Category Archives: Judaism

Lech Lecha: A People Apart, A Blessing to All

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The Torah moves from humanity’s failed attempt to make a name for itself at Babel to God’s promise to make Abraham’s name great. Between these two visions of greatness lies the foundation of Jewish peoplehood.

In last week’s portion, the people of Babel gather to build a great city and tower, united by a common language and ambition. They declare, “Let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). God disperses them across the earth, dividing humanity into different peoples and languages.

An illustration depicting the Tower of Babel with a group of people gathered in the foreground, some appearing distressed while others are engaged in construction activities.
Gustave Dore’s Tower of Babel

Immediately afterward, in this week’s portion, Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1–17:27), God calls upon Abraham and promises, “I will make your name great” (Genesis 12:2). The same Hebrew word, shem, meaning “name,” connects the two stories. At Babel, humanity seeks greatness for itself. Abraham is promised greatness through a mission that will benefit others:

“And all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).

That mission begins with a journey to a particular land. God commands Abraham to leave his birthplace and his father’s house and travel to the land that He will show him. Abraham journeys through Shechem, Bethel and Hebron, places that remain central to Jewish history nearly 4,000 years later. God promises the land to his descendants, establishing the foundations of Jewish peoplehood through geography, ancestry and covenant.

These foundations shape Jewish life across the centuries. The Jewish calendar follows the agricultural seasons of Israel, prayers turn toward Jerusalem, and the pilgrimage festivals call Jews to appear before God at the place of His choosing, ultimately Jerusalem. The land remains central to Jewish identity even during centuries of exile, preserved through ritual, language, memory and the longing to return.

A panoramic view of Jerusalem at sunset, showcasing the skyline with modern buildings in the background, the iconic Dome of the Rock in the foreground, and ancient city walls.
Jerusalem at dawn (photo: First One Through)

The Torah presents a vision of humanity in which a particular people, rooted in a particular land and bound by a covenant, carries a mission extending to the entire world. Jewish distinctiveness becomes a source of universal blessing.

For thousands of years, Jews have carried this dual obligation: preserving their own peoplehood while contributing to the wider world. Yet today, Jews are increasingly told that acceptance into movements proclaiming universal justice requires abandoning their attachment to Israel. Jewish peoplehood is reduced to a religious preference, while the essential character of Judaism as a land-based religion is dismissed as a political invention. Even some Jews adopt this framework, treating the abandonment of Jewish national identity as evidence of moral enlightenment.

Lech Lecha teaches that Jewish identity and universal responsibility are intertwined. The covenant connects Jews to their ancestors, their land and one another, providing the foundation from which their obligations to humanity extend.

The Torah’s promise of blessing to all humanity begins with a particular people, a particular land and an enduring covenant. Those demanding that Jews surrender these foundations in the name of universal justice are asking them to abandon the very mission through which Abraham was called to bless the world. Their vision leads back to Babel: an impressive structure, a polished veneer of unity, and a common project built in defiance of God.

Every Jew Belongs. Every Ideology Doesn’t.

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More than 100 Jews gathered in Brooklyn this month to plan a network of anti-Zionist synagogues, schools and summer camps. The emerging Jewish Diaspora Movement brought together people associated with Jewish Currents, Rabbis for Ceasefire, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) and the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Alissa Wise, formerly of Jewish Voice for Peace, is among its founders. Discussions included plans for a Jewish day school in Boston in 2029.

The gathering is part of a broader effort to reshape what future generations of American Jews learn about their religion, history and relationship to Israel.

The “intellectual” groundwork is expanding. Temple University professor emerita Carolyn Karcher’s Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism, featuring 47 Jewish contributors, includes a guide encouraging readers to bring anti-Zionist arguments into synagogues and families. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Benjamin Moser’s Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History profiles twelve Jewish opponents of Zionism, placing their dissent within a longer Jewish intellectual tradition.

Jewish opposition to modern Zionism has a history. Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel has a far longer one.

Judaism is an ancient, land-based religion. Abraham traveled to Canaan. The Israelites returned from Egypt. Jerusalem became the center of Jewish worship. The Torah commanded pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times annually, during Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. For millennia, Jews have prayed toward Jerusalem, mourned the destruction of its Temple and concluded the Passover Seder with the aspiration of returning there.

Opposing modern Jewish statehood is a political or theological position. Denying the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the Land of Israel is a historical falsehood. The distinction matters because Judaism’s scriptures, laws, holidays and prayers are rooted in a particular people and their ancestral homeland.

A Jew may reject God, violate Shabbat, oppose circumcision or denounce Israel and remain Jewish. Jewish belonging encompasses believers and atheists, the observant and secular, Zionists and anti-Zionists.

A Jew can reject a teaching of Judaism and remain Jewish. But that does not transform the rejection into a teaching of Judaism.

A Jew who eats ham makes a personal choice. A rabbi who certifies ham as kosher betrays the trust of Jews who rely on that certification to observe their religion. Similarly, a Jewish school that teaches children to deny their ancestral connection to Israel betrays the trust of parents who expect it to transmit Jewish history and tradition faithfully.

Jews who disagree with established organizations are free to create alternatives reflecting their beliefs. Existing institutions have the same right to preserve their missions. The Jewish identity of an institution’s founders establishes its origins. Its teachings and conduct determine whether it deserves the community’s trust.

Rabbi Brant Rosen, founder of the anti-Zionist congregation Tzedek Chicago, described his community as “consciously not an inclusive community.” His congregation establishes boundaries around its beliefs. Yet Open Hillel challenges Hillel’s restrictions on sponsoring organizations that advocate boycotts of Israel or reject its legitimacy as a Jewish state.

Hillel welcomes Jews across denominations, levels of observance and political beliefs while maintaining a mission that includes strengthening Jewish connections to Israel. Anti-Zionist congregations defend their own ideological boundaries while demanding that Hillel loosen its own. BDS supporters advocate withholding institutional support from organizations whose values they oppose, yet object when Jewish institutions apply similar standards to BDS.

At Emory Hillel, Rabbi Nikki Golomb was dismissed in August, weeks after beginning her position. She attributes the decision to her fiancé’s fierce criticism of Israel; Hillels of Georgia disputes that account, citing concerns about transparency and alignment with its mission. Golomb was affiliated with Rabbis for Ceasefire, founded by Alissa Wise. Whatever the disputed circumstances, Hillel has the right to expect its religious educators to uphold its mission.

Screenshot from Hillel’s website

Jewish disagreement has produced competing religious movements and institutions for centuries. But religious harm occurs when an institution entrusted with Jewish education misrepresents foundational elements of Jewish history or tradition. A school that teaches children to deny the Jewish people’s connection to Israel can legitimately have its claim to teach authentic Judaism challenged by the broader Jewish community. Opposition to modern Jewish sovereignty alone does not establish that denial.

Physical harm presents a separate and more urgent threshold. Organization that campaign to deprive threatened Jewish schools or synagogues of reasonable security protections, or to deny Israeli civilians protection against attack – like JVP, JFERJ, IfNotNow NYC and the American Council for Judaism – know that they expose Jewish lives to danger. The Jewish community has the right to challenge such conduct, withdraw communal recognition and support, and defend institutions that faithfully serve their missions.

Jewish Voice for Peace is against defensive weapons for Israel

Every Jew belongs to the Jewish people. Every institution founded by Jews does not automatically speak for Judaism. And when an institution uses the Jewish name to falsify Jewish history, betray Jewish trust or endanger Jewish lives, the Jewish community has a responsibility to confront it.

Seeing Good and Taking It: From Eden to the Flood

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God, Eve, and the corrupt rulers of Noah’s generation all do the same thing. They see something good and take it. One act establishes paradise. Another brings expulsion. The third precedes the destruction of humanity. How can the same sequence of actions produce such different judgments?

The Hebrew repeats a striking pattern: va’yar (saw), tov (good), and va’yikach (took). The words recur across the opening chapters of Genesis, but the morality of taking changes dramatically.

God surveys His creation and sees that it is tov me’od, very good (Genesis 1:31). He then takes Adam and places him in the Garden of Eden (2:15), providing him with a home, sustenance, and responsibility. Rashi (1040-1105), citing the Midrash, explains that God took Adam with pleasant words, persuading him to enter. The Creator uses His authority over what He made to benefit another.

Eve follows the same linguistic pattern, this time within a single verse. She sees that the tree is tov, good for food, and takes its fruit (3:6). Eve did not create the tree but was a beneficiary of God’s extraordinary generosity, permitted to eat from virtually every tree in Eden. The one she chose was expressly forbidden.

The third instance appears just before the Flood. The Bnei HaElohim see that the daughters of man are tovot, beautiful, and take wives from whomever they choose (6:2). Rashi identifies these men as rulers and judges, while Ramban (1194-1270) describes their taking as coercive. Men entrusted with authority use their power to seize women they neither created nor had any inherent right to possess.

The progression is from creator to recipient to appropriator. God sees goodness in what He created. Eve sees goodness in what she was given to enjoy, subject to a boundary. The rulers see goodness in other human beings and treat their desires as sufficient authority to possess them.

The contrast between God’s taking and that of the rulers is especially revealing. God, while possessing ultimate authority, persuades Adam with pleasant words. Men with limited authority, compel. They exercise the prerogatives of a creator over people they did not create.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) understood that desire is natural, while virtue requires knowing when and how to satisfy it. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) insisted that human beings must never be treated merely as instruments for another’s desires. Wanting something good is neither inherently virtuous nor sinful. The moral question is whether we have the right to take it, whether permission has been granted or withheld, and what our taking means for others.

God grants humanity dominion over creation in Genesis 1:28. By Genesis 6, powerful men have effectively extended that dominion to other human beings. What began as stewardship of creation has become domination of people. The earth is filled with hamas, violence and injustice, and the Flood follows.

A white marble sculpture depicting a male figure with wings embracing a female figure, both in a dynamic pose suggesting movement and passion.
The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair, by Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), modeled by 1918, carved 1923

God sees goodness in what He created and takes to give. Eve sees goodness in what she was given and takes what was forbidden. The rulers see goodness in other human beings and take whomever they please.

Va’yar. Tov. Va’yikach. Saw. Good. Took.

The Hebrew remains nearly identical. The morality changes completely.

The road from Eden to the Flood begins when people confuse the goodness of what they see with their entitlement to take it for themselves.

Who Gets to Name Evil?

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From Cain and Abel to the Third Anniversary of October 7

The first murder in the Bible takes place in the fourth chapter of Genesis. Cain kills his brother Abel, and God asks him a simple question: “Where is Abel your brother?”

God already knows the answer. The question gives Cain an opportunity to acknowledge his crime. Instead, Cain replies, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

With those words, the first murderer in human history also becomes the first to attempt to redirect the narrative away from his victim. God asks about Abel. Cain makes the conversation about himself, challenging the very notion that he bears responsibility for his brother.

God refuses to follow him.

“What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”

Abel is dead. He cannot describe his suffering, challenge Cain’s account, or defend his memory. Cain remains alive, free to explain himself and change the subject. But God insists that the victim’s blood speaks louder than the murderer’s words.

Cain and Abel by Marc Chagall (1960)

There is an extraordinary detail in the Hebrew. God refers to demei achikha, literally “your brother’s bloods,” in the plural. Rashi, drawing on rabbinic tradition, explains that the words encompass Abel’s blood and the blood of all his descendants who would never be born.

The first murder extinguished generations of possibilities. Children, grandchildren, families, and entire futures disappeared with Abel.

Combine these two ideas – the living control the narrative and the dead include generations – and one can see that the murderer will attempt to frame history for all time.

These opening chapters of Genesis offer a striking perspective on the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered 1,195 people, and abducted 251 hostages. Families were slaughtered in their homes, young people were murdered at a music festival, and entire communities were devastated.

Three years later, the struggle over how to commemorate the massacre has become a struggle over whose story is being told.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged the Hamas killings in his anniversary statement before shifting substantial attention to Israel’s subsequent military campaign and Palestinian suffering. Several leading democratic politicians did the same.

And just two days after the October 7 massacre anniversary, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations’ Navi Pillay, the woman who helped spread the genocide libel about Israel’s defensive war against jihadi terrorists. Seen together, the world is establishing the narrative that will prevail into the future, where the Bibas babies’ descendants who will never be born, will not be able to counter the charge.

The Bibas brothers with their mother, slaughtered by Gazan terrorists

Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” as a diversionary tactic to invert the subject.

God never answers that question directly. Instead, He demands, “What have you done?”

Three years after October 7, the United Nations and too many politicians have learned to answer questions about the murdered by changing the subject.

There is a Missing On Simchat Torah

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This Simchat Torah, I keep thinking about what is missing.

For some families, the absence is unbearable and permanent. A child, a parent, a spouse, a friend who was alive on the last Simchat Torah before October 7 and is no longer here. Every holiday marks time, but an anniversary holiday also measures absence. Another year has passed. Another place at the table remains empty. Another circle forms with someone missing from it.

Aryeh Ziering with his parents, killed as he responded to the massacre by Gazans on October 7, 2023

Loss is embedded in Simchat Torah itself. We reach the end of the Torah and lose Moses.

The man who confronted Pharaoh, led us through the sea, brought down the commandments and carried an impossible people through the wilderness does not cross into the Jewish Promised Land. The Torah does not soften his death or pretend it did not happen. It records it and we read it aloud.

Moses seeing the Promised Land before he dies by James Tissot (1896-1902)

Over the past three years, other things have felt as though they have gone missing as well.

I have watched context disappear from too much of the media coverage of Israel and the Middle East. Iran can threaten Israel and the region through proxies, missiles and terrorism, yet somehow vanish from the frame through which individual events are reported.

I have watched the United Nations lose all credibility as an institution capable of treating Israel with the same standards it applies elsewhere. Its institutions can devote extraordinary attention to Israel while regimes and movements that openly threaten Jews and Israelis often recede into the background.

I have watched universities where “Globalize the Intifada” could become part of the vocabulary of protest after Jews had just experienced the deadliest day since the Holocaust. A recent report on American antisemitism could devote enormous attention to Israel, Palestinian Arabs, race and politics while ignoring the jihadist antisemitism that helped produce October 7 in the first place.

And increasingly, I wonder whether I am losing the Democratic Party I knew.

Senator Chris Coons is not someone I associated with the anti-Israel fringe. Yet he spearheaded legislation that would authorize American sanctions connected to construction in E1, including against foreign persons who simply submit bids for construction tenders. Threatening private parties with the force of the American financial system for bidding on residential construction near Jerusalem represents a place in that debate I never expected mainstream Democrats to reach.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons threaten financial retribution against firms considering building residential homes in Jerusalem suburbs

Some losses happened in a morning. Others have accumulated slowly enough that it took me time to recognize them.

Judaism does not ask us to pretend that loss isn’t real. The Torah certainly doesn’t.

Moses dies. But then we do something remarkable.

We don’t pause to mourn Moses on Simchat Torah. We stand up, sing and dance. We lift the Torahs and our children. And when we have read the Torah’s final words, we refuse to leave the scroll there. We immediately return to Bereishit, to the beginning.

We don’t erase the loss or manufacture comforting explanations for it. We don’t avert our eyes from the people and institutions we have lost or from the lessons their loss may teach us. But neither do we build our lives around the empty spaces.

That may be the lesson I need most this Simchat Torah.

Notice who is missing. Remember them. Look clearly at what else we have lost since October 7 and understand why. Fight where something worth preserving can still be preserved.

Then look around the circle and see who is still there. Hold them a little closer.

And dance.

A Siddur on the Temple Mount Is Now a “Highly Dangerous Development”

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A Jewish prayer book is now a “highly dangerous development” in the Middle East according to the region’s Muslim leaders.

That was the Arab League’s description Sunday of reports that Israeli police are testing allowing Jewish prayer books — siddurim — onto the Temple Mount. The League warned that allowing them could establish new Jewish religious practices and alter the “historical and legal status quo.”

It wasn’t the only alarm sounded during Sukkot.

Over 1,000 Jews visited the Temple Mount on Sunday, with some openly praying and carrying the Four Species.

For perspective, roughly 80,000 Muslims attended the first Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa during Ramadan earlier this year. In normal years, Ramadan Friday attendance can reach 200,000.

For the Muslim world, Muslims were “worshippers” while Jews were “extremist” Israelis conducting “Talmudic rituals.”

Jewish men covered in prayer shawls hold the Four Species as they take part in morning prayers during the holiday of Sukkot at the Cotton Merchant’s Gate entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, September 27, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh warned that Israel risked transforming the political conflict into a “religious war.” He declared the entire 144 dunams of the Temple Mount an exclusively Muslim place of worship that cannot be divided or shared.

The reaction extends well beyond the Palestinian Authority.

Jordan condemned Sunday’s Jewish visits and again declared all 144 dunams exclusively Muslim. And Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have jointly used the same formulation: the entire compound is exclusively for Muslim worship and the Jordanian Waqf has exclusive jurisdiction to administer it and regulate entry.

Three weeks ago, I wrote about the effort to redefine the Temple Mount “status quo,” transforming restrictions on Jewish prayer into a broader claim that the entire compound is exclusively Muslim.

Sukkot takes the story further.

There is no question that Israel is changing its own practice. For decades, Israeli governments maintained the policy that Muslims prayed on the Temple Mount while non-Muslims visited. Israeli police restricted Jewish prayer and barred siddurim and other Jewish religious objects.

Israel observed those restrictions for decades. But it never enacted a permanent statutory ban on Jewish prayer or agreed that the entire Temple Mount would forever be exclusively Muslim.

Now Israel is allowing some Jews to worship at Judaism’s holiest site.

The response is not simply a demand that Israel return to its previous practice. Multiple Muslim governments are declaring that all 144 dunams are exclusively Muslim. The possibility of a Jew carrying a siddur is described as a “desecration of its sanctity,” and jihadi calls for a “religious war.”

And this is happening during Sukkot, one of Judaism’s three biblical pilgrimage festivals, historically centered on Jews traveling to Jerusalem and the Temple. Jews were making pilgrimage there during Sukkot more than a thousand years before Islam existed.

A small number of Jews praying peacefully at their holiest site during their pilgrimage holiday is used as incitement to jihad. And Muslim governments demanded that the “international community” take actions against the Jews.

Perhaps it is time for the international community to explain to radical Islamists what coexistence means.

Knowing What Time It Is

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We are in the middle of the Jewish holiday season, and Judaism has demanded a lot from us.

Rosh Hashanah asked us to stand in judgment. The Ten Days of Repentance asked us to examine ourselves. Yom Kippur demanded confession, fasting and repentance.

And then Judaism tells us to be happy.

Sukkot is zman simchateinu — the time of our joy.

The pivot can feel jarring. The melodies of Yom Kippur are still in our heads when we leave the synagogue, eat, begin building the sukkah and prepare for a holiday explicitly defined by happiness.

Kohelet, which Jews read on Sukkot, provides an answer: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time for war and a time for peace.

Kohelet does not suggest that human beings experience only one emotion at a time. We can mourn and feel gratitude. We can love and be angry. We can be frightened and hopeful.

But Kohelet points somewhere else: that emotions and activities do not only exist in time, but time is defined by emotion and activity.

Different moments call for different responses. The emotions we might personally carry do not relieve us of the obligation to recognize what the present moment demands.

Israel offers a powerful example today.

Israel has inflicted extraordinary damage on enemies that sought its destruction. Hamas and Hezbollah have been badly degraded, and Iran has suffered devastating blows. Israelis can feel enormous relief at what Israel has survived and accomplished.

At the same time, Israel faces extraordinary international hostility and diplomatic isolation. The image at the United Nations this week captured that reality starkly: as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium, dozens of delegations walked out, leaving him addressing a largely empty chamber.

So what should Israelis feel today? Relief? Alarm? Both?

Kohelet does not require one feeling to vanquish the other. The challenge is recognizing which response the present moment calls for.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks captured something similar in describing the distinctive nature of joy: “Joy lives in the moment. It asks no questions about tomorrow. It celebrates the power of now.”

That may explain why Sukkot follows Yom Kippur so quickly. Judaism does not give us weeks to transition from solemnity to celebration. We finish fasting and begin building a sukkah. We do not need to resolve every worry before experiencing joy. As Rabbi Sacks continued, joy “knows that yesterday has gone and tomorrow is unknown.”

Tomorrow will bring whatever tomorrow brings. Kohelet asks us to recognize today.

Zman simchateinu. This is the time for joy.

The Wheel of Jewish History in Songs

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Moses’ final message to the Jewish people was not another law but a song.

As Israel prepared to enter its land, Moses called heaven and earth as witnesses and described a future in which prosperity would lead to complacency, complacency to ingratitude and ingratitude to decline. The people who had depended upon God for water, food and protection in the desert would settle the land, enjoy its abundance and eventually mistake blessing for entitlement. “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.” The danger Moses foresaw was not that hardship would break the Jews, but that success would cause them to forget who they were.

Haazinu was intended as protection against that forgetting. God instructed Moses to write the song, teach it to the Israelites and place it in their mouths so that it would remain a witness among them. The Torah had already been given, the commandments were known and the covenant had been renewed, yet one final safeguard was required. The people had to internalize a warning about themselves that prosperity would otherwise make easy to dismiss.

This makes Haazinu the mirror image of the Torah’s other great song. At the sea, the Israelites were trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the water, free from slavery but not yet able to imagine themselves as a free people. When the sea opened and they crossed on dry land, gratitude rose naturally from within them and was directed toward God. A miracle entered their hearts and emerged through their mouths as the Song of the Sea.

Haazinu travels in the opposite direction. It does not rise spontaneously from the Jewish people but comes from God through Moses and is placed into their mouths so that it may eventually enter their hearts. The Song of the Sea is the Jews expressing to God what they have just experienced; Haazinu is God telling the Jews what they must learn about themselves. One is exuberant and immediate, sung at the moment terror gives way to triumph. The other is measured and unsettling, looking beyond victory toward the temptations victory will create. One moves from the heart to the mouth. The other must move from the mouth into the heart.

That difference may explain why Moses’ final instruction takes the form of song rather than another commandment. Law can remain external to the person who possesses it. A scroll may be stored, honored and ignored, while a commandment may be studied without becoming instinct. A song enters through repetition, settles into memory and returns when the book is closed. Haazinu was written to remain inside the Jewish people as their circumstances changed, so that when later generations prospered and forgot, declined and wondered why, the warning would already be present in words they had learned to sing. The Torah was not insufficient as law, but it also had to become memory.

The two songs describe opposite movements of the wheel of Jewish history. At the sea, Israel stood at the bottom: former slaves, defenseless and pursued by the most powerful army they knew. The sea opened and the wheel turned upward, carrying them from slavery to freedom, terror to triumph. Haazinu addresses a people traveling in the other direction. Israel is about to possess a land, build a society and enjoy an abundance unavailable in the desert, but Moses warns that prosperity may produce forgetfulness and that the wheel can turn down as quickly as it turned up. The Song of the Sea gives hope to Jews trapped at the bottom; Haazinu gives warning to Jews comfortable at the top.

Song at the seaHa’azinu
Israelites to GodGod to Israelites
Internal expression outwardExternal message to be interlized
Heart to mouthMouth to heart
Deliverance already experiencedDanger not yet recognized
Spontaneous, grateful and triumphantDeliberate, cautionary and prophetic
From the bottom toward the topA warning that the top can become the bottom
Recited every morningRead primarily through the annual Torah cycle

For much of the postwar period, particularly in the United States, many Jews came to believe that the wheel had finally stopped turning. Legal barriers fell, universities and professions opened, and open antisemitism became disreputable. Each generation appeared more secure and integrated than the one before it, until the dangers of Jewish history remained vivid in memory but increasingly remote from daily experience. The central questions became how fully Jews could participate in the surrounding society and how little distinctiveness that participation required. The golden age was not merely enjoyed; its permanence was assumed.

That assumption has become harder to sustain. American Jewish life remains strong, but its direction no longer feels assured as hatreds thought driven to the margins return to streets, campuses, politics and culture. Crowds celebrate the murder of Jews, universities explain away their intimidation and public figures revive ancient accusations in the language of contemporary justice. None of this means that catastrophe is inevitable or that American Jewish life is ending. It does mean that uninterrupted progress can no longer be treated as a law of history, and that Jews who spent generations asking how much further they might rise must now consider whether the wheel has begun moving the other way.

There is something remarkable about the place of the two songs in Jewish life. The Song of the Sea, born as the spontaneous response of one generation, is recited every morning, while Haazinu, composed to warn future generations, is generally heard once a year. The upward song became daily prayer, while the warning from the top became an annual interruption.

Hanan Ben Ari concert in Jerusalem, dedicated to members of his crew who died on October 7, 2023 (photo: First One Through)

Perhaps that balance served a people that needed constant reassurance that redemption remained possible. It is less obviously sufficient for Jews who have known extraordinary acceptance and are only beginning to recognize its fragility. The danger is not that Jews have forgotten the Song of the Sea. It is that they have mistaken it for the entire story.

Hanan Ben Ari asks everyone who lost someone during the war to raise their cellphones – almost the entire audience does. He then begins to sing, and the camera turns to capture him and the thousands of lights from the crowd.

The Mayor Is Not the Audience

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On Friday morning, students from SAR, Ramaz, Kehilath Jeshurun and other Jewish institutions will gather outside Gracie Mansion for Shacharit. They will pray, sing and speak about their love for New York, their love for Israel and their right to feel safe in the city where they were born.

Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, principal of SAR Academy, explains that the gathering is both prayer and statement. Its location is intentional: many Jewish New Yorkers believe that the mayor’s rhetoric about Israel and not condemning the phrase shouted at city universities “globalize the intifada” has made them easy targets. Prayer outside his residence ensures that the message cannot easily be ignored.

Yet Friday falls within the Ten Days of Repentance, when Jews should be especially clear about whom they are addressing. Gracie Mansion may be the location, but the mayor is not the audience. God is.

Prayer expresses the Jewish belief that political power is never the highest power. During these ten days, Jews repeatedly say Avinu Malkeinu – Our Father, Our King. They gather before God.

The Torah reading the following morning makes that message unmistakable. Haazinu is Moses’ final song, delivered as the Jewish people prepare to enter the Land of Israel. It calls heaven and earth as witnesses and describes the entire movement of Jewish history: God finds Israel in the wilderness, protects it, brings it to a fertile land and warns that prosperity can produce complacency.

Then comes one of the song’s most famous lines:

“Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.” – Deuteronomy 32:15

Jeshurun is an affectionate name for Israel. The warning is directed at successful Jews who have become so secure that they mistake comfort for permanence. They enjoy the land’s bounty, forget its source and abandon the Rock of their salvation.

The presence of Kehilath Jeshurun and Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz makes the verse impossible to miss. The very congregation joining the prayer bears the name invoked by Moses. This week, the children of Jeshurun will walk from their schools and shuls in one of the most prosperous Jewish neighborhoods in the world and pray in the public square.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Kehilat Jeshrun lighting Chanukah candles next to Gracie Mansion in December 2025 before a crowd and reporters, alluding to the new mayor’s anti-Jewish opinions and statements (photo: First One Through)

These Jews are heirs to what may have been one of the greatest Diaspora golden ages in Jewish history. New York Jews built synagogues, schools, hospitals, charities, businesses and cultural institutions. They rose to the highest levels of civic life and came to regard their acceptance as a permanent feature of the city. Their children could be openly Jewish, openly Zionist and fully American without perceiving any contradiction.

Recent attacks and an increasingly hostile public climate have shaken that confidence. Rabbi Krauss writes that students returned to school carrying both fear and a need to answer it. That answer should not be a plea for acceptance from a mayor. It should be a declaration that Jewish identity does not depend upon a mayor’s approval.

Haazinu does not teach that Jewish survival rests upon the favor of rulers. It teaches that the Jewish relationship with God, Torah and the Land of Israel survives the rise and fall of political powers. Moses delivers the song while standing outside the land he will never enter, yet he speaks of the connection between Israel and its land as something deeper than temporary possession or political recognition. Governments may contest it, enemies may attack it and Jews themselves may neglect it, but the covenant remains.

That should be the meaning of Friday’s public prayer. The students should not perform Judaism for the mayor. They should show New York what Judaism looks like: children praying openly, affirming their faith, facing Jerusalem and refusing to sever their attachment to Israel in exchange for political comfort.

The Temple Mount Status Quo Is Being Rewritten

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The Palestinian Authority has declared the Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism — the “exclusive right of Muslims.”

That is not the historic status quo. It is an attempt to rewrite it.

After Israel took control of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967, day-to-day religious administration of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif remained with the Islamic Waqf, while Israel retained responsibility for security and substantial control over access. The Waqf permitted Muslims to pray on the Mount, while non-Muslims could visit, prayer was restricted.

The arrangement governed administration, access and worship. It did not declare the Temple Mount the exclusive possession or religious entitlement of Muslims.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate crossed that line explicitly on September 6. It condemned Jews conducting “Talmudic rituals and prayers” as attempts to “alter its religious character,” declared the entire 144-dunam compound the “exclusive right of Muslims” and warned against changing its “identity.”

Those words matter.

Waqf administration is one thing. Restrictions on Jewish prayer are another. Declaring the site itself the “exclusive right” of Muslims is something else entirely.

The status quo regulates what Jews may do there. It never determined what the place is.

The First and Second Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount. Jewish prayer has faced Jerusalem for millennia. Jewish liturgy, mourning and hopes for redemption are bound to it. Many observant Jews have historically declined to walk upon portions of the Mount precisely because they consider the ground too holy to enter without the required ritual purity.

For some Jews, not ascending is itself an expression of the Mount’s extraordinary Jewish sanctity.

That makes the new language especially provocative. Jews visiting Judaism’s holiest place become “settlers” conducting “incursions.” Jewish prayer becomes threatening “Talmudic rituals.” A restriction accepted to preserve religious peace is transformed into evidence that Jewish religious expression does not belong there at all.

Jewish restraint was supposed to preserve coexistence. It cannot become a permission slip for Jewish erasure.

The international reaction sharpens that dynamic. The United Nations itself has called upon the parties to refrain from “provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric,” especially in places of “religious and cultural sensitivity.” In the very next paragraph, it demanded that Jerusalem’s historic status quo be respected “in word and practice” and urged “all sides” to halt provocations and incitement at the holy sites.

By the UN’s own standard, words can threaten the status quo. Yet when an official Palestinian governmental authority declares Judaism’s holiest site the “exclusive right of Muslims,” it is greeted with a silent nod of approval.

And this occurs as the anti-Israel horde discusses so-called “Jewish supremacy.” Zohran Mamdani has attacked privileging one religion over another (meaning Jews over Muslims). Hasan Piker denounces “ethnoreligious supremacist values.” At the Jewish Temple Mount, the principle stripped of abstraction: one religion claiming exclusive entitlement to the holiest site of another.

And that raises a more fundamental question about the status quo itself.

Perhaps placing religious administration of a multi-faith holy site exclusively in the hands of one of the religions claiming it was always structurally unstable.

The Waqf is not a neutral administrator. It is an Islamic religious institution representing one faith at a site sacred to several. That arrangement can function while custodianship means administration. It becomes difficult to justify when the authority entrusted with the site participates in or endorses a doctrine that denies another faith any legitimate claim to it.

The test should be remarkably simple: Can the authorities administering the Temple Mount state unambiguously that it is Judaism’s holiest site?

Acknowledging that fact surrenders nothing about Islam’s attachment to Al-Aqsa. But an administrator that cannot acknowledge the most basic religious identity of the people whose holiest site it administers has a profound conflict with the responsibilities of custodianship.

If the Waqf and Jordan cannot pass that test, their fitness to exercise exclusive administration should be questioned.

The logical alternative is administration by a political authority obligated to protect multiple religions rather than a religious authority representing one of them. Israel already bears responsibility for security at the compound and exercises substantial control over access. Any new arrangement would have to fully protect Muslim worship and Islamic holy places while recognizing rather than suppressing the religious attachments of others.

The status quo was built on the assumption that Islamic administration could coexist with Jewish restraint. The assertion of “Muslim exclusivity” is breaking that bargain.

If the Waqf cannot acknowledge Judaism at Judaism’s holiest site, it should no longer be entrusted to administer it.

Related:

US Embassy In Israel Only Invites Muslims To US To Study (September 2023)