Category Archives: Personalities

Perfect Timing

How despondent Pinchas could have easily felt when his grandfather, father and uncles, and all of their future descendants, were chosen by Hashem to be cohanim (Shemos, 28:1). But he himself, having been born before that moment, was not among that role’s grantees.

He probably did not mind, though. Because his subsequent action (at the end of parshas Balak), the killing of Zimri and Cozbi, could only be a proper act – and Hashem confirmed its propriety – if it had been committed by an utterly selfless person. One needs a sense of self to feel slighted.

How ironic, then, is the fact that, had Pinchas actually been a cohein at the time of his violent act, justified though it was, it would have rendered him unable to serve in that special role. Because a cohein who has killed a person, even properly or accidentally, is disqualified to serve as a cohein.

And Hashem made Pinchas a cohein only after – in fact, because – of his act (Zevachim 101b). Pinchas’s ultimate status as a cohein, in the end, depended on his having been “left out” when his relatives were granted that status.

Few of us are truly selfless, and many of us are easily slighted. When we are, we do well to recall Pinchas’ experience. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 230:5) actually states as halacha that “One should be accustomed to say: All that Hashem does is for the best.”

Sometimes we are fortunate, as Pinchas was, to come to see how that is true.

But even when we don’t, it still is.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Say It Sam

If the name Sam Harris doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because you’re blessedly not into the world of podcasts.

Neither am I, but Mr. Harris, holder of a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and a philosopher, is a popular podcaster. Although he is halachically Jewish, he is an avowed secularist, not someone who might be expected to feel any connection to Judaism or Israel.

Which is why those who consider him a highbrow of the highest caliber have been dismayed by his bucking of the Israel-hatred that has become mandatory among the imperious intelligentsia. They can’t understand how he missed the memo.

Recently, to address his dismayed disciples’ puzzlement, he wrote a 2000 word tour de force, audaciously titled “Why I won’t debate critics of Israel.” It has been widely shared.

Mr. Harris is no knee-jerk defender of any Israeli action or leader, but has no interest in “exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark.”

He is interested only in the larger picture, the one that, in a reasonable world, would obscure all else. “The ethical difference between Israel and her enemies,” he states, “remains vast.” And “the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible… the product of perennial lies and delusions.”

Strong words, made all the stronger by his elaboration.

Militant Islamists, he contends, are “essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise.”

Were the IDF ever to “morph into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields,” he fantasized, “if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom… producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics, if the residents of Tel Aviv [would] condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood – if, in other words, the Israelis began to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war.”

But of course, he continues, “there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to ‘love death’ more than everyone else loves life – for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.”

Cutting sharply through all the “pro-Palestinian” obfuscation, he explains that “The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the state of Israel.” It has been “jihadism… the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.”

Disentangling every strand of the region’s history is “a fool’s errand,” he further contends, “because Palestinians and Israelis have discrepant accounts of the past, and no amount of study or debate will reconcile them.”

All that matters in the here and now, he declares, is “what the current inhabitants of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the surrounding Arab states want out of life now…. What are they willing to sacrifice for? What are they willing to die for? And what are they willing to let their children die for?”

And here he cuts to the quick. While “Israel has its religious fanatics,” he writes, they are not “the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas or Hezbollah, and they’re far less representative of the surrounding culture.”

There is much more in Mr. Harris’ manifesto, but the following paragraph really says it all:

“If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution…. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel.”

Words worthy of being displayed on every billboard in Europe and posted in every American university classroom.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Humility: The Mark of Leadership

Few contrasts are as striking as the one between Moshe, the “most humble of all men,” who had to be Divinely drafted to lead the Jewish people, and Korach, who was consumed with a desire for a leadership role.

And, like deceitful populists over ensuing millennia, Korach insisted that he was merely standing up for the masses, advocating for their democratic rights. Who needs a mezuzah (i.e. a leader) if the house is filled with holy books (i.e. the magnificent masses)?

Many contemporary leaders, some more shamelessly than others, advanced their aspirations in Korach-fashion, lusting for power while claiming to be championing the people. (A rare exception was Dwight Eisenhower, the only American president who had to be drafted to run for that office.)

In the authentic Jewish religious world, true leaders are always drafted – that is to say, “elected,” not by campaigns and misleading claims but rather by unsought public acclaim. I have been privileged to have spent time in the vicinities of several, and was deeply affected by their selflessness and modesty. My rebbe, Rav Yaakov Weinberg, was one; see https://www.rabbiavishafran.com/mr-to-us/. His yahrtzeit is Shiva Asar B’Tamuz.

And, just like Moshe was accused of sins he didn’t commit, so are Gedolim today sometimes attacked for imagined misdeeds. And not only by people lacking any relationship to Torah, but even some who are meticulously observant. Frumkeit doesn’t necessarily imply ehrlichkeit.

Ohn ben Peles, the Midrash recounts, a confederate of Korach’s, was saved from the latter’s fate by Mrs. Ohn. After plying her husband with enough wine to put him to sleep, she sat outside their tent and uncovered her hair. So when Korach’s supporters came to fetch her husband and saw the immodest woman, meticulously religious folks that they were, they turned on their righteous heels and left. 

The upshot: Even religious people can fall for would-be-dictators’ lies. 

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Biha’aloscha — The Pain of Exquisite Empathy 

Suspecting someone who isn’t deserving of suspicion is reason for punishment, says the Talmud (Shabbos, 97a), citing the account at the end of the parsha, where Aharon and Miriam speak negatively about their brother, Moshe Rabbeinu.

Interestingly, though, the text of the Torah only relates Miriam’s punishment, her affliction with the skin condition tzara’as, and not Aharon’s:

“The cloud had departed from atop the Tent and behold, Miriam had tzara’as [white] as snow. Aharon turned to Miriam and behold, she had tzara’as” [Bamidbar 12:10].

While Rabi Akiva (in the Gemara cited above) asserts that Aharon, too, was afflicted with tzara’as, Rabi Yehudah ben Beseira disagrees. But he offers no reason for why Aharon, who also was part of the misdeed, would have been spared punishment.

What occurs is that Aharon was indeed punished, though not with his own tzara’as. His punishment was seeing his sister afflicted. Read the quote from the Torah above again. Is there a reason why we need to be told that Aharon “turned to Miriam” and saw her disease?

Perhaps there is indeed, because that was Aharon’s punishment. He was the exemplar of kindness, the “lover of peace and pursuer of peace (Avos, 1:12),” a man who was pained by strife, a man of exquisite empathy.

Thus, Miriam’s pain and shame, when Aharon witnessed it, became his own pain and shame. 

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Muckrakers Not Welcome

Last month, “activist” Tyler Oliveira notified his eight million social media subscribers that he was planning a trip to the Holy Land: “You guys think Israel will let me into the country?”

Shortly thereafter, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli reposted Mr. O.’s words along with a one-word response: “No.”

Mr. Chikli later explained that he was “proud to have denied entry to Israel today to an unfortunate YouTuber who is using the harassment of Jews as a way to get clout on social media.”

And so, fresh from an appearance on “just saying” Tucker Carlson’s innuendo-cast, the self-appointed investigative journalist – who had previously spent time in New Square and Lakewood harassing residents and “exposing” what he called “a parasitic, insulated Jewish community,” “systemic exploitation” of government programs and Orthodox “invasions” of communities, – boarded an El Al plane to Israel and, when it landed, was denied entry to the country.

During his earlier interview with the increasingly creepy Mr. Carlson, Mr. Oliveira recounted his trips to the heavily Orthodox American Jewish communities.

The “entire lifestyle” of Jews in the towns he visited, he said, “is designed to extract and exploit these welfare systems to the maximum degree. It is strategic. It is not happenstance. It is not coincidental. It is by design.”

The design, of course, is that of our nation’s social services, which reflect the citizenry’s democratically-expressed will to aid large families with limited incomes.

An argument can certainly be made – and Mr. Oliveira repeatedly makes it – that the country should not be using tax dollars to help those who face economic challenges that qualify them for things like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Social consciences, unfortunately, aren’t universal.

But when someone singles out only one or two racially or religiously identifiable groups (Mr. Oliveira has gone after other minorities, too), the “argument” is exposed as something other than fiscal conservatism. Tellingly, the muckraking crusader doesn’t seem to have made any effort to visit and harass poor white citizens, say, in Appalachia.

And then there is the regurgitation of hoary antisemitic tropes. “Seemingly,” Mr. Oliveira confided in Mr. Carlson, “there are a lot of powerful Jewish people who own significant media enterprises, [and] websites that seem to bend the knee… to [them]. As if Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were members of the tribe.

But, leaving aside the darker elements that infect the souls of some right-wing personalities, a question does present itself: Is Israel wise to prevent such people from visiting?

The argument against permitting them entry (and Israel had denied entry in the past as well to various politicians and academics, based on a 2017 law that allows it to refuse proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement) is straightforward: People who ally themselves with enemies of the country or with policies that would harm it don’t deserve to tread its soil.

What’s more – and in the case of Mr. Oliveira, it’s an entirely reasonable assumption – people ill-disposed to Israel or Jews will only use their visits to seek out yet new excuses for disparagment.

But there is a downside to that approach as well. The very denial of entry itself is sure to be used by the denied to their advantage. “If they have nothing to fear, why don’t they let me in?” they will say. “Must be that they have reason to fear…”

And, dovetailing with that concern to argue for allowing critics entry is the irrepressible Jewish optimism that dares to imagine that even haters, given the opportunity to get to know their targets better, might feel more constrained in the future, maybe even changed by the experience.

I generally opt for such optimism.

But when I witness someone somehow finding fault even with the volunteer police-allied Shomrim, which helps report and prevent crimes against innocent civilians, calling it, as Mr. Oliveira did, a “religious police” – prompting Mr. Carlson to add “Exactly. Essentially like in Saudi Arabia or Iran” – I have to concede that there are eyes just so hopelessly jaundiced that even the freshest snow will register in their eyes as soot and ash.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Fraud in Fact… or in Fiction?

One doesn’t expect an anti-racist organization to help finance white supremacist groups. But that is precisely what Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a public interest law firm that fights discrimination, stands accused of.

The accuser is the Department of Justice, which last week issued a surprising indictment of the SPLC, charging it with secretly funding hate groups, including affiliates of the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America.

According to the government, between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid over $3,000,000 – laundered through bank accounts registered to fictitious entities – to people in those groups.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, further claimed that the SPLC had failed to comply with its non-profit status, saying they committed fraud against their donors by failing to disclose the payments.

“And in no fundraising efforts that the investigation found,” he noted, “did they say, ‘Oh, and by the way, we’re going to give a million bucks to the Ku Klux Klan.’ So that’s fraud.”

Mr. Blanche, speaking alongside FBI Director Kash Patel at a news conference, said the organization made payments to at least eight people, including those affiliated with violent extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi organizations.

“The SPLC was not dismantling the groups,” Mr. Blanche said. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

Mr. Patel said that the SPLC “used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups.”

Established in 1971 and based in Alabama, the SPLC, over many years, successfully battled the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups in courts, and helped reporters and law enforcement keep tabs on domestic extremists.

In recent years, though, the group widened its net, identifying arguably mainstream conservative organizations as hate groups, which it defines as having “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people.”  Among the more recently SPLC-targeted groups are the Family Research Council and Turning Point USA (TPUSA).

In 2024, the SPLC said that TPUSA’s “primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants… and civil rights activists… [The group] is at the forefront of the movement to promote Christian nationalism, the theocratic worldview that the U.S. is a fundamentally Christian country and that Christian values and beliefs should inform the government and wider culture…”

It notes that the late Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s executive director until his murder in 2025, said, “You cannot have liberty if you don’t have a Christian population.”

Whether TPUSA is a hate group or what most people would simply consider a conservative (okay, “ultra-conservative”) organization, the SPLC certainly alienated some Republican lawmakers – and President Trump.

During a December congressional hearing, House Republicans accused the group of “being partisan and profitable.” In October, Mr. Patel severed FBI ties with the SPLC, alleging that it “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”

In an article last year, Margaret Huang, who was then the president and chief executive of the group, wrote that with President Trump’s second election, hard-right extremism now had “an ally in the highest office in the nation.” Needless to say, Mr. Trump was not pleased.

What, though, exactly, did the SPLC do to earn the administration’s charges?

It hired informants to infiltrate the targeted groups and convey back information about them and their plans. Bryan Fair, the SPLC’s chief executive, said that the group no longer used informants, but did so when extremist violence was common.

“There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives,” he said.

There is nothing illegal about paying informants to spy on groups, something that government agencies like the FBI themselves have often done. Which fact has let the president’s critics to accuse him of vindictively targeting the SPLC with specious charges.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the greatest political scams in American History,” Mr. Trump exulted on his social media platform, “has been charged with FRAUD.”

And, he added, somewhat incongruously, “If it is true, the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect!”

© 2026 Ami Magazine