Mike Huckabee, the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel, landed in the holy land to assume his new role and immediately went to the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple Mount. It is the holiest site where Jews can pray today, so he used the opportunity to address Jews in a call for peace.
Huckabee carried a small paper note from U.S. President Donald Trump praying for peace, which Huckabee inserted into a small crack in the ancient wall. He told those gathered that he and the president prayed that all the hostages violently taken by Gazans would be released to their families soon.
Mike Huckabee speaking at Western Wall about the “Judeo-Christian understanding that every life has worth and value.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that Huckabee’s appointment as ambassador to Israel will “undermine the rights and safety of Muslim and Christian Palestinians, including American citizens living in or traveling to the region.” Somehow, a man devoted to peace for everyone – including Jews – and freedom for everyone – including hostages – is a threat to radical Muslim groups like CAIR and the Islamic Waqf.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, wearing a hostage support yellow ribbon pin, places a note into the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple Mount, during Passover 2025
On the same day, Israel increased the number of Jewish visitors onto the Temple Mount to 180 at a time to accommodate demand. These were the largest sized groups according to the Islamic Waqf coming to “al Aqsa Mosque.” Aouni Bazbaz, head of international affairs for the waqf told Middle East Eye that the scene was “frightening” and portended Jews seeking to divide the holy compound into Jewish and Muslim sections like the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs in Hebron.
To put the 180-person Jewish group in context, during Ramadan last month, Israel banned Jews visiting the site while 90,000 Muslims visited for prayers without putting anyone into a “group” for security. No one in Israel called the massive number of Muslim visitors “frightening.”
To add insult to the waqf’s smear, Bazbaz said Israel’s allowing both Jews and Muslims to pray in Hebron was “apartheid” and likely to happen in Jerusalem.
Islamic extremists want a purely Muslim holy land in the Jewish homeland, without basic human rights like prayer for non-Muslims. Dignity for other faiths is labeled “apartheid” in slurs likely to be adopted by the United Nations and “human rights” groups.
The story of Chanukah happened in 164 BCE. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes had defiled the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and enacted several laws against Judaism, including banning circumcision, celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays, forcing Jews to eat pork, and making it a capital offense to have a torah scroll. The Jews of the holy land revolted against the Syrian-Greek king and got rid of all the anti-Judaism decrees and rededicated the Temple.
This was a war of pagans against the Jewish religion, before Herod built the expanded Temple Mount plaza and before Christianity.
Over the following centuries, King Herod (72 BCE – 4 BCE) built the expanded Temple Mount and Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans. Jewish revolts against the Romans in 66CE-70CE and 132-135CE led to the destruction of Jerusalem and expulsion of Jews from the area, renaming the city to “Aelia Capitolina” and the region to “Palestina.”
This was a war of pagans against Jews and Christians, before the birth of Mohammed and creation of Islam.
Mohammed’s quest to bring Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the world brought a Muslim invasion into the Jewish holy land in the 7th and 8th centuries. Muslims built their third holiest site on top of Herod’s Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa Mosque. Christians and Muslims waged several wars over the holy land between 1095 and 1291.
Those battles between Christian crusaders and Muslims, were over the Jewish holy land and Judaism’s holiest location.
In 1948, Muslim Arab armies invaded and tried to destroy the newly declared State of Israel. The Jordanian army ethnically cleansed all of the Jews on the western bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1954, it granted citizenship to all Arabs, as long as they were not Jewish.
This was a war of Arab Muslims countries against the physical presence of Jews in the Jewish holy land.
From the Chanukah story to the creation of Israel in 1948, many groups laid siege to Jerusalem, often attacking Jews through anti-religious actions, or lumped in with other religious groups. Since 1948, the war has been about the physical presence of Jews in Jerusalem, a place where Jews have been the majority since the 1860s.
At the story of Chanukah, there was no Temple Mount, no Christianity and no Islam. It was a battle of pagans against a small local tribe’s religion, who lived at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Chanukah marks the beginning of Jews in the holy land being attacked for their religion. The successful battles proved to be short-lived, as most Jews were forced into the diaspora over the following centuries, until the recent past. Celebrating the holiday today amidst a multi-front defensive war and global antisemitic chants that Jews are “European settler colonialists” is a chance to reassert Eight Attestations On Jerusalem:
Jews have an Inalienable right to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount
Banning Jews from living and praying in their holiest city is blatant anti-Semitism, as is denying Jewish history
There is no “Judaizing” Jerusalem, as Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s, and have devoted themselves to the city since 1000BCE
The security of Israel demands that its capital sit well within its borders
Divided capitals are a function of war, not peace. The place known as “East Jerusalem” only existed for a few years, 1949-1967
No part of Jerusalem was ever contemplated to be part of Palestine. Not only is “East Jerusalem” not an actual city, but there is no basis to call it “Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Jerusalem Arabs have been and are continued to be offered Israeli citizenship
There is no ethnic cleansing of Arabs. The Arab population in Jerusalem has grown faster than Jews since Israel reunited city
On Chanukah, diaspora Jews should pay particular attention to the direction of their prayer, the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, as Jews have done for thousands of years.
Happy Chanukah signs on the walls of Jerusalem, 2021
One of the most famous stories in the Book of Genesis is about Jacob’s ladder with angels ascending and descending. The famous biblical commentator Rashi (1040-1105) said that the angels going up were tied to the holy land and had to leave Jacob as he journeyed to live with his uncle Laban outside of the land. The angels coming down were new angels who would accompany Jacob while he lived outside of the holy land.
Jacob’s Ladder by Frans Francken II the Younger (1581-1642)
I would like to share an alternative interpretation: the angels on the ladder represent Jacob’s relationship with Esau.
There is no tool that connects hands and feet like a ladder. Both are required to go up as well as to come down. If several people are on a ladder at one time, hands and feet would likely be touching.
That is a reference to Jacob. His name literally came from his act of holding onto the heel of his brother Esau at their births. “Jacob” stems from the Hebrew word for heel, “akeb” (Genesis 25:26):
The clutching of the heel in the world’s first recorded twins set the primogeniture battle for the ages.
Birthright
There are two stories of Jacob angling to take the birthright from Esau. First, Jacob operates on his own and trades food with a hungry Esau for the birthright (Genesis 25:29-34). Years later, as their father Isaac wasn’t likely to abide by the earlier exchange between the brothers, Jacob acts at the urging of his mother Rebekah to trick Isaac into giving the special blessing intended for Esau to himself. Esau was so distraught by this action, that he swore he would kill Jacob, forcing Jacob to flee to live with Laban. (Genesis 27:1-21).
Jacob had the dream of angels on the ladder while he was fleeing from Esau. Jacob was not sure whether he had the advantage of the blessing or was a hunted man. On the ladder, the person higher up is only ahead while ascending; the elevated person actually trails the person below him when they are all descending.
The story of Jacob clutching Esau’s leg finally comes to a close when Jacob returns to the holy land. In Genesis 32:25-33, Jacob wrestles a man/angel who dislocates Jacob’s hip. As the angel breaks free he blesses Jacob by changing his name to Yisrael:
“Said he, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.'”
Jacob/Israel, together with his wives and children, are then able to meet with Esau with his 400-person army, no longer carrying the weight of the contest. After they meet, Jacob gets affirmation from Gd about moving beyond the Jacob-Esau heel connection in Genesis 35:9-13.
And God said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Be fertile and increase; A nation, yea an assembly of nations, Shall descend from you. Kings shall issue from your loins.
The land that I assigned to Abraham and Isaac I assign to you; And to your offspring to come Will I assign the land.”
Jacob’s view of himself was tied to his name which conveyed a pursuit of his brother and his blessing. Once he broke free of that pursuit – together with a limp and a new name – Israel was able to accept that he was the heir to the blessings Gd bestowed upon his forefathers.
The angels on the ladder in Jacob’s dream were not geofenced protectors of Jacob but a reflection of his link with Esau, together with confusion of his actions. Esau would always be older and above him on the ladder, but descending and on the ground in the holy land, Jacob/Israel was entitled to the blessings and inheritance.
For the sin of believing in Kamala Harris the moment she became the presidential nominee when I had believed her utterly incompetent for three and one-half years;
For the sin of not believing that Donald Trump is a megalomaniac;
For the sin of wasting time debating Trump-Harris for hours, when I live in a deeply blue or red state;
After Iran fired over 180 missiles at Israel, Israel considered how to handle synagogue attendance during the Rosh Hashanah holiday. Synagogue attendance typically swells on the holy days, with even more secular Jews attending services. But most synagogues only have small mamads (safe rooms) to protect people during a shelling attack, so hundreds could be left unprotected during an attack.
The situation is even more dire at one of the largest synagogues in the world – the Western Wall Plaza at the Kotel – where thousands of Jews gather in the Old City of Jerusalem. The large outdoor location has few easily accessible places to hide from missiles.
Perhaps the grey-domed al Aqsa Mosque can be used by thousands of Jews as a safe room from jihadi missiles. The jihadists would presumably try to spare their religious building, making the mosque a potential haven for Jews.
Al Aqsa Mosque from outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls (photo: First One Through)
Hamas termed their barbaric slaughter of Israelis the “al Aqsa Flood.” Perhaps it didn’t imagine that the term would become a prophecy inverted, drawing masses of Jews onto the Temple Mount.
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.
The United States was alarmed and appalled at the “Unite the Right” mob march in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017. As right-wing marchers descended on a university holding torches, wearing Nazi symbols and yelling “Jews will not replace us,” the country watched a scene of racism and antisemitism unfold into a crime scene. PBS called it a “watershed moment for the white supremacist movement.”
The real life play is being revealed once again in real time, with a new set of actors and fashion brandished by radical jihadists and the alt-left, once again yelling “Jews will not replace us.”
Radical Jihadists
Radical jihadists are typically located in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle and Far East including Iran, Qatar, Pakistan, Indonesia and Somalia. They believe that Islam should dominate the world, especially in any location which was once dominated by Islamists such as the land of Israel.
The jihadi extremists began to slowly migrate into Europe and the United States starting in the 1960s but accelerated their movement in 2015/16 as the “Arab Spring” and Syrian Civil War decimated their homelands. They came to Europe (2015) and the United States (in 2016) and brought much of their instilled antisemitism.
The United States also encouraged foreign students to attend American universities. In 2003, as the American War on Terror raged in mostly Muslim countries, the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program was launched. The goal was to bring “High school students from countries with significant Muslim populations [to] live and study in the United States for an academic year through the U.S.” In the 2015/6 academic year, 61,000 students from Saudi Arabia were at U.S. universities. That high figure represents 0.2% of the entire population of Saudi Arabia to a single country. By way of comparison, the ENTIRE American students abroad cohort all over the world is around 162,000, or 0.05% of the U.S. population.
The U.S. continues to push for foreign Muslim students at American schools. On September 12, 2023, the U.S. embassy in Israel posted an advertisement that the U.S. State Department “is seeking a group of Arab citizens of Israel secondary school students to participate in a Study- in-the-USA initiative for high school students during the 2024-2025 school year.” (bold in original). No Jewish students from Israel were invited to be part of the program.
And what do radical jihadists, faces covered in kaffiyehs, preach abroad and in the United States?
They consider the entire State of Israel to be an illegal project that must be terminated
Palestinian Arabs demand a “right of return” to towns where grandparents used to live along with an expulsion of Jews who refuse to live as second class “dhimmis.”
In short, radical jihadists are chanting that “Jews will not replace us!” in Palestine, as they seek to “Free Palestine” from the clutches of the Jews.
Alt-Left
The far-left cohort in America is seeking to end capitalism and pursue a broad redistribution of wealth and power. They have advanced the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) into schools and corporations that demand the minorities of preference (Blacks, Hispanics, LGBT) be given priority in admission, compensation, title and power before Whites or somehow “privileged” minorities such as Asians and Jews.
The alt-left considers Jews to be part of the uber elite class, occupying too many CEO, Supreme Court and political positions. They attribute Jewish success as a matter of Jews only looking out for themselves, and cheating or stealing from the labor of the working class, in classic antisemitic tropes.
When Black Israelites shot up a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, NJ in December 2019, several leaders of the Black community were clear that they felt the killers were only REacting as a form of self defense: “Black homeowners were threatened, intimidated, and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the jewish community.”
Jews do not belong. In the housing or their jobs.
“Jews will not replace us!” rained down in a hail of bullets in Jersey City and in federal and state mandated DEI programs.
Alt-Right
The alt-right coined the phrase “Jews will not replace us!” but far from monopolized the theme.
The alt-right version of the phrase in many ways is the most preposterous. White supremacists believe that Jews are so powerful that they are advancing a program of importing millions of non-White and non-Christian foreigners to dilute the White Christian backbone of the country. How and why that would have any remote advantages for Jews is never explained.
Muslim extremists, woke progressives and White nationalists have very different philosophies but congregate around a belief that Jews are cheats and thieves who are robbing the rightful owners of land, money, jobs and prestige. And they are coming for this beleaguered minority-minority “by any means they deem necessary,” much as antisemites have done for centuries.
We are at a “watershed moment for the jihadi and alt-left movements” in the United States to destroy Judeo-Christian values, capitalism and the West. How the government’s leaders and population respond will set the tone for our future.
Kosher food is eaten by Jews and non-Jews. Some Jews don’t eat kosher food and prefer non-kosher items. But “kosher” is definitely Jewish, as defined in the Bible outlining which foods are permissible and not permissible for Jews.
Many Jewish men get circumcised at eight days old in a “bris.” A small percentage of Jewish boys are not circumcised because the parents do not like the custom. But a “bris” is definitely Jewish, a commandment laid out in the Bible.
Many Jewish homes have a menorah as do many synagogues. They are lit on the holiday of Chanukah per rabbinic tradition. Some Jews do not own or light a menorah, but it is definitely a Jewish religious article.
Religious married Jewish women go to a ritual bath, a “mikvah,” once a month. Most Jewish women are not Orthodox or do not have regular menstrual cycles and do not visit the mikvah. But a mikvah is definitely a Jewish bath and has been for thousands of years.
Roughly 45% of world Jewry lives in the land of Israel, while the majority do not live there. But the land of Israel is central to Judaism, the “promised land” to the Jewish forefathers of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. It is central to the Jewish Bible and for Jews for 3,700 years.
Jews visiting the Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem
Whether a person keeps kosher, had a bris, visits a mikvah, lights a menorah, or lives in the land of Israel, has nothing to do with those items being integral parts of Judaism. Similarly, a person may never read the Talmud, but such action is irrelevant to the tractates inherently being a fabric of Jewish tradition.
So when a Jewish person says Jews shouldn’t live in Israel, it doesn’t negate that the land of Israel is central to Judaism; it just means that that particular person doesn’t believe it.
The next time you see members of Neturei Karta yelling that Zionism is terrible and the Jewish State should be destroyed, whisper in their ears that you are working to ban kosher meat and circumcision in America, as a gentle reminder that just because they may not appreciate how some people express their Judaism, they shouldn’t fight to ban it for others.
Members of ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta protesting a march combating antisemitism, January 2020 (photo: First One Through)
The land of Israel, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are deeply Jewish locations and have been for thousands of years. It makes absolutely no difference what any Jew or non-Jew says, and whether they are one side or the other of the Israeli-Hamas war. Parading “AsAJews” who fight against Zionism before cameras does nothing to negate the reality that Israel is an essential component of Judaism, much like keeping kosher and a bris.
The magnification of fringe anti-Jewish views held by Jews is a noxious tool used by Jew-haters to splinter the beleaguered minority-minority to become easier fodder for extinction. Shame on the media for making a deliberate point of doing so in these days of toxic antisemitism.
For the last few hundred years, Jews inserted three lines after their penultimate prayer in their daily services. Right after Aleinu and before the final mourner’s Kaddish, a sentence from Proverbs and two from Isaiah are found:
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.
Al-Tirah
Roots Of Al Tira Prayer
Leaving synagogue was often a traumatic affair when Jews were scattered around the world. Inside of the synagogue, Jews were both together and felt connected to God; outside was a starkly different reality. Sometimes the local non-Jews would attack the Jews with pogroms and edicts, and at other times, Jews would be fortunate to find salvation.
Today, very few congregations actually recite the prayer despite its inclusion in prayer books.
I suggest that perhaps it is now time for all congregations to begin saying it.
Israel has responded to the Palestinian barbarity. It has killed and injured roughly one-third of the political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and has leveled much of the terrorist enclave. Hamas has claimed that nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed at this point, with children accounting for over one-third.
On top of the frozen state of terror of Jews from the ongoing antisemitic attacks since October 7 is the sadness of watching the destruction of Gaza. Why did Hamas do this and why does the evil group insist that Israeli forces continue to pound Gaza rather than release the hostages and surrender the terrorists?
Hamas has an evil and twisted ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam that demands the destruction of the Jewish state, believing its presence is an embarrassment for Muslims. As it states in its foundational charter “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time… In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.”
For its part, Judaism has a different set of beliefs that stretches back thousands of years before the Islamic prophet Mohammed was born. It urges calm in the face of fear.
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. (Proverbs 3:25)
Jews are carrying both the shock of October 7 in Israel and the sickening reaction of Hamas’s fans around the world. They are simultaneously witnessing the destruction of that enemy. It’s a lot to process – the “sudden fear” and the “desolation of the wicked” – and has led many Jews and Zionists to huddle together in synagogue, and hide symbols of being Jewish when they go outside.
Jewish Calendar And Numbers
The Jewish year 5784 is a Jewish leap year which adds another month, and the year 2024 in the secular calendar is also a leap year which adds a single day. Both the Jewish calendar and the secular calendars add the time in the winter to “correct” the calendar for the upcoming spring.
We are now in the first of two months of Adar. Jewish tradition holds that Adar is a month of happiness and when Jews defeated their mortal enemies who attacked the weakest Jews. The double month of Adar is meant as a moment of double celebration.
This year of 5784 is the eighth year of the 19-year Metonic cycle which marks leap years on the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth year. Just as 2024 is the eighth year in the cycle, so was 1967, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, as was 1948, the year that the Jewish State was reborn. From 1948 to 1967 was one Metonic cycle and from 1967 to 2024 were three full cycles.
Numbers have significance in Judaism. One is connected to the singularity of God in the Jewish monotheistic faith. Three symbolizes Judaism’s founding fathers, the sections of the Shema prayer, three holidays of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the three groups of Jews.
Eight is also meaningful. Beyond the day that Jewish males are circumcised to join the Jewish nation, tradition is that eight connects man in the natural to the supernatural world. While God made the world in seven days and had seven branches on the menorah in the holy Temple, eight is the step beyond. The seven branch menorah was for the Temple, while Jews light an eight branch menorah in their homes and synagogues today to connect to the miracle.
Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. (Isaiah 8:10)
These months of Adar seem like important months to recite the oft-skipped prayer. A time to mark the third complete leap year cycle of Jewish control Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It is a time to remember that God is with us and he is the sole source of fear.
Amalek And Arms Aloft Together
When the Jewish people left slavery in Egypt they were attacked by the nation of Amalek. During the battle, Jews looked up to Moses who held his arms pointing to the sky with the assistance of Aaron and Hur who held the elderly prophet’s arms. The Jews were empowered when they saw Moses praying to God to vanquish the enemy, and prevailed as God enabled their success.
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4)
Today, there is no Jewish leader like Moses to pray on behalf of the jews, and every Jew takes their own prayer book to talk to God. They gather in minyanim around the world to pray for Jewish soldiers fighting with weapons, and Jewish lay leaders who fight against Hamas’s supporters in governments, college campuses and everywhere.
Let us all recite Al Tirah together, holding the hands of the people to our right and left, and pray for God to deliver success in defeating all of our foes.
First One Through 