Imagine your 12-year-old daughter announcing she’s actually a boy, or your son insisting he’s trapped in the wrong body. Online influencers promise you that medical transition will solve everything. School counselors urge you to use new pronouns and a new name for your child, warning that rejection of the practice could lead to the kid’s suicide. You’re told you must choose: a transitioned child or a dead one.

But what if this is a false choice? And what if both Jewish law and the best available science point to a very different path?

To address questions such as these, the Coalition for Jewish Values and Do No Harm have jointly released a groundbreaking guide for rabbis, Jewish educators and parents facing one of the most challenging issues of our time: How to respond when a child expresses gender dysphoria. This comprehensive resource, “Rethinking Gender Affirmation,” offers what has been sorely missing from public discourse—a careful examination of both Jewish tradition and scientific evidence regarding the social, medical and surgical transition of children.

In an era when the internet and social media expose our children to countless influences beyond parental control, gender ideology has become particularly pervasive. It preaches that gender exists on a spectrum and that children can be born in the “wrong” body. For adolescents already navigating the awkwardness of puberty, this message can fuel profound confusion—what is known as “gender dysphoria” or, more aptly, “sex identity disorder.”

The mental anguish these children experience is real and demands our compassion. However, compassion does not mean endorsing every proposed solution.

The guide makes clear that so-called “gender-affirming care”—social transition through cross-dressing and name/pronoun changes; medical transition via puberty blockers and hormones; and surgical transition involving the removal or alteration of healthy body parts—causes more harm than good. These interventions frequently lead to lifelong sexual dysfunction, sterility and numerous other serious health consequences, in addition to violating numerous halachic (Jewish law) prohibitions.

The Jewish perspective

At the heart of Jewish teaching stands a fundamental truth: “God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” This binary understanding of sex is not merely descriptive; it is foundational to Jewish ethics and identity.

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks observed that sexual ethics—grounded in the sanctity of marriage between man and woman—is what distinguished ancient Israel from pagan societies, and what continues to distinguish Judaism from secular ideologies today.

The sign of the covenant itself, circumcision, connects holiness intimately with sexuality. As Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik explained, man and woman represent not just biological differences, but “two ideas of personality”—distinct yet complementary, each essential to the other’s completeness.

Contrary to The New York Times and self-declared Talmud experts on social media, claims that Jewish law recognizes multiple genders beyond male and female are simply false. While the Talmud discusses eunuchs and rare disorders of sex development—cases where an individual’s primary or secondary sex characteristics fail to develop normally, or physical abnormalities obscure someone’s sex—these discussions never suggest that sex is a spectrum or that people can change their gender.

A man who is castrated (saris) is still a male, and a woman who is sterile or experiencing a disorder of sexual development, such as Turner’s Syndrome (aylonis), is still a female. The “tumtum” (a Hebrew word in Jewish texts for a person whose sex is unclear) for and “androgynous” classifications address biological ambiguity, not internal feelings about one’s body. These categories are not separate genders from male or female.

Gender transition—whether social, medical or surgical—violates numerous Jewish prohibitions. Surgical removal of reproductive organs transgresses the explicit biblical prohibition against castration. Cross-dressing violates the commandment: “A man’s attire shall not be on a woman, nor may a man wear a woman’s garment.”

Even hormone treatments that alter sexual characteristics may run afoul of these laws. Numerous other halachic requirements and prohibitions may be violated, including, but not limited to: the prohibition against unnecessary injury; the obligation to be fruitful and multiply; the prohibition against putting a stumbling block before the blind; and the obligation of “you shall be holy.”

Some argue that saving a life (pikuach nefesh) overrides these prohibitions. But rabbinic authorities have consistently concluded that mental anguish, however genuine, does not suspend Torah law in this context. Moreover, the premise itself is flawed, as there is no reliable evidence that transition prevents suicide or improves long-term mental health.

What the science shows

The guide reviews systematic evidence from multiple countries that have examined gender-affirming care. The “Cass Review” in the United Kingdom, along with similar evaluations in Sweden, Finland, Norway and France, reached the same sobering conclusion: that there is no reliable, objective evidence that social transition, puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones benefit children with gender dysphoria.

Even more striking: Studies show that when gender identity is not affirmed and social transition does not occur, between 61%-98% of gender-dysphoric children outgrow their dysphoria by adulthood. Without intervention, the vast majority become healthy adults. However, 96% of children who undergo social transition continue to medical transition, with its cascade of serious complications.

The harms are substantial and well-documented. Puberty blockers prevent normal physical and neurological development, cause bone density loss and risk permanent infertility. Cross-sex hormones in females can cause vaginal atrophy, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In males, they cause testicular degeneration, erectile dysfunction and increased stroke risk. Surgical interventions create lifelong complications, with complication rates as high as 76.5%.

A compassionate path forward

Parents facing a child’s gender distress deserve better than false promises and ideological pressure. They need honest information about the risks, the lack of evidence for benefits and the reality that most children naturally resolve these feelings without medical intervention.

Jewish tradition, informed by rigorous science, offers a wiser path: patience and proper psychological care for underlying issues. This is not rejection; it is genuine care for our children’s long-term physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing.

The guide from the Coalition for Jewish Values and Do No Harm provides families with the knowledge they need to resist pressure for unnecessary, untested and dangerous medical interventions and make truly informed decisions. In protecting our children from experimental and harmful treatments, we honor both the wisdom of our tradition and the findings of sound science.

Cover image: Transgender Pride Flag by Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr with CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed

Americans love fantasy. We enjoy cheering the good guys, booing the bad guy and a story with a happy ending.

Fantasy is innocent and fun in the make-believe worlds of movies, television and sports, but when it spills over into real life, it can be nightmarish.

The recent war in Gaza is a prime example. We’ve reduced it into shallow conflict with a simple plot. It has bad guys (Hamas terrorists), innocents who must be saved (the Gaza civilian population) and swashbuckling allies (Israel) to round out the cast.

The plot is Hollywood-perfect. Israel must vanquish Hamas while protecting innocent Gazans from harm. What will happen next? Stay tuned for the next episode as the credits roll.

The reality, of course, is as far from a movie set as the White House is from Gaza City. Before the current war, the coastal enclave was not the open-air prison Americans imagined. Entire neighborhoods featured fashionable villas and apartments, luxury cars, five-star restaurants and malls overflowing with designer goods. Gazans had access to higher education in Gaza universities and abroad. Together with Western money and Israeli aid that poured into their territory, the flourishing population was mostly well-nourished.

Yet in an election deemed legitimate by Western observers, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip voted for Hamas and its platform of killing all Jews, no matter where they live. They chose hate over coexistence and the education of their children in an Islam-superior belief system over tolerance. And it cost them.

The deeply held beliefs of the average Gazan and their educational system are hardly secret. They have been open about their worldviews. It is we Americans who choose to conform their reality into our fantasy of an open, welcoming and tolerant society. Hence, we have Western progressives defending a society that executes gays, women marching for those who subjugate women, and liberals championing a system that considers their opinions heretical.

Lest you think the devastation of their cities changed their ideology and tempered their zealotry, recent polls conducted by Palestinian research teams show that Hamas remains highly popular among Gazans.

The West Bank (the more correctly named Judea and Samaria) is another made-for-television thriller. In this full-length feature, the righteous Muslims valiantly try to recover their lost homeland from the world’s favorite bogeyman: the evil Jews. Its high drama includes Jewish “settlers” destroying olive groves and attacking villages. What can be better theater than a burning olive grove or more pastoral than a village?

The movie is fiction, of course. The reality is that Israel has been the Jewish homeland since biblical times. That the more recently settled Arabs were content to live under the brutal and corrupt rule of their fellow Muslims, the Turks and the Jordanians weren’t bothered by secular British rule, and only developed national aspirations when Jews founded their democratic State in the Holy Land, is dismissed as an inconvenient backstory.

The sporadic acts of aggression by Jewish extremists, whose actions are condemned by most Jews, present a far more compelling narrative than the Muslims who have murdered 1,500-plus civilians and destroyed thousands of acres of farmland and forests in the past five years alone.

This willingness to conform reality to fantasy goes beyond Israel. Americans are so desperate to believe that Islam at its core is a peaceful religion, albeit with a few fringe extremists, that we wave away the reality of Islamic terrorists murdering a quarter million people in more than 65,000 ideologically inspired attacks in the past 45 years with the ease of a magician making things disappear with the flick of his wand.

Our imaginary bubble extends to brutal tyrants whom we build into moderates. We cast Mahmud Abbas, the 90-year-old dictator of the Palestinian Authority, who pays a salary to every terrorist who kills an Israeli or a Westerner, as a reasonable man. We do the same for the Syrian leader who dons Western-style suits and ties, and is miraculously transformed from a murderous ISIS commander to a peace-loving statesman within the space of a week.

Americans aren’t the only ones who live in dreamland. Governments in France and in Scandinavia refuse to acknowledge neighborhoods that are off-limits to non-Muslims. In England, entire areas that practice Sharia law are completely ignored. And in Germany, under the guise of promoting democracy, speech condemning Islamic violence and hatred is strictly verboten.

To confront modern threats, Americans need to confront modern reality. Conflicts rooted in ideology, religion and history cannot be solved by pretending they don’t exist. If we persist in mistaking fantasy for reality, we shouldn’t be surprised if our happy ending turns into a hellish nightmare.

Cover Image: Arrest of Islamic Jihad activists in Judea and Samaria by Israeli Defence Forces Spokesperson’s Unit in Wikimedia Commons with CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently asserted that U.S. President Donald Trump regards Jews as “transactional” and that he tolerates antisemitism. Schumer placed himself in the role of arbiter, implying that he, as a Jew, truly understands Jews and what they need and want.

This contention is not only false, it’s infuriating. Although Schumer is Jewish and Trump is not, in a match-up between the two regarding who better understands, appreciates and has done more for the Jewish people, the president wins in a landslide.

Compare the reactions of their very different responses to protests by Hamas supporters on U.S. campuses in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. Students called to “Globalize the Intifada,” demanding a similar massacre against Jews in this country. Jewish students were terrified, and rightfully so. They were threatened on their campuses, in study halls and dormitories. They were dehumanized in the classroom, barricaded in libraries by aggressive mobs of their fellow students and subject to physical attacks and violence.

Trump is not just vocal in expressing his strong condemnation; his administration is withdrawing billions of dollars in grants and other supports for universities that have failed to uphold their obligations under Title VI, thereby allowing, and in some cases encouraging, antisemitic incitement. Students from foreign countries who violated the terms of their visas are being expelled, not just from their schools but from the country.

What was Schumer’s reaction to the existential threats facing his coreligionists on campus, and to the safety and security of Jews in America amid record-breaking instances of antisemitism?

Having achieved the highest elected office a Jew has ever held in the United States, you might have assumed that he would find himself at the forefront of confronting this wave of hate. Schumer should properly be leading the denunciations of bigotry and efforts to hold university administrators accountable.

Unfortunately, that assumption would be grievously incorrect. Schumer demonstrated himself to be part of the problem and not the solution. During the height of the protests, he advised Columbia University’s leaders that Democrats would not hold them accountable for enabling college antisemitism and would not scrutinize their behavior. He even counseled them to wait for the GOP-led storm to pass.

The upcoming deportation of Mahmoud Khalil is a good case study. Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen, was the chief spokesman of the Columbia University anti-Jewish protests, one of the leaders of the often violent and threatening demonstrators. Following the policies of the president, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio initiated deportation proceedings against Khalil, who is a permanent resident. The Trump administration broadcast a clear and unmistakable message that it will not tolerate anyone, especially foreigners, who want to harm America’s most vulnerable minority.

This should have been applauded, and indeed it was, by responsible leaders who seek a peaceful America and equal rights for all its citizens, even its Jewish citizens. Schumer, however, had different priorities. In an outrageous post to his X account, he demanded that the Trump administration prove that Khalil violated a “criminal law,” though there is no such requirement for revoking the visa or residency of a noncitizen.

In holding universities accountable for inexcusably tolerating Jew hatred on campus, it is Trump, not Schumer, who has led with fairness, intolerance for bigotry and a demand that wrongdoers face consequences.

Although the administration did not propose penalties against any college that protected its Jewish students, many Democrats chose to score political points at the expense of the threatened Jews of America by casting Trump’s act as an attack on higher education. Sadly, but perhaps predictably, Schumer sided with these members of his party against the members of his people. Although the very future of Jewish existence in America is at stake and the cherished ideal of America being a haven for all minorities is threatened, Schumer chose to focus on the effect Trump’s order would have on higher education instead of the impact that it would have on his own people.

By not protesting the shameful behavior of those attacking Jews on campus, Schumer showed colors no one should want to see. He gave Hamas propagandists support in Congress and a huge victory in the arena of public perception. By prioritizing his political career over basic morality and compassion for his people, Schumer cemented a dishonorable reputation that he is a Jew by birth and not by deed.

Photo Credit: Chuck Schumer by Gregory Hauenstein, with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license on Flickr.

The Jewish vote is, for the first time since Reagan beat Carter 44 years ago, likely to be close. Considering that Hillary Clinton garnered over 70% of the Jewish vote in 2016, and Trump less than one-fourth, this is a tectonic shift in Jewish allegiance away from Democrats. But it’s not hard to understand why even Jews with leftist leanings are reevaluating their loyalties this year.

As a community rabbi, director of a popular Jewish study center that attracts Jews from all backgrounds, and an officer of the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America, I am very well acquainted with local and national Jewish thought. But honestly, no expertise is needed: wherever Jews gather to chat, whether in synagogues, kosher supermarket aisles, community centers and on social media, we all hear the same conversations. Where once Jews would be embarrassed to admit they planned to vote for a Republican, today the opposite is true.

Those Jews whose priorities are progressive, or who consider Trump a dictator in waiting, will remain Harris voters. Many others are reconsidering. Amongst Orthodox Jews, the shift is nearly universal. It is driven by the fear Jews have for their personal safety and their concern for the continued viability of Israel and their dismay at the the credence Biden and Harris give to antisemitic tropes, that embolden our enemies.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have repeatedly berated Israel for not doing “enough” to prevent civilian casualties. America’s own military experts say precisely the opposite: that Israel routinely protects civilians to an unparalleled extent, even in ways that harm its own military goals. Yet the administration ignores this, instead repeating inflated casualty figures that even the UN and the Associated Press admit are untenable.

Similarly, both the President and Democratic candidate have repeatedly asserted that Israel is permitting those civilians to starve, falsely implying both that there is a food shortage and that Israel has caused it. In reality the amount of food brought in from Israel alone is enough to feed all of Gaza. Much of it, of course, is stolen by Hamas terrorists for their own use. This makes Israel the only country in history to generously feed the enemy trying to annihilate it, while simultaneously being falsely accused of starving the civilian population.

These lies elevate the antisemitic belief that Jews constitute a hostile force, anxious to mistreat all humanity in service of their own ends. Whether or not the administration recognizes the hateful roots of the false narrative it presents, there is no question that these statements are helping to popularize antisemitic sentiments in America.

This was reinforced when the administration withheld necessary weapons from Israel and warned Israel against entering the border city of Rafah to eliminate the Hamas battalions there. These positions gave Hamas breathing room to regroup, rearm and prolong the conflict at the expense of the lives of Jewish soldiers and hostages. It also reinforced the notion that Hamas, a genocidal terror group sworn to stamp out Jewish existence in the world, is not all that bad—and that Jewish lives can be sacrificed to maintain their presence in Gaza. The gruesome murder of six of the Rafah-held hostages, and the attempts by the administration to blame Israel for Hamas refusing to agree to any proposal for a pause in the fighting, only reinforced these false messages.

The Biden administration’s tacit permission for members of their party to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress further undermined Israel’s credibility in the world, and also harmed the fight against antisemitism here in America. That Vice President Harris skipped her opportunity to not merely attend, but preside, completed the Jewish perception that the administration is treating them as a lessor class of people.

When recent anti-Israel and antisemitic protests on campus turned violent and Jewish students were attacked and denied access to their own schools, the President did not send federal troops to protect Jewish rights and safety, as President Eisenhower did to ensure Black citizens would be safe in Arkansas public schools. Neither he nor Vice President Harris distanced themselves when Ilhan Omar, a member of their own party, went to a university campus to stand with terror-supporting protesters at Columbia. Neither could they summon up the moral courage to express outrage when Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg dropped charges against nearly all of the perpetrators, even those who were caught on video taking over a university building and screaming murderous slogans against Jewish students.

It should be no surprise, then, that Jews look back with longing to Donald Trump’s embrace of Jews both on a national and personal level. Trump finally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, unlike his predecessors for over two decades, kept his campaign promise and moved the U.S. Embassy to that city. He enforced the Taylor Force Act, halting indirect American support for the Palestinian Authority’s infamous pay–to–slay policy (unlike the current administration). And, of course, he brokered the historic Abraham Accords, the biggest advance for peace in the Middle East in at least thirty years.

Equally comforting is Trump’s personal affinity towards the Jewish people, something he inherited from his father. Trump’s respect for Jews and their religion was in evidence long before his entrance into politics, through his close relationships with numerous observant Jews including, of course, his own Jewish daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.

Neither Biden nor Harris ever demonstrated a similar bond with the Jewish people, and although Harris married a Jew, her husband has scant connection to his roots. Emhoff’s first wife was no more Jewish than is Harris, and his two children were not brought up as Jews. To the contrary, his daughter Ella is actively involved in raising money for Gaza, funds all but certain to fall into the hands of Hamas.

With history’s oldest irrational hatred on full display in America and throughout the world, even left-wing Jews have far more pressing concerns than progressive values and garden-variety political issues. Jews are worried and feel they need a strong leader who can not only protect them but value their contribution as full citizens and contributors to the well-being of the United States. It is clear why they feel that they have that person in Donald Trump.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

I wander through Kibbutz Aza with my friend. Together, Roi and I look at the burned shells of homes pockmarked with bullet holes and pierced through with rockets from the October 7th Hamas attack. It’s difficult to imagine that these homes, now monuments to the dead, were once vibrant with life. We listen to Liehr, a resident who survived the ferocious attacks, describe in detail the friends and relatives who lived in these homes. One couple planned to wed. Now, they are joined for eternity in death. A photo on a blackened porch in front of a lopsided home shows a family with three adorable, smiling children, lost to the world forever. Liehr sorrowfully says they were the delight of their neighborhood.

I wander again, this time in my mind. I go back to Birkenau, the death camp just a mile or so from the larger Auschwitz complex. In April 1984, less than 40 years after the War ended, Birkenau still stands as it did the day it was liberated in 1945, open to man and beast. The gate hangs open, the fence partially torn down the secrets within revealed to all who dare to enter. The wooden wheelbarrows used to transport gassed Jewish corpses to the crematoria cower in the shadows of the barracks as if fearful of being exposed for their gruesome role in Birkenau’s unspeakable mission.

I wander with my friend Joel about the lonely camp, accompanied only by the stories we have heard from survivors and the accounts we have read in books. We enter the barracks where Jews spent the last few hours of their tortured lives. We see the desperate pleas, not for the help they knew would never come, but for remembrance. The scrawls scratched into the walls in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish are the names of children, families, towns, and birthdays. All cry out to be remembered.

Roi and I venture onto the porch of a home in Kfar Aza. A dead couch ripped to shreds stands at one the side, haphazardly piled with clothing and books, the detritus of a former life. A lonely wooden table, used for outdoor meals in better times, faces the couch, accusing the living and begging for remembrance.

Joel and I wander out of the Birkenau barracks. We confront the remains of the crematoria, destroyed by the Nazis and their Polish collaborators in a vain attempt to hide their atrocities. This was the ashen fate of hundreds of thousands of my people. Some were fortunate enough to be shoved dead into the gaping jaws of finality; others went into the fire alive. The hopes and dreams of both the dead and the living burned within.

I enter a second kibbutz house, accompanied by Roi and by my thoughts. Grimacing weeds begin to creep up its sides. The door hangs  askew. The blackened walls and charred furniture are silent witnesses to the fierce firefight that ended only a short while ago. A young couple just beginning to enjoy life together try in vain to repel the invading enemy. The locked door, barred with tables and chairs, are no match for grenades launched through the windows and tires set ablaze around their home. Their burned bodies cry silently for recognition.

Joel and I roam the vast camp. We find ourselves standing before a large, lined pit filled with water. It takes a few moments for our minds to comprehend what we are seeing. The bones and ashes floating on the surface force us to understand. We want to cry, but we can’t. We want to vomit, but we can’t do that either. There are no words. In silence, we look at each other and continue walking—and thinking.

Roi and I wander through the untouched part of Kfar Aza. It’s a beautiful day in southern Israel. The weather is perfect: warm, but not hot; breezy, but not windy. The kibbutz is a modern Garden of Eden. The graceful lanes, gently curved and lined with fruit trees and native plants, artfully show nature at its best. The homes are designed to blend seamlessly into the Negev’s natural beauty. Paradoxically, the atmosphere seems gentle and innocent, like the dawning of a fresh, new day. I’m shocked and I’m angry. I’m angry at the trees, at the plants, at the weather and at all this beauty for being so serene in the Valley of Death.

Our cab drives us through the Auschwitz countryside. The villages are peaceful and the plowed fields look eager to show off their bounty. The well-kept trees swell with spring life. The villagers seem content to work their fields in the present, as if the past never existed.

I look over the fence into Gaza. The distant sounds of gunfire and explosions remind me that there’s still a war going on. I realize with the clarity of a 40-year journey and the insight of a member of a timeless people that there will always be wars against the Jews. Nazis and their collaborators—Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, French, Dutch, and others. Hamas murderers and their cruel Persian patrons will always exist, but so will the God-given strength of the immortal Jewish People. We will overcome, we will survive, as Jews always have. I am angry no longer.

Originally published in Townhall

Photo Credits: Deror Ari on Wikimedia Commons

This past Friday night, Jewish congregations marked Rosh HaShanah, The Jewish New Year. It is a happy time and a somber time. It’s a time for reflection and a time for appreciation. It’s a time for recognition and a time for reality. It’s a time to look life squarely in the eye and take stock of our situation, and to see who stands with the Jewish people – and who doesn’t.

Even as the candles flicker on the last survivors of the Holocaust, we come into this new year facing a new wave of antisemitism. We as a people need to express appreciation to those strong individuals who have stood up to the evil of Jew-hatred, and who have castigated those who seek to undermine the world’s only Jewish State.

Thankfully, there are many shining lights, but as a Floridian I tend to focus on those in my own state who advocate for the Jewish people. One of the most underappreciated is Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who has a long history of helping America’s most targeted minority and the world’s most embattled democracy; yet some, for partisan reasons, seem unable to give credit where credit is (over)due.

As a congressman, DeSantis pushed relentlessly for the administration to stand by its promise to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State. He travelled to Israel to find a site for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and proudly returned for its opening in May 2018.

DeSantis also strongly advocated for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Subsequent events in the Middle East proved the wisdom of this insightful position. Had the Golan Heights been transferred to Syria, Hezbollah, the brutal Iranian-backed terror group, would have entrenchments overlooking the entire Israeli north threatening Israel’s security.

DeSantis’ first overseas trip was to Israel. He led the largest trade delegation in history, held the first-ever cabinet meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and was the first sitting Governor to ever visit Judea and Samaria. DeSantis also visited Israel a few months ago to join in the celebration marking the 75th anniversary since Israel’s founding.

Fighting antisemitism has also been a top priority. He publicly denounced companies like Airbnb and Ben & Jerry’s who refused to do business in parts of Israel. His strong enforcement of Florida’s anti-BDS law helped force them to reverse course. DeSantis also expanded that law to prohibit companies such as investment firms from using anti-Israel ratings systems to facilitate BDS against Israel.

These are hardly the only ways in which DeSantis joined the fight against the world’s oldest hatred. He mandated Holocaust education in Florida’s public school system, and honored Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, with a medal of honor. He helped shepherd through Florida’s legislature a law, HB 269, that enhances criminal penalties against anyone who distributes materials, project images, or otherwise intimidates, threatens or harasses someone based on antisemitic motivation.

Additionally, he signed a bill providing funding for school choice, thereby giving Jewish parents the ability to educate their children in a safe environment that reflects their timeless values. He also provided tens of millions of dollars in much-needed security funding to Jewish Day schools.

All these public stances for Israel and the Jewish people, and against antisemitism, should rightly earn him public acclaim. But for me personally, I was especially impressed by his humanity and friendship during one of the worst disasters in Florida’s history.

Many of the victims of the horrific Surfside building collapse in June 2021 were Jewish, as were survivors, family members, and rescuers. Many were Sabbath observant. For those unfamiliar with this weekly Jewish observance, Shabbos is a day of rest, not just from worldly pursuits and earthly cares but – although lifesaving activity continued – also a respite from pondering the tragedy. Relatives and friends tried to drive their anxieties away and capture a brief bit of Shabbos spirit and religious comfort, while crews searched for their loved ones just a few miles away.

In his role as Governor, Ron DeSantis came to the scene of the collapse to help coordinate the response and marshal the State’s resources. He also brought in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to help. As a fellow human being touched by the tragedy surrounding him, he simply could not leave. He remained with the families to offer what words of comfort and condolence that he could.

He spent that deeply challenging and uncomfortable Shabbos crying, comforting and listening. There were no reporters or juicy photo ops, no self-promoting statements to promote an agenda. The families wanted a quiet Shabbos, and DeSantis respected and honored their wishes. This is almost unimaginable in today’s publicity-driven world, especially for a politician with ambitions for higher office. The Yiddish language has a word for a person like him: a mensch.

During this intense period of introspection, beginning on Rosh Hashanah and culminating with the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, when Jews throughout the world strive to improve themselves and be better citizens of G-d’s world, it is important to recognize those who have led by example, showing America what a true leader should be.

Originally published in The Florida Standard

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr

Passover is an intriguing holiday. It features unusual customs and practices with deep and sometimes mysterious meanings. Not only is it the world’s longest continuous celebration of any kind but it features the earliest examples of ethnic foods, like matzah and marror, the special bitter herbs, which are still eaten by Jews throughout the globe today. In fact, many of the rituals of the Passover ceremony, commonly called the seder, are timeless, so much so that traditional Jews would be as comfortable sitting at the biblical Moses’ Passover table as they are at their own.

Passover, like all Jewish festivals, is marked by unique cuisine. My mind takes me back to the delicious food my grandmother and my mother prepared in honor of the weeklong event – specially spiced meats and fish, cholent, cabbage soup, and copious amounts of crispy matzah. I also remember my father dressed in his pure white festival robe presiding over the seder, explaining the rituals, and sharing the story of the Exodus with his family and our guests.

But my most keen memories from the Passovers of my youth, and of our own seders, which were copied from my parents’ playbook, are of the people who shared the seder with us. They were fascinating and diverse and often very colorful. There were exotic Jews from Africa and the Middle East, poor people who could not scrape together the money to make a seder of their own, intellectuals who expounded on the holiday’s meaning as if they heard it from Moses himself, together with people so assimilated they barely knew what Passover was. Yet, they all seemed to meld together through the rituals, the food, and the songs. Strangers became life-long friends – for the evening.

What is it about Passover – Pesach in Hebrew – that makes it so unique? What ancient gene draws Jews together and seems to compel them to share the traditions with family, whom they rarely see during the rest of the year, and with newfound friends, whom they most probably will never meet again? And what lessons can civilization learn from this most ancient of celebrations?

The Haggadah, the book read aloud at the seder encapsulating the enslavement and miraculous exodus of the Jewish people from the hands of the cruel Egyptians, features a passage, like many similar passages, which is both remarkable and cryptic. It asserts that had God not freed the Jewish people they would still be enslaved to Pharoah in Egypt. It is a particularly remarkable assertion given that it was written at a time when there was no longer Pharaonic rule in Egypt. It is further remarkable in that it assumes that no benevolent nation would have freed the Jews from slavery as so many nations did throughout history when they abolished slavery.

This short statement defines the essence of the Jewish people and underscores one of the great lessons mankind can learn from our story. God alone redeemed the Jews thereby making them a nation beholden only to their Creator. He did not want the Jewish people to suffer from a slave mentality and to constantly rely on handouts from others to survive. He, therefore, engineered redemption through a series of Divine miracles conceived and carried out by God alone. He wanted Jews to remember their former enslaved state with pride, not with embarrassment or subservience, but as a conduit to gratitude to their Redeemer.

The Talmud defines Passover as a Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish New Year, of sorts. It certainly is a time of unbridled joy, but also a time of introspection similar to the intense reflection of the High Holy Days. Passover does not just mark redemption from the cruel Egyptian enslavement, it is the celebration of the forging of the Jewish People as an independent and proud people with a unique destiny rising high above the considerable challenges and obstacles history has placed in its path. As Mark Twain once observed, “The Jew has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all ages, and has done it with his hands tied behind him.”

Even the most religiously distant Jews seem to awaken on Passover. They become alive to the ancient lessons ingrained in them by this most defining of festivals. They recognize true independence and how to manage adversity. They look deeply at Jewish history and understand how to carry their former enslavement not as a deformity to be hidden from public view, but as a proud expression of loyalty to the God who guides them. And, most importantly, they are empowered to pass their Passover knowledge onward for future generations to appreciate.

Originally published in Townhall

Israel’s newly proposed Judicial Reform Bill is all over the news, both in Israel and abroad, for all the wrong reasons. Thousands of protestors in Tel Aviv claimed that its passage would change the character of the State from a liberal democracy to an unyielding theocracy.

Prominent media outlets and left-leaning pundits are rending their garments over the corpse of Israeli democracy, mourning the end of the State of Israel and the demise of Judaism itself.

None of this is even remotely true. In actuality, not only does the Judicial Reform Bill not herald the end of times, it may even usher at the beginning of a stronger, leaner, and more focused Jewish people.

Let’s be honest, Israelis never cared much about democracy. The forced evacuations of thousands of Jews from their Gaza homes during the Sharon-led government, a policy supported by only a small minority in the Knesset, pulled the mask off any such pretensions in Israeli society. The brutal crackdowns on protestors and the warrantless jailing of minors that followed, gleefully supported by the secular Israeli press, underscored how little Israelis really value their freedoms.

The Gaza debacle was hardly a one-time event. Since its conception in the late 1800’s the founders of the State always valued socialist policy and conformity over human rights and democracy. The familiar saga of Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the State of Israel in its early years and tried to observe the Jewish traditions they had been accustomed to in their native lands was a harbinger of things to come. For the double sin of being both Sephardi and traditional, they were greeted with contempt, discrimination, forcible secularization, and even open hatred while trying to seek jobs, benefits, and healthcare.

The Yemenites fared even worse. Their ancient community who resettled in Israel after the establishment of the State with great hope and anticipation was not met with the understanding and tolerance you would expect from a democracy. Instead, they were forced into anti-religious kibbutzim foreign to their way of life, often made to eat non-kosher food, given jobs compelling them to work on Shabbat, and some even had their precious children torn away and placed in secular hands.

And so it was with the barely tolerated Haredi minority. As an American yeshiva student in the early 1980’s I vividly remember watching a peaceful, albeit loud, protest in Jerusalem’s Kikar HaShabbat, when Mayor Teddy Kolek disembarked from a black sedan and the police, who were mostly passively observing up till then, swung into action. They punched, beat, and shoved the protestors mercilessly. I’ll never forget the look of triumph on Kolek’s countenance as he watched a policeman bloody the face of a young Haredi student until the blood ran down his white shirt and onto the ground. I recognized that look; it was terrifying. I had seen it often in pictures from my parent’s time, but never on a Jewish face.

Purim is over, so we don’t need to masquerade any longer. The anguish at the proposed changes in the Israeli judicial system has nothing to do with the demise of a system of government that was always foreign to the Israeli psyche. What Israelis, and all Jews, do care about, what they have always deeply invested in, is ideology and identity. Israel is currently facing a profound identity crisis, not a judicial crisis. It is wrestling with the confluence and contradiction of being an Israeli together with being a Jew.

History has shown that all movements that seek to redefine Judaism and Jews and divorce Judaism from its traditional sense, have no Jewish future. There has never been a successful adaption of the Jewish religion, since the foundations of Christianity and Islam, that has maintained its Jewish identity. These breakaway movements are usually lauded and embraced at their inception as a new and dynamic form of Judaism, but ultimately, they drift away from their Jewish core, and their adherents are lost to the Jewish people forever.

In modern times, one needn’t look further than the Reform movement and its fraternal twin, the Conservatives. Once hailed as the very future of Judaism and the logical adaption of Jewish practice to contemporary custom, now, they only manage to sputter along because their numbers are artificially inflated by non-Jewish members. With their rabbinical and cantorial schools in serious decline, the shuttering of many of their synagogues and temples across America, and the majority of their members marrying non-Jews, they are the very definition of assimilation and Jewish obsolescence.

The demise of the Reform and Conservative movements abroad and the great religious revival over the past four decades throughout the Jewish world places the Israeli secular public squarely in the center of an existential dilemma.

Israel’s Founding Fathers tried to fashion a Jewish identity based upon fealty to the State but not to the religion. “Israelism” was to become the new Judaism. This was the Israeli nationalist version of the Reform and Conservative movements. This new Israelism embraced Jewish culture, just as Reform does. There’s nothing unsettling about placing a Chanukah menorah in the window or enjoying a knish or a pastrami sandwich, but anyone who crossed the line into Jewish religion was met with the full wrath of the new Israeli. The inherent contradictions embodied in a philosophy promoting a “Jewish” State devoid of Judaism, although apparent to religious Jews, were actively ignored by secular Israelis. Thus, the strongarming of the highly traditional Sephardic and Yemenite immigrants, the shunning of hareidim, and the disrespect for religious Zionists were not met with democratic outrage. Instead, they were welcomed as a necessary component in fashioning the modern identity of a Jewishless Israeli man.

Today, with the political rise of hareidim, Sephardim, religious Zionists, and the many secular Israelis who revere Judaism and all that it encompasses, their desire to ensure a Jewish future for their children and grandchildren by espousing Jewish values can no longer be beaten down and pushed to the side like a protestor in Kolek’s Jerusalem of old.

Today’s protests are not against Judicial reform, which any liberal-minded citizen should happily champion. It’s about the guilt and contradiction that all Jews feel when confronted with Judaism. Secular Israelis are feeling the sharp pressure of their own faith bearing down on them and they correctly view the Supreme Court and its disdain for religion (e.g. former Chief Justice Aharon Barak recently admitted that he does not even know the words of Shema Yisrael, but felt capable of making judgments on religious issues during his tenure, ed.) as the last bastion of Israelism and the only remaining firewall against the onslaught of Judaism. They are greatly encouraged by American reform and conservative movement leaders who see this battle as their final prospect to transgender the Jewish religion into the modern oblivion of Western ideas, transient culture, and anti-religious secularism.

The civil unrest has opened very deep wounds in our national soul which at once hurt badly but give us the opportunity to peer into ourselves as we never have before. If we look honestly we can come out more focused and stronger than we were before. If we don’t, we should bear in mind that this epic battle has a preordained victor. The Jewish Nation will ultimately choose Judaism over any innovation as it always has. Judaism is immortal and will survive and even thrive. The great question of the day is, will the anti-religious left in the State of Israel realize that in time?

Originally published in the Israel National News

Looking at the Biden administration, I can’t help but be reminded of a mischievous trick that my older brother and I used to regularly play on our younger brother. We called it “the opposite game.” Whatever our younger brother did or said, we did or said the opposite. It was tons of fun for us and annoyed the heck out of our younger brother, which, of course, was the point.

Now that we’re adults, we know it was petty. But it appears that the Oval Office’s newest occupant, who is anything but young, has developed his own version of our game, except the human costs and the stakes for U.S. national interest are no laughing matter. Biden seems bent on taking the mirror opposite approach of every Trump policy—even the policies that were sensible and proved effective.

For example, under Trump, the border was—for all intents and purposes—finally secured. We no longer had illegal immigrants entering the country en masse, and we certainly didn’t hear about children wandering alone through Mexico to get into the United States or kids being thrown over the border wall. Trump’s policy was clear: All immigrants must first apply for refugee status while still outside our country.

It was sensible, too. It vastly cut down on illegal immigration and prevented the further spread of coronavirus. The policy also maintained America’s national sovereignty and gave legal immigrants the opportunity for a better life.

Alas, because Trump implemented it, Biden had to take the diametrically opposed stance, and we, the American people, are bearing the burden.

And look at U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority refused to cease operation of its Martyr’s Fund, which was a violation of the Taylor Force Act, Trump, in 2018, cut off the $400 million U.S. taxpayer dollars that the governing body was receiving annually. The fund continues to pay terrorists who murder Israeli citizens and others, and gives life-time, monthly stipends to the families of perpetrators of violent attacks.

Thus, Trump brought U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the law. The law, by the way, was named after Taylor Force, a former U.S. Army veteran who was <href=”https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/08/middleeast/israel-violence/index.html”> stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist while on a Vanderbilt University-sponsored tour in Tel Aviv. But because Trump cracked down on vicious terrorists, Biden concluded it must have been wrong to do so.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is another illustration of Biden’s opposite game. UNRWA ostensibly provides aid to Palestinians. It’s supposed to build schools, develop curricula and employ teachers, among other things. This sounds like a worthwhile humanitarian effort. Unfortunately, UNRWA doesn’t come close to living up to its name.

An investigation by the United Nations—no friend of Israel’s—revealed that its own organization took an active role in perpetrating terror against Israeli civilians. Specifically, UNRWA schools were used as storage facilities for Hamas rockets. They also permitted the firing of those missiles—while school was in session!

Further, a Center for Near East Policy Research report documented the complicity of UNRWA schools in indoctrinating Palestinian children. Over 200 elementary school textbooks, even in math and civics, explicitly encouraged martyrdom and Jewish expulsion from Israel. The State Department called UNRWA an “irredeemably flawed operation.”

Trump stopped the endless cycle of terror by defunding the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. Ergo, it must have been the wrong thing to do. So Biden announced he would renew funding to the Palestinians to the tune of $235 million dollars.

You would assume our nation’s generosity would at least have been predicated upon the Palestinian Authority’s dismantlement of its Martyr’s Fund. It wasn’t. You would think we had received a promise from UNRWA to halt its facilitation of terrorism. We didn’t. The money was given gratis—no strings attached.

The opposite game is an impish pastime for kids. In real-life, it can have deadly consequences. The new administration’s policy agenda needs to quickly grow up. Biden should objectively assess his predecessor’s record, then embrace and build upon the most successful strategies. The American people, and our strongest allies, deserve nothing less.

Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes is Southern Regional Vice President of Coalition of Jewish Values, the largest rabbinic public-policy organization in America, and Dean of the Hollywood Community Kollel in Hollywood, Florida.