What kind of a liberation movement purposely, with malice aforethought, murders a 9-month-old infant, a 4-year-old toddler and their terrorized mother?
What kind of world praises Hamas’ atrocities?
How “civilized” can people in the civilized West be if, in response to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, they continue to support the rape, torture, murder and kidnapping of civilians from southern Israel?
Or, just hours after Hamas announced that it would be returning the corpses of the Bibas children and
Bari Weiss warns threat is growing on right as well
By The Jewish Star
The “last thing” pro-Israel conservative stalwart Bari Weiss wanted to have to reckon with “is the extent of profound anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiment on large parts of the American right.”
“I’ve spent the past decade of my life so focused in so many ways on the excesses of the illiberal left,” she said on her Honestly podcast last Thursday. “Over the past several months, I feel like my gaze is now shifting to what’s happening on the right.”
Press group visits NYC shul
Representatives of the American Middle East Press Association discussed efforts to facilitate access by reporters and news media leaders to stories and key players in the region, at Congregation B’nai Avraham of Brooklyn Heights on Sunday. From left: AMEPA’s Kim Kamen and Suzanne Zionts, NY Post contributor Doree Lewak, and AMEPA media adisers Warren Cohn and Jeremy Pink. They were welcomed by CBA President Ellen Kamaras and Rabbi Aaron Raskin. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
Weiss famously quit a prominent editorial position at the New York Times in 2020 over its anti-Israel bias and later founded The Free Press.
“A lot of the illiberalism on the left … began as a fringe online movement that a lot of Democrats and a lot of liberals waved away because it was just some crazy influencers online,” she recalled. “Woe to the people … [who] believe that the things that Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are saying will not make an impact on the right, because they will.”
While some of the policy priorities voiced by President Trump have generated a whirlwind, there is “a profound unpredictability, not just of Trump but of the world right now,” she said.
“Trump went on Twitter and said there would be ‘hell to pay,’ sent a real-estate guy from the Bronx who seems to have accomplished, arguably, … more than Jake Sullivan and any of these fancy pointy heads over the past few years,” Weiss said. “Looked at another way, Trump is a
their mother, respond by violently attacking Orthodox Jews in Borough Park, the heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in which I grew up? No matter what our individual views may be, and whether or not we are religious, Jews are indigenous to
‘Beards
the Holy Land. We were there long before anyone else ever visited or occupied us.
There were always Jews there. Now, we are a sovereign nation in the Holy Land once again.
for Bibas’ meets tragic end
By Steven Goodstein
The Riverdale Press
It was an emotional week for a longtime Riverdale resident who vowed not to shave until two Israeli children hostages kidnapped by Hamas were released. Instead, their bodies were returned to Israel.
James Lapin, who has lived in Riverdale for the past 25 years, began his no-shave journey in January 2024 as he advocated for the release of Kfir Bibas, a 9-month-old infant, and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas, two of the more than 240 hostages kidnapped by Gazan terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
On Feb. 19, more than 500 days after they had been kidnapped, the two children, along with their mother, Shiri Bibas, 33, and longtime Israeli journalist, Oded Lifshitz, 83, were officially declared deceased.
Despite the long-held hope that the young hostages were alive, Hamas announced they had been killed a month after their kidnapping. Four bodies were returned to Israel the next day.
Lapin, who shaved his beard later that evening, explained his decision not to shave his facial hair or cut the hair on his head was a way to be connected to the Bibas boys until the two children returned home.
“I felt like I needed to do something in solidarity with the Bibas boys, on behalf of all hostages — and the hostages don’t have access to barber shops,” Lapin said.
The father of the boys, Yarden Bibas, was released on Feb. 1 as part of a Gaza ceasefire involving a hostages-and-prisoners exchange agreed upon by Israel and Hamas last month.
Riverdalian James Lapin grew out his beard for more than a year in solidarity with Israeli hostages.
Lapin, who got a haircut when the first hostages were returned on Jan. 19, continued to let his beard grow while monitoring developments.
“I was constantly checking for updates on released hostages, but I was reminded of the situation every time I would look in the mirror,” Lapin said.
The Kotel in Jerusalem. Courtesy G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection and LOC
Chesler…
Continued from page 1
Throughout many exiles, our culture, prayers, rituals, ethics and memories were centered upon, or radiated out from, the Holy Land. The language of our prayers and holy books was first Aramaic, then Hebrew; these languages have existed and been utilized for nearly 6,000 years.
However, if you search online for “the indigenous nature of Jews,” you will read this: “The Jewish people have a very ancient history in the land known both as Palestine and the Land of Israel.”
Known as Palestine? By whom? By those who wish to exterminate the Jewish presence in Israel, just as they have done in every Arab and Muslim country? By AI? Wikipedia? By left-wing billionaires in the West who are joined by the deep pocketed elite of Iran and Qatar?
What can I say that hasn’t already been said many times over? I am weary of telling the truth only to be met with the most ferocious lies.
I sent a fact-based study to a radical feminist in Australia about how Israel has not starved or genocidally exterminated civilians in Gaza, and she responded with a piece of Hamas propaganda to refute “my” truth.
The Jews in Boro Park fought back. The IDF fights back. We wordsmiths are fighting back.
Since Oct. 7, a close friend of mine in London — a woman who is not Jewish but has stood for both the truth and the Jews — has been suffering the loss of colleagues; Arab, Muslim and Southeast Asian women have turned on her and cut her off. Me? I’m long used to this. These cowards and conformists will never break my spirit. However, I have not yet solved the challenge of how to deprogram those suffering from mass psychosis, hysterical paranoia or a belief in inverted truths.
All I can write, again and again, is this: Whenever Hamas and its supporters accuse Israel of some crime, it must be taken as Hamas’ own confession. The genocidal maniacs are the Islamist terrorists, not the Israel Defense Forces. The practicing of gender and religious apartheid is not characteristic of Israelis, but it does describe Arab and Muslim culture, both historically and in our times. Many of us have said this over and over. Now, more people in the West are beginning to understand it as well.
The Orthodox Jews in Borough Park fought back. The Israel Defense Forces fights back. We wordsmiths are fighting back.
None of the pogroms we’re seeing against the Jews are spontaneous. Most are well-funded and well-organized uprisings meant to further terrorize grieving and vulnerable Jewish communities. The vicious verbal attacks, tearing down of hostage posters, smirks and curses of those who do so, jeering and menacing mobs, such as the masked and armed Hamas warriors who mocked and mobbed the three skeletal Israelis as they were being returned to Israel, and the encampments on college campuses — all are meant to traumatize and retraumatize our people in the hope that we will give up, quit, resign and disappear. Not just from the Holy Land but from life itself.
This has never happened before, and it will not happen now.
Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at CUNY. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Riverdale sends 120K ambulance to Magen David Adom in Israel
By ET Rodriguez The Riverdale Press
It was a spring-like day on Sunday as Rep. Ritchie Torres, along with local elected officials and community leaders, gathered at the Riverdale Y to dedicate a fully funded ambulance to ship to Israel amid the ongoing war.
The Riverdale Jewish Community Partnership said the decision to dedicate the ambulance was inspired by the harrowing story of Zvi Reder, an EMT with Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Reder awoke to the sound of thousands of rockets launched by Hamas as the border separating Israel from the Gaza Strip was breached by terrorists, The invaders killed more than 1,200 people and seized more than 240 hostages were taken into Gaza.
Despite the chaos, Reder immediately went to work treating the injured, risking his life to help those caught in the massacre. However, personal tragedy struck when Reder received a text from his son, Dor, who was at home on that fateful day.
“I can’t talk, there’s a lot of noise outside,” the text read.
Reder’s worst fears were realized when he later learned his son had been murdered by the terrorist group. Shortly after burying his son, he stood at the funeral of another fallen hero, Yarin Peled, an MDA volunteer and soldier whom he once hosted at his home.
The same month of the attack, the Riverdale partnership began collecting donations and raised more than $120,000 that they used to buy the ambulance they would send to Magen David Adom.
On Sunday, community leaders unveiled the state-of-the-art vehicle with an inscrip-
Warns…
Continued from page 1
guy that really likes to make deals,” suggesting a possible compromise with Iran.
“What’s not to love” in the first Trump administration, she asked rhethorically, but “there are other impulses” as well, leading to actions that are “vengeful, unprincipled and do not bode well for anybody because there doesn’t seem to be any underlying principled worldview or framework.'
“Jews do not do well in a political context of tribalism, of extremism, of identity politics, of right or left, of group thinking that demands conformity and orthodoxy and is threatened by difference,” Weiss continued. “They do not do well in an era in which mobs are popular, and they don’t do well in a moment where people, again, of the right and the left, are calling for the burning down and the abolishing and the tearing down of our rules-based law-based order.”
Weiss recalled growing up “in a context where there never seemed to be any tension at all between my Jewishness and my Zionism and my identity as a proud American. None. They were all harmonious. Who can say that today?
“So it’s important to look reality squarely in the face to not delude ourselves … and then to figure out the right ways to protect ourselves, to protect our community, and also to protect the country that allowed for this tiny window that Jews for 2,000 years were never been able to experience.”
Link to the podcast: bit.ly/3ENp4r1
tion on both ambulance doors that read, “Presented to the people of Israel in love and solidarity by the Riverdale Jewish Community Partnership.”
“There is a special relationship between the United States and Israel,” Torres said. “In Riverdale, this connection runs deep. We have a vibrant Jewish community here and we feel a moral obligation to support Israel in this moment of trauma, particularly in a postOct. 7 world.”
The public was welcome to view the and inspect the ambulance, including a young red-headed child who posed for a photo while sitting in the back seat with a large smile across his face and who looked strikingly similar to Ariel Bibas, the 4-year-old Israeli hostage whose body was returned by Hamas earlier this month.
“It’s a powerful thing to see how our community comes together,” said Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson at the dedication ceremony. “We must do our part to take care
of our brothers and sisters in Israel, especially in light of the devastation they continue to endure.”
Melissa Sigmond, CEO of the Riverdale Y, which helped coordinate the event, reflected on the broader importance of the initiative.
“We’re a community center, but we also have a global vision. Supporting MDA and sending this ambulance is a reflection of our values of caring and inclusivity.”
As the ambulance is set to be shipped to Israel, it will join MDA’s fleet which operate 24/7 while responding to medical emergencies, terror attacks and natural disasters. MDA’s mission, supported by American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA), is to help ensure that Israel’s first responders are equipped with the resources they need to continue their vital work.
“This ambulance is more than just a vehicle. It’s a symbol of hope, unity and the unbreakable bond between Riverdale and Israel,” Sigmond added.
‘Beards for Bibas’…
Continued from page 1
Following the news released on Feb. 20, Lapin reflected on the “emotional” and “difficult” chapter which didn’t have a happy ending after holding out hope that the children and their mother would return.
“It’s sad it had to end this way, but there’s also a relief of knowing I can let go of the constant anxiety of thinking, ‘are they dead,’ ‘are they alive,’ and ‘when will they be brought back home,’ he said.
Lapin, now sporting a five o’clock shadow, said the inspiration for his “Beards4Bibas” movement began after participating in several weekly “Run 4 Their Lives” marches, which are held every Sunday in Riverdale, to acknowledge the captives kidnapped by Hamas.
Lapin said his wife, Ann Lapin, doesn’t like facial hair but “understands the premise of the beard.”
“It’s difficult to process the trauma, especially when it’s all the time, so I’m relieved in a way that this chapter seems to be over,” he said.
Last year, Lapin received a community service award from Bronx Community Board 8 for hosting Friday night dinners at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (the Bayit) for more than 15 years.
As of last Thursday, it was reported that five dozen captives were still believed to be held hostage in Gaza.
A child tries out a seat in the new MDA ambulance being sent by the Riverdale community to Israel, while Rep. Ritchie Torres tries out the driver’s seat. American Friends of Magen David Adom
James Lapin shaved last Thursday night after he learned two Israeli children hostages, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, were confirmed deceased.
MIND & BODY
Does health care for terrorists betray Israelis? HEALTH,
The question of whether it is immoral to treat terrorists in Israeli hospitals stirs strong emotions and deep ethical debates. It has been an intense discussion in Israeli society over the years and, particularly, post-Oct. 7, 2023.
In Israel, the prevailing belief is that doctors and nurses have a moral obligation to provide medical care to all in need. Israel’s health-care system, renowned for its expertise and advancement, stands out for its practice of treating terrorists who have attacked, wounded and murdered its citizens. Recent example includes Hamas terrorists who were injured while carrying out mass slaughter, torture and rape against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Following the brutal massacre on Oct. 7, Israel seemed to reconsider its stance, leading the Israeli Ministry of Health to issue a directive that captured terrorists should only be treated in prison facilities. This decision was ultimately disregarded. Although some terrorists were treated in prison facilities, Hamas terrorists were also transferred to civilian hospitals in Israeli cities, including Ramat Gan, Petach Tikvah and Beersheva.
During the ensuing months of the ongoing
“Swords of Iron” war, Israeli hospitals continued to treat terrorists who were responsible for the rape, slaughter and torture of many, alongside their victims. This placed an immense strain on the health-care system, which was already reeling from the horrific events of Oct. 7 and the influx of thousands of injured soldiers from the subsequent conflict.
Treating terrorists isn’t new. In fact, years before Oct. 7, Israeli doctors saved the life of Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Hamas massacre. In 2004, while imprisoned, Sinwar was diagnosed with a brain tumor by an Israeli doctor who successfully saved his life.
Sinwar reportedly acknowledged the doctor’s role in his survival and, upon his release in 2011, promised to repay the debt he owed. He fulfilled this promise by orchestrating the sadistic slaughter of Oct. 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people with thousands more injured. Among those killed was the doctor’s nephew, who was killed after attempting to fight off five terrorists before being abducted to Gaza and succumbing to his injuries there.
According to one news article, senior doctors at Hasharon Hospital in central Israel reported that terrorists receive all-encompassing medical care, with no clear policy between essential and non-essential treatment.
Security risks are undoubtedly associated with substantial costs linked to treating highrisk terrorists. These include the expenses associated with maintaining high-security measures to prevent escapes, protect other
patients and ensure the safety of medical staff. Health-care expenses also include the costs of medical professionals, hospital visits and medications, plus the provision of food and other basic necessities.
It is deeply troubling that Israel’s citi-
Iwould like to raise three critical issues at this juncture.
•First, on the principle of the sanctity and preservation of life. Does this principle apply when it comes to individuals who have actively engaged in violence and terrorism, causing immense harm and suffering to innocent civilians?
Should the values of human dignity and life be extended to these individuals, or should Israel make exceptions for those who commit horrific acts of terror?
•Second, does treating terrorists in Israeli hospitals inadvertently support their cause? In many cases, terrorists receive top-tier medical care, often saving their lives, only for them to return to their extremist and murderous activities once they recover.
zens are forced to bear such a heavy burden, effectively paying to restore the health of those who seek to harm them and who could potentially return and murder the very people who helped them.
Despite all this, Israel’s Medical Association maintains that it must continue to treat these terrorists. In mid-2024, the Israeli Medical Association published a letter stating that “treating Hamas terrorists is our duty as doctors.”
However, the real question one must ask is this: Is Israel acting ethically when it treats terrorists, or is it behaving immorally and betraying its own citizens?
•Lastly, providing health care to terrorists sends a troubling message of moral equivalence between the victims of terrorism and the perpetrators. This undermines Israel’s security interests and weakens public trust in the ethical use of medical resources.
While health care should ideally be impartial and a medical professional has a duty to save lives, society must ensure that those who inflict harm are held accountable. There must be a limit to compassion when it comes to those who commit acts of violence and state that they are determined to continue doing so.
Oshy Ellman is executive director of media and international relations for World Likud. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
There’s a lot of Jewish at this year’s Oscars
By Alan Zeitlin, JNS
The Oscars ceremony at the annual Academy Awards in Hollywood has offered some drama of its own these past few years. There was Will Smith, who slapped the show’s host — fellow actor and comedian Chris Rock — on stage. There was last year’s British director Jonathan Glazer, who in his speech in accepting the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for “The Zone of Interest” proclaimed a “refute” of his Jewishness, citing the “Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip” as his rationale. It may be quieter this year, but it is also likely that for the second straight year, the Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role will go to men playing Jewish characters.
Cillian Murphy took home the Best Actor trophy last year for his portrayal of Jewish scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, while castmate Robert Downey Jr. snagged the prize for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for portraying Navy Rear Adm. Lewis Strauss, who Oppenheimer mocks for using a less Jewish pronunciation of his name.
In this year’s ceremony, scheduled for Sunday, March 2, Jewish actor Adrien Brody is the favorite to win Best Actor for his role as Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor Laszlo Toth, while Kieran Culkin is a virtual lock to win Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his depiction of Benji Kaplan, a troubled young Jewish man who with his cousin visits the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland, in “A Real Pain.”
Best Actor
Brody became the youngest man to win Best Actor in 2003, when he was just 29. He earned the award for his performance as Polish Jewish pianist and classical composer Władysław Szpilman, who died in 2000, in “The Pianist.” In “The Brutalist,” Brody plays Laszlo Toth, a created character who survives the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany and tries to make it in America as a Jew, while facing many challenges.
In the film, Toth comes first to New York, and then
Pennsylvania, with nothing, and gets wrongly accused of something. He yearns for his wife to join him in America. He is charismatic, creative and funny but has a hot temper and a problem with drugs. This type of tale has been told before; it’s the classic immigrant story, though one that resonates with the times.
“Laszlo really is flawed, and that’s what’s so beautiful about the storytelling — to have a protagonist that is a human being, that’s got afflictions and all kinds of things he’s contending with,” Brody said at a recent appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. “But in spite of that he’s someone you root for, and someone who has a purpose … .”
Timothée Chalamet, also Jewish, earned a Best Actor nomination for his depiction of a young Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.” What’s most impressive is that he sings all his own vocals. Dylan, Jewish and born in Duluth, Minn., has always remained somewhat of an enigma — thus, the double entendre of the film’s title. In interviews, the 29-yearold said he gained 20 pounds for the role.
Best Supporting Actor
Two stars of the hit Max show “Succession” are up against each other in the Best Actor for a Support Role: Culkin and Jeremy Strong.
In “A Real Pain,” Culkin plays Benji Kaplan, a charismatic and sentimental man who can light up a room with his energy and antics. He heads to Poland to see the hometown of his deceased, beloved grandmother with his equally beloved cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg), a much more subdued and introverted person. They join a group of tourists with a quirky guide and spend a day at Majdanek, from which their grandmother survived during World War II and the Holocaust.
Culkin brings humor from his “Succession” character, joking at the airport when David fears Benji could be taken into custody for carrying marijuana.
“They’re gonna arrest two Jews in Poland for a little bit of weed?” Benji quips. “That’s a good look for the Polish people.”
Strong is every bit as good as Culkin as Jewish attorney Roy Cohn in “The Apprentice” which chronicles how Cohn mentored Donald Trump to work the levers of power.
In the film, the character throws a few Yiddish words around. “I want to be armed to the teeth when I put her yutz of a husband on the stand,” Cohn says as he reviews a divorce case while wearing a bathrobe and calling his dog a “shmuck.”
Best Actress
Jewish actress Mikey Madison brings her Brooklyn accent (real name Mikaela Madison Rosberg) and knocks it out of the park in her debut lead role as a sex worker who falls in love with the son of rich Russian parents in “Anora.”
She is called to meet Ivan (Jewish actor Mark Eydelshteyn) because he prefers someone who speaks Russian. After he pays her to sleep with him for several days, he suggests that they go to Las Vegas to get married.
Things get crazy when Ivan’s parents send goons who become violent and see Anora as nothing but a prostitute. While she may lose the award to Demi Moore, star of “The Substance,” Madison has a puncher’s chance.
Best Supporting Actress
Felicity Jones is outstanding as the wife of Laszlo, a Holocaust survivor named Erzsebet. While she isn’t in much of the first half of the three-hour and thirtyfive-minute film, she makes her presence felt in the second half and has some powerful scenes. While not expected to win, her performance is one of the reasons “The Brutalist” should get the Oscar for Best Picture.
Best Picture
‘The Brutalist’
This is the best film of the year; it’s not even close. That it was made in 33 days for only $10 million is hard to believe.
At the heart of the movie is a battle between Toth and his benefactor, Harrison Lee Van Buren (an excellent Guy Pearce), who is first rude to him, then admires him and hires him before doing something diabolical that no one could forgive.
The film asks: What is an individual’s breaking point? How much betrayal can a person take? When is it time to keep fighting, and when is it smarter to get up and leave? It is majestic, gritty and takes hold of one’s soul.
Social media was abuzz debating whether or not “The Brutalist” is a “Zionist” movie, often in a negative way. In an early scene, David Ben-Gurion announces the establishment of the modern-day State of Israel. While it is clearly a film about a Jewish man regrouping after World War II and the Holocaust — trying to assimilate into America and overcome challenges — it is open to interpretation about whether or not it is a “Jewish” film.
‘A Real Pain’
There is a scene showing a gas chamber at Majdanek and many Jewish references, but what is most noteworthy about “A Real Pain” is that it is partially a buddy movie that also educates on the Holocaust and
is accessible to Gen Z.
Eisenberg could have certainly gotten a Best Actor nomination, though he did nab one for Best Screenplay. He plays a neurotic character with a regular job, a wife and a young child, who wants to know his cousin better. He does a fine job in acting and with his script, though the Jewish history of this film remains stuck in the past.
‘A Complete Unknown’
Directed by James Mangold, the film showcases Chalamet as Dylan, whose real name is Robert Zimmerman. The film keeps Dylan as a mystery and doesn’t seek to answer questions many have about him. Not expected to win, it’s very likable by all age groups.
‘Dune: Part Two’
Chalamet had a good year; he also stars in the sci-fi flick that will likely miss out on the major awards but has a chance for Best Visual Effects or Best Sound. He plays the main character Paul Atreides, who battles evil people on a desert-like planet. It’s perplexing that director Denis Villeneuve didn’t get a nomination, as this film is so beautifully crafted that every scene could be its own painting. It also boasts the best fight scene of the year as Paul squares off against (Austin Butler) who plays Feyd-Rautha, one of the best villains ever.
‘Anora’
Written and directed by Sean Baker, the film boasts two leads who are Jewish actors, Madison and Edelshteyn. Expect big things from both actors. A movie with wild moments and much nudity, it has become a hit with younger audiences. “Anora” is the favorite to win “Best Original Screenplay.”
Best Documentary
‘No Other Land’
This film, which is the favorite to win, follows Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian activist and attorney, Basel Adra. Directed by Adra, Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal, it was shot from 2019 to 2023. It depicts Israeli soldiers assigned to Judea and Samaria who are rude and bordering on cruel. They routinely knock down houses built illegally, such as those in a collection of Arab villages in Masafer Yatta. Basel says his first memory is of his father being arrested at a protest against Israeli land use.
This is not a documentary showing both sides of an issue, nor does it provide much in the way of historical or political context. The focus is to highlight the plight of this particular family. The title could, of course, refer to Israel as well.
Some will be disappointed by the lack of inclusion of a film on the events of Oct. 7, 2023, but a spate of films either already made or in the works should be eligible in the future.
Best Original Score
Jewish musician Daniel Blumberg has a shot to win “Best Original Score” for “The Brutalist.” His sweeping music gives the movie the feel of an epic.
Biggest Snub
‘September 5’
While it did get a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, “September 5” should have certainly been up for Best Picture. It is Jewish through and through.
The film focuses on ABC sports journalists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, who because of their access to the Games take on the news story when Black September terrorists take Israeli athletes and coaches hostage. There isn’t a tension-free minute, and the acting is superb.
The film stars Jewish actor John Magaro and is directed by Tim Fehlbaum. In one of the biggest mistakes in journalism history, the media outlet first reported that the hostages were saved and that the terrorists had been killed, only to have to backtrack and announce the truth: that 11 Israelis were murdered.
Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” A24 Films
Timothée Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown.” Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain.” Searchlight Pictures
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Everything’s rich at New Orleans’ Mardi Gras
Let the good times roll! In New Orleans, that would be Mardi Gras, a citywide carnival celebration that spans three riotous months beginning on Jan. 6 and culminates with Mardi Gras (or “Fat Tuesday”) on March 4.
t’s all about music, parades, floats, food, drink and wild excitement. It’s estimated that more than a million people, locals and visitors, fill the streets during Mardi Gras. All across the city is revelry, with parades day and night. Beads of purple, green and gold — colors representing justice, faith and power — are tossed to spectators and party-goers.
Deadly violence on New Year’s Day rocked Bourbon Street and the local community, but New Orleans is a hardy city, in some ways still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Mardi Gras is the highlight of its year — a tradition with religious roots; indeed, Catholic iconography — that the city is determined to observe. Domestic terrorism is not going to deter a time-honored institution that historically has involved all residents to some effect, including those in the Jewish community.
Alan Smason, editor of the Crescent City Jewish News who was born and bred in New Orleans, notes the proximity between Mardi Gras festivities and the Jewish holiday of Purim. Even the colors associated with the holidays harken to royalty, including that of Queen Esther in Persia.
Mardi Gras is the last day of carnival season. It’s also the last night of eating rich, fatty foods as Christians prepare for fasting associated with Lent, which counts up to Easter.
“It’s not just one day, it’s a month of celebration,” says Smason.
Local Jews not only enjoy the parades and marching bands that are a common denominator of the festivities but often participate in them. And they definitely go with their families to watch them and take advantage of all the city has to offer during this time.
Smason also points out that the event has been known for its tight security with police and Homeland Security officers on the streets, where visitors and locals throng the
French Quarter. New Orleans was also the site of the Super Bowl 2025 at the Caesars Superdome on Feb. 9, which went off without a hitch.
Todd Schwartz is an innkeeper and “prison warden” at the Inn at the Old Jail, once the destination of criminals and vagrants. The Queen Anne Victorian building has been impeccably restored by the Schwartz brothers to a boutique guesthouse. It is in the Tremé section of the city, with cafes and jazz clubs within walking distance.
“The city is all set to celebrate,” Schwartz said. “Locals are out in droves with parades, music, throwing out beads — nothing has changed.”
As for the inn, he says there have been no cancellations.
New Orleans is one of the best foodie cities
in America. While the fried beignets at four Café Du Monde locaitons are a tourist tradition (and have kosher certification — daily, chalav stam, non-yoshon), most of the city’s cuisine — a combination of French, Spanish, Cajun and African (think gumbo), with a heavy emphasis on seafood — will be beyond reach.
Most of recipes below are easily cooked up in the kosher kitchen. Creamiest Grits is a comfort dairy dish similar to what’s offered at Tujague’s. Steelhead trout gives the Chartres Street recipe a mild, delicate texture, perfect to show off the zesty sauce.
As for King Cake, dozens of recipes are out there. It’s a Mardi Gras tradition going back to the Middle Ages. The version below starts with Gesundheit Kuchen (“Blessing Cake”), a trea-
sured Hofman family recipe. Super easy, the result is a delicate pound cake, slathered with creamy frosting and dusted with the traditional purple, green and gold sugar sprinkles.
For a fleishig option, Dirty Rice may be prepared using chicken livers.
The recipe for Shortcut Café Brûlot comes from Jessica Harris, an African-American awardwinning cookbook author and culinary historian. Instead of the flamboyant drink served tableside, Harris has streamlined the drink to be easily prepared and served at home.
A fairly new addition to the city is the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, which shows a different kind of flavor — how the Jews of the American South have blended, added to
See Everything’s rich on page 14
Dirty Rice. Ethel G. Hofman Creamy Grits.
Amy Aletheia Cahill via WikiCommons via JNS
EthEl G. hofmAN
Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Alan Smason, Crescent City Jewish News
Everything’s rich at New Orleans’ Mardi Gras…
and taken away elements in and from the areas they have lived.
If you can’t be in New Orleans, then bring Mardi Gras home with any of the recipes below.
Dirty Rice (Meat)
Serves 6
Cook’s Tips: •Substitute chicken livers for ground beef. •Kosher Cajun Seasoning is available from Pereg online.
Ingredients:
• 2 tsp. vegetable oil
• 1 lb. lean ground beef, crumbled
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 cup celery, thinly sliced
• 2 tsp. bottled chopped garlic
• 2 tsp. Cajun Seasoning
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1-1/2 cups white rice, uncooked
• 3-1/2 cups beef broth
• 2 to 3 Tbsp. bottled diced pimento, drained
• sliced green onion to garnish (optional)
Directions:
In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, heat the oil and the ground beef over medium heat. Cook the meat, stirring for 5 minutes or until no pink remains.
Add the onion, celery, garlic, Cajun Seasoning and salt. Stir to mix.
Add the rice and beef broth. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring often. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes longer or until rice is cooked.
Stir in the pimento. Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with green onion. Serve hot.
Creamiest Grits (Dairy)
Serves 4 to 6
Cook’s Tips: •Grits are coarsely ground corn (hominy). They can be cooked with water or milk. This dish is made richer by using heavy or light cream. •For cheesy grits, stir a half-cup of grated cheese, such as cheddar or Parmesan, into the hot grits.
Ingredients:
• 3 cups water (or milk)
• 1 cup heavy or light cream
• 4 Tbsp. butter
• 3/4 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 cup grits (not instant grits)
• 1 Tbsp. plain yogurt
Directions:
In a medium pot, bring the water, cream, margarine and salt to a boil.
Gradually pour in the grits, whisking constantly.
Reduce the heat to medium-low. Stir constantly until the grits are tender and creamy, 20 to 25 minutes.
Stir in the yogurt to blend. Pour into bowls. Serve hot.
Chartres Street Trout (Pareve)
Serves 4 to 6
Cook’s Tips: •Salmon is a good substitute for steelhead trout. •For those who mix dairy and fish, substitute the margarine for butter.
Ingredients:
• 2-1/2 to 3 pounds steelhead trout, cut into 6 to 8 pieces
• 1 stick (4 ounces) margarine, cut into 8 pieces
• 4 to 5 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice (juice of 2 large lemons)
• 1/2 tsp. hot sauce
• 1/2 cup large capers
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• bread of choice for toasted wedges
Directions:
Preheat oven to 415 degrees. Spray a baking dish with nonstick baking spray. Place the trout in a prepared baking dish. Dot it with the margarine. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Cover loosely with foil. Bake in preheated oven 15 to 20 minutes or until fish flakes easily. Place in a serving dish and keep warm.
Add the lemon juice and hot sauce to the liquids left in the baking dish. Stir in the capers. Pour over the trout.
Serve hot with wedges of toasted bread spread with margarine.
Kings Cake or ‘Mardi Gras’ Cake (Dairy)
Serves 12 to 15
Cook’s Tips:
•Colored sugar for dusting is available in the supermarket baking section. •Add the milk gradually, a tsp. at a time, until the mixture is softly spreadable.
Ingredients:
• 1 stick (4 ounces) butter, softened
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 2 rounded Tbsp. of sour cream or plain yogurt
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• Porcelain baby (optional)
Frosting:
• 1-1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 2 Tbsp. butter, melted
• 3 to 4 Tbsp. of milk
• green, purple and yellow sanded sugar
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 10inch Bundt pan with nonstick baking spray. In a large bowl, beat the butter, cream cheese, sour cream or yogurt, and the sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time with a half-cup of flour. Add the baking powder and vanilla with the last half-cup of flour, beating well after each addition. Spoon the batter into the prepared
Bundt pan.
Bake in a preheated oven for 55 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire tray.
For the frosting: Measure the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl. Make a well in the center and pour in the butter, plus 3 Tbsp. of milk. Stir to mix. The mixture should be soft but not runny. Spread over the top of the cooled cake. Sprinkle with sections of green-, purple- and gold-colored sugar. Cut into wedges to serve.
Jessica Harris’s Shortcut Café Brûlot (Pareve)
Serves 4
Cook’s Tips: •Substitute Sabra for Cointreau or Grand Marnier. •Jessica B. Harris is an American culinary historian, college professor, cookbook author and journalist.
Ingredients:
• 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp. fresh orange juice
• 1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick
• 4 whole cloves
• 3/4 cup (6 ounces) orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier, Cointreau or Triple Sec
• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) cognac
• 4 cups brewed strong coffee, hot Directions:
Stir together the lemon juice, orange juice, cinnamon stick and cloves in a large heatproof bowl until combined. Set aside.
Heat the orange liqueur and cognac in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until heated through, about 2 minutes.
Add the cognac mixture to the lemon juice mixture in a bowl.
Stir in hot coffee. Serve immediately. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
King Cake. Alan Smason, Crescent City Jewish News Hot coffee. Cocoparisienne, Pixabay via JNS
A marching band during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Alan Smason, Crescent City Jewish News
Steelhead trout. Fishbio via JNS
Jewish Star Torah columnists:
•Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native •Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn
•Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem
Contributing writers:
•Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l,
former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh
Ki Sisa (Fri is Purim, Sat is Shushan Purim) Candles: 6:42• Havdalah: 7:52
Fri March 28 / Adar 28
Shabbat Hachodesh
Candles: 6:57 • Havdalah: 8:07
Fri April 4 / Nissan 6
Vayikra Candles: 7:05 • Havdalah: 8:14
Carefully building an architecture of holiness
•Rabbi Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi, Great Synagogue of Sydney •Rabbi Yossy Goldman, life rabbi emeritus, Sydenham Shul, Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association. rabbi Sir
From here to the end of the book of Exodus the Torah describes, in painstaking detail and great length, the construction of the Mishkan, the first collective house of worship of the Jewish people. Precise instructions are given for each item — the Tabernacle itself, the frames and drapes, and the various objects it contained — including their dimensions. So for example we read:
Make the Tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim woven into them by a skilled worker. All the curtains are to be the same size — twenty-eight cubits long and four cubits wide. … Make curtains of goat hair for the tent over the Tabernacle — eleven altogether. All eleven curtains are to be the same size — thirty cubits long and four cubits wide. … Make upright frames of acacia wood for the Tabernacle. Each frame is to be ten cubits long and a cubit and a half wide.” Ex. 26:1-16
And so on. But why do we need to know how big the Tabernacle was? It did not function in perpetuity. Its primary use was during the wilderness years. Eventually it was replaced by the Temple, an altogether larger and more magnificent structure. What then is the eternal significance of the dimensions of this modest, portable construction?
To put the question more sharply still: is not the very idea of a specific size for the home of the Shechinah, the Divine Presence, liable to mislead? A transcendent G-d cannot be contained in space. Solomon said so: But will G-d really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this Temple I have built. 1 Kings 8:27
Isaiah said the same in the name of G-d Himself:
Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house you will build for Me? Where will My resting place be? Isaiah 66:1
No physical space, however large, is big enough. On the other hand, no space is too small. So says a striking Midrash: When G-d said to Moses, “Make Me a Tabernacle,” Moses said in amazement, “The glory of the Holy One blessed be He fills heaven and earth, and yet He commands, Make me a Tabernacle?” … G-d replied, “Not as you think do I think. Twenty boards on the north, twenty on the
No physical space is big enough, and no space is too small.
south and eight in the west are sufficient. Indeed, I will descend and confine My presence even within one square cubit.” Shemot Rabbah 34:1 What difference could it make whether the Tabernacle was large or small? Either way, it was a symbol, a focus, of the Divine Presence that is everywhere, wherever human beings open their heart to G-d. Its dimensions should not matter.
I came across an answer in an unexpected and indirect way some years ago. I had gone to Cambridge University to take part in a conversation on religion and science. When the session was over, a member of the audience came over to me, a quiet, unassuming man, and said, “I have written a book I think you might find interesting. I’ll send it to you.” I did not know at the time who he was.
A week later the book arrived. It was called “Just Six Numbers,” subtitled “The deep forces that shape the universe.” With a shock I discovered that the author was the then Sir Martin, now Baron Rees, Astronomer Royal, later President of the Royal Society, the oldest and most famous scientific body in the world, and Master of Trinity College Cambridge. In 2011 he won the Templeton Prize. I had been talking to Britain’s most distinguished scientist.
Hmeant to signal, powerfully and palpably, that G-d exists throughout the cosmos. It was a man-made structure to mirror and focus attention on the Divinely-created universe. It was in space what Shabbat is in time: a reminder of creation.
order humans had ruined by their violence and corruption. G-d was about to destroy that world, leaving only Noah, the Ark, and what it contained as symbols of the vestige of order that remained, on the basis of which G-d would fashion a new order.
is book was enthralling. It explained that the universe is shaped by six mathematical constants which, had they varied by a millionth or trillionth degree, would have resulted in no universe or at least no life.
Had the force of gravity been slightly different, for example, the universe would either have expanded or imploded in such a way as to preclude the formation of stars or planets. Had nuclear efficiency been slightly lower the cosmos would consist only of hydrogen; no life would have emerged. Had it been slightly higher there would have been rapid stellar evolution and decay leaving no time for life to evolve. The combination of improbabilities was immense.
Torah commentators, especially the late Nechama Leibowitz, have drawn attention to the way the terminology of the construction of the Tabernacle is the same as that used to describe G-d’s creation of the universe. The Tabernacle was, in other words, a micro-cosmos, a symbolic reminder of the world G-d made.
The fact that the Divine Presence rested within it was not meant to suggest that G-d is here not there, in this place not that. It was
The dimensions of the universe are precise, mathematically exact. Had they differed in even the slightest degree the universe, or life, would not exist. Only now are scientists beginning to realize how precise, and even this knowledge will seem rudimentary to future generations. We are on the threshold of a quantum leap in our understanding of the full depth of the words: “How many are Your works, Lord; in wisdom You made them all” (Ps. 104:24).
The word “wisdom” here — as in the many times it occurs in the account of the making of the Tabernacle — means, “precise, exact craftsmanship”.
In one other place in the Torah there is the same emphasis on precise dimensions, namely, Noah’s Ark:
So make yourself an Ark of cypress wood. Make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The Ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Gen. 6:14-16
The reason is similar to that in the case of the Tabernacle. Noah’s Ark symbolized the world in its Divinely-constructed order, the
Precision matters. Order matters. The misplacement of even a few of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome can lead to devastating genetic conditions.
The famous Butterfly Effect — the beating of a butterfly’s wing somewhere may cause a tsunami elsewhere, thousands of miles away –tells us that small actions can have large consequences. That is the message the Tabernacle was intended to convey.
G-d creates order in the natural universe. We are charged with creating order in the human universe. That means painstaking care in what we say, what we do, and what we must restrain ourselves from doing.
There is a precise choreography to the moral and spiritual life as there is a precise architecture to the Tabernacle. Being good, specifically being holy, is not a matter of acting as the spirit moves us.
It is a matter of aligning ourselves to the Will that made the world. Law, structure, precision: of these things the cosmos is made and without them it would cease to be. It was to signal that the same applies to human behavior that the Torah records the precise dimensions of the Tabernacle and Noah’s Ark.
Locating and understanding our religiosity
Rabbi DR. tzvi
heRsh weinReb Orthodox Union
It was at a post-graduate seminar that I first became aware of the distinction many make between “religion” and “spirituality.” Members of the seminar were all PhDs in psychology with varying degrees of experience and expertise. They were of a wide range of religious persuasions. Some claimed they were not particularly “religious” but were “spiritual.”
The text that was referred to during this discussion was “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” by the noted American philosopher Wil-
liam James. The author argues that atheists and agnostics can have “religious” experiences.
Some time ago I found a Hebrew translation of James’ book in a Jerusalem bookstore and came away from that translation with a different understanding of what the author was trying to say. Most of all, I was impressed by the extent to which the translator used terminology that helped me understand that the Jewish expressions of religiosity with which I was personally familiar were the same as the “religious experiences” described by James, who incidentally was unfamiliar with Judaism.
What James called “religious experience” we would call “the presence of the Shechinah,” or the sensation that the Almighty is close to us, sees us, hears us, teaches us, and comforts us.
The concept of “religious experience” helps
us understand a distinction made by several commentators on the weekly portions that we are now “experiencing,” the parsha that we read two weeks ago, Yitro, and this week’s parsha, Terumah.
Ask yourself, When did you last feel the Shechinah’s presence?
The distinction was, to my knowledge, first made by Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno. He is impressed by the contrast between two verses, one near the end of Parshat Yitro and one which
begins this week’s parsha.
The first verse, Exodus 20:21, reads, in my loose translation, “In every place (b’chol makom) where I will mention My Name, I will approach you and bless you.”
The phrasing is an assertion of the Shechina’s presence in the world at large — “in every place!”
On the other hand, in this week’s parsha we read of the construction of the Mishkan, or tabernacle, a physical structure with walls and a ceiling, a very constricted space indeed. Note that the root of the word Mishkan is the same as in the word Shechinah. The message seems clear: G-d is only accessible in this single space, this limited structure, and nowhere else.
Rabbi Sforno, an Italian scholar of the late Middle Ages, wonders about this contradiction
See Weinreb on page 22
How long must we tolerate this outrage?
Ein milim (there are no words). Yet our only way to communicate our disgust is with words, as inadequate as they are.
While every “release” has been a sorry and sordid spectacle, this one was the most egregious, designed to torture, torment and humiliate. Not satisfied with murdering babies Ariel and Kfir and their mother Shiri, Hamas pulled a shocking bait and switch, substituting an unknown female corpse for that of Shiri. Then, as other hostages were being released
on Saturday (why always on Shabbat?) two more young men were kept in a vehicle feet away from freedom, torturing them with the taste of liberation only to whisk them back into captivity. And before their release, other Jewish captives were forced to debase themselves and “kiss” their captors.
How does one process such cruelty? What should be the Jewish response — or better yet what should be the Jewish expressions of power to prevent such humiliations from recurring?
Let us turn to a hostage situation recorded in the Torah. Dina, daughter of Leah and Yaakov, was kidnapped and violated by Shechem. Upon hearing this, Dina‘s brothers are “extremely angry, for he (Shechem) had committed an outrage in Israel. … Such a thing may not be done” (Bereishit 34:7).
Through subterfuge and guile, the brothers turn the tables on Shechem and his entire family and townsfolk, seemingly offering to make peace in exchange for their entering the covenant of circumcision, only to have Shimon and Levi slaughter every male as they lay aching in pain from their circumcisions.
Yaakov, who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole ordeal, admonishes his sons (and specifically the leaders, Shimon and Levi) not because what they did was wrong but because “you made life difficult for me with our neighbors; how are we going to continue to live here?”
The two brothers respond defiantly, “Hakezonah yaaseh et achotenu (should he treat our sister like a harlot)?“ (34:31). No response by Yaakov is recorded, although later on his death-
bed, Yaakov will curse their anger, although not their act (49:5–7).
While multiple commentators disagree as to the extent of why the actions by Shimon and Levi were legitimate, but they also justify Yaakov’s curse of their anger.
Chazal tell us in the Eleh Ezkera midrash that we recite on Yom Kippur, that the execution of the 10 great Holy Sages by the Romans is an atonement for our collective sin of the sale of Yosef by his brothers — a sin that the brothers never clearly did teshuva for.
On the face of it, this seems like a monstrous notion, that our greatest Mishnaic and Talmudic sages, who provided our understanding of the oral law and the framework for Rabbinic Judaism would die in the most heinous ways for sins
See Mazurek on page 22
What is it we mean when we talk of ‘giving’?
Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee. In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a Tzav Shmoneh). I still recall the middle of the night phone call from my battalion commander telling me to get my gear together and report to our assembly point. In response to my query of when I needed to be there his response was, “I’ll see you in an hour,” and when I asked how long I could expect to be in for his answer was: “Ein li musag” (“I have no idea”), which was a shock coming from a battalion commander.
The challenge of having your entire life turned upside down in an instant, with no time to prepare for it, is hard to describe. And this reserve duty was even more difficult as a result of how close we were to home. Usually, the long trip to whatever hot zone we were in also gave us a chance to adjust and put home in the back pocket. But this time, we were defending and patrolling a line that was ten minutes from home. And while it resulted in a very high motivation level, as we were protecting our homes and families, it was incredibly depressing to be dodging bullets or even stuck on patrol, with your wife and kids just minutes away and yet out of reach.
About a week into it, I stopped at one of our guard posts overlooking the Arab village of Chirbet Aliah (near Bethlehem) to check on a few of my men. I was listening to yet another soldier trying to understand what was going on when the lights of a civilian car came over the top of the hill. As it
was nearly three in the morning, we approached the vehicle with caution, until we smelled the incredible aroma of freshly brewed coffee coming from the open car.
The first stage of changing the world is developing the desire to change the world.
Josh, a good friend who had made aliyah late enough to have missed being called up to the army, could not stand the thought of his friends alone on patrol and decided to single-handedly bring coffee and cake to all the guard positions,
a feat he repeated nearly every night for almost two months!
It is hard to describe what an impact it makes on your morale to know someone cares that much, and I can honestly say his was a tremendous contribution to the war effort.
What is the nature of giving? This week’s portion, Terumah, begins with the notion of giving, and contributing: G-d says to Moshe: “Speak to the people of Israel and let them take for me an offering (terumah), from every man whose heart motivates him, take my offering (terumati). And this is the offering (terumah) you shall take from them: gold, silver, and copper.” (Shemot 25:2-3)
What is the nature of this terumah, this offering G-d is asking us for? How do you give anything, let alone a specific offering to G-d?
This week’s portion is the first in a series of five
See Freedman on page 22
Terumah: Discovering meaning in the menorah
of the week
avi
The Torah is comprised primarily of laws and narrative. Let us take a quick scan of Parshat Terumah to see where it fits in the scheme of the rest of the Torah.
According to the Sefer HaChinukh, Parshat Terumah has three mitzvot in it:
•to build a Beit Hamikdash
•not to remove the poles from the aron
•and the rules surrounding the placement of the “showbread” on the Shulchan
The narrative is confined to the specific instructions surrounding the creation of the onetime Mishkan that was never built again. We don’t even see them building it here; those details are only shared with us in Vayakhel and Pekudei, which we will read in a few weeks.
As a result, most contemporary discussions of this parsha that go beyond the importance of “making a sanctuary to G-d” focus on symbolic interpretations.
The Sfas Emes writes of the beautiful symbolism embedded in the Menorah. With six branches and a centerpiece that counts as number 7, the Sfas Emes explains that it represents the week highlighted by Shabbos. The light of the Menorah represents the light of Torah and the Torah is read on Shabbos to be a source of
light for the six days of the week.
Many point out that the menorah itself is in reality only the middle candlestick, while the arms that come out are the kanei hamenorah (the menorah’s branches). There are altogether 22 decorative cups on the menorah in its totality, four on the center candlestick, and three on each of the branches. Twenty-two represents the 22 letter alphabet G-d used to create the world and the Torah.
The three cups on each of the branches that stand for the weekdays represent the forefathers, who independently established the three prayers of the day. As the center candlestick represents the seventh day of the week, Shabbos, its four cups represent the prayers of Shabbos, the regular three and Mussaf.
Taking the idea a step further, the Sfas Emes looks at the 22 phrase poem we recite on Shabbos, El Adon, and says the first two and last two phrases (which are connected to one another through the “a’t ba’sh” symbolism) together contain 22 words. Additionally, the letters of “a’t ba’sh” spell out the word shabata, which means Shabbos in Aramaic. The 18 remaining phrases, representing the 18 remaining letters, represent the other days of the week, three letters per day, like the three cups of each branch. F or further detail and for deeper understanding, the Gerer Rebbe explains, one must seek clarification in the Zohar. In his “Collected Writings, Vol. III,” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch presents an extensive
Parsha
Rabbi
billet Jewish Star columnist
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The Hamas baby killers spotlight the world’s broken moral compass
As much as anything else, two little redhaired boys and their mother symbolized the barbaric cruelty of the Hamas assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The video of a terrified Shiri Bibas, 32, clutching and comforting her two children — Ariel, 4, and Kfir, just 9 months old at the time — as they were being pushed away by Hamas terrorists into captivity in Gaza should haunt the conscience of humanity in much the same way as some of the most iconic images of the Holocaust.
But it did not. Or at least, it didn’t do so sufficiently to prevent a sizable portion of the international community from thinking of their captors as the good guys in the war that the Palestinians started on Oct. 7. Now, 500 days after that infamous and tragic date, as their fate has been revealed, we are also being forced to come to terms with the extent of the moral failure of the world to respond appropriately to this brazen act of genocidal terrorism.
To much of the world, the Bibas children were just Zionist propaganda, not human beings who were brutalized for the crime of being Jewish. Their likenesses were not to be tolerated — let alone viewed with sympathy. Posters of them and others kidnapped by Hamas were put up around the world only to be torn down by brazen antisemites.
Vestiges of decency
Attitudes toward the fate of the Bibas family has become an unavoidable test of our common humanity.
That is a test that much of the international community is failing miserably. And it’s
To much of the world, the Bibas children were just Zionist propaganda, not human beings who were brutalized for the crime of being Jewish.
important for the rest of us, even as we mourn for the Bibas family, to take note of this and ask why it should be so.
It’s not just that Hamas wants to destroy Israel and commit genocide against its population.
The terror group (that has the backing of most Palestinian Arabs), planned and executed a massacre in which more than 1,200 people of all ages and places in society were murdered. It did so not only by shooting missiles or sending suicide bombers into crowded buses, cafes and dance clubs. Its “fighters” and the Palestinian civilians who followed in their wake when Israeli communities were attacked on Oct. 7, engaged in an orgy of murder, torture, rape and kidnapping in a way that made it clear that they had shed any vestige of humanity or decency.
More than that, it boasted proudly of these bestial crimes by posting photos and videos of their actions on social media to make it clear that their attack was a trailer for what they aim to do to the rest of Israel — or at least it did so before their foreign supporters perversely began to deny any of it actually happened.
When stated that way, the atrocities of Oct. 7 are, as awful as they were, still something of an abstraction. But when you look at the images of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir as they cowered in the face of their kidnappers after their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz was attacked, we see it in a different light. They are not just statistics. They are human beings with whom anyone can identify.
That’s why so many decent people came to care so much about them.
We knew that Yarden Bibas — Shiri’s husband and the children’s father — had left their house’s safe room in a futile attempt to save his family, and had also been kidnapped. We prayed that they would all be reunited and brought home. But when Yarden was among the few Israelis released under the current ceasefire deal, and his wife and children were not, it quickly became obvious that they had died in captivity.
That should force even those most inclined to rationalize Palestinian actions to conclude that the so-called “resistance” against Israel that Hamas and its allies aren’t just garden variety terrorists; they are baby killers.
Motivation for antisemitism
Regardless of the details of the crime that we don’t yet know, the unavoidable truth is
that a toddler, an infant and their mother were all murdered by their Palestinian captors.
Once we arrive at that sad conclusion, it is incumbent to ponder how it is that even after learning about this so many people, including a large number of those who consider themselves humanitarians and opposed to barbarism, still support Hamas and oppose Israel.
How is that possible? The answer isn’t complicated.
An increasingly significant proportion of international opinion, as well as of Americans, has turned on Israel since Oct. 7. While, as always is the case with polls, it depends on how you pose the question, a number of surveys show a decline in backing for Israel, and its right to defend itself and the war against Hamas it has been fighting for the last 16 months. Though most Americans still back Israel, this shift to support the war on the Jewish state is especially apparent when it comes to young people.
Muslim and Arab sympathy for the Palestinians, coupled with a long tradition of Jewhatred so prevalent in the Islamic world, is part of the reason. But throughout the West, this development is the result of the spread of toxic leftist ideologies like critical race theory, intersectionality and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that pointedly excludes Jews from its alleged crusade for better treatment of minorities.
Like other neo-Marxist theories, those indoctrinated in such beliefs — a demographic that includes most of those who have gone through the mainstream American education system in recent years — encourage the dehumanization of those who hold the wrong identity and/or the wrong views about the world, according to fashionable leftist doctrine. And that is what has fueled the post-Oct. 7 surge in Jew-hatred worldwide.
It is also why so many college and university students, especially those attending elite schools, have come to believe that the Bibas family simply doesn’t fall into the category of people who deserve the empathy of fellow human beings. As was the case for European fascist and Nazi ideologues a century ago, leftwing intellectuals and those who have fallen under their influence believe that Israelis and Jews are undeserving of compassion.
To those who buy into the anti-Zionist mindset, by living in Israel — even within the 1967 borders and in communities where support for peace with the Palestinian Arabs was prevalent — Jewish residents and often pacifists in places like Kfir Oz had it coming on Oct. 7.
It didn’t matter to them that Gaza wasn’t “occupied” on Oct. 7. The fact that every Israeli soldier, settler and settlement had been withdrawn from the Strip in 2005 and that
See Tobin on page 22
Jonathan S. tobin
JnS Editor-in-Chief
A half-ripped poster in Ventnor, NJ, of Kfir Bibas, abducted to Gaza with his 4-year-old brother and parents on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists. Carin M. Smilk
Politics aside, real war is between civilizations
VIRAG GULYAS
Iremember the first time I read Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” while pursuing my degree in international business relations. I was 23 and living in a country that had just broken free from communism and struggling to find its way out of the Cold War’s shadow.
We were desperately seeking our place in the world, longing to belong to the Western civilization. Huntington’s argument hit me, and I connected deeply with his work. It offered something deeper than the explanations of how the Cold War was “created” as he spoke of culture, identity and the inevitable friction between civilizations.
The other day, I woke up with an aha moment. Everything happening in the United States today — every cultural battle, every religious and ideological split — ultimately boils down to the clash of civilizations.
Take a look around. When Latinos burn the American flag on camera, it’s not just about immigration policy. It’s a cultural clash. When masked Muslim students torch Israeli and American flags in New York or Los Angeles, it’s not about “Free Palestine.” It’s the clash of civilizations.
Huntington’s work, published in 1993, was a direct counterargument to Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992), which argued that the Cold War’s end meant ideological conflicts would fade. Liberal democ-
Civilizations are systems of belief, identity and values that don’t change overnight.
racy, Fukuyama believed, had won and the world would settle into a peaceful, Western-led order.
A political scientist and Harvard University professor, Huntington thought otherwise. He predicted that conflicts wouldn’t disappear; they’d just evolve. The next great battles wouldn’t be fought over political ideologies like capitalism versus communism; they would be fought over culture, religion and civilization itself.
He identified nine major civilizations, saying that the most significant conflicts would emerge from these civilizations clashing with each other.
1. Western (Europe, North America, Australia)
2. Orthodox (Russia, Eastern Europe)
3. Islamic (Middle East, North Africa)
4. Sinic (China, Taiwan, etc.)
5. Hindu (India, Nepal)
6. African (Sub-Saharan Africa)
7. Latin American (South America, Mexico)
8. Buddhist (Tibet, Mongolia, parts of Southeast Asia)
9. Japanese (Japan)
Huntington made some bold predictions: the Western world would decline, China and the Islamic world would gain power, and religion would become the dominant factor shaping global conflicts. Do these sound familiar?
Critics rebuked him for overgeneralizing cultures and ignoring economic and political divisions within civilizations. And sure, they had and have a point. But let’s look at what’s happening today.
•Why is it that when we talk about Hamas, people can’t agree on whether they’re terrorists or “freedom fighters?”
•Why do some ignore the child soldiers in Gaza, the glorification of jihad or the use of human shields?
Because it’s not just about politics, it’s a civilizational clash.
The Islamic world doesn’t see the world through a Western lens. And the West struggles to understand an entirely different worldview shaped by centuries of history, religion and identity.
The same thing is happening in Mexico. They,
as a civilization, are part of Latin America, but they are deeply connected to North America. That internal identity crisis plays out in its politics, economy and social struggles. That’s why many of them look at the American civilization as something to fight against. A civilization at war with itself.
What about the United States? It keeps exporting democracy and human rights, believing that these are universal ideals. But over and over again, we see what happens when Western ideals clash with civilizations that don’t share the same historical evolution. Pushback. Resistance. Resentment.
Because civilizations aren’t just collections of people. They’re systems of belief, identity and values that don’t change overnight. Huntington was especially clear about the growing clash between the Islamic world and the West. He argued that this conflict would define the coming decades.
Look at the United States and Western Europe. Look at the conflict around Israel. These aren’t Cold War-style standstills where ideologies squared off in neatly defined camps. It’s the clash
of civilizations, where culture and religion shape alliances and enmities in ways that transcend traditional politics.
While pushback on Huntington’s theories exists, such as his overstating cultural identity and ignoring economic and political interests, we cannot ignore the rising nationalism worldwide. We also cannot ignore the undeniable decline of Western influence and the escalating tensions between the Islamic world and the West.
The more the world globalizes, the more civilizations resist outside influence. The more interconnected we become, the more we emphasize our differences. The more we mix, the more fault lines emerge.
This is why, sometimes, no amount of discussion can bridge the gap. Because it’s not just a disagreement. It’s a civilizational clash playing out right before our eyes.
Virag Gulyas is an expert on international Jewish, EU and UN affairs, who challenges misguided narratives on Israel, Hungary, communism and beyond. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
To a dreaded moment, Hamas adds a blood libel
GLOBAL FOCUS
BEN COHEN
The moment we had all been dreading came to pass on Feb. 20, as four coffins draped with Israeli flags traveled from the Gaza Strip to Israel in a convoy led by the Israel Defense Forces. Two of the caskets were markedly smaller, in a heartbreaking confirmation that Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the two little boys abducted to Gaza with their mother, Shiri Bibas, during the Hamas-led pogrom on Oct. 7, 2013, did not survive their ordeal.
As I was writing these words, I received a video from my youngest son, who is studying in Israel, of two rainbows etched high in the sky above Tel Aviv’s Florentin district. As I choked back tears, I wanted to believe that this spectacle — G-d’s tribute to these two complete innocents — was a sign of hope for the rest of us.
But then I remembered that once again, Jews are on the defensive even as we grieve for these children, whose smiling faces became emblematic of the plight of the Israeli and foreign hostages seized on that terrible day.
An eerie ceremony in Gaza mocked the youngest of the hostages, little Ariel and Kfir Bibas, even in death.
It is impossible to grieve peacefully without remembering the sight of posters bearing the photos of Ariel and Kfir, as well as Shiri and their father, Yarden Bibas, being violently ripped from walls and lampposts by the antisemitic Hamas cheerleaders who have poisoned our lives. It is impossible to grieve peacefully without recalling the cruel barbs about the “weaponization” of the hostages issued by insidious pundits like Mehdi Hasan, the Britishborn Islamist antisemite who, shockingly and inexplicably, was granted US citizenship in 2020.
Most of all, it is impossible to grieve peacefully with the memory of the grotesque ceremony staged by Hamas before the coffins carrying the four bodies set off still fresh in our minds. Jaunty Arabic music blared through loudspeakers, and children posed with the guns carried by Hamas terrorists as their parents grinned and leered for the cameras.
Many hours later, an even more shocking development was reported. Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike, as falsely claimed by Hamas, but were brutally murdered in November 2023, as was the fourth hostage, 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, according to the autopsies on the bodies undertaken in Israel. Forensic analysis also revealed that Hamas lied about Shiri being returned since the body in the coffin was not hers. The agony persists, and we continue to cry out, “Where is Shiri Bibas?”
The giant screen at the ceremony mocked Shiri and her children even in death — their images dwarfed by a vile, crude caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire, his fangs dripping with blood.
Don’t be fooled by the apologists who will tell you that this representation of Netanyahu
is merely trenchant criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza — a war that only erupted because of the monstrous atrocities of Oct. 7. It is better understood as a symbol of the sickness enveloping Palestinian society, which regards Jews as subhuman, and which liberally borrows from 2,000 years of anti-Jewish iconography to make that point.
The depiction of Netanyahu as a vampire is no accident, just as images of him dressed in a Nazi uniform are no accident. The Palestinians and their admirers are expert at selecting im-
ages that recycle the worst canards about Jews: that they have eagerly adopted the methods and ideology of their worst persecutors and that their collective goal is to suck out the lifeblood of non-Jews without mercy — to the point of sacrificing their own people should that turn out to be necessary, with the Bibas family on display as Exhibit “A.”
The association of Jews with blood dates back at least to the Roman era, spawning anti-Jewish “Blood Libel” riots from
People gather outside of the Kirya base in Tel Aviv on Feb. 20, as the bodies of four Israeli hostages were released from Hamas captivity, including the youngest two, Ariel and Kfir Bibas (a broken heart shows their last name in Hebrew). Chaim Goldberg, Flash90
Palestinians clash with Israeli forces during a protest in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, on June 17, 2022. Wisam Hashlamoun, Flash90
Progressives’ humanitarian values and Jews
If you saw the video of Hamas’ screaming rabble of armed, masked fighters surrounding Israeli hostage Arbel Yehud as she was released to the International Red Cross last month, you were probably horrified, as Arbel clearly was. Yet not a word of condemnation was uttered by progressive activists or politicians toward the terrorist monsters, neither for the war crime of her kidnapping nor the barbaric form of her release.
The entire posture of leftists who support Palestinian terrorists stands as a stark, hypocritical contradiction to the liberal values
Would legacy media dare to compare ravaged black or LGBTQ+ hostages with Ku Klux Klan murderers?
— pluralism, feminism, equality, inclusion — that progressives constantly espouse. The problem is, in the minds of progressives, these enlightened values don’t apply to Jews.
Not only did progressives fail to condemn Hamas for making an abhorrent spectacle out of the release of hostages, but some progressive media implied a moral equivalence between Israeli hostages and jailed Palestinian terrorists. Would legacy media have dared to compare ravaged black or LGBTQ+ hostages with Ku Klux Klan murderers?
Also, what are we to make of the virtual silence on the part of progressives and even the International Red Cross in fighting for the release of the hostages?
When Nigerian Islamists kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria in 2014, massive humanitarian campaigns to free them spanned the globe. Today, we’re more likely to see leftists ripping down posters of Hamas’s mostly Jewish hostages. Likewise, it’s almost only Jews and staunch supporters of Israel who advocate for the hostages’ freedom. Progressives can’t be bothered.
Finally, even in the face of shockingly graphic brutality filmed by terrorists themselves, progressives persist in promoting the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as a form of Palestinian “resistance.” This narrative almost always ends with the
demand for a ceasefire, which means “let Hamas survive to massacre again.”
Progressives who preach humanitarian values and social justice but exclude Jews from equal protection deserve no livelihood in elected office, education, journalism or any job involving public interaction. Rather, their reward for such hypocrisy should be social disgrace.
Media shamefully make a moral equivalence between Israeli hostages and jailed Palestinian terrorists.
In one instance, BBC News anchor Nicky Schiller referred to both groups as “prisoners.” While the BBC quickly apologized for this outrage, it was not an isolated incident, as NBC, CNN, Sky News and PBS coverage all
Monsters in charge, their babies in
bandanas
Exactly seven months before their abduction on Simchat Torah, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were photographed getting ready to celebrate Purim — a particular favorite among children, since it involves parading around in costume.
The by-now famous snapshot shows the toddler and his baby brother each dressed up as Batman. Age three and a half at the time, Ariel must have been familiar enough with the comic-book superhero to request the get-up. As another widely circulated image illustrates, the whole family, including mother Shiri and father Yarden, wore Batman pajamas.
Two-month-old Kfir certainly wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the Purim outfit. But his doting parents clearly couldn’t resist
The children of Gaza and the PA are raised on a steady diet of hatred. Their heroes are bombers, not Batman.
cloaking him in the action figure’s garb for the cuteness of it all.
Little did they realize at the time that the whole world would come to know just how adorable these two little redheads in Batman bandanas were. Indeed, their faces have been etched in our hearts and minds since Oct. 7, 2023.
That was the day on which Hamas invaded southern Israel. With the gleeful help of average Gaza residents, thousands of Palestinians from the neighboring terrorist-infested enclave committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust.
They slaughtered around 1,200 people, among them Shiri Bibas’s parents. They raped, stabbed, shot, burned and decapitated anyone and everyone they encountered, ultimately kidnapping more than 250 innocent Israelis and foreign nationals.
Yarden and Shiri, residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz — known for its peace activism and generous assistance to Gazans in need of work or medical treatment in Israeli hospitals — were among the latter. Bleeding from his wounds, Yarden was hauled off on a motorcycle by the barbarians who raided Nir Oz. He was released three weeks ago as part of the ceasefire deal.
Before caskets with the Bibas children were transferred to the Red Cross, masked Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah operatives proudly basked in the cheering crowds of Palestinian “civilians.”
These male and female jihad-lovers came
out in droves, with children of all ages in tow, decorated in bandanas. Not ones with bat wings, of course. No, those with terrorist insignias. After all, their superheroes are “martyrs” for Allah. That’s whom they are taught to glorify and emulate.
Following the horrifying display of joy over the dead Jews, the crowd dispersed and the coffins were transported back to Israel, a short car-ride — yet light years — away. Once past the border that separates hell from heaven, they were delivered to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for autopsy.
“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys; they killed them with their bare hands,”
For all of us, mixed emotions as war continues
As we wait with bated breath for the next set of hostages to be released, what’s been unfolding is incomprehensible. We braced ourselves to receive the bodies of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas z”l, 4-year-old Ariel Bibas z”l, their mother Shiri Bibas z”l, and
83-year-old Oded Lifshitz z”l — but Shiri did not return with her children.
Any hope that Shiri Bibas might still have been alive was dashed the next day, when her body was finally returned.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Later that day, there were several bus bombings in Israel. What could have ended in a major tragedy ended up being a massive miracle, with no casualties.
Between getting our youngest hostages back and the bombing it was a long and difficult day.
That the Bibas were returned as murder vic-
tims — the young children apparently strangled to death — and were not freed alive inspired a lot of handwringing by people who had previously been silent, which makes me ask, “Where were all these people when Oct. 7th happened? If they had spoken up then would the outcome be different?”
While each of us has focused every day on the plight of our hostages and the heavy price that the ongoing war extracts from individual Israelis, we are reminded by the reaction to the horrific murder of the Bibases that not everyone’s been paying attention.
It takes a lot of courage for the people of the world to stand with the Jewish people, one of the smallest religious groups. Thus it’s especially important for us to stand together and show how important the state of Israel is to us.
We may not agree on everything, but as a whole, the Jewish nation is proving we are one. People are asking: What can we do to continue helping Israel? How can we continue to show our support for Israel and the hostage families? What can we do to better ourselves?
Nechama Bluth is associate for The Jewish Star. Write: nbluth@TheJewishStar.com
See Blum on page 23
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Roda Abu Agamia celebrates her release from an Israeli prison on Nov. 24, 2023. Screenshot via JNS
Palestinian children dressed in the Al-Qassam Brigades uniform and carrying weapons participate in a handover of Israeli hostages to the Red Cross, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on Feb. 8. Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash90
See Sinkinson on page 23
Weinreb… Billet…
Continued from page 16
between the ease of attaching oneself to the Almighty everywhere and anywhere versus the scarcity of His availability anywhere but in the relatively tiny tabernacle.
To deal with this contradiction, Sforno distinguishes between the time prior to the sin of the Golden Calf and the time subsequent to that atrocious sin.
Before that idolatrous and orgiastic display, closeness to the Shechinah, the religious experience of encounter with the Divine, could be achieved anywhere. But after such a scandalous and rebellious offense, substituting a Golden Calf, a graven image, for the Master of the Universe, the Almighty, so to speak, made Himself scarce. Now He would confine His presence to extremely limited venues, especially holy places.
Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, an early twentieth century inspirational teacher whom I’ve quoted frequently in these weekly columns, accepts Rabbi Sforno’s distinction but broadens it somewhat. In his words, in an essay entitled, “In Every Place”:
Before the sin of the Golden Calf our forefathers experienced the presence of the Shechinah everywhere. They were shepherds and felt the Almighty with them in the fields. They felt the Shechinah in their interactions with others, and felt enabled by the Shechinah as they went to war. The entire world was holy!
But after the great sin the world was no longer holy. It was desacralized, ordinary, mundane. The Shechinah retreated from the world at large to the tiny desert structure, the Mishkan. There, and only there, was a “religious experience” possible.
The distinction introduced by Sforno, whose surname is pronounced “Siporno” by some, always captivated me. The expansion of his thesis by Rabbi Levovitz held my attention for a long time.
But over the years, I began to be irritated by the pessimism inherent in their approach. Is the Shechinah so elusive? Are authentic “religious experiences” so hard to come by? Must we restrict our attachment to the Almighty only to the tabernacles of our era, synagogues and holy sites?
What about by the bedside of a dear friend who is suffering from a terrible illness? Are we not taught that the Shechinah hovers over the head of the choleh, the sick person? As I stand respectfully by the bedside of my barely conscious friend and silently utter a prayer, am I deluding myself if I sense a “religious experience”?
Frankly, if I offered a communal prayer for my friend in synagogue, I would not have felt nearly as emotionally impacted as I do at his sickbed!
Ask yourselves, or ask others around you, when they last felt the Shechinah’s presence. I wager that if you receive a sincere response, it would not have been in a tabernacle or anything like it, but more likely the result of some poignant human interaction (perhaps the birth of a baby, or the celebration of a significant birthday, or the satisfaction of a difficult achievement).
The Jewish people have been amid a most challenging set of circumstances for well over a year. Listen to the returning soldiers and hear their stories of “religious experiences” on the battlefield.
Or, even more impressive, listen to the thankfully freed former hostages and the “religious experiences” that they modestly share.
Speak to the women soldiers who lit Shabbos candles beside an armored vehicle and experienced the comforting presence of the Shechinah in a tank!
Or join in the joy of reunited families whose dear ones have been freed. You too will sense the Shechinah and participate in a “religious experience.”
The Shechinah was present in the tunnels of Gaza, as it is in the homes of the bereaved widows and orphans whom we must support in every way we can, assured that in assisting them we are participating in a “religious experience” of the highest order.
“Religious experience” is not a “high,” as those who have attempted to achieve such ex-
periences by ingesting narcotic substances have, often tragically, discovered.
No. “Religious experiences” are not always pleasurable in a physical sense. They are spiritual occurrences, often provocative and challenging, requiring a response adequate to the experience, which generally means great changes in our lifestyles. But we can be comforted by the many phrases in our sacred works that express assurances like this one:
True sacrifice to G-d is a contrite spirit.
G-d, You will not despise
A broken and crushed heart
—Psalms 51-19
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Mazurek…
Continued from page 16
committed by their forbearers. In fact, the idea is so outrageous that the Eleh Ezkera itself records the angels beseeching Hashem, “How can you destroy these Holy Saintly souls?” Where upon G-d, brooking no dissent, answers, “one more word and I will end the entire world.”
That is because no rational explanation would suffice. Only He knows and understands the reasons why.
Shabbat shalom.
Dr. Alan A. Mazurek is a retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida. He is a former chairman of the ZOA. To reach him, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Freedman…
Continued from page 16
that deal almost exclusively with the process involved in building the Mishkan (Tabernacle), the tent of meeting that will serve as the focal point of the Jewish people and eventually will give way to the Beit HaMikdash, the holy temple in Jerusalem.
Why were the Jewish people asked to do all of this giving for a building for G-d? Why does G-d need a building?
Rashi (quoting the Jerusalem Talmud in Shekalim1:1) points out that there were actually three different collections of offerings here, as denoted by the fact that the word Terumah (offering) is used three times in the verse above:
1. “Ve’yikchu’ Li terumah” (take for me an offering) refers to the collection of a shekel per person which was specifically designated for the sockets or Aaanim(that held the boards that made up the wall of the courtyard of the Mishkan, as mentioned in Shemot 38:26).
2. “Tikchu et terumati” (take my offering) refers to the shekel per person collected for the public sacrifices (as mentioned in Shemot 30:15).
3. “Ha’terumah” (the offering) which is what our portion here is referring to, was a general collection of various materials such as gold, silver, copper and a list of 13 items mentioned at the beginning of this week’s portion, appropriately named Terumah.
But why is there a necessity for three separate collections? Why couldn’t Moshe have collected all of them at one time? And why mention three different offerings and yet only delineate what one of them was in the verse?
Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the late Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory) suggests that the idea that building the Mishkan is an allegory for how we are meant to build the world, and as such, these three different offerings represent the three different areas in which we interact with and contribute to the world.
The first offering represents Torah, which is the basis for everything. It would be hard to imagine that G-d created us for no reason, so G-d has to, at some point, clarify what that reason, or purpose, really is. This revelation, where G-d reveals the purpose of everything, in Judaism is called Torah. The Torah is essentially the blueprint for life and living. Which is why it is an offering specifically designated for the Adanim, or sockets, on which the entire wall’s foundation rests.
This offering then, represents all those aspects
of life that we are meant purely to receive, but not necessarily to change.
And then there is the second offering, which represents service to Hashem, or prayer. Essentially, where the Torah is about what G-d wants us to so, prayer is about what we want to do, in an attempt to give back to G-d. This does not mean to say that G-d needs what we have to give, but rather, we need to be in the process of giving to G-d.
Often, people presume that prayer is about asking G-d for the things I want, but in truth, Jewish prayer is much more about understanding the things I could want, and if what we want is a function of who we are, then this process becomes all about discovering what I have to give back to G-d.
Hence, the particular terumah (offering) referred to here is the offering for the sacrifices, upon which our prayers are based (see Talmud Berachot 26a). Ultimately the sacrifice represents what I have to offer (or give back) in this world. Indeed, it is precisely the ability to recognize even the animal side of myself and how it too can be harnessed to bring peace and ethics into the world that is the root of both the sacrifices, as well as tefillah itself.
And the last terumah, which represents lovingkindness or chesed, are the things that become the vehicles for having such an impact in this world: the gold, and silver and tangible items with which we impact the world around us. This is the offering of all the physical actions and mitzvoth with which we impact the world.
The first two offerings, representing Torah and Avodah (Torah study and prayer or service to G-d), are basically opportunities for us to develop ourselves and our relationship with G-d. It is only with the third offering that we actually impact the physical world both in terms of objects (represented by the gold and silver) as well as the people around us.
Which brings us full circle to this week’s portion: If indeed, these three separate Terumot represent the essence of Judaism and three pillars of how we achieve our purpose in the world, then why are the first two (Torah and service, or prayer) alluded to, while it is only the third, representing action and mitzvoth that is delineated?
Torah is the recipe given us by G-d to figure out what we are doing here. And prayer challenges me to become a different, and even a better person.
The study of Torah can teach me the objective value of peace, and give me the objective definition of when it is a time for peace, and when it is a time for war; the Torah can even teach us what type of peace inevitably leads to war, and what type of war creates the space for peace, and how I could achieve it. But it is the experience of prayer that measures whether I really want it.
Just because I have discovered what ethical behavior is, does not necessarily mean I yearn for it. And the first stage of changing the world is developing the desire to change the world.
But this is not enough. A person can live a life immersed in the study of Torah and the experience of prayer. Such a person can develop a deep and powerful relationship with G-d, and amass incredible volumes of knowledge and understanding into the way G-d runs the world. But until these achievements impact the world beyond one’s own self, they fall far short of what Judaism is all about.
At the end of the day, the Torah here alludes to all three of these offerings, to make clear that without any one of these, there is something missing in who we are and how we could make a difference in the world. At the same time, it is only the third offering, representing the actions that I actually do, which impact the world around me, that is spelled out here, perhaps because we need to remember that this is actually the goal. The goal in building a tabernacle is not to leave the world, for a monastic life up high, but to make it better from the ground up.
The purpose of building a Temple was never about leaving the world behind, it was always about a partnership with G-d to create a better world. And while it is only through a synthesis of these three areas that we can truly achieve this, this week’s portion comes to remind us of the importance of recognizing the difference between the process and the goal itself.
Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.
Rabbi Freedman is rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Continued from page 16
study of symbolism in Jewish law and writes that “the light in the center… is the goal common to all the other lights on the menorah. These lights, in turn, are borne by six branches. However, none of these has a separate base or shaft of its own. Rather, they all stand upon one base; they all have one root, and one shaft supports them all… the light in the middle is not only the ultimate goal of all the lights, which serves to unite them all, but also the starting point from which all the other lights emanate.”
There is much more symbolism in this onepiece marvel of gold that we call “menorah” than meets the eye. But this is a good start.
Seven represents nature, as Rabbi Hirsch writes of in his essays on tzitzit and bris milah, both of which take seven and elevate it to eight in their efforts to heighten spirituality by going above and beyond nature — taking it to the level of “supernatural.”
If the candles indeed represent the days of the week, and the center candlestick is the glue that holds everything together, then we can certainly take the obvious step and declare that Shabbos is what holds everything about what it means to be a Jew together.
But it is not just about a physical image or manifestation, as much as it is about what the menorah does practically. After all a candelabra’s job is to give light.
Herein lies the ultimate symbolism. The Torah is the ultimate light, as it is the original source for just about all goodness that exists in the world. If holy light emanates from the branches of the menorah, it is a reminder to us that our days must be infused with the study of Torah. Ultimately, the study of Torah is most beneficial when put it into practice in the most significant way, through the observance of Shabbos.
May the Jews recognize this beauty and may we all merit to bask in the light of the menorah when we live to fulfill the mitzvot that are commanded in Parshat Terumah.
Avi Billet, who grew up in the Five Towns, is a South Florida-based mohel and rabbi of Anshei Chesed Congregation in Boynton Beach. This column was previously published. Write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
Continued from page 17
since 2007, it had been an independent Palestinian state run by Islamist terrorists was irrelevant.
Lies and rationalizations
Since Oct. 7, they have spewed forth a series of often-contradictory arguments and narratives justifying Palestinian conduct. They falsely claimed that Gaza was an “openair prison” whose inhabitants had a right to “resist” Israeli oppression. They further argued that even though Hamas had initiated this round of fighting with unspeakable atrocities, it was Israel’s efforts to defend itself against this Palestinian terrorism that was the real crime.
They cite the suffering of Gazans during the subsequent war as a reason not to care about the Bibas family. While that suffering is real, they refuse to accept that the people who started the war are the ones who are responsible for the horror inflicted on both sides of that conflict.
No doubt we will hear in the coming days that it wasn’t Hamas that killed the Bibas boys and their mother — that it was the Israelis who did it in the course of their war on the terrorists. We don’t know if this is true. Even if they were killed by Israeli fire on terrorist enclaves and fortresses that were deliberately constructed to increase civilian casualties, the idea that Hamas is innocent of their deaths is risible. They were in Gaza and exposed to danger not because the Israeli government
was heartless or complicit in their murders but because they were dragged there by terrorists that ruled the Strip.
Despite the dogmatic justification of their crimes by Israel’s enemies, which is morally equivalent to Holocaust denial, other mothers and children, as well as fathers and sons, were murdered on Oct. 7, with many slaughtered by horrific methods that are hard to think about.
Yet once you’ve been convinced that Jews have no rights, those crimes become just details to be dropped down an Orwellian memory hole. Those who have romanticized “resistance” to Israel — like best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has spoken of his wish to have taken part in Oct. 7 — the murder of one mother and her children is an act that is justified by Jews simply living in the one Jewish state on the planet.
In this way, Palestinian Arabs who deliberately set out to kill Jewish babies can be depicted as heroes and the Israelis who seek to avoid civilian casualties while trying to defeat the Oct. 7 criminals are the bad guys. Those with an unbroken moral compass recognize the difference between the baby killers and people trying to stop them.
That’s why we shouldn’t expect the news that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir died at the hands of their captors or their funerals to shift public opinion about Israel or the war on the part of those who have been taught that Israel has no right to exist.
Broken moral compass an
For generations, decent people have wondered how it was that the citizens of what was arguably the most civilized and scientifically advanced society in Europe — Germany — behaved as they did during the Holocaust.
The answer was that they didn’t believe in the humanity of the Jews. Ordinary Germans looked the other way as their Jewish neighbors were taken away and sent to their deaths. The best and brightest of their young men fought to preserve the Nazi regime and/ or took part in the slaughter of 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children, and millions of other victims.
The point being is that if you cheer for or justify these Hamas baby killers, it isn’t just that you’re mistaken about the origins and causes of the post-Oct. 7 war or have been misled by the misinformation about it spread by the Palestinians. It means you are no different from those ordinary Germans who stood by with indifference or actually facilitated the Holocaust.
During World War II, the people of the Allied nations instinctively understood that there was no moral equivalence between those murdered by the German Nazis and their collaborators and civilians killed as a result of military actions that led to the liberation of Europe. But that wise understanding of the nature of war is not shared by much of liberal and leftist elite public opinion today. Instead, they have accepted the big lies about Israel committing “genocide” and Hamas terrorism being justified “resistance.”
This sort of broken moral compass is to be found among so many of those who consider themselves good people and can be discerned in many ways. It’s evident among those who think that democracy can only be preserved by trashing its basic values through censorship of dissent against leftist orthodoxies. It’s also present among those who have come to reject the canon of Western civilization because it doesn’t conform to divisive woke ideas about race.
But at the core of the argument are those who take the side of the Hamas baby killers and spread hatred for a moral and democratic Israel, as well as for the Jewish people. Not for the first time in world history, antisemitism has provided a justification for the murderers of Jewish children.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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Norwich in England (one of the earliest examples) to Damascus in Syria (one of the more recent). It has been embraced by both Christian and Islamic theologians, as well as by the more secular antisemites who asserted their hatred of Jews in the language of science rather than religion. In the literature and journals of the 19th and 20th centuries, the fictitious figure of the vampire emerged with unmistakable Jewish associations.
“It’s impossible to have this discussion without bringing up the blood libel, the unsubstantiated claim that Jews murdered gentile children to use their blood in rituals,” wrote Isabella Reish in a recent essay on the 1922 film Nosferatu. “Thus, European vampires of old are intrinsically linked to Jewishness.” In my view, that linkage is as true of Hamas now as it is of a Berlin salon in the dark years that ushered in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
We cannot live with this hatred, which has seeped from the Palestinians into the wider world, especially among Muslim communities in North America, Europe and Australia — nor should we be expected to. Combating it effectively means that we must be honest about the sources of the problem.
The main source is the Palestinians themselves. All the current discussions about the reconstruction of Gaza and the possible relocation of its civilian population miss the bigger issue.
If Palestinians are to live successful, productive lives, then their society must be thoroughly deradicalized, foremost by challenging the antisemitic hatred that has consumed them. The United States, in particular, must prioritize the complete transformation of the Palestinian school system, installing and supervising a curriculum that will educate Palestinian children about Jewish history and religion, about the abiding, uninterrupted Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, and about the cynical manner their own plight has been exploited by Arab leaders happy to project internal unrest onto an external, “colonialist” enemy.
The second source is harder to pin down and cannot be dealt with in a school environment.
I’m talking about the fans of the Scottish soccer club Glasgow Celtic, who waved banners urging “Show Zionism the Red Card” at a match in, of all places, the German city of Munich; about the Muslim and far-left vigilantes who last week descended on one of America’s most Jewish neighborhood, Borough Park in Brooklyn, where they were gratifyingly confronted by local resistance; about the cowardly arsonists burning down synagogues and Jewish day-care centers in Canada and Australia.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies need to do more than just respond to each outrage. What’s required is a comprehensive global strategy aimed at rooting out these organizations, their communications networks and their propaganda outlets. No measures, including deportation and loss of naturalized citizenship, should be off the table, and no country — looking at you two, Qatar and Iran — should escape scrutiny for fueling these fires.
For decades, our elected leaders have cynically used Holocaust commemoration and education as evidence of their commitment to fighting post-Hitler antisemitism. That hasn’t worked very well, and as the black-and-white images of the Holocaust fade into history’s depths, replaced by decontextualized socialmedia video bursts of Gazans fleeing Israeli bombing, it’ll work even less so.
If the soul-crushing pictures of the coffins bearing the Bibas children don’t result in a fundamental strategic pivot, then perhaps nothing will.
Ben Cohen is a senior analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Write Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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implied a moral equivalency between Hamasheld hostages and jailed Palestinian terrorists. For its part, CNN tried to equate the appalling conditions of the hostages upon their liberation to released Palestinian terrorist prisoners. They reported the hostages appeared “thin and pale,” while describing the terrorists as “emaciated and in poor health” with “signs of physical abuse and starvation.” Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for terrorism live a judicially regulated, well-fed lifestyle. To suggest a moral equivalence between Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism and innocents brutally kidnapped and tortured by Hamas is repugnant.
Universities advocate for free speech but deny it to Jewish or pro-Israel speakers.
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia University, for example, expressed his outrage at anti-Israel, antisemitic activity at his institution, where he heard chants like “Jews, go back to Poland” and calls for more acts of slaughter. Instead of addressing his concerns and punishing the perpetrators, the university administration banned Davidai from campus.
Just last month, masked, pro-Hamas thugs disrupted a Columbia class in Israeli history taught by Israeli historian Avi Shilon while distributing anti-Israel fliers with violent imagery. Indeed, while universities piously claim to value free speech, in reality, only a tiny number of speakers on antisemitism or Israel’s right to exist are allowed on any campus.
Deafening silence on the plight of Israeli hostages.
The United Nations expressed outrage when Houthi terrorists in Yemen kidnapped and imprisoned its workers, including one who died in detention. But it has been utterly silent on the kidnapping and despicable treatment of Israel’s hostages. Moreover, there’s no global effort by progressive organizations to liberate the hostages, as there was in 2014 when the Boko Haram terrorists abducted hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls. The same humanitarians who organized the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign say nothing about the girls and women brutally raped, murdered or kidnapped during the Oct. 7 massacre.
Progressives justify and support the Oct. 7 atrocities as “resistance.”
Organizations ranging from 34 student groups at Harvard University to the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter expressed support for the atrocities on Oct. 7. The Democratic Socialists of America promoted a rally in New York where attendees reportedly chanted, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.” At Sarah Lawrence College in New York, the diversity, equity and inclusion official, Briana Martin, called on students to attend an “Hour of Solidarity with Palestine” following the massacre. Let us try to imagine any DEI executive expressing solidarity with murderers of black, Muslim or LGBTQ+ people.
Progressives chastise Israel’s defense but not Hamas’s savagery.
Who can forget former Vice President Kamala Harris saying that Israel had the right to defend itself, but “how it does so matters.” She and virtually the entire Biden administration repeatedly expressed “ironclad” support for Israel in its war against Hamas, yet took measures that threatened to cripple its military campaign. Today, progressive groups express outrage at President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, arguing that its Palestinian residents should be forced to remain in the largely uninhabitable enclave. But they have no problem ethnically cleansing half a million Jews — uprooting them from their homes in Judea and Samaria — to enable a bankrupt two-state solution.
Progressives regard liberal values as universal, unless you’re Jewish.
Humanitarians globally would no doubt indignantly flood the public square if women, people of color, transexuals or Native Ameri-
cans were systemically murdered, raped, burned, decapitated, tortured and kidnapped. Surely, we would hear no criticism of how the victimized group chose to defend itself against such atrocities. Yet after Oct. 7, it was Israel, not Hamas, that was subject to relentless international condemnation. Progressives demanded that Israel show restraint and agree to a ceasefire that would leave Hamas in charge of Gaza — primed to repeat the massacre again and again, as they promised they would.
Those who say they believe in liberal values but don’t believe these values apply equally to Jews have zero credibility, nor do they deserve responsibility in any capacity serving the public.
James Sinkinson is president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), which publishes educational messages to correct lies and misperceptions about Israel and its relationship to the United States.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari revealed on Friday. “Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”
Gasps could be heard around the country and beyond. Memories came flooding back of the footage of a terrified Shiri, clutching her babies for dear life, being ushered by Palestinian “civilians” into a residence in Khan Yunis, never to be seen or heard from again. Until Friday night, that is, when Hamas deigned to return her actual body.
No mother in Gaza empathized with her fate. On the contrary, the women of the Strip continue to view her as a perfectly legitimate target for sadistic abuse.
It’s in keeping with how they educate their children in the art — and skill — of savagery. It’s why so many Gazan youngsters continue to be taken to observe the nauseating hostagereturn ceremonies aimed at a last hurrah of humiliation for the State of Israel.
Those children wear the headbands of one terrorist faction or another. You know, for the cuteness of it all.
Batman symbolizes the fight for justice. He stands for righteousness in the face of evil. His mission is to protect the innocent. To fight for the weak. To ensure that villains do not triumph over good.
This is what Israeli children grow up to admire. Heroes who defend, not attack. Warriors who sacrifice for the sake of others, not themselves. The IDF soldier who protects civilians at all costs. The paramedic who rushes to the scene of terror attacks, unarmed, to save lives. The firefighter who runs into flames while others flee.
Contrast this with the children of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, who are raised on a steady diet of hatred. Their heroes are bombers, not Batman. Mass murderers, not saviors. This is the reality of a society governed by blood lust. It’s the result of rulers who use their people as human shields and ideological pawns, indoctrinating generations into believing that the path to paradise is paved with mutilated Jews.
It’s high time for the Tribe, in Israel and abroad, to internalize this reality and realize that coexistence with heathen monsters is impossible. Anyone who has a temporary lapse in judgment on this score should remember what befell the Bibas family.
Ruthie Blum, a former adviser at the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is an award-winning columnist and a senior contributing editor at JNS.
