At its recent Board of Governors gathering (June 2026), the Jewish Agency for Israel issued a statement declaring that “a diverse, pluralistic and tolerant Judaism has been and remains one of the cornerstones of Zionism.”

It is a pleasing sentiment. It is also untrue – provably so, from the movement’s own founding documents.

The cornerstone of Zionism was never a theology. It was peoplehood. Theodor Herzl built the movement on a single premise, stated plainly in Der Judenstaat: “We are a people – one people.”

Precisely because the Jews of 1897 could not agree on Judaism, Herzl’s achievement was to set religion aside as the basis of the enterprise. Would the Jewish state be a theocracy? “No, indeed… We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the confines of their barracks.” Religion – in every form – was to be respected and contained, not enthroned as a founding value.

Herzl’s oft-quoted promise that “every man will be as free and undisturbed in his faith or his disbelief, as he is in his nationality”, was a pledge of civic liberty extended to all future citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. It was freedom of conscience – not a declaration that competing denominations constitute Zionism’s foundation. To read it otherwise is to confuse a civil right with a religious ideology.

History of the Jewish Agency

History is even less kind to the Agency’s formulation. The movements that today carry the banner of “pluralistic Judaism” were not Zionism’s cornerstone; they were among its most determined opponents.

The Reform movement’s Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 declared: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine…” In July 1897 – weeks before the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel – the Central Conference of American Rabbis resolved its total disapproval of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. In 1942, Reform rabbis founded the American Council for Judaism for the express purpose of fighting Zionism.

The Reform movement entered the World Zionist Organization only in the late 1970s and fully reconciled with Zionism only in its 1997 Miami Platform. A cornerstone cannot be laid one hundred years after the foundation – least of all by those who opposed the construction.

The Conservative movement fares a little better in this history – yet its record, too, refutes the Agency’s claim. Solomon Schechter, the architect of American Conservative Judaism, endorsed Zionism in 1906 – but as a bulwark against assimilation and an ally of traditional Judaism, not as a warrant for pluralism.

He did so over the public objections of his own seminary’s patrons, and his successor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cyrus Adler, remained a committed non-Zionist. Institutionally, the movement joined the World Zionist Organization only with the founding of Mercaz in 1976. Where early Conservative Zionism existed, it was an argument from peoplehood and tradition – which is precisely our point.

The Jewish Agency’s statement also invoked the Western Wall. For the sake of historical integrity and honesty, we refer readers to the Memorandum on the Western Wall, submitted in 1930 to the Special Commission of the League of Nations on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Palestine – the direct precursor of today’s Jewish Agency for Israel, written by the same Cyrus Adler, Ph.D., D.H.L., then president of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In the section titled “Action Requested,” Adler wrote: “We now come to the request that we will make to your honorable body on behalf of the Jewish Agency: That you give recognition to the immemorial claim that the Kotel Maaravi (Western Wall) is a Holy Place to the Jews; that they should have the right of access to it for prayers to be conducted in accordance with their ritual in a decent and dignified manner; that the regulation of such services shall be under the direction of the Rabbinate in Jerusalem, who shall assume responsibility therefor.”

Such is all that is requested now – that which the president of the Conservative movement’s own seminary, writing for the Jewish Agency itself, requested then.

What, then, was the movement’s actual founding arrangement on religion? The Basel Program of 1897 contains not a single word of religious law. When the question arose, the Second Zionist Congress in 1898 resolved that Zionism would undertake nothing contrary to the precepts of the Jewish religion – a pledge of deference to traditional Judaism, offered to keep Orthodox Jewry within the tent.

The paper trail settles the matter. Language about “mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people” entered the movement’s platform only in the 2004 Jerusalem Program. It appears nowhere in 1897, and nowhere in the 1951 revision.

The Zionist movement’s own constitutional documents date the concept – and refute the words “has been.” And, let us be brutally honest, a politically (and financially) motivated phrase added to the World Zionist Organization Jerusalem Program by a small group of delegates does not redefine Zionism.

Some will object that Zionism was always a big tent, and that is true: the World Zionist Organization has housed secular, religious, socialist, and Revisionist factions for well over a century. But coalition politics is not theology.

A Congress in which Mizrachi and Poalei Zion (a movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers) sat together did not thereby declare all Judaisms equally valid; it declared the Jewish people indivisible.

Herzl’s Altneuland preached civic tolerance – its villain is the demagogue who would deny others a share in the commonwealth – but tolerance among citizens is not “pluralistic Judaism” as a creed. Both partners to the founding compact, the secular majority and the religious Zionists, would have rejected such a creed.

It would have shattered the coalition from either side.

Why does this matter? Because the Jewish Agency is a national institution, entrusted with the heritage of the entire Jewish people.

The Jewish Agency is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world, serving as the primary link between the State of Israel and Jewish communities globally. It is responsible for facilitating aliyah, managing global shlichut programs, and strengthening Jewish identity. The organization is funded by global philanthropic efforts, including the Jewish Federations of North America, KKL/JNF, Keren HaYesod, and the Israeli government.

When it converts a contested contemporary agenda into a founding principle, it does not honor history – it rewrites it. Religious pluralism is a position some hold; but they can not smuggle it into Basel.

Zionism’s cornerstone was, and remains, Klal Yisrael – the unity of one people. That foundation is broad enough for every Jew who ever prayed, in any accent, “Next year in Jerusalem.” It requires no retroactive renovation.

Also printed in Israel National News as “A Cornerstone Laid a Century Late.”

Photo: Delegates at the First Zionist Congress, Basel, 1897, by the Government Press Office (Israel), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The newest kid on Israel’s political block, and this season’s general de jure, is Gadi Eisenkot, former IDF chief of staff and a relatively brief member of the wartime security cabinet. It has long been a tactic of the Israeli left to seek out a former general to lead its election campaigns in order to bolster its credibility on security matters, given its propensity for policies that weaken Israel’s security. And Eisenkot is what President Trump would call – and likely appoint – “right out of central casting,” tough-looking, son of Moroccan immigrants, career army man, and, most sadly, father of a soldier who fell in battle in Gaza. We all honor his service.

Nevertheless, most mature countries have moved away from the “general as president or prime minister” fantasy. The United States has not elected a general as president in almost 75 years (Dwight Eisenhower, in 1952) and only once since then has a general even competed for the presidency (Wesley Clark, in 2004). No other general has served as US president since the 19th century. No English general has served as prime minister in almost two centuries (the first Duke of Wellington). The general who assumes political power is the hallmark of banana republics.

Yet, many Israelis remain enamored with the general-turned-prime-minister model, and to our misfortune. As it turns out, the three greatest strategic blunders in the history of Israel were made by renowned generals who were elected prime minister.

It was PM Yitzchak Rabin, former IDF Chief of Staff acclaimed (rightly or wrongly) as one of the heroes of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, who foisted the Oslo Accords on the people of Israel in 1993. He thought that it was a grand idea to import into the heartland of Israel our sworn enemy, one with genocidal ambitions, and give them a governing authority and weapons.

What could possibly go wrong??

What went wrong was a wave of terror that left Israelis dazed and despondent, and thousands of Israelis dead and maimed.

Almost as egregiously, the Oslo Accords essentially announced to the world that the Land of Israel does not belong exclusively to the Jewish people. Since then, we have struggled to prove to the world that we are entitled to any part of the land of Israel. But Rabin was Mr. Security, being a former general, and Israelis bought it.

It was PM Ehud Barak, also a former IDF Chief of Staff, and lionized as “Israel’s most decorated soldier,” who orchestrated the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon in 2000 in the dead of night, abandoning our Lebanese allies to their fates and leaving behind enormous stores of IDF weapons. This was in response to the campaign of the “Four Mothers” who mobilized much of society against the IDF remaining in Lebanon and Barak’s strong conviction that the IDF could return to Lebanon at any time to deal with terror.

Well. Instead, the hasty retreat emboldened Hezbollah to conquer southern Lebanon, which it did in due course, and build the elaborate underground terror infrastructure that we are slowly and painfully dismantling.

Additionally, Israel has since been forced to fight several wars in Lebanon, extracting a far greater cost in life than the number of soldiers who were killed annually while the IDF still occupied southern Lebanon in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Barak’s tactical retreat was widely perceived by our enemies as a timorous surrender that has engendered even deadlier conflicts.

The failed Ehud Barak – who later served multiple terms as Defense Minister – was succeeded as prime minister by Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s greatest generals and a genuine hero of the Yom Kippur War who crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, turned the tide of war, and forced Egypt to its knees. And his legacy as Prime Minister was the forced expulsion of 9500 Jews in 2005 from Gaza and the northern Shomron and the destruction of two dozen thriving communities.

That folly, twenty-one years ago this week, occasioned the speedy takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the construction of another elaborate terror network through diversion of all the billions of dollars of international aid that flowed into Gaza, constant terror attacks on Israel, multiple rounds of fighting, and all culminating in the catastrophe of October 7.

It is worth noting that all the generals who became prime minister claimed to know better than others what would provide security to Israelis and what would endanger our existence. They also claimed that their withdrawals were all easily reversible and that, if the need arose, the IDF could simply retake the territory surrendered. No harm, no foul.

The opposite, of course, was true; grave harm resulted from multiple fouls, all self-inflicted. And the land that each purported to surrender to our enemies in order to safeguard our security – land originally conquered and held at a high cost in Jewish blood – has mostly been retaken by saner heads (non-generals) responding to reality and not fantasy. That land has been reconquered, and again at a high cost in Jewish blood.

What then qualifies Gadi Eisenkot to serve as prime minister, other than that he has been designated as leader of the ABB (Anyone but Bibi) sect? He could be the exception to the rule but his tenure as Chief of Staff was unremarkable, mainly remembered for Eisenkot’s advocacy of a “small and smart IDF,” an IDF that relied more on technology than on manpower, something that debilitated us on October 7 and thereafter.

He threw the book at Elor Azaria, provoking indecision among soldiers that factored into the deadly terrorist attack last Friday. His brief tenure on the wartime cabinet was also undistinguished, noted for his advocacy for the release of the hostages at any price and opposition to initiatives that actually worked. Apparently, he still supports the establishment of a Palestinian state and has suggested that we learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. He also currently favors the immediate entry of 150,000 Gazans to work in Israel, as if that hasn’t been tried before with devastating results.

It is not often realized that generals might be brilliant tacticians on the battlefield but simultaneously awful geopolitical strategists. Those are completely different skill sets. The affairs of state require the ability to navigate multiple and often conflicting interests, and on both the domestic and international stages. Clichés aside, does Eisenkot have an economic or educational policy, an objective more comprehensive than “Israel must win,” a position on the dictatorial excesses of the Supreme Court, or a desire to do anything other than topple Netanyahu?

The failed Israeli generals-turned-prime-ministers also had tenuous commitments to democracy, and especially to the rights of minorities, as evidenced by Rabin and Sharon’s contemptuous dismissal of their opponents and settlers. After all, generals are used to giving orders and are not always amenable to the give-and-take of democratic governance. Harry Truman, who chose not to run against Eisenhower, predicted that his successor would have a hard time getting things done: “He’ll sit right here and he’ll say do this, do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ike-it won’t be a bit like the Army.”

If only that would be our problem! Our problem has been not military leaders turned prime ministers getting nothing done but in getting the wrong things done. Our problem has been generals spearheading and bulldozing their (and our) way into strategic calamities that cost us dearly in lives, treasure, international standing, and the fulfillment of our destiny.

A mature society knows better than to expect tough-looking generals to be successful politicians. A Jewish society should know to find leaders who can advance our national, spiritual destiny, until we merit true leaders as we had in days of old.

Photo: Gadi Eisenkot by Elad Malka, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Few Americans realize that one of the country’s most beloved entertainers was born Israel Iskowitz, the orphaned son of impoverished Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. He later changed his name to Eddie Cantor—the comedian, singer, actor and radio personality who entertained millions. But when European Jewry came under assault during the 1930s, Cantor never hesitated to speak publicly as a Jew, even when doing so invited criticism and placed his career at risk. When history demanded that he choose which identity would speak first, Eddie Cantor answered as a Jew.

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence, Cantor’s example invites us to ask a larger question: How should Jews understand themselves while living in America? Are we Jewish Americans—or American Jews?

At first glance, the distinction seems little more than wordplay. After all, both phrases describe Jews who proudly call America home. Yet perhaps the difference is more than linguistic. It may reflect something deeper about how we understand ourselves.

The question is not whether we are patriotic. Nor is it how deeply we cherish either America or Judaism. Rather, it is which identity each phrase places first.

For some Jews, Judaism is understood primarily as a source of universal moral values—justice, compassion and creating a better world. For others, Judaism begins with belonging to the Jewish people, an eternal nation whose shared history, memory and covenant have shaped Jewish life for more than three millennia. Both perspectives see themselves as part of the Jewish people and embrace many of the same ideals, yet they begin from different starting points. And where we begin often shapes where we arrive.

Perhaps this helps explain why thoughtful, committed Jews can respond so differently to many of the questions confronting our community today. Recent disagreements over Israel, antisemitism, Jewish education, religious observance and communal responsibility have revealed differences that often run deeper than politics or religious affiliation. They reflect differing understandings of Jewish identity itself.

The point is not that one group loves America more than another. American Jews across the religious and political spectrum have every reason to feel profound gratitude toward this country. The United States has offered the Jewish people freedoms and opportunities unmatched in much of our history. Here, Jews have flourished as citizens while contributing richly to American life. That is a blessing worthy of celebration, especially as our nation marks this historic anniversary.

Yet gratitude alone does not answer the deeper question of identity.

For my part, I think of myself as an American Jew—a Jew whose family has been blessed to now make its home in America, while some of our children have built their lives in Israel. I cherish this country, pray for its welfare, and remain deeply grateful for the liberties it has afforded my family and generations of Jews before us. But my citizenship, precious as it is, does not define the deepest part of who I am. That identity was forged long before the United States came into being. It binds me to a people, a history and a covenant that transcends every country in which Jews have lived.

America’s 250th anniversary is a fitting moment to reflect not only on what it means to be an American, but also on what it means to be a Jew living in America. Whether we ultimately describe ourselves as Jewish Americans or American Jews, the more important question remains: which identity does each phrase place first? Our understanding not only shapes how we see ourselves, but also how we meet our responsibilities to one another, to our country and to the Jewish people.

Photo: Statue of Liberty, NY by William Warby, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s bogus threat against Israel’s prime minister revealed something essential about his political career — and even more about his sycophants. When Mamdani promised to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu should he set foot in the United States, only to admit that this would be both impossible and illegal just days later, his fan club did not blink, much less assess whether he was prone to reckless, false claims. They simply moved on.

That indifferent reaction is the point: Mamdani’s followers are not impressed by truth or history.

A fact-free mob is dangerous, often more likely to justify violence than to condemn it. One can expect that they will respond to his new call for “protest” by conducting themselves like those described on CNN as “mostly peaceful” while stores burned in the background. As NYPD Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry put it, “violent agitators will assume they have permission to cause as much havoc as possible.” Already, a deranged man yelling Allahu Akbar attacked bystanders (including a Jew coming from prayers) in NYC just days after Mamdani’s racist tirade.

And Mamdani must have known he was inciting his crowd. He gave them not only permission but pretense, stating as fact that Netanyahu was a “war criminal,” deserving of a violent welcome. He claimed that Israel’s rescue of hostages being tortured, starved and raped, and the elimination of the terrorists responsible, constituted a “genocide.”

He wants us to imagine that it’s simply coincidence that the victims whose rescue he condemned were primarily Jews. Surely he would deny being the monster and sexual deviant that such condemnation makes him out to be.

But, crucially, his entire effort is based upon such obvious lies. Equating the neutralization of terrorists to murder of civilians is the least of his problems.

That honor goes to the underlying narrative of “Palestine,” which Mamdani and his followers defend with fervor and without curiosity.

The Bible refers to Israel thousands of times as both a nation and a homeland. “Palestine,” on the other hand, was invented by Greco-Roman colonialists, and instituted by Hadrian to replace the indigenous name Judea, identified with the Jews he was driving out.

The “Palestinian” flag flown at rallies is derived from that of the Arab Revolt of 1916, representing no new identity, but the Jihadists’ dream of a unified Arab kingdom from Syria to Yemen. Old administrative maps of the British Mandate, and similar bureaucratic charts dating back hundreds of years, are exploited to rewrite the historical record of the land they depict.

The history of the region called Palestine is real — and overwhelmingly Jewish. It produced the Palestinian Talmud (also called the Jerusalem Talmud) and the Palestinian Gaonate.

The four central cities of Jewish scholarship — Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias — fundraised together for centuries as “the Four Holy Cities of Palestine.” Maimonides, Rabbi Yosef Karo, the Ari, and Rabbi Moshe Cordovero all lived and taught there. Safed alone produced a revolution in Jewish mysticism.

None of the foregoing related to “Palestine” as anything more than the name used by Greco-Roman and Christian scholars. And notably, there is no parallel Arab or Muslim, much less “Palestinian,” intellectual tradition tied to the region, until Arafat’s PLO determined that manufacturing one would serve their bigoted cause.

In other words, the modern Palestinian national narrative is a mid-20th-century political fiction, built upon the erasure of two millennia of Jewish history and the denial of the land’s holy status to Jews as their homeland and center of Jewish religious practice. That is not a judgment about any individual Arab or Muslim, much less “Islamophobia.” It is simply historical fact.

Thus it is fair and accurate to describe Mamdani’s followers as indifferent to the truth. The tragedy is not that Mamdani is so wrong, so malevolent, and so clearly adversarial towards American values, but that his followers have lost the ability to care.

That is why his reelection isn’t just plausible, but likely — at least until New Yorkers recognize that following in the historical footsteps of Berlin and Moscow is a truly bad idea.

Photo: Zohran Mamdani Speaking at a DSA 101 Meeting at the Church of the Village in NYC by Bingjiefu He, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There are moments when you leave a gathering feeling not simply encouraged, but genuinely inspired. Less than three years after the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and amid a worldwide resurgence of antisemitism, attending Christians United for Israel’s annual conference was one of those moments. This is not simply because CUFI is home to millions of admirers and supporters of the beleaguered Jewish community, but because of the courage found among them.

When antisemitism is surging around the globe, Jewish students are harassed on college campuses, and synagogues require heightened security, the easy course is to keep one’s distance. Some would even call that prudent. CUFI celebrates those who do just the opposite, who lean in against those who threaten us. CUFI’s founder and creator, Pastor John Hagee, put it this way: “If a line has to be drawn, draw it around Christians and Jews. We are united.”

In the federal FACE Act case born from the mob that blocked access in November 2024 to a synagogue in West Orange, N.J., the defendants are asking the courts to abandon the constitutional protections of religious freedom that make America great, while disregarding Jewish law, prayer and lived experience. One could hardly seek better proof that the defendants in this instance discarded both the law and America’s founding principles in their pursuit of antisemitic bigotry.

The legislation was initially designed to protect people entering abortion clinics from being harassed; eventually, it was expanded to apply to the entrances to houses of worship.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey, American Muslims for Palestine New Jersey and numerous individual defendants all outrageously insist that the synagogue event they disrupted—one that memorialized a murdered Israeli rabbi and encouraged Jewish life in Israel—was not religious at all. They arrogate for themselves the right to decide what Judaism is, what Jews believe and which parts of Jewish life count as religious. That is not a legal defense, but an act of erasure, as antisemitic as it is unconstitutional.

The court filings could hardly make their intent and animus more blatant. One defendant asserts therein that encouraging Jews to live in the Holy Land “could not plausibly be interpreted” as a religious activity. Another compares such a real estate fair to “bingo night in a church basement.” A third faults the government for failing to prove, from Jewish law, that it’s a mitzvah (“commandment”) for Jews to live in the land of Israel, as if U.S. attorneys should be expected to research Jewish sources to establish basic Jewish tenets.

All of these attempt to force the courts into unconstitutional entanglement with religious doctrine, while denying and distorting obvious Jewish beliefs.

The First Amendment, to be certain, forbids the courts from wading into this argument; they cannot be called upon to determine what is or is not a Jewish religious activity. American courts cannot claim expertise in the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel, the relevant mitzvot (“biblical commandments”) or how they apply today.

At the same time, the defendants’ attitude is so obviously at odds with Jewish belief and so dismissive of the Jewish experience as to prove antisemitic bias. The desire to live on holy ground is a theme that saturates Jewish prayer, holy texts and halachah (“Jewish law”). Antisemitism does not only target Jews as individuals, but Judaism as a religion, and the defense filings openly express that the defendants share this familiar and repugnant hostility.

To claim that a synagogue event about land in Israel is “not religious” requires, first of all, that one deny the mitzvah of yishuv ha’aretz, “settling the land,” affirmed by the Ramban and rooted in Torah. It demands nullification of the pleas for rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, restoration of the Davidic Kingdom and return of the Divine Presence that are at the core of every Jewish prayer service, every day of the year.

And, of course, it erases religious expression by Jews. Whether those making aliyah come from the United States, France, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Argentina or anywhere else, political Zionism is rarely even a secondary concern. The overwhelming majority move either to escape Jew-hatred or to fulfill numerous religious commandments, including living in the Land of Israel and participating in its rebuilding. Maimonides, Rav Ovadiah of Bartenura, Rav Yosef Karo, in addition to the hundreds of students of the Vilna Gaon and Ba’al Shem Tov who moved to the Land of Israel, all did so exclusively as an expression of their Jewish religious beliefs.

Most fundamentally, to insist that their motivations are “not religious” is to tell the Jews targeted at Congregation Ohr Torah that their own lives, fears, hopes, beliefs and commitments do not matter. That is not a defense. It is an expression of transparent—and transparently hateful—disregard for Jewish humanity.

The FACE Act protects all forms of religious exercise, not only ritual. Congress enacted it to protect houses of worship and religious communities from intimidation and obstruction. This protection is not limited to prayer services, but encompasses the full spectrum of religious life, including gatherings that express, celebrate or advance a community’s religious identity. A synagogue event discussing Jewish life in Israel is unquestionably part of that spectrum.

If a court accepted the defendants’ framing, that would set a chilling precedent. Jewish prayer would be protected, but attempts to realize the commitments expressed in those prayers would not. That would hamper Jewish religious liberty no less than attacks on circumcision or kosher meat. It would have the courts annul the parts of Judaism that anti‑Israel activists find inconvenient.

The defendants’ argument is unconstitutional because it asks the court to define Judaism, and antisemitic because it expressly denies both Judaism’s own self‑definition and the religious beliefs of the targeted Jews. In other words, the defendants want the courts to declare their activities not to be hateful or bigoted, precisely because they are.

This is dangerous not only for Jews who seek to fulfill mitzvot, but for all Americans who share the reverence of the country’s Founding Fathers for religious freedom and tolerance.

Consider that without those principles, Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Mennonites in Pennsylvania and Anglicans in Virginia could not have united to build the world’s dominant superpower. The defendants have thus proven both their guilt and their hostility towards Judaism, Jewish life and the values that make America great.

If you think about it, it is shocking that Korach joined forces with Datan and Aviram in his campaign to usurp leadership. Korach had a distinguished reputation, as Chazal (the Sages) explain, and he presented his case by way of (very flawed) doctrinal arguments, trying to persuade the masses that his theological position was correct. In stark contrast, Datan and Aviram had a very checkered and disreputable past of nasty confrontation and shameful instigation.

As Rashi explains, based on midrashim, it was Datan and Aviram who were violently fighting with each other in Egypt when Moshe tried to stop them (Shemot [Exodus] 2:3); it was Datan and Aviram who badmouthed Moshe to Pharoah, thereby almost causing Moshe’s execution (ibid. 2:15); it was Datan and Aviram who violated the command not to leave over any manna until the next day (ibid. 16:19-20); and as Midrash Ha-Gadol (Bamidbar [Numbers]16:1) states, it was Datan and Aviram who complained at the shore of Yam Suf (the Sea of Reeds) about having left Egypt and who sought to return there (Shemot 14:11-12 – v. Rashi on v. 12).

Why in the world did Korach join forces with Datan and Aviram, whose very compromised past and quite negative reputation would surely not have served his professed ideological campaign well?

How could people who were known for their belligerent personalities and violations of Torah bring prestige to what Korach promoted as a grassroots religious drive founded on positive principles?

Why would Korach tarnish his movement by aligning with known troublemakers and negative forces?

The answer is that despite Korach presenting his agenda as an ideological crusade for the betterment of the masses, in truth it was a self-serving power grab motivated by jealousy and personal ambition; the ideology was a mere front and a ruse to draw pubic support for what was nothing more than an egocentric stunt. As such, Korach needed loud voices and strident personalities to amplify his message and force Moshe into a position of weakness and concession.

Datan and Aviram were the perfect characters for this. They were the ideal “hit men” and the best people to catalyze a mass movement against Moshe Rabbeinu, escalating matters to the point of surrender and collapse.

It is not surprising that throughout Jewish history, those who sought to challenge the Mesorah (Torah tradition) typically launched their campaigns by professing lofty ideologies that purported to enhance or ennoble Judaism, whereas the reality is that these deviant movements’ true aim to was to dilute and tear down Torah values and observance, usually with an underlying motivation of opportunism on the part of those involved.

By including Datan and Aviram in his uprising, Korach in effect exposed his campaign for what it really was – a self-serving power grab, in which Torah and Torah leadership were contested and defied by ostensibly lofty religious philosophies, all in a base effort by an illegitimate and greedy player to undermine the system and seize power.

May Hashem continue to illuminate our path, provide us with true Torah leaders, and enable us to realize when people are seeking to subvert Torah values while professing to enrich them.

By the time Tucker Carlson trashed the Book of Esther, describing the source of the Jewish festival of Purim, it was already Passover. But timing was the least of his errors, and since he took it upon himself to rewrite Scripture and misinform the masses, those who revere the Holy Bible must now take a stand for God and his Word.

Carlson told his listeners that the Book of Esther was “controversial,” that the Book describes: A Genocide of Persians. Oh yeah, 75,000 Persians… Not just people who committed crimes but people who were Persian, and that’s why they were killed.

I would suggest that such a grievous misreading requires not only a “low IQ,” as President Trump recently put it, but a mind burdened by hate. Call it “Jew Derangement Syndrome.” And far from being an affliction limited to Carlson and a few others, this particular mental illness afflicts the multitudes claiming Israel committed a “genocide” in Gaza, rather than Persia. And that is why it is so crucial that those who wish to learn from the Bible, rather than rewrite it to serve their own bigoted interests, emphatically correct the record.

The account in the Book of Esther is quite the opposite of Carlson’s. There was indeed a planned genocide, but of the Jews, architected by the evil Haman. When Queen Esther intervened, disclosing that she was a Jew herself, King Ahasuerus was bound by Persian law that his decrees not be rescinded. Instead he issued a second one, permitting the Jews to defend themselves.

The fighting that followed, per the Biblical text, was not an offensive campaign, but self-defense against a genocidal mob.

Perhaps Carlson’s greatest offense was to claim that the mob was targeted because they were Persian. “That’s why they were killed,” he said. Scripture could not be more clear; those killed were “of those who hated them,” says Esther 9:16. They came from all 127 nationalities of the empire; their unifying characteristic was murderous hatred for Jews.

The obvious motivation for this inversion, misportraying a genocidal band of antisemites as innocent victims of Jewish bigotry, is that Carlson shares their same hate. Allowing Jews to defend themselves is what he terms “genocide.” By telling a lie so obvious, Carlson exposed a broader pattern which is as evident regarding Israel the modern country as Israel the ancient people.

The side responding to violence is recast as the initiator, while the culpability and hateful motivations of those that launched the attack is ignored. Context is ignored, in favor of an immoral calculus in which the side with the lower casualty count is presumed to be the villain.

This is just as obvious in media reports relying upon the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry as it is in Carlson’s dystopian version of Esther. This type of inversion is found not only in the charge of genocide, but also in the details. For example, it is a criminal violation of the laws of warfare to store weapons in a school, or to use a hospital as a military base. Once this crime has been committed, the former school or hospital becomes a legitimate military target as a result. Yet Hamas knew that it could commit war crimes with impunity, because global media outlets would falsely report that Israel bombed a school or hospital, rather than the Hamas base that they had become.

To offer a specific illustration, when Israel bombed the Hamas Command and Control center located in the Nasser Hospital building in Khan Younis, outlets from the BBC to NPR to CNN reported the “outrage” that Israel bombed a “hospital” and “killed journalists, health workers and emergency response crews.” It failed to mention that the erstwhile hospital was a base for Hamas fighters that had been used to imprison hostages.

This sort of omission of relevant context happened far too often to be brushed away as an innocent error. In a just and decent world, CNN executives would have faced federal charges under the Antiterrorism Act for having provided material support to Hamas.

Such lies have a real human cost: Hamas puts journalists, doctors, and children at risk knowing both that Israel will risk her own soldiers’ lives to take more efforts to avoid harming them than would any other military force, and that despite this, when civilians are inevitably harmed, Israel rather than Hamas will be blamed. Gazan children died in the conflict because Hamas knew it could rely upon CNN to cover for its crimes.

Antisemitism does not merely harm Jews.

The Book of Esther is deliberately structured to highlight the reversal of fortune—the oppressed rising up against their would‐be oppressors. But the story is also careful to preserve the moral logic of that reversal. The Jews defend themselves; they do not plunder, nor do they initiate violence. The text is a celebration of survival, not slaughter. And that is the account found in the most published Book on earth.

Esther, and Carlson’s distortion thereof, tells us how dangerous misinformation can be, especially when motivated by hate.

Newscasters can reverse victims and villains. Pundits can invert the moral order of a story. And podcasters can mislead us into condemning those who are simply fighting for their survival.

In an age saturated with data but starved for context, the ancient text offers both modern lessons, and an obligation to stand up in its defense.

A recent ConservativeHome article powerfully captured what many British Jews have been forced to confront: denial is no longer possible. The fear is real. The attacks are real. The evasions by some political figures are real.

Something has changed in Britain. Jewish schools, synagogues, shops and visibly Jewish neighbourhoods now live with a level of security concern that would once have seemed unthinkable. Parents worry about children walking through familiar streets. Jews who never previously felt self-conscious about being visibly Jewish now hesitate.

Britain has a serious antisemitism problem. That must be said plainly.

But after denial comes a second danger: panic. Serious problems require serious analysis. And here we must be careful.

The danger facing British Jews is not simply a story about Britain. Nor is it uniquely British. What we are seeing here is the British expression of a wider global phenomenon: the fusion of anti-Israel hatred, Islamist radicalism, far-left ideology and anti-Western resentment into a worldview in which Jews become the symbolic enemy.

This is visible not only in London and Manchester, but in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, New York, Sydney and on university campuses across the West. Wherever hostility to Israel becomes the language through which wider anger at the West is expressed, Jews are placed in the firing line.

That does not mean all Muslims are antisemites. It does mean we must be honest about ideological currents within Islamist politics and parts of Muslim communal activism which have turned hostility to Israel into hostility towards Jews. The slogan “globalise the intifada” was never a harmless chant. It meant what it said.

This is why the response cannot be sentimental. It is not enough for politicians to speak of “cohesion”, “dialogue” and “standing together”. Those words have their place, but they cannot substitute for policing, prosecutions, counter-extremism, school oversight, university discipline and political courage.

At the same time, Jewish leadership and Jewish commentary must avoid a different danger: despair masquerading as realism.

It is understandable that some Jews now ask whether they have a future in Britain. But it is not serious to speak as though British Jewish life is finished. Nor is it helpful, as some do in the wider communal conversation, to present aliyah simply as an escape route from danger. Israel is the eternal homeland of the Jewish people, but it is not a panic room. It is a country living with rockets, terror, war and daily security pressures of a kind British Jews have not experienced.

Jews who move to Israel do so for many reasons: faith, family, history, destiny, Zionism, belonging. Those are noble reasons. But to present aliyah merely as a move from danger to safety is confused. The Jewish people do not need illusions. We need clarity.

Britain remains a country with functioning institutions, courts, police, Parliament, allies and a deep reservoir of decency. Those institutions have often been too slow, too nervous and too evasive in confronting antisemitism. But they are not beyond reach. They can be pressed. They can be made to act.

British Jews are not helpless. We are not guests tolerated at the edge of national life. We are citizens, contributors, teachers, business owners, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, councillors, parliamentarians, neighbours and friends. We have every right to demand protection without apologising for our presence.

The proper response is therefore neither denial nor panic. It is clarity.

Name the threat. Confront Islamist antisemitism honestly. Challenge the far left’s obsession with Israel. Hold political parties accountable when they minimise or excuse Jew-hatred. Require universities to enforce their own rules. Insist that police treat intimidation as intimidation, not as colourful protest. And make clear that British Jews will not be frightened out of public life.

Jewish history has taught us never to be naïve. But it has also taught us not to collapse at the first sign of hostility. Jewish life in Britain was built by generations who endured hardship, exclusion and prejudice, yet still created schools, synagogues, charities, businesses and communities of extraordinary strength.

We honour them not by declaring the future over, but by defending it.

British Jews should not be told that their fear is merely a perception. It is not. But neither should they be encouraged to believe that despair is wisdom.

Panic is not policy. Fear is not analysis. And Britain’s Jews need more than lamentation. They need truth, courage, communal confidence and a state prepared to protect them.

Cover image: Canva Suite

For months, the debate over under-16 yeshiva provision has too often been framed as though there were only two possible positions. On one side: safeguarding, modernity, and public responsibility. On the other: secrecy, backwardness, and resistance. It is an easy frame, and for some, a convenient one. But it is also badly misleading.

The Bishop saw something more important. He understood that the argument was not really about whether children should be safe. On that, there should be no dispute. It was about whether the British state still has the cultural intelligence to recognise that not every serious institution is a school in the modern secular sense.

A yeshivah is not a failed school. It is a different kind of institution.

That distinction may sound narrow. It is not. It goes to the heart of a much larger question in British public life: whether the state can still make room for forms of life that it did not design, does not instinctively understand, and cannot easily fit into a single regulatory template.

The issue arises in relation to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and particularly the danger that under-16 yeshivot may be treated as though they are simply unregistered schools operating under cover of religion. But that description already assumes the point at issue. For many in the Charedi community, the yeshiva ketanah is not an attempt to evade schooling rules. It is a form of full-time religious formation rooted in a long and coherent tradition of Torah education.

That does not place it beyond scrutiny. No serious person should argue that any institution, religious or otherwise, is immune from safeguarding requirements. But neither should safeguarding become a slogan under which the state quietly abolishes difference.

This is where conservatives ought to be especially alert. We are meant to understand that society is made up not only of individuals and the state, but of families, communities, churches, synagogues, schools, clubs, traditions, and inherited forms of moral life. We are meant to know that these “little platoons” matter precisely because they are not interchangeable units in a national system.

Yet modern bureaucratic culture repeatedly falls into the same temptation: if something looks unfamiliar, regulate it until it resembles something familiar. If an institution does not fit the existing categories, force it into one of them. If it resists, treat that resistance as evidence of guilt.

That is not wisdom. It is administrative impatience.

In the case of yeshivot, the category mistake is especially serious. Britain has long allowed for educational pluralism. It has recognised that parents may raise and educate their children in different ways, within the law, and that not every legitimate path is identical to the standard state model. For decades, parts of the Torah world have operated within a broader understanding of elective home education and religious study, not in a legal vacuum but in a different educational tradition.

The real question, therefore, is not whether the state has an interest. Of course it does. The real question is whether that interest can be exercised with discrimination, restraint, and respect for a minority community’s deeply held way of life.

Can government protect children without insisting on cultural sameness? Can it enforce safeguarding without acting as though every thick, inherited religious culture is merely a problem waiting to be normalised?

Those questions are not only Jewish questions. They concern the shape of a free country.

A mature society does not respond to every unfamiliar institution with panic. It asks calmer questions. Are children safe? Is there neglect? Is there abuse? Are basic legal duties being met? If the answer to such questions is satisfactory, then the burden lies on the state to justify why further intrusion is necessary. And if the proposed intrusion effectively means forcing a religious institution to cease being itself, that should trouble anyone with a serious commitment to liberty.

This is why the Bishop of Manchester’s intervention was so striking. He did not approach the matter as an insider to the yeshiva world. He approached it as a public moral question. And in doing so he performed a service not only to one Jewish community, but to Britain’s wider constitutional culture.

He recognised that when the state loses the ability to distinguish between harm and difference, liberty is in danger. He recognised that a society confident in its own values should not need to flatten every minority institution into the same shape. And he recognised, too, that religious freedom in Britain is not secured merely by warm words about tolerance, but by the harder work of careful classification, proportionate law, and institutional humility.

Too much current discussion proceeds as though any educational model that departs from late-modern assumptions must be suspect. But conservatism, at its best, begins from a different instinct. It knows that human beings are formed in particular traditions. It knows that moral worlds are handed down, not invented afresh by each generation. And it knows that the state, though necessary and often beneficent, is a crude instrument when it tries to replace the organic work of family and faith.

None of this relieves religious communities of responsibility. They must be serious about child welfare, serious about engagement, and serious about explaining themselves to the wider public. But the wider public, and especially the state, has responsibilities too. One of them is not to confuse non-conformity with wrongdoing.

That is why this issue matters beyond the Charedi world. Today it may be a yeshivah. Tomorrow it may be another religious body, another minority institution, another community whose habits do not fit comfortably within official assumptions. Once the principle is established that legitimate difference is merely deviance awaiting correction, the space for freedom shrinks for everyone.

A confident Britain should be able to do better than that. It should be able to safeguard children while preserving liberty. It should be able to regulate carefully without erasing difference. And it should be able to admit that not every valuable institution is legible at first glance to Whitehall.

The Bishop of Manchester understood this. If ministers are wise, they will too.

Photo credit: Statue of Liberty by Firoz Ansari with CC BY-SA 4.0 license on Wikimedia Commons