted so many miracles, large and small, divinely inspired and man-made. Serendipitous and earned. All of them gifts.

Casey got a day of just feeling good. And he started to breakdance and wants to be a rabbi. But there are people who want to bury their heads in Love Island or wherever the White Lotus is being filmed and pretend nothing is being lost.

And there are people who want to take it all away. Because they want things, lots of things. Because they want power. Because they are mean-spirited and blasphemous – worshipping the false idol that they are staring at in the mirror.

They don’t see the miracle of every breath, every step. They know less about being truly alive than, to paraphrase FDR, “my little dog Casey,” so mocked by Republicans.

Tomorrow will be a very important day in the history of this country. It may be Shabbat for Jews, but for America, it’s Yom Kippur. Tanks will be rolling past our most sacred places in Washington – the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the African American and Holocaust Museums. Korean War memorial too. And in view of the Kennedy Center, which has been desecrated like Antiochus did with the temple. Tanks will trample on Constitution Avenue, making our most sacred mile look like a Stalinist nightmare – tomorrow.

And all across this country, millions of ordinary Americans will be standing up to the bullies and turning back the tanks.

We can take nothing for granted. We must appreciate every gift that we have. And we need to do everything in our power to preserve those gifts. I don’t know if my cancer is gone. The odds suggest it will likely return. But Casey has helped me understand how to live with it.

Behaalotcha ends with the most famous healing prayer in the Bible. Moses, about to lose his beloved sister, cries out, “El Na, Refa Na La.” Please, God, Please, heal her.”

We say those same words tonight - Please God, heal American democracy, Please God, we pray for Jewish security, for a secure Israel at peace with her neighbors and with herself, and we pray for peace for our world, and that all living beings can know the fleeting yet fulsome joy experienced by Casey Hammerman and Fala Roosevelt.

Casey wanted the last word…

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Lior Schleien is Israel’s Jon Stewart and he’s on a mission. Two missions, really. One, to get Israeli youth to understand the existentially high stakes of the upcoming election1, which for half a million of them will be their first as voters. And second, to help Americans who have been turned off to Israel, particularly American Jews, to see Israel from his perspective. Please take a look at this short video Schleien just released, and then by all means, share it - today - with your confused, dispirited, and angry former Israel-supporting relatives and friends. Unlike so much “hasbara2” out there, it is not condescending or overly defensive, and it does not deny the seriousness of the problem. But it does so with humor.

Humor is often the best way to break though barriers of misinformation, and Schleien has been specializing in that for years. But the fact that he is now directing his message to those of us in the English-speaking world is a big deal. We may have lost Stephen Colbert this week, but we have gained Lior Schleien.3

In this video, he compares the US-Israel relationship to a lovers’ spat, acknowledging the bipartisan contempt expressed for Israel by Democrats and Republicans alike. He places much of the blame for that at the feet of Prime Minister Netanyahu, which is valid, though in my mind too glib. It’s too easy to call him the root of all evil, when at the root of all this evil is the fascism and religious supremacism embedded in Christian Nationalism here and Kahanism in Israel. It’s the Kahanist Itamar Ben Gvir who performed the Abu Ghraib-like abduction of the Gaza flotilla last week, an abusive act so degrading that it made even Netanyahu wince (probably more on PR grounds than moral ones). Ben Gvir should have been fired on the spot. The greatest threat to Israeli democracy is Kahanism, a movement that was banned from the Knesset for decades before Netanyahu made his deal with the devil in 2022, and invited it in.

But for most Americans, Netanyahu is the bogeyman4, and so Schleien goes with it. Schleien’s half-hearted excuse for some of Israel’s excesses is, “Sometimes you say things you don’t mean.” And then with a metaphorical wink to America, “Sometimes you elect people you don’t mean.”

“But we’re working on it,” he concludes. “We have elections in six months. So come on, America. Please give us another chance. We know we haven’t been ourselves lately. But we can change… Our government.”

Some might take exception to Schleien laying all of Israel’s sins at Bibi’s door, or of minimizing, to some degree, the psychological impact of October 7 or Israel’s inexplicable trust in America’s con man president. Many believe Israel bears no responsibility for the fact that Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson can now walk hand-in-hand opposing Israel in bipartisan bliss.

Schleien also doesn’t weigh into the blame game that is obsessing American Jews right now. Some are calling proud Zionists who simply seek a two-state solution “appeasers” or worse. Israel’s ambassador to the US recently called two-state proponent J-Street “a cancer” - a remark that was itself cancerous - and hundreds of Jewish leaders, including myself, signed a letter demanding an apology. There’s an awful lot of blaming going on within the Jewish community. “Who lost Israel?” has becoming this generation’s “Who lost China?” But it’s all a distraction. None of that will matter if things go badly this fall.

Schleien himself is addressing the many Israelis who don’t seem to understand the perils that would face an increasingly isolated Israel if the current course continues. Schleien explains that pro-Israel progressives are simply people who want to see Israel continue to be a light unto the nations, at the crossroads of a flourishing world where science, culture and education meet, where creative ideas are exchanged freely and where students can study and build a better future together. Where, at the very least, American students can spend a semester abroad without spending half of it in bomb shelters.

Is that too much to ask? To want to see Jerusalem as a 21st century Athens, rather than Netanyahu’s dark vision of a Sparta5 in a perpetual state of warfare?

Schleien’s plea here to Americans is simple. Let us Israelis work this out. Let us go to the polls, but lend us your support, he’s saying, rather than your disdain, as we try to get rid of these guys. And if you can help us save decency and democracy in Israel this coming September and October, it will give pro-democracy forces in the US a huge boost in November.

To be blunt - Bernie, I know you smell blood in the water, but it’s time to back off just a little. Newsom and Shapiro, embrace the liberal forces of Bibi’s opposition. We know that Trump will embrace Bibi (if they are on speaking terms). You too, Jon Stewart and John Oliver6. And Jon, meet me at Camera Three.

Jon - we met at your nephew’s bar mitzvah. Your niece’s bat mitzvah too. You had an aliyah and did a nice job - I told you you’d be fine, that after you had just hosted the Oscars, you were used to a tough crowd. You’re an amazing source of pride for American Jews. So partner with this Schleien guy. Bring him on as a guest. Unify to beat Bibi, even if it means holding your nose with some of your condemnation of the country. Let’s use Hungary as a model of unity for the upcoming election and work toward a similar result.

Neither Schleien nor I are suggesting that legitimate criticism be stifled. I’m just saying that outright vilification right now is not helpful, because it is so easy for even legitimate criticism to contain a whiff of antisemitism, even if just in the timing (ask Nick Kristof). A little less outrage will give the forces for sanity in Israel the boost they need to drag democracy over the finish line. If everyone in Israel is focused on the nasty things Americans are saying, like the preoccupation with genocide and whether dogs are capable of rape, backs will stiffen, defenses will be raised, people will just get angrier, and angry people tend to support angry candidates.

We’re just playing into the algorithms folks. We’re just stirring up the hate.

And, a special memo for those who salivate at the chance to attack Israel at the slightest provocation: Please, when Jews are attacked, anywhere, rush to condemn that too - unequivocally, without need to add “context.” Run, don’t walk, to hug your closest Jewish neighbor. Link the fight for democracy and decency here with what’s happening there.

Democracy is the true intersectionality.

The dominos are falling: Hungary-Israel-America.

And all this will help America in the fall.

Give us a chance, Schleien is saying to democracy-loving Americans, and come November, we Israelis just might give you a most precious gift.7

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1

From Ha’aretz:

4

From Pew, April 2026

5

“Super-Sparta” speech

One holiday features dairy foods and the other meaty cookouts. Unless you are into barbecued blintzes, it seems like a mismatch.

But Shavuot, which begins this evening and lasts into the weekend, and Memorial Day which falls on Monday but is really all weekend, have more in common than we would think. For one thing, both celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer, when wearing white is now officially permissible, and even desirable, evoking symbolism of nature’s renewal and our recommitment to higher ideals (Shavuot is considered the “wedding” of God and the Jewish people). For another, both holidays are curiously neglected and rarely are they observed as originally intended.

In the case of Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai was a later insertion of history into what was essentially an agricultural holiday, the wheat harvest. These days, most Jews are unfamiliar with Shavuot, as it gets the least attention of all Jewish festivals.

Memorial Day, meanwhile was originally a day to remember war dead (“Memorial” Day...get it?), before it became an occasion for car sales, beach trips, auto races and barbecues. Maybe this year we can regain some of the deeper meaning of each festival, now that they’ll be celebrated back-to-back.

We need to.

On Memorial Day and on the second day of Shavuot in the diaspora (there’s only one day observed in Israel and for Reform Jews - it’s complicated), we will recite memorial prayers. This weekend, I hope that each of us will take a moment to recall those who have made the supreme sacrifice.

For a history of Memorial Day you can go to the History Channel website. It’s become a custom for me on this weekend to share the words of Rabbi Roland Gittlesohn in a speech delivered in dedication of the 5th marine cemetery on Iwo Jima, in March 1945. Click here for the backstory. It has been called one of the great battlefield sermons to come out of World War Two and it has never been more urgent for us to hear it in its entirety:

Both Memorial Day and Shavuot focus our thoughts on those who have sacrificed, on their commitment, selflessness, and love.

And both holidays remind us - as Gittlesohn did - that democracy and freedom are for everyone.

The Kindest Person in the Bible

On Shavuot, we read my hands-down favorite biblical book, Ruth, the tale of a kind Moabite woman who chose to cast her lot with the Jewish people and was welcomed by them. Ruth is among the most exemplary, compassionate and courageous people in all of ancient literature, and a fitting great grandmother to King David, as we discover at the very end of the book. Her very name means friendship.

Ruth1 is especially about easing the plight of refugees, as Ruth herself was embraced by her mother-in-law Naomi and her community. We Americans, who live in a country whose default seems permanently set on “They’re eating the dogs,” have much to learn from this book.

To illustrate my point about this country, here’s Fortune’s survey on how Americans viewed Jewish refugees in 1938, euphemistically called “Austrian” and “German” even as the walls were closing in on them:

As The Forward explains it:

In a July 1938 poll, 67 percent of Americans told Fortune magazine that America should try to keep out altogether German, Austrian and other political refugees, and another 18 percent said America should allow them in but without increasing immigration quotas. In another 1938 poll, cited in the book “Jews in the Mind of America,” some 75 percent of respondents said they opposed increasing the number of German Jews allowed to resettle in the United States.

In January 1939, 61 percent of Americans told Gallup they opposed the settlement of 10,000 refugee children, “most of them Jewish,” in the United States.

Americans have a problem with people who are different. It’s endemic, it’s ageless and it is us. This is “who we really are.” We have to change who we really are.

Here’s a sobering bit of news for this week. The killings at the Islamic Center in San Diego were horrific. And these nihilistic, neo-Nazi, far-right extremist haters turned out to be equal opportunity bigots. After aiming for Muslims, these killers had to get their verbal shots in - at the Jews….

Shavuot and Memorial Day remind us to seek the good, to use our power for the betterment of others. We see that in Ruth. And we saw that on the beaches of Normandy.

Not eating the dogs - but marrying them?

Hate and intolerance take many forms. While it may seem trivial and even comical, an incident from the Israeli Knesset this week is quite typical, and indicative of why the current government needs to be replaced.

As the rush to fall elections begins, the extremist far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties are pushing for some of their pet legislation to be passed. One item on their radar is the elimination of non-Orthodox prayer spaces at the Western Wall. They want to make it a criminal offense to have religious services - even in specially designated areas, as has long been the case - where men and women stand together. Many groups who attempt non-Orthodox prayer there, such as the Women of the Wall, are harassed. But five years in jail for praying in a Jewish state? This will look really good on an El Al brochure.

So that set the stage for this outburst by a Knesset member from Likud, the Prime Minister’s party, advocating for the new law:

Welcome to my world! (Understand that yes, I’ve been dealing with this forever, and it takes nothing away from my love for Israel. I can love Israel despite May Golan just as I can love America despite Clarence Thomas.)

It all comes back to the imperative of Memorial Day and Shavuot, for us to build societies that embrace difference. The ultra-Orthodox establishment in Israel is notorious for narrowly defining Jewish identity, and they feel threatened by the progressives’ embrace of people like Ruth the Moabite.

Click here for a YouTube clip, with subtitles, from a popular Israeli comedy series that parodies Jewish history and touches on this topic of Othering with piercing wit. It’s dark and hits you over the head like a sledgehammer. But it gets the point across.

In another episode of that same show, there is a skit where, following Ruth’s supreme gesture to follow Naomi wherever she goes, immigration officials jump out of the bushes and demand to see her papers. But all joking aside, the message of this book is that the only way to confront tragedy is though steadfast kindness, by standing shoulder to shoulder with those who are bereft, by restoring hope to the hopeless and by welcoming the stranger.

The rabbis had it right in assigning the book of Ruth to this holiday. In order to be worthy of receiving the Torah, we need to first purify our souls of hate and then fill that empty space with kindness. We need to be more like dogs!

I have an additional bone to pick with May Golan.

Now to be clear, I’ve never performed a dog wedding, but I did host a Bark Mitzvah in my backyard. It was for my dog Crosby. And it was wonderful! I believe that, weddings aside, humans should create rituals to celebrate and sanctify their relationships with their pets. Below in the footnotes, you’ll find the tribute I wrote for Crosby when he traversed that rainbow bridge several years ago.

Put that in your next hateful speech, May Golan, and may a random dog in the Sachar Park just outside the Knesset - which features a dedicated, off-leash dog park - mistake your leg for kibble and take a small nibble of it on your way home.

Or if not a dog, perhaps a rabid progressive rabbi.

We’ve been known for our biting satire, after all.

Here’s a video from Crosby’s Bark Mitzvah, for May Golan’s scrapbook. This is how a progressive rabbi makes Judaism a special treat for everyone!

• My full tribute to Crosby is at the bottom of this newsletter.2

And a couple of assorted items:

• For those who missed my Substack Live event yesterday with Substack star and noted pundit Julie Roginsky, here it is. We discussed the challenges of being a diaspora Jew these days, and what lies ahead.

And finally, WTF? Bibi and Trump wanted to install HIM?

The NYT claims that Israel and the US had a scheme all worked out in the early days of the Iran war to install as the head of their new Iran puppet government none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Come again? So this guy, the one who I schlepped to Daj Hammarskjöld plaza outside the UN to protest, he’s the one Trump and Bibi wanted to install to lead Iran? This guy didn’t just deny the Holocaust; he convened international conferences to deny the Holocaust. Brilliant! What could go wrong with that? Seriously, who comes up with these ideas? The same one who thought of stuffing Qatari money into suitcases and funneling it to Hamas? I’m so glad our world is in such stable hands. Sometimes I wish the producers of the streaming shows Tehran and Fauda would just take over the whole operation. One wonders who they are picking for Our Man in Havana: Ricky Ricardo?

For those who are celebrating, have a happy Shavuot and meaningful Memorial Day

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2

Tribute to Crosby (If the print is too small, you can see it also here):

Like many of my essays, this needs to be read slowly, perhaps in more than one sitting (and even more sittings to explore the source materials), and with an open mind for nuanced truths. What might seem contradictory might actually be complementary. Enjoy.

I’ve been agonizing over how to respond to that Nicholas Kristof opinion piece alleging sex offenses by Israelis toward Palestinians (particularly prisoners) in the New York Times1, which coincidentally (or not), appeared concurrently with a report documenting a two-year investigation into sexual violence by Hamas toward Israelis on October 7 and beyond.

I did not feel obligated to share my thoughts on so weighty a topic and planned to do so only if I have something to add to a conversation that has already saturated social media with mostly tribal, angry talking points and expletives, among a few thoughtful analyses.2

I’d like to suggest three complementary observations:

• All sexual crimes of this nature, whether perpetrated by individuals or groups in positions of power, whether by my tribe or my enemy’s, or anyone else, are to be condemned. Rape is not a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. There are only losers. Some lose their lives. Most lose their souls. The pain of these traumas is cumulative and knows no national or ethnic boundaries. What dehumanizes one dehumanizes all.

• While Kristof’s investigation is not antisemitic, we need to recognize that there is something deeply embedded in our culture that focuses international animus on Jews. This sickness goes back centuries and is now being cultivated, especially and deliberately, by the oligarchs who own social media. That recognition should summon us to filter out much of the constant vilification being steered toward not only Israel, but Jews everywhere.

• Violent, abusive acts such as these fly in the face of all the religious traditions in question, including Judaism and Islam.

I’ve shared in the footnotes the full Kristof article from the NYT print edition, which came out on Sunday, nearly a week after it first appeared online. Interestingly, by the time Kristof’s words were “fit to print” on real newsprint, no mention of it could be found on the front page of that print edition - where opinion pieces are often teased; another one was here - and Kristof’s piece couldn’t be found even on the front page of the Opinion section. It’s as if The Times was very subtly hedging its bets and realizing that this presentation of a shocking news investigation by a reputable journalist on the opinion pages might not have been the best idea.

Can you imagine the Pentagon Papers as an opinion piece? 3

I share below the first section of Kristof’s piece, along with the pdf download of the full 300-page report by the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, an independent, non-profit organization, along with key findings of that report. I share them side-by-side, as it were, not to lay the groundwork for claims of “bothsidesism,” but rather to view these tragedies as cumulative in their impact, while each account also is uniquely shocking. Even if not every detail of each account can be conclusively verified, it only takes one grain of truth to justify serious soul searching.

Each incident makes us all a little less human, shattering again and again our fragile belief in the potential of people to overcome rage, unchecked power and the temptation to use that power to abuse a neighbor. The anger might not be shared, but the pain is. Everywhere we look, there is agony.

I want people to have easy access to these reports, so here they are. Bookmark and share this page, read the testimonies in small portions, and reflect on them this week, as jews prepare for Shavuot (Pentecost) and Americans for Memorial Day.

Hamas Sexual Terror Report

9.66MB ∙ PDF file

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Here is the first part of Kristof’s opinion piece.

The two reports are very different, one investigated by a team over the course of years, the other an opinion piece. But zoom in to see, not the map of the conflict writ large, but the landscape of tears on the faces of the victims and their loved ones, and we see how at their essence, these crimes have a commonality. It is disorienting that the online cover pages from both The Times’ website and the Civil Commission’s, which I’ve posted at the top of this piece, almost look like mirror images of each other. Same white on black color scheme, same use of the word “silence.”

I’ll try to be as clear as I can with this complementary pair of points:

• The evils perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, which went far beyond the sex crimes described here, are incomparable and sui generis. They stand alone. I’ve been saying that since just days after the massacre, and nothing has changed that fact, even the war crimes Israel will have to answer to. Hamas also committed their crimes with clear genocidal intent. For one thing, genocidal intent is in their charter, and the exact opposite is in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.4

• But all sexual crimes of this nature, directed at any gender, whether perpetrated by individuals or groups in positions of power are to be condemned, whether at the Nova festival or in Gaza, or Israel, or in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Ukraine, Uganda, Abu Ghraib prison - or Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. They are, at their core, all the same crime. The pain never ends, it only grows with each added scream. It seems fitting that on the same day Kristof’s and the Oct.7 reports were being made known, Epstein survivors were giving testimony in Palm Beach. More cries to toss out into the ether.

Dahlia Scheindlin wrote in Ha’aretz, in quasi-defense of Kristof:

Tigray. Sudan. Indonesia. Kosovo. Bosnia. I could go on; Kristof has covered these issues for a lifetime… Sexual violence that includes physical mutilation, desecration, torture, family assault, humiliation, infection and destruction mean that any assertion that Israeli- or Palestinian-perpetrated crimes are especially brutal simply dismisses or denies the horrors suffered by multitudes of victims around the world.

…Kristof too wrote that his reporting on sexual abuse over the years taught him that "a combination of dehumanization and impunity can propel people into a Hobbesian state of nature. I've encountered this drift toward savagery in killing fields from Congo to Sudan to Myanmar." He cites American abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and by New York City police. Do Israelis or Palestinians really think they alone are above doing those things, or that no other people have been accused?

People are outraged, but part of that anger is misdirected. I’m still waiting for international organizations, particularly those who typically defend Hamas, to address Hamas’s sexual crimes with the appropriate outrage. But I’d also like to see fewer Jewish groups directing their ire at The New York Times and take more seriously the questions raised by Kristof. Every act of such utter inhumanity should outrage us. Granted, Israelis have reason to have little empathy with prisoners who may well have killed or raped their friends and relatives. But we can’t lose our humanity, we who adhere to faith traditions that advocate compassion and empathy. If we lose our capacity to love the stranger, we’ve lost the essence of Torah.

All inhumanity should outrage us. That is the default position. If it turns out that some details are left wanting and that maybe dogs can’t be trained to become rapists (does sniffing butts count? Asking for a furry friend), that should not reduce our deep, deep concern about each incident described in each of these reports.

And of course, there’s antisemitism….

At the same time, we have to ask serious questions about why these accusations seem to land more often in Israel’s lap than anywhere else. Hamas aside, Russian atrocities in Ukraine and China’s genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs have receded to the back pages, and atrocities in places like Ethiopia have barely been covered at all. But Israel? Never fails. Part of that is the fault of the perpetrators. But not all.

There is something unique about the hatred of Jews that goes far beyond anything borne by any other group. It’s not a competition (and if it were, I wish we would lose), but read this excerpt from an excellent Substack column by Julie Roginsky. She speaks of forces that “have quietly and relentlessly pushed public discourse beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and into something far darker — a nihilistic contempt for the existence of an entire nation, its people and, increasingly, Jews far beyond its borders.”

Salty Politics with Julie Roginsky

What Anti-Zionists Can Learn from The Devil Wears Prada

(The Devil Wears Prada/20th Century Fox…

Read more

12 days ago · 93 likes · 18 comments · Julie Roginsky

Today, the “lumpy blue sweater” hanging in the bargain bin of public discourse is antisemitism — only now it comes dressed up as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel sentiment. It is one of the few things both parties’ bases increasingly agree on. And while acolytes of Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker may believe they are mortal enemies who arrived at their views honestly, many of them did not arrive there independently. Like the assistant whose illusion of free will Miranda Priestly so icily dismantles, they have been dressed in someone else’s ideology — manipulated into beliefs by forces they do not even realize exist.

This is not a column defending the Netanyahu government, which has become a stain on the nation of Israel, much as the Trump administration is a stain on the United States. Netanyahu has done incalculable damage, not only to Israel itself and to the region, but to diaspora Jews who are left to absorb the backlash from his cruelty, corruption, and disastrous choices. Nor is this a defense of AIPAC, which demands blind allegiance to a government that many Israelis — and certainly most American Jews — reject.

This is a column about something else: the forces that have quietly and relentlessly pushed public discourse beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and into something far darker — a nihilistic contempt for the existence of an entire nation, its people and, increasingly, Jews far beyond its borders.

For years now, the conversation has drifted well past the specific actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza or the West Bank. It has moved into a much more dangerous place, where people often slide, without even realizing it, from debating foreign policy into blaming “Israel,” “AIPAC,” “Zionists” and Jews for everything broken in American life.

(And please do not tell me this does not happen. Almost every time I go Live, someone in the chat blames “AIPAC” or “Zionists” for whatever domestic crisis we are discussing in the United States, no matter how unrelated. That is not criticism of Israeli policy. That is an old conspiracy theory wearing new language.)

Roginsky goes into detail on how antisemitism has infiltrated into all corners of social media:

The result is an online ecosystem where antisemitism no longer arrives wearing a swastika. It arrives disguised as “decolonization” and algorithmically boosted through emotionally manipulative content streams engineered to maximize outrage, tribalism, and radicalization. Social media companies have almost no incentive to stop it because rage is profitable — and because their investors are increasingly despotic Middle Eastern autocrats that have either expelled Jews from their own lands or have every vested interest in having Americans direct their ire at Israel and not at them.

This hatred goes back millennia, long before social media, and it can’t be ignored.

One might ask The New York Times just why this report was run when it was, and in the manner it was, and on the same day of a completely unrelated piece about Israel supposedly wielding undue influence over Eurovision. It wasn’t a very serious piece of journalism, but on the same day? In the NFL, they would have been flagged for piling on. But we’re to believe that no editor noticed that no one even worried about the perception of piling on. That’s the subconscious double standard at work. Hundreds of years of “blame the Jews” - just substitute “Eurovision voting” for poisoned wells.

Our task as Jews -and other people of faith - is to fight this evil

But still, this does not justify downplaying accusations like Kristof’s and picket the NYT. Sheindlin put it best at the end of her piece:

We cannot have it both ways. Jews deserve the same as all other human beings – protection, human rights, national rights. And precisely because we are human beings like all others, we – like everyone – have the capacity for evil. It is my responsibility to believe, expose and seek to end it.

Rates of Domestic Violence have become unspeakably high during the Trump era. On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. Treating women like chattel, a Trump/Epstein specialty, undoubtedly has had something to do with that. But all genders have been victimized by the hyper-brutality of our age. Not surprisingly, transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. And those numbers predate Trump 2.0.

At a time like this, of all times, the Jewish people need to set an example by reaffirming the brilliant wisdom found in our traditional sources. And while I am no expert on Islam, just as rape is condemned in Judaism it clearly is condemned in normative Islamic law too. At a time when most victims are still silent - or silenced forever by death - we look to the Bible for inspiration. When Jacob’s daughter Dina was raped, the trauma was so great as to render silent not only Dina, but her father Jacob as well. And not only Jacob, but God.5

This selection from the Talmud perfectly encapsulates my response to the two reports:

I can imagine Oprah asking God and Jacob, after the rape of Dina, “Were you silent? Or silenced?”

We’ve all been silenced by our own anger, tribal chauvinism and good old-fashioned fearmongering. In that sense we are all victims. It’s time for all of us to speak up.

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1

Kristof’s full piece (linked here).

2

Among the most helpful initial analyses are Hen Mazzig’s widely quoted posting, “What was the goal here?” and Dahlia Scheindlin’s from Ha’aretz (see below):

3

Pentagon Papers

4

On Hamas and genocide:

Policy Brief Sara E

185KB ∙ PDF file

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Donald Trump’s “Rededicate 250,” a nine-hour prayer-fest on Sunday billed as “A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving,” and his despicable attempt to politicize the Jewish Sabbath into some sort of “National Shabbat” on Saturday, are crass attempts to destroy the precious line separating religion and state. No one should be fooled.

And those Jewish groups scampering to join in this politicized fun ought to run the other way - and aim to turn every Shabbat into a special Shabbat - or to partake in Shabbat Across America, a successful annual event that does not try to subvert a religious celebration into a strident political message. For thirty years, Shabbat Across America’s sponsors have brought over a million Jews together, from across the widest spectrum of denominations.

We don’t need the government to “Shove us into Shab-bos” while at the same time betraying our deepest religious principles. It constantly astounds me how willing Jewish groups are to bend the knee before this false idol and accede to this hostile takeover of our most cherished institutions. It projects shame and weakness. First the Kennedy Center. Now, Shabbat has been sullied with Trump’s name scribbled all over it with a Sharpie.

Trump’s trying to project a singular religious vision where our Constitution promotes pluralism, an idolatrous vision at that - one where he is God’s Chosen - and to carefully edit and recast America’s story through the lens of extremist White Nationalism. And Trump ends up as Dr. Jesus for Jews too, if you haven’t read the fine print. He’s the Chosen, whether you are reading from right to left or left to right.

Jews and Christians should observe their Sabbaths this weekend, by all means, but not by buying into this charade. If Trump’s “National Sabbath” could include a discussion of how the fourth commandment calls us on us to liberate those who are enslaved, protect the environment, refrain from violence and be kind to animals, maybe I can begin to share it with the nation. A conversation on why it’s dangerous to slap that fourth commandment on courthouses across the land? Sure. A discussion that calls on us to prepare for Memorial Day by recalling the extreme cost of our nation’s wars in human terms, and calls us to account for wars we should have avoided and a Civil War that has still not ended? Well, maybe.

But otherwise, hands off my Sabbath!

For in fact, with this farce, Trump is trying to do to religion what his partisan gerrymander scheme is attempting to do to this November’s midterm elections. It’s a last-ditch, desperate attempt to steal back what is summarily slipping away. No matter how many busloads turn out on Sunday, the messianic right knows that they are losing the religious narrative, in Middle America and on the coasts, on farms and in factories, in villages, suburbs and our largest cities, just as they are losing the political narrative. They are not the majority.

Pete Hegseth’s choreographed performance of “Onward Christian Soldiers” has hit a snag in the Persian Gulf - not one I would have hoped for, but a catastrophe that will eventually lead anyone pinning their messianic hopes on this war to ask profound theological questions. This is not the path that God has chosen. God is speaking to us through the voice of the psalmist. Hear the cry of Psalm 118:5: “Out of the straits I called upon the Lord. He answered me and set me free!”

And what did God answer?

“I’m nowhere near Hormuz, nowhere near that narrow place. Nor should you be. Take the wide view! Quit with your narrow messianic dreamscape, get rid of the gauzy visions, get real - and LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS!”

I’m disappointed that no mass response from the interfaith community has been organized to counter this “jubilee.” The Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist group and Faithful America,1 a Christian resistance group, are running counter programming, complete with a golden calf, but there should be a more serious and substantive collective response.

Still, we can respond privately. And maybe that’s most appropriate.

Faithful America’s petition regarding this event is one that, while aimed at Christians, Jews should reflect upon, especially those Jews so willing to capitulate to Shabbat 250 even as the 4th commandment is being improperly plastered on the walls of public school classrooms throughout the nation.

To: The organizers of Rededicate 250

We declare that as Christians, we reject Christian Nationalists’ Rededicate 250.

We name Rededicate 250 for what it is: the Trump regime’s attempt to rewrite a nationalistic pseudohistory and homogenize the country’s religious identity for its own purposes.

To spread a white Christian Nationalist agenda that props up Trump’s own image under the guise of celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary. To propagandize a very specific, exclusive, and self-serving version of Christianity.

You claim it will be a national jubilee.

We confess, we cannot rejoice when you are stealing food from the mouths of babes.

We cannot celebrate while you defund the essential aid programs that sustain people.

We cannot condone your continued perversion of the name of God to further Christian Nationalist ideology.

We profess our faith differently. The God we know loves, serves, and teaches compassion, humility, and sacrifice.

He feeds the hungry, clothes the poor, heals the sick, frees the oppressed, and loves all sinners.

So let us make clear: We Christians reject Rededicate 250.

Here’s something for normal American people of faith to ponder as they observe their own private Sabbaths this weekend, while White Christian Supremacist bullies make a mockery of our nation’s ideals in Washington. It’s from my Substack on this topic, written last March when the FCC tried to censor James Talarico’s interview with Stephen Colbert (they failed to silence them, as they will fail to silence Colbert’s voice after “The Late Show” leaves the airwaves this week. It will only be amplified all the more).

Something remarkable is occurring right now. Religion is making a comeback. Not the fake religion that justifies oppression, abuse and discrimination, but real religion, the kind that preaches love of the stranger and stands up to power, the kind that disdains corruption, the kind that provides comfort and community when your life has fallen apart, the kind they taught in religious schools of all faiths and denominations when I was growing up. We are seeing a religious revival, one keyed by values of compassion and courage. Old faith groups are finding new voices and new denominations are coalescing around time-tested messages.

The fact that the Trump administration didn’t want the nation to hear James Talarico’s interview with Stephen Colbert, however they tried to parse the matter later on, stemmed from their fear that Talarico is reasserting the religious symbolism that the right had co-opted and perverted for decades. His message of social justice and love-of-neighbor has hit a nerve, countering the anti-empathy ideology of the Trumpists. They know that cruelty might be the point, but it ‘aint selling.

On his website, Talarico explains why he ran, as a chance to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, a Baptist minister in Texas, and…

“…a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments: love God and love neighbor. Because there is no love of God without love of neighbor. Every single person bears the image of the sacred; every single person is holy — not just the neighbors who look like me or pray like me or vote like me.”

I’m a rabbi too, though I typically wear shoes, and I can attest that precisely these same ideals are the soil from which Talarico’s rabbi and my rabbinic sages emerged, though there were religious hypocrites then as there are now.

I must say that Talarico’s candidacy is one of the most important statements about religion and state that has happened in some time. If successful - and that’s a huge “if” - he could accomplish something that no one this side of Raphael Warnock has accomplished: he could help take religion back to a place of political neutrality and spiritual centrism, so it can be precisely the fount of wisdom the Founders wanted it to be.

The message of Talarico’s candidacy is loud and clear: Right wing nationalists no longer own religion.

They’ve lost the narrative and are about to learn today’s Bible lesson: This is one election you can’t rig.

You can’t partisan-gerrymander God.

Shabbat Shalom

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Faithful America’s press release:

So now it looks like the Israeli elections might be advanced to September, in order to stage them before the anniversary of October 7. It seems the Kahanist Israeli government believes that if the people are not reminded of that catastrophe, they’ll somehow forget to vote out those who were responsible for it - the ones who still refuse to take ownership.

Good luck with that!1

Meanwhile the crimes perpetrated on January 6 have been expunged from the record in a blizzard of pardons and bogus counter-investigations, as if the coup never happened.

The upcoming elections, in Israel and the US, will all be about the two most infamous dates of the past quarter century, which the governments in power - who also happened to be at the helm when they occurred - want to consign to the dustbin of history: October 7 and January 6.

We cannot allow them - or anyone - to drown out those two dates with so much extraneous noise. And in order to do that, we need to keep things simple. The most important thing is for us not to add to that noise and to deny the autocrats the chance to spin about like Tasmanian devils and send us all into a dizzying, mass dissociative amnesia.

There are many other issues that matter, of course, ranging from immigration to inflation in the US, to the many conflicts Israel is embroiled in, in Iran, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. But at their core, both elections will be about 1/6 and 10/7 and all that they imply. They will be about how both governments failed to protect their own people, their innocent neighbors and democracy itself.

As Miranda Priestly would say, “That’s all.”

As I explained in my recent “No Kings” speech:

Let me repeat. Nothing else matters.

“No Kings” must be the biggest of big tents, because democracy needs the biggest of big wins this fall, in America and in Israel. Anything that could potentially fracture the unity of this massive, growing movement to unseat the existential threat of Christian White Supremacist Trumpism here and Jewish Supremacist Kahanism in Israel must be handled with extreme sensitivity and care. It doesn’t mean other issues can’t be addressed, just not in a manner that will jeopardize the coalition - and perhaps not right now.

I know that in the context of a war that has taken center stage (as a deliberate distraction), with antisemitism raging and Jim Crow returning with a vengeance, some energy will need to be spent putting out those and other fires.

But we cannot afford division right now.

American Jews who love Israel need to feel comfortable as Zionists while at the same time finding the courage to slide away from an instinctive, knee-jerk allegiance to the government in power. We have to be able to criticize Israel without having to accept a narrative that demonizes the legitimacy of Jewish national self-realization, recognizing that a democratic Jewish state is very much a work-in-progress.

The left is not allowing us to do that, filling the air with such vitriol that can only help our Great Divider. Demonization lurks around every corner, in the guise of slanted opinion pieces2 aggressive marches and relentless verbal attacks, online and on the streets. I face relentless attack on social media - from both sides - and it’s not helping, that is, if the goal is to actually address the problem. Personally, I can certainly handle it (I gladly address anyone seeking real dialogue and summarily block the arsonists). And I get it, especially given the destruction the Bibi-Trump partnership has wrought. The war and all. But on what planet does it help the progressive cause to make Jews feel unsafe in their own synagogues or campuses?

And AIPAC and other apologists for the Israeli far-right are doing democracy no favors either, in their opposition to perfectly moderate candidates who support Israel but have an issue with its current leadership3 and in their support for Jan. 6 deniers, which is, in my mind, a disqualifier, for both the candidate and the organization.

At the most recent “No Kings” rally that I attended, there was just one “Free Palestine” sign, among the hundreds of banners. A little free speech was a small price to pay to have a bigger tent. And no one was offended that I got up there representing the mainstream Jewish community. On the contrary, people craved it. Dozens of people came up to me afterwards to thank me.

There should be a rabbi speaking at all these rallies.

Jews who love Israel need to call out its excesses where needed - and yet, in exchange, our progressive and centrist allies in the “No Kings” movement need to understand the need not to “pile on,” for in doing so they risk unleashing an animus that often runs far deeper and goes back much further than simply responding to current events. And they need to understand that we are important allies, and that pro-Israel Jews have no need to prove our bonafides to anyone.

It is very easy to be both pro-Israel and pro-America, even at a time when both governments have hijacked democracy and are holding it hostage. All we have to do is unite in patriotic opposition to those governments, while embracing the best that the two countries have to offer.

And we need to campaign like hell in advance of the fall.

We need to ignore the noise, at least for now. Hold your nose if candidates aren’t perfect, as long as they have some integrity and will not undermine democracy. And fight off the amnesia!

There can be no litmus tests. Except these:

• If a candidate denies the catastrophic significance of January 6 and October 7, do not support that candidate.

• If that candidate denies the responsibility of those who were in power on January 6 or October 7, don’t give them the time of day, no matter what else they support.

Those two horrible days will live on in infamy. Their memory should never be allowed to die. If we just remember that, everything else will fall into place.

That’s all.

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1

How could this election not be about October 7?

2

See for example Hen Mazzig’s response to the New York Times’ op-ed piece alleging systematic rape of Palestinians (including by trained dogs, a neat trick), that appeared on the day of a report detailed sex crimes done to Israelis on October 7. He doesn’t deny that crimes occurred but asks questions worth asking in terms of the coverage.

3

See below a summary of Steve Sheffey’s critique of AIPAC. You can read Sheffey’s full essay here.

For a group that melted into history 2,000 years ago, the Pharisees are having a moment. CNN just chose Pharisee as their Word of the Week and Pete Hegseth has evoked it multiple times to disparage critics of the Iran War, especially journalists, citing a sermon he had heard on the topic. The problem is that the virulent anti-Pharisee language of the New Testament has, over the centuries, evolved into outright antisemitism. “Pharisee” has become a convenient euphemism for “Jew,” with a focus on the worst stereotypes of Judaism, much like other euphemisms such as “globalist,” “cosmopolitan,” “communist,” “colonizer” and “Zionist.” Or, as one historian argues, “devil.” 1

“Pharisee” works if you want to focus on Judaism’s (incorrectly) supposed cold, calculating legalistic side, even though the original Pharisaic Jews promoted precisely the opposite, as I’ll explain. But hey, anything that makes it easier to hate a Jew and promote a Christian Supremacist military to fight Trump’s Holy Wars. Pete Hegseth doesn’t care how we get to this Christian Nationalist Nirvana, as long as we get there.

Here’s the most salient thing Hegseth said:

You see, the Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to report, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle. It didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.

Oh yes, you can add “elites” to that list of euphemisms, slithery Pharaohs whose hearts were hardened.

Last week at the Capitol, Senator Jackie Rosen chastised Hegseth for using the term, pointing out its well-known antisemitic associations.

Hegseth sat there with the kind of sickening grin, like that high school kid in the principal’s office, caught red handed peeping into the girls’ locker room. Rosen scolded him, calling Pharisees “a problematic and historically weaponized term that casts Jewish communities as hypocritical and morally corrupt.”

“And then you doubled down again,” she said. “Words matter.”

Hegseth did not retract. That’s because he agrees with the text claiming that these Jews refused to appreciate the miracles wrought by his Lord. And most Jews refused to believe in Jesus then, resulting in an eternity of scorn, just as so many refuse to believe in the salvation being wrought by God’s Chosen One now, according to the polls. That makes all us non-believers into….oh I don’t know…Pharisees!

You just know that Hegseth just ached to call Rosen a woke weenie or something along those lines. He was just itching to pull an AOC-style “Wah! Wah! Wah!” (which, incidentally, hasn’t aged well). Except that he couldn’t - because isn’t this the administration that has tried to shut down major universities, stymie free speech and upend democratic institutions because of antisemitism? Isn’t their entire ruse based on helping Jews, or at least pretending to, as they pave the way for Christian White Supremacism to reign supreme?

Sure it is. And that usage of antisemitism as a means of achieving an even more antisemitic goal, not criticism of the war, is what’s most hypocritical and morally corrupt about this whole episode. The Trump administration could care less about the Jews, and Hegseth’s anti-Pharisee crusade proves it.

I implore my fellow Jews to take notice: This man is NOT your friend.

Pharisees: more democratic than Democrats.

And here’s the juiciest irony of all: the Pharisees, a Jewish sect that existed in Roman-era Judea, who had many adherents critical of Jesus; well, they were skeptical about this charismatic rabbi because they prided themselves in thinking skeptically about everything. The Pharisees turned out to be one of the most intellectually rigorous, morally demanding and socially inclusive movements of the ancient world. You didn’t need to belong to the country club to be a Pharisee. Most likely you couldn’t. But you could live a fully-observant, God-fearing life, even without the mediation of the priests.

Yes, the Pharisees were more democratic than the Democrats. They were the Jewish version of DEI. They weren’t just skeptics, they were pacifist rebels. They were an illiberal’s nightmare. They were “No Kings…AND No Priests Too!”

Those of us who want to fight the forces of autocracy and see democracy prevail could learn a few things from the Pharisees. And you might learn a few things too, Pete.

Why the “P” word is a slur

The first thing to learn is why it antisemitic to use the word. It’s comparable to using the “n” word for Blacks. Really. It’s that bad. While in Jesus’ time some Jews were Pharisees and some not, and some Pharisees followed Jesus and some not, as the decades and then centuries passed, Jesus’ followers came to conflate all Jews with Pharisees, and that did not bode well for Jews. It became shorthand not just for Jew but for Evil Jew.

My colleague Rabbi Sandra Lawson wrote about this recently:

My Musings

What Christians Need to Understand About Pharisees

I started drafting this piece before I left for Chicago last week…

Read more

23 days ago · 47 likes · 13 comments · Rabbi Sandra Lawson

What Jewish people experienced, over centuries of living as a minority inside Christian Europe, was a specific portrayal of the Pharisees being used against us. The Pharisees were cast as hypocrites, rigid legalists, enemies of truth and goodness. That portrayal became part of a broader theology called supersession which in plain English is the belief that Christianity replaced Judaism, that God’s covenant with the Jewish people had been cancelled and replaced by something new. In that framework, Jewish practice was obsolete and left behind.

The Pharisees became the symbol of everything that refused to be replaced. The villain of the story.

And over centuries, as that portrayal spread and hardened, the cartoon version of the Pharisees, the scheming, hypocritical, morally corrupt, enemies of truth, became the cartoon version of Jews. Full stop.

It was preached from pulpits. Taught to children. It built the cultural foundation for laws that stripped Jews of rights, expulsions from entire countries, and violence that never really stopped.

It fed pogroms.

It fed worse.

The word Pharisee carried all of that history into the modern era. When you call someone a Pharisee you are reaching into a well that has been poisoning Jewish life for two thousand years.

If a straight line can be drawn from early Christianity to the Holocaust, it begins with that word. Jews are legalistic, miracle-denying troublemakers. Like reporters.

For Hegseth not to know that, at the very least, the simpleton math of Pharisee = Jew = Bad strains credulity. The Christ-killing-Jew-hating theology that his brand of Christian White Supremacism espouses has largely been disavowed, especially by Catholics since Vatican 2.

For Hegseth to bring back that word, at this moment, as Secretary of Defense (or Minister of Mutilation, or whatever) just shows how his intoxicated consciousness exists totally within a militaristic-apocalyptic theological framework of 1096. He’s a Crusader lobbing javelins in some video game, charging up the hill to liberate Golgotha. He is not living in the real world.

No wonder Pope Leo sees him and his boss as being so dangerous. They are setting interfaith dialogue back decades, if not centuries, with their unabashed, militant supersessionism that mocks other religions even as it pretends to save them like damsels in distress in Harvard yard.

They’ll “save” me from Gaza protesters, even as the ADL is telling us that college protests have subsided considerably, falling 66 percent over the past year. But at the same time that they pretend to be protecting me, threatening the heck out of over 60 institutions of higher learning ostensibly because of antisemitism, they’re also telling me, “Just sayin’, your religion sucks, and when we’re done, you’ll be second class.”

Funny thing is, even as Jesus blamed the Pharisees for their criticism of him, excoriating their supposed legalistic rigidity and dishonesty, the Pharisees were not the Jews in power in Jesus’ time (though that changed by the time the New Testament was completed). They were the underdogs, often the outcasts, and they were very diverse group that shared much with Jesus’ followers. They opposed the temple aristocracy, that group known as the Sadducees. They popularized grass-roots religion in synagogues, like the ones in the Galilee frequented by Jesus and has followers. Literally, some of Jesus’ best friends were Pharisees.

Paul was a Pharisee.

Pete H, was Paul a bad journalist too? He certainly had a good publicist.

Pharisees were not accused of conspiring in Jesus’ death, but it is so easy to conflate this group that Jesus despised so much with those who contributed to his demise.

Je suis a Pharisee

But that’s not at all how Jews look at Pharisees. In fact, I - along with every rabbi - am a spiritual heir to the Pharisees. They were the founders of rabbinic Judaism, and many were among the greatest scholars of that era, and all of Jewish history. You just insulted every rabbi, Pete.

Insulting the Pharisees isn’t merely an antisemitic trope, it’s like insulting your grandmother. These are my peeps, Pete Hegseth. Quit insulting my peeps! They were intellectual and moral giants. People like…

• Hillel, the first century sage who proclaimed the essence of Torah (which could be recited while standing on one foot) to be “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary - now go and study!” Does he sound like a hypocritical legalist? No, he sounds, in fact, like Jesus himself, who recited his version of the Golden Rule, most famously in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matt. 7:12. Basically the same thing.

• Yochanan Ben Zakkai, who escaped besieged Jerusalem in a coffin to set up an academy. Is this what you would consider the act of one of the “children of hell,” as Jesus called the Pharisees in Matthew 23:15? Or “blind,” in Matt. 23:26?

• Simon Ben Shetach, who lived in the century before Jesus, a sage of modest means. One day his students bought him a donkey from an Arab in the market. When they presented the donkey to their teacher, suddenly a precious jewel fell from its fur. The students were overjoyed. Their teacher would be financially secure for the rest of his life. But the sage insisted on bringing the jewel back to its rightful owner, the Arab in the shuk. Upon receiving the gem, the Arab said, “Praised be the God of Shimon ben Shetach.” This the type of guy who Jesus detested - who would coveted status and demand the prime seats in the synagogue (Luke 11:43)? In fact, the contemporary historian Josephus portrayed the Pharisees as extremely virtuous and opposed to luxuries.

• And Rabbi Yehuda haNasi (Judah the Prince), arguably the greatest of the first cohort of the bridging generation that birthed the rabbinic era, the Tana’im.

We’re so alike

Maybe Jesus despised the Pharisees because they were so alike. Same learning style, same language, same DNA (including on dad’s side), and same zest for kindness and love. But they were Macy’s to Jesus’ Gimbels. In Luke 11, Jesus says “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” But in Pirke Avot, the Pharisees’ training manual, it specifically states, “Don’t look at the container but at that which is in it (Avot 4:20).” Both Jesus and the Pharisees are saying that what’s inside matters more than what’s on the surface.

Perhaps if Pete Hegseth stopped parroting these notorious insults, which led to catastrophic consequences for the past twenty centuries, people would begin to recognize that there is much common ground among our religious traditions, and some of our despised leaders weren’t so evil after all.

Bringing religion and leadership to ordinary people

But Hegseth may not have liked one thing the Pharisees stood for: inclusivity.

In his classic essay about Pharisees from the Jewish Encyclopedia, Kaufmann Kohler lays out why the Pharisees were considered to be purveyors of democracy to the world of ancient Judaism. You’ll find more details in the footnotes.2

They did that by breaking through the Temple priest’s ownership of ritual and authority and bringing basic practices down to the people. So now Passover and Sabbath celebrations could take place not just in the temple itself, but at dining tables in every home. That’s how the Passover Seder came to be, and just in time to introduce Jewish practice to a much more diverse and mobile population, one that would soon be on the move in earnest when the Temple was destroyed.

Now schools were established and synagogues proliferated all over the land and beyond. Jewish communities already were thriving in places as distant as Alexandria and Rome itself. The Pharisees helped to decentralize the faith so Torah would replace Temple as Judaism’s prime symbol.

Not only was Judaism suddenly for everyone, not just the Jerusalem aristocracy, but through the Pharisees, anyone could become a leader. The merit-based system of leadership elevated scholars and teachers to leadership roles rather than kings and priests. (Conservatives used to like merit-based leadership, right Pete?)

It wasn’t pure, Athenian democracy, but these rabbis were popular and accepted by the people, because they lived among them. When the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., the Pharisaic leaders were suddenly thrust into the forefront while the Sadducees and priests faded into insignificance.

And finally, Pharisees love questioning. The style of learning that they revolutionized and led later to the Talmud, relies on intense, collaborative inquiry and critical thought. An inquisitive mind is the enemy of Trumpism. I don’t mean to be insulting. It was Trump, not me, who said, “I love the poorly educated!”

And Hegseth seems hellbent on making the Pentagon into a mecca of anti-intellectualism. According to Eliot A Cohen in the Atlantic, “his military-education reforms seem designed to ensure fighting men can’t think and thinking men can’t fight.”

For whatever reason—perhaps Hegseth had a rough time in freshman calculus or was embarrassed while parsing a difficult passage of Plato—he seems determined to bar academics or anyone who faintly resembles one from contact with the armed forces. He has prohibited officers from attending the Aspen Security Forum, presided over by well-known radicals such as my former boss Condoleezza Rice. He has extended this ban to participation in think-tank events where officers might meet and even get into arguments with retired generals and admirals, not to mention former ambassadors, undersecretaries of defense, retired spies, and, worst of all, people with Ph.D.s who know foreign languages or operations research.

So maybe that’s why Pete Hegseth insults Pharisees so much. They stood for democratic values and prized critical thought. They, like Jews forever and journalists today, dare to stand up and speak truth to power. He and his boss can’t stand that.

And we must stand up to him now and his violent messianic, hateful rhetoric.

It’s time to disavow your Pharisee comments, Pete, and to put them to bed. Yes, Jesus insulted Jews, as was his right.3 Freedom of speech existed even before there was a First Amendment. "When a person refrains from speech, the ideas die, the soul stops, and the senses deteriorate," said Moses ibn Ezra (Shirat Yisrael 12c).

But that doesn’t mean everyone has to echo those insulting remarks.

Of course Hegseth will never disavow the Pharisee remarks because they are just the tip of his theological iceberg, as best articulated by his mentor, pastor Douglas Wilson, who not only wants to turn this into a Christian nation but is aiming for a fully Christian world, and an oppressive, patriarchal society that most Christians and Jews would not choose.

As chronicled by The Bulwark, Wilson and his followers “would deny not only women but also non-Christians the franchise and the right to pursue public office. They would limit the ability of believers of other faiths—including non-Protestant Christians—to publicly practice their faith; Wilson recently said on a podcast that the theocratic society he envisions would ban mosques from broadcasting calls to prayer and prohibit Catholic parades honoring the Virgin Mary.”

So Hegseth’s views on Pharisees presage a vision that has no place for Jews or women or Muslims or even Catholics.

• See also: What Christian nationalism has in store for Jews and other religious minorities (JTA) - “These folks say that pluralism is heresy, and they argue that in a biblical society, people who weren’t Christians could still be there, but they would clearly be second-class citizens.”4

And this is the man who has been selected to lead us into battle?

We could do with some wisdom from Pharisaic sources just about now. Here’s a good one, from the tractate Pirke Avot 2:3:

2

Entry on Pharisees from the Encyclopedia Judaica (pdf below).

Phariseeej

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Entry from the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Pharisees):

I have a new kind of great replacement theory, which is as good as the other Great Replacement Theory is evil. This is a form of Great Replacement that Tucker Carlson would never promote. For one, it doesn’t spout antisemitism; for another, it relies on altruism.

There’s a sign permanently displayed near the dining hall of Camp Mystic in Texas, where everyone gathered for generations, summer after summer, until the camp was ravaged by floodwaters1 last year, resulting in the deaths of 25 campers, ages 7-10 and two counselors. The family that has run the camp all these years recently announced that they will not be reopening this summer, for the first time in decades.

The sign says, “Be ye kind. One to another.”

The sign is still there, and so should be the smiles of those precious children. Our task is to be their Great Replacement, making it our mission to replacing the priceless smiles of those innocent children by bringing smiles to children’s faces everywhere.

In my last posting, I wrote about my disabled brother Mark’s ability to bring out the best in every person he comes across, virtually without exception. I called him a “kindness magnet.”

There are people like that everywhere. One subscriber sent me a note highlighting a “Kindness Magnet” that she encountered.

…A few days ago a severely challenged woman in a motor-driven wheel chair was having a hard time getting up the little ramp our streetcars roll out to facilitate wheelchairs. I was not fast enough myself, but witnessed about 5 people all rushing to help her up and into the streetcar. And I witness every day how people of all ages and nationalities will offer their seats to elderly or anyone looking like they need to sit out the ride. It is heartwarming….

In the comments section, I’d love to hear your life-affirming stories of people who bring out the kindness in others. We certainly can use them!

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Jewish sources are very clear about the need to steer the world toward kindness and love, and to judge others favorably, even when doing that seems counterintuitive. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but not counterproductive.

Because when our nation is being driven to cruelty, kindness becomes a form of rebellion. 2

Compassion is the Jewish way, even if, regretfully, not all Jews practice what their tradition preaches.3

The 19th century sage Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav wrote in his magnum opus, Likutei Moharan (282:1), “Know that it is necessary to judge each person favorably, and even someone who is completely evil, one needs to search for and to find in him some little bit of goodness.”4

The Hebrew expression for benefit of the doubt is Dan L’Chaf Zechut. (Here is a study packet I put together on this virtue).

Benefitofthedoubtdanlchafzecut

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So we need to seek goodness in others and ourselves. But how can that make a difference in fighting off the cruelty of the Trump era and replacing it with kindness?

It gets back to one of the prime reasons so many autocrats hate the Jews. It’s not because Jews are a malevolent force, but ironically because we are not. In the face of unmitigated oppression, brutality and falsehood, we assert that all are created in God’s image and deserve to live a life of dignity. We take pride - and take on the burden - of being the world’s conscience.

Granted, that sacred work has not been going too great for us lately, but it’s still our assignment; and it still pisses off Putin, makes Orban ornery and trips up Trump, who bemoaned that “Jews always flip”.

That goody-goodyness is what most angered Adolf too, even more than those illusions he had of Jews seeking world domination. He wrote in Mein Kampf:

Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like circumcision….I am freeing men from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge; from the dirty and degrading modifications of a falsehood called conscience and morality.

In a recent book about antisemitism, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew? and a film based on it, Tragic Awakening, Rabbi Ronald Shore claims that Hitler’s hatred for the Jews was actually based more on fear than hate. “He didn’t want to kill the Jews because they were bad; he wanted to kill them because they were good,” writes David Suissa in a Jewish Journal piece about Shore’s film.

Suissa, quoting the film, continues:

The Jews, with their ethics and life-driven ideals, represented a direct threat to Hitler’s Darwinian vision where the frail and the weak would be left behind. “Hitler believed that if the ideas of humanitarianism, love, equality, democracy were to succeed, that would be the end of humanity…The ideology of social Darwinism argued that civilized societies were harming humanity by helping the poor, the sick, and those who nature would have killed off.”

In Shore’s eye, the Jews were not a physical threat to Hitler but a moral threat. And that’s why, even when the war was lost in 1944, Hitler marshaled all of his remaining power toward annihilating the Jews.

Authoritarian leaders always have a problem with moral codes that exist outside of their personal code of conduct and their whims. Jews stand for a law that promotes kindness and human dignity, and that’s why autocratic leaders from time immemorial have hated us.

I wrote this right after the election in 2024, and it bears repeating today:

The most Jewish way to act in the face of an administration that has openly pledged to be cruel is to stand up to the cruelty.

Not only have they pledged cruelty, they’ve made good on that promise. In a guest essay in the NYT, Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’, Thomas Edsall tries to quantify the damage Trump has done to the US and the world in just the first 15 months of his presidency. He writes:

A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone. “Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.”

And that’s just one small part of the cruelty inflicted, before we begin to discuss the damage caused by new environmental and health policies and food and childcare cutbacks. Oh yes, and ICE and war and corruption. And it all comes back to the basic cruelty and that “falsehood called conscience and morality.”

We, along with others who wish to join us, need to be the conscience of America. It’s why the haters hate us, so we might as well not shrink from the challenge. We need to be true to who we are. Not to “resist” or be “anti-Trump” or “anti” anything. We just need to be what we are meant to be. We need to be “pro” kindness.

Kindness is resistance.

Yes, Jews are the conscience of the world and that’s why bad people are sick and tired of us. That’s why they attack synagogues in Queens and Jewish ambulances in London. And by the way, even those Jews who have bought into the ethos of cruelty also hate us - “us” being those who stubbornly insist in seeing each person, no matter what their background, as being created in the Image of God (Tzelem Elohim).5

“God will be their comforter.”

In the midrash collection known as Leviticus Rabbah, there is a discussion about whether to shun or treat with compassion individuals who have become marginalized through no fault of their own - in other words, whether to follow the letter of the law, which in these cases is to shun them, or to show kindness. The example given is someone born out of wedlock, who in the Bible is supposed to be shunned for ten generations.

One rabbi looks at a verse written in the book of Ecclesiastes, which states, “behold the tears of…the oppressed, and they have no comforter.” He then states: “It is written: ‘and they have no comforter’ – and thus God declares: I must be their comforter.”

What a brilliant line. GOD will be their comforter! Comforter from what? According to this subversive rabbinic story, the oppression being discussed in the verse, is the law itself. The oppressors are those who cling to the letter of the law rather than to its spirit.

God is saying, that’s a dumb law!

This Midrash gets it. The ancient rabbis got it: Don’t use law to oppress! The law is supposed to make us a more caring society, not a more obedient one. Don’t fall into the knee-jerk response of following a practice that goes against your moral instincts, simply because it’s the way it’s always been done; it’s the stock answer, the command of someone you think is God…or because it is now government policy. “Remember,” the Midrash is telling us: God loves the outcasts! And not even the law itself is immutable.

The reality is this: All people deserve to be loved, all deserve kindness, because all are created in God’s image. And we’ll be the annoying bee in the autocrat’s bonnet.

If people are going to hate us for that, so be it. We can handle this.

Since it was Hitler’s struggle to release the world from the “burdens” of morality and restraint, all the more is it our crusade to reinforce those so-called burdens. It is our task to champion conscience and stand up to power. Our struggle – our Kampf, so to speak – is to subdue that inclination to follow the crowd and mindlessly obey the orders of impulse. Our cause is and must continue to be: to replace the autocrat’s cruelty with immeasurable kindness

So how can Jews get through these horrific times? The same way we’ve gotten through the last 4,000. By being the True Great Replacement, exchanging callousness for conscience.

We are God’s hands, in the form of the hands of those angelic Kindness Magnets of Camp Mystic. And we shall replace their goodness with our own.

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3

From Ha’aretz:

From the article: Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo said he felt “ashamed to be a Jew” after touring Palestinian communities in the West Bank that have come under repeated attack from Israeli settlers, warning that current Israeli policy there is “planting the seeds for the next October 7.”

In a recent Substack posting, the former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote of disturbing events that he’s witnessed, on the highway, in line at a bakery and at a neighborhood Safeway, and he asked, “Is our civic life becoming more brutish, or am I becoming angrier about it?”

He wrote:

I’ve been seeing more people dump their trash on the street and telling them to stop. I’m watching parents scream at their kids with a ferocity I’ve rarely witnessed before, and occasionally I suggest they treat their kids better. My neighbor has started using a loud power tool in the evening, and I’ve asked him to keep it down.

I’m aware of more shoving and pushing — in a department store, at a local restaurant, at an airport — which pisses me off. I hear more people using racial, ethnic, and sexist insults, which I just won’t tolerate. Yesterday’s errands included a stop at the neighborhood Safeway, where someone called the cashier a “bitch.” I told him he shouldn’t say that.

Are such small acts of bullying on the rise, or am I becoming less tolerant of them?

The answer to his question about the deterioration of civic life is yes - and emphatically no.

You see, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed famously that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But in Jewish tradition, justice is only half the battle. For Judaism, the arc of the moral universe must bend, at least as much, toward love. And despite all the hate and anger we witness, despite the ginned-up algorithms online and Trump’s hateful tweets, despite the antisemitic violence in London and our Jim Crow Supreme Court, despite it all, as we enter May of 2026, I believe that the arc is bending – slowly but surely – toward love.

Yes, I’ve seen what Reich has seen: people cutting in line, yelling at cashiers and raising holy hell on social media, and cars routinely going 90+ on the turnpike.

But I’ve also seen the other side, and I see it all the time, thanks to my intellectually disabled brother, Mark. You see, Mark, who like me is in his late 60s, has to deal with obesity and very limited mobility, to go along with his other challenges. He still is able to get around without need of a walker - barely.

• For more on Mark, see my prior article, “My Brother’s Keeper” And listen to the chapter “My Brother’s Keeper: On Disability and Destiny,” in my audiobook, Mensch-Marks.

A few times a month, I make the trip from my home in southern Connecticut up to Boston to take Mark out for lunch, usually at a Panera a few blocks away from his day program. I try to park as close to the restaurant’s entrance as possible, but at lunchtime that usually means a short walk through the lot, on uneven, sloping pavement, with traffic. It’s daunting for him, but also needed exercise, and the grilled cheese awaiting him on the other end is the best incentive imaginable.

While I make that agonizingly slow walk with Mark from the car to Panera’s entrance, with him holding both my hands and me usually walking backward, people line up to open the Panera door for us. I’ve been taking Mark to that place for years, and never once - not a single time - have had I had to open the door myself.

And not once - not a single time - has a person in vague proximity to the door when we arrive not stopped, or backtracked or shifted several steps sideways to open it. I’m not talking about two thirds or three quarters. The number is 100 percent.

Over the course of time, literally hundreds of people have had the opportunity to help us during these excursions, whether at the door, behind the counter, the men’s room, anywhere in the restaurant, and literally no one has turned down the chance. And when I thank them, and I always do, they always downplay it.

And no wonder - here’s the secret: They are the ones who are grateful, to my brother, for reminding them of their humanity and for giving the chance to perform a random act of kindness.

Mark is the conduit to hundreds of such acts. He is the enabler of all that is good about people, all the things that can never be replicated by A.I. Now I’ll admit that Mark can be pretty selfish and annoying at times, but he also recognizes his vulnerability and is willing to let others help him, even total strangers - especially if at the end of the rainbow is a grilled cheese and a Diet Coke.

For Mark, Diet Coke is absolutely his favorite (Panera has only Pepsi, which is OK too) and that love is the only thing he shares with the eugenics-obsessed occupant of the White House, who would dismiss my brother with disgust and an “R” word and probably claim, as he has in other contexts, that people like Mark should “just die.”

He and his sidekick RFK - who has dismissed many on the autism spectrum as useless “kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted” - would not recognize the positive impact Mark has made on so many lives.

Mark wasn’t toilet trained until late adolescence. Until then my parents, sister and I took turns wiping him; not a pleasant task, but one that older siblings of toddlers face every day, I figured. A minor inconvenience. For my parents, Mark’s condition was a tragedy; for me, a given. As a teenager, while most of my friends spent their Friday nights hanging out in someone’s basement or at the movies, I often gave Mark a bath.

I used to justify Mark’s existence by noting that he had provided me with cheap sensitivity training. And while it’s no doubt true that I am a better person for having cared for him while we were both children, I now have a keener understanding of the impact Mark and others with similar challenges have on other people. Mark’s life’s purpose, so much as I can determine, is to bring out the best in other human beings. Trump’s is to bring out the worst, by constantly displaying the worst in himself. Those who lack the capacity for empathy can’t possibly understand how much it replenishes the soul to be able to hold a door for someone in need.

And yet, since 100 percent of people in my unofficial Panera experiment acted kindly, that’s got to include at least a few sociopaths, one would think. Law of averages. Yet even they helped Mark. My brother is a kindness magnet. You don’t need to be a genius to be a kindness magnet. In fact, you don’t even need to be human - my cancer-surviving (thus far) miracle dog Casey is one too.

While so many have had their lives enriched by their passing encounters with my brother, I’ve had the privilege of seeing the glow in their eyes and the smile on their faces. This spiritual connection, between Mark, a total stranger, and me, lasts just a moment or two and then it’s gone forever. Until the next one. Now, as I we begin our slow walk in the parking lot, I scan the scene, wondering whose life Mark is going to change today. Will it be someone dealing with a harsh breakup? Some bad news from the doctor? Or just someone perpetually lonely?

And then this week, something happened.

When Mark and I were coming back to my car at Panera’s, as he was trying to duck his head through the door and slide in to sit down, he came up short and landed awkwardly on the edge of the seat for a few moments. He lingered there but was unable to move his feet to steady himself, and so he and eventually went to the ground.

I was unable to lift him up - he weighs at least 250 pounds. For several moments we were both overwhelmed with confusion, but I sensed that help was on the way. Before I could even turn to look for help, a woman came along and then another, and then a man, and then another woman. Four good Samaritans who happened to be walking by all came over to help. One took on the role of directing the operation, asking Mark questions - his name, whether he was hurt, could he move his leg - while calming him down. His leg which had been bent awkwardly, was straightened and stabilized. Then, each of the volunteers took a side, and they carefully lifted him into the car on the count of three, as if they were transferring an accident victim onto an emergency room gurney on The Pitt.

And then, just as fast as they had lifted him, they disbursed. I was too discombobulated to get their names or ask if I could make a donation or do something to thank them. I was shaking, fighting back tears, and standing in complete amazement and awe at the potential for good that resides in all people, 100 percent of them, and the ability of my brother to bring it out.

I pulled myself together just long enough to ask one question of the self-appointed group leader, that first woman who came up to me, as she was turning to leave.

“Did you all know each other?”

“No,” she replied, and disappeared.

Mark was OK, and so I turned to buckle him in - but someone already had. I got in and we drove off.

Jews recite Psalm 145 several times each day, and verse 14 is alluded to constantly in the liturgy:

GOD supports all who stumble (literally: “lifts the fallen”),
and makes all who are bent stand straight.

Lifting the fallen and straightening those bent over are seen as Godlike acts, expressions employed to describe God in blessings recited each morning and in the liturgy’s central prayer, the Amida, recited three times each day. God is that which lifts the fallen – Somech noflim – and heals the sick – rofeh cholim – and releases the bound - matir asurim.1

I’ve called it the “God Particle,” a takeoff on the Higgs boson particle in physics. What Higgs boson’s version of the God Particle does for the physical universe, my version of the God Particle does in propelling human beings and history forward. It is activated through deeds of kindness and love. As Judaic scholar Eitan Fishbane describes it, “God is the space within the inextricable threads of life. God is the mystery that pulsates at the core of our living and our dying.”

• See: The God Particle In All Of Us (Jewish Week)

Just as my brother was lifted from the ground by a group of total strangers, who had never met and came together for just this one moment of doing God’s work, so does Mark lift spirits - and open doors - for all who literally open doors for him. He makes us all better people and thereby fills the world with good people. He is activating the God Particle on earth. So are programs like The Pitt2, I should add, and Ted Lasso3, which is returning - and none too soon. Lasso made kindness great again4. He made it chic.

Which would make Mark not just a kindness magnet, but a “Chic Magnet.”

Mark single-handedly has done what lawyers and economists around the world have failed to do: he’s proven Robert Reich wrong. And, if RFK is listening, his toilet etiquette is excellent.

I can only dream of having such an impact on the world, and so divine a purpose in my life.

Justice and Love mugs, from the MLK Center in Atlanta. (Rabbi Joshua Hammerman)5

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Notes:

1

Imitating God’s acts of kindness is frequently seen in Jewish sources as a means of actualizing the Sacred in our lives. Here are common examples:

Tel Aviv Diary

A Daily view of Israel as seen from inside the Tel Aviv bubble six days a week during the war

By Marc Schulman

In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook

A Mensch's guide to life - with a focus on how religion (especially but not exclusively Judaism) can help guide us through these challenging times.

By Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

See and hear my conversation with educator and pundit Marc Schulman, host of the Tel Aviv Diary Substack. Marc, who is one of my go-to sources for the latest information on Israel, has just been traveling in America for the first time in a year. We discussed the state of American Jewry and Israel in these precarious times, confronting the continuing traumas of war, antisemitism, Israel’s declining popularity here and democracy under threat in both countries, as we head toward crucial elections. Watch, share and subscribe!

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

From Marc Schulman’s description of the podcast episode:

In this joint episode of Tel Aviv Diary and In This Moment: A Rabbi’s Notebook, Marc Schulman sits down with Rabbi Joshua Hammerman for a wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation on the state of Israel, American Jewry, and the fragile relationship between them.

Broadcast during Schulman’s visit to the United States, the discussion captures a moment of profound anxiety and uncertainty. Both men reflect on the growing sense of fear among American Jews—driven by rising antisemitism, campus hostility, and political polarization—alongside a striking shift in public opinion, where Israel is no longer broadly supported across the American political spectrum. At the same time, they explore the Israeli experience of the past several years: a society shaped by war, repeated missile attacks, mass reserve duty, and an ongoing struggle over the country’s democratic institutions.

The conversation moves between the political and the personal. They examine the impact of leadership—both in Israel and the United States—including the roles of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, and the consequences of increasingly centralized decision-making. They revisit critical turning points, from the Iran nuclear deal to October 7, and debate whether different choices might have altered the trajectory of events—or whether deeper forces were always at work.

A central theme is the growing disconnect between Israeli and American Jewish realities. Schulman describes the daily pressures of life under fire in Tel Aviv, while Hammerman outlines the social and political pressures facing Jews in America, including the erosion of church-state boundaries and the reemergence of both traditional and new forms of antisemitism. Each challenges the other’s assumptions, underscoring how differently these communities now experience the same conflict.

The discussion also turns to the battle over narrative—how Israel has struggled to communicate its story in a world dominated by visual media—and the long-term implications of losing the “public relations war.” They explore generational divides, the influence of social media, and the decline of unified Jewish leadership in the United States.

Despite the gravity of the issues, the episode ultimately looks toward the future. Drawing on history—from the Holocaust to the peace with Egypt—they ask whether transformative leadership is still possible. Could a figure like Anwar Sadat emerge again? Is there a path to restoring trust between Israel and American Jewry? And can both societies find a way to move beyond trauma toward a renewed sense of purpose?

This is a candid, unscripted conversation between two longtime colleagues and friends—one rooted in Tel Aviv, the other in American Jewish life—grappling with some of the most urgent questions facing the Jewish people today, and ending, deliberately, with a search for hope.

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What happened last night in Washington is horrifying and must have been especially frightening to the hundreds of people in the room, including many reporters who literally had a major story fall into their laps. Thank God no one was seriously hurt.

We still don’t know all the what’s and why’s, and without underestimating the real terror everyone in the room must have felt, I wonder whether the story deserves any more oxygen than, say, all these mass shootings that have taken place just over the past week (source: Wikipedia):

That’s just a list of the mass shootings in one week! True, none of them involved rich and powerful folks like the ones at the dinner, but by standard definitions, last night’s incident wouldn’t even be considered a mass shooting.1 And it remains to be seen whether the perpetrator even fired the shot that evidently hit a secret service agent in his bulletproof vest, which he was thankfully wearing.

But we know little else, and when we are given more information from government sources, it’s a crapshoot as to whether we should trust it. That unfortunately needs to be said out loud. Yes, that’s a very sad state of affairs, but given that the now-politically castrated Hungarian macho man Viktor Orbán, when facing sagging polls, allegedly tried to pull off a false flag terror attack earlier this month (on April 4)…

…and given how Orbán has been the prime global model for Trump and his illiberal cronies, the possibility of a false flag attack between now and the midterms cannot be discounted. Anyone who ignores that possibility is burying their head in the sand (not to be confused with sticking it under the table, which was totally understandable last night).

Trump’s Hungarian mentor lost his election very badly, and that brings me to the most important thing that happened in the world this weekend.

Just today, in Israel, two of the most significant opposition leaders, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, both of whom served as Prime Minister under the most recent government prior to the current extremist one, joined forces, unifying their parties under one banner. In fact the name of the new party will be “Yachad,” “United.”

This is more fallout from the Hungarian elections, as Peter Magyar’s landslide was fueled by the unification of all the opposition parties under his party’s banner. Given the elaborate gerrymandering and associated rigging that Orbán had accomplished over his years in power, consolidation was the only way the opposition could win. Magyar forced the other parties to comply and they did.

Netanyahu, like his illiberal Hungarian mentor, has profited from fostering division among his opposition. One can hope that this time the lessons of Hungary have been learned. It looks promising.

Before this week, Likud, Netanyahu’s party, was ahead or tied in the polls, although his coalition was running well behind the opposition. When the next polls are published, Bennett and Lapid’s combined forces will surpass Likud as #1. Bibi will be running far behind - and running for his political life. Unity works.

It remains to be seen whether Democrats in the US can unite before November. So far the signs are mixed. Truthfully, Trump and his policies are so unpopular right now that it might not matter. As long as we stay on guard for every dirty trick in the book - the book that was written by Orban.

The book that includes false flags.

Now, about that scandal…

For gossipmongers and Patriots haters, the saga of New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel’s fall from grace has been a mesmerizing treat, a slow-motion train wreck with real-life consequences for real families. A round of schadenfreude for the house!

At first the titillating NY Post photos of Vrabel and journalist Dianna Russini holding hands were cringe-worthy, but hardly newsworthy. But the compromising kanoodling got worse and worse as the story, now shown to ostensibly go back at least six years, leapt off Page Six and into gossip columns and water cooler conversations everywhere, overshadowing the NFL Draft, and it became clearer that something was not right in the state of their marriages.

It’s important that I add here that we don’t know all the facts, and that no one can ever really know the full truth of what goes on inside someone else’s marriage. We don’t even know for sure if the photos are real or doctored.

One matter that we need to consider - if things are as they appear - is whether an affair is a serious transgression or just a “private matter.” While I’m no expert on matters of the heart, on matters of morality I feel qualified to respond.

I say that if there was infidelity involved, it’s serious on a whole lot of levels, and while we’ve understandably focused so much on other - very serious and less consensual - forms of sexual abuse in recent years, we’ve forgotten that simple infidelity is nothing to be sneezed at.

“Simple” is never really so simple. “Casual” is never really “casual.” A “fling” is never really just a “fling” or an “indscretion” or a “dalliance” or a “liaison.” Ever notice how so many of these euphemisms have French origins?

A betrayal of trust may not be as dramatic as physical or emotional abuse. It’s not sex trafficking or rape. It’s not peeping into dressing rooms at beauty pageants or copping a feel because “when you’re a star they let you do it.” These are all bad, and usually worse than “simple” infidelity. But an affair can often be just as harmful.

Just ask the families involved. Just don’t ask the Vrabels or Russinis, for now. Give them space.

You won’t be able to ask the corpses of all those killed by jealous ex-spouses. According to UN statistics from 2024, 140 women and girls die every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative, which means one woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes. And to be clear, murder is never justified. Spousal abuse is never justified. I’m just saying that crimes of passion don’t happen in a vacuum. There is no such thing as a “simple fling.”

Adultery is a cardinal sin for a reason. It’s dangerous and can be lethal.

Infidelity is exactly what the word says it is: a profound betrayal of trust. And anyone who would betray their most sacred vows can’t exactly be entrusted with things like nuclear codes or football teams.

They say the coverup is often worse than the crime. That’s often true. But not here. Yes, it appears that Vrabel and Russini lied in downplaying the scandal at first. And yes, the idea that they were “protecting their families,” whom they had betrayed, is laughable. Their profound care for their families was not on display in those photos.

But the coverup only made things worse in that it exacerbated what was already a serious betrayal of trust, one that is often fatal to a marriage and to other treasured relationships.

And the Bible understands that. Even though the ancient world was filled with double standards, not to mention sex slavery, handmaidens, abandonment and polygamy, the prohibition of adultery is still one of the “Big Ten.” The Hebrew root letters for adultery, N-A-F (נ-א-פ), connote the breaking not only of marital vows, but of a covenant with God. Just as in English, there is an intimate connection between the words adultery and idolatry.

• Quick aside: I suppose when the Ten Commandments are required to be hoisted in Texas public school classrooms, as a court ruled last week, they might want to include a photo of Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose wife is suing him for divorce, citing adultery. Oops.

Paxton is not alone. Surveys indicate that a quarter or more of married couples (and many more who are in otherwise committed relationships) have experienced adultery. But it’s still bad, even if it’s common. The excuse that “everyone does it” has never held up.

When the prophet Hosea searched for a metaphor to demonstrate Israel’s sinfulness toward God, he chose an unfaithful spouse, basing it on his own personal experience.

Adultery is the most corrosive sin imaginable, because it involves the most sanctified of relationships. Marriage in Hebrew is called “Kiddushin,” which means “holy.” So in Judaism, marriage isn’t merely holy, it is the very essence of holiness. And the key to holiness - and to marriage - is not sustainable eros, it’s not merely “keeping the flame alive,” though undoubtedly passion is important. But love is, from a rabbinic and biblical perspective, much more about commitment and loyalty than emotion, which was precisely what Hosea was getting at.

Shai Held, who just came out with his book, Judaism is About Love, told Krista Tippett on the podcast On Being, that Jewish prayers reflect two kinds of love, abundant and abiding:

The rabbis believed that sins like adultery have consequences, not merely for a small nuclear family, but they have a ripple effect that extends to the entire world. From the Talmud:

Swearing, lying, murder, theft and adultery: What do they all have in common? They impact all of us. It’s like Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote about the expansive impact of a single terror bomb.2 A single sin of lust and greed - even if everyone considers it a “private matter” and says “Who am I to judge?” - can have an equally devastating radius.

The biblical books of Proverbs and Job explain how devastating it can be, per the Bible Hub Lexicon:

Proverbs repeatedly warns of the personal ruin awaiting the adulterer. “He who commits adultery lacks judgment; whoever does so destroys himself” (Proverbs 6:32). Adultery is portrayed not only as a social sin but as self-harm that incinerates reputation, finances, and life itself. The clandestine nature of the act—“The eye of the adulterer watches for twilight” (Job 24:15)—demonstrates its innate shame and the conscience’s testimony against it.

That said, not all adulteries are created equal. If in fact this current relationship is adulterous - which I repeat is still not conclusive - it certainly is not as destructive as King David’s relationship with Bathsheva. And even for David there was a way back, a path to repentance. There are multiple paths for both Vrabel and Russini to make things right, and one way would be for him to apologize to female sports reporters, as The Boston Globe’s Chris Gasper eloquently wrote today. Vrabel has worked for many years to elevate the profession for women, and they have now become collateral damage in this situation.

Several years back, I wrote a “Jewish Ethicist” column for The New York Jewish Week, and the question of infidelity came up in a context not unlike the one facing Vrabel and Russini right now. Below is my reply. For me, it’s not a matter of simply coming clean. I think Vrabel has already started to do that. It’s a matter of owning the failure and repenting. Part of that will involve his family, and for that part, the Vrabels are entitled to complete privacy. But part of this also involves the team and, not to be forgotten, the fans. People like me, a Pats fan forever, who completely bought into his authenticity and trusted his leadership. He needs to earn back that trust. I hope and suspect he will.

Here’s how I handled that Ethicist question, and in the notes, you can read some more source material from different religions on this topic.3

Q – I’m a shul president and I’ve just discovered that two of my board members have been carrying on an affair, using board meeting nights as cover for their trysts. I like them both and they are very hard workers. I like their spouses too. I’m not sure what to do. Do I confront them? Do I tell the rabbi? Do I kick them off the board?

A – Confront them in private and if they fess up, hope that they have the good sense to resign from the board, effective immediately. Otherwise, once the news gets out, if you do nothing, the reputation of your board and, by extension, your congregation, will be in the toilet.

Yes, you might consider it hypocritical not to similarly punish board members who eat ham sandwiches or break the Sabbath. But ritual laws are between a person and God. Interpersonal laws are far more complicated, but something like this can rip apart the fabric of a community, and the ancient rabbis knew it.

The Torah states “And Israel abode in Shittim and the people began to commit harlotry” (Num. 25:1). Recognizing the damage that adultery can do to a community, the rabbis stated that the place was named “Shittim” because the people committed folly - “shtut,” quoting Proverbs 6:32, “He who commits adultery is a complete idiot” (my translation).

If you fail to act, you’ll be implicitly condoning their behavior, and your congregation will no longer be a safe zone for the aggrieved spouses and their legions of supporters, a number that will multiply daily as the gossip makes the rounds. You don’t need to take sides, but if you ignore what occurred on your watch, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing, at the expense of the victims.

During my first year following ordination, way back in the last century, this exact same scenario unfolded. I was sopping wet behind the ears and an easy mark for a very powerful couple. The president passed the buck to me to decide their fate. So I called the perpetrators in. As their rabbi, I had to explain that they represent the organization and should resign from the board, but as their rabbi, I also let them know that I would treasure the chance to help them move forward toward repentance and reconciliation. They looked at me, a neophyte rabbi and virtual newlywed without a clue as to the trials of long-term marriage, like I was a little chutzpah-filled punk. I think the guy might have called me that. But I stood my ground, they left the board and the incident inspired me to write about the trials of being a young rabbi.

I heard from lots of people back then that when I reached my fifties, I’d come to understand why so many people sleep around, and then maybe I’d be less judgmental. Well, here I am, having successfully made it to midlife and I still don’t get it. Oh I know that successful marriages aren’t easy to sustain and I understand that temptation can be overpowering. I also try hard not to rush to judgment. But the act of deliberately jamming a dagger of betrayal into the heart of someone you once loved, or maybe someone you love still, that’s something I’ve never been able to comprehend. Once a person has betrayed that most primal commitment, how can they be entrusted with the future of anything else?

Which is why I never vote for an unrepentant philanderer. And why I wouldn’t want one on the board of my synagogue.

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1

Mass shootings require multiple victims, and this one had, it appears, only one

2

This classic poem of Yehuda Amichai’s is from his collection, “Open, Closed, Open.”

3

Many faiths prohibit sins of lust, power and greed (Source: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts - Dr. Andrew Wilson, Editor

I was honored to participate in a multi-faith program at the Connecticut State Capitol on Wednesday, Earth Day, which included ten faith leaders and Governor Lamont. Thanks so much to Terri Eickel of the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network for providing the recording and putting together the fantastic event. My small portion of it is above (apologies for the diminished quality of that clip) and about ten minutes in on the full video below.

The program:

Prayer for Faithful Caretaking

From the very first sunset on their very first night, as darkness enveloped Adam and Eve, they experienced the first pangs of Jewish guilt in recorded history. They sensed that they had somehow let God down, that this darkness thing was somehow their fault, that they had already messed up the marvelous gift that they had been given.

The Talmud elaborates - God leads them around the Garden of Eden, and says, “Look at My works. See how beautiful they are, how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil or destroy My world—for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.”

Oh God, this is what you told Adam and Eve when giving the world’s first garden tour, and this is your warning to us: This is a beautiful world. And if we mess it up, there could come a time when that sun will not rise at the end of a cold, dark night. And if that happens, it will not be my fault, God says, it will be yours.

Please O God, continue to entrust us with stewardship over this precious planet, this pristine blue marble in the blackness of space. We pledge to be worthy of that trust.

We are aware of the great symbols of your love; the fresh buds of spring, the rising sun and the waxing moon, and the rainbow that became the symbol of your covenant with Noah and humanity. With that sign, you pledged never again to bring about the kind of massive natural disaster that could destroy humanity. But we know that we possess the power to do just that.

Give us the strength and courage to care for our earth, to love it, and through our love for our world, to love one another as well.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Some Earth Day thoughts - Love Poems for the Land

We need to remind ourselves that this sacred, beautiful and tragic Land is holy to Israelis and Palestinians - and to cranes and sunflowers too.

Earth Day reminds us of our custodianship of the planet and our escalating obligations. For when, God willing, the current fighting finally ends for real, we will still be left with a planet that just completed its hottest year by far.

Yes, we need to remind ourselves that this sacred, beautiful and tragic Land is not only holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians - but to cranes and sunflowers too.

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A rabbi, a priest and a minister were having a conversation about how each of them could help bring some peace and harmony to the world. What would each of them be willing to sacrifice as a gesture to global unity. So the priest said, “OK, I guess we could give up our preoccupation with the Blessed Virgin.” The minister said, “Well, if it will bring true peace and harmony, we’ll give up all reference to Jesus and his uniqueness in respect to those faiths who don’t believe in him.

Then the rabbi scratched his beard for a while and finally said, “OK – but only if it could bring peace and harmony to the world…we’ll give up Yismechu in Musaf.”1

You can check the footnote to see why this joke is funny, but suffice to say, it’s equivalent to saying, “You give up Jesus? OK. so we‘ll give up the first season of Seinfeld2.”

The main point is this: Sometimes in our myopic view of the world we expect others to reach out to us without seeing the need for reciprocity. Speaking as a Jew; because there are so many who hate us - and because we’ve suffered unthinkable harms that have only led to some people hating us more - we’ve lost some of our ability to love the many that don’t. We’ve been tainted by the hate, and in that way the haters have won. We cannot let that happen. Moslems and Christians need to prevent that from happening too, but we need to hold up our end. After all, when Abraham was given the command “Lech Lecha,” “Go forth,” in Genesis 12, he began a journey of three faiths, not just our own. And at the end of his life, his children Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury him.

So this is my message. Excuse me if you’ve heard this from me before. Evidently it needs to be repeated:

Unity, coexistence and compromise have got to become the watchwords of those who are in the camp of democracy, worldwide. There is no time to waste.

In Hungary, the opposition came together in a remarkable manner to achieve a shocking landslide last week. They learned from prior failures, and they applied those lessons wonderfully.

How did they? In brief, all the opposition parties - and in the most recent prior election there were many - joined to form one united front with one leader to go up against Viktor Orban’s Fidesz. Given the elaborate gerrymandering and associated rigging that Orban had accomplished over his years in power, that’s the only way they could win. But they did it.

The consolidation of the opposition was dramatic and its impact downright revolutionary. The London School of Economics analyzed the election results this week:

In the 2026 elections, Tisza (the main opposition party) excluded the possibility of electoral alliance with any of the older opposition parties, demanding instead that they unilaterally withdraw their candidates in favor of Tisza, which in many cases did indeed happen. The two left-leaning opposition parties that did field an electoral list and individual candidates (DK and MKKP) finished well below the parliamentary threshold.

American and Israeli resistors need to do precisely the same thing. But when I look at the electoral landscape at the moment, I see a mess of colliding egos and mixed messages. We all need to start getting along better. If we want to see corrupt despots fall, we must unite. That’s how Hungary did it3. That’s how we need to. And we need to do it now. We can’t be distracted.

Now, if I may, I want to turn to camera three and speak exclusively to my fellow Jews, my “mishpacha,” (family).

We take pride in how well we articulate our differences. You know, “Two Jews, three opinions.” It’s an admirable if occasionally annoying cultural trait, derived from the Talmudic (originally Greek, actually - Socratic) style of learning. We don’t fall in line. We don’t go along with the crowd. No one can shut us up. We struggle with everything, even grappling with God (hence the name “Israel,” which means “God wrestler”). They even put God on trial at Auschwitz. So differences are expected.

But what is being portrayed as a “divided Israel” a “divided Jewish people” or a divided America” no longer rings true. Certainly, neither Israel nor America are divided in half anymore. The opposition in both countries has been growing considerably over the past several months, to more like 2/3 vs 1/3.

We see Trump’s “approval” rating falling to the mid 30s recently. Meanwhile, most in Israel have supported the war in Iran, which, although I feel it’s shortsighted and ridiculously dependent on the word of the world’s two greatest liars, I can understand it, given the Iranian threats of annihilation and such. But most Israelis have now come to understand three things. 1) Trump is never to be taken at his word4 and 2) Bibi is just as bad, and 3) as Thomas Friedman told an Israeli journalist this weekend:

As of Friday, only 36 percent of Israelis prefer for Netanyahu to remain the country’s leader following this fall’s elections. Take a look at this screenshot from Israel’s top newscast, a response to the question, “Who in your opinion, needs to be the next prime minister?” You don’t need to read Hebrew to see where Netanyahu resides, whether you ae reading from right to left or left to right.

So the population is unifying in its strong intent to oust the autocrat.

The problem is that while 56 percent prefer “anybody but Netanyahu,” there is little agreement on who that “anybody” should be. The contender most analogous to Hungary’s Peter Magyar might be Naftali Bennett, but there are no fewer than half a dozen vying to lead the opposition. Joining Bennett on that list are qualified, formidable leaders Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman, Yair Golan and, to a lesser extent, Benny Ganz, whose “Blue and White” party does not reach the electoral threshold in most polls, raising the possibility of thousands of wasted opposition votes.

While all of them are qualified, they need to do everything possible to unify in advance of the elections. But as a Ma’ariv analyst stated on Friday, “Eisenkot is not at all convinced that he wants Bennett, even as his number two, and is not sure at this time that joining forces is the right thing. Perhaps a separate run is actually preferable. In politics, one plus one does not always equal two. Often the sum of the whole is less than the sum of its parts.”

Perhaps, but at least the opposition needs to unite behind some sort of non-belligerency pact so as not to confuse the electorate or turn them off completely.

There are real differences between these leaders, including the question of whether to potentially include Arab parties in their coalition. But those differences pale in comparison to the prospect of keeping a man in power who has compromised the security of the state and nearly destroyed Israel’s relations with Americans of all political persuasions. The Israeli opposition must come together, and American Jews need to insist on it. We have too much at stake.

It looks like the Israeli opposition has heard the Hungarian wake-up call. On Saturday, Israel’s weekly “Meet the Press” program had interesting news to report:

Now, for American Jews and many others, there is outright despair over the precipitous fall from grace Israel has taken in American public opinion. In normal times, this would be a cause for emergency action, and some action is warranted. But that action should not be for Israel supporters to rally around this Netanyahu government that has caused such harm to Israel’s fragile, hard-earned reputation for humanity and resilience. That harm is significant5 as journalist Barak Ravid indicated in this posting on X:

The only way to restore Israeli and American standing and security is to replace the current Congress and Knesset with people who support democracy. For it is a recommitment to basic human rights and freedoms that will help both countries flourish and keep the rest of the world safe.

And that means we need to set aside hot-button differences and come together. That means not choosing this moment to make the Israeli public, those who are turning away from Bibi in droves, feel more embattled and isolated. This is the time to encourage them, not to vilify them. This is not the time to pile on, when public opinion has turned against Israel. This is the time to distinguish the growing majority in opposition from the embattled government. That’s true in both countries, as it was in Hungary last week.

It’s time to unify. That’s essentially what I said when I spoke at the last No Kings rally, and my words were extremely well-received. I spoke about how religious values have been misappropriated by the despots. I guess Pope Leo must have been reading my Substack when he echoed those thoughts:

"Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. It is a world turned upside down, an exploitation of God’s creation that must be denounced and rejected by every honest conscience."

The defining battle taking place in the world right now - including within the Jewish world - is not between orthodox and progressive, because the same struggle rages within each of the movements too. It is the battle between justice and love, strictness and acceptance, between exclusivity and inclusivity, between keeping out and welcoming in, between Hegseth’s brand of religion and Pope Leo’s.

Leo’s vision must win.

That’s what matters. To resist Trump is to resist scapegoating and needless invective. If you would never consider saying out loud “I hate America” simply because you detest its leadership, or “I hate Hungary” because if its corrupted government, please use that same standard in how you judge Israel. It’s so tempting to kick a country when it’s down. Try to exercise a little restraint. You’ll be reflecting the views of a supermajority of all three countries, who need to come together to effect global change and save democracy at this pivotal point.

While there are lots of issues to debate, we need to set most of them aside for the sake of the greater good. There should be no litmus test for inclusion in democracy’s big tent. Let’s get these primaries over with and onto the main event.

And here’s my lesson about Armageddon.

Coexistence in the Shadow of Armageddon

Now for a little history lesson. Because what would my postings be without some educational content?

People have been talking about Armageddon a lot these days. Let me tell you a different story about Armageddon’s neighbor to the north. Armageddon’s a real place, you know.

I love every inch of Israel, but no place is more special for me than the Galilee region, and especially the Jezreel Valley, from Beit Alpha and Sea of Galilee in the east, westward toward the Mediterranean Coast and Mount Carmel. Nowhere on earth can one find such a combination of natural beauty and ancient history. There Deborah defeated the Canaanites on Mount Tabor, Saul succumbed to the Philistines on the slopes of Gilboa, and there the epic revolt against the Romans took shape. There Jesus preached (and lived) and Saladin marched. There the swamps were drained by the early Zionist pioneers; there thousands of barren acres of hillside were carpeted with greenery by the Jewish National Fund in the 1920s. And there the hills are often not natural hills at all, but accumulated layers of time, century upon century, civilization upon civilization, one on top of the other.

At the center of it all is Megiddo, sitting on the crossroads of the ages, atop 26 layers of civilization. No wonder it is considered the place where the end of days will arrive, Armageddon (literally “Mount of Meggido”). When you walk there your existence transcends a given place or time. You become one with all that has ever occurred and all that ever will. You are the vertical axis cutting through all the layers of history simultaneously.

If you drive from Meggido through the Jezreel Valley for a half hour or so, past the rich farmland and small kibbutzim, and there you’ll find another village nestled in a hill, the ancient town of Tzippori, which was a center of Jewish life in Roman times. Sepphoris in Greek, Saffuriya in Arabic, one of the most excavated, scrutinized and contested sites in Israel.

The rabbis of the Mishnah lived there, and - here’s the key - this is a place where the Jewish and pagan populations coexisted in harmony. The name of the place, which means “bird,” is said to have come from the fact that it is perched on the top of a mountain like a bird.

It’s 33 minutes from Megiddo to Tzippori by car, seven hours on foot, maybe an hour as the tzipor flies. It was a quick three hour walk for Jesus from Nazareth, and I’ll bet he went up there for some carpentry jobs in the pricy villas.

The great historian Josephus called it “the jewel of all Galilee.” There the days are cooler than in the valley below, and rabbis were known to travel there from Tiberias when they fell ill. Tzippori takes the high ground, literally and politically; and during the Jewish War against Rome (66-70 CE), its Jews supported the Romans. The town was renamed Eirenopolis Neronias (City of Peace of Nero) on coins minted at that time.

You may call it treason - and I admit, it doesn’t look great - but who are we to judge? That war didn’t work out so well for the Zealots, you know6, not so different from our current skirmish, led by modern-day zealots. Josephus himself moderated his views when he saw how extremist his zealots had become.

Which is precisely what is happening in America and Israel right now.

But in Tzippori, life was marked by upscale coexistence. Within a few hundred meters, you can find the marvelously preserved ruins of a synagogue with mosaic floor containing the zodiac, which sits next to a Roman theater, which lies adjacent to a wealthy Jew’s home with portraits of Dionysus, all beneath a Crusader fortress at the top of the hill.7 It’s a place where, for the most part, people with different backgrounds got along.

In the Talmud, a rabbi is asked how he could possibly enter the Roman bathhouse (the one described happened to be in nearby Akko, another integrated city) decorated with idols of Aphrodite. The rabbi says, essentially, “Hey, I gotta take a bath. And it’s not like I’m entering Aphrodite’s place – Aphrodite entered mine!”8

That’s how they coexisted in places like ancient Tzippori. When the Arabs tried to hold this strategic location in 1948, they planted cacti along the hillside to impede the Jewish advance. Yes, in a stunning twist of irony, in order to keep the Jews from laying down roots, the Arabs of Tzippori planted gorgeous clusters of these indigenous cactus plants, literally laying down Sabra roots.

Theater, art, worship, rabbinic and Roman close together, a little opulence and a whole lot of integrity, able to live side by side. All just a stone’s throw from Armageddon.

Armageddon or Tzippori? Pete Hegseth or Pope Leo? The coalescing supermajority or the corrupt autocrats who are out of control?

Which would you choose?

As for me, if we could have two more elections like the one that happened last week, I’d give up two seasons of Seinfeld for that!

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NOTES:

1

Yismechu is an enjoyable but very expendable prayer in a part of the Sabbath service, and Musaf, which literally means “added-on,” is an extra prayer service (Amidah), designed to recall and replace the sacrifices brought to the ancient temple on Shabbat.

Here’s how I described Musaf in a service guide I created for the congregation:

Musaf is an additional Amidah is inserted into traditional services (generally not in Reform and Reconstructionist prayer books) for Shabbat and holidays to help us recall the glory and grandeur of ancient Jerusalem. Musaf means “additional.” While some have an aversion to the sacrificial system that existed in those times, that is not the point here. The rabbis also disliked animal sacrifice and replaced it with prayer and good deeds when the Holy Temple was destroyed. We should keep in mind, however, that most animals sacrificed were then grilled and eaten by priests in the Temple. In that sense, the sacrificial system was as morally repugnant as your basic barbecue, and its impact on the participant was much more profound. Musaf calls on us to better appreciate the power of life and death that we hold over all living creatures, the ways we try to channel and control our violent urges, and our need to seek closeness with God.

Musaf directs our attention to the lessons of Jewish history. By recalling the Temple and its destruction, we gain added motivation to return Jerusalem to its glory, not by reinstituting sacrifices, but by helping it to become a city of eternal Sabbath peace. That is the Jerusalem we yearn to rebuild, and we yearn no less fervently in the relative comfort of this American diaspora. In this post-1948 context (State of Israel exists), Musaf challenges us to celebrate future Sabbaths in Israel and to work toward bringing peace to our reborn Jewish homeland.

And in the post-1945 context (after the Holocaust), Musaf also reminds us that the destruction of the Temple was not the final disaster to befall the Jews, and that during the Holocaust it was people, not sheep and goats, who were sacrificed in great pillars of smoke. Following the Holocaust, Musaf brings us the hope that a moment of Sabbath peace can calm our troubled hearts, and that our Shabbat offering of rest will set an example for all of humanity, so that acts of such inhumanity will never happen again.

Musaf is especially significant - and much longer - in High Holidays liturgy.

And here’s how I explained the part of the service known as the “Amidah,” of which Musaf is a second version:

Amidah means “The Standing Prayer,” and is also known as, simply “The Prayer” in Hebrew. It is a collection of blessings, praises and petitions, and takes a different form on Shabbat and festivals. The weekday Amidah contains a number of specific requests relating to our hopes for the world and ourselves. Today, however, we limit ourselves mostly to praise and gratitude, in recognition that Shabbat is a most generous and precious gift in itself. Any other request would be distasteful. Nonetheless, one important petition does sneak in at the end— the prayer for peace (Sim Shalom). The Amidah has been an integral part of Jewish prayer since at least the first century.

With this prayer we’ve reached the fourth and final level of spiritual awakening, beyond the physical, emotional and rational. The Amidah is purely experiential. Going beyond feeling, analyzing and understanding, here we seek to actually experience the Sacred. We stand and chant in unison with our community, invoking our ancestors, reaching out to our descendants and rubbing shoulders with Jews all over the world. Through this extraordinary communion, we sense a spark of immortality within us, a purpose to our being—and that we are not alone.

4

See this Tweet:

8

Mishna Avoda Zara 3:4

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How the three worst places on earth for Jews have turned the tables on autocracy

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During the Holocaust, more Jews from Poland (3 million), Hungary (565,000) and Ukraine (1.5 million, as part of the Soviet Union) perished than from any other country, including Germany. But now, with the defeat of Victor Orbán last Sunday, a trifecta of wins against Putin puppets in each of these countries has transformed the political equation of Europe. Those three countries have led the way in throwing off the kind of autocratic government that made life unsafe for Jews and other minority groups. And a vibrant Jewish life is returning to all three places.

There could hardly be better news this week, for all freedom loving people, despite some skepticism among what seems like a minority of Jews, primarily from the right, in Hungary.1

Let’s look at each of the Big Three:

While the history of Jews in Ukraine has hardly been without blemish (a vast understatement), the country currently ranks as one of the least antisemitic in Europe. Three of the first four Israeli prime ministers came from present-day Ukraine, including Golda Meir, and some of the greatest literary figures and spiritual leaders of all time, including Nachman of Bratzlav and Chaim Nachman Bialik.

And did I mention that they have a Jewish president? President Zelensky is holding up his end amazingly as a contemporary Jewish hero, having replaced the corrupt pro-Putin leader Viktor Yanukovych, who was chased out in 2014. True, there have been some blemishes on the Ukrainian record, like the 1648 Cossack massacres (also a black mark for Poland) and Babi Yar; but Ukraine also houses the real-life Anatevka and Uman is a site of euphoric pilgrimage (called the Jewish Burning Man) to the grave of Rabbi Nachman.

• See also The stormy, yet rich history of the Jews in Ukraine. Also, the YIVO Encyclopedia article on Ukrainian Jewry.

And then there’s Poland. When I went to Poland with my congregation in 2017, we saw a country struggling to come to grips with its dark side. But we did not see outright denial of that history. In Warsaw’s spectacular Polin Museum commemorating 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland, one display speaks with an admirable honesty about the topic, stating, in Polish and English:

What was the attitude of Poles to the Jewish tragedy? Few chose to risk their lives and the lives of their families by trying to save Jews. Many were simply too preoccupied with everyday hardships of the occupation to concern themselves with the fate of Jews. Some Poles denounced Jews to the Germans or murdered them themselves. How did those on the Aryan side react to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? Some sympathized with Jews and admired their heroism. Most, however, were indifferent, while others made antisemitic comments.

While it may understate the degree of antisemitism that existed at that time, this hardly sounds like a whitewash. The museum was created by a unique partnership of the Polish government and the private sector, including Jewish groups. It has been praised universally and is part of an impressive and expanded array of memorials, museums and restored synagogues in Poland.

As the Holocaust recedes into history, it is becoming even more important for Jews to visit these places. The Polin Museum also describes the vibrant Jewish life that preceded the rise of the Nazis, when Warsaw was the second largest Jewish city in the world, trailing only New York, and its cultural life was unrivaled.

In assessing the complicated historical relationship between Poles and Jews, let’s acknowledge that Jews share quite a bit with the Poles. While horrible things happened to Jews in Poland, horrible things — though considerably less horrible — happened to Poles too.

Here’s something else Jews, Poles and Ukrainians share — the concern for an alarming erosion of fragile democratic norms all over the world, through dangerous demagogic tactics of strongman leaders who pit one group against another.

Which brings us to Hungary, the newest member of this Eastern European Axis of Democratic Rejuvenation. In Poland and Hungary, and to a lesser degree Ukraine, far-right wing governments consolidated power by following a familiar playbook. They demonized the press, co-opted the judiciary and directed the anger toward familiar scapegoats, especially the Jews.

A Shabbat in Budapest

And now, following this week’s shocking defeat for Orbán, the truth can now be told about how terrified Jews felt in Hungary under this regime. I believe those stories will quickly emerge, as Jews and other vulnerable groups emerge from metaphorical hiding.

When my congregation visited Hungary, We joined the Frankel Synagogue, one of the city’s most active congregations, for a Friday night service, and before that, we spent about a half hour conversing with the rabbi and his wife, an author and educator. The congregation comes from a branch of Judaism unique to central Europe – called Neolog. It’s sort of a fruit salad of Orthodoxy and Conservative. For example: there is separate seating, but the women get the better seats.

We came away from the conversation amazed at the vibrancy of the community – and we came away equally concerned for its future.

Before the Shoah, this was a thriving community - nearly a quarter of Budapest’s population was Jewish. But during the war, of the more than 800,000 Jews living in Hungary, nearly 620,000 died or were deported. In Budapest, Jews had a somewhat better chance of survival at first, until the notorious Arrow Cross – those rabid Hungarian nationalists who tried to out-Nazi the Nazis, took over, herded Jews into the ghetto beginning in December 1944, took as many as 20,000 out to the banks of the Danube, shot them and threw their bodies into the river. We saw the memorial that has been set up right by the riverbank, a sculpture depicting the shoes that were left behind. It’s incredibly moving, but equally problematic, because the memorial does not specify that the victims were Jewish.

The current Jewish population is about 100,000, they think – and that number is based on those who have received reparations for the Holocaust. But no one really knows, because the vast majority of Jews are afraid to be identified. They remain in the closet - literally, sometimes, because many still remember that proverbial knock on the door. While physical attacks are rare, anti-Semitism is plainly practiced by the extreme right-wing government and is embedded in the culture. I wrote about the antiSemitic poster campaign that popped up all over the country when we were there. Vandalism of Jewish gravestones and synagogues is commonplace. I asked the rabbi whether he wears a yarmulke in public, and he said no. Most Jewish children encounter anti-Semitism in school from a young age. The word “Jewish” is often used as a curse word in the vernacular.

Just imagine, their culture has, almost without a break, gone from medieval Christian antisemitism, to the Cossacks, then the racism and eugenics of the Nazi era, to Soviet-era antisemitism and right to Orbán’s castigation of “globalism” and castration of potential opponents in politics and the press.

And then, to add to antisemitism, there is Jewish illiteracy. After the Nazis were defeated, the country was “liberated” into nearly half a century of communist rule, where anyone living an openly Jewish lifestyle was subject to ridicule and discrimination. After the horrors of Auschwitz, most Hungarian Jews had little place for God in their lives anyway, so while the practice of Judaism wasn’t expressly forbidden, it was for all intents and purposes forgotten.

Yet despite all this, what we saw that summer was remarkable: Jewish life was rising in Budapest like a phoenix from the ashes. Despite impossible odds.

There is thriving summer camp called Szarvas near Budapest, which serves Jewish communities all over Europe. Many campers recall being dropped off and asking their parents why they were being sent to a Jewish camp. At that point, the parents would tell them, while driving off, “By the way, you’re Jewish.”

The Shabbat service at the Frankel synagogue was one of our most cherished moments on the trip back in 2017. There were a number of young families with kids there – well over a hundred people. The rabbi mentioned that very few Jewish groups visit them, so they were curious to meet their guests from America. I felt really good that we were there, as many Jewish heritage tours of Eastern Europe only visit the dead. We were determined to visit living Jewish communities too. It was another tearful moment. We were there to tell the Jews of Budapest that they are not alone.

And at the end of the service, we did the kiddish and ha-motzi prayers all together, because, we were told, very few of the congregants know how to do Shabbat at home. And there is often no grandparent to ask, because Bubbe and Zayde were murdered by the Nazis or Iron Cross.

If this congregation read from a yahrzeit list before the mourner’s kaddish, as we do (and they don’t), the list would have 1,000 names on it every week. So many were lost.

But even more to the point, they didn’t do the rituals at home because so many were afraid to. Their Jewish lives have been confined to their synagogue, a building so heavily barricaded that you almost expected Jean Valjean to make an appearance there too. The building is not visible from the street.

I came to Budapest to help people back home remember the last Holocaust, and I left Hungary more determined than ever to prevent the next one.

But that was back in 2017. I don’t know how the Jewish community was doing now, in the leadup to the elections. Trying to avoid politics, no doubt. I’m hoping to find some community members to interview as soon as the dust begins to settle.

And now, the people of Hungary have a fresh start - and the Jewish community too. They were apparently divided over whether to vote for the dictator, but given the final tally, I’d be surprised if many did. After defeating the Nazis, Soviets and Orbanist Illiberals, they are finally free. Like their Polish and Ukrainian cousins, they’ve thrown off the yoke of Putin, and centuries of irrational hate.

With the resounding defeat of the dictator, it feels like a new day is at hand.

Share In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook

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I’ve spent my life seeking out the world’s most sacred places, and I’ve managed to visit quite a few. But as I looked at this photo of earth from space last week, taken by the Artemis astronauts, I realized that all my travels had been unnecessary. That most sacred spot on earth IS the earth - it was the very spot I was standing on. The perfection and the beauty of that photo they took had little to do with its astounding symmetry and balance and the gorgeous earth toned blues and browns. It had more to do with the fact that all of us are in it. We are right there, without even knowing it. And we are dwelling on a fragile raft that has just enough of this and that to sustain life.

We humans crave connection and we have never been more connected - all of us together - than in that photo. And all the sacred places we’ve constructed, from the tabernacle in the wilderness to the Western Wall and Dome of the Rock, to the Vatican to Machu Picchu to Angkor Wat - all of which I’ve made pilgrimage to - are mere facsimilies in miniature of the Oneness depicted in that photo. The word religion, after all, comes from the Latin religare, meaning to connect.

Manly Hall, philosopher and seeker, wrote in The Secret Teachings in All Ages (1928):

True religion must be universal: Christ, Buddha or Mohammed, the name means little, for we recognize only the light and not the bearer. We worship at every shrine, bow before every altar, whether in temple, mosque or cathedral, realizing with our truer understanding the oneness of all spiritual truth.

The moon mission reminded us of our essential unity.

I was skeptical about Artemis. It seemed anachronistic to retrace the steps of the ‘60s, in a bizarro way, no less, with a different senseless war and a crazier RFK, minus the Tang but with much better cameras.

And these days, rather than looking up, we’ve needed to keep our nose to the ground in dealing with the toxic mess we’re making of earth. But given yesterday’s earthshaking news out of Hungary, the irony was not lost on me that when he won in 2022, Viktor Orbán called it “a victory so great you could see it from the moon - and certainly from Brussels.”

And yesterday, in celebrating his win, Peter Magyar (whose last name means Hungary - it’s like calling him “Captain America” - retorted with this:

“Together, we have dismantled the Orbán system, liberated Hungary, and reclaimed our country. This victory is visible not from the moon, but from every Hungarian window—whether in the smallest rural home, a tower block apartment, a major city, or the countryside.”

Take that, Viktor! (and Donald and Vlad.)

Actually, Magyar’s statement isn’t totally true. Yesterday’s victory was so overwhelming that, unlike 2022, it should have been visible from space. And in fact, this drone footage indicates that it was.

The landslide broke the spell of inevitability for illiberalism. With a crashing thud, Putinesque autocracy was so thoroughly beaten that no one could even try to reverse engineer this election. The win was so enormous that it was un-riggable, even by Putin himself. We now know for November (and October in Israel), there is such a thing as unriggability. It begins with a landslide.

I marvel at the courage of Hungarian people, who, within the scope of a single century, have endured at least three brands of autocratic oppression and overcome them all: Nazi, Soviet and Orbanism - arguably the three most insidious and cruel incarnations of political evil this world has known over that span of time.

This landslide victory symbolized a return to the dream of a world with less rigid fences, where nationalism can nurture alliances rather than generate wars, and candles can illumine the windows of rural cottages and urban apartments with the light of peace. But the home writ large is earth, a home that we all share, a fragile, delicate, small and lonely place in a vast universe, a place where all humanity can be reminded that WE ARE ALL ONE.

Who could have known when Viktor Orban invoked the moon in his bombastic 2022 declaration of viktor-y that his downfall would coincide with the waxing of the lunar space program?

And as we watched this first wave of freedom sweep across the landscape yesterday, we were reminded, one and all, that this is what democracy looks like.

No wonder they call it the Blue Danube. Because last night was the first indicator of an oncoming Blue Wave.

This was today’s headline from a newly liberated Hungarian press.

Budapest must feel like a Disney movie when the curse is broken. Everything has been unfrozen and all the kitchen utensils restored to their human form. We’ll know the feeling here when we get to take down the Arch-de-Trump and rename the Kennedy Center for JFK alone once again.

And even before Sunday’s news, when we saw those photos from space, suddenly we all got it. Maybe it was the competing front page news, where a guy was threatening to bomb a country back to the Stone Age and taunting the pope. But suddenly the world was looking up, not to check the sky for drones but because four human beings were looking down (or sideways) - at us. And the headlines took notice, nudging us from the Stone Age to the Space Age.

When I saw the photos, especially that one of the earth - and this one of the moon and earth rise - I was reminded of the grandeur of the universe, the emptiness of space and how small and unique - and united - we are.

It was put perfectly by educator Troy D. Allen in the New York Times.1

And I heard the humility of the astronauts, reminding me of Apollo 8’s reading of Genesis as they looked down at the lunar surface and back at earth. And I was hooked.

Those photos became my prayerbook this past Shabbat. Check out these photo albums:

• Journey to the moon gallery

• The lunar flyby gallery

  

  

And what better way is there to remind us to care for this planet, that it’s not merely our home, IT IS US.

The Home Planet: Our Holy Place

Back in 1948, British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle predicted that, “Once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside, is available, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.” At the end of a catastrophic year, 1968, and just seven months before the moon landing, there was the flight of Apollo 8; we still don’t fully appreciate what it meant for humanity to see, for the first time, the earth rising, as the spacecraft emerged from the dark side of the moon.

And what did these awestruck astronauts do at that moment? They read from chapter one of Genesis, the story of creation. “To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible,” John Glenn told reporters in 1998, just after returning from his final trip to space at age 77. “It just strengthens my faith.”

A while back, as the space race was winding down, a group of astronauts and cosmonauts came together to create a unique book called The Home Planet, a collection of their perspectives on what they alone have seen, the vision of earth from a distance. For Edgar Mitchell, an American astronaut, a revelation occurred when “looking at the earth and seeing the blue and white planet floating there, and knowing it was orbiting the sun, seeing that sun, seeing it set the background of that very deep, black and velvety cosmos, seeing – rather, knowing, for sure – that there is was a purposefulness of flow, of energy, of time, of space in the cosmos, and that it was beyond man’s rational ability to understand. I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving and harmonious.”

Yuri Artykin, a Soviet cosmonaut said, “It isn’t important in which country see you observe an oil slick, or in the forests of which country a fire breaks out. You are standing guard over the whole earth.”

And another cosmonaut said “One morning I woke up and decided to look out the window, to see where we were. We were flying over America and suddenly I saw snow. I’ve never visited America, but I imagine that the arrival of autumn and winter is the same there as in other places, and the process of getting ready for them is the same. And then it struck me that it doesn’t matter what country you look at; we are all children of our earth.”

And, the words of Sultan bin Salman al-Saud, an astronaut from Saudi Arabia: “The first day or so we all pointed to our country, the third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents, and by the fifth day we were aware of only one earth.”

Oh how I wish we could all get a single glimpse of what they have seen, of our fragile sacred ball of life. How I wish it. For if we could, there would be no more fear, no more hatred. No more war. In Hebrew, man is Adam and Earth is Adama. We are one with our planet and with all who share it with us.

Earth Day and Yom HaShoah

Earth Day (April 22) is next week and Holocaust Remembrance Day is tonight and tomorrow. In Jewish tradition, respect for the health of the environment and concern for the dignity of human beings go hand in hand. The Nazis were notorious for their pillage of both the land and its inhabitants, and Eastern Europe is paying the price for that to this day. Judaism is so concerned about the earth that we have our own annual Earth Day, Tu b’Shevat, not to mention a weekly one, Shabbat.

Several years ago I visited the site of Dachau, the concentration camp just outside Munich. I say that I visited the “site” of Dachau, because it wasn’t Dachau. Yes, the name was there, right next to the infamous inscription, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Yes, the barbed wire was there, and the barracks, remarkably well preserved, and the ovens. Yes, there were memorials to the dead, marking mass graves of nameless victims. But it wasn’t Dachau.

Dachau was hell and this wasn’t it. There were flowers at this place, surrounded by fresh-cut grass. The whole area is being marketed as an artist colony and tourism center. I could hear birds. I even saw a butterfly, which confirmed for me that this was not Dachau, for the famous Holocaust poem tells us that there were no butterflies in the death camps.

If this was not hell, then what was it, and why did it suddenly look so lovely, so natural? Was this a cruel trick by God, a vain attempt to reclaim that which God had ceded to the beast in humanity in 1933? Or was this God’s apology, this smattering of forget-me-nots and daisies embedded in cemetery sod, a plea for forgiveness, too little and too late?

Or maybe God was hoping, beyond hope, to give Jews one last chance to regain the illusion of an attainable paradise on earth, a thin veneer of April hope covering the reality of August hell.

“Here,” God is telling us, “I can’t give you redemption. All I can give you is this spring-like illusion. Let it ease the pain of your wanderings. Take it.”

On Yom HaShoah we say to God that this plan, however comforting and kind, can’t possibly work. We reject the illusion. We have seen hell first-hand; it won’t be forgotten. Time will not heal this wound. If renewal is possible following the Holocaust, a God who was absent during it cannot bring it about. God, who could not save the Jews, will also not redeem the earth. If renewal and hope are at all possible, only human beings can facilitate it.

Anyone can grow a few forget-me-nots.

There are two seemingly contradictory verses in Psalms: Psalm 24 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” while we read in Psalm 115, “The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth has been given to humankind.” This discrepancy can be resolved by drawing from it this lesson: Once upon a time, the earth was the Lord’s, but since the Holocaust, it is ours and ours alone.

Before the Shoah, when the earth still belonged to God, we, who had once experienced Paradise first-hand, could only imagine Eden’s opposite. As David Grossman wrote in his masterful novel, See Under: Love, “We always pictured hell with boiling lava and pitch bubbling in barrels,” until the Nazis came along, “showing us how paltry our pictures were.”

Now, nothing is left to the imagination. The earth is ours and we are utterly responsible for all that happens to it; all of it, the people, and the flowers, too. Those flowers at Dachau have become a symbol of God’s ultimate helplessness and our ultimate responsibility. We still pray, though no longer for divine intervention, but in gratitude for the basic tools provided us: warm summer days, rain in its season, the miraculous ecosystem. We look to heaven for resolve but little else, for “the earth has been given to humankind.”

And the blood of our brother Abel is screaming from that very earth. We must care for the earth because our ancestors and martyrs are buried within it. The earth is not only their legacy to us; it is them — their bones, their blood, their illusions, their dreams, and their follies. Their cries seep through the ozone layer. Their tears fall as polluted rain. Defoliated rainforests uncover their nakedness. We cannot go anywhere without walking on their bones. We must tend to their graves.

The earth is not only ours, it is us. Chief Seattle, a Native American leader of the last century, wrote, “This we know, the earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.” And in time our bones will rest there too, serving as a firm platform upon which our grandchildren will walk.

That is the earth that we see from space. Chief Seattle’s earth.

In caring for our planet, we sanctify the names of those who died and affirm life for those not yet born. We do it not out of the illusory hope that the world can be as it was, for we shall never return to Eden. We do it because we have to, because it is our responsibility. No one else will do it for us. And if we succeed, if the world becomes a better place for our grandchildren, then we’ll have taken a small step toward resuscitating a measure of hope. This is the best we can hope to accomplish in the aged of scorched flesh and earth.

As we look at our planet home from on high, doesn’t it seem a little silly for us to be squabbling over a few miles of water at Hormuz to transport a black crude that completely ruins the earth-toned hues of the Artemis photo. Why are we fighting in the sandbox for a few boats of oil to get through when we already have the means to resolve our energy and climate needs through wind and solar? Why are we killing one another over prehistoric fossils when the answer is being given to us right now, directly from God?

“From a distance, there is harmony,” penned Julie Gold in the song that eventually became a Grammy winner in 1991. This song, From a Distance, echoes that most Jewish of hopes, for unity and harmony, a vision that grows in the heart of everyone who has ever recited the Four Questions. From a distance, it all makes sense. Think of the satellite photo of a hurricane, taken from space. On earth, there is no force more chaotic and destructive. When viewed from space, nothing looks more orderly and perfect than a fully formed hurricane. Order and chaos, all at the same time. From a distance it all makes sense.

Artemis reminded us of that.

This year, I’ll mark Earth Day and Yom HaShoah with sadness and grim determination. And for the first time in quite a while, a touch of hope.

Because as a Jew, a human being and a guardian of the planet, I have no other choice.

Artemis reminded us that wherever we are standing is holy ground.

And the Hungarian people, who courageously overthrew dictators three times, reminded us that today, their sacred homeland is our Holy of Holies.

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1

Allen quote in the Times:

“Don’t look for the scary uniforms.” You’ll miss all the other signs.

When the fever-dream of hate returns to the world, they’ll look just like us, says psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who was assigned to evaluate Nazi leaders, in particular Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), in the excellent and timely docudrama about the Nuremberg trials, “Nuremberg,” that you can now find on Netflix.

See it. In fact, see it this week. Tuesday is Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) and we are in midst of commemorating 80 years since a trial that, according to Rebecca West, who covered Nuremberg for the New Yorker, “was botched and imperfect” in large part because it had to deal with new crimes for which there was no provision in national law or international law.

Despite the risks, Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the trials (played with pitch-perfect humility by Michael Shannon), said, “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

The following haunting interaction takes place at the end of the film, between a radio interviewer and Kelley (played by Rami Malek), who was promoting his book about the trial.

Radio Show Moderator: I have to be honest, Dr. Kelley. I find some of the conclusions in your book quite unbelievable. You were dealing with the Nazis, who you must admit are unique people.

Douglas Kelley: They are not unique people. There are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today.

Radio Show Moderator: Not in America.

Douglas Kelley: Yes, in America. Their personality patterns are not obscure. There are people who want to be in power. And while you say they don’t exist here, I would say I’m quite certain there are people in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half the American public if they knew they could gain control of the other half.

Radio Show Moderator: Doctor, please.

Douglas Kelley: They stoke hatred. It’s what Hitler and Göring did, and it is textbook. And if you think the next time it happens we’re going to recognize it because they’re wearing scary uniforms, you’re out of your damn mind.

Kelley of course was right. But finding universal commonalities in the evils of the Nazis and what we see in our own society was not what Americans wanted to hear just after the war, as people swung into the 50’s, an era of mindless good times tinged with McCarthyist paranoia. And so the book failed and Kelley ended up taking his own life just a few years later.

Americans weren’t ready to hear that they were just like Nazis and that in fact every human being on the planet is susceptible to becoming part of a collective society of monsters. We didn’t want to hear of it, even as Jim Crow was going on. Even as lynchings were taking place regularly. Even as George Wallace blocked the school doors. We didn’t want to hear it even as actual real-live Nazis still existed among us.

But what of now? Could Nazi Germany happen in 21st century America? Could the haters Make America Über Alles Again?

Yes, prophesied Kelley.

Here’s another interaction, which turned out to be crucial for the plotline of the film, and for the trial itself:

Douglas Kelley: Let’s talk about Hitler.

Hermann Göring: It’s curious that you have not asked me this question directly before.

Douglas Kelley: I’m curious what the attraction was. There’s a failed painter, not a very good soldier, yet he was worshipped and revered.

Hermann Göring: He made us feel German again.

Douglas Kelley: How?

Hermann Göring: First of all, I had seen Germany crushed. And along comes a man who says “We can reclaim our former glory.” Would you not follow a man like this?

Douglas Kelley: Depends what else you were willing to do.

While Kelley’s original book 22 Cells in Nuremberg may have gone unnoticed at the time, you can now read it online. Here’s a key passage:

The failed painter murdered millions and his people averted their eyes. He made some economic promises and pledged to Make Germany Great Again, and that’s all they needed.

True, things were much worse for Germans in the wake of Versailles and the Great Depression than they were in America in 2016. Much worse.

So in that sense, Americans were more susceptible than Germans. But Weimar Germany didn’t have Fox News to fan the flames of hate.

I’m not equating the past fifteen months to what the Nazis did between 1933-1945, but even minus the death camps, we now have enough evidence to say that the analogy holds. Murder on the streets? Check. A school filled with little girls blown to bits without a hint of regret? Check. Concentration Camps where kids die? Yep. We’ve seen needless war. We’ve seen a war on civil rights and democracy. We’ve seen military adventurism and international extortion. We’ve even seen an attempt to shake down the pope. (Ironically, the film “Nuremberg” depicts Jackson’s attempt to strong-arm the pope for an endorsement of the trial, though it was nothing like the Mafia-like threats by the Pentagon toward the Vatican last January.)

What else do we need to see?

Douglas Kelley says of Herman Göring, “You know what sets him apart from us? Nothing.”

The only difference is that we know what happened back in Göring time. That’s why they had the Nuremberg trials in the first place. To prevent it from happening again.

We have enough of a sample size now to know that this is no longer a warning of what could be. It’s a description of what is. This is the true Trump Derangement, which has infected our society with a new variant of an old plague.

We don’t need any more Truth Social abominations about destroying a civilization. We don’t need any more proof from the Epstein files. We don’t need any more edicts aimed at keeping people of color from being honored, or employed, or serving our country, or voting, or eating lunch at school, or reaching their third birthday without contracting measles.

The sample size is large enough. Yes, Trumpists might not be Nazis. Mazal tov. But Trumpism embodies a new American strain of the same evil, a highly-mutated variant of the original disease. And this one is far more lethal than the one we fended off after 2016.

The film includes the actual footage shot at the death camps that was shown at the original trial. These are the clips they showed me in Hebrew School. We stopped doing that in Jewish education, not wanting to traumatize subsequent generations, but perhaps we’ve been too quick to whitewash the history books.

Somehow, despite this unedited footage, Nuremberg is rated PG-13. It needs to be seen.

Here’s what Kelley wrote at the end of his book. It’s not too late for us to heed his lessons.

We must never forget the lessons of Nuremberg.

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Still, there is something to be said for going halfway. Even UConn coach Danny Hurley said it was better to have reached the finals and lost than not to have gotten there at all. Half a redemption still matters, if it can keep us from blowing up the world.

Today we won’t achieve a full redemption. As 8 PM approaches, perhaps it’s enough to have a partial redemption, a piece of peace. Perhaps, just this once, it will be enough - Dayenu - to achieve “Peace in our time.” Perhaps half way is enough, as we aim to do what Trump has always been so good at - running out the clock. We aim to do just that, run out the clock on this most dangerous era, counting the minutes not to 8 PM, but to November 3.

And so I pray for a piece of peace.

It’s not everyday that I post every day. But it’s not everyday that my country’s president explicitly states that he intends to commit genocide - tonight…at 8:00.

Film at 11.

Timothy Snyder wrote eloquently about this unprecedented action earlier today.

Thinking about...

The president speaks genocide

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…

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2 months ago · 2412 likes · 82 comments · Timothy Snyder

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

These are not the words of Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or Assad, or Putin. These are the words of the president of the United States, today.

Do not be distracted by circumstances. Of course there are emotions, personalities, politics, a war. None of this excuses that sentence. The reason we have a notion of genocide, and a convention on genocide, is to define certain actions as always and definitively wrong.

Are these “only words”? No, they cannot be “only words.” As any historian of mass atrocity knows, there is no such thing as “only words.” The notion of killing a whole civilization, once spoken, remains. It enables others to say similar things, as when another elected representative compared the entire country of Iran to a cancer that had to be removed.

Whatever happens tonight, the president, by saying such things, has already changed the world for the worse, and made acts of mass violence more likely. If we are Americans, he has also changed our country. He has changed us, because he represents us; we voted for him, or we didn’t vote and allowed him to come to power, or we didn’t do enough to stop him. These words are America’s words, until and unless Americans reject them.

I just re-read JFK’s Speech About the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s worth a read/ listen.

Such a stark contrast between JFK’s measured words and Trump’s insane rants. The situation was no less precarious then, and the stakes arguably higher, the threat to the homeland even greater. Much greater, in fact, although that could change tonight.

But the main difference was that back in the Kennedy era we could be confident that the fate of the world was still in the hands of rational actors. Such is not the case now.

Back then, the leaders of the USSR were not measuring the drapes in paradise, like the mullahs seem to be doing, and the leader of the US was not salivating about conquest next to the Easter Bunny. It’s hard to say whether Khrushchev cared at all about his people, but he was able to come to an agreement with his American counterpart, and Armageddon was averted.

If ever there were a day for prayer, this is it.

In Jewish tradition, the seventh day of Passover, which begins this evening, almost exactly an hour before Trump’s deadline - is the day when the Red Sea was crossed. That was a life-or-death moment for the newly-liberated Israelites. And for the world, echoing the words of Exodus 12, it will be a “Night of Watching.”

(יהוה is Adonai, God’s name)

The question this time is whether the Destroyer will cause a “whole civilization to die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Neither on that final night in Egypt nor in the midst of the swirling Red Sea did God’s Angel of Death wipe out an entire civilization. But that’s what Donald Trump says he intends to do.

And so, as both the Seventh Day and Zero Hour begin in just a few hours, I present a multifaith prayer for peace, a dozen prayers in one. I suggest that you read aloud the prayer from your own faith tradition and than at least one from another tradition.

I conclude with this plea for peace and security. Hashkivenu, which in the liturgy immediately follows the prayer of triumph at the Red Sea, Mi Chamocha.

Peace to you. Peace to all of us. Peace to the innocent people of Iran, the Gulf, Israel, so many of whom are sleeping in shelters tonight, America and the world.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

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Some thoughts while we await, at long last, Trump’s “Infrastructure Day.” Only in typical Trump fashion, he is promising to break things, not build them. But it’s not Iran’s bridges, refineries and water plants that he will break, if he follows though on his threats, it’s the whole region’s - and beyond. As we await Trump’s next spasm of wanton destruction, take a look at what Jewish sources have to say about wanton destruction. And then read below why the Iran War is not the most important thing happening this week.

Remember how in June of 2016, Brexit’s shocking win stunned the world and presaged a successful fall for a certain disruptive, populist isolationist in America?

Well, this week, the first domino just might fall, and it might mark the beginning of the end for Trumpism.

People are rising up to defeat the axis of autocracy, and Trump, Orban and Netanyahu are groping to deal with spontaneous bursts of people power, on the streets and at the ballot box. With the unending wars, financial collapse and rampant corruption, three electoral tsunamis are forming. All three elections are crucial, and the first, Hungary, is happening right now.

Should Orbán lose, as appears quite possible, according to current polls, the first autocratic domino will fall. Netanyahu and then MAGA will be next. And they know it. The freedom-loving people of all three countries are clearing their throats and courageously daring to be heard. We know that Putin and Trump will do anything to keep that from happening, but they might be powerless to stop a popular mass movement.

And right on cue, Orbán is playing the terrorism card. Here’s how it was reported on Yahoo News on Sunday:

Opposition leader Peter Magyar accuses Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of staging a gas pipeline sabotage in Serbia to influence the upcoming elections.

Magyar calls on Orbán to provide information on the incident and convene a security council, warning against using the provocation for campaign purposes.

Investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi suggests that the alleged sabotage looks like a staged “performance” to help Orbán avoid electoral defeat, with both Hungary and Serbia taking security measures in response.

Peter Magyar stated:

“I also want to stress that he will not succeed in disrupting next Sunday’s elections. He will not be able to prevent millions of Hungarians from putting an end to the two most corrupt decades in our country’s history. Hungarians have sufficient grounds to fear that a prime minister facing the loss of power, on the advice of Russian agents, is planning to instill fear in his fellow citizens through increasingly clumsy ‘false flag operations’. If Orbán’s propaganda machine uses this provocation for campaign purposes – that will be an open admission that this was a planned ‘false flag operation.”

Israelis and Americans should take good notes. Because Trump and Bibi certainly are. And so are democracy’s most vigilant defenders. Timothy Snyder is especially concerned1 about the ramifications of Trump’s scorched earth threats in Iran, along with the likely false flag drummed up this past weekend by Hungary.

We need to recall that just as with gerrymandered districts in the US were redrawn to give Republicans a massive advantage (Democrats have since fought back), Orban’s party Fidesz cooked the books in Hungary so that, in the 2022 elections, Fidesz secured 68 percent of the parliamentary seats in 2022 while only receiving around 53 percent of the vote. That could happen again on Sunday. The prime opposition party, Tisza, needs to secure at least 6 percent more of the vote than Fidesz in order to win. And they need to do it despite having control of most of the machinery of the election - and the media covering it and the judiciary evaluating it - in its hands.

And then there’s the polling itself, which can be deceptive. According to Eva Mulholland of the Atlantic Council, while independent polling places Tisza in a comfortable lead (about 10 percentage points), government-aligned polling shows a different story, with Fidesz up 7 percent from Tisza. She adds, “Diaspora Hungarians, who historically vote overwhelmingly for Fidesz, are not captured in domestic polls but are counted in the national vote threshold.” And to add to that, who knows what Putin has in mind for this Sunday? All we know is that if his boy loses, it could trigger a cascade of good news for Ukraine and the EU, which is bad news for him.

Right now the streets of Budapest are awash in pro-government propaganda, including this poster of Volodymyr Zelensky, with the tag line, “Let’s not let Zelensky have the last laugh.”

Yes, it’s a dog whistle. The exact same poster was plastered all over the country when I was there before a prior election, except the face was of another Jew, George Soros. I took this photo below, right on the Hungarian border with Slovakia. It was literally the first thing I saw when I entered the country.

Even the smile looks exactly the same. The Jew is laughing at us! Every trick in the book….

For those who may not be aware, THE LAUGHING JEW IS A CLASSIC ANTISEMITIC TROPE.2

Whoever calls Orban a friend of the Jews is not worth a moment of my time.

But according to Jill Dougherty, Distinguished Fellow at The Wilson Center who is in Budapest now (and her new report is well worth reading), there are zero posters of Orban! That, my friends, is telling.

So buckle up! If that first domino does fall, it will fall a long way, and the crash will resound more than any bombs in Iran. It will change the face of Europe and, like the Brexit vote in 2016, send a signal that a new world order is at hand.

But Hungarians are courageous and resilient. I saw that personally when I visited the Jewish community of Budapest in 2017.3 The people of Hungary have been taking to the streets with increasing temerity, such as last December in Budapest, when over 50,000 people walked the streets of Budapest to demand the resignation of Orban’s government. It followed the publication of videos showing staff at a Budapest juvenile correction facility physically abusing children. Orban’s main challenger, Peter Magyar, led the march.

• In addition, massive rival rallies took place just a few weeks ago.

  We all will be on the edge of our seats this weekend to see if MAGA’s darling takes a massive fall - which will only put the wind at democracy’s back heading into the fall.

  • See also: What Happens After Hungary’s Election? Four Scenarios to Watch (Center for Strategic and International Studies)

  • See also: Feels like history is being made. Will young Hungarian voters oust Orbán? (The Guardian)

  • See also: Hungary’s Turning Point (Wilson Center)

  • Read my Yom Kippur 2017 sermons - Listen to it below (that section begins at about 18:30):

  The Second Domino: Israel

  Meanwhile, while Israel’s long national nightmare is far from over, their next election will be no later than October 27, which is exactly a week before America votes on November 3. Polling is complicated there, but most recent surveys show the opposition with the only realistic path to governing. Here’s the most recent, from Friday’s Ma’ariv newspaper, which shows a surprising and unmistakable trend. Israelis, while supporting the war against Iran, have not fallen in line behind the wartime leader, as usually happens, but instead have turned on Netanyahu. A Hebrew University political science professor explains on X:

For those who don’t read Hebrew, the red is the opposition bloc, and the blue is Netanyahu’s. With a majority of the Knesset’s 120 seats (meaning 61 seats), you can form a governing coalition. According to this poll, the current government, which now has 64 mandates, would shrink to 49. The opposition parties would be right at the precipice of being able to form a coalition, even without the Arab parties, who are represented in gray, with ten seats. If the opposition parties find a way to incorporate the Arab parties into a new government - which I hope happens and would not be unprecedented - they could easily form a coalition. Below is the complete breakdown, party by party. Netanyahu’s party has 25 mandates to lead the poll, but the strongest parties shown here are all opposing him and easily outnumber Likud. He’s in a polling pickle, and he knows it. Which is why he didn’t move up elections to June when the war began. He easily could have.

The headline states, “ “The Cost of Political Opportunism and Lack of Progress: The Opposition is Getting Stronger.” And the article states: “The majority of the public believes the (just-passed) budget serves the needs of the coalition and not those of the public.”

Unless some sort of major reversal takes place, allowing for a clear win in Iran, Netanyahu is going down to defeat.

And we know where the Republican Party is headed this fall. In a free and fair election, the House is gone and the Senate is in play. The world could look very different this coming winter.

But that partly depends on what happens this coming week.

People Power

What the three elections have in common is that they’ve been preceded by a massive show of grass-roots potency that took shape on the streets. In Israel, before the massacres of October 7, 2023, People Power was deployed at weekly, mass demonstrations to oppose reforms of the judicial system that would have effectively ended democracy in Israel. The mass movement then adapted to embrace the cause of the hostages held in Gaza and to support displaced Israelis in the north and south. And now, even though the population has spent so much time in protective shelters, those grass-roots sentiments remain, along with the threats. Once the missiles stop flying, the campaign will begin in earnest and the streets will again be filled with protesting Israelis.

Which is why Netanyahu wants to keep the wars going.

The Third Domino: America

We can recall this statement by Trump before the 2024 election. Was he talking to Americans? Or Hungarians? Or any of Putin’s other protectorates?

Here in America, if anything, polling places Trump in worse shape than either Orban or Netanyahu. And the movement to the streets has been massive. I had the pleasure of seeing that first-hand when I spoke at the local No Kings rally on March 28. National estimates indicate that it was the largest mass protest in US history, with over 8 million taking to the streets.

If you thought nail-biting time begins in the fall, think again. This Sunday will give us huge clues as to how the rest of the year will go.

Like the proverbial Maine of yore, so goes Hungary, so goes the world.

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1

This from Timothy Snyder on X on Sunday. See point #10 in the thread.

2

Laughing Jew Trope, from the American Jewish Committee

3

Here’s what I wrote about the Jewish community of Budapest in a sermon delivered upon my return:

One of the real highlights of our trip last summer was our encounter with the Jewish community of Budapest. We joined the Frankel Synagogue, one of the city’s most active congregations for a Friday night service, and before that, we spent about a half hour conversing with the rabbi and his wife, an author and educator. The congregation comes from a branch of Judaism unique to central Europe – called Neolog. It’s sort of a fruit salad of Orthodoxy and Conservative. For example: there is separate seating, but the women get the better seats.

We came away from the conversation amazed at the vibrancy of the community – and we came away equally concerned for its future.

Before the Shoah, this was a thriving community - nearly a quarter of Budapest’s population was Jewish. But during the war, of the more than 800,000 Jews living in Hungary, nearly 620,000 died or were deported. In Budapest, Jews had a somewhat better chance of survival at first, until the notorious Arrow Cross – those rabid Hungarian nationalists who tried to out-Nazi the Nazis, took over, herded Jews into the ghetto beginning in December 1944, took as many as 20,000 out to the banks of the Danube, shot them and threw their bodies into the river. We saw the memorial that has been set up right by the riverbank, a sculpture depicting the shoes that were left behind. It’s incredibly moving, but equally problematic, because the memorial does not specify that the victims were Jewish.

The current Jewish population is about 100,000, they think – and that number is based on those who have received reparations for the Holocaust. But no one really knows, because the vast majority of Jews are afraid to be identified. They remain in the closet - literally, sometimes, because many still remember that proverbial knock on the door. While physical attacks are rare, anti-Semitism is plainly practiced by the extreme right-wing government and is embedded in the culture. I wrote about the anti-Semitic poster campaign that popped up all over the country when we were there. Vandalism of Jewish gravestones and synagogues is commonplace. I asked the rabbi whether he wears a kippah in public, and he said no. Most Jewish children encounter anti-Semitism in school from a young age. The word “Jewish” is often used as a curse word in the vernacular.

And then, to add to anti-Semitism, there is Jewish illiteracy. After the Nazis were defeated, the country was “liberated” into nearly half a century of communist rule, where anyone living an openly Jewish lifestyle was subject to ridicule and discrimination. After the horrors of Auschwitz, most Hungarian Jews had little place for God in their lives anyway, so while the practice of Judaism wasn’t expressly forbidden, it was for all intents and purposes forgotten.

Yet despite all this, what we saw this summer was remarkable: Jewish life is rising in Budapest like a phoenix from the ashes. Despite impossible odds.

There is thriving summer camp called Szarvas near Budapest, which serves Jewish communities all over Europe. Many campers recall being dropped off and asking their parents why they were being sent to a Jewish camp. At that point, the parents would tell them, while driving off, “By the way, you’re Jewish.”

The Shabbat service at the Frankel synagogue was one of our most cherished moments on the trip. There were a number of young families with kids there – well over a hundred people. The rabbi mentioned that very few Jewish groups visit them, so they were curious to meet their guests from America. I felt really good that we were there, as most Jewish heritage tours of Eastern Europe only visit the dead. We were determined to visit living Jewish communities too. It was another tearful moment. We were there to tell the Jews of Budapest that they are not alone. Like Evan Hansen’s tree in the forest, they had been found. And like those legendary gingko trees that somehow withstood the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the Jews of Hungary have survived.

And at the end of the service, we did the kiddish and ha-motzi all together, because, we were told, very few of the congregants know how to do Shabbat at home. And there is often no grandparent to ask, because Bubbe and Zayde were murdered by the Nazis or Iron Cross. If this congregation read from a yahrzeit list before the mourner’s kaddish, as we do, the list would have 1,000 names on it every week.

But even more to the point, they don’t do the rituals at home because so many are afraid to. Their Jewish lives are confined to their synagogue, a building so heavily barricaded that you almost expected Jean Valjean to make an appearance there too. The building is not visible from the street.

It is impossible for us to appreciate what they have had to overcome in order to rebuild their Jewish community. It is something that we all take for granted. We need to think about it the next time we are tempted to toss off our priceless Jewish heritage like Grandma Sophie’s closetful of plastic bags from Fairway. I know I’m preaching to the choir. You are here. But please send this sermon around to the 53 percent of American Jews who no longer observe Yom Kippur. Not as a guilt trip. But as a reminder of how fragile is our precious legacy... OK, maybe a bit of a guilt trip too.

The Hiroshima ginkgo are called survivor trees – and how did they manage to overcome the fallout of a nuclear blast? It’s because they have very deep roots. Our roots are unnaturally deep as well. Any other people would have given up after the Shoah. But we saw in Budapest that the Hungarian Jews have not.

These Jews have chosen life. They have chosen to see “Am Yisrael Chai” not as a song, but as a summons. That is the call of the Torah of Auschwitz – Choose life, collectively, because survival IS victory.