By Nicole Weatherholtz at Newsmax

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Coalition for Jewish Values managing director, told Newsmax on Friday that Passover is a “great example” of “how education can be done in a way that involves adults and children.”

“To put it in modern terms, it’s a great example of parental control of education because you have parents sitting down with their children, with their extended family, talking about the miracles that happened to the Jewish people back in Egypt, the miraculous rescue from horrible conditions of enslavement,” Menken said on “Wake Up America.” “There are so many things done in the Seder to convey that message to children, to keep them interested, to keep them aware – and awake, at that hour – and that’s a great part of the holiday, is just the way that the whole family comes together to bring this message alive.”

This year, the Jewish holiday of Passover, which celebrates the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, begins at sundown Saturday and ends at nightfall on April 20. During the first two nights of Passover, a Seder (candle-lit dinner) is eaten, which is comprised of ceremonial foods to commemorate the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, including unleavened bread called matzo that resembles a large, flat cracker.

Menken said the “whole point of the Seder” is to “recount” the miracles the Israelites encountered when Moses ordered Pharaoh to “let my people go.”

“It’s interesting how Passover manages to answer to each generation, but, certainly, you look at Pharaoh and, in fact, you can open the Book of Exodus and just read the story and think about how irrational Pharaoh was,” Menken said. “It wasn’t just that he didn’t know Joseph, who had saved the entire country; it was that he regarded Jews as a hostile force who would join with the enemies and then they would leave and go to their own place, all of which was horrible. Wow, doesn’t that sound a lot like what people are saying on campus?”

The rabbi was referring to the anti-Israel protests and antisemitism that roiled college campuses across the country last year. He reiterated how Passover is a model for education, going back thousands of years, that demonstrates how adults and children can be involved in a family-oriented style of learning.

“The one key element of the Seder is reciting, ‘This is what has stood for our fathers and us, that in every generation they rise over us to kill us,'” Menken said. “In every generation there’s going to be antisemites. They’re going to rise over us, to kill us, and God will save us from their hands.”

Photo Credit: Newsmax Screenshot.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss American psychiatrist, told of a terminally ill woman who was in the hospital and begged the doctors to help her survive long enough to attend her son’s wedding. If she could just get to the wedding, she said, she could die in peace. So they did everything possible to have her at her highest level of well-being. 

The day of the wedding all her intravenous lines and tubes were removed. She was dressed up and made up until she looked beautiful, and off she went to the wedding. When she returned to the hospital, everyone was expecting her to stagger onto her bed, lie down and die. Instead, she came back into the ward, she called the doctors, and said, “Don’t forget, I have another son.”

How does the Torah look at praying for the terminally ill? Would prayers that could possibly ask God to perform a miracle be appropriate or even permissible? And if not, how should one approach prayer in such a dire situation? Is prayer ever futile? 

Numerous Torah sources argue that it is a mistake to ever lose hope. Prayer, even for a patient who is told that they have little or no hope of recovery, is a time-tested Jewish approach. In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Jewish law emphasizes the importance of always continuing to pray.

Today more than even, a “terminal” diagnosis is not a death sentence. There is no infallibility in a physician’s diagnosis of an incurably ill patient. We should also recognize that some diseases can be controlled for years or even decades, during which time new medications and treatments can be discovered. Additionally, many examples exist of those who were told they had as little as weeks to live but went on to live productive, enjoyable lives for years and even decades.

Jane Plant, professor of geochemistry in London, diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 42, was told at the time of her diagnosis that she had at most two months to live. Jane passed away in 2016 at the age of 72. Guitarist Wilko Johnson performed a farewell tour in 2013, after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Johnson was told by his physicians that he had nine or 10 months to live but stunned his doctors by living an additional nine years. 

In our daily prayers we refer to God as Shome’a tefilla, “He who listens to prayer.” Note that we don’t refer to God as a Mekabel tefilla, “One who accepts our prayers” and who says yes to our specific requests. But even if the patient isn’t cured, it is possible that his or her suffering will be even slightly diminished as the result of our prayers. Additionally, the patient may live longer than they would have otherwise. Why would this be desirable? The Torah emphasizes that every moment of life has tremendous value. Praying in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is expressed in the well-known Talmudic statement, “Even if a sword is placed on one’s neck, one should not despair of God’s mercy.” Prayer can infuse the terminally ill patient with hope as an affirmation that there are ways of finding optimism and courage in even the bleakest of situations. 

It is always essential to pray, even when there appears to be no chance of recovery or any hope our prayers will be answered. In addition to the efficacy of prayer and the hope and support it brings to the terminally ill patient, prayer creates a meaningful relationship between ourselves and God. Even if we don’t receive what we pray for, thoughtful prayer uplifts us and connects us to the Almighty. It humbles us to realize that although we care passionately about the outcome, we have no idea what will happen. This humility spiritually elevates us and connects us to God and enables us to accept His will. 

A nurse who works in an ICU offered several important insights. She said that the reason people find praying frustrating is because they expect a total cure, and that they need to realize that there is much more to pray for with regard to an incurably ill individual than his or her complete recovery.

Here are some of the things she suggested people pray for: That the sick person not suffer too much pain, anxiety, depression or loneliness; that the sick person be treated gently and with dignity by the medical staff; that the veins of the sick person be easy to find for intravenous injections; that the family have the strength to hold up under the strain and to not abandon the patient; that the correct decisions, medical and ethical, be taken by the family, patient, doctor and rabbi. “If you pray for all of the above for a sick person,” the nurse said, “you will find that many of your prayers will be answered”

We all have much to pray for. May all in need of a refuah (healing) experience a full, speedy recovery. And may we accept that our prayers will be answered in the way God best chooses to do so.

Fourteen years ago, I received an unusual phone call. The call was from a nun. Sister Mary called to tell me that Dale, a Jewish man who was a student of mine, had suddenly passed away at the age of 45. 

She asked if I could assist her in raising enough money to pay for his cremation.

Judaism strictly prohibits cremation. At that moment several thoughts raced through my mind. I certainly couldn’t participate in assisting with a cremation. If I were to decide to become involved, what were the chances that I could convince Sister Mary and Dale’s ex-wife that Dale should be given a Jewish burial and not cremated?  And even if I managed to convince them, how could I possibly come up with thousands of dollars needed to pay for a burial? 

Before sharing what happened, I’d like to discuss the importance of Jewish burial. Much of the following is taken or adapted from “Last Kindness,” a nonprofit dedicated to helping every Jew choose and receive Jewish burial (LastKindness.org). 

The Torah teaches that every Jew, no matter how “Jewish” they lived — or did not live — has the right to be buried as a Jew.  Burial is how the Torah teaches every human being should be cared for when they die. Burial is an act of kindness and respect. It’s a kindness to the soul and body of the deceased, it’s a kindness to the planet, and it’s a kindness to the remaining loved ones as well.

Remember the respectful treatment Queen Elizabeth’s body received? You deserve no less. Really. Blue blood doesn’t make a bit of difference at the end. Every human body should be treated with respect — both in life and in death. The human body is sacred, having housed the soul, and should be treated as such.  

Our heritage as Jews matters, and having a Jewish burial tells the world you are proud of it. The primary reason we choose burial is that it’s a mitzvah to bury the dead. A direct reference to burial can be found in Genesis: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (3:19) Torah and traditional Jewish law are replete with references to the importance of providing burial for every human being. Although having a grave provides closure and comfort to remaining loved ones, even if no one will ever visit the grave, burial has intrinsic value for the deceased. There is no greater example of this than Moses, the greatest Jewish leader of all time who was buried by G-d Himself and G-d vows that no one will ever visit his grave. 

Jewish afterlife-care is particularly gentle and kind in its treatment. Throughout the entire process, care for the body is carried out quietly, gently, and with great reverence, recognizing the body as the sacred creation it is. And traditional Jewish burial is eco-friendly. It uses a simple pine coffin, biodegradable shrouds and absolutely no chemicals. The body decomposes gradually and becomes one with the earth.

On a spiritual level, Jewish burial is an act of kindness to the departed soul. Our body isn’t our true essence our soul is — and it lives forever. Yet the soul remains with the body even after the two are separated at death. The soul still feels connected to the body and is sensitive to how its lifelong partner is being treated.

Why not opt for cremation? Cremation is not only an act of violence against the deceased, which pains the soul, but it actually severs the connection between the body and soul, causing the soul eternal pain. Additionally, we don’t burn things we love. As an 11-year-old boy I remember when my pet turtle died. I lovingly placed it in a shoebox, and gently bid it farewell in a backyard funeral service. If anyone would have mentioned throwing the remains of my beloved pet into a bonfire, I would have been appalled. We love our pets. And by magnitudes difficult to measure, we love our dear relatives.

To return to the story with which I began: I told Sister Mary that according to Jewish law, Jews have to be buried. She paused, and said, “ ‘Rabbi, I agree with that!’ I called Dale’s ex-wife, who said she would be grateful if a Jewish burial could be arranged. I called the director of a local Jewish funeral home who said, ‘Rabbi, see how much money the family can afford. We’ll do the funeral, regardless, and I’ll do what I can to get a cemetery to donate a plot.’”    

The ceremony was most unusual. There was a rabbi and a nun. But more significantly, there was kindness and generosity. Dale’s family and many members of the Jewish community were in attendance. This was appropriate, I felt, because Dale was a kind and generous man. He was not a man who went to synagogue. Nor was he an observant Jew. But Dale was a proud Jew and was buried like a Jew.

Traditional Jewish burial is kinder to your body, kinder to the planet, kinder to your relatives, and kinder to your soul. And as Jews, traditional Jewish burial connects us to our glorious 3300-year heritage, as well as connecting us to our Jewish mothers and fathers throughout the ages who lived as Jews and who died as Jews.

Originally published in the St. Louis Jewish Light

The glorious eight-day festival of Pesach (Passover) ended Tuesday night. It coincided with the end of a challenging four-week recovery period from a surgery that was followed by severe post-op complications. I am 80 percent recovered, and I finally now can write. The enforced separation from the outside world and everyday activity allowed me time to cogitate. I now am bursting with thoughts about the campus riots, and I have prepared a five-part series that offers specific and unique proposals to take back our universities and stop the rot.

Why do I write and propose if I know that Biden and Kamala will not implement these proposals? Because, maybe, if G-d smiles on America and if America is worthy, there will be a change in government in only six more months. And even if not — G-d forbid — maybe brave and courageous governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott will consider creating state equivalents to these federal proposals I offer.

I begin with a bit of background. I graduated from Columbia University in 1976 with a B.A. in political science. During my last two years, I had the extraordinary honor to be elected by the entire undergraduate body — thousands of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors — to represent all of them, the entire college student body, as their chosen representative in the University Senate, Columbia’s highest deliberative body. Why would a left-wing student body elect one of the most right-wing students in the college? Because I was known campus wide as a fighter who does not take “no.” My primary cause then was freedom from communism for Soviet Jewry, but the concern of the collegiates was rising tuition. I campaigned on a promise to fight tuition hikes as I fought for Soviet Jewry, and I won. And, wow, did I ever fight as one voice among more than 100 University Senators to stop or at least reduce tuition hikes.

So I know Columbia University. I met my first wife, a Barnard student, on campus. I sent children to Columbia University. My first wife earned her doctorate at Columbia University.

I also know UCLA. I attended for law school, and I have wonderful law school memories. I was selected by my peers to be the No. 2 on law review, chief articles editor. I later was told in confidence by two of those who had been in the inside circle that voted that I had lost by a single vote in the decision to name the editor-in-chief because three of those voting expressed doubt that an Orthodox Jew with four children could do the job effectively while taking off one day every week to observe the Sabbath. So, I came in second and became chief articles editor. I loved my role, and it has stood me well even these 30 years later.

In four years at Columbia, I never once met a professor with conservative values. They all were leftist, many outright communist, or at best apolitical. I majored in political science and never heard of William F. Buckley Jr. or Ayn Rand. I took an introductory course in economics and never heard of Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. I took a course on the History of Judaism, and it was taught by an atheist who devoted the entire term to propounding his theories that the Torah is not the word of G-d but a compilation of texts written by nomads. I once challenged him in class respectfully with a compelling question. After class, he told me not to do that again, or he would reduce my grade.

At UCLA School of Law, each and every professor was a leftist except for two blessed souls: Wesley Liebler, who taught mergers and acquisitions, and Grant Nelson, who taught real estate and property law. It was non-stop leftist indoctrination, like a Mao Zedong reeducation camp. Class after class, term after term, year after year.

In the past 30 years in particular, these and all the other universities like them have become cesspools of intellectual toxicity and rot. Students are presented with only one distorted worldview. Each professor professes the same. They literally tell students how to vote: vote for McGovern over Nixon, vote for Carter over Ford, vote for Carter over Reagan, vote for Mondale over Reagan, vote for Dukakis over Bush I, vote for Clinton over Bush I, vote for Clinton over Dole, vote for Gore over Bush II, vote for Kerry over Bush II, vote for Obama over McCain, vote for Obama over Romney, vote for Hillary over Trump, vote for Biden over Trump. They indoctrinate and hammer the lesson in.

To seal the deal, they create curricula, syllabi, and reading lists that seem scholarly enough. But they all are of one perspective. There is no balance. Students spend 15 or so weeks each semester reading Marx and Engels and Fanon, and they never read anything else. So, as naïve innocents out of high school, they think they now are gaining a broad-spectrum education, but they are not. They are being indoctrinated. They are being brainwashed.

I am a rabbi of more than 40 years and am engaged in the broader society. Thus, I am close not only to Jews but also to Christians. I hear the same plaint over and over again: “Rabbi Fischer, we reared our child to be a good, honest, decent kid. She never opened a mouth, never uttered a curse word, and none were spoken around her at home. She attended church with us every Sunday and loved it. Sometimes, if we awoke lazily, she pressed us to hurry to get to church on time. We recited grace at the table before eating. Our home was wholesome. Her friends were wholesome. She attended a Catholic parochial school (or a Protestant church Sunday school, or a yeshiva), loved G-d, loved America. We invested 12 years educating her at the finest schools through high school. And then we sent her to XYZ College because we wanted the best for her: to gain a broad worldly education to make her competitive in the modern world and to expand her horizons and make her even brighter and more interesting.

“And she came back destroyed. We don’t recognize her. Rabbi, we literally don’t recognize her. Everything we did from the day she was born through age 18 was destroyed in a mere four years at college. Now she sleeps with boys. She mocks religion. Won’t go to church. Hates America. Criticizes us as vapid materialistic ogres. She went to a campus therapist who convinced her that her mother had been a monster and that her father had engaged in ‘emotional incest,’ whatever that means. The therapist told her she must never again communicate with her father. She has tattoos all over her body. A small ring on her tongue. Rabbi, where did we go wrong?”

I have been writing in these pages throughout the eight years I have had this column about the peril to our young people posed by most of America’s colleges and universities. (There are a few discrete exceptions.) People read my words and warnings, nod their heads in agreement, and shrug that there is nothing that can be done about it. That as long as ego-driven billionaires keep donating to see their names on buildings or endowed professorial chairs, the rot cannot be stopped.

That is the hidden blessing in this month’s campus riots. Forget about the fiction of “Palestine.” There never was an “Arab Palestine,” and there never — ever — will be. And don’t worry about Israel. There will not be a third Churban (“catastrophe,” as with the Babylonian destruction of the First Holy Temple in 586 B.C.E. and the Roman destruction of the second in 70 C.E.). Long after Columbia and UCLA are torn and turned to ashes, Israel will stand strong with brides and grooms dancing and singing in the cities of Judea and the outskirts of Jerusalem. So forget about the cause du jour, the excuse of the day to riot.

Here is the blessing. Finally — finally, finally — all of America is taking notice that the colleges and universities have gotten out of hand. It is no longer about the ideological brainwashing of kids but about insurrection. Thank G-d! Thank G-d people finally are talking about what must be done.

I am not a prophet of G-d, and I very well may be wrong, but I expect the riots to end in one month, even if nothing is done to stop them. We now are in May, the last weeks of the spring term. Final exams are coming soon, and term paper deadlines are due. Either the schools will close down and cancel finals and term papers, or they won’t. But the campuses will empty in four weeks. I may be wrong, but remember you heard it here first. And, honestly, when was the last time I was wrong these past eight years on a prediction?

As the spring term ends, the rich New York kids will return to their wealthy parents’ lavish estates in Long Island, Longer Island, Longest Island, and Great Neck, Greater Neck, and Greatest Neck, where they will denounce their parents’ materialism, even as they expect their African American maids to pick up their socks and launder their dirty underwear, while they await their Hispanic gardeners and pool cleaners to clean up after them.

And the dreck on campus from Malaysia and Indonesia and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will return to the dirt holes they come from to ride camels and mash garbanzo beans into hummus.

And what of the others? The ones without rich estates and Arab Muslim dictatorships to go home to? They will regather on TikTok, on Facebook and X (Twitter), and will reunite shortly in Chicago for the Democrat National Convention to fight with the Chicago police and chant, “The Whole World Is Watching! The Whole World Is Watching!” as they get clubbed in their heads. It will be 1968 all over again. That one made heroes of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Tom Hayden — and elected Richard M. Nixon. So may it be again.

All a blessing.

Originally published in The American Spectator

Photo Credit: Matt Hrkac on Flickr

Dear Rabbi,

My husband and I just found out we’re expecting. This pregnancy hasn’t come at the best time; we’re facing difficult financial pressures, and it just doesn’t seem like the right time for us to have a child. Friends have advised me to consider an abortion. Some have said their rabbis teach that a fetus doesn’t become a person until after birth and that, according to Judaism, abortion is “a choice.” However, when I think about terminating the life of our unborn child, my heart tells me that it might not be the right thing to do. What does the Jewish Bible say about abortion?

Respectfully,
Samantha

Dear Samantha,

I so admire that you look to our 3,300-year-old Torah for moral guidance regarding the consequential decision you face. Before relating the Torah’s stance on abortion, I’d like to share some ideas that Judaism expresses regarding the grandeur and significance of the life growing inside you.

The Divine gift of a soul was given to your child, Samantha, when it was conceived within you. The Talmud identifies this moment of ensoulment in a fascinating dialogue between Rabbi Judah the Prince and the Roman Emperor Antoninus (Sanhedrin 91b). Although the popular joke goes that a Jewish fetus is only considered viable when it gets into medical school, the truth is that Judaism has always believed that life begins at conception, i.e. that the soul — that all-knowing, all-feeling inner self that is the true person — is present at the very beginning of an unborn child’s formation.

Were you aware, Samantha, that the soul you and your husband brought into the world now has a share of the World to Come? Many are unaware that Judaism believes in the afterlife and the eternity of the soul. An infant gains a share of the World to Come from the moment of conception.

Rashi, the preeminent French Medieval Torah elucidator, states:  “ ‘From the time of conception’ — from the time the seed has been conceived in the mother’s womb, even if the mother miscarried and the child is lost, it has a portion in the World to Come” (Sanhedrin 110b). 

The life of your baby began long before he or she will be born. And lest someone attempt to convince you, Samantha, that the question of when life begins is solely an issue of theology or philosophy, please consider just a handful of developmental markers of the child growing inside you.

Your unborn baby’s heart will begin to beat 18 to 21 days after fertilization. At a certain stage, your unborn child will begin to suck his or her thumb for comfort. If you sing or listen to music on loudspeakers during your pregnancy, your baby will be born with a better ability for neuronal encoding of speech sounds. 

The Torah teaches, Samantha, that your unborn child lives an astoundingly robust spiritual life. The Talmud (Niddah 30b) reveals that an angel teaches your unborn child the entire Torah. This means that everything we need to know is inside us: Your yet-born child, in utero, is taught the difference between right and wrong, the purpose of life, how to love and how to reach its potential.

And I’m certain you’ll find it of interest, Samantha, that Jewish law demands that the Sabbath be violated in order to save an unborn life, regardless of its proximity to conception. Given that lifesaving activity is the only situation in which Sabbath restrictions are set aside, were an unborn child considered as simply “fetal tissue” and not considered “alive,” this would be prohibited, not required.

What then, Samantha, about abortion? Jewish law opposes abortion except in cases of danger to the mother. Times may change, but the Torah’s eternal values and truth never change.

Most Torah authorities consider feticide an act of murder. Even the most permissive opinions of Torah scholars reserve abortion for extreme situations that no woman should ever experience. However, the tragic fact remains that in the United States, nearly 95% of abortions are performed on healthy children being carried by healthy mothers.

Don’t be misled, Samantha, by those who misrepresent biblical passages in order to promote the idea that abortion should be regarded as simply a “choice.”  Jewish law is based on the theological presumption that a human being does not possess total ownership of one’s body: Our bodies belong to God. We are His stewards of our bodies. And we are stewards of His children, both those already born and of those conceived but not yet born. 

Samantha, I suggest you listen to your heart. It is telling you that the child you are carrying is a gift, arguably the greatest gift God can grant us. As you begin your pregnancy, rejoice in being a sacred repository — like a Holy Ark containing a Torah Scroll — of a yet-born child with a precious soul who is of inestimable value in God’s eyes.

As you and your husband deal with the challenges of raising your child, may your decision to choose life for your unborn child bless you both with abundant joy and nachas for the rest of your lives.

With blessings, 

— Rabbi

Originally published in the St. Louis Jewish Link

When the renowned Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky lived in Toronto in the 1940s, his synagogue presented him with a silver platter as a present for Purim. A few days later, one of the shul members saw Rav Kamenetsky in a Toronto pawn shop with this very same silver platter. The member thought it highly inappropriate. The shul gave their rabbi a gift and he went to pawn it!  The member was shocked. He went back and told other members of the shul and the board of directors. A contingent came to Rav Kamenetsky and asked him “What kind of business is this – you went to pawn our gift in a pawn shop?” 

Kamenetsky told the “Committee of Inquiry” that according to Jewish law, the gift was considered part of his salary.  If it is part of his salary, he felt, he needed to declare it on his income tax form as earned income. “I need to know how much the silver platter is worth, so I know how much to declare.”  So, he took it to the pawn shop to assess the fair market value of the platter so that he could accurately record it as part of his income tax declaration.

This beautiful story illustrates the beauty of the heart of the Jewish people.  Those who are immersed in Torah and follow not only its detailed commandments, but also do so in the spirit that God intends as expressed in His directive, Kedoshim Ti’yu, “You Shall be Holy,” act not simply with honesty, but with unassailable integrity. 

Our people, descended from and who grow up surrounded by those immersed in Torah, are often capable of extraordinary compassion and forgiveness.

And then there was one. Magill out at Penn. Claudine Gay out at Harvard. Or, as she might say: “Copy that.” And next, we shall turn to MIT’s dubious president.

The first hint that Claudine Gay is a plagiarist came when she copied 2,000 years of anti-Semites and their enablers. (Thanks, Gavi.)

It’s all in the context.

In our Brave New World — actually a Cowardly Old World — where DEI rules education, the great Ivy League universities have moved toward DEI Great Pretenders as presidents. At a minimum, a woman. Better if black. Even better if colored and Muslim. Or black and gay. Or, if not gay, then black and Gay.

Competence is not the criterion. Adequacy is sufficient. Magill? She is adequate. Gay? Even less so, according to standard academic standards. Scholarly integrity barely matters. The selection committees look not at the content of their character but at the color of their skin and the shape of their reproductive organs. In a world in which no one who is woke knows what a woman is, the DEI selection-and-appointment committees keep landing on the “Person of Pregnancy Potentiality” card.

The universities now are evil. They teach evil. They brainwash children into pursuing an agenda of evil. Amerikkka is the Great Satan, as the tenured anti-war demonstrators of the 1960s and ’70s chanted 50 years ago, taught their apostles of the ’80s and ’90s, and now see inculcated into contemporary zombies. By now, those radicals of the ’60s and ’70s are making do on Social Security, are too weak to fight off muggers, fear the subways, and cannot afford gasoline at more than $5 a gallon. In other words, they have become conservative Republicans. That entire hippie anti-war generation now poll as the GOP’s loyal seniors, having confronted their Frantz Fanon reading lists in real life. They planted the seeds of evil that have germinated — and, with anti-Semitism added, Nazi Germanated — on the campuses, even as they now vote Republican, early enough in the day to qualify for the 5:00 p.m. dinner special at Denny’s.

I have said forever that Jews are society’s canary in the coal mine. Nor am I the first who so has observed. When evil is perpetrated against Jews on Monday, you can be certain that everyone else will feel it in spades by Thursday. Hitler murdered 6 million of us. He murdered 75 million of everyone else. Do the math. Those haters never stop with Jews. There simply are not enough Jews around to satisfy their lust for hate or to quench that thirst.

The universities have been toxic and poison for the past 40 years, centers of The New Hate. They were liberal before, but reasonably so. Professors accommodated conservative students; I know because I was one at 1970s Columbia. Students did not apply political litmus tests to friendships. I know because Mitch was a Communist with a Trotsky beard, and Steve the Radical Leftist (“But don’t call me a Communist!”) was his best friend. And yet, we were a threesome — with our girlfriends — when the neighborhood Olympia theater, which showed two old movies for a dollar, played Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

In today’s world, Communist Mitch would not be caught near me. Even only Radical Steve would avoid me. In fact, Mitch would avoid Steve like the Plague. And no one anywhere would be seeing Blazing Saddles because such movies no longer are allowed above ground. Yeah, the fat guy passing rectal gas after eating beans — that would be socially acceptable. But a black sheriff with an implied elongated frankfurter? An Indian speaking Yiddish? The repeated articulation of the forbidden N-word that hip-hop “artists” and rappers repeat throughout their “works of art”? Fuggediboudit.

There should have been an outcry long before Claudine Gay’s and Liz Magill’s minions began beating up Jews publicly. The anti-Semitism steeped into the colleges’ and universities’ curricula are a pittance compared to the anti-Americanism, the anti-capitalism, the anti-Christianity.

These universities have been bought by Arab Muslim sheikhdoms intent on exporting their Islamism to America. They pay the professors’ salaries obliquely by buying and paying for the Middle Eastern Studies departments that breed hatred for the West, taught by Arab Muslim professors who hate the America where they are, and also by a fair share of extreme radical non-Muslims. Beyond that, the Arab Muslim sheikhdoms pay full tuition for tens of thousands of their own Arab Muslim citizens to be students at American universities. Those troublemakers are cash cows because they do not apply for scholarships or need DEI approval; rather, their governments pay full freight for them.

You want proof? Look at the list of more than 30 Harvard student groups that signed a letter against Israel and Jews: the vast majority foreign students, Arabs and Muslims. You scan the list:

African American Resistance Organization
Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College
Harvard Act on a Dream
Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association
Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association
Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine
Harvard College Pakistan Student Association
Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association
Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association
Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society
Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine
Harvard Islamic Society
Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine
Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine
Harvard Jews for Liberation
Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus
Harvard Muslim Law School Association
Harvard Pakistan Forum
Harvard Prison Divest Coalition
Harvard South Asian Law Students Association
Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research
Harvard TPS [Temporary Protected Status] Coalition
Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective
Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo
Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance
Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association
Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee
Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society
Neighbor Program Cambridge
Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates Society of Arab Students

So we have these way-out leftist universities with Muslim Arab imports who hate America, sprinkled with apostate Jews who hate Jews and especially their parents, and an even larger majority of people born to Catholics and Protestants who also are society’s dregs, outliers protected by Ivy and Ivory walls, all in a community teaching American kids four years (often delayed into five years) of pure unadulterated garbage.

They do it because they cannot be fired —  practically the only job in the world where a person cannot be fired, no matter how lazy and incompetent. “Tenure” is a lifetime guarantee as long as the dolt avoids moral turpitude. And, armed with that vocational invincibility, they construct absurd reading lists that present their zombies with only one world of thinking.

Even the Columbia University I attended in the 1970s was like that. I majored in political science. Almost every reading list in every class seemed to have The Marx-Engels Reader as required reading. Almost always The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

I once had to see a doctor in the University Health program for a sinus condition. He was a nice guy, and as he was helping cure me, he also started playing “Conservative Footsie” with me. It was something like what homosexuals did in the 1940s and 1950s, afraid to reveal their orientations, yet searching for fellow travelers on that journey. It was scary for them. They looked for clues, hints — and G-d forbid if they read someone wrong. So they “played footsie.” A hint here. A giggle there. And if they were wrong, as long as they did not explicitly reveal, none the worse.

That was “Conservative Footsie” at 1970s Columbia. The doctor dared not risk his job in Health Services by revealing himself a Republican. And yet, though non-Jewish, he saw my yarmulka, and he knew that we Orthodox usually are the most right-wing Americans. We were MAGA even when Trump was donating to the Clintons. So this doctor, while pumping some saline solution into one nostril — a moment when I was atypically compromised — asked what I was reading for class. I told him: “Karl Marx. Friedrich Engels. Frantz Fanon. Karl Marx. Friedrich Engels. Frantz Fanon. Karl Marx. Friedrich Engels. And Frantz Fanon.” He asked me, warily, “Have you ever been assigned to read Ayn Rand?”

“No.”

“Have you ever heard of Ayn Rand?”

“I’m sorry. I never heard of him. Was he a Columbia alumnus?”

“Actually, it’s not ‘he’ but ‘she.’ And I don’t want to prejudice you about her. I am just asking you this one favor: If you wake up tomorrow with clearer sinuses and an ability to breathe easier, will you agree to read a book called Atas Shrugged?”

Oh, come on, I thought. I have so many reading assignments every day. All I do is read, except when Commie Mitch and Radical Steve are up for Mel Brooks. I had to ask my question:

“How many pages is it?”

I had no idea what I had walked into.

“It’s a million pages. And that’s only the radio address. So, instead, do me a favor and read either We the Living or The Fountainhead. OK?”

“Yes, it’s a deal. If I can breathe better tomorrow, I will go down to Fourth Avenue, where all the used books are sold, and will dig one up and read it.”

I ended up reading We the Living. As soon as I was done with Kira Argounova, I was so transformed that, yes Regis, I went for The Million … pages. I read Atlas Shrugged.

Four years of Columbia University, and the best education I ever got was when my nose would not stop dripping even with Sudafed.

It took rabid anti-Israelism and pure Jew-hatred at the Ivies to bring out what else is now going on in the coal mine. The gas is not just leaking but is being spewed. And it is almost all our universities, except for those listed in the last edition of The American Spectator print magazine. The non–Ivy League universities are no less evil than the Ivies. It is just that the Ivies are more prominent, have a longer and more storied history, and, therefore, live off their reputations. The Ivies get away with so much that would plunge other universities into oblivion. Because they have names like Harvard and Yale, Columbia and Penn, Princeton and Cornell, and Dartmouth, they are deemed above reproach. Not to mention Brown — the perfect Ivy name in the Age of DEI: Brown. Poor Stanford and Berkeley barely get mentioned, having arrived later on the West Coast and apparently unable to grow ivy on their walls as easily as weed in their dormitories.

Some of America’s smartest kids pay insane amounts of money — or, more accurately, their parents do — not for a Harvard or Yale edjimication but for a Harvard or Yale degree. That is what they are paying for: the degree. Eight Poison Ivies. Eight Degrees of Separation — from reality.

When American presidents name Supreme Court justices, most lack the courage to name great jurists from law schools other than Harvard or Yale. President Donald Trump alone had the courage to name a great judge, Amy Coney Barrett, graduated from Notre Dame Law School, where she could study great ideas while in an environment supportive of her deeply devout Catholic faith. But most of the cowards in the White House, Democrat and Republican alike, “play it safe” by naming graduates of Harvard and Yale. That way, no matter how mediocre their picks — Sotomayor and Ketanji are Exhibits A and B — they are blanketed with an aura of protection.

No one may dare inquire into their lack of academic achievement or intellectual substance if they are Hispanic or Black women, particularly garbed with a Harvard/Yale degree. That is how the DEI candidates now slink through the Senate. They are immune from a Clement Haynsworth or G. Harrold Carswell strict scrutiny.

And how did they get into those schools? Did their LSATs match those of white males who were denied admission to ensure that more Sotomayors and Ketanjis got in? Really, what were their LSAT scores? Can’t dare to ask.

Ivy League educations are marked by artificially inflated grades, as are all colleges’ and universities’ grades in this era of the Participation Trophy: just show up, and  — Mazal Tov! — you have a law degree from Harvard and Yale and now are Supreme Court eligible.

The entire situation in academia is rotten. Rot from the bottom to the top. Rot in the faculties. Rot in the reading lists. Rot in the course requirements. Rot in the “majors” now offered. Rot in the administration. Rot among the presidents. Rot among the boards of directors who oversee the rot.

It started with beating up the Jews, the canaries. But it has exposed that DEI and woke ideology have destroyed academia. And the billionaires whose larger-than-life egos fund the garbage, knowing full well that it is garbage, but desperate to see their names on a dorm building or a students’ union or, at least, some campus toilet somewhere, lack the decency to stop funding it.

Each and every one of them who made his billions by virtue of American capitalism is a mini-George Soros wielding his money to destroy America.

Originally published by The American Spectator

We all know that the colleges turn good Christian and Jewish children from good homes with good values and love of G-d and country into America-hating G-dless woke progressives. They come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and parents hardly can believe their visitors are the children they reared for 18 years, taught, and cherished. “What happened to my son or daughter?” they ask. “I just signed on for four years at $60,000 a year for the precious child of my life to get a world-class mind-expanding college education and to dorm on campus. What did they do to my child? How did they destroy 12 years of education and home values? How do they brainwash kids?”

Here is an example.

I know the University of California, Irvine, very well. It is a seven-minute drive from my home and congregation. I taught at their law school for six years and was one of their most popular professors. My subjects there were Remedies and Advanced Torts. Students begged to get into my class. I have documentation: six years of stellar student reviews. I was so popular that students persuaded the administration to allow me to create a brand-new course in American Law and Jewish Legal Issues, as a sort-of expansion beyond other courses on law of interest to Black and Muslim students. I worked 200 hours on preparing that course proposal. We went through all the channels. The course finally was approved by the deans. Students were ready to sign up. And then the course never was offered.

Nor was I ever allowed an opportunity to be considered for a tenure-track position. Rather, I was an adjunct, invited to teach courses on a temporary year-to-year basis, with no employee benefits. I was hired by the extreme-leftist Erwin Chemerinsky, the soft-spoken radical who backs packing the Supreme Court with as many leftist judges as needed to reverse the conservative majority. He knew I am a conservative and an Orthodox rabbi, and he would not consider me for tenure track. I had all the qualifications for a tenure-track position: I had graduated from a nationally ranked Top 15 law school, UCLA Law. Not only had I done Moot Court and made law review, but I even was chief articles editor of the UCLA Law Review. Not only had I spent time under a judge, but I clerked in the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit for one of the nation’s top appellate judges and unquestionably the smartest, Danny J. Boggs of Louisville, Kentucky. Judge Boggs rose to be chief judge of the appellate circuit and even was on George H.W. Bush’s short list when he ultimately named Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Moreover, I had actual real-life law experience by litigating nearly a decade at two of the nation’s highest-rated law firms, Jones Day and Akin Gump. My clients included the biggest corporate names: Experian, AT&T, Samsung, and so many more. I was overqualified to teach at the new law school. But I was a political conservative, so all that was nullified. Only years later did Erwin’s disgustingly corrupt and dishonest hiring practices become public knowledge. Watch this one-minute video, posted by Christopher Rufo, in which the churlish cheating Chemerinsky tells an entire class at University of Berkeley Law School that he proudly lies, defrauds, and covers up his dishonesty and bigotry when it comes to hiring or refusing faculty, based on race and ethnicity:

EXCLUSIVE: Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains how he has secretly enacted a policy of racial discrimination in faculty hiring—which is illegal in California.

"If I'm ever deposed, I'm going to deny I said this to you." pic.twitter.com/GYgtNZfhtb

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 29, 2023

When the pandemic hit and my lungs degraded, UCI stopped inviting me to teach. Dozens of law students wrote me, asking where I was, why I was not back. No answer could be given until today — and here.

So I know UCI and how it operates, brainwashing students by enveloping them in an all-leftist environment. I still keep tabs on UCI, particularly its college and its School of Law. Several years ago, a bunch of Arab and Muslim students infamously disrupted a speech by Israel’s ambassador to America, Michael Oren. The thing is that Orange County still has enough of a conservative Republican presence not to stand for the garbage that goes on in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Ithaca and Manhattan, New York. So, although the UCI college president wimped out, the district attorney of Orange County brought criminal charges against 11 of the wild animals who disrupted Ambassador Oren. That gutsy move by the off-campus Orange County DA put an end to it, and no Arab Muslim UCI student ever again has done that. Yet, in that heated environment, the anti-Semitic Muslim Arab organization CAIR came out in support of the prosecuted 11 animals, and I was invited to debate a national CAIR leader in two televised debates:

The poison remains at UCI, and it reared its ugly head at this latest leftist anti-Israel brainwashing event titled: “Ask a UCI Professor: Israel-Palestine Conflict 101.”

That sounds academically fruitful, doesn’t it? “Ask a UCI Professor: Israel-Palestine Conflict 101.” Sounds like an opportunity to learn. But at UCI it is a scheme to brainwash.

The key: Ask which professors. These were the four: a Muslim Arab who hates Israel. Another Muslim Arab who hates Israel….

Hmmm. That calls for balance, does it not? And balance there was:

A Jewish professor who hates Israel. And another Jewish professor — this one an Israeli who has a long record of attacking Israel.

Imagine college kids coming to such a program. They hear one professor after another attack Israel, distort history, say things about Israel that are lies, things about a phony entity fraudulently called “Palestine” and about Arabs who fraudulently call themselves “Palestinians.” The concern is not that Jews have been murdered, slaughtered, butchered, beheaded, raped, with pregnant women cut open live and their fetuses torn out of them, then burned, and then the women burned. That is not the day’s concern. Understand who these four snakes are:

One is sometimes Mark “Levine,” when he wants to attack Israel and intensify the attack by conveying that even a Jew hates Israel. And when he wants to hide the Jewish roots of which he is ashamed, he goes by Mark LeVine, professor of history, as though he is French. He ain’t French. He has been cited several times by Campus Watch for his Israel hate. As professor Steven Plaut wrote:

While hardly the only Israel-hating extremist at UCI, LeVine has built an academic career on it in a way that others have not. There are few anti-Israel or pro-jihad events at UCI in which he is not somehow involved. LeVine regularly addresses the anti-Semitic Hate Rallies at UCI organized by the student supporters of Hezb’Allah and al-Qaeda, in which Jews are denounced as “Zio-nazis.” LeVine rationalizes and defends the UCI intifada, and blames violence and tensions at the UCI campus on the malevolent Zionist Lobby….

LeVine routinely organizes anti-Israel “scholarly conferences” at UCI, which are little more than anti-Israel indoctrination camps. No dissident pro-Israel opinion may be expressed in them. The standard LeVine format is to include Arab haters of Israel alongside Israeli far-leftist anti-Israel radicals, and then present the invariable bashing of Israel as the consensus position of both Jews and Arabs seeking peace. Among the Israelis who have been included in LeVine “panels” have been Oren Yiftachel, a geographer and fanatic anti-Zionist from Ben Gurion University, best known for his endless rants against Israeli “apartheid,” and Yoav Peled, a hard-core Stalinist Israeli professor of Political Science from Tel Aviv University.

One former UCI student even devoted an entire blog to exposing the lies against Israel taught by Mark Levine of the vine.

The Israeli, Liron Mor? More poison. She endorsed a hate Israel book.

And this!

She signed as “Liron Mor, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine.”

On another Hate Israel list, she is #136 on “Elephant in the Room.” The aforementioned Mark LeVine is #1256.

That’s the second of the 2 Jewish presenters. Now for their “cousins”:

Yousuf Al-Bulushi wrote this: “In World War II, the Nazis were the obvious aggressors, occupying a foreign land illegally. In present-day Israel and occupied Palestine, it is Israel that is the aggressor…”

Thus, Israel is to be equated with Nazi Germany. Get it?

As for Meryem Kamil, she likewise has attacked Israel’s “occupation of Palestinian land.”

Imagine: a college student, perhaps your son or daughter, perhaps your grandchild or nephew or niece, attending such a Hate Israel Fest without realizing that is what it is. On another day, your child, grandchild, or other young relative attends another such UCI program aimed not at hating Israel and loving Hamas-ISIS rapists, beheaders, and terrorists but at hating our America. A full day to hate America. In their classes, they are assigned to read books that hate America on reading lists aimed at hating America. They teach such hate in history class, sociology class, philosophy class, political science class, and even in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) courses.

The kids do not even know what is hitting them, that they are not being educated but are part of a coordinated nationwide effort at brainwashing peons. Then they come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, transformed. They no longer are the children you brought to church or temple every weekend and holy day. The child you had baptized or circumcised. The one who loved America and the values you taught at home. They are lost to you. You will never have them back. In the left-wing nationwide college invasion of the body snatchers, they have been seized, their minds and souls emptied.

That is what is going on today on America’s campuses. How is it done? You just read it.

Originally published in The American Spectator

Pamela R. Winnick told a fascinating story about her father’s illness in the Wall Street Journal on July 21, 2006.  Medical residents had repeatedly asked the family to agree to disconnect his life support. They claimed that the patient would have wanted this. The family disagreed strongly. They thought that he wanted to live. 

So in an attempt to relieve the pressure, Winnick told the residents that the family were Orthodox Jews, even though this was not the case. The pressure from the residents immediately stopped. The results of this strategy were incredible. Her father was still dying of lung cancer, but given this additional time, he was able to recover from his unconscious state. To the great joy of the family, he woke up, recovered his sense of humor, and read the New York Times.

Judaism values every moment of life. One who is dying is regarded as a living person in all respects, and every moment of his life is of infinite value, regardless of his condition.

The value of a single moment of life in modern society is underappreciated. Right-to-die activists have invented something they called “physician-assisted suicide” and are working hard to convince Americans that physicians ought to be writing lethal prescriptions for those who want to die, be they diagnosed with a terminal illness, or even those chronically ill.  They have passed legislation in multiple states to legalize what they now euphemistically call “aid in dying,” “death with dignity” and “medical assistance at the end of life.” Judaism calls it murder.

Since God created man in His image, if someone shortens a life, he is destroying something holy. Even if someone wants to die, it is forbidden for him to take his own life or for anyone to help him do so. As it is said in the well-known verse from the Book of Job, “The Lord has given, the Lord has taken, blessed is the Name of the Lord.” Only God has the authority to take life, as well as to bestow it.

Jews who accept the Torah’s guidance are not alone in opposing physician-assisted suicide. Opponents of this practice are working hard to prevent its broader legalization. They publicize multiple problems with assisted suicide; for example, individuals sometimes die slowly and painfully from the death-inducing medicine. Additionally, there is a tendency over time to loosen the so-called safeguards in the legislation.  However, details aside, many Americans oppose physician-assisted suicide because they intuitively understand that there is no such thing as a life not worthy to be lived.

A vital component to this discussion must be added: Judaism has an important mitzvah called Bikur Cholim, visiting the sick.  When we visit those who are ill, we pray for them.  We should also thoughtfully assess the situation to tactfully provide them with their needs. In America, one who is ill may feel dispirited, and even crushed. Beyond the physical aspects of their ailment, the seriously ill patient may suffer acute psychological pain because of our society’s emphasis on youth, beauty, and productivity.

However, Bikur Cholim, visiting the sick, is literally restorative. Encouragement and support from family, friends, and caring medical professionals give the seriously ill patient strength and resolve to live despite their formidable challenges.  Remarkably, the Talmud says that one who visits the sick takes away one-sixtieth of their illness.

We once heard a rabbi speak about a hospital visit he made.  The critically ill woman was seemingly comatose and was given a very short time to live.  The rabbi said he prayed a bit in her presence (a chapter of Psalms), and as he left he said ‘Good Shabbos’ — not expecting that she would even hear what he said.  As he was leaving the room, he was astounded to hear the woman faintly say in response, “Good Shabbos.”

The rabbi said, “Do you know what that means?  Despite her illness, and despite the fact that someone might have said that her life was meaningless, she said ‘Good Shabbos,’ which was the fulfillment of the 4th commandment — Honor the Sabbath day.  Who knows what value that had in Heaven for her, and to those who supported her?”

Every moment of life is of infinite value. In the secular world, they say, “Time is money.” From the Torah perspective, we say, “Time is life.” The clock for every one of us keeps running. The days, the hours, the minutes – and yes, even the seconds quickly move at their unstoppable pace. But we can change the course of our lives in even as small a fraction of time as a second.

Perhaps that’s why it’s called a “second” — because it gives us a second chance to rectify our mistakes, redirect our goals, redefine our values, and become better versions of who we are from the perspective of who we could be.

You are richer than 93% of people.

Not in money, but in time. Throughout history, 108 billion people have lived — 93% of them are dead.

You have what every king and queen, every pharaoh and ruler, every CEO and celebrity of the past would give all their wealth for: Today.  

Why? Because life, every moment of life, is an invaluable treasure.

Originally published in the St. Louis Jewish Light