Category Archives: Art and Culture

Who’s Afraid Of Superman?

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The newest Superman movie incarnation is out and critics and journalists have grabbed a pen even before a seat. Their reflections on modern society will inform how they view the characters and plot more than the cinematic quality of the film.

An interesting take was made in The New York Times opinion section called “My Problem With Superman.” The guest essay was written Junot Diaz, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who teaches creative writing at MIT. One would imagine the story of Superman would resonate with this first generation immigrant but Diaz makes clear that he never liked Superman as originally presented to the world.

He recognizes that Superman was brought into the world as a story of a foreign refugee who escaped his dying world, something with which he should be able to relate. Diaz is well versed in the storyline in which Superman’s powers were used to fight for good in a mad world.

Yet it does not resonate for him. Not through his eyes when he was young, nor in looking at society today.

Because for Diaz – and possibly (presumably?) many immigrants like him, Superman is a force unlike any around him, a body of permanent power inequality. He might be a refugee but the dynamic is irrelevant in a progressive worldview obsessed with inequalities and power.

In today’s environment, Superman is internalized not as an individual but a nation. For Democratic-Socialists, the United States is not a “shining city on a hill,” but a monstrous force convinced of exceptionalism which wreaks havoc on the Global South.

Diaz article in The NY Times “My Problem With Superman”

In this mindset, the “annihilating exceptionalism” of power IS the evil. It is neither a force for good nor an aspiration or inspiration. It is an unnatural entity in a society intoxicated by a mission of massive redistribution of wealth and power.

Diaz makes his point clear, quoting Frederick Douglass in a call for a revolution of “fire, thunder and earthquake” to mobilize a nation of people to combat the “world in peril” from a sick governmental order.

Diaz article in The NY Times “My Problem With Superman”

The citizens of Metropolis are voting for Democratic Socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani who believe that “billionaires shouldn’t exist.” Exceptionalism is viewed as inherently racist and/or enabled by a society which is deeply corrupt. Capitalism is tarred as deeply unfair. All of the power structures are fair game for targeted assassination – whether political, financial or moral.

Superman – and many of the superheroes of the era like Spiderman, Captain America and Batman – were created by young Jews before the start of the World War II and the Holocaust of European Jewry. They were young immigrants who wanted to survive in a world which had cast them out and marked them as forever different. The creators of these superheroes wrote stories of good defeating evil in a world which saw little support for the underdog. Evil was everywhere, and the only way of balancing the world between sparks of good and an inferno of evil was to oversize the good. Good needed to be extra – extra-powerful, extra-moral, and yes, extraterrestrial – to gain the upperhand.

That narrative spoke to Americans watching Nazi Germany incinerate Europe. It continued to capture the West’s attention in the following decades.

But now?

Much of the world is not looking at morality in the plain sense of the last generation. It is defined first – no, only – by equity. In this framework, without a balancing of power and wealth there can never be a good society. DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) for progressives is the only solution, and a nation which strips those initiatives is attempting to install a permanent dynamic of inequalities. Democratic-socialists are seeking to dismantle such America via a revolution of the masses.

The two Jewish writers and illustrators who created Superman – Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – might be amazed that their creation finally has a Jewish actor, David Corenswet, playing the part in a major movie. If alive today, they might imagine that such milestone would mark a blessed society which finally welcomed the stranger, the immigrant, the survivor of the destruction of his old world. Embraced him as someone kind and noble who fought for justice for all.

David Corenswet as Superman

Alas. Imagine their amazement, the horror, if they could time travel to today, to see the target audience for their stories – immigrants in America – turn on Superman as a grotesque to be liquidated. Not because of White nationalism of Nazism that they faced a hundred years ago, but for the sin of exceptionalism in a society hell-bent on equity.

Related:

The Disappearing Jew (July 2024)

Now Is The Time For Sabra, An Israeli Superhero, To Join Captain America (October 2022)

From the Hitler Youth to Woke Classrooms: State Indoctrination Then and Now

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Zohran Mamdani, a radical socialist won the New York City Democratic primary for mayor. He did it on the strength of young voters who turned out to vote in Brooklyn and Queens. It was not solely about race or income level as commonly thought (Bronx is poorest and went +18 for Cuomo and Manhattan has the greatest percentage of Whites and went for Mamdani). The young people in liberal districts who came out in droves and secured his victory.

Poor Hispanics generally preferred Cuomo; Asians preferred Mamdani. But the real divide was in age: both in candidate preference and coming out to vote

America’s young people – especially in urban areas like New York City – are much more likely to be non-White than older Americans. They are more likely to get their news from social media influencers than credible news outlets, know little about the Holocaust, don’t remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and have been indoctrinated in a public school system that has advanced an “oppressor/oppressed” narrative in which “White privilege” has not only intentionally placed young non-White people at a disadvantage, but stolen their wealth and power in a racist generational kleptocracy.

Today’s youth have been indoctrinated by a socialist public school system which has compulsory attendance. Powerful teacher unions block alternatives like new charter schools and fight any monies going to private schools, thereby making them out-of-reach for many and frequently non-viable. Further, the teacher unions demand that they have total control of the education and block parental involvement.

This forced indoctrination of youth into a divisive ideology has a historic parallel: Nazi Germany.

When people think of black-and-white images of Hitler Youth, they instinctively recoil. The idea of a government-run school system indoctrinating children with a twisted dogma, demonizing whole groups of people, and eliminating parental rights is rightfully condemned. But the problem of the real world modern incarnation is ignored. Western democracies employ the same mechanisms, just with different terminology and new targets.

Germany’s National Socialist Party Educational System

In Nazi Germany, schools were not really about education—they were about indoctrination. From an early age, children were taught racial supremacy, loyalty to the Führer, and hatred of Jews, communists, and other so-called “enemies of the state.” Textbooks were rewritten to glorify White Aryans and dehumanize others. History was a fable of German victimhood and revenge. Biology became eugenics.

Parents were sidelined and teachers were party enforcers. Loyalty was not to truth or family, but to ideology.

America’s Democratic Socialist Party Indoctrination

Today, we do not see classrooms preaching eugenics or worshipping a dictator. But we do see a disturbing echo of the same approach: children are being indoctrinated to hate fellow classmates and members of society.

Public schools across the United States and other Western democracies increasingly push a worldview centered around oppressor and oppressed—not in terms of deeds or choices, but by skin color and gender. Critical Race Theory, once an obscure legal theory, has bled into K–12 education in the form of “equity-based learning,” and “antiracism,” approaches that specifically elevate non-White and low income students, and sideline Whites and Jews.

White children are taught they benefit from “privilege,” regardless of their life experience. Minority children are taught that their struggle is rooted in systemic bias. And the lesson is rarely a call for unity or shared values—it is a call for reordering society through grievance and power struggle.

New York Times bestseller to remake education in grades K-8 focused on “liberation”. As described by the publisher, “Antiracist Reading Revolution provides an actionable antiracist teaching framework and models how K-8 educators can create opportunities for transformative reading and discussions in classrooms.“

History is reframed as nothing more than a record of Western oppression. Heroes like Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill are minimized or vilified. Meanwhile, activists are lionized regardless of method or truth. There is no longer a shared civic narrative—only the mantra of “deconstructing power structures.” The language of “revolution” and “liberation” are instilled in America’s youth.

And the teachers – and only the teachers – are in charge. Parents and politicians who push back against the curricula are demonized under a banner of “disguised censorship” who are “trying to dictate what teachers say and block kids from learning about our shared history.”

But it’s not shared history; it’s divisive history.

Teachers as Activists

During the Nazi regime, teachers were required to join the National Socialist Teachers’ League and toe the ideological line. They encouraged teachers to intimidate and harass perceived enemies: Jews. Today, public school teachers are forced to join powerful teacher unions. It promotes teachers becoming open activists that feast on current enemies, such as attacking “Zionist” Jews.

Holocaust Museum review of education in Nazi Germany

These teacher unions aggressively fight against charter schools and school vouchers, keeping millions of students trapped in underperforming, politically biased and morally deformed systems. Parents who speak up at school board meetings could be tarred as “domestic terrorists” by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), as happened in September 2021.

In Nazi Germany, dissent was criminal. In the modern West, dissent is canceled.

Michael Mukasey reviewed attempt by NSBA to shut down parental involvement in classrooms, vilifying parents who “disrupt” school board meetings as engaged in “domestic terrorism.”

Compulsory Attendance, Controlled Curriculum

In both Nazi Germany and America today, attendance was (and is) compulsory. Children cannot simply walk away and parents are similarly held captive. And in most school districts, there is no alternative—no charter school, no voucher for private education, no support for homeschooling. The state dictates the curriculum. The unions staff the classrooms. And the ideology is enforced, not debated.

Then and Now

FeatureNazi GermanyModern Public Schools
CurriculumRacial supremacy, hatred of JewsOppressor vs. oppressed, white guilt, DEI focus
ControlTotal state monopolyUnion-dominated, resistance to school choice
TeachersNazi enforcersIdeological activists protected by unions
EnemiesJews, Slavs, Communists“Whiteness,” traditional values, parents who dissent
DissentCriminalizedCanceled, ignored, or labeled extremist
OutcomeFanatical loyalty to regimeCultural division and civic unraveling

Indoctrination by Any Other Name

Today’s teachers are not training students to become SS officers but they are shaping how children see their country, their history, their families, themselves – and their neighbors. And when a government-backed education system insists that children adopt one political ideology, demonize dissent, and question parental authority, we are no longer talking about education—we are talking about indoctrination.

ACTION ITEM

Get involved in your local school board. There are elections every year and public fora held throughout the year.

Related:

A Fever Called Antisemitism Hatched In Schools (June 2025)

School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20 (May 2025)

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools (May 2025)

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

In San Francisco Schools, Anti-Zionism is Anti-Racism (February 2021)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools

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Major socialist groups have taken aggressive anti-Israel stances, both before and after the October 7, 2023 brutal massacre of people in Israel by Gazans. These socialists are aggressively working their ideology into America’s public schools.

Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) Is Anti-Israeli Jews

The Democratic Socialist of America of New York City demanded that politicians not visit Israel to be considered for its endorsement in 2020, even though the local municipal elections had nothing to do with foreign policy. In July 2023 – months before the October 7 massacre – DSA posted that Israeli Jews could not be considered “civilians,” essentially making all of them legitimate targets for violence, endorsed ethnic cleansing.

The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a radical jihadi group, praised DSA’s stances and called for the group to “discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” The DSA has fallen in line with its jihadi revolutionary comrades, and issued a statement while the slaughter and 1,200 people and raping of women in Israel was ongoing, that the group is “steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.”

These vile and violent attitudes are being pushed into the public schools.

Infiltration Into Public Schools

The socialist publication Jacobin made the point clearly in January 2024 when it praised the DSA which “passed a resolution encouraging local chapters to run candidates for school boards” during its summer 2023 convention. It noted that school board elections are “small-scale enough that grassroots organizing” can swing elections, and socialists are particularly adept at such activity. It argues that “by connecting with other progressive groups that have been working on education issues in New York for decades, each in their own silos, DSA might be able to cut through the antidemocratic structures and confusing messages” and take over schools to advance their preferred narratives.

The effort is deliberate and focused on public schools. One of the drafters of the DSA resolution to pursue school boards wrote “unlike federal elections, school boards are also races we can have a clear impact in…. By concentrating our efforts on these races, we can have an outsized effect…. By electing socialists into those seats, we can set new model policies.”

The ultimate goal of the DSA is to build its own political party apart from the Democratic Party, and it believes that these school board seats lay the foundation for such long term goal by building communities and indoctrinating the youth.

One can see this happening right now, in races for the head of the teacher’s union and the school board in New Rochelle.

United Federation of Teachers (UFT)

Amy Arundell is currently running to become the president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a union with about 200,000 members. She was temporarily removed from her post heading UFT in Queens for insisting that the word “terrorist” be dropped from the UFT statement denouncing the October 7 attacks, even though Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. If raping women and burning families alive is not terrorism, it is unclear if anything is.

The UFT, which represents New York City public school teachers, issued a statement after New York City Department of Education’s chancellor, David Banks, sent an email to district staff stating: “I unequivocally condemn these horrific acts of violence, and I want to offer my deepest condolences and steadfast support to those in our New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) community impacted by the killings and kidnappings.” The UFT statement read “Chancellor Banks’s statement last Tuesday solely centering the needs of Israeli families, and UFT President Mulgrew’s dismissal of Queens Borough Rep Amy Arundell for speaking in support of Palestine are but two examples of the erasure of our Palestinian students, staff, and families.” It recommended educators use a virulently anti-Israel website TeachPalestine as a tool in their classrooms and push the anti-Israel narrative into classrooms.

Amy Arundell marked “revolutionary liberation” movements as her face to the world

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) rallied to its socialist-jihadi colleague and issued a statement that “penaliz[ing] their representative for actively seeking an inclusive statement that considers pro-Palestinian narratives is reprehensible.” It is bewildering to imagine how dropping the word “terrorist” from the worst terrorist attack in modern history is a “pro-Palestinian narrative.”

New Rochelle School Board

In the City of New Rochelle in Westchester County, just north of New York City, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is running for the local school board. She is endorsed by disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman who also wrote a foreword for her book on “radical care.” DSA proudly endorsed Bowman.

Rivera-McCutchen was interviewed in March 2025 on the Progressive News Network by Howard Horowitz, a leader of anti-Israel group WESPAC which supports PYM, part of the DSA socialist-jihadi alliance. WESPAC also supports Students for Justice in Palestine, which has fostered antisemitic environment and attacks on American college campuses.

If socialists win seats on local school boards and elections for union leadership, the situation for American Jewry will likely become stark. Get involved.

Related articles:

CUNY’s New Anti-Education Professor Of Intimidation (February 2025)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

The Provenance Of Jews

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In the world of archaeology, there is nothing as prized as finding something in situ, meaning in its original place. The location helps provide archeologists with clues as to the surroundings’ age and usage, who lived in that location and the nature of society. Once an item moves, critical details of the environment are lost forever.

From that moment, the provenance is often a curiosity. Who owned the item and for how long? How did it come to find its way into this collection or that museum and what happened to the artifact over this time? These matters are often used to prove the subject’s authenticity, by tracing it back without interruption to the point of discovery.

When it comes to works of art (rather than archeological finds), provenance is less of a curiosity. Experts and viewers mostly focus on the art itself as well as the artist. The visual and message are the primary matters, not the journey of the art onto a museum’s wall.

Yet there are stories too remarkable to ignore. Sometimes the provenance is as much of the subject as the art itself, even reorienting the very perception of the artwork to modern viewers.

A Dutch Masterwork, As Seen By A Jew, A Nazi And Complicit Government

Consider the painting A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).

A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).

Van Ruisdael was considered among the greatest landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age. While his peers Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) mostly painted people, Van Ruisdael painted scenes of nature.

In A River Landscape with a Waterfall, we see the artist’s work with contrasts. The right side of the painting is illuminated by the setting sun, with a solid house on a hill set under clouds. To the left is dark scene in the shadow of the sun. Broken branches lay on the rocks and a hint of a house protrudes from the standing leafy trees. A barely perceptible person makes his way towards that house before sunset. A stream separates the two sides of the painting with a small waterfall.

This is one of many waterfall paintings by Van Ruisdael during the middle of his life. Of them all, this one is the most serene, with the title’s inclusion of “river” and “waterfall” seemingly an exaggeration of a modest calm landscape.

The story of the painting’s journey to the Phoenix Art Museum where it is exhibited today was anything but calm.

In the mid-1930s, the painting came into the collection of Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer who was among the foremost collectors of Old Master works. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Nazi military leader Hermann Göring confiscated Goudstikker’s collection. Over the course of the war, Göring is estimated to have amassed over 4,000 works of art. Most of the art was taken from France, including from the Rothschild family. Goudstikker’s collection made up a sizable part of the non-French collection, as he was partial to landscapes and the Old Masters.

Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer

As the war started, Goudstikker fled Holland with his wife and one year old son. They first went to England and then caught a boat to the United States. On the ship to America, Jacques accidentally walked into an open hatch and plummeted to the ground below, dying instantly. His wife and son made it to America without him.

At the end of the war, the Dutch government confiscated the looted Nazi art. Most of the paintings did not find their way back to the rightful owners as there were few notes about the provenance of each work. However, because Goudstikker was a leading arts dealer, he had ledgers with each work, including this Van Ruisdael painting. Despite the clear markings on the back of the painting with Goustikker’s seal, and Goustikker’s wife and family showing records of being the proper owners, the Dutch government would not release the painting to the family until 2002, 57 years later. The family sold the painting in 2007 to a doctor in Phoenix, Arizona who donated it to the Phoenix Art Museum in 2022, where it hangs today.

During World War II, private art collections like Goustikker’s were often seized by the Nazis, while those from public museums were better able to protect the most prized works.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, the Mauritshuis public art museum in The Hague is having an exhibition until June 29, 2025 called “Facing the Storm – A Museum in Wartime.” It relays the efforts taken by the museum to hide its most valuable art from the Nazis. As described by the museum, “The exhibition will devote attention to the travels of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring during the war. The Mauritshuis had a bombproof ‘art bunker ’ in which it would store all its masterpieces overnight, bringing out a few – including the Girl – during the day…. During the course of the war, the most important works of art were taken to the various ‘National Storage Facilities’, where they remained until the war ended. During this time, the gallery walls at the Mauritshuis were a sorry sight, lined as they were with empty frames.” During some of the public showings during the war, Hitler featured his personal paintings and his book Mein Kampf alongside the museum’s Dutch masters.

Moving paintings from Dutch museum to hide from Nazi theft and bombings

There was a split dynamic between public and private museums as well as viewing art during the day and night during the war in Holland. Private collections were seized and public collections were hidden at night. When collections made it to the light of day, they were used as propaganda for Dutch residents and the enjoyment of Nazi officers who were able to walk the streets freely. Empty frames were like the disappeared Jews of Holland, perhaps hidden away like Anne Frank and her family, or shipped to Nazi concentration camps for liquidation.

Empty frames at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, July 1944

The background story and provenance of the Van Ruisdael painting is very much part of viewing the painting today. The pastoral scene of light and darkness owned by a Dutch Jewish family on the eve of World War II was seized – and enjoyed – by Nazi criminals. After the defeat of the Nazis, the Dutch government held onto the artwork and would not return it to the Jewish family which had to flea across the ocean to survive the Holocaust, even as the man who owned the painting did not survive.

To view the painting with such knowledge, the stream becomes an ocean which the Goudstikker family crossed to save themselves. They left their open, illuminated and public house on a hill for an unknown future. Indeed, Jacques’ untimely death during the journey is like the broken branches in the foreground of the painting.

The home and art the Goudstikkers left behind became a showcase for Nazi propaganda, like the house on the right side of the painting enjoying the full setting sun and completely exposed to the world. The dark left side of the painting are the works of art and the Jews of Holland who were hidden and transported to death camps, or perhaps they were lucky to leave the war early like the Goudstikkers, attempting to find a new uncertain home across the ocean. And even when they made it safely to the other side, did they get to enjoy their freedom, or were they fighting for their basic rights and property, such as against the Dutch government who would not surrender their art?

A painting made in the 17th century can be understood anew hundreds of years later because of its provenance. Journeys can shape the subject.

That is most certainly true of Jews, especially on Passover.

Passover Seder As Seen By A Guest

It is a tradition for hundreds, if not thousands of years to invite someone to a Passover seder. Inviting a guest unfamiliar with the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt over 3,000 years ago – especially for meals that do not have any children present – provides an opportunity to tell the story of the Jewish journey from slavery to freedom, and from Egypt to the Jewish Promised Land.

The seder uses a Haggadah, a standard text used by Jews around the world, which not only discusses the Exodus, but prior generations telling the story of the Exodus on Passover. The seder is both a story FROM 3,000 years ago at the point of origination, as well as the journey of that story over the intervening years until today.

The guest at the seder is not only learning about ancient Jewish history but seeing and hearing the provenance of that history.

A person can read the bible at any time of year to get a clinical understanding of the Exodus from Egypt. However, to sit at a seder is to see the redemption of Jews in a new light, incorporating the journeys they have taken over the centuries.

The story of the Exodus and the journey of Jews for millenia are too remarkable to ignore. Viewing both simultaneously is the magic of Passover, a gift for everyone attending a seder.

Related articles:

When Our History Begins (December 2022)

The Haggadah as Touchstone for Harmony (April 2022)

Prayer of The Common Man, From Ancient Egypt to Modern Israel (January 2021)

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ (April 2019)

The Beautiful and Bad Images in Barcelona (March 2019)

Delivery of the Fictional Palestinian Keys (May 2015)

A Warm Israeli Heart In Brooklyn

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The religious Israeli singer Hanan Ben Ari came to Brooklyn on the night of March 30, 2025. His songs calling for peace and unity drawn from holy texts drew a crowd of Israeli expats, yeshivish men and women, Russian and American Jews. They sang and stood on their feet for the entire show.

Hanan Ben Ari’s presence also brought out a handful of anti-Israel protestors who waved Palestinian flags, placards about President Trump and shouts of “Zionism has got to go!” to let everyone coming to the concert know that the pro-Palestinian group hated THEM and their beliefs as much as the singer.

Anti-Israel protestors yell at Jews going to concert at Brooklyn, March 30, 2025 (photo: First One Through)

As the State of Israel continued to decimate the terrorists of Gaza, the mood was both happy and somber. Happy that many hostages were home, as well as pleased that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Gazan terrorist were being brought to justice. Yet also sad that dozens of hostages remain in Gaza after 571 days, that so many people have been killed, and that there’s no clear sight to peace. Hanan made those points directly and repeatedly throughout the night, that he doesn’t want to beat the Gazans; he just wants a peaceful world.

Hanan Ben Ari singing “Shemesh” in Brooklyn, NY on March 30, 2025 (photo: First One Through)

Hanan discussed one member of his crew who had lived alongside Gaza, who was killed in the first days of the war. He told the audience about two members of the crew who remained captives of Gazan terrorists, and the audience shouted to “Bring them home!”

Screen showing two members of Hanan’s crew still held by Gazan terrorists.

But Hanan also celebrated three former hostages held by the Gazan terrorists who were freed and at the show that night. The crowd cheered as the singer introduced them and shared everyone’s sentiments how happy they were. Hanan shared a story that one of the hostages told him, that he couldn’t believe how many people around the world were praying for his well being. Hanan added that one day soon, that will be the norm, that everyone will pray for each other’s well being, even in times of peace.

The show was definitely charged with Israeli energy. In the lobby of the concert hall, people from the Israeli American Council were getting people to sign onto the World Zionist Congress election to vote for the IAC slate. People in the crowd carried Israeli flags. Almost the entirety of the concert was in Hebrew.

Audience at Hanan Ben Ari concert holding Israeli flag, March 30, 2025 (photo: First One Through)

And the artist himself did the same. He brought out a flag and sang “Am Yisrael Chai!” “The nation of Israel lives!” to an adoring audience.

Hanan Ben Ari holding Israeli flag at Brooklyn concert on March 30, 2025 (photo: First One Through)

The concert ended with the singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem by the band. Almost all of the audience stood and sang along, with some Ultra Orthodox Jews sitting out because while they are believers in the LAND of Israel, the Jewish people and Judaism, they oppose the secular Jewish state.

Audience waves Israeli flags at Hanan Ben Ari concert in Brooklyn on March 30, 2025 (photo: First One Through)

As rain fell on a cold early spring night, the small crowd of anti-Israel protestors left. The Jewish crowd poured into the light showers outside. And the heart of Israel who has sung hundreds of times at Israeli army bases and at the beds of wounded Israeli soldiers, packed his gear to fly to Miami for a last U.S. show before heading to Israel for Passover.

People call Israelis “sabras” because they resemble the cactus fruit which is prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside. Lost in that analogy is the warmth of the heart, which would rather be sweet and accessible to everyone without thorns, even in a defensive war.

Related articles:

October 7 And A Year (October 2024)

A Visit To A Nation Held Hostage (July 2024)

Now Is The Time For Sabra, An Israeli Superhero, To Join Captain America (October 2022)

This Purim’s Only Costume Is Bibas Batman

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The latest Batman movie franchise focused on his arch-villain Joker. The deranged psychopath had a restless fan club who relished Joker’s “resistance” and rejection of societal norms. The masses donned their own clown masks to feel empowered alongside their hero who took on authority in an attempt to unleash anarchy to redistribute wealth and power to the horde on the streets. Their affiliate masks also enabled themselves to remain anonymous to carry out mayhem without consequences.

The comic world is playing out in the real world as the genocidal jihadists of Hamas are celebrated in the West Bank and Gaza as well as several cities around the world. The depraved slaughtering of Jewish civilians inside Israel on October 7, 2023 was greeted with wide support in Gaza and east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL). Hamas enthusiasts outside the Middle East have likewise donned masks and attack and harass Jews and Jewish institutions around the world in support of a “global intifada” against Jews and their supporters.

Masked pro-Hamas people at Columbia University

Batman also wore a mask but for different reasons. He sought to protect society from the dark underbelly of man’s worst tendencies. He chose to remain anonymous so that he could work for society as a businessman, as well as to protect the people he loves from attack. He wanted his anonymity to be a motivator for the public, that anyone you saw on the street could be the secreted protector of peace.

Bruce Wayne explains why he wears a mask during The Dark Knight Rises

Jews have a tradition of wearing costumes during the holiday of Purim which commemorates when a genocidal lunatic sought to kill the Jews in Persia (modern Iran) 2,400 years ago but failed to do so. The Persian Jews were able to turn the genocide on its head, first killing the evil instigator, his family and 500 associates, before wiping out 75,000 enemies in the provinces. These days, some Jews dress up like characters from the story as conveyed in the Scroll of Esther, while others dress in costumes to comment on current events.

For Purim 2025, I suggest that people honor the memory of the Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, who were four years old and nine months, respectively, when they were seized by members of the political-terrorist group Hamas and other Gazans on October 7, 2023. The children’s bodies were returned in coffins to Israel this week.

The Bibas boys loved Batman. Many pictures have circulated online of the two redheads wearing Batman masks as well as their parents wearing Batman attire when they enjoyed a peaceful life in their small kibbutz in Israel.

Putting on a Batman mask with a bright red wig for Purim will not just show solidarity with the murdered small innocent boys, but declare that one stands for justice, peace, family and civility. It also highlights our determination to eradicate evil and those who wish to destroy the world behind the masks of madmen.

Related articles:

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi (August 2024)

Palestinians And Their Supporters Hate America (August 2024)

Hamas Is The Very Definition Of A Genocidal Group (November 2023)

Deformity Of Palestinian Culture In America’s Youth (October 2023)

NYU’s “Israel Studies” Department Showcases Films By Gazans About The War

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New York University in New York City, home to the largest Jewish community in the Jewish diaspora, has a department called the Taub Center for Israel Studies. One would imagine that the department would feature a pro-Israel narrative, especially amidst the genocidal jihadist war started by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Alas, in a deeply infected educational environment which has been sued over its handling of harassment and discrimination against Jewish students, even the Israel Studies department is a tool for lambasting the Jewish State during its defensive war.

On February 25, 2025, just days after the bodies of Jewish toddlers Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned in coffins to Israel, the Taub Center will host a film series called “From Ground Zero,” which features 22 short films made by Gazans about the Iranian Proxies-Israel war. Each story portrays Gazans as victims of Israeli aggression, even though Hamas, the ruling power of Gaza, initiated the war with overwhelming support from the Gaza population.

The event is being co-sponsored by the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (that’s a single group, meant to convey that the Middle East is Islamic, as opposed to the singularly segmented Israel Studies Department). Unsurprisingly, the Islamic Studies department has not sponsored a pro-Israel film series.

This toxic mindset inside Israel studies departments is not confined to NYU. Brown University hosted a webinar about “new antisemitism” which included two Israeli professors, Amos Goldberg of Hebrew University and Raef Zreik of Ono Academic College. Both lambasted Zionism as the new form of antisemitism and “apartheid,” rather than call out the rampant Jew-hatred sweeping over the planet.

Just blocks from the actual Ground Zero where the Twin Towers were destroyed by radical jihadists on September 11, 2001, NYU’s Israel Studies department is mocking thousands of dead Americans and Jews, inverting genocidal Islamists as victims instead of perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

Self-flagellation is a specialized sport of liberal Jews, and they are enjoying the raucous roar of jihadists as they harpoon fellow Jews.

ACTION ITEM

Reserve a spot for the movie here, it’s free. Leave the theater dark.

Related articles:

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada (January 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

The Problem With Antisemitism On College Campuses Stems From Where Jews And Arabs Focused Their Donations (October 2023)

Anti-Semites Don’t Ride In Cattle Cars (September 2022)

Beyond Death, Religion

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Is there a word
For the day that no one remembers someone? Quotes their poems, enjoys the production of a life lived?
Is that the day the person really dies
And if so, what is the word to mark such moment? 

‘Extinction’ is for a species 
Where only memory and fossils
remain. But what when records are no more? Is that beyond Extinction? 

And a star’s end is its collapse
A singularity in which space and time lose ordinary meaning
and light loses memory of itself at the cusp of the ‘Event Horizon.’

The Old Cemetery in Jerusalem rides the Event Horizon
breaking from centuries of unchanted kaddishes 
echoing against a wall and sealed door.
Will it bury itself forever or loosen the bounds of tenses,
a ‘Memory Horizon’ with and without past, present and future?

I Understand Why the Caged Jew Sighs

The Touch of the Sound of the Shofar

Jews At The Center But Not The Focus

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Praying At The Jerusalem Great Synagogue

The Jerusalem Great Synagogue is one of the grandest synagogues in the world. On holidays and sabbaths, it typically has a magnificent choir which enhances prayer services. In July 2024, when Rosh Hodesh, the new month of Tamuz fell on Shabbat, the synagogue decided to have a special choir with prayers full of songs by a 50-person choir consisting of many young boys.

The Jerusalem Great Synagogue, July 2024

Shabbat Rosh Hodesh involves reading from two torah scrolls, rather than a single torah on a regular Sabbath. On this special sabbath, two men raised the torahs at the conclusion of the particular readings and sat holding the holy scrolls as Moshe Lion, the mayor of Jerusalem read the haftorah before a packed synagogue.

Before the torahs were returned to their places in the ark, the large choir came down from their podium and encircled the bima, the center of prayers in the heart of the synagogue. The two men holding the torahs rose, and the entire congregation with them, as the cantor and choir sang two special blessings, one for the government of Israel and one for the Israeli Defense Forces.

With the backdrop of the ongoing war, the choir used a variety of melodies in singing the two blessings, including Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, and Lu Yehi, a contemporary song of longing to arrive at the end of all wars.

For twenty minutes the choir sang the songs with the congregation’s participation. Many cried as both old and young thought about many family members who were serving in the armed forces to combat enemies in Gaza and Lebanon. Hundreds of people gathered in the centers of Israel, of Jerusalem, and of the Great Synagogue but hearts and minds were elsewhere.

A Wedding In The Jerusalem Forest

The next day a wedding was held in the Jerusalem forest. The sun was setting as the bride and groom took their places under the chuppah, the wedding canopy. Family and close friends gathered before them, watching the young couple sanctify their union.

The Jewish ritual of presenting a ring, reading the ketubah and reciting seven blessings were complete, but the happy couple was not ready to celebrate. First a friend took the microphone to recite a chapter of Psalms for the soldiers and families impacted in the current war. Everyone recited the lines responsively, and then all sang Im Eshkachech Yerushalyim, If I forget thee, Jerusalem.

The groom then crushed a glass beneath his feet, symbolizing the still unbuilt holy city of Jerusalem, before turning to hug his bride.

Groom ready to crush glass symbolizing the ongoing incompleteness of Jerusalem

Two men in a synagogue and a bride and groom under a canopy, stood at the center of attention, yet their focus was elsewhere. Thinking of young soldiers at the battlefront, hostages held in captivity and the unbuilt Temple, Jews turn their consciousness outward to the larger community beyond those present.

The focus of the Jewish gaze ultimately extends beyond line of sight.

Related articles:

Singing of Joy and Jerusalem on Foreign Land (December 2021)

Humble Faith (October 2021)

Holocaust Survivors At The 2024 Israeli Day Parade In New York City

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New York City has held a Celebrate Israel Day parade for many decades. In 2024, just months after the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the gathering of Jews and Israel-supporters had a very different feeling.

Among the many marchers were several elderly people who survived the European Holocaust 80 years ago. Some joined a float sponsored by the Claims Conference, the organization that secures funding from European countries, principally Germany, and distributes it to help the elderly victims.

Holocaust survivors at the Israeli Day Parade, June 1, 2024 (photo: First one Through)

The survivors and Claims Conference supporters wore shirts that read “cancel hate” on the front, while the backs read “never again,” particularly meaningful slogans for people who had survived violent trauma as children and were living through a period of antisemitic slaughter and vulgar hatred again in their old age.

Alas, “never again” proved a hollow slogan. On October 7, vicious Palestinian Arab antisemites invaded Israel and butchered 1,200 civilians in their homes and at a peaceful dance rave. In the tragedy’s immediate aftermath, people in many cities – including New York City – chanted that they were thrilled at the burning of Jewish families. Once again.

Eight months later, Holocaust survivors rode up Fifth Avenue holding Israeli flags, as New York City Police sharpshooters watched from atop buildings, and drones and helicopters circled overhead, worried that anti-Israel protestors would attack the celebration.

Police helicopters and sharpshooters atop buildings, watched as a float carrying Holocaust survivors went up Fifth Avenue at the Israeli Parade, June 1, 2024 (photo: FirstoneThrough)

Only half of Fifth Avenue held onlookers, as the police did not want infiltrators coming in from Central Park, which packed viewers against the buildings. Many wore stickers and held placards to finish Hamas, the ruling Palestinian entity of Gaza which carried out the vicious massacre and has sworn to destroy the Jewish State.

The survivors were born in various countries including Poland and Russia. They were mostly women, as male survivors are becoming a rarity.

They waved flags. They danced with young Jews.

Holocaust survivors dance with parents and students from Hillel

They cried at the situation that they were living in a world where “never again” were empty words, even as they clasped Israeli flags and tried to remain hopeful that now Jews have autonomy in the State of Israel which was lacking during World War II.

The reality is that they had fled many years ago to America and internalized that this “goldene medina” was unique and offered Jews protection and opportunity absent in Europe.

Now, their smiles and optimism felt shallow.

The crowd very much echoed those feelings. Yellow ribbons, pins and stickers calling to bring home the 125 remaining hostages held by Palestinian Arabs, were close to everyone’s hearts and minds.

Crowd – set back by an eight-foot gap with barricades – wave to Holocaust survivors on the Claims Conference float riding on Fifth Avenue in New York City’s Israel Day Parade on June 1, 2024 (photo: First One Through)

In the end, the Holocaust survivors didn’t confront any Jew haters in the crowd as they rode the float in the Israel celebration. They and the crowd which included many with family members impacted by the October 7 Massacre as well as the War on Terror, thought about the words that accompanied them on the journey from Matisyahu’s One Day song:

All my life, I’ve been waitin’ for (waitin’ for)
I’ve been prayin’ for (prayin’ for), for the people to say
That we don’t wanna fight no more (fight no more)
There’ll be no more wars (no more wars), and our children will play

One day (one day), one day (one day)
One day (oh, oh, oh, oh-oh-oh, one day)
One day (one day), one day (one day)
One day (oh-oh-oh)

One day, this all will change, treat people the same
Stop with the violence, down with the hate
One day, we’ll all be free and proud to be
Under the same sun, singin’ songs of freedom like

Wah-yo (one day, one day), wah-yo, oh, oh (oh-oh-oh)
Wah-yo (one day, one day), wah-yo, oh, oh (oh-oh-oh)

People cheer Holocaust survivors wearing shirts “never again” and holding Israeli flags as they ride up Fifth Avenue to Matisyahu’s song “One Day” on June 1, 2024 (First One Through)