Columbia University is all about “constructive dialogue.” It believes in a “learning environment” infused with “civility, tolerance and respect.”
The school’s Gay and Lesbian Studies section of the English Department has a professor who has written extensively on the deep mental illness of transgender people, and another who has written several books with heroes who butcher lesbians, despite protests from the LGBTQ+ community.
Columbia’s African American and African Diaspora Studies Department has one professor who denies that there ever were slaves in the United States, another who has given speeches on the valuable lessons learned by African slaves in the South and another who teaches that today’s African Americans who were descended from slaves are incapable of learning or being productive members of society. While Black students were incensed, the school was adamant about showcasing a range of viewpoints.
The wide range of scholarship sought by this Ivy League institution includes tenured professors in Islamic Studies who have written extensively about the barbarism in Islamic culture, including genital mutilation, forced marriages of young girls, honor killings, and the cutting off ears and noses of women who embarrass men. One tenured professor has written many articles on the violent nature of religious imams who teach jihad against infidels. Some authors who are apostates – have left Islam for Christianity – are the most frequent visiting lecturers. The department hopes to host Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie to teach about the underpinnings of Islam. Elsewhere, the art department is hosting a symposium about the depiction of the Islamic prophet Mohammed in the arts through the centuries, over the objections of the Muslim student body.
When some gay, Black and Muslim students complained about teachers who are openly hostile to their communities, Columbia assured them that all was fine since the courses are not mandated for graduation.
If that sounds too ridiculous or far-fetched to comprehend, I suggest you review the official Columbia University statement about its professor Joseph Massad who referred to the October 7 rape and massacre of 1,200 people and taking of 250 hostages as a moment of “Jubilation and awe.” He’s called the Jews in the Bible “Palestinian Hebrews” denying Jews their history and heritage. He has done this to strip any claims of Jewish indigeneity in the Jewish holy land (35:00).
If Columbia truly believes that denying Jews their history and heritage, as well as celebrating their massacre is a sign of “civility, tolerance, and respect,” one should expect to see Andrew Tate give a class on Women’s and Gender Studies, and David Duke to lecture about the history of Blacks in America.
Our crew brought out a minivan for the Brooklyn Chanukah Donut Crawl for 2024, as we added two new people to the crawl. Going on Christmas day meant some of the bakeries had lighter staffs, and going later in the day meant some stores had run out and donuts were not at their peak freshness.
We added several new destinations based on people’s Instagram posts. Let me share that some of the IG posts may be paid advertisements (this blog takes no money or ads- please just get friends to subscribe on topics covering Jews, Judaism and Israel) since some were quite weak and overpriced. We also added a nice new bakery based on conversations with people we met at the stores. The list for 2024 is (in the order we visited them):
Oneg Bakery, 188 Lee Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 [Williamsburg]
Almah Cafe, 87 Utica Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213 [Crown Heights]
Ricotta Coffee, 513 Albany Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11203 [Crown Heights]
Schreiber’s Homestyle Bakery, 3008 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11210 [Flatbush]
Pita Sababa, 540 Kings Hwy, Brooklyn, NY 11223 [Flatbush]
Maison Valero, 501 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230 [Flatbush]
Sesame – Flatbush, 1540 Coney Island Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11230 [Flatbush]
Taste of Israel, 1322 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230 [Flatbush]
Ostrovitsky Bakery, 1124 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY 11230 [Flatbush]
For those familiar with Brooklyn, you will note that these are a bit scattered, but there is a method to the madness that you will see in the descriptions below.
Oneg Bakery
We’ve skipped Oneg over the last couple of years since Williamsburg bakeries do not, in general, stand out. Oneg is the exception. It is famous for its babkas which are among the very best in NYC. You should pick one up (do not get overwhelmed by the size which looks prepared for a synagogue kiddush; they will cut it in sections. Note that they freeze very well.) You can order from Goldbelly if you do not want to visit in person.
Oneg is small “Old World” bakery and has a small staff during Christmas. Here, a worker prepares dough for their apple strudel
There is not a large selection of donuts at the small store, and they didn’t have frittle when we visited as they were short-staffed on Christmas. Some of our tasting crew thought the plain jelly donut was “fantastic!” and others really enjoyed the Boston cream.
Oneg’s jelly, custard, caramel and sprinkle donuts
Almah Cafe
Almah is a new addition to the donut crawl, being flagged on Instagram. We decided to taste some of their other baked goods like the olive and mushroom focaccias, which were great. It’s a small and fantastic place to visit for brunch. However, I would NOT suggest going for the sufganiyot. They are small, very expensive at $7 each, and not that tasty. We tried two, including strawberry cheesecake. There was little filling and the flavor is so subtle to be virtually non-existent.
Ricotta Coffee
Ricotta Coffee is a pretty new establishment that doesn’t even have signage on the doors. The small place was packed with people eating lunch which looked very fresh. Unfortunately, we did not know that you have to order in advance, so please do so at (347) 365-5177, the day before you plan on picking up donuts. We were very fortunate to meet a Chabad rabbi and his wife that we know who very generously gave us their order of three donuts, as they lived nearby and were able to pick up another order the next day. So nice!!
We found the raspberry donut to be okay and the pistachio to be interesting- it is much saltier (like salted pistachios you might normally eat) with bits of pistachios in the filling. It’s a much more crunchy, saltier version than Sesame which is creamier and sweeter.
Schreiber’s Homestyle Bakery
We visit Schreiber’s each year to get their lace cookies, which they do to perfection (I know that it’s a simple cookie but we love places that perfect things).
The sufganiyot were all in the back and they have simple jellies for about $2, and fancy ones for $5. They have a nice selection of packaged donuts for quick takeaway or you can select the ones you want. We bought one pretzel and one graham cracker donut. Both were good, not too sweet.
At this point, we had our first sugar rush. We broke for sushi at Sushi Meshuga, 1637 E 17th Street. The sushi was fine, and helped cleanse our palates for the second half of the donut crawl.
Pita Sababa
As a non-Brooklynite, (and non-Sefaradi) I did not know Pita Sababa, a large Moroccan bakery. I heard about the bakery from a woman on line at Almah who told me she absolutely loved the bakery. It seems so do many others!
The bakery was totally sold out when we visited. Tal, who runs the store, told me he thought he’d sell 10,000 donuts on Christmas! He expects to sell closer to 5-7,000 on the other days of Chanukah. One needs to order in advance on the website. We decided to try a sfenj which is a Moroccan donut. It’s basically just fried dough, somewhat like a churro. It was straight out of the oven, warm and delicious.
Sfenj
You can also pre-order at sabababakery.com or with the QR code below. There are just a few flavors, including chocolate ($48/dozen), custard ($42/dozen) and jelly ($42/dozen). They also sell mini donuts in smaller sizes.
Maison Valero
Some of the smaller bakeries only cook in the morning (as opposed to larger one’s like Sesame and Pita Sababa which bake all day). As such, one needs to come early to get donuts at the smaller shops, and this store was closed by the time we arrived in the afternoon.
Sesame
Sesame has a well-earned reputation for excellent donuts so the few bakery locations are packed. Because they bake all day, people stand around and clamor over the next flavors to emerge from the ovens, shouting “lotus!” and “white chocolate!” Pareve flavors include Oreo, Halvah, Lotus, Pistachio, Peanut Butter, Lemon and classic jelly. Dairy varieties include White Chocolate, Nutella, Caramel and Cheese. All of the fancy sufganiyot were about $5.25.
Crowd standing outside of Sesame bakery in Flatbush waiting to fill in boxes of donuts with the next great flavor to emerge from the kitchen next door to the retail store
Note that these sufganiyot and large and have very rich flavor. We suggest cutting them in quarters so you can try from their wide variety. All are excellent. We ordered a dozen and brought them to friends for dinner.
If you are not planning on eating them for a while and not so particular of the flavors you get, consider picking up packaged Sesame donuts at stores like Sprinkles. We met people at the Oneg bakery who had done just that.
Inside Oneg bakery, people show the Sesame sufganiyot they purchased at Sprinkles. Many people like to sample baked goods from several bakeries
Taste of Israel
Taste of Israel is small general store, but you can order sufganiyot in advance at (347) 554-8133. They have eight varieties ranging in price from $4 to $6, and all are very good. We bought another dozen here to bring to people.
Ostrovitsky’s Bakery
Ostrovitsky’s was cleared out of their fancy sufganiyot (Rosemarie, Chocolate Mousse…) when we arrived around 4pm. We tried a custard donut which was just okay. Dough gets heavy as the day goes on which weakens the experience.
Summary
If one budgets $2-$4 for a donut, look for simple jelly donuts or custard which are usually quite good at most locations (including Pomegranate). The more expensive varieties run $5-$6 each. There is absolutely no reason to spend $7 for a small donut at Almah.
Sufganiyot are much, much better fresh. If one is planning to eat them at the time of purchase, go early to the smaller bakeries which only bake in the morning. The larger locations like Sesame and Pita Sababa can be visited at any time and recommended if one is planning on having them at dinner.
Some places require ordering at least a day in advance, including Pita Sababa, Ricotta Coffee and Taste of Israel. It is very unlikely that you will be able to get any if not ordered early. However, I imagine that it will get easier on the last few nights of the holiday.
Sesame sufganiyotTaste of Israel sufganiyot
Lastly, talk to people! We discovered Sababa from talking to a woman in line and got gifted donuts at Ricotta from speaking to a Chabad rabbi. People are out enjoying the holiday and you should view the bakery hop as an experience to enjoy with everyone, and not just picking up donuts because pictures looked pretty on Instagram.
BONUS: Latkes (Pomegranate and Essen Deli)
We sampled latkes from Pomegranate (across from Sesame-Flatbush) and Essen Deli (not far from there, next to Ostrovitsky’s). Pomegranate had a few flavors like potato, sweet potato and zucchini which were flat and wide. Essen had potato which were very crunch and thick. The Essen latkes were a bit saltier and people preferred them to Pomegranate’s which candidly, did not look as appetizing when placed side by side.
Wishing you and your families a very wonderful Chanukah!
If Jesus were alive in the 7th century, he would have been murdered by invading Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula.
If Jesus were alive in 1949, we would have been ethnically-cleansed from Bethlehem and the region by the Transjordanian army because he was a Jew.
Jews ethnically cleansed from the Old City of Jerusalem in 1949 by invading Arab Muslim armies
If Jesus were alive today, he would be banned from praying on the Temple Mount because it offends Muslims.
If Jesus were alive today, he’d be hiding in a bomb shelter from the “axis of resistance.”
If Jesus were alive today, Hamas would call for his rape and murder.
If Jesus were alive today, his dead body would be paraded through Gaza, where the local Arabs would gather to spit on him.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be a hostage in Gaza, and his picture would be ripped down in the streets of major U.S. cities.
If Jesus were alive today, his synagogue would be vandalized.
If Jesus were alive today, the United Nations would call him a “settler.”
If Jesus were alive today, Democratic Socialists would call him a “colonizer.”
If Jesus were alive today, he would be harassed and intimidated on college campuses.
If Jesus were alive today, Ireland would boycott him.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be fighting in the IDF.
If Jesus were alive today, he’d be lighting the first light of Chanukah, celebrating the rededication of the Jewish Temple in Judaism’s holiest city of Jerusalem.
The United Nations’ operation in Gaza is almost completely staffed by local Arabs. Since Hamas’s takeover of the coastal strip in 2007, UNRWA, the UN agency which runs schools and hospitals in the area, have operated in tandem with Hamas. The school circula is approved by the US-designated terrorist group and its facilities operate with Hamas’s oversight.
After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 and butchered 1,200 people, Israel sought to bring the perpetrators to justice, to save the 250 hostages stolen by the Gazans militant groups, and ensure that the terrorist groups could never attack again, as they had promised to do.
As Israel has been decimating Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups and their infrastructure in Gaza, local armed Arab gangs have been stealing aid being delivered into the strip.
The New York Times blames Israel for making Gazans hungry.
December 23, 2024 New York Times article about looting in Gaza
The article squarely put blame on Israel for: 1) its “bombardment and invasion of Gaza”; 2) its limiting flow of goods around Gaza; and 3) not putting a new government in charge of Gaza.
How absurd.
Hamas launched the invasion, not Israel. Hamas took hundreds of captives into Gaza, demanding Israel’s counter-invasion. Hamas’s history of importing and moving vast weapons of war and terrorists around Gaza necessitates Israel’s control of goods and people.
And it is the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to govern Gaza, not Israel. The world demands that Israel leave the strip so how does it simultaneously demand that its should put in place a new government?
The Times shared that UNRWA decided that it would no longer deliver aid through one of the major entry points into Gaza, and that relief is piling up at the crossings. It acknowledged that the Gaza police force is an arm of Hamas but they are rarely seen in Gaza these days.
The Times inadvertently highlighted the farce of the entire situation stating that “The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its [the UN’s] neutrality.” Unsaid, is that only under the protection of Hamas and other Gazan terrorist groups can UNRWA operate freely, showing that the UN group has always been extremely biased.
The article moved beyond the lawless areas without Hamas or Hamas’s police ruling the area to sectors “fully controlled by the Israeli military. UN agencies have been able to avoid looters and deliver some relief.” However, not enough according to the UN: “‘There is continued tolerance by the Israel Defense Forces of unacceptable amounts of looting.”
According to the article, Israel is responsible for the entire situation in Gaza. Not the Gazans who are doing the actual looting. Not Hamas which refuses every ceasefire and to return all the hostages. Not UNRWA, the joint venture between the United Nations and Hamas, which teaches Gazans that Israel is an illegal entity which should be destroyed and replaced with a purely Arab Palestine.
UNRWA collapsed because Hamas is defeated. Local Arab gangs steal humanitarian relief because Iran, Turkey and others have been smuggling in vast amount of weaponry into the region, despite the official Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the terrorist enclave.
Gazans are hungry today DESPITE the efforts of Israel, and because of the toxic policies of the United Nations and local Arab warlords for the past decades.
The story of Chanukah happened in 164 BCE. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes had defiled the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and enacted several laws against Judaism, including banning circumcision, celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays, forcing Jews to eat pork, and making it a capital offense to have a torah scroll. The Jews of the holy land revolted against the Syrian-Greek king and got rid of all the anti-Judaism decrees and rededicated the Temple.
This was a war of pagans against the Jewish religion, before Herod built the expanded Temple Mount plaza and before Christianity.
Over the following centuries, King Herod (72 BCE – 4 BCE) built the expanded Temple Mount and Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans. Jewish revolts against the Romans in 66CE-70CE and 132-135CE led to the destruction of Jerusalem and expulsion of Jews from the area, renaming the city to “Aelia Capitolina” and the region to “Palestina.”
This was a war of pagans against Jews and Christians, before the birth of Mohammed and creation of Islam.
Mohammed’s quest to bring Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the world brought a Muslim invasion into the Jewish holy land in the 7th and 8th centuries. Muslims built their third holiest site on top of Herod’s Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa Mosque. Christians and Muslims waged several wars over the holy land between 1095 and 1291.
Those battles between Christian crusaders and Muslims, were over the Jewish holy land and Judaism’s holiest location.
In 1948, Muslim Arab armies invaded and tried to destroy the newly declared State of Israel. The Jordanian army ethnically cleansed all of the Jews on the western bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1954, it granted citizenship to all Arabs, as long as they were not Jewish.
This was a war of Arab Muslims countries against the physical presence of Jews in the Jewish holy land.
From the Chanukah story to the creation of Israel in 1948, many groups laid siege to Jerusalem, often attacking Jews through anti-religious actions, or lumped in with other religious groups. Since 1948, the war has been about the physical presence of Jews in Jerusalem, a place where Jews have been the majority since the 1860s.
At the story of Chanukah, there was no Temple Mount, no Christianity and no Islam. It was a battle of pagans against a small local tribe’s religion, who lived at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Chanukah marks the beginning of Jews in the holy land being attacked for their religion. The successful battles proved to be short-lived, as most Jews were forced into the diaspora over the following centuries, until the recent past. Celebrating the holiday today amidst a multi-front defensive war and global antisemitic chants that Jews are “European settler colonialists” is a chance to reassert Eight Attestations On Jerusalem:
Jews have an Inalienable right to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount
Banning Jews from living and praying in their holiest city is blatant anti-Semitism, as is denying Jewish history
There is no “Judaizing” Jerusalem, as Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s, and have devoted themselves to the city since 1000BCE
The security of Israel demands that its capital sit well within its borders
Divided capitals are a function of war, not peace. The place known as “East Jerusalem” only existed for a few years, 1949-1967
No part of Jerusalem was ever contemplated to be part of Palestine. Not only is “East Jerusalem” not an actual city, but there is no basis to call it “Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Jerusalem Arabs have been and are continued to be offered Israeli citizenship
There is no ethnic cleansing of Arabs. The Arab population in Jerusalem has grown faster than Jews since Israel reunited city
On Chanukah, diaspora Jews should pay particular attention to the direction of their prayer, the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, as Jews have done for thousands of years.
Happy Chanukah signs on the walls of Jerusalem, 2021
The United Nations has long shown its anti-Israel bias in its various agencies. The global leader of the UN has also shows his disregard for civilians around the Middle East, preferring to coddle vile dictators as his clients.
In the aftermath of unveiling of the brutal torture regime of Bashar al-Assad’s prison system which killed over 100,000 people, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres chose to highlight the historic opportunity for the Syrian people as the country was taken over by a hybrid of jihadi terrorist groups of ISIS and Al Qaeda.
While he was making his absurd comments, a young US Congressman named Ritchie Torres was rebuking Syria and its sponsor of Iran’s “machinery of death,” and also called out the “international community” which ignored and continues to ignore the axis’ crimes against humanity, preferring to expend its energy on Israel’s defensive battles.
We know that Iran, Syria and the “axis of resistance” is evil. We must also acknowledge that the United Nations is an enabler of their atrocities and consider how to shrink the global body’s menacing actions.
Some groups like Amnesty International and countries like South Africa have drummed up the idea that Israel is committing a ‘genocide’ against the people of Gaza, or Palestinian Arabs, or the Arab or Muslim world, depending on how narrow or broad the defaming party chose to go. They have ignored the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio in any urban war, the declining number of women and children killed as the war moved on to a ground invasion, and many other statistics in Israel’s defensive war in making the accusation.
It is curious that people have also not considered the basic fact that Israel has offered many ceasefires to Hamas since the war started in October 2023. No target of a genocide has ever been offered a ceasefire.
Let alone reject it.
Yet Hamas has rejected one ceasefire after another since the war started.
If an army was intent on slaughtering a group of people, would it offer a ceasefire every month?
If a persecuted population felt like it was desperate for the killing to stop, would it reject offers to stop the fighting?
Jews in the Holocaust were not offered a ceasefire. They were defenseless. They had no army. They had no government advocating on their behalf to stop the slaughter.
The heavy loss of life among Gazans is because of a war they started and refuse to cease. It is the deep-seated antisemitic genocidal intent of Gazans to destroy Israel that has perpetuated the war, not Israel’s desire to eliminate Gazans as declared by know-nothings under heavily tarnished brands.
After fourteen months of refusing ceasefires, it is time for the Arab and Muslim world to force Hamas to admit defeat and surrender so that the killing can stop and the day after can begin.
In the aftermath of the targeted killing of a healthcare insurance executive, more 18-29 year olds thought that the assassination was justified than thought it unjustified (41% to 40%) according to a DailyMail poll. The Gen Z generation was an outlier compared to every other age group, with those over 50 years old having 10% or fewer believing that the killing was justified.
The peculiar morality of 18-29 year olds is not limited to their view of the insurance industry. In the aftermath of the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, a Harvard poll showed that 60% of 18 to 24 year old thought that the attack was justified. Half of that age group supported Hamas (compared to 4% for people over 65) and 51% said they thought Israel should be liquidated and handed to Hamas.
Why is there such depravity and celebration of violence amongst today’s youth?
According to a Yale poll conducted in the fall of 2024, the majority (52.5%) of Americans under 30 years old consider themselves liberal. Only one-quarter are conservative, and those that are, are only “somewhat conservative.”
These under 30 liberals are not typically perceived as violent. According to Pew Research, they have the lowest gun ownership in America. According to a PBS poll, it is Republicans that are more likely to resort to violence “get the country back on track,” not the left (which should not be surprising as the poll was taken under a Democratic presidency; should the poll be conducted again under a Trump administration, it would be curious to see the results).
Further, according to a McCourtney poll in January 2024, Gen Z youth are the least angry age group in the U.S. They also tend to feel the most pride for certain things.
The various polls seem incongruous. On one hand, Gen Z youth applaud murder but are generally not as angry or prone to violence according to polls.
One observation made by the Brookings Institute is that today’s youth is much more diverse racially and ethnically than older generations, as well as compared to youth of prior generations. It means that current polling data may be wrong depending on the sample set selected, and it means that age may be only one determinant of how young people view the world.
Brookings Institute warns of polling data for today’s youth
Another factor is perhaps social.
Gen Z was more impacted by the pandemic and its lockdowns than other generations, forced to spend high school and college at home and behind masks. They grew up and went through puberty with social media and texting on their cellphones as the main methods of engagement rather than physically interacting with peers and society.
Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, said that Gen Z is suffering from a serious mental health crisis. He views this generation as more depressed and susceptible to self-harm. His analysis highlights correlation rather than causation, as there are very few Gen Z without social media to compare. The podcast linked above considers that maybe more anxious youth spend more time on social media than less anxious people, so the correlation may be from the self-selected initiators rather than from platform engagement.
Polls have looked at Gen Z’s attitudes regarding societal values. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, those aged 18-29 were much more likely to believe that companies should be more focused on long-term benefits of society than profitability. They are much more likely than older Americans to leave a position at a firm if they disagreed with the company’s values.
Those opinions are seemingly not limited to corporate America. Harvard’s December 2021 poll showed that young Americans were very unhappy with President Biden and Congress and “over a third think they may see a second U.S. civil war within their lifetimes.” While Gen Z may not be carrying guns, they believe that society is broken and war is coming.
Beyond society being broken, they personally feel broke. According to a 2024 NBC poll, the most pressing matter for Gen Z by far was inflation and the cost of living (31%), ahead of “threats to democracy” at 11%. Crime, immigration, foreign affairs and other matters were all far behind.
NBC poll of Gen Z before 2024 presidential election
None of the polls are perfect but the assembly of all this data leads to some disturbing conclusions about Gen Z today:
they are distressed – emotionally and financially – disconnected from society because of masks and technology
they do not see a secure future, whether because of personal financial stress or because they believe the system is rigged against them
they have no faith in institutions – whether government or corporations – to look out for them and society
while they may not be inclined or able to commit violence themselves, they empathize with those who do
It sounds like the backdrop for the movie Joker, with a society ready to venerate murder as a pathway for validation and justice. It’s Gen Z’s desire to rip down the establishment in a brewing civil war which more closely resembles the French Revolution than the 19th century war between the states.
While the fictional Joker character was understood to be deeply troubled, Hamas and Luigi Mangione, the killer of the United Healthcare CEO, are being portrayed as deeply righteous. Professors at universities are praising the killers, and pointing to “wealthy Jews” as operating “behind the curtain” (to quote Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)) to entrench a corrupt system for selfish goals. The media echoes the “powerful Jew” and corrupt Republican/”White supremacy”/patriarchy themes to incite the masses. They make playing cards of other insurance executives to target.
The youth are marching with chants to “Globalize the Intifada“, to bring the October 7 massacres to every corner of the world. They are picking infidels in each town and industry to target for their rage.
March in New York City
Gen Z’s embrace of anarchy is being encouraged by liberal media, the education system, radical left wing organizations and America’s foreign foes. Each is influencing and validating “the anxious generation,” seeking TikTok moments to clone the next Joker, attempting to destroy the United States from within.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced that the country was closing its embassy in Ireland because of a host of “antisemitic rhetoric” and “efforts to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.” While it is well understood that any sovereign country is free to open or close embassies in bilateral fora, it was interesting to see Israel’s foreign minister include a charge of how Ireland treated its own Jewish citizens, stating the “government has failed to take effective measures to combat the surge of antisemitism within Ireland.”
The Jewish State was reestablished in 1948 as a place where Jews were guaranteed self-determination and protection within its borders. Israel is also considering the fate of Jews in the diaspora as it weighs its international dealings.
One of the most famous stories in the Book of Genesis is about Jacob’s ladder with angels ascending and descending. The famous biblical commentator Rashi (1040-1105) said that the angels going up were tied to the holy land and had to leave Jacob as he journeyed to live with his uncle Laban outside of the land. The angels coming down were new angels who would accompany Jacob while he lived outside of the holy land.
Jacob’s Ladder by Frans Francken II the Younger (1581-1642)
I would like to share an alternative interpretation: the angels on the ladder represent Jacob’s relationship with Esau.
There is no tool that connects hands and feet like a ladder. Both are required to go up as well as to come down. If several people are on a ladder at one time, hands and feet would likely be touching.
That is a reference to Jacob. His name literally came from his act of holding onto the heel of his brother Esau at their births. “Jacob” stems from the Hebrew word for heel, “akeb” (Genesis 25:26):
The clutching of the heel in the world’s first recorded twins set the primogeniture battle for the ages.
Birthright
There are two stories of Jacob angling to take the birthright from Esau. First, Jacob operates on his own and trades food with a hungry Esau for the birthright (Genesis 25:29-34). Years later, as their father Isaac wasn’t likely to abide by the earlier exchange between the brothers, Jacob acts at the urging of his mother Rebekah to trick Isaac into giving the special blessing intended for Esau to himself. Esau was so distraught by this action, that he swore he would kill Jacob, forcing Jacob to flee to live with Laban. (Genesis 27:1-21).
Jacob had the dream of angels on the ladder while he was fleeing from Esau. Jacob was not sure whether he had the advantage of the blessing or was a hunted man. On the ladder, the person higher up is only ahead while ascending; the elevated person actually trails the person below him when they are all descending.
The story of Jacob clutching Esau’s leg finally comes to a close when Jacob returns to the holy land. In Genesis 32:25-33, Jacob wrestles a man/angel who dislocates Jacob’s hip. As the angel breaks free he blesses Jacob by changing his name to Yisrael:
“Said he, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.'”
Jacob/Israel, together with his wives and children, are then able to meet with Esau with his 400-person army, no longer carrying the weight of the contest. After they meet, Jacob gets affirmation from Gd about moving beyond the Jacob-Esau heel connection in Genesis 35:9-13.
And God said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Be fertile and increase; A nation, yea an assembly of nations, Shall descend from you. Kings shall issue from your loins.
The land that I assigned to Abraham and Isaac I assign to you; And to your offspring to come Will I assign the land.”
Jacob’s view of himself was tied to his name which conveyed a pursuit of his brother and his blessing. Once he broke free of that pursuit – together with a limp and a new name – Israel was able to accept that he was the heir to the blessings Gd bestowed upon his forefathers.
The angels on the ladder in Jacob’s dream were not geofenced protectors of Jacob but a reflection of his link with Esau, together with confusion of his actions. Esau would always be older and above him on the ladder, but descending and on the ground in the holy land, Jacob/Israel was entitled to the blessings and inheritance.
First One Through 