Op-Eds

I couldn’t help but think of the “Say Hey Kid” while watching Robert Mueller’s rambling, awkward, uncomfortable, and disjointed testimony before two congressional committees on Wednesday. It was clear the former special counsel was out of his element, and unfamiliar with much of the report that bears his name. He clearly did not write it and, arguably, did not even bother to read it.

In Orthodox Judaism, homosexuality is not a matter of pride. Certainly, it must never be a basis for social or employment discrimination, never for mockery. As with heterosexuality, it is a matter for privacy, no one else’s business.

Although the Squad live in an echo … echo … echo … chamber of similar extreme radical-left Democrats, including outright communists like Bernie Sanders, they misread the greater American landscape. Not everyone in this country calls the President of the United States an “M-F’er.” Not everyone here in this country — and not even a sizeable number, unlike in Somalia — is a Jew-hater.

To anyone who’s been paying attention to Ilhan Omar, this latest outrage comes as no surprise — it’s pretty much par for the course for this Somali-American socialist from Minneapolis.

Strange as it sounds, Jews have always had a special relationship with the moon. We are compared to the moon (Midrash Tehillim 22) and count our months according to the moon’s cycle (Sukkah 29a). The moon was singled out for creation on the fourth day, and is the only element of creation that perceptively changes shape before our eyes every day, waxing and waning every month and thereby meriting its own berachah upon its monthly reappearance.

The Democratic Party is rallying behind three of the most vicious bigots Congress has seen in decades. I am alternately annoyed at the president for engineering this and impressed by his strategic thinking for the same reason.

When you give someone welfare handouts and food stamps, you help him or her until the cash soon runs out. But when you create conditions that enable such people to obtain employment and to work gainfully, you help them and their future generations for life, even as you imbue them with dignity.

The elephant in the room is that Rabbi Landes fails to say one word about intermarriage and assimilation being objectionable or problematic. In contrast, the objectionability of intermarriage and its dire consequences are exactly what Rabbi Peretz’ remarks were targeting.

On its face, socialism sounds so fair, especially in its latest iteration, the “Green New Deal”: To each according to his or her need — and why not? Equality of results. Equality of incomes. As a bonus, an end to climate change and cows flatulating. Let us briefly look more closely.

On this 243rd anniversary of our declaring independence from tyranny and launching the greatest human experiment in world history, we stand together before you on this beautiful day that You created — and made gorgeous, by Your grace and Your loving-kindness for all You created — with the word of “Thanks!” on our lips. Simply: Thanks.