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To read what informs that contention, please click here.

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Rashi, quoting Rabi Levi in a Midrash, elaborates: “He went out of his world.” 

The idea of an individual’s personal “world” is also employed by the renowned 18th century Italian mystic Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato in the very first sentence of his famous work Mesilas Yesharim. He introduces his book by stating that the essence and root of human service to the Divine begins with a person’s effort to clarify and establish “what his obligation is in his world.”

That each of us has his or her own world is a curious notion. What I think it means is that each of us has a unique spiritual essence that needs to be expressed in a unique way and utilized in a unique service to Hashem. Intriguingly, that idea resonates powerfully with the second Midrash Rashi cites about the phrase “And he went out” – that the blasphemer had just left the court of Moshe, where he had lost his case.

That case involved his claim, since his mother was Jewish (although his father was an Egyptian) that he was entitled to a portion of the Holy Land in the portion designated for his mother’s tribe, Dan. The ruling, however, was that, while he was a member of the Jewish people, he –  uniquely, among the people – would receive no portion of the land.

That left him with two options: Either to accept that fate, and recognize that the ruling was “his world” – was assigning him a personal situation that somehow positioned him for a particular, singular role to play in society.  Or to reject the ruling angrily. He chose the second path, and then some.  He thus “left” not only the court but his world, the specific role for which he was chosen.

Some people who see their life circumstances as “unfair” face similar choices. The key to true success in life – which, of course, is unrelated to profession, wealth, fame or pleasure –  is the seizing of one’s individual, unique circumstance, no matter how limiting or painful or puzzling it may be, the recognition that it is his or her “own world” – what makes them unique. 

And then, after ascertaining what that specialness seems to demand, getting down to work.

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And the Rambam, in fact, places the prohibition in his “Laws of Idolatry.” 

So it would seem reasonable, if seeking some message in the tattoo prohibition, to imagine that it might be a rejection of the designation of something, anything, other than Hashem as one’s ultimate object of dedication.

And, in fact, tattooing is, at least in many cultures, not a mere “decorative” practice but rather a demonstration of devotion – whether to “Mom,” “Jane,” “Jim” or “Semper Fi.”

Or to any less-than-holy ideal, no matter how worthy. What to an idolater is his deity’s name or symbol is, to a contemporary potential tattoo-ee, any of the broad assortment of “isms” – socialism, capitalism, Zionism, environmentalism… that are popular at any given time. Rav Elchonon Wasserman famously identified “ isms” as the idolatries of the modern era.

And so, what the Torah is forbidding may be understood as inscribing one’s utter dedication to any such concept. In fact, the Hebrew for “upon yourselves” (bachem) can be read even more simply as “in yourselves.”

Political isms are still popular these days, but the most widespread ism of the nonce, I suspect, is the one beginning with the word “material.” Not easily depicted in a tattoo, perhaps, but it’s a most consuming (pun intended) idolatry all the same.

We should feel prohibited from worshiping it.

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Indeed, the Talmud uses that added indignity to illustrate a popular (well, at the time) saying: “Poverty follows the poor.” (Bava Kama, 92b).

But the metzora’s prescribed announcement of his condition, says the Talmud, teaches other things too. Like the importance of letting others know of one’s sufferings, so that they might pray for him (Mo’ed Katan 5a). And it hints, too, to the need to mark a grave, so that people won’t inadvertently contract tum’ah by passing over it (ibid).

The Shelah (Rav Yeshayahu HaLevi Horovitz, c.1555-1630), however, sees in the metzora’s announcement a hint to yet something else. Parsing the phrase differently, he reads it as saying “and those ritually contaminated will call out [about others] ‘Contaminated!’ ”

In other words, some people project their own deficits onto others.  As the amora Shmuel said, in the context of genealogical status: “Those who assert a flaw [in others], it is their own flaw that they in fact assert” (Kiddushin 70a).

Indeed, it isn’t uncommon to see people in the public sphere who seem to make a habit of accusing others of a particular proclivity or wrongdoing being exposed as having the same proclivity or having been engaged in the same sin.

So if we ever have the unpleasant experience of being accused of something by someone who is given to lobbing the same accusation at others, we might do well to pause. And, rather than take the allegation personally, realize that the accuser may, in fact, suffer from insecurity, and that he is really accusing himself.  

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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A rather fine distinction, of course, a matter of a millimeter. 

Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin, zt”l, sees it as a template for judgments to be made throughout our lives.  There is a mere hairsbreadth’s difference between holiness and its opposite, he notes in his sefer LaTorah V’lamoadim. He cites the Talmudic account of Rabi Meir’s recollection of Rabi Yishmael’s words upon hearing that Rabi Meir was a sofer. “My son, be very careful in your work… for if you omit a mere letter or add one [which, in certain cases could radically change the meaning of a word], you could destroy the entire world.”

Similarly, Rav Zevin notes, we are enjoined to see ourselves as if we are half-worthy and half-unworthy; and Rabi Elazar ben Rabi Shimon adds that the world itself can be dependent on its merits outweighing – even by a single mitzvah – its demerits.  And so, with each decision we make, we should imagine that only choosing correctly will preserve the world.

Even a mere momentary thought can be that crucial element, he adds, since a marriage effected by a man who betroths a woman “on the condition that I am a completely righteous person,” but whose subsequent actions indicate otherwise, requires a divorce to be dissolved.  Because, as the Gemara says, “perhaps he had a thought of repentance” when he betrothed the woman on the condition.

The words of Robert Frost, in his famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” come to mind.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

We often make decisions in our daily lives without considering that our choices could be potentially life-changing, even earth-shattering.”

Such  mindlessness is a serious mistake.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The Guardian lets down its guard

“First comes the hummus: studded with chickpeas, anointed with a little reservoir of olive oil, greedily smeared up with hunks of pitta [sic] bread and messy fingers. Then the tabbouleh, then some homemade falafels…”

Thus opened an article in The Guardian, the London daily that is considered Britain’s “paper of record,” like our country’s The New York Times. And, like The Times, it has a denied but evident bias against Israel and Jews.

The details of the sumptuous meal continued through several deliriously described courses and dessert (baklava and homemade chocolate, if you really must know). The writer, the paper’s sports writer and opinion columnist Jonathan Liew, was feasting at a successful North London Arab-run eatery called Cafe Metro.

He wasn’t writing a food column. It was, rather, a report on a controversy swirling around Cafe Metro and a new nearby branch of an popular upscale bakery called Gail’s.

The night before it was due to open, the bakery was vandalized with red paint. Less than a week later, all its windows were smashed in. Slogans reading “reject corporate Zionism” and various obscenities were scrawled on its walls.

Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK,” but its parent company, Bain Capital, reportedly invests in military technology, including some Israeli security companies. Bad bakery!

Mr. Liew, after noting how Cafe Metro, “proudly blazons its Palestinian heritage” with a public display of flags, describes it lovingly as “a source of comfort and community in troubling times, resistance in its tastiest and most delicately spiced form.” And goes on to contend that “the very presence of [Gail’s] 20 metres away from a small independent cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.”

Gail’s, the writer seems to imply, has no business being a business.

Many people saw Mr. Liew’s description of the bakery’s opening, “an act of heavy-handed, high-street aggression” as, well, an act of heavy-handed Fleet Street aggression.

It was also an example of utterly corrupt journalism. Mr. Liew wasn’t quoting the Arab owners of Cafe Metro – who would be misguided enough to characterize Gail’s as an aggressor for simply existing. It was the columnist’s own ostensible statement of fact.

Making matters even more outrageous, the piece, which included no quotes from anyone connected to Gail’s, dismissed the window-smashing and paint smearing as “small acts of petty symbolism.”

A slew of complaints about the column was registered by, among many others, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who called the column “disgusting,” “appalling” and “ridiculous.”

With typical droll British humor. Senior Barrister Simon Myerson referenced the paper’s record of bias, writing: “I see the Guardian is having an antisemitic moment. Sorry, another antisemitic moment.”

The Guardian later edited the piece, “repositioning” the objectional “aggression” wordage “to clarify it meant to refer to the described fears about the chain’s impact on small traders.”

Also, “to avoid misunderstanding,” the paper removed the “small acts of petty symbolism” phrase, which, it explained, “was not intended to minimize local vandalism but rather to suggest its misdirected futility.”

All of which really misses the real point. It was the framing of the entire piece that was, and remains, journalistically objectionable.

After hundreds of words extolling the gustatory delights of Arab cuisine, Mr. Liew dwells for hundreds more on how the family of one of Cafe Metro’s operators “once lived in the city of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, and now lives out a precarious and hunted existence in one of Gaza’s many temporary refugee camps…”

And he contrasts that with how “Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence.” Even though the chain is not currently owned by Jews or Israelis, the insinuation is as obvious as it is odious.

And Mr. Liew concludes with the observation that the two businesses “have found themselves on the frontline of a war. A deeply asymmetric war, defined by gross imbalances in power and resources and platforms.”

There is in fact a gross imbalance here. It lies in the shameless portrayal of a vandalized victim as an aggressor, opposite a reverent, adulatory portrayal of an imagined victim.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

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Although Mr. Kent was a Trump loyalist, even to the point of endorsing the discredited “stolen election” of 2020 claim and asserting that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an FBI plot, he turned his back on Mr. Trump last week, resigning his position in protest of the current Iran war.

The content of his resignation letter should concern us all.

Mr. Kent is entitled to believe, as he wrote, that the current war was not warranted because there was no “imminent threat” to the U.S. that would permit an American president to order to attack another country.

It’s a risible stance, considering Iran’s “Death to America” drumbeat and accelerated ballistic missile and nuclear programs – not to mention the mullahs’ employment of proxies over years to kill American citizens. But people are entitled to be short-sighted, even myopic, even stupid.

The gist of Mr. Kent’s letter, however, was not an insistence on Congressional approval or some pacifist plea. It was contemporary blood libel. And aimed at such slanders’ perennial targets.

The former security official lays responsibility for what he considers an illegitimate war squarely at the feet of Israel and her American supporters. It was they, he asserted, who forced a helpless, impressionable President Trump to attack Iran. “It is clear,” he wrote, “that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

He blames the Iraq war, too, on Israel, which “cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

That Mr. Trump might be vulnerable to outside pressure is a laughable notion. If there is anything that both supporters and detractors of the president agree upon, it’s that the man has a mind of his own and is about as pliable as a steel rod.

But Mr. Kent seems to harbor an unshakeable belief in the Jewish ability to… control things, including the president.

Mr. Netanyahu certainly made the case to Mr. Trump that Iran is an imminent threat not only to Israel, its “Little Satan,” but also to the U.S., its “Great Satan.” But Mr. Trump has regarded Iran as a threat for decades. Well before he first became president, he actually called for troop deployments to the country and seizure of control of Iranian oil. In 2018, he famously withdrew from the Obama-era JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran.

Sharing an interest with Israel – and acting in unison with her to head off the mullahs’ desire to Islamify the world – isn’t some dark conspiracy. It’s responsible leadership.

What’s more, Israeli leaders have lobbied every president in memory to go to war in Iran. That Mr. Trump decided to do so is not a sign of some gullibility but of his judgment that the time had come to remove a threat to the Western world.

Mr. Kent should never have been in a governmental position, much less a counterterrorism post. That should have been evident from the start. The evidence would have included his 2021 call to the odious white nationalist Nick Fuentes to get advice on social media strategy for a Congressional run. And his interview by neo-Nazi blogger Greyson Arnold. And his hiring of a member of the neo-fascist “Proud Boys” as a campaign consultant.

And then there’s the large tattoo on his arm, revealed in a relative’s innocent posting of him in a swimming pool, that reads: “Panzer.” The name, of course, of a famed Nazi tank.

Now, since his resignation, he has appeared on Jew-baiting Tucker Carlson’s podcast and has been lauded by the likes of Candace Owens, a reincarnation of rabid antisemite Charles Coughlin. “May American troops take [Kent’s] lead,” she posted on social media, “and look into conscientious objection to Bibi’s Red Heifer War. Goyim stand down.”

Birds of a feather…

While we can feel relief that Mr. Kent has left the NCTC, it’s deeply concerning that he was ever part of it. One has to wonder if other bigots may be lurking in government bodies.

(c) 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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It’s both interesting and timely that the Jewish national thanksgiving which is Pesach involves each of those categories. A sea had to be crossed, a desert, subsequently, had to be traversed, Egypt is described by the Midrash as having been a virtual prison, from which no one had previously escaped, and the Jewish people are described as having sunk to the lowest spiritual level in Egypt — a sickness of the national soul — necessitating their immediate exodus from the spiritually decrepit land. 

But something is strange here. The korban todah, unique among offerings, requires as an accompaniment four groups of flour-offerings. And, equally unique, one of those groups must be chametz, leavened breads. (Other flour offerings, aside from Shavuos’ shtei halechem, are not permitted to rise.)

And on Pesach, of course, chametz is forbidden not only to consume but even to own.

If Pesach is a national parallel of an individual’s korban todah, why would the latter include something that is anathema to the former?

What occurs is that the “illness” that a korban todah offerer survived was a physical one, whereas the national malady we experienced in Egypt was entirely spiritual.  The inclusion of chametz in the todah-offering might reflect the fact that the danger was to bodies (chametz being associated with physical desires); the dearth of it on Pesach, the fact that the danger was essentially to our souls. (The Alshich, in fact, identifies each of the four flour-offerings with one of the todah- obligating escaped dangers, and associates “enduring illness” with the chametz offering.)

Soon enough, we will be celebrating Hashem’s rescue of our ancestors from the illness that was Egypt, a spiritual malady. And when we recount that history at our Pesach seder tables and declare our thanksgiving in Hallel, there will be nary a crumb of chametz to be found in our homes.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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So does “Captain Ella,” about whom you can read here.

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How closeness is effected by korbanos may have to do, at least in a simple sense, with the hierarchy of creation noted in many Jewish sources, domeim, tzomei’ach, chai, medaber: “still” (mineral), “growing” (vegetation), “living” (animal) and “speaking” (human). 

By establishing the korban-bringer as subjugating and employing the lower realms (which are all represented in korbanos), he is placing himself closer to Hashem, in Whose image he was created.

Interestingly, the “still,” or mineral component of korbanos, is a necessary component of all korbanos, both animal and vegetable (i.e. menachos, or flour offerings): salt.   “On your every offering shall you offer salt” – Vayikra 2:13).

Rishonim like Ramban and Rabbeinu Bachya, who assert that salt can be seen as a combination of water and fire may have based that description on the simple observation that salt can be obtained through saltwater and can “burn” vegetation and skin. Or maybe the description is meant as symbolic, and part of a mystical mesorah.

But whatever the source of their assertion, they see salt as representing a combination of opposites, of antagonists, which informs the use in parshas Vayikra of the word bris, or “covenant,” in the pasuk quoted above, to refer to the mineral.

The Kli Yakar explains that the “covenant [of opposites]” that salt represents conveys the idea that Dualist philosophies like Manichaeism are false. Hashem is King over all; what may seem like irreconcilable opposites are all ultimately under His control. 

I find it intriguing that, in the paradigm of contemporary physics, salt is indeed a compound of two disparate (if not “opposite,” whatever that might mean in the periodic table) elements: sodium and chlorine.  Both are highly reactive. (Countless chemistry teachers got the attention of their students by dropping a piece of sodium into a container of water.) 

And each is invariably fatal if ingested. Both, in other words, are poisons.

And yet, the ionic compound that results from the two elements’ “covenant” is a mineral that is necessary for life, that flavors our food, that preserves perishables… and that must be part of every korban. 

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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But that good will is not shared by two self-promoting professed Christians who have been prominent in the public eye.

To read about the danger they represent, click here.

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The Zohar informs us of the folly of such thinking.

On Moshe’s exhortation near the beginning of parshas Vayakhel that the people donate materials for the construction of the Mishkan – “Take from yourselves a portion for Hashem…” (Shemos 35:5), the mystical text states:

“From yourselves” —  from what is [truly] yours, not from [what you have obtained from] usury and not from [what you have obtained from] theft.  Because if it is [obtained through unethical means, the giver] has no merit, but, on the contrary, woe to him, as he has come to recall his sin.”  

Not only would the Mishkan’s holiness have been compromised if any of the precious metals or fabrics used for its construction were besmirched by its donor’s bad behavior in obtaining it, but also, any donation of wrongly obtained material would be a reminder of the donor’s sin.

The same point is said to have been made, particularly pointedly and wittily, by the Kotzker Rebbe, on Chazal’s statement that, at Sinai, the people saw with their eyes what normally could only be heard with ears.  That way, allegedly said the Kotzker, there would be no way for anyone to hear the lo (“Thou shall not”) in lo signov – “Thou shall not steal” – as being spelled lamed-vav, meaning, “For Him, steal.”

It would seem that the notion of justifying economic crimes with virtuous use of ill-gotten gains is nothing new. It existed in the 19th century — and even in Biblical times.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The legendary Novardhoker Maggid, Rav Yaakov Galinsky, zt”l, would comment in the name of an “early master” that the order of the happenings in that pasuk is significant, andhas broad historical pertinence.

The egel hazahav, he explained, was the first veering of the Jewish people away from Hashem, the first Jewish pursuit of a foreign-to-Torah ideal, one that bordered on idolatry. But it is an unfortunate prototype for other such ideal-idolatries in subsequent times.

Many a social movement has been birthed or eagerly embraced by Jews. And each began with with a lofty ideal, a figurative olah, a sacrifice entirely consumed on the altar, signifying selfless devotion.

With the passage of time, though, the heady days of every “ism”’s youth give way to a more jaded, or at least “realistic,” approach, signified by shelamim, a sacrifice where the supplicant is able to enjoy some of the meat. The high ideal, of course, is still heralded as paramount, the flag of altruism still flies, but there is an expectation of some “return on the investment” in the cause.

And then come the final stages, when the loftiness of the movement’s revolutionary goal deteriorates into “eating and drinking” – where self-interest and a “what’s in it for me?” mentality reigns — and, ultimately, into a litzachek frame of mind, when materialism and lust become the society’s entire foci.

The golden calf was the first worshipped ism, but it was far from the last.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Monsieur Barrot’s alleged misstep was his reaction to Signora Albanese’s comments on February 7, 2026 at an Al Jazeera forum in Doha, Qatar, on a panel devoted to “the Palestinian cause.”

True to loathsome form and to the great pleasure of her audience, the signora, like others on the panel, including a Hamas leader and an Iranian minister, railed against Israel.

Ho hum.

She accused the Western world of amplifying a “pro-apartheid genocidal narrative” and bemoaned the challenges that the “global community” faces today.

And she concluded that “We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms, and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy [italics mine].”

Monsieur Barrot called Signora Albanese’s remarks “outrageous and reprehensible.” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said her “behavior, statements and initiatives aren’t appropriate for the position she holds,” and Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said the lady’s position is “no longer tenable.” France, Austria, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom have also called for the special rapporteur’s dismissal.

Even U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, not known for empathy for Israel, said (through a spokesperson; he may have feared choking on the words) that “We don’t agree with much of what [Albanese] says, and wouldn’t have used the language that she’s using in describing the situation.”

Thus my need to reread, with incredulity, the 151 former ministers’, ambassadors’, and diplomats’ and entertainers’ (always experts on foreign affairs) rush to the defense of the special rapporteur, claiming that the media had truncated and distorted her comments.

In an open letter, the group accused Monsieur Barrot of spreading inaccurate and manipulated information, and condemned its use to discredit the UN official.

“The dissemination of disinformation by senior officials,” they wrote, “undermines international law, weakens human rights protections, and threatens the credibility of the multilateral system itself.”

Signora Albanese herself fumed that “European governments accuse me – based on statements I never made – with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children in 858 days” – tellingly citing the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry’s death toll claim.

So how did the signora defend her words? She contended that what she had meant by humanity’s “common enemy” was not – G-d forbid! – Israel (the topic of her rant), but rather “THE SYSTEM [caps hers] that has enabled the genocide in Palestine.”

Oh.

Even in her attempt to “explain” her words, the signora felt it important to use the disgustingly deceitful word “genocide” for Israel’s war against Hamas. Hardly surprising, considering that, during the October 7 pogrom, she urged that the murdering of innocents be placed in its “context.” And that she dismissed reported acts of the invaders’ viciousness documented by U.N Watch and the ADL as “fabrications.”

With that background, and in a speech that was devoted entirely to besmirching Israel, the special rapporteur’s claim that it was only a “SYSTEM” she was identifying as humanity’s enemy and not the usual object of her animus (and the subject of her speech) is ludicrous.

Three cheers for Monsieur Barrot, who stuck to his guns, posting on his social media, in response to the risible “contextualizing” of the special rapporteur’s Hitlerian comment: “Stop fake news. I did not truncate or distort Ms. Albanese’s comments. I simply condemned them because they are reprehensible.”

In an even semi-sane world, Signora Albanese would be reassigned to flipping pizza dough. Back in 2024, former special envoy for combating antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt described remarks the signora made as “openly antisemitic.” And last year, she was placed under U.S. sanctions, with the State Department condemning her “unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”

In some places, it’s customary to stage Purim shpiels where contemporary figures take the place of Megillas Esther’s protagonists. With Monsieur Barrot and Signora Albanese occupying space in my head, were I in charge of central casting for such a play, I have a good idea about whom I’d choose for Charvonah. And Vashti.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

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It is clearly a singular entity. Not only in its placement, directly facing the Holy of Holies (in fact, the final pasuk of the parshah calls the incense altar itself a kodesh kodashim, [“holy of holies”]), but in the fact that its main purpose is for something unique, a pure aroma-offering.

While animal and flour offerings are described as producing a rei’ach nicho’ach, an “aroma of contentment,” only on the golden altar is the offering itself one of pure fragrance, the ketores.

The sense of smell is special too. It is ethereal, ill-understood by science (theories of how brains can distinguish among many thousands of odors have come and gone, with no final clarity to date) and evocative of strong emotions. Think, on the one hand, of baking bread or lilacs blooming; and, on the other, of sewage or skunks. And evocative, too, of memories – Proust’s tea and madeleine comprise literature’s most famous example of olfactory-related sensory experience, but we’ve all had similar experiences.

There’s a seeming paradox to smell. It is exquisitely sensitive, even in humans. And yet, it requires proximity to the odor-generator. One can see stars at a distance of thousands of light years, and hear a rumble of thunder from lightning that has struck miles away. But one cannot smell something unless it is relatively close.

But in truth there is no paradox there. Because our eyes and ears are perceiving only generated waves of light or sound; our noses are ingesting actual pieces of what we smell – microscopic ones, to be sure, but actual pieces all the same.

Odors, moreover, take a direct route to the limbic system, the deepest part of the brain. 

Smell thus entails the penetration of the odor-source into the organ that makes us… us. As such, the ketores might symbolize relationship of the closest sort. The word “korban,” so often translated as “sacrifice,” in reality means “closeness-causing.”

And so, the ketores may be the ultimate korban.  In fact, the word ketores itself, whose simple meaning is “burning” or “smoking,” in Aramaic can mean “knot” or “bond.”

On the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, the holiest man of the people, the Kohein Gadol, brings an offering in the holiest place on earth, the Kodesh HaKodashim. 

That korban, the only one ever offered in that place, is ketores.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Say hi to the First Amendment.

Americans’ right to speak freely is, in most cases, something worth appreciating. Countries whose governments criminalize citizens’ ability to express opinions are generally not places where any of us would want to live. But, once speech is unlimited, anything goes.

Well not anything; there are exceptions. The Supreme Court has held that speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action” is unprotected by the Constitution. Likewise, libel or slander, or – did you know? – threatening the life of the president or anyone in the order of succession to the presidency.

But Nazi marches, KKK rallies and angry mobs chanting “Globalize the Intifada” are all tolerated by U.S. law (if they don’t impede traffic). While that latter chant is in fact a threat – the intifadas were famously murderous affairs – the “imminent lawless action” isn’t present.

There are, however, cases where a “buffer zone” can legally be established, a police-enforced area off-limits to protesters. Where such zones can be created isn’t entirely clear. The Supreme Court has alternately upheld, struck down, or limited various buffer zones at places like medical clinics and residential neighborhoods or at funerals.

What about at a shul? Good question. And a pertinent one.

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin has introduced legislation to creat a 100-foot buffer zone to prevent “harassment” and “intimidation” around sensitive sites such as shuls, mosques, churches, and schools.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a statewide measure mandating a 25-foot protective zone around houses of worship. A coalition of New York lawmakers has introduced legislation to that effect.

Interestingly, when Ms. Hochul announced her plan last month, during her “State of the State” address in Albany,the audience applauded loudly, save one attendee, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who kept his hands in his lap.

“Progressive” groups like Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow oppose the proposed buffer zones. They want to preserve the right to, as has happened, shout slogans like“Globalize the intifada,” “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here” and “Death to the IDF” in the faces of Jews attending shul events that encourage the purchase of homes in Israel.

Those groups see such events as aiding “the dispossession of Palestinians,” and buffer zones as “unconstitutionally suppress[ing] political dissent.”

The fact that, according to the New York City Police Department, antisemitic incidents made up 57% of all hate crimes reported in 2025 (and that the trend has continued, with more than half of all hate crimes reported in January targeting Jews or Jewish institutions) would make buffer zones around shuls (and other houses of worship; the law cannot make distinctions based on religion) a reasonable thing. Jews these days feel (and often are) threatened with violence. Whether that reasonablity can pass legal muster will have to be seen.

If not, though, and hateful protesters are allowed to get in the faces of Jews interested in moving to Israel (something the protesters inadvertently bolster), perhaps a tactic successfully used in other contexts might prove useful.

Let the mob members shout and spit and threaten as they wish. Let the shul-goers ignore them (which will incense them even more) and just stoically walk into the building. And let a cadre of others photograph and video them as they are confronted by angry faces and endure verbal assaults.

There are archival photographs and film from 1930s Germany that show German citizens harassing Jews. Pairing those visuals with new ones showing contemporary haters similarly berating Jews in 2026 would make for a powerful set of images, easily shared widely with media and the public.

Maybe powerful images, of the sort that in other contexts have greatly affected public perception, can do the same thing here.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

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The Gemara (ibid) sees in the aron, which contains the luchos, shivrei luchos and a Torah scroll, a metaphor for the coherence of conscience and behavior that defines a true scholar. “A talmid chacham,” Rava teaches there, “who isn’t tocho kiboro,” – whose inside [essence] isn’t like his outside [the image yielded by his behavior] – “isn’t a talmid chacham.”

My revered rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, noted that the Gemara’s wording is pointed. We are not exhorted to bring our “outsides” into line with our “insides” – to first achieve purity of heart and then display its signifiers – but rather the other way around. We do right to first emulate the comportment and behavior of those more spiritually accomplished than we are – to present an image of observance and propriety – even if our souls may not be as pure as our clothing and actions seem to declare. 

That is because, in the Sefer Hachinuch’s words, “A person is affected by his actions” and demeanor. How we dress, speak and act can change who we are.

Achieving coherence of appearance and heart must be the ultimate goal for us all. But we shouldn’t feel hypocritical or despondent if, in the process of reaching that goal, we show the world a better image of ourselves than we deserve. What matters is only that we are working to bring our inner selves into line with our outer ones.

What’s more, according to a Midrash brought by Rashi on the posuk 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, the Gemara  (Shabbos 55b) says was one of the humans who never sinned! 

The inescapable conclusion is that self-interest isn’t sin. The essential sense of self is inherent in being human, and no contradiction to righteousness. 

That, too, is reflected in the aron. It was gold within and without, yes, but there was wood (perhaps hinting to the eitz hadaas) between the golden layers. One’s toch and bar can be pure and consistent, but there is always a self in the middle. And that’s inherent in being human.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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To be sure, the fake images didn’t misportray what had happened. But there has been true havoc wreaked by less pedestrian imagery.

After federal immigration agents shot and killed two protesters last month in Minneapolis, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin displayed an enlarged photo of an ICE agent holding a gun against the back of the head of one, a man named Alex Pretti, who was down on one knee. It was an AI-altered image. Mr. Pretti was indeed killed in a scuffle but was not, as the photo seemed to show, summarily executed. (To his credit, though, Mr. Durbin, when informed of the provenance of the photo, apologized for inadvertently giving it publicity.)

Another manipulated photo of Mr. Pretti, who was a nurse, enhanced his facial features and portrayed him sympathetically by showing him assisting two rehabilitating veterans.

When, also last month, a group of protesters interrupted a church service in Minnesota, the White House posted a digitally altered image showing one of the demonstrators bawling as she was arrested. It was an AI-altered version of a photo of the woman looking entirely at ease.

The protest was an uncouth disturbance of a religious service. But the photo, still, was sheker.

As were those showing Representative Ilhan Omar smiling next to a man who had sprayed her with apple cider vinegar. That led to claims that the Congresswoman had staged the attack. President Trump echoed the idea on his social media platform.

Needless to say (or maybe not), there was no evidence that the attack, such as it was, was staged. The attacker, moreover, had previously made threats against Ms. Omar and has a history of online criticism against her.

There are more than enough reasons to excoriate Ms. Omar without resorting to sheker.

Then we had an A.I.-generated “newscaster” who reported that California Governor Gavin Newsom had laundered drug money for Mexican cartels. The “report” was reposted on President Trump’s Truth Social platform. And was, in case you might be wondering, entirely evidence-free.

Last October, an entirely convincing video showed a television reporter interviewing a Georgia woman about how she sold her food stamps for cash, which is a crime. The entire conversation was conjured from thin air (and AI). Neither the reporter nor the woman ever existed.

But the reaction to the video was entirely real, with some commenters railing against government assistance programs and others, since the interviewee was black, employing ugly racist tropes.

Fakes have been used to mock not only poor people but President Trump as well. One video showed an image of the White House with a voice-over that sounded exactly like Mr. Trump, berating his cabinet over the release of documents that showed his relationship with a disgraced criminal.

There was a time, a not-too-distant one, when AI-generated “memes” were obviously manufactured, no more misleading than a hand-drawn cartoon. Think the president as Superman or “Dark Brandon” Joe Biden with bright red laser eyes.

They were blatantly, silly caricatures, as anyone could see. Today, though, there are counterfeit images and entire fake videos that are indistinguishable from photos of real things and happenings that actually happened.

And, combined with a polarized, confirmation-biased and disturbingly gullible public, such evolved AI, while it might not spell the end of the human race as some fear, certainly presents an unprecedented challenge to emes.

Social conservatives and liberals alike, have utilized new AI technology to reach and fool the public. But the most aggressive use of AI to mislead seems to have come from one side of the political spectrum. It’s the side whose policies most of us, myself included, favor. But sheker is sheker, and we’re enjoined by the Torah to distance ourselves from it. Here, at least, we’re enjoined to recognize it and certainly to avoid becoming complicit in its dissemination.

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A sure way to anger an atheist is to challenge him to explain why anyone should be pleasant, or ethical or moral – beyond the mere utilitarian gain of a social contract. He will jump up and down and insist that goodness and badness exist. But, in the end, without a Higher Power’s guidance, those words are utterly fungible.  Good and bad behavior, sans a Divine Guide, carry no more ultimate meaning than good or bad weather. And flowers appreciate thunderstorms.

Parshas Mishpatim begins with the connection-letter vav, indicating that the laws that follow, many of them dealing with financial dealings, torts and other interpersonal matters, were, no less than the “Ten Commandments” and mizbei’ach laws of the previous parshah, “from Sinai,” as Rashi, quoting Midrash Tanchuma, notes.

Inherent in that vav-connector, says Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, is the fact that, for Jews, seemingly mundane business and interpersonal dealings are to be conducted ethically not as mere parts of a social contract but rather as the fulfilment of Divine command.

And, he continues, it is a distinction with a momentous difference. “Rivers of blood” have been spilled, he points out as an example, “up to and including the present,” as a result of human reinterpretation of “Thou shall not murder.”  

When killing, or stealing, or harming others are only man-made social constructs, ways will be found to sidestep them or “clarify” their application when deemed necessary. By contrast, one who accepts the Torah’s ethical laws as a divine charge will perforce treat them as truly binding and absolute, no matter what.

Those with the custom of saying a “lishem yichud” declaration of holy intent before putting on tefillin or taking an esrog and lulav in hand generally don’t do so before signing a contract or treating another person pleasantly.  

But there’s really no reason not to.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Tucker Carlson? Candace Owens?

Nope. Not even Ms. Rachel. It’s from an editorial in our friends the Saudis’ official government’s newspaper Al-Riyadh earlier this month.

If anyone thought that the Saudi charm offensive and seeming outstretched-in-peace Arabian arm were signs that the desert kingdom was moving toward rapprochement with Israel and an embrace of the Abraham Accords, some further thinking might be in order.

Recent months have seen imams’ sermons at the Grand Mosque in Mecca – which are seen as reflecting official Saudi messages – express sentiments like those of Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah bin Humaid, who, in his drasha, emplored his misguided conception of the Creator to “deal with the Jews who have seized and occupied, for they cannot escape Your power. Oh… send upon them your punishment and misery.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted on a recent podcast that, whereas in the past, “you only got these crazy terrorist clerics, the al-Qaida types [who] would be inciting against the Jews,” of late, “the [Saudi] state-owned media” was engaging in incitement.

Barak Ravid, a correspondent for Axios, said that lately “the Saudi press is full of articles that include anti-Israeli conspiracies, anti-Abraham Accords rhetoric and even antisemitic language.”

Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. antisemitism envoy, said about the Saudi about-face: “If this is a real pivot, and not just a momentary detour… then it’s very disturbing.” She added that the shift “also has implications for the spread of hatred, Jew hate.”

It’s not clear what has driven the change for the worse. Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, suggests that one factor may be the Trump administration’s friendly relations with Islamist leaders in Turkey, Qatar and Syria, which, he contends, sends a signal to the Saudis that you could take more Islamist positions, and it won’t hurt you with the United States.”

Edy Cohen, of the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, told Jewish Insider that he sees the Saudi shift as a sign of panic in the wake of the mass protests in Iran.

Saudi leaders, he says, “heard [exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi] say the new Iran will normalize relations with Israel, and this drove the leadership crazy.”

“Imagine Iran and Israel together,” he explained. “The Shi’a and the Jews together; it’s their biggest nightmare.”

Others point to the increasing enmity between the House of Saud and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the new face of moderation on the Arabian peninsula.

Once, not long ago, the two nations were on friendly terms, even working together in Yemen to curb Houthi influence there. But lately, the UAE has been a target of Saudi ire. Prominent Saudi columnist Dr. Ahmed bin Othman Al-Tuwaijri, for instance, wrote an article on a Saudi site attacking the UAE as “an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab world … in betrayal of [G-d], His Messenger and the entire nation.”

After some backlash by American critics, the Saudi site took the article down. After further backlash, though, this from the Arab world, it went back online. Welcome to Arabia.

A surprisingly contrary voice was that of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, as stalwart a conservative supporter of Israel and enemy of Islamism as the chamber has ever featured.

After meeting last week with Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and speaking by phone with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, he said “After having met with the Saudis today, I understand their concerns better. I don’t agree with everything they’ve done, but I fundamentally believe that the vision is still the same.”

 “To all those who think like me and have been upset by what you’ve heard,” he continued, “I understand why you’re upset, but I would just say this: If I feel good, you should feel good.”

Brings to mind Ben Shapiro’s maxim, that “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

Is the kingdom choosing Islamism or peace? Coming weeks’ Saudi sermons and media musings will tell.

© 2026 Ami Magazine

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The paper even ran an “editor’s note” a few years back to clarify that “the headline and a passage” in an article had “implied incorrectly that questions among scholars about the location of the temples potentially affected Jewish claims to the site”; and that “unlike assertions by some Palestinians that the temples never existed,” there are no archeological findings that “challenge Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.”

Shkoyach. Chalk one up for history!

Unfortunately, the Beis Hamikdash doesn’t currently stand where it stood and where it will. And when the Har Habayis was captured along with the rest of Yerushalayim by Israel in 1967 during the Six-Day War, the Israeli government gave administrative control of the site to the Jordan-based Islamic trust known as the Waqf.

In keeping with the longstanding status quo that had prevailed until that point, Israel declared that only Muslim worship would be permitted on the Temple Mount. Israel’s leaders reasoned that changing the character of the site, where two Islamic edifices, the Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, have long stood, would be seen by the Muslim world as a blatant affront. And so, to keep the peace, Israel allows only Islamic worship on the mount.

From a purely reasonable perspective, of course, prohibiting Jews from praying at Judaism’s holiest site is an absurdity. Reasonable perspectives, however, are rarities when it comes to the Middle East, and absurdities abound.

Israel’s decision to not change the character of the Temple Mount, discomfiting as it was, and remains, evidenced sensitivity and wisdom.

Neither of which are evident in the ongoing attempts by some to assert a Jewish presence on the Har Habayis.

Increasingly, groups of Jews have ascended the Har Habayis and prayed there. They are motivated, no doubt, by fealty to history and Jewish pride, but their actions, nonetheless, are provocations. And gifts to Muslim extremists the world over who loathe Israel and Jews, and who are on constant lookout for any event, however tenuous, that they can portray as insulting to their faith.

And indeed, each time a group of Jews enters the compound, Arab media screamingly condemn what they laughably call “stormings” of the site.

No, they’re not stormings. But neither are they justifiable.

The “stormers” reject the opinion of gedolei Yisrael and the consensus view of Israel’s chief rabbis that Jews are barred by halachah from entering the compound. In 1967, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate ordered that a sign be posted at the Mughrabi Gate, the entrance to the Har Habayis for non-Muslims, warning that “According to Torah Law, entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.”

But even those who rely on minority halachic rulings they say permit them to stand on part of the compound need to realize that not everything that’s permitted is necessarily wise. And asserting a Jewish presence on the Har Habayis today, in the context of raging global Israel-hatred, most certainly is not. The ascenders to the mount might feel inspired by standing on the holiest ground on earth, but there are 2 billion Muslims who, to put it delicately, don’t want them there.

Most recently, a small group of Jews entered the compound carrying a “Guide Page for the visitor to the Temple Mount,” newly published by the “Temple Mount Yeshiva.” Alongside instructions for visitors, the page pointedly includes the Shemoneh Esrei.

The man who heads the Temple Mount Yeshiva told Haaretz that he hopes the next stage will be the introduction of regular siddurim, and Jews wearing taleisos and tefillin.

To be sure, a new era of history will ensue when, in the navi Yeshayahu’s words, “a wolf and a lamb shall graze together,” when the entire world will recognize that Moshe emes viToraso emes.

But we’ve clearly not arrived there yet. And, in the interim, we are enjoined to not goad or incite other peoples or religions. That directive might be vexing, but doing the right thing often is.

(c) 2016 Ami Magazine

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The Gemara (Shabbos 88a) teaches that “Hashem held the mountain over the Jews’ heads like a gigis (barrel).” The Maharal explains that the stunning nature of the experience, the terrifying interaction of human and Divine, left no opportunity for full free will. Directly interacting with Hashem, how could one possibly refuse?

And that “coercion” remained a moda’ah, a “remonstration,” against Klal Yisrael, the Gemara teaches, until… the events commemorated by Purim.

In the time of Esther, the Jews chose, without being forced, entirely of their own volition, to perceive Hashem’s presence where – diametric to the Sinai experience – it was anything but obvious.  Instead of seeing the threat against them in mundane terms, Persia’s Jews recognized it as Hashem’s message, and responded with prayer, fasting, and repentance. 

And so, by freely choosing to perceive Hashem’s hand in the happenings, they supplied what was missing at Sinai, confirming that the Jewish acceptance of the Torah was – and is – wholehearted and sincere. 

The Gemara’s image of Hashem “holding the mountain over their heads” at Sinai is a striking metaphor. But why “like a barrel”? Isn’t a mountain overhead compelling enough?  Who ordered the barrel?

One of the ways a person’s true nature is revealed, Chazal teach, is “b’koso” – “in his cup” – in his behavior when his inhibitions are diluted by drink (Eruvin, 65b).

On Purim, in striking contrast to the rest of the Jewish year, we are enjoined to drink wine to excess.  And what emerges from that observance, at least among Jews who approach the mitzvah properly, is not what we usually associate with inebriation, but rather a holy, if uninhibited, mode of mind.

Thus the revelation of our true nature provided by the Purim-mitzvah perfectly parallels the revelation of the Jews’ wholehearted acceptance of Hashem that took place at the time of the Purim events.  With our masks (another Purim motif, of course) removed, we show our true selves.

In Pirkei Avos (4:20), Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches us not “to look at the container, but at what it holds.” 

A gigis, throughout the Talmud, contains an intoxicating beverage.  

Hashem doesn’t look at the container – the coercion symbolized by the barrel held over our ancestors’ heads – but rather at how Jews act when they have imbibed its contents. He sees not our ancestors’ lack of full free will at the Sinai experience but the deeper truth about the Jewish essence, the one revealed by Purim’s wine.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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It is the worldview-struggle between Klal Yisrael and Amalek, introduced at the end of this week’s parsha in a military showdown.

We read how the Amalekites attacked the Jews after our ancestors’ exodus from Egypt, and how Moshe Rabbeinu, from a distance, influenced the course of the battle. 

“When Moshe lifted his arm, Yisrael was stronger; and when he lowered his arm, Amalek was stronger.” (Shemos 17:11)

The name Amalek, whose final letter is“kuf,” can be parsed as “amal kof” — the “toil of a monkey.” (Kuf and kof are spelled identically, and kof meaning monkey is found, in its plural form, in Melachim I, 10:22 and in Divrei Hayamim II, 9:21.)

Ki adam l’amal yulad — “For man is born to toil” (Iyov, 5:7).  We humans are here l’amal, for toil, to work to rise above our base natures and serve our Creator according to His will. Our lives have ultimate meaning. This is the credo of Yisrael.

Amalek, by contrast, sees man as a mere product of chance happenings and random mutations, with no more inherent worth than any animal, including his closest “relative,” the ape.

Curiously, and perhaps significantly, only two creatures are able to lift their arms above their heads: apes and humans.

Might Moshe’s raised arms during the Amalek-Yisrael battle signify Yisrael’s anti-Amalek conviction, that there is a G-d in heaven?  

Amalek, too, denying the divine, can raise its arms, but its gesture is meaningless. It is a monkey’s mere, and quite literal, aping of what Yisrael is doing when it raises  its arms heavenward. 

Amalek’s “toil” is amal kof, that of a monkey, using its arms only to swing from vine to vine, without any higher aim than getting from here to there. 

The pan-historical Yisrael-Amalek struggle is thus a pitting of dedication to Hashem, signified in our parsha by Moshe’s raised arms, against the meaningless toil of human creatures who deny what being human truly means.

While we cannot know the identity of the Amalekites today, the philosophy identified with that people is everywhere around us.  But Yisrael and its understanding of life’s meaningfulness will prevail in time.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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But whether the future of the left wing of the Democratic Party is more accurately presaged by the election of a radical as mayor than by the downfall of a progressive governor is far from clear.

To read what I’m referring to, please click here.

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Jewish history, no less, testifies to the miraculous existence of Klal Yisrael. Despite the vicissitudes of our history, our repeated scatterings and exiles, and the insane but ever-present desire of some to wipe us out, we have persevered, and persevere, as a people. 

The alpha-point of our peoplehood is in our ancestors’ exodus from Egypt, their leaving behind of their servitude to men for the holy calling of servitude to Hashem. And in this week’s parshah, we read of the preparation for doing that, which includes the first Pesach sacrifice and, perplexingly, the placing of some of the animal’s blood on each Jewish home’s doorposts and lintel — a ritual referred to as an ōs — a “sign” (Shemos, 12:13).

But ōs can also mean a letter of the aleph-beis, the Hebrew alphabet.

The celebrated 16th century Torah luminary, Rabbi Yehudah Loew ben Betzalel, the Maharal, famously associates the number seven with nature, and the next number, eight, with “above” or “beyond” nature – what we would call the miraculous.

Picture the Jewish doorways in Egypt just before the exodus. Imagine away the edifices themselves, leaving only the sign of the blood, in two vertical parallel lines along the doorposts and one horizontal one, above and connecting them.

The image is that, in ksav ashuris, of a ches, the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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“This time I have sinned,” Par’oh admits. “Hashem is the righteous One, and I and my nation are the wicked ones.” (Shemos 9:27). 

It is the plague of hail. Why, of all the other punishments, that one?

What occurs is that the answer may lie in the Midrash brought by Rashi (ibid, 24), that each piece of hail contained a flame, and that water and fire “made peace with each other” in order “to do the will of their Creator.”

Par’oh was an idolater.  The Egyptians worshipped the Nile and, according to historians, the sun.  Idolatry entails choosing a “team” to be on.  One can be on Team Nile, Team Sun, Team Water, Team Fire…

Monotheism entails the recognition that all the “teams” (elohos) are subservient to the one Creator of all the elements (Elohim).

Perhaps Par’oh was forced to confront and internalize that fact by having witnessed, during the plague of hail, the “partnership” of opposites.

Truth be told, we are all comprised of opposites: souls and bodies.  Each has its own desideratum. The only way to “make peace” between them is endeavoring to fulfill the will of our Creator, which requires both elements to work together.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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A superficial reading of vayakutzu would lead to a simpler understanding, that the Egyptians, out of fear (as pesukim 8 and 9 describe), found the Jews, not themselves,disgusting. What is the significance of Rashi’s comment?

The Mei Marom (Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlop, 1882-1951) posits that the pasuk as Rashi explains it is imparting a psychological truth: It is impossible to embitter the life of another unless one is embittered with himself. Anyone who appreciates and cherishes his own life will perforce be concerned about the lives of others.  

And so, Rabbi Charlop concludes, if one sees someone oppressing another, one can surmise that the oppressor’s cruelty is fundamentally sourced in self-loathing.  

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The way to understand the contention that Yaakov didn’t die, I think (and it’s borne out of the verses quoted in that Gemara), is that he lives on — as the patriarch whose children, all of them, became the progenitors of Klal Yisrael — through the eternal Jewish people.

The Midrash in Vayeishev, commenting on Yosef’s dream about the sun, moon and stars bowing to him, has Yaakov wondering, “Who revealed to him that my [secret] name is ‘sun’?”

It’s interesting to reflect (pun intended) on the fact that the moon –  the symbol, in its waxing and waning, and in its role in the Jewish calendar, of Klal Yisrael –  reflects the light of the sun.  We reflect Yaakov, are the continuation of his life.

Even more interesting, according to the Tikkunei Zohar (brought by the Shela and the Bach [Orach Chaim 281]), “the image of Yaakov is carved out [i.e. visible] in the moon.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Rashi comments on Hashem’s repetition of Yaakov Avinu’s name, calling out to him “Yaakov! Yaakov!” (Beraishis, 46:2), as a lashon chibah, a locution of endearment.

The full Midrash from which Rashi quotes, though, adds “lashon ziruz” –  a locution of motivation, a pushing to action. 

In last week’s parshah, the Midrash has Yaakov hinting to Hashem a desire for an end to the relentless challenges that had confronted him throughout his life, regarding Lavan, Esav, Rochel, Dina, Yosef, Shimon and Binyamin (43:14).

But in this week’s parshah, Hashem hints back that what might seem to be burdens are in truth opportunities, features, not bugs. Yaakov’s life was unimaginably hard. But by living it he became Yaakov Avinu.

With the term “Yaakov! Yaakov!” Hashem signals that being given the responsibility to shoulder challenges – ziruz – can be inseparable from, indeed an expression of, chibah – love.

And that is true not only when the “pushing” is coming from Above, but also when it’s coming from a parent, a spouse or a friend.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Rashi (Beraishis 42:8) quotes the Gemara that explains the reason Yosef’s brothers didn’t recognize him when they appeared before him in his role as second in command of Egypt: They had last seen him as a teen and now he was a grown man with a full beard. 

But Yosef, the Midrash says, looked just like his father Yaakov, whom the brothers knew as a grown man, if one considerably older than the Yosef facing them. And so, he must have resembled surely bearded Yaakov when his brothers came before him in Egypt.

Perhaps, though, there was another element at play here, too, the sort of cognitive dissonance that might explain the Australian aborigines’ lack of reaction to the sudden appearance of the large ship. It has been speculated that they had no model in their imaginations for a vessel like the Endeavour and so their minds blocked out what was before their eyes, rendering it, for all purposes, invisible.

The very last place Yosef’s brothers could have imagined him being was on a throne in a powerful country. They had left him in the hands of slave-traders and “knew” that he was, if he was even alive, toiling somewhere as a lowly servant.  Might that “knowledge” have been at least part of why his face didn’t register with them, why they couldn’t see him even as he was right before their eyes?

Even in our times, we see the incredible power of assumptions and preconceptions, how blinding they can be. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence for the truth of something, whether a fair election or the need for a country to destroy an enemy pledged to its destruction, the fact can still remain for millions of people an unthinkable thought, and render what is right in front of them effectively invisible.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The word “eivel” — “mourning” — is composed of the same letters, in the same order, as the word “aval” — “however.”

“However” bespeaks an interruption of a thought.  And mourning — the facing of mortality forced by the death of someone close — is an interruption of life, of living, as we all do, without constantly thinking about death.

It’s interesting to note that the parsha includes not only the interruption of Yaakov’s life by Yosef’s disappearance – the source of his aveilus – but a striking interruption, too, of the narrative flow of the parsha itself, by the account of Yehudah and Tamar. 

And that narrative also presents yet another interruption, this one, of Yehudah’s life. He is suddenly, unexpectedly, forced to confront the reality of his responsibility for the fact of Tamar’s pregnancy. 

Tamar tells him, when he seeks to punish her, that he seems innocent and she seems guilty.  But, she continues, please recognize these personal items… (38:25). That, for Yehudah, is an aval – a “however” – moment too.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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It has come up today in the context of a video message from Democratic lawmakers, reminding members of the military that they must refuse to obey illegal orders.

My thoughts on the matter are here.

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That, according to the Midrash Rabbah brought by Rashi (Beraishis 32:23). His reason for hiding Dinah, the Midrash notes, was because he feared that Esav, upon seeing her, would wish to marry her. And Yaakov didn’t want to take that chance.

There’s a phrase in the Midrash, though, that is easily overlooked but shouldn’t be. Not only did he put his daughter in a container, he “locked her in.”

What that seems to indicate is that Yaakov knew that, as Chazal explain at the very beginning of the saga of Dinah’s abduction and rape by Shechem, she was a yatzanis, an “outgoing personality.” She was a naturally curious person. And so, prudently, her father locked her in, since he feared she might emerge during his meeting with Esav to witness the goings-on and be targeted by her uncle.

And, according to the Midrash, Yaakov is faulted for that, since, had Dinah in fact been seen by Esav and ended up marrying him, she might have been able to turn his life around and alter the enmity he held in his heart for Yaakov.

But protecting children is a parent’s first priority. Wasn’t Yaakov right to do what he did?.

Apparently not. The question is why.

What occurs is that children have natural proclivities and tendencies.  There are times, to be sure, indeed many times, when a child has to receive “no” as an answer.

But squelching a child’s nature is not a good idea. It can easily backfire. Ideal child rearing is channeling the child’s nature, not seeking to squelch it. (See Malbim on Chanoch lina’ar al pi darko in Mishlei 22:6).

My wife and I know a couple whose little boy seemed obsessed with airplanes, beyond the normal interest in such things shared by all little boys. The parents didn’t try to dissuade him from his desire, as he grew, to fly or work with planes, to force him, so to speak, into a box. They allowed him to express it, and the little boy is grown today, a yeshiva (and flight school) graduate who is a certified air traffic controller, and he’s raising a beautiful, Torah-centered family with his wife, our daughter.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Does a respectable mainstream, at least presently, dominate in each party?

My take is here.

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Most people fall somewhere on the spectrum between those two extremes, and most people also may experience one of the attitudes at some points; the other, at others.

Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the Kotzker Rebbe, pointed out that, even though Jews are descended from 12 tribes, the sons of Yaakov, we are called Yehudim, after only one of those progenitors, Yehudah.

That, he contended, is because Jews are meant to embody the sentiment that yielded Yehudah his name – his mother Leah’s declaration at his birth that she was the beneficiary of what she “didn’t deserve.”

Since Yaakov had children from four women and Leah knew that her husband was destined to father 12 sons, she expected to bear only three.  Yehudah was her fourth.  And she acknowledged (“odeh,” the root of “Yehudah”) the fact that she had “received more than my share” (Beraishis 29:35; see Rashi).

Traditionally, the first words to leave a Jew’s mouth each morning upon awakening are “Modeh Ani” (or, for a woman, “Modah Ani”) — “I acknowledge.” The acknowledgment is for having woken up, for life itself.  A Jew is meant to take nothing for granted, nothing. To take everything he has as a divine gift.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Yet one misleading phrase still stands out: “Come eat of my hunted [food]” (ibid), says Yaakov, offering his father the goat meat he could mistake for game.  But it was neither Yaakov’s food – his mother Rivka had prepared it – nor had it been “hunted.” How was Yaakov not lying?

What occurs is that “hunting” is a word we’ve seen earlier, in the Torah’s description of Nimrod: “a powerful hunter” (ibid 10:9).  And there, Rashi explains that what Nimrod “hunted” and captured were people’s minds.  He used words and subterfuge to mislead, convince and amass followers.

Perhaps here, too, Yaakov was subtly, slyly, subtly “confessing” to his father that he was engaged in a psychological subterfuge, presenting himself as someone he wasn’t, offering his “hunting” to Yitzchak, his ability to navigate a tricky and untrustworthy world. Thereby demonstrating that he, Yaakov, too, was capable of dealing with that challenging world no less than his brother, something that, as the Malbim and others explain, Yitzchak had assumed was not true.

And so Yaakov was saying, in effect, “Accept my current subterfuge as proof that I can do what you have assumed only Esav is able to do.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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I have started offering weekly writing on the online publishing platform Substack. What I post there are either ruminations that have not been published (or are unpublishable!) elsewhere, some oldies but goodies (at least in my estimation) articles and short thoughts on current events. There is no charge for subscribing.

To subscribe to receive the offerings, just go to https://substack.com/@rabbiavishafran

and click on the “free” option.  There is no need to upgrade to a paying plan (though any funds generated will go to help marbitzei Torah — like funds generated by the “Donate” button here). All of what I post will be accessible to all subscribers.

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“If only I had done this… or we had done that… or not done this… or not done that, we could have avoided this outcome.”

But human nature can be misleading. A thought I once heard suggests that the repetition of the phrase, “the years of Sarah’s life,” in the first pasuk of the parsha, even though the pasuk had opened with “And the lifetime of Sarah was 127 years,” teaches us to resist our proclivity to imagine that things could have been different had we only acted differently.

We might think that had Sarah not been told (as per a famous Midrash) about her son having been bound on an altar, she wouldn’t have died at the moment she did, having been spared the shock.

But Sarah’s death was divinely ordained for that moment. “The years of Sarah’s life” were the years granted her. The proximate cause of her death wasn’t its ultimate cause. Its ultimate cause was Hashem’s will.

Post-facto calculi in such things are wrongheaded.

We are certainly required to do what is normative practice to preserve our health –  but only that. Someone, for instance, who suffered from  Covid when it was raging might kick himself for having worn only a simple mask, not an expensive, surgical-quality one.  Or for having spaced himself only 6 feet from others, instead of 10. But if one fulfilled the normative obligaton and still became sick, he is wrong to agonize over not having done more. He needs to recognize the ultimate determinant: Hashem’s will.  And then do what normative practice demands, to, with Hashem’s help,  recover.

But pondering “if onlys” is pointless.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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“I, too, knew,” Hashem tells Avimelech in a dream, “that it was in the innocence of your heart that you did this” (Beraishis, 20:6).

So, if Avimelech was innocent in taking Sarah, why didn’t Hashem merely prevent the king  from approaching  her?  Why were he and his family and entourage physically punished?

Perhaps the answer lies in what Avraham told Avimelech, when the king demanded an explanation for having misled him:

“Because,” Avraham explained, “I said ‘There is no fear of G-d in this place’” (ibid, 11).

A leader, that tells us, has the ability, and responsibility, to influence the mores of his society. And if a society evidences lack of “fear of G-d,” its leadership is implicated in the evil.

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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.

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How could people presumably aware of Hashem think they could somehow stand in opposition to Him?

The “Mei Marom” (R’ Yaakov Moshe Charlop, zt”l) offers a tantalizing thought: The place m earth called Bavel possessed a deep spiritual nature of “overcoming the Divine” – which eventually expressed itself properly in the cases recorded in the Gemara (e.g. Bava Metzia 59b, Rosh Hashana 57b) where a beis din “overruled” Hashem – that is to say, asserted the ability He gave them to do so.

Perhaps, Rav Charlop suggests, it was that spiritual reality of the place that inchoately resonated with its inhabitants, leading them to feel that, indeed, in their own way, they had the “ability” to challenge Hashem.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The first of those offerings is below.

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The Torah’s first verse is purposely unclear.  As the Ramban (Nachmanides) points out, the deepest truths of how the universe was created are unfathomable and inscrutable, hidden, ultimately, in the realm of mysticism, not physical science.

It is intriguing, though, that the Torah’s first word, “Bereishis,” implies, as the Seforno explicitly states, that time itself is a creation – a notion that comports with traditional cosmological physics (if not with scientists who, terrified at the notion of a “beginning,” postulate a “multiverse” of universes, conveniently beyond observation).

Likewise intriguing is that, according to the Talmud, the Torah’s first word can be split into two words, “bara” and “shis.”  While the Gemara sees in “shis” a hint to an Aramaic word meaning “conduit,” hinting to an underground channel into which liquid poured on the mizbe’ach, the altar, would descend (a channel created at the beginning of time – Sukkah, 49a), the word can also, and most simply, mean “six.”

As in the six types of quarks, currently believed to be the fundamental particles of which all matter is, ultimately, comprised.

“He created six”?

 © 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Ashrei can be translated as “praiseworthy” or “fortunate.”  That latter meaning may be the key to the “bridge idea” connecting the end of the Torah and its beginning, which we seek to connect on Simchas Torah when we complete the yearly Torah-cycle and begin it anew.

Our recognition of how truly fortunate we are – to have been granted existence and the opportunity to play a role in the Divine plan, to daily receive Hashem’s gifts of life and sustenance, to be part of Klal Yisrael – should inform every Jew’s outlook and attitudes. 

And the joy it yields should be front and center of our minds during z’man simchaseinu and Simchas Torah.

(c) 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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It would thus refer to the end of history, when the nations of the world will be dazzled by a clarity that eluded them until that point. And so harninu, “sing the praises,” is an imperative (or a prediction, in the sense of “they will sing the praises”).

Rav Hirsch and the Alshich read the pasuk differently (and perhaps in a more grammatically defensible way). In Rav Hirsch’s words (the English translation of the German original), the words refer to the ongoing present: “Therefore, nations, make the lot of His people a happy one.”

As his commentary on the pasuk expands: “The treatment accorded to the Jews becomes the graduated scale by which the allegiance accorded on earth to Hashem is measured…”

So the words, read that way, are not a prediction but rather a warning – an informing of the nations of the world that they will be eventually judged by how they treat the Jews. Rav Hirsch adds that “It was anticipated – as has actually occurred – that this Book of Hashem’s teachings would become the common property of the world, through the hands of its scattered bearers.”

And that its “principles of the equality and brotherhood of all men and the duties of respecting justice and the rights of man… [be] brought into practice.”

Even if the ultimate judgment of the nations of the world will take place only in the future, the passing into extinction of some of the world’s most Jew-oppressive regimes has already occurred. The ancient Romans and Greeks, and more recent oppressors like the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all molder in history’s compost bin.

Today, unfortunately, there persist not only nations but also forces within otherwise benevolent countries, including our own, that seek to slander and attack Jews, both verbally and physically.

They are all warned.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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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

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He explained that the Torah is predicting a time when some evils can be “complementary,” in the sense that addressing one will exacerbate the other, and vice versa.

The metaphor he cites is someone stung in the same place by both a hornet and a scorpion. The former sting’s pain is alleviated by a cold compress and intensified by a hot one; the latter’s, alleviated by a hot compress and intensified by a cold one. What can the stung person do? Whatever he chooses to do will leave him in greater pain.

To our anguish, we live in such times. The mortal danger that is Hamas, which is pledged to destroy the Jewish presence in our land, can only be “treated” by its utter destruction. And yet, seeing that goal to fruition is impossible without attacking the genocidal group’s forces, which are routinely embedded in hospitals and mosques, and among civilians.

Which means exacerbating world opinion, which chooses to see only the tragic but necessary wages of the war against Hamas and to ignore the terrorists’ declared goal.

We Jews in the U.S. are experiencing hornet and scorpion stings of our own. The polarization of American society leaves us with the impossible choice of supporting a political movement that largely has embraced us and Israel, which choice brands us as adversaries in the eyes of those who oppose that movement’s antidemocratic tendencies. And if we declare our fealty to the democratic institutions that have undergirded our security and prosperity for so long, we alienate those who have most strongly championed our rights and Israel’s.

To Americans who value respect for the rule of law and political propriety, the MAGA world is a dire threat. To the MAGA world, those upholders of law and liberal (in the best sense of the word) values are the hazard.

And Jews, who have always actively participated in the democratic system and who seek both security and respect for law and propriety, are viewed suspiciously by both camps. And utterly despised by the fringe of each.

We pray for the Divine intervention that alone can alleviate the pain born of galus.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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That would be Hamas, which called the attack “a heinous crime, a blatant aggression, and a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.” Words that nicely describe the goals and daily diet of the lynch mob itself.

Second place in risibility went to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which condemned the strike as a “blatant criminal act.” This, from a group whose dozens of terrorist attacks include detonating a bomb in a Hadera market in 2005, killing seven people and injuring 55; another one the following year in a Tel Aviv eatery that killed eleven and injured 70; and a suicide bombing at an Eilat bakery that killed three.

Then, of course, were the expected words of condemnation from the usual pack of wolves, like Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, Egypt, Algeria, Oman, Turkey, the UAE and Libya. And let’s not slight Kazakhstan, Mauritania and the Maldives.

Joining the clamoring canines were Jordan, Spain, Italy, Germany, the European Union, the United Kingdom and France.

And, at least perfunctorily, the U.S. too. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” (We’ll leave the highly debatable description of the country unaddressed for now, due to space limitations.)

Ms. Leavitt did add, though, that “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. did join the other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the strike.

Ah, such short memories some have. Does no one recall how, on May 2, 2011, the Obama administration violated the territorial integrity of Pakistan, in Operation Neptune Spear, when SEAL Team Six members shot and killed a man named Osama bin Laden? You know, the founder of al-Qaeda and orchestrator of the recently commemorated September 11, 2001 attacks? Three other men and a woman in the attacked compound were also killed in that operation.

Or the first Trump administration’s violation of Iran’s space on January 3, 2020, when an American drone strike took out Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful person in Iran at the time?

The world tut-tutting Israel for actions it has taken is, of course, nothing new. In fact, it’s become something of a new normal. But it goes back quite a long way, at least to 1960, when Mossad agents captured Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. (He was spirited to Israel, tried and found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1962.)

At the time, The Washington Post huffed that “anything connected with the indictment of Eichmann is tainted with lawlessness.” And The New York Times wrote that “No immoral or illegal act justifies another.”

And when, in 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad, cries of woe were heard around the world (though Iran was gratified, having tried, and failed, to destroy the same facility a year earlier).

The New York Times called the attack “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.” The Los Angeles Times referred to it as “state sponsored terrorism.” The United Nations passed two resolutions rebuking Israel for its chutzpah.

The Reagan administration, too, voted in support of a U.N. Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the raid, and the president suspended the delivery of six F-16 fighter jets to Israel.

There are those who maintain that, justification aside, Israel’s attack on a perceived ally of the U.S. was a strategic mistake. Others claim that, in the end, the net result will be positive. I don’t claim the geopolitical savvy to make any judgment in the matter.

What I do claim, in light of history, is the right to point out that Western powers’ condemnations of the Israeli strike against Hamas members in Doha are somewhat (to employ a less charged word than the one that first occurs)… inconsistent.

© 2025 Ami Magazine

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As Rav Elchonon Wasserman wrote, even today, when the urge to worship literal idols is absent, there are a number of “isms” that represent still–beckoning idolatries of the modern era.

In warning against assimilating other nations’ idolatries, Moshe Rabbeinu tells our ancestors that

“You saw their abominations and their detestable idols, of wood and stone; of silver and gold that were with them” (Devarim, 29:16).

Rashi explains the separation (reflected in the cantillation notes) of the phrases “of wood and stone” and “of silver and gold” by noting the latter’s proximity to “that were with them.” He explains that the idolators of old had no compunctions about exposing their wood and stone statues to public view but took pains to protect their valuable metal ones by keeping them “with them,” under lock and key.

I wonder if there may be another way of reading the pasuk’s separation of the phrases.

The “silver and gold” phrase doesn’t explicitly mention idols, although it’s certainly reasonable to assume that the early reference to “abominations and… detestable idols” refers as well to the final phrase of the pasuk.

But maybe that last phrase can also be read as a discrete reference, not to idols per se but, rather, to literal “silver and gold” – in other words, to other nations’ infatuation with precious metals, with amassing wealth.

With, in other words, one of the modern idolatries, one of the “isms” that would tempt Jews in the future: materialism.

The Midrash in Koheles Rabbah (1:13) observes that: “One who has one hundred [units of currency]wants two hundred”; and implies that the progression only continues on from there.

Aspiring to being able to provide for one’s family’s needs is obviously proper, as is aiming for wealth to support good causes. So, in the modern economic system, is saving for the future.

But aspiring, when one has “100,” to attain “200” simply for the sake of having more – and billionaires have no need to double their wealth – is something else. It may reflect the aspiration of societies around us, but it should have no place among Jews. We are not to imitate others in either their literal idolatries or in their addiction to “silver and gold.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Rav Dessler famously explained that every aspect of nature is no less a miracle than a sea splitting, an act of G-d. What we choose to call miraculous is just a divine-directed happening we’re not used to seeing.

The most fundamental element of nature, arguably, is time. The past, from our perspective, is past, and time proceeds relentlessly into the future. But time, too, is a divine creation. Commenting on the Torah’s first words, which introduce Hashem’s creation, “In the beginning…,” the Seforno writes: “[the beginning] of time, the first, indivisible, moment.”

Time is the bane of human existence.  The Kli Yakar notes that the word the Torah uses for the sun and moon—“me’oros,” or “luminaries” (Bereishis, 1:16), which lacks the expected vov, can be read “me’eiros,” or “afflictions.”

“For all that comes under the influence of time,” he explains, “is afflicted with pain.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, zt”l, notes, similarly, that the term “memsheles” (ibid), which describes those luminaries’ roles, implies “subjugation.”  For, the Rosh Yeshiva explains, we are enslaved by time, unable to control it or escape its relentless progression.  Our positions in space are subject to our manipulation.  Not so our positions in time.

But time,, like the rest of nature, can be manipulated, of course, by Hashem’s will. Indeed, as it happens, astoundingly, it can be manipulated by our own as well.

In Nitzavim, which is always read before Rosh Hashana, are the words: “And you will return to Hashem…” (Devarim 30:2).

Teshuvah, Chazal teach us, can change past intentional sins into unintended ones. Even, if the teshuvah is propelled by love of Hashem, into merits (Yoma 86b). Quite a remarkable thought.  Chilul Shabbos transformed into reciting kiddush on Shabbos?  Eating treif into eating matzah on Pesach?  Telling lashon hora into saying a dvar Torah?

By truly confronting our past wrong actions and feeling pain for them, and resolving to not repeat them, we can reach back into the past and actually change it.  We are freed from the subjugation of time. Is that not the temporal equivalent of the splitting of a sea?

Which thought might well lie at the root of the larger theme of freedom that is so prominent on Rosh Hashana.  Tishrei, the month of repentence, is rooted in “shara,” the Aramaic word for “freeing”; the shofar is associated with Yovel, when servants are released; we read from the Torah about Yitzchak Avinu’s release from his “binding”; and Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of Yosef’s release from his Egyptian prison, and of the breaking of what can be thought of as Sarah and Chana’s childlessness-chains.

And that ability to manipulate time may be why, on Rosh Hashanah, unlike on every other Jewish yomtov, the moon, the “clock” by which we count the calender months of the year, is not visible. The moon is, famously, a symbol of Klal Yisrael.  It receives its light from the sun, just as we receive our enlightenment, and our mission, from Hashem; it wanes but waxes again, as Klal Yisrael does throughout history.

The subtle message in the moon’s Rosh Hashana invisibility may be the idea that time need not limit us, if we successfully engage the charge of the season. We are guided to imagine that the sky, with its missing “Jewish clock,” is reminding us, at the advent of the Aseres Yimei Teshuva, that time can be overcome in an entirely real way, through the Divine gift of teshuvah, powered by our heartfelt determination.

Ksivah vachasimah tovah!

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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

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Several years ago, I noted how an incongruity seems to lie in the case of Yishmael. Although his descendants, as Rashi notes, will prove to be cruel tormenters of his half-brother Yitzchak’s descendants, he is judged “ba’asher hu shom”: where he is at the current moment (Beraishis 21:17).

The Mizrachi and Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin address the problem by noting that the ben sorer u’moreh has already himself acted in an ugly manner, whereas Yishmael’s cruel descendants lay generations in the future. (I suggested, based on a question, another approach, that internalizing materialism and luxuries, like the ben sorer has done, is a particularly weighty indicator of hopelessness.)

Rav Zevin, based on his approach, also reveals a different dimension of the law of ben sorer u’moreh, which is virtually impossible to happen, given Chazal’s requirements for prosecution (see Sanhedrin 71a), and, according to Rabi Yehudah, indeed never did, and exists only to edify us.

He explains that just as the boy’s harsh judgment is based (as above) on his having demonstrated the seeds of criminality already, so are all of us responsible for whatever bad we’ve done, and for its implications for our futures.

But, he continues, when Rosh Hashanah arrives, we are able to engage in doing teshuvah, which removes our past sins from the divine calculus. And, thus, even though we may indeed – like Yishmael’s descendents, lihavdil, did in their horrible way – lapse in our own ways in the coming year, at the moment of judgment, we are judged “ba’asher hu shom.” Where we stand at the moment of din.

Which, Rav Zevin, suggests, is why the parsha about Yishmael’s life being saved by Hashem is read on Rosh Hashanah.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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One person who has successfully gotten aid to civilians has been rewarded with… death threats. Read why here.

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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

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Rav Saadia Gaon reads those words not as an allowance but rather as an imperative – that there is a Torah mitzvah (which he counts among the 613) to eat meat.

To be sure, we are admonished to consume meat only when we have a compelling appetite for it (Chullin 84a, codified by the Rambam in Hilchos Dei’os 5:10). But, at least according to Saadia Gaon, when such an appetite is present, satisfying it is a fulfillment of a d’Oryaisa commandment.

Similarly, in the Talmud Yerushalmi, at the end of Massechta Kiddushin, it is stated in the name of Rav that “One will be held accountable for not having not eaten something permitted that one found enticing.” Presumably, because to do otherwise would be to decline a Divine gift.

Surrendering to appetites is not something generally seen as consonant with a Torah-conscious life. And moderation even in permitted things is a high ideal. Yet, here, with regard to meat (and, according to the Yerushalmi, it would seem, any food), if one has a desire to consume it, one not only may but must do so.

Saadia Gaon is alone among those who enumerate the 613 mitzvos who sees the words “eat to your heart’s content” as a commandment.

But the next time you feel an urge to eat a steak or a hamburger, out of acknowledgment of Saadia Gaon’s opinion, it might be proper to have intent that one’s enjoyment of the fare is an observance of a mitzvah.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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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

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The pesukim that relay Hashem’s message to our ancestors: “Know this day that it was not your children” who saw Hashem’s majesty and experienced all of the miracles in Mitzrayim and during the exodus thereof and those during the desert years, but, rather, it was “your [own] eyes that saw” Hashem’s great acts (Devarim 11, 2-7), offer us alive today such an argument.

Because our ancestors directly experienced Hashem’s might and direction, and were thus rightly accountable to recognize the import of the same on their behavior. But we, their mere descendants, did not witness the exodus and subsequent wonders. What, then, compels us? Do we not have a pischon peh here, an excuse?

Key here is the vital importance of mesorah, the “handed-down,” usually used colloquially to refer to the handed-down law but no less applicable to “handed-down history.”

No one in his right mind today, despite not having been alive then, denies the event we call World War I, or the one we call the Civil War, or the existence of ancient Rome or ancient Greece. That is because history is handed down to us from when it happened.

And ancient Jewish history, with all of its miracles, has been faithfully handed down to us. We were therefore, in a sense and for all practical purposes, “there.” Our eyes, too – those of every Jew who has ever sat at a Pesach seder – witnessed the exodus from Mitzrayim.

What is more, we have something our ancestors had not: Compelling evidence of Hashem’s might: the fulfillment of Hashem’s words.

The Torah predicts Klal Yisrael’s failures and its exile from its land. It predicts our scattering across the world and our persecutions. All of which we, not our ancestors, can attest to having happened. So while they may have personally experienced Hashem’s hand, we have experienced the fulfillment of His promise.

And the Torah predicts, too, the full return of Klal Yisrael to the Torah and to the land (already begun), and the ultimate redemption. May it come speedily, in our day.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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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

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But it’s a pointless sentiment, and not only because it’s irreversible, like spilled milk. But because it is a denial, in a subtle but real sense, of Hashem.

A seemingly superfluous phrase, or, at least one whose intention is not clear, is appended to the Torah’s admonition “You shall not be partial in judgment. Hear out minor and major matters [or people] alike. Fear not any man.” The pasuk then adds: “For judgment is Hashem’s” (Devarim 1:17).

That phrase could be understood as meaning “For you are doing Hashem’s work, and must do so with pure objectivity.” Or, “For you are but instruments of Hashem.”  But Rashi, basing his words on Sanhedrin 8a, writes:

“Whatever you take from this man unjustly you will compel Me to restore to him; it follows, therefore, that you have thwarted judgment from Me.”

In other words, the phrase implies that an unjust judgment will be divinely rectified. And, it follows that if one judges properly, even if that means that a wealthy party is the winner of a financial case and a destitute party the loser, the judge needn’t fret. If the destitute party is meant to thrive, Hashem will see to it that he does, in some other way.

The implications of that idea – the truism that Hashem can and ultimately does run the show – go well beyond court proceedings. In life, no negative outcome is final, at least not in the larger scheme of things. And so, angst over losing, in any way, is unwarranted.

One can be deprived of a job, shidduch or opportunity. But the “loss” is illusory. And so, angst is pointless; it even borders on heretical, since one must recognize that, if Hashem’s “rectification” of a seemingly unfair verdict or happening is merited, it will happen.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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I am a Zionist. I am not a Zionist.

Both statements are true, because the word, something of a war cry these days, has lost its meaning. Or, better, has multiple meanings. And it’s worth the while of anyone who cares about the Middle East, antisemitism or religion to tease out the details of the multiplicity.

As a haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox” (we dislike that pejorative), Jew, I do not subscribe to the foundational principle of the movement created by Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.

Before Israel’s founding, in 1948, the religious leaders to whom most haredim like me looked for guidance opposed the establishment of a political state for Jews, even one self-defined as “Jewish.”

Theologically, they insisted, the return of Jews en masse to the Holy Land needed to await the arrival of the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets of old (Herzl, an avowed secularist, didn’t quite fit the bill). And from a practical standpoint, they feared that a “Jewish state” would only serve to spur the hatred of Jews that forever lurks and seeks some excuse to express itself, often with violence.

So, as a Jew who believes that the Jewish religion, not any political state, is the essential expression of Judaism, I’m not a Zionist, at least not if one defines the word in its historical sense, as a believer in the Herzlian Zionist program.

At the same time, just as the religious leaders who did not back the creation of Israel in the end accepted the state once it became a fait accompli, and urged their followers in the Holy Land to participate in the country’s civil and political processes, I feel a connection with Israel and a deep concern for the welfare and safety of its citizens, many of whom are my friends or (closer or more distant) relatives.

So I am a Zionist, at least if one defines the word as a “accepter and supporter of Israel.”

There is, though, a third definition of Zionist, a new one, this one a slur, intended to refer to anyone who supports Israel’s current war against her enemies.

How Israel is waging that war is rightly open to criticism, but it is subject, too, to reasoned defense. When  “Zionist!” is angrily shouted at those who seek to offer the latter, the word is used to portray defenders of Israel as moral monsters – for the slurred’s conviction that Hamas and other terrorist entities need to be destroyed, the Israeli government’s goal.

When that government’s goal is characterized, instead, as genocide, the accusers have gone from righterous protesters to ignorant haters. And when they vent their animus by intimidating random Jews or attacking them or their synagogues or institutions, they expose themselves as nothing short of old-fashioned antisemites hiding behind kaffiyehs.

It is unfortunate – no, tragic – that a terrible toll on civilians is so often taken in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. And eradicating the engines of terrorism in Gaza necessitates attacking the places from which they operate (including, sadly, hospitals and mosques).

But, in the end, whatever one may think of Israel’s actions, if words are to have meanings, “Zionist” can only mean either a subscriber to Herzl’s vision or a rejector of the same  who nevertheless supports the security of Israel’s citizens. When the word  is twisted to mean murderers, the twisters reveal nothing about Israel, and much about themselves,

(c) 2025 WSJ

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In his lengthy lamentation about Israel’s ostensible descent into genocide, Omer Bartov somehow overlooks a most germane distinction between Israel’s war to vanquish an enemy bent on its destruction and murderous campaigns like those that took place in Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia — and certainly the one carried out by Nazi Germany.

How Israel is waging its war against an enemy that has loudly declared its genocidal intentions is rightly open to criticism, and subject, too, to a reasoned defense. But it is a strange sort of “genocide” that can end immediately with the rulers of the attacked region simply laying down their arms, releasing those they kidnapped who are still alive and leaving the scene.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran

Staten Island

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The “even,” of course, refers to the fact that Ataros and Divon, as names of places, are proper nouns and hence no different in targum than in mikra. All the same, Rav Huna bar Yehuda in the name of Rabbi Ami says, they, too, must be recited a third time.

Although Rashi explains that the places in that pasuk are rendered the same in Targum Onkelos, our Chumashim do indeed have different  renderings of those names (with the exception of the final one, Be’on), As do the Targum Yonason ben Uziel and the Targum Yerushalmi, with variations.

What’s more, there are dozens of names of places and people throughout the Torah that are rendered the same in targum as in mikra. Why would the Gemara seize particularly upon Ataros and Divon (especially since they do in fact have targum)? And there are other psukim in the Torah that, like Ataros and Divon, consist entirely of proper nouns.

Tosfos (ibid) say that the Gemara’s intention is to direct us to use the alternate targumim even though there is no non-repetitive Onkelos one. (And, presumably, publishers, somewhat misleadingly, included one of those targumim in our editions of Targum Onkelos itself.)

Interesting, though, is the fact that the targum renderings of the names the Gemara mentions, Ataros and Divon, the ones we have in our Chumashim, whether they are Onkelos’ or not, are machlelta and malbeshta, words whose roots seem to mean  “inclusion” and “cloaked.”

I wonder if those renderings may be meant to signify that the Torah includes much more in its words than their simple meanings; and that deeper meanings are cloaked in its every word. And, thus, that repeating even a proper noun a third time is indicated.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Her score on that count is the subject of my most recent Ami column, which you can read here.

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Our parsha lists a number of special communal korbanos. On Rosh Chodesh, the day of the new moon, among other sacrifices, a chatas, a sin-offering, is brought (Bamidbar 28:15).  Unlike other chata’os brought on holidays, though, it alone is called a chatas laHashem. The halachic import of that fact, as Rashi notes, is that it atones for tum’ah contamination of the mikdash or kodoshim that no person ever knew about, only Hashem.

But the Midrash (also cited by Rashi) says something flabbergasting, that the korban is brought as an “atonement” – whatever that might mean – on behalf of Hashem, for His having “lessened” the moon. The reference, of course, is to the Midrash’s account of how the moon complained that “two kings cannot wear one crown” and, as a result, was divinely demoted.

The reason for a Jewish leap year, says the Nachlas Tzvi, is that the Jewish calendar, which is essentially lunar, requires an occasional additional month, to bring the Jewish months into alignment with the seasons (which are the result of the sun’s rays’ angle toward the hemispheres of an axis-tilted earth). The Nachalas Tzvi suggests  that the “lessening” of the moon may refer not only to a muting of brightness or size but also to the fact that it takes less time for our satellite to orbit around the earth 12 times than it takes the earth to revolve around the sun, rendering a lunar year “less,” in a temporal sense – shorter – than a solar one.

He sees the “atonement” as being for the moon’s complaint. But it would seem that it might better refer to the confounding Midrash cited that Rashi cites, whatever it might mean.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Even then, though, after being reminded of the halacha, Moshe demurs, telling Pinchas that “the reader of the letter should be its contents’ executor.”

It is an interesting aphorism, but was there any compelling reason why Moshe didn’t rise to the task of dispatching Zimri and Kozbi himself? It is hard to imagine the ultimate defender of Torah and Klal Yisrael not wishing to himself undertake what needed to be done to defend the Torah and protect his people. After all, the immediately preceding psukim have him punishing those who engaged in worship of Baal Pe’or.

Rav Shlomo Ganzfried, the author of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, in his sefer Aperion, suggests a reason, beyond the upshot of the aphorism, for Moshe’s hesitancy.

He points out that Zimri had challenged Moshe, asking if Cozbi was forbidden to him. “And if you say that she is forbidden, what about the daughter of Yitro to whom you are married? Who permitted her to you?” (ibid).

Moshe feared, Rav Ganzfried suggests, that if he were the one to dispatch the sinners, it might be seen as the settling of a personal score, not the heeding of a Torah law. It might be perceived not as an act of kana’us but rather of negi’us.

It occurs to me that Moshe may not so much have been concerned with what others might think but rather demurred and invoked the aphorism of the letter-reader because of the singular nature of kana’im pog’im bo.

Normally, a violator of the law must appear in court and his case properly adjudicated. Kana’im pog’im bo is an exception to that. Thus, the executor of the punishment is acting in a way like a judge. Halacha disallows a judge from adjudicating a case if he has any relationship of pre-existing bias for or against a litigant. So Moshe may have felt he could not halachically assume the role of a kana’i here. As to who could, well, he said to Pinchas, “You read the letter.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Rather “when the Jewish people turned their eyes upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in Heaven, they were healed, but if not, they were necrotized [by the venom]” (Rosh Hashana 29a).

So, the obvious question: Why not eliminate the middlesnake and just look directly heavenward?

Rabbeinu Bachya calls attention to the word used to introduce the (real) snakes in the account: hanechashim (Bamidbar 21:6). Not “snakes” but “the snakes.”  The definite article, he says, is a reference to the poisonous  reptiles that, are described (Devarim 8:15) as having been ever-present in the desert our ancestors wandered. 

Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch expands on that observation, explaining that gazing at the copper snake was meant to sensitize the people to the ubiquity of snakes around them – and to the realization that when the snakes hadn’t harmed them, it was because of Hashem’s protection.

That puts me in mind of a pasuk (Tehillim 35:10) included at the end of Nishmas, the beautiful expression of gratitude recited at the end of psukei dizimra on Shabbos. “Kol atzmosai… matzil ani meichazak mimenu” – “All my bones shall say, ‘Hashem, who is like You? You save the poor from one stronger than him, the poor and needy from the one who would rob him’.”

My bones?

Parts of Nishmas describe our bodies’ figuratively praising Hashem. But those parts can be read, too, as asserting that our bodies’ functionings are themselves praises of Hashem.

Our physical bodies are threatened by scores of dangerous invaders, held off, if we are healthy, by an unbelievably complex biological network we call the immune system.

An astounding menagerie of antibodies is produced by the white blood cells in our bodies, each product designed by our Designer to disable a specific bacteria, virus or toxin, thousands of which constantly seek to infect our bodies.

Those protectors, as it happens, are born in the marrow of our bones.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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That’s what Chazal point to with regard to how a pikei’ach (perceptive person) like Korach could undertake a shtus, a “stupidity” like fomenting a rebellion against Moshe Rabbeinu.

The words of the Midrash, brought by Rashi (Bamidbar 16:7), are: “His eye misled him. He saw [in a prophecy] that Shmuel would be one of his descendants” and assumed that he, Korach, was thereby licensed to foment a rebellion.

Why his “eye,” in the singular?

The fact that we have a pair of eyes allows, of course, for a special sort of vision, stereopsis, which gives us the ability to perceive depth and three-dimensional structures by combining the slightly different images received by each eye. That facilitates our ability to judge the relative distance of objects and perceive depth.

Korach was focused on only one aspect, his genealogical legacy, his future descendant Shmuel. He didn’t employ the full complement of vision, and remained blind to the larger issue of what he was actually about to do – foster a schismatic rebellion against Hashem’s chosen messenger. He saw a picture, yes, just not the big picture.

Chazal famously teach that “falsehood has no feet” – that the word sheker teeters on the single “foot” of the letter kuf – while truth is stable, as each letter of the word emes is firmly grounded (Shabbos 104a).

But that same Gemara also notes that the letters of sheker are adjacent to one another in the alphabet, while those of emes span the entire aleph-beis. That fact, Chazal say, teaches us that falsehood is easily found, but truth, only with great difficulty.

I understand that to mean that one can be misled by focusing on only one aspect of something. Perceiving the truth, by contrast, requires spanning the entirety of what is seen, the “big picture,” complete with stereopsis. It’s a lesson much needed in our polarized, black-and-white, one-dimensional times.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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That’s what Chazal point to with regard to how a pikei’ach (perceptive person) like Korach could undertake a shtus, a “stupidity” like fomenting a rebellion against Moshe Rabbeinu.

The words of the Midrash, brought by Rashi (Bamidbar 16:7), are: “His eye misled him. He saw [in a prophecy] that Shmuel would be one of his descendants” and assumed that he, Korach, was thereby licensed to foment a rebellion.

Why his “eye,” in the singular?

The fact that we have a pair of eyes allows, of course, for a special sort of vision, stereopsis, which gives us the ability to perceive depth and three-dimensional structures by combining the slightly different images received by each eye. That facilitates our ability to judge the relative distance of objects and perceive depth.

Korach was focused on only one aspect, his genealogical legacy, his future descendant Shmuel. He didn’t employ the full complement of vision, and remained blind to the larger issue of what he was actually about to do – foster a schismatic rebellion against Hashem’s chosen messenger. He saw a picture, yes, just not the big picture.

Chazal famously teach that “falsehood has no feet” – that the word sheker teeters on the single “foot” of the letter kuf – while truth is stable, as each letter of the word emes is firmly grounded (Shabbos 104a).

But that same Gemara also notes that the letters of sheker are adjacent to one another in the alphabet, while those of emes span the entire aleph-beis. That fact, Chazal say, teaches us that falsehood is easily found, but truth, only with great difficulty.

I understand that to mean that one can be misled by focusing on only one aspect of something. Perceiving the truth, by contrast, requires spanning the entirety of what is seen, the “big picture,” complete with stereopsis. It’s a lesson much needed in our polarized, black-and-white, one-dimensional times.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

“The US… has committed a grave violation of… international law… by attacking Iran’s peaceful nuclear installations.”

Benito Mussolini, in 1936:

“[Our German alliance] is… animated by a desire for peace ….”

Peace, yeah.

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Yes, and in math class, an equation has a “Final Solution.”

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What has always occurred to me about their use of that word is that a daily factor in the lives of Klal Yisrael in the desert was a “bread” of sorts: the mon. It is called bread in several places, including Shemos 16:4 and Tehillim 78:25.

The mon, of course, was an unprecedented and undeniable miracle, a heavenly intervention that nourished Klal Yisrael. So perhaps the metaphor was meant to reassure the people that, despite the fears expressed by the meraglim about the fearsome occupants of the land, the conquest would proceed apace, just as miraculously as the food that had fallen each day to nourish them.

It’s a truistic idea but one worth focusing on these days: Wars are fought with manpower and weapons, but are won only with the help of Hashem.

The Chasam Sofer, I discovered, also saw the mon as the metaphor’s reference, and he expounds on it more deeply (echoing the Ohr Hachaim). The produce of the Holy Land, he explains, contains not only a physicality but also a special spiritual element. Ahead of the invasion of Can’an, that element was divinely withdrawn from the land’s produce and transformed into the mon. It was that embodiment of holiness that sustained Klal Yisrael over all the desert years.

And its removal from Cna’an’s produce left only the raw physicality of the land’s produce — mere “bread,” devoid of its erstwhile holiness — for the Cna’anim. And that, in turn, left them entirely vulnerable to being vanquished.

May we merit that all who threaten Klal Yisrael meet the same defeat.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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But it’s smooth sailing if you’re an anti-Jewish terrorist entity like Hamas, which, without official fundraisers, receives largesse from a number of eager sources. 

There’s Iran, of course. Any cause holding the promise of dead Jews is a shoo-in for the mullahs. And they go the extra mile, offering would-be killers not only cash (according to the State Department, up to $100 million annually to Hamas and other assorted such gangs) but also weapons and training.

Then there is Qatar, which has covered salaries of government (i.e. Hamas) employees in Gaza. And there’s no lack of private groups and individuals in places like Algeria, Sudan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates who are more than happy to aid evildoers. And don’t forget the lucrative smuggling of weapons, chemicals and electronics. And income from sham “humanitarian” charities in Western countries.

Like the U.K., at least according to a recent investigation by Israel’s Channel 12. The Brits? Who knew? Not many, it seems, at least until now.

Hamas is banned in the U.K. as the terrorist organization it is. And no one is accusing the country’s government or official entities of intentionally funding it. The problem is that it may be enabling aid to Hamas, by supporting efforts with nefarious connections. By taking, in other words, the famed road of good intentions to an unexpected but not uncommon terminus.

The U.K. and, to be fair, Canada and the European Union, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and others, have sponsored a project of UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, whose beneficiaries are designated by a Hamas-run office, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).

The program provides monthly cash payments to 546,000 Gazans the MSD deems needy.

The MSD’s head is Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ politburo. The U.S. Treasury Department identifies him as a “senior Hamas official.”

NGO Monitor, a group that investigates non-governmental organizations, found a document from back in 2022 that shows how the U.K. Foreign Office was aware even then of the involvement of Hamas, “a proscribed group,” with the program. The office was concerned about “severe reputational damage” that revelation of the connection might cause Britain.

All respect is due to traditional British fussiness about appearances, but blimey, there’s a rather larger issue here, namely handing funds over to a member of a terrorist movement and allowing him to disburse them as he sees fit. 

And the U.N. agency “is just the tip of the iceberg,” according to NGO Monitor’s legal advisor, Anne Herzberg, “because 13 U.N. agencies are operating in Gaza. There is very little information into how these other U.N. agencies are operating.” 

What’s more, there are also Hamas operatives active in the U.K., including Zaker Birawi, a head of the Palestinian Return Center, who has helped organize weekly anti-Israel protests in London. A former member of the Hamas politburo, Issam Yusef Mustafa, a U.K. citizen, is the biggest fundraiser for Hamas in Europe.

In response to a query from Jewish Insider, the British Embassy in Israel insisted that “Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.K., and funding or supporting it is a crime.” The embassy, moreover, “categorically reject[s] the false and irresponsible allegations in the Channel 12 investigation,” and maintains that “No U.K. funding was provided to the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza.”

That, though, wasn’t the investigators’ allegation. It was that UNICEF funds the MSD, with cash provided by the U.K. It’s the old “I didn’t give the killer a gun, I just left it on his nighttable” excuse.

The U.K. claims that its Foreign Office monitors where funds provided to UNICEF  end up. But allowing a Hamas honcho to be a conduit doesn’t inspire confidence in the effectiveness of that supposed oversight.

Recently, the U.K., along with France and Canada, threatened Israel with “concrete actions” if it does not lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and work with United Nations agencies. 

Humanitarians, heal thyselves.

(c) 2025 Ami Magazine

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Rav Yonason Eybeschutz has an alternate, and very pith, take on the phrase. 

He asserts that wealthy people don’t wear expensive clothes and eat expensive meals primarily because of the enjoyment they may provide but, rather, because of the status they convey. (Think of Lamborghinis that need repairs more often than Hondas, or Rolexes that keep time no better than drugstore watches.) Put most bluntly, members of the upper class want to show that they are different (implying, presumably, better) than the hoi polloi. “That,” writes Rav Eybeschutz, in his sefer Ahavas Yonasan, “is the nature of man.”

The mon, though, served as a great equalizer, allowing the poorest person to taste whatever delicacy he imagined as he consumed it. 

Taking the word for “the nation” as referring to the upper class of the midbar-society; and “family” to mean social stratum, he sees the complaint of the wealthy as being about the erasure of the possibility to adopt status symbols. The removal of that option deeply pains those accustomed to believe their worth can be telegraphed by what they wear or eat (or drive).

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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You can read about it here.

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Mishpacha Magazine asked me to contribute, as part of a symposium, a short essay on the topic of a lesson I would want my children to internalize. The symposium was recently published, and my contribution is below.

(As it happens, although the below was written months before then end of my 31-year tenure as Agudath Israel’s director of public affairs, it turns out to be a most timely idea for me.)

A lesson that has become concretized in my life, and that I have sought to impart to my children (and to anyone else who will listen – the progeny are a captive audience) is what Rabi Akiva famously said when he found himself sleeping in the wild, with the candle he had lit blown out by the wind, his rooster alarm clock devoured by a cat and his donkey killed by a lion (Berachos 60b).

Namely, “All that the Merciful One does is for the good” – an attitude that reflected the motto of his teacher, Nachum Ish Gamzu,  “This, too, is for the good.” 

And when Rabi Akiva repeats that sentiment as well to the people of the nearby town as they, unlike him, were marched into captivity, he is reminding them of the same, even as they are experiencing great adversity. We may not see the good in what happens to us right away – or ever – but it is still for the good.

There’s nothing wrong with wishing for peace and calm and stability. But when adversity arrives, we can either kick and scream (to no avail) or seek to accept and come to terms with the challenge.

What began to teach me that lesson (though it took long to absorb it) was the knowledge that my father, a”h, as a teenager, was banished with other members of his Novardhok yeshiva by the Soviets to Siberia. Those boys could easily have felt hopeless. Yet they grew in unimaginable ways during their Siberian ordeal.  And survived the war to marry and raise families. Families that raised families of their own…

And in my own life, although I never faced anything like Siberian exile, I saw how “bad” things could be good things well-disguised. Our family moved to new cities twice and each exodus was from a wonderful place, leaving me devastated to be leaving. In each case, the new city loomed depressingly.

And yet, each move turned out to be a great brachah. As did an unexpected seeming professional downturn, which I deeply bemoaned at the time but that I have come to see as a true blessing well-camouflaged.

The life lesson of understanding how good can lie beneath what seems its opposite is even reflected in halacha:  “Just as one offers a blessing over good,” Chazal teach and the Shulchan Aruch codifies, “so does one offer a blessing over bad.”

I still need to fully internalize that truth; it’s one that needs constant chazarah. But I have experience born of having seen it realized. And I hope that my and my wife’s children will come to appreciate it as well.

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