Novominsker Rebbe once said to me
"this was about 40 years ago after he gave a gemora shiur I asked him about sex education. Noting that Rav Yaakov told my brother that education in these matters should be at age 16
"Eight year old children today know more about these issues than I do."
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-780172+
Tucker Carlson, the populist pundit who led Fox News’s evening lineup until his ouster in April 2023, said in an interview this week that Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire “[doesn’t] care about the country at all,” accusing him and other pro-Israel voices of being “focused on a conflict in a foreign country as their own country becomes dangerously unstable.”
“It’s important to me to reveal the real situation about the people who live in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there,” she told Channel 13 news. “I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists… there are no innocent civilians, not one,” she said. “[Innocent civilians] don’t exist.”
https://www.torahweb.org/torah/2017/parsha/rsch_shoftim.html
The Talmud, as well as later rabbinical literature, is replete with halachic disputes. The halacha has had to decide which opinion should be followed. Should we assume that the rejected view was mistaken and simply incorrect? The Gemara (Eruvin 13b) states regarding the many disputes between Beis Shamai and Beis Hillel that, "eilu v'eilu divrei Elokim Chaim - both opinions are the words of the Living G-d." although in the overwhelming majority of cases we have not accepted the views of Beis Shamai, this does not mean that they were wrong; one who spends time learning the views of Beis Shamai is in fulfillment of the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. Beis Shamai were also basing their opinions on middos she'ha'Torah nidreshes bohein; they were following the principles and the rules of the Torah She'b'al Peh, just that they came to a different conclusion than Beis Hillel. Therefore learning their opinions would also constitute a proper fulfillment of the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. To use the terminology of Rav Soloveitchik, their views also constitute a cheftza shel Torah.
I was reading about Sinclair Lewis and his concern with conformity in middle America. I realized the same dynamic applies to the Chareidi world.
You probably noted that from Tanach through the Rishonim the most obvious feature is the constant disagreement and variety of opinions about everything. This has famously been pointed out by the gemora that concludes Ailu v'eilu. All views are correct as the word of G-d
Rav Yakov Kaminetsky decided he wanted to go to learn in Kelm. Instead of simply asking permission from the Alter - the masgiach of Slobodka so he simple deviated from his normal behavior. He took a different path to the bathroom. That deviance was enough for the Alter to call him over and tell him to go learn in Kelm where he would acquire consistency.
Someone raised a question in a gemora shiur from a tosfos which directly contradicted the rebbe's hypothesis. The rebbe responded "There is no such Tosfos!" His students asked him whether he in fact knew every Tosfos. He replied I don't know every Tosfos but i I know Tosfos doesn't think that way it had been claimed
Institutional education attempts to provide a standardized mind - the core curriculum
However Rav Hutner noted that the ideal is not yeshiva learning but father to son learning
My rebbe once said that he thought most creatively when he had to commute from Williamsburg to Far Rockaway. His mind was free while he was driving.
Today the ideal is to listen 24/7 to shiurim or reading a sefer
Today we use Ramchal and Maharal, Artsroll. Daf Yomi, Bina magazine and Mishpacha Magazine to ensure a standard way of thinking. Apparently, a large part of the content is from Mussar and Chassidus
The Raban and Shulchan Aruch are major tools for standardization.
The Gerrer Rebbe once chastised some chassidim who had sinned. "I am not criticizing you for sinning since you are human beings with a yetzer harah. I am upset that you had the spare time to sin!
Rav Kook noted that each individual needs to develop his own haskofa from the variety of views while Rav Dessler noted we have an inner voice to listen to for guidance.
Bottom line is whether to strive for standardization or individualization.
.The Gemara, Eruvin 45a, establishes that the Sabbath must be desecrated in order to defend the borders of a Jewish state from enemy incursion. That casus belli standard was [more than] adequately met this past Oct. 7, 2023. Hence, as elaborated by R. J. David Bleich, Be-Netivot ha-Halakhah, I, pp. 77-84, the Israeli Defense Forces enjoy moral authorization to wage a war termed “ezrat Yisrael mi-yad tzar” (rescuing Israel from the oppressor, a termed coined by Rambam, Hilkhot Melakhim 5:1). This means there is no guilt whatsoever for collateral damage caused by the IDF in its legitimate war of self-defense against Hamas.
In my opinion, Rabbi Bleich is supported by Tosafot, Yevamot 114b, s.v. zimnin, who write that it is the nature of war for projectiles to be launched from a large distance, with the combatants not knowing who will actually be hit by those projectiles. Ergo, we can extrapolate from Tosafot that once the Torah authorizes the Jewish army to engage in ezrat Yisrael mi-yad tzar, it means that the Jewish army is granted immunity from guilt over collateral damage. [And that which the Gemara, Gittin 56b, speaks of “removing the threatening snake with tongues while protecting the barrel of honey” is specifically referring as a critique against Vespasian’s invasive attack on the Temple in Jerusalem, a fundamentally different situation.]
In an effort to verify that my proof from Yevamot 114b is dispositive, I touched base with posek ha-dor Rav Bleich. On Nov. 18, 2023 [after havdalah], he responded by e-mail as follows:
“The reference in the Gemara is to milchamah ba-olam. That doesn’t sound as if there was Jewish involvement. If so, Tosafot is describing conduct of non-Jews before the Geneva Convention.”
Nevertheless, even granted Rabbi Bleich’s caveat, the bottom line is that Tosafot seem to demonstrate that the nature of warfare is to precipitate collateral damage. Ergo, while warfare may well be forbidden to Noahides [as per my previous article at <https://daattorah.blogspot.
It is true that Siftei Chakhamim to Genesis 32:8 comments that Jacob was distressed at the prospect of defending himself in war against Esau, lest Jacob execute collateral damage. However, there the issue appears to be emotional discomfort experienced by the patriarch, rather than identification of moral transgression. Assuredly, any war represents a monumental tragedy, and so Jacob desperately yearned to avoid it. But it remains the case that a military campaign of ezrat Yisrael mi-yad tzar – once necessitated by enemy attack – is ethically correct. [And see R. Chaim ben Atar, Or ha-Chaim to Genesis 34:31, who comments that it would have been collective self-endangerment for the family of Jacob had it failed to rescue Dinah from Nablus.]
Furthermore, in my capacity as the author of [what appears to be] the only halakhic prenup that is actually effective in [at least somewhat] alleviating the agunah problem [as recently publicized at <http://daattorah.blogspot.
In attempting to appeal to the conscience of Gazans, the key issue at hand is how to properly channel the spiritual yearnings of Gazan society in a halakhically correct way. Rambam, Hilkhot Melakhim 10:9-10 rules that Noahides must not invent their own religion. Rather, Noahides are commanded by the Holy One, Blessed Be He, to observe the Seven Commandments identified by the Gemara, Sanhedrin 56b. If a Noahide seeks further spiritual enrichment, then he is welcome to choose to volunteer to perform any additional mitzvah [that would normally be directed to Jews alone] that he seeks, and he will receive reward as a volunteer for that mitzvah. The only exceptional mitzvot which Noahides cannot volunteer to observe are Shabbat and Torah study, as per the Gemara, Sanhedrin 58b-59a. [If a Noahide truly desires to observe even the latter two mitzvot, he enjoys the option of applying to a qualified Beth Din for consideration for conversion to Judaism.]
Now let us halakhically analyze the ways of many religiously fervent Gazans. They reject idolatry, insisting instead on worshipping the One and Only Master of the universe Who revealed Himself to Abraham. This represents a most impressive achievement, because it fulfills one of the Seven Commandments. Gazans also pray with devotion in Arabic, perhaps as much as five times a day. That’s wonderful, because prayer is a mitzvah that Noahides are either obligated or at least allowed to observe [-see Encyclopedia Talmudit, s.v. Ben No’ach], and prayer can be performed in any language, as per the Mishnah, Sotah 32a. Furthermore, when Gazans pray, they announce that “the Holy One, Blessed Be He, Is Great.” Well said: the Holy One, Blessed Be He, Is indeed Great, as per Deut. 10:17 [-a verse incorporated into the first paragraph of every Jewish amidah prayer for the past 2,400 years, as per the Gemara, Yoma 69b]. And the way that a Gazan should show that he truly recognizes that Greatness, is that the Gazan should observe the Noahide Code. Keep it at that, and thereby keep the peace.
Some confusion appears to have arisen from the fact that Gazan married ladies are scrupulously diligent to perform the mitzvah of kisui rosh (head covering). This may have led Hamas to the regrettable (mis)impression that it can therefore attack Jews. [To that effect, a recent statement by Agudath Israel, dated 17 Kislev, 5784, specifically asks all Jews (in the Hebrew version, though not directly translated in the accompanying English version) to strengthen themselves in kisui rosh. See <https://hamodia.com/2023/11/
The reality that Arab civilization excels in kisui rosh was already known two millenia ago to the Sages of the Mishnah, as recorded in Shabbat 65a. Actually, the mitzvah of kisui rosh is primarily directed to Jews [as per the Gemara, Ketubot 72a-b], although one could hypothetically argue that it has bears a measure of relevance even to righteous Noahides, regarding whom we have an oral tradition that following the Deluge, they accepted upon themselves an enhanced dimension of respect for the sanctity of marriage. [See Rashi to Genesis 34:7 and Numbers 22:5, as well as Maharsha, Chiddushei Aggadot to Yevamot 63b, s.v. limsokh. And see Eruvin 100b which seems to indicate that Eve covered her head.] In any event, even if Noahides are not formally commanded in kisui rosh, a Noahide who volunteers to perform an extra mitzvah will certainly receive reward [as per the aforementioned Rambam, Hilkhot Melakhim 10:10], and so the Gazan married ladies deserve congratulations for their kisui rosh. Yet, at no time does the Talmud suggest that Arab civilization can therefore persecute Jews. On the contrary, Arab civilization – like all of humanity – is expected to seek spiritual excellence by specifically observing all commandments of the Noahide Code, and these commandments include refraining from murder and refraining from kidnapping.
Arguably [and as possibly reflected in the aforementioned Agudath Israel statement], there may be room for Jewish improvement regarding kisui rosh. Although R. Moshe Feinstein, Iggerot Mosheh, Even ha-Ezer, II, no. 12 allows a wig, his responsum is challenged by a lengthy monograph of R. Nehorai Yosef Ohana, Zahav Levushah (Jerusalem, 5774), available online at <https://hebrewbooks.org/56098
My late mentor R. Joshua H. Shmidman (previously showcased at <https://daattorah.blogspot.
May we indeed see humanity embrace the Noahide Code, and thereby usher in an era of global harmony. And the first step in that direction is for Hamas to surrender.
Rabbi Spira works as the Editor of Manuscripts and Grants at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, a pavilion of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Canada.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382618
Critics blasted New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a Christmas message comparing Jesus to the Palestinians, with at least one saying it invoked the historic charge that the Jews killed Jesus.
Drawing parallels between Jesus’ persecutors and present-day Israel, Ocasio-Cortez claimed in an Instagram post on Sunday that Jesus was born in “modern-day Palestine” under a government carrying out “a massacre of innocents.” According to the New Testament, Jesus was a Jew who lived within the modern borders of Israel and was killed by the Roman forces ruling the territory at the time.
“He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382542
Darien Harris, a resident of Chicago, spent more than twelve years of a 76-year sentence in prison for murder due to a witness testimony that connected him to the crime.
According to CTV, Harris was released this week when it was clarified to the judge that the key witness in the case was blind.
At the age of eighteen, Harris was arrested on suspicion of murder in a gas station which happened while he chanced to be walking along a nearby street. The sole evidence for his conviction came from a security camera, which showed an unidentified man exiting a vehicle and shooting the victim, and testimony from one Dexter Saffold.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-779463
An International Committee of the Red Cross representative refused to bring a box of life-saving medicine to Israelis taken hostage in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a Monday address to the Knesset plenum.
"I met with the Red Cross; I handed them a box of medicine for some of the hostages shown here. Some of them really need it...I told a representative to take this box to Rafah; she said no. It was a difficult conversation," he told a special Knesset session attended by families of hostages, who were heard shouting "Now!" at the prime minister as he explained the return of all hostages would take time.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/20/business/harvard-president-claudine-gay-plagiarism/index.html
Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism expert who runs the site Plagiarism Today, told CNN that instances of plagiarism are often followed by calls for a harsh rebuke.
“People tend to want to paint plagiarism with a broad brush as something that should be immediately cause for termination or immediately cause for the strongest action,” Bailey said. “But that’s just not how it works in the real world. A lot of factors are looked at and considered when deciding how to respond to it.”
“This is a nuanced case, and that nuance is kind of impossible because of how politically charged it is right now,” said Baile
https://cross-currents.com/2009/07/07/sickened-by-the-chilul-hashem/
Here’s an idea to consider. Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz has written urging the rest of the Torah community to stand up without equivocation and combat the unspeakable primitivism of many of the Yerushalayim protesters. He takes most of the media accounts seriously. He points a finger at “askanim” who are really in charge, and not Gedolim whom others presuppose are in charge. He cites approvingly the statement of an American philanthropist that he will withhold his sizable donation to a favorite yeshiva until its Rosh Yeshiva publicly condemns the form of the demonstrations. (Note: he does not – and I would not – urge us regular folks to withhold money from the yeshivos that are the lifeblood of Klal Yisrael.)
Barkat, seen as a potential future rival to Netanyahu as leader of the Likud party, told ministers, “The number of air force bombardments has fallen dramatically. Soldiers are being sent to booby-trapped buildings like [sitting] ducks.”
Netanyahu responded, “The fact that you keep saying this doesn’t make it true. There are operational considerations.”
Netanyahu, justifying his policies, said, “There are countries [whose positions] we have to take into account. If we don’t do that, eventually there’ll be a UN decision to impose a blockade on us. The whole world will be against us.”
Asked about Barkat’s criticism, the IDF Spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said later Sunday that “any IDF force on the ground that requires air support, for any mission, gets the necessary protection.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-779397
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as “erroneous” a Wall Street Journal report that the IDF halted plans to preemptively attack Hezbollah in Lebanon in the first days after the start of the Gaza war in October.
“I have seen erroneous reports to the effect that the US prevented, and is preventing, us from operational actions in the region; this is incorrect. Israel is a sovereign state,” Netanyahu said on Sunday.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/22/bill-pascrell-new-jersey-muslim-vote-00132858
“I can’t control the politics of Israel,” he said, according to a video of his remarks obtained by POLITICO. “But they have every right to protect themselves and defend themselves. Case closed.”
While Arab Americans are an important constituency for Pascrell, they make up a relatively small bloc in a district that includes two dozen towns in heavily Jewish Bergen County. That’s made it impossible for the representative to please the entire Democratic base.
השבוע ערך הגאון הגדול רבי אהרן פלדמן ראש ישיבת 'נר ישראל' בבולטימור' ומזקני חברי מועצג"ת של אגודת ישראל בארה"ב, ביקור במעונו של מרן פוסק הדור הגר"מ שטרנבוך שליט"א רחוב קצנלבוגן 4 בירושלים.
במהלך הביקור שאל ראש הישיבה את מרן פוסק הדור באיזה נוסח להתפלל בימים אלו, "האם להתפלל להצלחת המדינה".
מרן פוסק הדור השיב בדברים נחרצים: "יש להתפלל ששמו של הקב"ה יתקדש בעולם, וששום יהודי לא יסבול".
מרן פוסק הדור הוסיף: איי.. איך זה יכול להסתדר יחד, התשובה היא שאנחנו לא אפוטרופסים על זה, ואין אנחנו צריכים לדון או לענות איך לסדר את זה.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/12/12/easy-exercise-habits
1. 11-minutes of brisk walking makes a big difference
The biggest gains in exercise come when we just start moving a little. Walking for at least 11 minutes every day could lower your risk of premature death by almost 25 percent, according to a major study of 30 million people. Those 11 daily minutes of exercise also dropped people’s risks for heart disease by 17 percent and for cancer of any kind by 7 percent. For certain cancers, including myeloid leukemia, myeloma and some stomach cancers, the risk fell by as much as 26 percent.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/01/schizophrenia-autoimmune-lupus-psychiatry/
New research suggests that a subset of patients with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia may actually have autoimmune disease that attacks the brain
Markx and his colleagues discovered that although April’s illness was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, she also had lupus, an underlying and treatable autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/b1zvgnywa
Last January, a video showing demonstrators with pride flags burning the image of Rabbi Chaim Drukman, one of the leaders of the Religious Zionist community who had passed away a week earlier, quickly spread on Facebook, X, WhatsApp, and Telegram, circulated by real users and fake accounts alike. Right-wing users and media could not contain their anger. "Do not absolve yourselves of the heavy responsibility for this demonstration of anti-Zionism and antisemitism," wrote Menny Asayag. Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Prime Minister, was quick to respond: "Remember what they did to Jews who defaced an image of Arabs at a wedding? Arrest and indictment... not that it interests the police, of course." Channel 7 also reported on the incident with the headline "Rabbi Chaim Drukman's image burned in left-wing protest."
They, along with many other users and journalists, were unaware that they had fallen victim to a trap set by a foreign entity, likely Iran, and not only in this case. An investigation by the organization Fake Reporter reveals that since 2021, a foreign influence network connected to Iran has been operating in Israel, spreading lies, incitement, and hate to deepen the rift among Israelis, and to use them to extend its influence beyond the virtual world.
https://www.newsweek.com/jack-smith-trump-scott-perry-messages-2020-election-1854097
In a ruling on Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said that more than 1,600 communications sent from Perry, including texts and emails, can be handed over the Special Counsel Jack Smith's office after rejecting the argument they fall under the U.S. Constitution's "speech or debate" clause. The clause states that members of Congress can't be questioned in criminal investigations on matters relating to their legislative duties.
Perry, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, had his phone seized by the FBI in August 2022 as part of the investigation into the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Perry is alleged to have been in frequent discussions with Trump as part of the plot to install Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark as attorney general to support the false claim the 2020 election was rigged in the final few weeks of Trump's presidency.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382101
"And at any rate, those who come and claim, 'Why do you not go to visit the sick and help with the war effort,' can be considered insane, since the yeshiva students and Torah sages cause that there be no need for a spear or a shield, and they cause that we should not need more tanks or fighter jets to protect ourselves, because they themselves are protecting us from the brutal enemies. And essentially, that they sit and invest in their studies, they fulfill the greatest [commandment] to visit the sick that there is, in their own way, since they are adding merits so that there will not be any more ill in the nation of Israel."
How does he explain the following?
Gittin (62a) the Sages taught in a baraita (Tosefta 5:4): One sustains poor gentiles along with poor Jews, and one visits sick gentiles along with sick Jews, and one buries dead gentiles along with dead Jews. All this is done on account of the ways of peace, to foster peaceful relations between Jews and gentiles.
He summed up the major issue of the time ‘as a struggle between “the great mass of Americans of the old pioneer stock” and the “intellectually mongrelised Liberals.”’‘We are, ‘of the plain people, very weak in the matter of culture, intellectual support, and trained leadership. We are demanding, and we expect to win, a return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualised, but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanised, average citizen of the old stock…. This is undoubtedly a weakness. It lays us open to the charge of being “hicks” and “rubes” and “drivers of second-hand Fords.” We admit it.’
Donald Trump can’t appear on the 2024 presidential primary ballot in Colorado because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday.
The first-of-its kind decision sided with a group of Colorado voters who argued in a lawsuit that the Republican front-runner was disqualified under a clause in the 14th Amendment. Enacted after the Civil War, the provision disqualifies from public office those who swore to defend the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S.
“President Trump incited and encouraged the use of violence and lawless action to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” the Colorado Supreme Court said in a 4-to-3 ruling.
On the other hand, when it comes to the sick or poor or kollel- we are not to tell them that they should repent or have bitachon and G-d will provide. Instead, we are instructed to provide what they are lacking - even to provide luxuries to a rich man who lost his wealth. There is even an arrangement call Yissachar Zevulen - Rav Moshe says this is to provide peace of mind to learn Torah and it must be a long term relation since security for a short time doesn't eliminate worries and we are not to say to the talmid chachom to have bitachon that G-d will provide what he needs. Rav Moshe also notes that a person in Kollel should not refuse kollel payments claiming that one should not benefit from Torah study - He goes so far as to say this is the advice of Satan
So why do we need to have bitachon for our problems, but we can't tell others that they need greater bitachon or repentance?
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-778641
Police in New York City “insisted” that Elisha Wiesel put away an Israeli flag on Tuesday, as Weisel, son of the late writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel, attempted to counterprotest a hundreds-strong pro-Palestinian demonstration in the city’s Penn Station, Wiesel said on X.
The protest was organized by Within Our Lifetime, an activist group that has led near-daily protests since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel’s south, initiating the ongoing war between Israel and the terror group that has controlled Gaza since 2006.
Within Our Lifetime expressed support for the attack, defending “whatever means necessary… with no exceptions and no fine print.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382211
Ahmed Kahlot, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya, Gaza, confessed to the Shin Bet that the Hamas terrorist organization used his hospital as a military facility.
During his interrogation, Kahalot describes how Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, including hiding its operatives, carrying out military activity, moving around Hamas members, and even bringing a captured soldier to the hospital.
"They hide in hospitals because for them a hospital is a safe place. They won't be targeted when they are inside a hospital," Kahalot said.
https://www.newsweek.com/judge-engoron-ruling-donald-trump-fraud-trial-1853587
While rejecting Trump's argument to rule in his favor, Engorn highlighted some of the "fatal flaws" in the former president's defense, including the testimony from one of their expert witnesses in the trial, New York University Stern School of Business research professor Eli Bartov.
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday suspended several soldiers who appeared on video singing Hanukkah songs over the loudspeaker system in a mosque in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The incident came as the military continued a three-day operation in the city, a hotbed for terrorism, during which troops detained hundreds of suspects and seized weapons.
Footage circulating online showed the soldiers singing Hanukkah songs and the Jewish prayer “Shema Yisrael” (Hear, O Israel).
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382192
Rabbis of the Edah HaChareidis, a conservative haredi organization with anti-Zionist views, published a strongly worded letter yesterday against haredi journalists they believe to be promoting nationalism and combined enlistment of men and women. The Rabbis were led by Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, a member of the organization's rabbinical court.
Dr. Ramsey Khasho, chief clinical officer at Children’s Health Council in Palo Alto, who works with youth in crisis, argues that it’s reductive to begin and end discussions of mental illness among youth by talking about smartphones and social media. According to Khasho, one of the reasons we see a rise in youth hospitalizations for mental health is because we’ve increased awareness of mental illnesses, making it more acceptable for parents to access treatment for their children.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-778447
Nearly half of British Jews have considered leaving the UK since October 7 due to antisemitism, according to polling data collected by the Campaign Against Antisemitism. Four out of five Jews surveyed identified as Zionists.
The polling was conducted from November 12-17 among 3,744 respondents.
Based on the CAA survey data, 69% of UK Jews agree (40% of them strongly) that they were less likely than they were before the October 7 massacre to show visible signs of their Jewishness, such as wearing a Star of David or kippah. Another 15% disagreed, and the rest did not say.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/strategy-not-tactics-israel-hamas-war/675863/
Both sides are driven by total objectives. For Hamas, this is nothing new: In its 1988 covenant, it committed itself to the annihilation of the state of Israel, and then and since, to the extermination of as many of its citizens as possible. Like most extreme Islamist movements, it distinguishes only loosely, or not at all, between Jews and Israelis. This objective justifies in its view the ultimate in violence, all of which was horrifically on display in the October 7 massacre, accompanied by the murder of children, rape, torture, beheading, and kidnapping. Behind its strategy is a long-term theory of victory: that such attacks, coupled perhaps with strikes by Hezbollah and Iran, or the risings of Palestinians in the West Bank, will cause Israel to collapse. In Hamas’s view, Israeli counterattacks on Gaza, which will inevitably kill many civilians, contribute to its objectives because they undermine support for Israel abroad, and inflame its many enemies.
In the Israel-Hamas war, the horror of the act of rape grips us and shocks the consciousness. The idea that these mass rapes were not simply the spoils of war but a tactic intended to instigate the current Israeli response must be realistically considered. Hamas has shown itself to be capable of playing a deadly long game and proven itself implacable, cruel and single-minded. As Hamas seeks to crush Israel from the river to the sea once and for all, it draws Israel into the predictable response that will see tens of thousands of Gazans killed. Hamas appears willing to make that sacrifice. The undecided question is whether Hamas will rise out of the rubble that remains of Gaza, however miserably, by this “risk it all” bet.
https://www.newsweek.com/hamas-gen-z-river-sea-1853419
The majority of young Americans are the only age group where the majority does not want a two-state solution, which is heavily favored by older Americans. More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds want Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians, while 32 percent favor two states.
But the poll also showed there were strong anti-Hamas and pro-Israel sentiments among Gen Z, suggesting the conflict is much more complicated than simply siding with Israel or Palestinians.
Earlier Saturday at a rally in New Hampshire, Trump said illegal immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase that closely mirrors one used several times in Hilter’s “Mein Kampf” to describe the “influx of foreign blood” as “poison.”
Trump on Saturday also quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin and praised dictators Hungarian President Viktor Orban and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Trump said “even Vladimir Putin” says that President Joe Biden has led “politically motivated prosecution of his political rival.”
My thoughts then turned to Harvard undergrads. Imagine if you were an 18-year-old Jewish or Israeli student, or even a pro-Israel Catholic like me, and you wanted to study for your chemistry final in the Widener Reading Room on a Sunday morning. Imagine being confronted by this protest, obviously condoned by Harvard’s leadership and commandeered by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the group behind the notorious statement that holds “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack.
United Nations officials called for an investigation into an Israeli military raid on a Gaza hospital during which patients died and the armed forces said they detained scores of Hamas militants and recovered a trove of weapons and other military equipment, some of which officials said was hidden inside an infant incubator and a resuscitation station for newborns.
Israeli forces withdrew from Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza on Saturday after entering the facility on Tuesday. The U.N. Human Rights Office said it was calling for an investigation of what transpired during the raid, citing allegations from medical staff that patients had died because of the conditions in the facility.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/jewish-american-family-wrestles-over-israel-2b8019f1?mod=hp_lista_pos2
Emanuelle Sippy, a 20-year-old junior at Princeton University who heads the campus’s Alliance of Jewish Progressives, came to believe in recent years that Israel is an apartheid state guilty of committing human-rights abuses. The war in Gaza has reinforced her views, and she has responded by participating in vigils, walkouts and other actions demanding a cease-fire.
Sippy’s father, David Wirtschafter—a Reform rabbi in Lexington, Ky., who attended rabbinical school in Jerusalem—aches when he hears some of her harshest criticisms of Israel. And Sippy’s grandmother, Carol Wirtschafter, who lived with her husband and children in Jerusalem during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, laments that Sippy has lost hope for the country.
“I think she’s given up on Israel,” she said. “That makes me sad.”
https://hamodia.com/columns/language-at-a-loss-for-words/
Among the casualties of the war are the very words used to describe it. As the words get repeated, the meaning drains out of them. Even words like brutal, heinous, horrific, monsters and atrocities have become anemic, feeble, lifeless …
https://jacobin.com/2023/12/psychiatry-history-trauma-politics-medicine-mental-health
Arab countries will not agree to normalize ties with Israel unless Jerusalem agrees to a two-state solution, Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Sunday.
The comments amounted to a rare recognition by a Republican lawmaker that Palestinian statehood is a condition for the expansion of the Abraham Accords, a series of US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states negotiated under the administration of former US president Donald Trump. They came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was weeks into a public post-October 7 campaign in which he has vowed to block the strategy.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/15/nixon-trump-young-conservatives-00131637
“If we can rehabilitate Richard Nixon in a balanced and fair manner — or even if we can just create questions in the public discourse about Nixon and about Nixon’s presidency — then I think, by way of analogy, it will provoke similar questions about Donald Trump,” said the conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who published a lengthy defense of Nixon earlier this year for City Journal. “It will give us the kind of template, it will give us the precedents, it will give us the skills, where we can more effectively defend a conservative president against these kinds of attacks.”
The Toldos HaPoskim notes that the Rambam does not differentiate between halacha found in halachic discourse in Talmud and readily decides halacha based entirely on Agada or midrashim
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Majority of all respondents support Israel, but results from 18-24 age group show majority think IDF campaign ‘genocidal,’ while saying calls for genocide of Jews is are legitimate
Not until the Renaissance, however, did the subject of Judaism’s critical attitude to its own traditions lead to an open dispute, when the Mantuan scholar Azariah de’ Rossi, also influenced by the thinking of Christian contemporaries, dismissed the Aggadot as unreliable, considering them an invention, whose significance was primarily ethical. Azariah was of the opinion that the Aggadot could not be considered history and ought not to be taken literally since they consisted of “fabricated conjectures.” His opinion, however, was reached on a basis of a comparison between pagan, Christian and Jewish sources.
The central point of his approach: interpreting the words of the Sages must be done in a similar manner to the way the Sages themselves formulated their statements. And since their words are very deep, and were not derived through an ordinary process of evaluation, they should be interpreted in a similar manner, with understanding and deep contemplation, and not through axioms. This principle is mentioned many times in Maharal’s works.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/interesectionality-american-college/676350/
Thirty years from now, Americans will likely recall a witness table of presidents—representing not top corporations in one single sector, but the nation’s most powerful educational institutions—refusing to speak plainly, defiantly rejecting any sense that they are part of a “we,” and exhibiting smug moralistic certainty even as they embraced bizarrely immoral positions about anti-Semitism and genocide.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-777940
One hundred years ago, in November 1923, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, one of the greatest leaders of the Zionist movement and definitely the one with the greatest foresight, wrote in Berlin a seminal article in the Razsviet (Dawn, in Russian) newspaper, titled “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs).” His main argument was that in order for the Zionists to succeed in settling the Land of Israel and persist in living there, they must create an “Iron Wall” that will thwart Arab ambitions to eradicate the Zionist enterprise. It is worth quoting him at some length:
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf recently took to X to mourn the “catastrophic” decline in U.S. life expectancy.
But his post, which hit on smoking, diet, chronic illness and health care, ignored the obvious: People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID-19 waned. Yet public health agencies and medical societies are silent.
Harvard forces a Jewish student group to hide its menorah each night after its lighting over fears of vandalism that “won’t look good” for the Ivy League school, the rabbi of Harvard Chabad said.
“On our campus in the shadow of Widener Library, we in the Jewish community are instructed, ‘We’ll let you have the menorah, you made your point, OK. Pack it up, don’t leave it out overnight because there will be criminal activity we fear and it won’t look good’,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi said at a Hanukkah lighting Wednesday night.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan pressed Israeli leaders to shift from a reliance on airstrikes and ground assaults in Gaza toward targeted military operations and warned that a protracted conflict would make the Palestinian territory harder to govern after the war, U.S. officials said.
Sullivan’s meetings with Israeli political and military leaders Thursday seemed to have made little headway addressing the growing rift between the U.S. and Israel over civilian casualties, the length of the conflict, flagging international support for Israel’s campaign, and the future governance of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. is undertaking a full-court press in the region for the Israelis to begin to wrap up the conflict. U.S. officials have said privately the U.S. wants to see the fight end in weeks, not months, though the Biden administration continues to support Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas’s ability to wage military operations or govern Gaza.
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-admits-russia-suffered-huge-losses-ukraine-1852660
Despite the figures from Matveev, it is not clear that Putin was admitting to 363,000 lost soldiers. However, the figure does come close to the 315,000 claimed Russian troop casualties that were revealed in a leaked declassified U.S. intelligence document this week.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed in a Facebook post on Wednesday that Russia had lost 342,800 troops since first launching its invasion on February 24, 2022. The U.K. military also estimated in mid-November that 302,000 Russian personnel had been lost.
https://www.positive.news/society/the-finnish-approach-to-psychosis/
In the 1980s, Finnish psychiatrists developed an approach to treating mental illness that dramatically improved outcomes for those in crisis. As a five-year study of ‘open dialogue’ nears completion in the UK, Alex Riley – whose family has seen our mental healthcare system at close quarters – meets the doctors who believe the results could revolutionise treatment of mental illness in Britain, and beyond
An Australian mother who spent two decades in prison after she was wrongly found guilty of killing her four children had her convictions formally quashed Thursday, as her lawyers called for legal reform and “substantial” compensation.
Kathleen Folbigg was pardoned and freed in June on the recommendation of retired judge Tom Bathurst, who re-examined all the evidence put to her 2003 trial and found “reasonable doubt” as to her guilt.
The fact is that the Maharal was ignored for centries
There are two explanations given
1) He was overshadowed by the Arizal until the Chassidic world realized his true value and actively promoted and republished his works
In his letter of approbation to Rabbi Hartman’s work on Nesivos Olam, the late Rav Shmuel Auerbach attributes the relative eclipse of the Maharal’s writings to the appearance in Europe of the astounding new kabbalistic insights of the Maharal’s younger contemporary, the Arizal, which were brought from Tzfas to Europe by the Shelah Hakadosh. Though there is no indication that the Maharal knew of Lurianic Kabbalah, legend has it that the Arizal said on his deathbed, “There is another like me in the West,” referring to the Maharal.
https://mishpacha.com/a-page-from-his-book-2/
2) He is not part of the Mesorah, his Rebbe is unknown, and he presents a mixture of Kabbah Philosophy and ideas he made up - many of which are hard to understand
Rav Shlomo Fisher wrote
ציטוט מכ"י של רבינו זצוקללה".
(ודרך המהר"ל בזה בס' פירושי האגדות שלו דרך תמוהה ומסוכנת. ולא לחינם לא נדפס ספר זה עד דורנו ונשאר בכת"י, ודע עוד דהמהר"ל אינו מחכמי הקבלה המוסמכים, וכל דבריו דרך סברא בעלמא.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leib_Tropper
On 14 February 2010 Tropper was to be summoned to a meeting in the Yeshiva Bais Mikroh of Monsey where the Rabbonim were to demand that Tropper resign all his posts and leave Monsey. Before the meeting, Tropper signed an agreement which stated “In not fulfilling the requirement of Shulchan Aruch that a leader be 'Pirko No’eh' (פרקו נאה), the undersigned is relinquishing his position.” Tropper also stated that he "released all rights and severs any connection he has to his former Yeshiva in Monsey and withdraws forthwith as a trustee of the organization." Tropper also stated his agreement to move out of Monsey within a few months.[13][14]
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-777750
US President Joe Biden warned Israel that it was losing support for the Israel-Hamas war and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change the membership of his coalition which is largely opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-sends-warning-israel-netanyahu-1851798
U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is "starting to lose support" and that changes need to be made considering the mounting death toll in Gaza.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-777637
"This is the time to remind you, Mr. Secretary-General, that Yahya Sinwar himself was sentenced to five life sentences in Israel for murdering Palestinians – not Jews. Gaza should be freed from Hamas, not from Israel. Hamas is ISIS."
Ronen Bar continues: "Out of respect for the thousands of lives that have already been lost, and in order to save many more lives, please help us remove the rule of evil from the Gaza Strip and restore faith in the most basic human rights, human dignity and the value of human life, as written in the UN Charter. Help us restore the belief in equal rights between men and women, Palestinians, Israelis, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others," he implored.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/11/stefanik-democrats-higher-education-00131193
But it is the movement against the university presidents from a chorus of Democrats that suggests a possible realignment of a traditional political alliance, one that could see bipartisan pushback against the elitism of the ivory tower.
Ramban (Bereishis 49:10) In my opinion, the kings from other tribes, who ruled over Israel after David, went against the wish of their father Jacob by diverting the inheritance of Judah to another tribe. Now they relied on the word of Achiyah the Shilonite, the prophet who anointed Jeroboam, who said, And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not forever. But when [the ten tribes of] Israel continued to crown kings one after another of the rest of the tribes, and they did not revert to the kingdom of Judah, they transgressed the testament of the ancestor, and they were accordingly punished, just as Hosea said, They have set up kings, but not from Me.