When I was a kid, before every supermarket aisle was filled with OU symbols, you had to read the ingredients yourself. That’s how you figured out whether something was kosher. No stamp, no shortcut. You made your own call with the information at hand.

It wasn’t perfect but that training carried over to how I learned to read the news. You didn’t wait for someone in authority to tell you what was moral. You read, you weighed, you judged.

After the October 7 Gazans’ slaughter in Israel, non-Orthodox denominations—the same ones least interested in kosher certification—raced to the presses with appeals for peace on both sides and declarations of shared mourning. The Orthodox world stayed largely quiet.

Then in August 2025, Open Orthodox rabbis decided they, too, needed to weigh in, well after Hamas and its allies had been trounced. Their letter condemned Hamas’s atrocities, but it quickly shifted its focus. Israel, they argued, bore moral responsibility for not providing enough food to Gazans and for Jewish violence in the West Bank.

The reaction was swift. The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing a more traditional Orthodox camp, branded the letter a distortion. They accused the signatories of ignoring critical facts, downplaying Hamas’s genocidal intent, and amplifying Jewish sins while minimizing Islamist terror. In other words, the Open Orthodox letter was stamped “Not Kosher.”

But step back for a moment and ask the obvious: who exactly are these letters for? Are the rabbis addressing their own congregants and communities, who look to them for guidance in halacha, prayer, and Jewish life? Are they trying to lecture the Israeli cabinet, which is fighting an existential war 6,000 miles away? Are they speaking to the American press and social media audience, where the concern is whether they will be judged as sufficiently “balanced” or critical? Or do they believe they are the modern equivalent of biblical prophets keeping Jewish kings in check?

The truth is that no single voice speaks for the Jews. And if you want serious political analysis, rabbis are not the address. They are trained to decide what happens when your meat knife slices into a piece of cheese—not how to conduct a multi-front war. When the OU stamps a product, it’s because real diligence has been done: site visits, lab tests, ingredient tracing. When rabbis stamp foreign policy with a moral hechsher, it’s about as kosher as Zabar’s selling ham on Chanukah.

Meanwhile, rabbis are getting urgent war-related questions. Not about ceasefires or humanitarian corridors—but about how to bury a soldier whose body isn’t recovered, or what obligations a spouse has when the other is on the front line, or how to mourn when half a community is shattered. Those questions are answered the traditional way: discreetly, privately, and halachically. That is moral clarity.

Open letters, by contrast, are performative. Nobody asked these rabbis to issue a ruling on how the IDF fights its battles. If anyone had, the question and answer would have been private, rooted in Torah and respect. To publish sweeping pronouncements in American media isn’t moral clarity—it’s moral vanity. It attempts to signal superiority over the very people fighting and dying, while feeding the antisemitic bonfire already raging online.

That may be the point. To profess innocence now that certain lines have been crossed, to posture publicly so that no one can accuse you of silence. But make no mistake: this is not Torah. It is branding.

Moral clarity means living the values you preach and answering the hard questions your people actually ask. It does not mean stamping your moral logo on a war you neither fight nor fully understand.

When liberals talk about “weaponizing racism,” the meaning is clear. Think of the infamous cases where white people call the police on Black people for doing something perfectly innocuous — selling water, birdwatching, sitting in a Starbucks. The very act of dialing 911 becomes a way to make Black people feel more vulnerable, more over-policed, more endangered. Racism is real in this framing, and its “weaponization” is a way of worsening the problem, inflicting still more harm on those already marginalized.

But when it comes to antisemitism, the logic gets flipped on its head. When Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) or campus activists talk about “weaponizing antisemitism,” they don’t mean that Jews are made more vulnerable. They mean the accusation of antisemitism is being used to silence critics of Israel or chill free speech. In this version, the harm is not what antisemitism does to Jews — but what claims of antisemitism do to non-Jews.

That’s a disturbing asymmetry. With racism, the victim is always centered: racism exists, and its weaponization compounds the pain. With antisemitism, the victim disappears entirely: antisemitism itself is treated as unreal, and Jews are recast as the aggressors who manipulate charges of antisemitism for their own gain.

That’s not just dismissive. It’s antisemitism squared: denying the reality of antisemitism, while simultaneously vilifying Jews as powerful, conniving actors who exploit victimhood to harm others. It erases Jewish vulnerability, erases Jewish history, and turns the victims into villains.

The result is a discourse where every minority group is believed about its pain — except Jews. For everyone else, weaponization highlights their marginalization. For Jews, weaponization supposedly proves their power. That isn’t a progressive double standard. It’s an old antisemitic one, dressed up in new language.

For Americans and Israelis, a summer vacation in Europe is almost instinctive. A relatively short flight offers a world away—new languages, different currencies, distinct cuisines. The joy is in the immersion: wandering museums, hearing street musicians in centuries-old plazas, staring up at Gothic spires, and feeling the weight of two millennia of history.

But the summer of 2025 was different. The walls of Europe’s cities told a darker story.

Alongside the usual student slogans and political tags were messages aimed squarely at one people and one country. Anti-Israel graffiti was everywhere—not just Palestinian flags but slogans in English declaring ” Smash Zionism” and “all Israeli soldiers are war criminals.” The words were not about policy disputes or borders. They were echoes of the Hamas charter, demanding the eradication of the Jewish state.

This was not the first time Europe’s streets had carried such messages. A century ago, it was pamphlets, posters, and shop signs. In the 1930s, “Kauft nicht bei Juden”—“Don’t buy from Jews”—was painted on storefronts. Nazi caricatures and blood libel imagery were plastered in public squares. These were not fringe ideas—they were mainstreamed into the civic landscape, normalizing antisemitism as part of public discourse.

Today’s slogans are more fluent in the language of modern activism, but the purpose is the same: to strip Jews of legitimacy and belonging. In the 1930s, the Jewish store owner was framed as a threat to society; in 2025, the Jewish state is framed as a threat to world peace. Then as now, the goal is erasure—economic, cultural, political, and, ultimately, physical.

What makes the present moment particularly jarring is its setting. The graffiti appears on the same walls that tourists pass on their way to see memorials to Europe’s murdered Jews. A plaque in the street may commemorate Jews deported to Auschwitz, but the wall above it proclaims “From the river to the sea,” a slogan advocating the removal of the Jewish State altogether. The contradiction is almost too much to process: “Never Again” in bronze, “Again Now” in spray paint.

Europe and the United States remain the last major powers to hold off on recognizing a Palestinian state somewhere in the Middle East. But that resistance is softening—not from a careful appreciation of the challenges of creating a peaceful, democratic state alongside Israel, but from the pressure of chants and hashtags lifted from jihadist manifestos. Politicians are not being persuaded by policy papers; they are being worn down by the relentlessness of street-level messaging and its seep into mainstream politics.

For Israeli and American Jewish tourists, the graffiti is not abstract. It’s aimed at them, personally. To walk through a city square and see your country branded as genocidal is not just uncomfortable—it’s alienating. It says: We know you’re here, and you’re not welcome IN HEBREW.

The tragedy is that many of the cities now hosting this wave of messaging were once vibrant centers of Jewish life, wiped out in living memory. The graffiti is a reminder that antisemitism, like the paint itself, seeps easily into old cracks, clings to old walls, and waits for the right political climate to dry in place.

There was scant commentary on the streets about the antisemitic genocidal group Hamas that launched the war. When it appeared, it was very small and seemingly in reaction to pro-Palestinian paint. It was a tank-versus-switchblade graffiti street brawl. The conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere were nowhere to be seen.

In the summer of 2025, Europe’s walls have become more than stone: they are mirrors that reflect not just the continent’s history, but its willingness to embrace its darkest periods. A reminder that the high brow culture frequently sinks in moral depravity.

The government is coming down hard on Columbia University for failing to protect Jewish students. It has blocked grants from the school and has come after particular international students. Some civil rights organizations and Democratic politicians have argued that such maneuvers are trouncing protected free speech and are illegal actions against people who have different opinions than President Trump.

People are entitled to have opinions – even hateful ones, and share them aloud or in print. However, such rights are not absolute and have limitations at universities.

1. In general, people may not stop other people from enjoying their particular rights, say to enjoy the campus and study freely.

The students who went into a classroom about Modern Israel and handed out leaflets and did not let the professor teach class were NOT exercising free speech but were being disruptive. The hecklers at Hillary Clinton’s lecture were not engaged in free speech but impinging on the rights of other students to learn.

2. Students cannot engage in vandalism. Painting red triangles which are the signature of the Hamas terrorist group to target people and breaking glass is destructive. Anti-Israel Columbia students have done this repeatedly.

The vandalism and takeover of schools is against both of these first two principles and certainly not part of free speech. The abduction of a school custodian during the building takeover also warranted severe disciplinary action.

3. People cannot disseminate propaganda and wave flags of US-designated terrorist groups. The United States has labeled several Palestinian Arab groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Sharing propaganda from such groups can be viewed as providing material support, a serious crime.

Columbia students who are part of Students for Justice in Palestine shared statements from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh that “contextualizes” the slaughter of 1,200 people, kidnapping of babies and Holocaust survivors, and raping of women. They lionized the architect of the October 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and many other mass murderers.

Some of the students at the Columbia encampments have been at rallies with Hamas flags and headbands, and people calling to repeat the October 7 massacre in other parts of the world to achieve “liberation.”

Being associated with designated foreign terrorist groups jumps from “free speech” considerations to the blurry definition of “domestic terrorism” to the very real and illegal area of “international terrorism” which the federal government will prosecute immediately.

4. People may not intentionally provoke someone “face-to-face” in an action likely to be met with violence. Screaming “I am Hamas” to a Jew in the aftermath of Hamas’s butchery of Jews and the genocidal group’s promise to repeat the heinous slaughter would not be protected under free speech.

5. Beyond provoking a violent response, free speech may not intimidate or harass someone or a group of people, especially if they are part of a “protected group.” For example, a mob yelling for all Zionists to get off a subway is not protected under free speech.

More generally, free speech only relates to government involvement. A private business or university may have restrictions on offensive speech that are more restrictive than federal laws. The government may then investigate the select application of free speech at private institutions when only protecting certain groups’ permitted speech while not for others.

Further, free speech does not shield someone from the ramifications of such speech. Someone may something that is protected under the government’s definition of free speech and still lose a job or opportunity because it is viewed as offensive.

The list above may overlap. For example, drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed is protected speech but drawing it on a mosque is vandalism and harassment. Talking about an “Intifada” generally which might mean to “shake off” is okay, yet shouting to “globalize the intifada” while holding “zionism is racism” and “there is only one solution” banners before a Jewish institution is the equivalent of a bomb threat.

Free speech is a cornerstone of America—but so is liberty. The targeted harassment and intimidation of Jews across campuses and cities has crossed the line. Chanting genocidal slogans and glorifying the slaughter of Jews – at Jews – is not protected speech; it’s an assault on civil rights.

Defending the First Amendment must never come at the cost of abandoning the safety and liberty of American Jews.