Category Archives: Personalities

Lech Lecha — No, Thank You

When, as they approach Egypt, Avram asks Sarai to pretend she is his sister, he explains “so that it will be good for me and I will remain alive because of you.” (Beraishis, 12:13)

Rashi’s comment on the words “it will be good for me” – “so that they [the Egyptians] will give me gifts” – puzzled me, as they surely have many, for years. Avram, who later in the parshah (14:23) spurned even a shoelace from the king of Sdom, is concerned with gifts?

An intriguing possible understanding of Rashi’s words occurred to me. Shlomo HaMelech, in Mishlei (15:27) teaches us that “the one who hates gifts will live.”

It may be that the greatest expression of that attitude isn’t only “in theory,” in hating the idea of gifts, but in actual practice – namely, that it’s the attitude toward an actual proffered gift that helps ensure life. 

And so, perhaps Avram wanted gifts to be offered to him, so that he could “hate” the fact that he was offered them… with the result being that, as he continues, “I will remain alive…” – echoing Shlomo HaMelech’s words.

Postscript: Interestingly, the concept of shunning gifts as bolstering life is reflected in a snippet from a 1960s folk song:

“Some people never get, some never give;

Some people never die and some never live.”

There is, Chazal teach us, “chachmah bagoyim,” wisdom among other nations.

Last Laugh

It might not be known to many of us, but in the years before WWII, antisemitism of the vilest sort was a prominent part of the American scene.

According to David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, in their book “A Race Against Death,” a series of national public opinion polls gauging American attitudes between 1938 and 1946 showed that between one third and one half of the U.S. population saw Jews as greedy and dishonest, and that “Jews had too much power” in the country. Some 15 percent of Americans supported “a widespread campaign against the Jews in this country” and another 20 percent sympathized with such a campaign.

Then there was the infamous German-American Bund, which, on February 20, 1939, some six months before Nazi Germany invaded Poland and just as Hitler was completing construction of his sixth concentration camp, held a packed rally at Madison Square Garden, where more than 20,000 right hands shot forth in the Nazi salute as an American flag passed by. Held aloft were posters with slogans like “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.”

Speeches at the rally referred to “job-taking Jewish refugees.” Flags borne by attendees were waved in approval. When an unarmed young Jewish man rushed onstage to protest, he was viciously beaten by attendees before police took him away.

Perhaps most famous of all of the Jew-haters of the time was the Catholic priest Father Charles E. Coughlin. His weekly broadcasts garnered an estimated quarter of the U.S. population at the time. His periodical, “Social Justice,” even printed weekly installments from “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

“Yonder comes Father Coughlin wearing the silver chain,” sang folk singer Woody Guthrie, “cash on his stomach and Hitler on the brain.”

Coughlin’s vitriol was so objectionable that he was censured by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and the federal government barred his publication “because it mirrored the Axis propoganda line.”

Although he was Canadian-born, by 1926, Coughlin had settled in Detroit, on the order of his superior and avid supporter Bishop Michael J. Gallagher. There he established a parish in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, known as the Shrine of the Little Flower. It was from that edifice that he broadcast his views.

In a 1938 speech, he threatened that “When we get through with the Jews of America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”

When, on December 5, 1938, Coughlin plagiarized a 1935 speech by Nazi Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, quipsters were quick to refer to Coughlin’s church as “the Shrine of the Little Führer.”

Coughlin died in 1979. He is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Southfield, Michigan.

Southfield is well-known to me. My wife and I have visited the city, and its adjacent city Oak Park, several times. West Bloomfield is another adjacent locale. Two of our dear daughters and their wonderful mishpachos live in that “Greater Detroit” area.

It is a vibrantly Jewish area. Shuls, large and small, abound. There are several kollelim for full time learning including the Kollel Institute of Greater Detroit and Yeshiva Beis Yehuda Kollel.

The city has a respected Vaad HaRabbonim and it operates the local beis din and a kashrus hashgacha division.

There are a number of mosdei chinuch in the area, including the renowned Yeshiva Gedolah of Greater Detroit. There is also Yeshiva Beth Yehudah and its affiliated Bais Yaakov, Yeshiva Darchei Torah, Mesivta of West Bloomfield, the recently opened Yeshivas Ohel Torah-Detroit and others.

And, of course, there is a kosher supermarket and bakeries and eateries. Not to mention Judaica stores and clothing stores aimed at frum clientele. In short, the Orthodox community in “Detroit” (although Southfield, West Bloomfield and Oak Park are really independent cities) is dynamic, strong and growing.

Not far down the road in Southfield lie Coughlin’s bones. Musing on that fact during our most recent visit, I had to smile, imagining what the reverend would have to say about the neighborhood he once called home.

(C) 2025 Ami Magazine

Ki Savo – The Future of Wood and Stone

It is said in the name of the Vilna Gaon that the “idols of wood and stone” that Klal Yisrael will come to worship, referenced in the tochacha (Devarim 28:36 and 28:64), are hints to the religions that would come to dominate much of mankind in the future. The “wood” refers to the cross; and the “stone,” to the kaaba, the stone building housing a revered stone, in Mecca.

Although there have been apostates among the Jewish people over the centuries, Rashi’s comment on the latter of the references above is germane. He writes: “[This does] not [mean] worship of their gods literally but rather the paying of tributes and taxes to their clergy.” Targum Onkelos (which Rashi cites) indeed translates the phrases as “You will worship [i.e. be subservient] to nations that worship wood and stone.”

And indeed, history has borne out the fact that our long galus has included subservience to Muslim rulers and Christian ones. Even at times when our ancestors were not being vilified and killed by those rulers and their societies, when we were “tolerated,” we were, well, tolerated, but always subjects – subjected, that is to say, to rules, regulations and whims of the dominant religion.

Even today, when human rights are seen, at least in theory and law, as encompassing Jewish rights, the de facto situation – imposed by members of societies if not necessarily rulers – sets Jews apart as worthy of scorn. Whether the animus is vomited forth from the mouths of people like Louis Farrakhan, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens or any of a host of similar deriders of Jews, or from Islamists the world over, we remain subservient – in the sense of victims – of champions and espousers of faiths that followed (indeed borrowed copiously from) our own.

As galus goes, the current victimization of Jews pales beside the horrific things that our ancestors, distant and not-so-distant, endured. We must hope that that signifies a weakening of the domination, a lessening of our subordination to others… and the advent of what the navi Tzephania foresaw when he channeled Hashem saying “For then I will convert the peoples to a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Hashem, to serve him with a unified effort” (3:9).

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Shoftim — It’s Too Easy Being Green

It is explicit in the text of the Torah that those who went to war in the conquest of Cna’an knew that their lives could be lost in battle: “lest he die and another….” (Devarim 20:5) And that anyone “who is fearful or fainthearted…” (20:8) would be exempt from it.

Even among the brave, though, one imagines that the possibility of dying, even if fully recognized and accepted, would cause anguish. And yet, what are described as being sources of anguish to a fighter, even one ready to give up his life, are the thoughts that someone else might assume his place in occupying his new home, in harvesting his new vineyard, in a new marriage.

That points to a fundamental, if illogical, part of human nature. Losing out on something feels bad, but losing out to someone else is worse. In fact, a low salary has been shown to be less stressful on its own than the knowledge that someone else with the same skills and job is making more money. And when the anguish of “losing out” to someone else is compounded with the idea that the other’s “win” happens even before one has had a chance to experience the fruits of his labor, as in the exempted soldiers’ cases, it is all the more intense.

The inclination to envy, born of the sense of self, comes easily to us. In fact, it is inherent to being human.

That a sense of self isn’t a sin is evident in a a Midrash brought by Rashi on the pasuk “uvicheit yechemasni imi” (Tehillim 51:7); Dovid Hamelech lamented the fact that when his parents conceived him, their intent was basically selfish (a thought reflected as well in his words ki avi vi’imi azovuni, Tehillim 27:10). And yet, Dovid’s father was Yishai, who we are told (Shabbos 55b) died sinless.

We are, of course, admonished to not feed feelings of jealousy (Devarim 5:18), to not allow them to bring us to covet what another person has. But the initial feeling of resentment is part and parcel of being a human being. It’s the dwelling on it, intensifying it, that is wrong.

Its appearance, however, should not make us feel despair, only human, and challenged to resist it.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Photo Fiasco Update

Some interesting information about how the New York Times’ Gaza sausage is made was presented recently by Semafor, a news website founded in 2022 by Ben Smith, a former media columnist at the Times, and Justin B. Smith, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group.

A piece on the site written by its media editor Max Tani disclosed that the Times had originally wanted to run images of Youssef Matar, a young child in Gaza with cerebral palsy, alongside its July 24 story that cited doctors in Gaza finding that “an increasing number of their patients are suffering and dying – from starvation.” While the child may, sadly, have been malnourished (ultimately, Hamas’ fault – and its intention, since Gazans’ suffering does wonders for its p.r.), his shocking physical state was mainly due to the ravages of his disease.

Responsibly, though, the report notes, the Times’ topmost editors wanted to err on the side of caution. According to communications viewed by Semafor, they worried that running the photos might call into question the paper’s reporting (smart guys!). Especially since the article claimed that many of the children suffering from hunger had been healthy kids, without preexisting diseases.

According to internal messages obtained by Semafor, the paper’s managing editor Marc Lacey expressed his concern. “Do we want to use a photo,” he asked “that will be the subject of debate when there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are?”

Sagely, executive editor Joe Kahn agreed, writing that “The story isn’t framed around people with special needs and the lead art[icle] really should not do that, either.”

And so they wisely opted not to publish Youssef’s photos. Instead, they ran, as noted last week in this space, those of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, an 18-month-old child in Gaza, whose tiny, emaciated body was the perfect accompaniment to the news story. At least, that’s what the editors thought.

Problem was, of course, that Mohammed was also suffering from serious diseases, cerebral palsy and a suspected genetic disorder, a fact that, when publicized and called to the Times’s attention, was shared in an “Editor’s Note” (posted to the original story, not on the paper’s main social media account) four days after the article appeared and the photo of the “born healthy” child had been widely and irresponsibly republished by other media.

So, let’s recap, just to be clear: The head honchos at the “paper of record” recognized how journalistically irresponsible it would have been to accompany an article saying that healthy Gazan children were being reduced to skeletal shadows of their former selves with a photo of a child with a serious medical condition, the main cause of his sad state. And then went ahead and did precisely that, choosing a different child with a serious medical condition.

As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up.

If Mr. Lacey, as quoted above, is correct in his contention that “there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are,” it’s odd that no other clearly malnourished, wasting away young people have had their photographs plastered on his paper’s front page. Could it be that there may indeed be such a shortage?

I don’t know. There is certainly great need in Gaza, and Israel and the U.S. are taking serious steps to ensure that aid to residents isn’t intercepted by Hamas and criminal gangs.

What I do know is that there was a strong desire on 8th Avenue to publish some photo of an ostensibly starving child. So strong that the Old Gray Lady tripped on her skirt and fell face-first into an omelet.

As Semafor reported further, “One thing that pro-Israel critics of the Times and some staff at the paper agree on is that there is a large contingent of staff at the paper who are opposed to the war in Gaza, and blame Israel for the crisis.”

It would seem that, at least on the West Side of Manhattan, objectivity, like irony, is dead.

© 2025 Ami Magazine

Vo’eschanan – Requited Love

The obvious problem posed by the commandment to love Hashem (Devarim 6:5) is that love is an emotion. How can one possibly be told to love?

One understanding of that commandment is provided by Abaye in the Talmud (Yoma 86a): “That [one should cause] the name of Heaven to be beloved [by others] through you.”

He explains that if one conducts himself properly, studying Torah, serving scholars and conducting business with honesty, people will say “Fortunate is his father who taught him Torah, fortunate is his teacher who taught him Torah” – thereby engendering observers’ love for Hashem.

The Rambam (Yesodei HaTorah 5:11) echoes that statement, adding the importance of taking care to not “separate [oneself] too far [from normal life]”.

Causing others to love Hashem is arguably easier today than ever. Since society is so often crass and rude, even conducting oneself in a normal, reasonable way does not go unnoticed. A “please” or “thank you” or “good morning,” not to mention a smile, stands out. And if offered by an identifiable Jew, can create love for Hashem.

Another approach to the mitzvah of loving Hashem is recorded in the name of Rav Akiva Eger, based on the fact that emotions can be cultivated and harnessed.

A key to observing the “love Hashem” commandment, he suggests, is provided each day just before we recite the Shma, which introduces it. The final brachah before krias Shma in the morning ends with “Who chooses His nation Yisrael with love”; and the one before the evening recitation, with “the One who loves His nation Yisrael.”

In other words, recognizing Hashem’s love for us yields reciprocal love for Him.

As Shlomo Hamelech teaches in Mishlei (27: 19), Kamayim hapanim lapanim… – “As water reflects a face back to a face, so is one’s heart reflected back to him by another.”

What is true in human relationships is equally true in our relationship with our Creator.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran