Op-Eds

Rabbis may feel good about themselves delivering political messages, and I’m sure many congregants passionately applaud. But what they don’t seem to realize is that they are essentially saying that anyone who doesn’t share their politics has no place in their congregation.

Somewhere around the 10th day of my disappearance, amid missing “Eggos,” the letters begin. Some are addressed to my publisher and editor: “What happened to Dov?” Others come into my own inbox: “What happened to you? I miss you. Answer me!” People really care, and I appreciate it so much that I get to read them in my own lifetime: “I miss Dov. Is Dov still writing? Where did he go?” And the tone is so sweetly different from the reactions of my political adversaries and former in-laws.

In a world where “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure,” no data could be more revealing than the true numbers of votes cast. Israelis did not vote on Tuesday for a “national unity government.” Rather, some 26 percent voted for the Blue & White party, which promised to keep Benjamin Netanyahu out of government. On the other side, nearly twice as many Jews voted for a right-wing government.

It is said that Jews are so opinionated that two Jews render three opinions. We see from this week’s elections in Israel, timed perfectly for Rosh Hashanah season, that it is not true. For nearly seven million Jews, only 30 (or so) political parties are ample to choose from.

Whether particular Jews are acting against true Jewish interests is not a “dual loyalty” canard, and when one considers the President’s comment, this is the only form of “disloyalty” that fit the context.

Take heart, anti-Semites. Or be depressed. Because the myth on which so much anti-Semitism is built finally now is exposed as one more fantasy, one more falsehood, one more libel. This is the myth that Jews have influence in the Democrat Party. Turns out ’taint so. Duh!

It was refreshing indeed to hear Thursday’s news that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who seem to represent a long-underrepresented constituency of terrorist supporters and America-haters, will be barred from setting foot in Israel after all. Looks like Rashida Tlaib, to cope, will have to satisfy herself with her sense that the Holocaust was calming. And with Benjamin Netanyahu having made the decision to bar her, Ilhan Omar can tweet, “See, I told you it was about the Benjamins, baby.”

with Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld — As a host of mainstream Jewish organizations joined the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to restate our community’s rejection of the misuse of Holocaust imagery, a cadre of Jewish progressives rushed to defend the (in)famous “AOC.” An entirely new organization sprang up, “Never Again Action”, whose mission was presciently described by Ms. Friedberg in 2018: to “exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel.”

This mass-shooting phenomenon never before has happened with such prevalence. Therefore, I deem it a unique crisis comprising a clear and present danger. There is no rhyme nor reason. It can be at a Batman movie in Colorado, at a Congressional softball game attended by a Bernie Sanders supporter, at a political rally where a female Democrat Congressional representative is shot by a former campaign volunteer, at churches, at mosques, at temples, at state fairs, at garlic festivals, at Walmarts, at schools.

Racism is racist. That is to say, an observer’s own racism defines whether he accuses another of racism. And the Left is racist in a way that the conservative right cannot even fathom because the conservative right simply does not operate on racial terms.