EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Monday, November 24, 2025
Child Sexual Abuse Isn't a 'Type' by Chloe Nazra Lee, MD, MPH
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| What will we as a country do about it? Will something change? Will we hold perpetrators truly accountable? |
"Can I tell you something, Dr. Lee?" my adolescent patient asked. I nodded.
She whispered into my ear: "He raped me." Her large eyes pleaded with me to believe her, and she suddenly pushed her baby face into my shoulder and let the tears come.
I don't allow physical contact with patients. But instinctively, I let her stay there. There are no words to describe the bitterness of the moment; it was a pain transcending language. She -- younger-looking than her years, disappearing into an oversized sweatshirt -- clinging to me. I -- a young doctor on call, exhausted -- numb after the revelation.
He was her teacher. As she cried silently, my mind raced with physician responsibilities: psychiatric stabilization, documentation, and notifying Mom, child protective services, my superiors at the hospital. Even after doing all those things, I knew the abuse had irreparably altered her life's trajectory. Healing was possible, as many child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors know. But it could never un-happen to her.
I've treated CSA survivors as young as 6 and as old as 70. The willfully inflicted damage to these patients cannot, and must not, be minimized.
Pedophile Math
In a moment enraging many abuse survivors, podcaster Megyn Kelly appeared to downplay late sex offender (and convicted pedophile
) Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, making space for the perspectivethat Epstein was not, in fact, a pedophile. She paraphrased a source describing Epstein's "type" as the "barely legal" look, and then went on to say:
"We have yet to see anybody come forward and say I was under 10, I was under 14...You can say that's a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference. There's a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?"
Kelly's comments seem profoundly perfidious, especially in the context of #MeToo, her own experience of sexual harassment
, and her carefully curated image of a woman protecting women's interests. She appears to paint abuse as a mere preference, transforming predators into horny men and ostensibly laying the groundwork for their actions to become forgivable. It's a gross disservice to survivors.
If truly a matter of sexual preference, Epstein could have consensually dated young-looking women of legal age. Yet, he sexually abused minors.
Child predators specifically target minors because they're vulnerable. The physical appearance of the child is not a turn-on; the ability to dominate is.
Clinically Assessing Abusers
Abuse is not about sexual preferences, but power dynamics. Perpetrators do not enjoy the mutuality of a healthy sexual relationship, and Epstein's crimes
at the intersection of sex trafficking, soliciting prostitution from a minor, and child sexual abuse highlight this point.
I first started thinking about this after leaving an abusive partner with a penchant for prostitutes -- I couldn't understand why he preferred them sexually to a healthy relationship. But a domestic violence counselor gave me the evidence-based answer to that question: "Abusive men seek transactional sex because they feel they control the scene when they pay for it. They create a scene where they're allowed to overpower a woman."
found that men who go to prostitutes share many characteristics with sexually violent men and generally have less empathy for prostituted women.
"Both groups tend to have a preference for impersonal sex, a fear of rejection by women, a history of having committed sexually aggressive acts, and a hostile masculine
self-identification [meaning dominance, acceptance of violence against women, and hostility towards women]," said study authorNeil Malamuth, PhD.
Malamuth developed the Confluence Model
that can help clinicians understand men at risk of perpetrating sexual violence and identify points of intervention. The model highlights two risk pathways: hostile masculinity and impersonal sex -- like prostitution. At the intersection of these pathways is a high likelihood of sexual violence against women.
Alarmingly, the men in the study were fully cognizant of the harms they inflicted. One told researchers, "[The women] feel degraded. I mean the ones I know have no self-confidence." Another could tell that some of the women dissociated during sex -- a common trauma response. They were additionally aware of the fact that many women who find themselves in prostitution are tricked or trafficked into it.
They bought the women anyway.
Women and girls are disposable to these men. One study participant likened prostitution to purchasing a cup of coffee: "When you're done, you throw it out."
The research shows that these men -- abusive, predatory, seeking transactional sex -- know what they're doing is wrong. Abuse is not a psychiatric disorder, but a choice.
The girls are not a "type." They're objects to be dominated.
What Is a Child?
In its definition of CSA
, the CDC defines "child" as "person less than 18." Developmentally, a child does not understand and cannot consent to sex with an adult.
I do not dispute that there is a difference between a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old. I dispute that the difference matters when it comes to sexual abuse.
The costs of CSA are dire. Survivors are at disproportionate risk of multiple health consequences
: sexually transmitted infections, chronic pain, gastrointestinal and cardiopulmonary disorders, gynecologic disorders, and high utilization of healthcare, among others. The annual economic burdenof CSA in the U.S. exceeds $9 billion.
And the mental health costs are even higher-stakes: post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, and suicidal behavior or completed suicide. From my work with CSA survivors, I'll say this: a child abused at the age of 15 is no less affected than a child abused at the age of 6. The distinction is meaningless.
Even the most fastidious of moral particularists
in clinical bioethics cannot justify child sexual abuse. There are ethical exceptions to many unacceptable things, like killing (self-defense). But no one with a shred of morality can possibly find a context in which the rape of a child is acceptable, and playing semantics over what constitutes a pedophile serves no meaningful purpose but to center the perpetrator, redraw the boundaries of acceptable, and hurt survivors.
The patient I described earlier did poorly, even after disclosing her abuse to me. I wish I could have ended this piece on a hopeful note, but this is the stark reality of sexual abuse.
Now that we know what a child is, what sexual abuse is, and what the risk factors for perpetration of sexual violence are, I leave you with some important questions whose answers will speak volumes: What will we as a country do about it? Will something change? Will we hold perpetrators truly accountable?
is a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. The views expressed above reflect only those of the author and are not necessarily shared by any institution with which she is affiliated.
If you or someone you know has been trafficked or abused, call 1-888-373-7888 for the National Human Trafficking Hotline or 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) for the
Thursday, November 20, 2025
The "Leaders" You Deserve!
NY Jewish leaders asked governor to release Hasidic abuser, records show
Rabbis from Haredi communities appealed to commute sentence of Nechemya Weberman, imprisoned for abusing an adolescent in 2013, arguing that his sentence was disproportionate
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| Nechemya Weberman was convicted and sentenced to 103 years for child sexual abuse, October 16, 2012. |
NEW YORK — Jewish leaders in New York appealed to the governor for the release of a Hasidic community counselor imprisoned for sexual abuse, arguing that his sentence was disproportionate, according to court documents that surfaced this month.
Nechemya Weberman, 67, an unlicensed religious counselor in the Satmar Hasidic movement, was sentenced to 103 years in prison in 2013, in a major case for the New York Jewish community.
He was convicted of 59 counts, including sustained sexual abuse of a child, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse!
Weberman’s sentence was reduced to 50 years later in 2013. He is incarcerated in the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
The case resurfaced this month when Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez backed a move to issue a new sentence for Weberman. Weberman is scheduled to appear in court next month.
As the case reemerged, court filings obtained by The Times of Israel showed that last December, an array of Jewish leaders signed a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul seeking a commutation for Weberman’s immediate release. The previously unreported letter was submitted to the court as a reference for resentencing in June, along with other letters of support from Weberman’s family and supporters.
The letter called Weberman’s sentence “absorbently excessive,” saying he had not incurred any infractions during his 12 years in prison and that his sentence was “much greater by comparison to others held guilty of a similar crime.”
“While we strongly condemn the nature of this crime, we do believe Mr. Weberman’s excessive sentence was placed upon him to set an example to the Orthodox Jewish community,” the letter said. “Using him because he is an Orthodox Jew as a scapegoat is unjust.”
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| Nechemya Weberman, left, a community counselor in New York City’s Hasidic Jewish community, confers with his lawyer George Farkas in Brooklyn Supreme Court, January 22, 2013, in New York |
The letter was signed by 13 prominent IMMORAL/CORRUPT rabbis representing an array of
Hasidic groups in New York City and a representative of Yeshiva
University. The university did not reply to a request for comment. HERE THEY ARE:https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2025/11/Binder1.pdf
The letter said that, due to Weberman’s health problems, his imprisonment amounts to a life sentence. A doctor also submitted a letter attesting to Weberman’s “deteriorating health.”
The New York State constitution grants the governor the ability to commute prison sentences.
Gonzalez also asked then-governor Andrew Cuomo to consider a commutation of Weberman’s sentence in 2021, saying Weberman had been “singled out for an unusually harsh punishment,” according to court filings.
Cuomo and Hochul did not publicly respond to the requests.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Tuesday, “This was a horrific case, but fairness compels us to look critically at sentences like this one that fall wildly outside the range for other defendants convicted of the same crimes.”
No Mercy for Monsters: When Rabbis Plead for the Unforgivable
It is an obscenity that in our time, when Jewish children are still healing from wounds inflicted in the dark corners of their own communities, we see rabbis—men who claim to bear the Torah’s moral authority—signing letters begging for leniency for sexual abusers and consumers of child pornography. What Torah are they reading? What G-d are they serving? Certainly not the G-d of justice, nor the Torah of truth....
READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-mercy-for-monsters-when-rabbis-plead-for-the-unforgivable/
Until the rabbinate purges this moral rot from its ranks—until letters of “support” for abusers are replaced by public cries for the protection of children—the rabbis who sign them will bear the shame of standing on the wrong side of Heaven. Because Heaven weeps not for the predator, but for the child. This sickness in parts of our rabbinic leadership—the reflex to “protect” the abuser because he once wore a yarmulke and learned in a yeshiva—is nothing less than moral collapse.
READ:
https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2025/10/no-mercy-for-monsters-when-rabbis-plead.html
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
From Einstein to Epstein — How Did We Get Here?
There was a time when the word Jewish genius summoned images of chalk-dust, violin cases, telescopes pointed toward the heavens, and a tiny man from Ulm bending reality with a pencil. Einstein was not perfect—far from it—but he symbolized something that has defined the Jewish people for centuries: an obsession with ideas, ethics, responsibility, questioning, and the search for truth.
And today? The headline “Jewish” is splattered next to Epstein, a grotesque symbol of corruption, exploitation, and moral decay. How did we get from the quivering moral antennae of an Einstein to the bottomless moral vacuum of an Epstein?
This is not simply about two men. It’s about the cultural, communal, and moral arc of the modern Jewish world, a century-long slide where intellectual ambition mutated into narcissistic ambition, where ethical responsibility was traded for elite access, where brilliance without moral grounding devolved into depravity.
This is the question we must confront—fiery, unapologetic, and without euphemism: What happened to us?
Einstein represented more than relativity and a wild head of hair. He was a moral philosopher masquerading as a physicist. He warned of tyranny, pleaded for refugees, defended civil rights, begged the Jewish people to resist their own extremisms, and feared the atom bomb he helped unleash.
He embodied a distinctly Jewish idea: Intelligence is worthless without conscience.
After the Holocaust, a traumatized Jewish people made a silent pact with the American Dream:
“Never again be powerless. Never again be poor. Never again be shut out.”
It was understandable. It was even necessary. But with success came a new idolatry.
The children and grandchildren of immigrants moved from scholarship to social climbing, from intellectual prestige to financial prestige. The old moral vocabulary was replaced by a new American one: networking, influence, endowments, real estate, exclusive clubs.
There were still giants — Rabbis Mendlowitz, Soloveitchik, Kook, Kotler, Feinstein, Kamenetsky, ideological heirs, the visionaries of Jewish values. But after them rose a new class of Jewish elites: brokers, donors, fixers, operators, and gatekeepers.
A class more fluent in access than ethics. More dazzled by power than conscience. More eager to be close to presidents and princes than philosophers. It was only a matter of time before someone like Jeffrey Epstein stepped onto that stage.
The moral catastrophe of Epstein should not be dismissed as a scandal. It is a wake-up call. If Einstein represents the Jewish capacity to elevate humanity, Epstein represents the Jewish capacity to betray it. Between these two poles lies the future of the Jewish people.
We must choose. Do we continue down the path of worshiping access, influence, and brilliance for its own sake? Or do we reclaim the older, humbler, fiercer Jewish tradition in which intellect serves conscience, not ego?
Because if we do not confront how we got here—honestly, painfully, fearlessly—then we guarantee something worse will follow. The question “How did we get from Einstein to Epstein?” is really “How did we drift from moral ambition to moral anesthesia?”
But the Jewish tradition has never been afraid of self-rebuke. Prophets did nothing else. The remedy begins where it always has:
Teach that intelligence is a gift only when it serves humanity. Teach that Jewish success is meaningless without Jewish responsibility. Teach that the moral universe is real—and it always cashes its checks.
From Einstein to Epstein is a fall. But it is not irreversible. If anything, it shows us how desperately we must climb back.
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| REPUBLISHED |
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-einstein-to-epstein-how-did-we-get-here/
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
"Between Healing Bodies and Shaping Minds"
“I’m Famished”: The Excuse Maimonides Gave His Translator
From the moment he became chief physician at the royal court of Egypt, Maimonides found that he had almost no time left for anything else, not even to meet with the translator of his most famous work.
This story begins after the tragic death of the brother of Maimonides, Aaron, who drowned at sea during a trading voyage. In addition to the terrible personal loss, his death brought about a financial crisis for the family, whose wealth was tied-up in Aaron’s business ventures. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon – Maimonides – one of Judaism’s greatest legal authorities and its foremost philosopher, who would also serve as head of the Jewish community in Egypt and the surrounding regions, was forced to scramble to find a way to earn a living. Around the year 1178, he turned to medicine.
Thanks to his sharp intellect and growing reputation, it was only a few years before Maimonides was appointed personal physician to the royal court in Cairo. From that moment, the tone of his letters changed: urgency and exhaustion seeped into every written line. To his students and friends, he wrote of the immense demands on his time and energy, the constant stream of people who sought his help, and the strain of his new position.
Despite the ever-increasing pressures, Maimonides somehow managed to find time for extraordinary philosophical creativity and halakhic ingenuity. He wrote during the late-night hours, time meant for rest and renewal, and thus was able to complete The Guide for the Perplexed.
When he finished this great philosophical work, written in Arabic – the intellectual language of his surroundings – Jewish readers in Europe also longed to study it. The task of translation was taken up by Samuel ibn Tibbon, a member of a distinguished family of translators specializing in rendering Arabic works into Hebrew.
Working in France, the industrious translator sent Maimonides an unusual request. After reading The Guide in the original, he immediately recognized its immense importance, and the layers of concealment and complexity woven throughout. Even in his time, ibn Tibbon understood why readers sometimes called it “The Perplexing Guide.”
To clarify certain fundamental questions about Maimonides’ ideas and writing, ibn Tibbon offered to make the long journey from France to Egypt at his own expense, hoping to spend time in the philosopher’s company, however long Maimonides might allow.
Maimonides’ reply, however, was a firm refusal:
I live in Fustat, and the sultan resides in Cairo; these two places are two Sabbath limits distant from each other. My duties to the sultan are very heavy. I am obliged to visit him every day, early in the morning, and when he or any of his children or concubines are indisposed, I cannot leave Cairo but must stay during most of the day in the palace. It also frequently happens that one or two of the officers fall sick, and I must attend to their healing. Hence, as a rule, every day, early in the morning I go to Cairo and, even if nothing unusual happens there, I do not return to Fustat until the afternoon. Then I am famished but I find the antechambers filled with people, both Jews and Gentiles, nobles and common people, judges and policemen, friends and enemies — a mixed multitude who await the time of my return.
Maimonides then described how little time he had even to eat:
I dismount from my animal, wash my hands, go forth to my patients, and entreat them to bear with me while I partake of some light refreshment, the only meal I eat in 24 hours.
[Translation: Eliyahu Junik, via Sefaria]
Through this heartfelt description, Maimonides sought to dissuade his translator, and the many others who wished to visit him, from interrupting the few moments of rest he had left.
Before modern times, few rabbinic figures had left us such a clear window into their inner lives or such personal correspondence, especially remarkable given that Maimonides lived nearly a thousand years ago. The letters preserved in the Cairo Genizah offer a rare glimpse not only into the elevated thoughts of one of Judaism’s most brilliant philosophers and spiritual leaders – ideas often conceived in the quiet of the night and expressed (or concealed) in The Guide for the Perplexed – but also into the crushing weight of his daily responsibilities, and the relentless rhythm of a life divided between healing bodies and shaping minds.
Monday, November 17, 2025
Rabbi Karp was a textile businessman by trade—but Torah was his life.
Memory Lane: Rabbi Elias Karp
For decades, there was an iyun shiur given in Agudas Yisroel on 14th Avenue by Rabbi Elias Karp, a close talmid of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, zt”l, who had a storied career as a rov in America’s rust belt, and spent decades in learning and askonus in Boro Park of yore.
New York of Yore
Rabbi Karp was born on the Lower East Side of New York in the winter of the year 1912. His parents were Reb Yisroel and Yetta Karp, who had arrived in the United States from Galicia.
Tragically, his father passed away shortly after his bar mitzvah—right around the time that Elias entered Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, a place that would remain his identity for life.
He would remain enrolled in the yeshiva for around ten years—and its influences, and that of his illustrious rebbeim there, would remain with him for life. His primary rebbeim were Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz—whose minhagim he kept for all his life—and Rav Shloime Heiman. His chaverim were Rav Gedaliah Schorr, Rav Avrohom Pam—future Roshei Yeshiva in Torah Vodaath—Rav Nesanel Quinn, and Reb Shia Wilhelm who was also his longtime chavrusa.
In 1934, he accepted the rabbonus of Degel Israel of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at which time he warned the Jews of Lancaster about ‘indifference’ that was plaguing American Jewry, including the Jews of the area, a speech that was reported in the local paper.
Boro Park
Following his discharge from the army, with few chinuch options for the young children, the Karp’s moved to Boro Park. But the fledgling community in Boro Park of the 1940’s likewise did not offer many chinuch options, for many families preferred something different from the existing institutions in Boro Park.
So, Rabbi Karp, along with a number of other askonim, helped found Bais Yaakov of Boro Park—with his children being among the first enrollees. For decades thereafter, Rabbi Karp remained integrally involved in the mossad that he helped found, serving as the longtime treasurer of Bais Yaakov.
With his arrival in Boro Park, the Agudas Yisroel on Fourteenth Avenue became a new family for the Karp’s, and he would daven exclusively among his chaverim at the Agudah. He sat the same table with Reb Moshe Sherer, Rav Simcha Elberg, the president, Reb Dovid Turkel, and others.
Part of his joining the Agudah was his involvement in Hatzolah and war-rescue efforts, in which he worked with Mike Tress. “One didn’t have to wealthy to be an askan,” relates a daughter about Rabbi Karp’s decades of askonus in various mosdos and causes. Everyone pooled their resources and talents to make a difference.
Rabbi Karp was a textile businessman by trade—but Torah was his life.
His children recall how he would come home after a long day’s work, and spend hours immersed in learning. For more than forty years, he delivered a weekly Shabbos shiur at the Agudah.
Once he retired, until his last years, he sat and learned with great hasmodoh—along with his lifelong friends and chavrusos, Reb Shia Wilhelm and Rav Nesanel Quinn—in Boro Park’s Lakewood Minyan. In later years, when he could no longer walk to the Agudah, and he was residing at 4701 15th Avenue (in the apartment once occupied by Rav Aharon Kotler) he would daven at the nearby Bobover Shul, and he would have chavrusos coming to learn with him three times a day.
Rabbi Karp was an excellent orator, and people loved when he got up to speak, because he was concise, and always to the point. “He always had the right words,” recalls a daughter. This also made him a welcome visitor at people’s sickbeds; he would never overstay his welcome, but remain for a short while, and truly lift the spirit of those whom he would visit.
Rabbi Karp was niftar in the winter of 2009 leaving behind a beautiful Torah family.
https://www.boropark24.com/news/memory-lane-rabbi-elias-karp
Sunday, November 16, 2025
Lando To Every Guy With Five Dollars In His Pocket --- Go Broke If You Have To! He concluded: “I hope you will awaken, and each person will give according to his ability - and beyond his ability!
Rabbi Lando to donors: Woe to us if the yeshivas close
Rabbi Dov Lando thanks US, European donors who gave large sums to yeshivas, but warns it is not enough.
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| Rabbi Dov Lando at the event |
Rabbi Dov Lando, a leading rabbi in the Lithuanian-haredi community, on Sunday night delivered the keynote address at an emergency dinner held in support of the “World of Torah Fund.”
During his speech, Rabbi Lando stressed the vital importance of sustaining the yeshivas in Israel.
“In the Land of Israel, those who fear the word of God,” Rabbi Lando began, “you know very well the difficult situation of how the authorities and the courts relate to the Torah learners and the yeshivas. They have frozen the budgets, and the situation was such that the yeshivas were about to close, G-d forbid. Woe to us if such a thing would happen - it would be a great disaster.”
Rabbi Lando also expressed gratitude to the businessmen in the United States and Europe who donated “large sums - very large sums - for the sake of supporting the Torah world,” but emphasized that “this continues, and we cannot rely solely on what is given abroad.”
He then turned to the attendees: “The obligation is upon you in no less of a fashion; perhaps even more. You are generous people, to give and to support. Fortunate are you - you will be happy. It is good for you, for your children, for all your families. You will merit double and many times over, with peace of mind and good health.”
Issuing a rare warning about the possibility of institutions closing, Rabbi Lando said: “If you give, support, participate to the fullest extent possible in sustaining the yeshivas and Torah institutions in the Land of Israel, so that they will not close, G-d forbid, G-d help us if they close, woe is us for what will be. Who knows what will happen. I do not wish to speak such words, but they must be said.”
He concluded: “I hope you will awaken, and each person will give according to his ability - and beyond his ability - for the sake of the World of Torah Fund, so that it may uphold him and be good for him, his family, his children, his health. He will merit double and double many times over, great abundance - and may G-d help us, such that all evil decrees be annulled swiftly.”
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Full-Time Torah Study for All: The Greatest Orthodox Jewish Fraud Since the End of World War Two...
"Kollel should be a meritocracy — a place for the few who are truly destined for scholarship, not a refuge for the unwilling. Torah learning should inspire men to serve, to build, to defend, to uplift."... Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz/ Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky - Zechuso Yagen Aleinu.
In the long history of Jewish survival, few ideas have caused more internal rot than the postwar fantasy that every Jewish man is meant to study Torah full-time. It is not a mitzvah — it is a distortion. It has become the greatest Jewish fraud since the end of World War II.
The Torah commands us to be a “kingdom of priests” — not a nation of dependents. Our ancestors were shepherds, merchants, craftsmen, judges, warriors, and prophets — men who lived and worked in the real world, sanctifying it through their deeds. Yet somewhere after the Holocaust, a tragic inversion took hold. The noble dream of rebuilding the Torah world turned into an ideology of isolation, dependency, and cowardice — all sanctified in the name of “learning.”
After the Holocaust, Torah scholarship in Europe lay in ruins. The yeshivos of Lita and Galicia, the centers of Jewish intellectual and spiritual greatness, were reduced to ash. It was natural — even holy — that survivors sought to resurrect the world that was destroyed. But rebuilding Torah did not mean abandoning reality.
Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the visionary founder of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in New York, and Torah Umesorah, presently, a network of 760 Orthodox schools throughout the United States, whose mission is to ensure that every Jewish child in Yeshivos, day schools, and Bais Yaakovs receives the highest standards of Torah education, along with the skills to lead a successful life and become a productive member of society.
Rabbi Mendlowitz understood this clearly. He was no small-time educator; he was a prophet of postwar Jewish survival. His dream was not to create an army of cloistered scholars, but a generation of American Jews who would combine Torah fidelity with productive citizenship. He sent his students into Jewish education, business, and communal leadership. He taught that Torah must illuminate the world, not retreat from it.
Had his philosophy prevailed, American and Israeli Orthodoxy might have looked very different today. But in the chaos of postwar Europe and the birth of the State of Israel, another current — quieter, more insidious — gained ground.
When David Ben-Gurion was negotiating the contours of the new Jewish state, he met with the Chazon Ish, Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, the spiritual titan of the Lithuanian yeshiva world. The Chazon Ish insisted that Torah study must remain free from state interference and that a small number of young men — around 400 — should be exempted from military service to rebuild the ranks of Torah scholars decimated by the Nazis.
Ben-Gurion, ever the pragmatist, agreed. It was a small concession — a symbolic gesture — to the old world that had perished. He never imagined that this modest arrangement would metastasize into a political juggernaut, protecting hundreds of thousands of men from national service and labor.
That meeting in 1947 was the original sin of the “status quo.” It institutionalized the separation of Torah from life. It legitimized the idea that Torah scholars could live on the public dime while other Jews bore the burden of defending and sustaining the state.
What began as a few hundred exceptions turned into an ideology: full-time study for all men, indefinitely. The kollelim that once trained the elite became welfare networks for the masses. The word “Torah world” ceased to mean a culture of ethical refinement and began to mean a bureaucracy of stipends, exemptions, and ignorance of reality.
The Agudath Israel movement, originally formed in Europe to preserve traditional Judaism against secular Zionism, found a new purpose in this arrangement. In prewar Poland, Agudah had been wary of aligning Torah with political power; in postwar Israel, it became addicted to it.
Agudah’s rabbis realized they could leverage the collective bloc of their yeshiva students and their growing families to extract power from the state. Knesset seats translated into subsidies for yeshivos. Subsidies sustained the illusion of holiness without responsibility. The system fed itself: poverty bred more dependence, which bred more loyalty.
And so, a movement that once feared secular politics became one of its most skilled manipulators. Its moral language masked a cynical machine. “Daas Torah” — the supposed divine authority of rabbis over all matters — was weaponized to silence dissent and perpetuate control.
Meanwhile, the Rambam’s ancient words — “Anyone who decides to study Torah and not work, and supports himself from charity, desecrates God’s name” — were quietly erased from the curriculum.
In America, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz’s Torah Vodaath sent out a different message. He encouraged his students to engage the world, to teach, to lead, to work. He famously said: “The Torah must live in America — not hide in America.”
But his philosophy lost the postwar struggle. By the late 1960s, the myth of the “full-time learner” became the new gold standard of Jewish virtue. A young man who entered business or education was considered lesser. The kollelnik became the symbol of piety — even as his wife struggled to feed the children and his community depended on the charity of others.
The fraud was spiritualized: “You work for money,” the kollelnik was told, “but I work for Heaven.” It was a seductive lie — because it cloaked laziness in holiness, irresponsibility in sacrifice.
The true Torah ideal, as Rabbi Mendlowitz and the Rambam understood, was to live in the world and sanctify it. The Torah was not meant to be the privilege of the idle but the compass of the active.
Today, in 2025, Israel pays the price of this seventy-year-old deception. Nearly half of Israel’s Haredi men do not participate in the workforce. Entire neighborhoods thrive on government stipends and foreign donations. Military service exemptions are defended as divine law.
And yet, when war comes — as it did on October 7 — it is not the yeshiva world that runs toward the fire. It is the sons of secular kibbutzim, Modern Orthodox families, and immigrants from Ethiopia and Ukraine who fill the ranks. The Torah world hides behind the soldiers it despises.
This is not faith. This is fraud.
A Torah that forbids its followers from defending their people is a Torah that has been hijacked. A Torah that turns charity into lifetime welfare is not Torah lishmah — it is Torah le-hafsidah, a Torah that corrodes from within.
And the spiritual cost is even greater. Generations of young men grow up believing that work is shameful, that reality is impure, and that holiness lies in detachment. The Torah becomes not a light to the nations but a dark room to hide in.
It does not have to be this way. The Torah world can still be redeemed — but only by returning to its authentic roots. The path forward is not rebellion but restoration.
Restore the balance between Torah and derech eretz — learning and labor — as Hillel, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, and the Rambam all lived. Restore the honor of the Jewish worker, soldier, and builder — as Yehoshua, David, and Nechemiah all embodied. Restore the vision of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, who believed that Torah should sanctify the world, not escape it.
"Kollel should be a meritocracy — a place for the few who are truly destined for scholarship, not a refuge for the unwilling. Torah learning should inspire men to serve, to build, to defend, to uplift." Rabbi Mendlowitz declared. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky agreed.
The Torah that once built nations has been reduced to a subsidy. The Torah that gave us courage has been turned into a comfort blanket. It’s time to tear off the blanket and reclaim the sword.
The idea that every Jewish man must sit in yeshiva indefinitely is not holiness — it is heresy against the Torah’s purpose. It betrays the essence of what it means to be Jewish: to act, to serve, to create, to take responsibility.
Seventy years of moral decline began with a simple deal — a “status quo” that turned exception into entitlement. Ben-Gurion gave the Chazon Ish 400 exemptions. We now live with 400,000. That is not continuity — that is collapse.
The time has come to end the fraud — not by abandoning Torah, but by rescuing it. Torah must once again be the soul of a living nation, not the slogan of a parasitic sect.
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| REPUBLISHED |
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
We must enforce our laws over the ultra-Orthodox communities that refuse to teach their young people even the most basic modern subjects, much less serve in our army.
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Israel’s victory in the Middle East war that followed the October 7 attack in 2023 was one of the greatest in modern history. Generals will study it for generations. But every victory exacts a price, and the price that Israel paid was especially heavy. In addition to the tens of thousands who were harmed—killed, wounded, or suffered severe trauma—the billions of shekels spent, and the near collapse of our international relations, we paid a price also in terms of our sovereignty. Never before in the history of our nation have our leaders had less latitude for decision-making. Never before has our army enjoyed less freedom of action.
For the sake of fairness, in military matters, Israel has never been completely free. Beginning with the Sinai Campaign in 1956 and continuing with the wars of 1967, 1973, and 1982, as well as in every major operation in Gaza and in Lebanon, the United States told us exactly when to stop. And in almost all cases, we stopped. Only rarely, such as the destruction of the nuclear reactors in Iraq and in Syria, did Israel act contrary to America’s will. Much more typical was the situation in the First Gulf War in 1991, when, while missiles were falling on Tel Aviv, the United States ordered us not to go to war at all—and Israel obeyed.
But there is a huge difference between receiving an order to stop fighting and the need to receive approval every time we must act. This is the situation today when there are 200 American soldiers in Kiryat Gat and American drones are flying over Gaza. Stationed here are also soldiers from France and from Canada, countries that have not been particularly friendly toward Israel, as well as from overtly hostile Spain. Supposedly, they are here to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement that Hamas violates almost every day, but in fact they can restrain Israel’s response to these violations.
Fortunately, as we saw the other week, President Trump understands that Israel “should hit back” when its soldiers are murdered by Hamas and the deceased hostages do not return. There may also be some advantage in having France and Spain lend legitimacy to our military responses. Nevertheless, there exists a feeling that even for a limited military action in Gaza, Israel must receive a green light from Washington.
This is an unprecedented situation—not only for Israel, but for any sovereign state. In planning the period after the war, Israel must strive to restore its foreign relations and to tirelessly seek peace with our neighbors. We must heal the deep wounds within us, but we are also obligated to restore our sovereignty.
We must extend our sovereignty over the Negev—62% of the country—where the Bedouin build illegally and smugglers deal drugs with impunity. We must enforce our laws over the ultra-Orthodox communities that refuse to teach their young people even the most basic modern subjects, much less serve in our army, and over the “hilltop youth” who flout those laws almost daily. Above all, we must reclaim our sovereignty over the main repository of our independence and the principal pride of our state, the IDF.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
The Common Denominator Threaded Through the Yom Kippur War, 9/11, October 7 & Zohran Mamdani — For Israel and the USA : Evil Never Dies!
There is a single thread — dark, defiant, and utterly familiar — that runs through the Yom Kippur War, through the falling towers of September 11th, through the blood-soaked soil of Israel on October 7th, and through the smooth-tongued, hate-fueled rhetoric of Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in New York City. That thread is the arrogance of evil and the blindness of appeasement. It is the recurring curse of a civilization that refuses to learn from its own wake-up calls.
Every generation of Jews — and Americans — seems to need a new reminder that evil doesn’t politely knock before it enters. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t coexist. It waits until you’re praying, fasting, dreaming, and then it strikes — as it did on Yom Kippur 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian tanks rolled into Israel while her soldiers were wrapped in talleitem and eyes soaked with tears. The attack wasn’t only on a state; it was an assault on Jewish destiny itself, a declaration that the Jewish people’s right to exist could still be contested.
Then came September 11, 2001 — a day every American swore would change the world. But did it? We buried our dead, raised our flags, spoke about “never forgetting,” and then, like tired dreamers, drifted right back to sleep. Within two decades, American campuses, city councils, and even Congress would welcome the same anti-Western, anti-Israel ideology that fueled the hijackers. The same grievance-filled theology that celebrates martyrdom over mercy and blames the victim for being free.
And then came October 7, 2023 — a day when the world’s oldest hatred removed its mask again. Hamas didn’t invade for territory or negotiation leverage. They came for Jews — babies, grandmothers, students, festival-goers — because that’s what evil does when it sees softness, confusion, and the paralysis of moral relativism. The blood of 1,200 Jews cried out, and yet within days, the global chorus — from the UN to American universities — turned its wrath not on the murderers, but on the murdered.
That’s when the fourth link in this cursed chain emerged: Zohran Mamdani, the New York Assemblyman who wrapped anti-Semitism in the language of “justice.” He doesn’t wear a uniform or carry a gun. He doesn’t need to. His battlefield is social media, his weapon is rhetoric, and his target is truth itself. He calls Zionism a crime, brands Israel an “apartheid state,” and defends terrorists with the arrogance of someone certain that America has already forgotten 9/11.
Mamdani is not an anomaly. He is the inevitable product of moral confusion — of a culture that forgot how to distinguish between victim and aggressor, civilization and barbarism, faith and fanaticism. He is what happens when universities reward anti-Western activism, when politicians are afraid to be called “Islamophobic” for defending civilization, and when Jews themselves try to earn survival through silence.
But the thread that ties Yom Kippur 1973, 9/11, October 7, and Mamdani together is not just about hatred — it’s about warning. Each time evil rises, it first tests our courage to name it. And each time, too many among us fail the test. The Yom Kippur War taught us that Jewish complacency invites slaughter. 9/11 taught us that American tolerance without discernment becomes suicide. October 7 taught us that weakness invites annihilation. And Mamdani teaches us that our enemies no longer need rockets — our own moral confusion will do the job for them.
The message for both the Jewish people and the United States is identical: Evil never dies — it adapts. It changes its flag, its accent, its hashtags, but the ideology is the same. It hates freedom, it hates the covenant between God and man, and it despises a people and a nation that dare to live by conscience rather than chaos.
We must name it. We must reject it — not with polite “statements” but with unapologetic conviction. We must teach our children that moral clarity is not extremism, and that silence is complicity. We must remember that in both Jerusalem and New York, the battle is not between right and left — it is between truth and its erasure.
History has already given us three wake-up calls. The fourth one — Zohran Mamdani’s normalization of anti-Semitism in the halls of American democracy — may be the most dangerous yet. Because when hatred puts on a suit and sits in office, the next Yom Kippur War, the next 9/11, the next October 7 — is already being planned.
REPUBLISHED: EVIL NEVER DIES:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-message-for-both-the-israelis-the-americans-evil-never-dies/Monday, November 10, 2025
Israel Has to Look Post-Trump and Plan Accordingly - Why Trump’s Middle East “Peace Plan” Is Backfiring Badly
Donald Trump gave Israel years of unapologetic friendship, biblical recognition, and a kind of political courage the Jewish state had rarely seen from any American president. Jerusalem was finally recognized. The Golan Heights, long treated like a bargaining chip by Washington diplomats, was affirmed as Israeli. And the Abraham Accords broke the suffocating myth that peace with the Arab world must first go through Ramallah.
But history has a brutal sense of irony: the very warmth that binds nations can also lull them into complacency. Too many in Israel began to believe that Trumpism is a new covenant — a permanent rewriting of the American-Israeli bond. It is not. It is a chapter, not a covenant.
Trump, for all his friendship, is a man of impulses, not institutions. He reshaped U.S. foreign policy with flair, not structure. His instincts were often good for Israel, but they were never guaranteed. And Israel, of all nations, should know better than to confuse divine miracles with political moments.
Ben-Gurion didn’t build Israel on miracles. He built it on paranoia — the good kind. He assumed every friend might one day turn fickle. When Eisenhower humiliated Israel in 1956 and forced its withdrawal from Sinai, Ben-Gurion didn’t sulk. He adapted. He vowed never again to be caught dependent on American arms or approval. From that humiliation came the foundations of Israel’s independent defense industry and nuclear deterrent. He understood what too many forget today: gratitude is not a strategy.
Israel cannot afford to be anyone’s client state — not Biden’s, not Trump’s, not anyone’s. It must remain a sovereign moral power that listens politely to Washington but plans relentlessly for the day Washington looks elsewhere. And that day will come.
Look at America: a nation split down the middle, its politics poisoned by tribalism and fatigue. Isolationism is creeping back into both parties. Progressives who despise Zionism grow louder by the month. Even some conservatives now mutter about “foreign aid cuts” while basking in the delusion that Israel can simply fend for itself without consequence.
Israel’s answer to all this must be the same answer it has given to every crisis since 1948: build, defend, and innovate — alone if necessary. The Jewish people waited 2,000 years to return home; they cannot afford to hinge that home on a fluctuating American election cycle.
The Abraham Accords were not just diplomatic trophies — they were prophecy fulfilled in realpolitik form. They proved that Israel can thrive regionally without waiting for permission from Foggy Bottom. The road ahead is through Riyadh, New Delhi, Nairobi, and even Tokyo — a network of alliances based on shared threats, shared technology, and shared survival.
Israel must also steel itself economically and militarily for a post-American world order. The United States will remain an ally — but an overstretched, distracted one. The smart move now is to localize more arms production, train for operational autonomy, and stop assuming the next shipment of precision munitions will arrive on time. The biblical Joseph didn’t wait for famine to strike — he stored grain in advance. Israel must do the same with its Iron Dome missiles, drones, and cyber defenses.
The Jewish story has always been one of preparation. When exile seemed endless, smart Jews with vision built yeshivas. When the nations said “you cannot,” Jews said “we must.” And when the world’s empires fell — Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Britain, the Soviet Union — the Jewish nation somehow still stood.
Trump was a friend. Maybe one of Israel’s greatest. But the lesson of Jewish history is that friendship is never forever — only faith and foresight are.
Israel must thank Trump, bless him, and then do what it has always done best: plan for the next test, the next betrayal, the next dawn. Because when it comes to Jewish survival, the best insurance policy is not a promise from any president. It’s Israel itself.
REPUBLISHED:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-to-look-post-trump-and-plan-accordingly/
Sunday, November 09, 2025
Thursday, November 06, 2025
Agudath Israel Must Publicly Reject and Condemn the Satmar Faction That Supported Anti-Israel, Anti-Semite, Jew-Hating Zohran Mamdani
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| New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI) |
There are moments in Jewish history when silence becomes complicity. When neutrality morphs into moral cowardice. When the lines that divide ideological disagreement from spiritual treachery must be redrawn — sharply, publicly, and without apology.
Such a moment is upon us.
Last week, a faction aligned with the Satmar Hasidic community openly lent support to New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — a man who has never hidden his hostility toward Israel and who traffics in the oldest, ugliest antisemitic tropes, now dressed up in the language of “anti-Zionism.” Mamdani, the self-styled “Palestinian socialist,” has accused Israel of genocide, championed the BDS movement, and cheered for the delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state.
That any group of Jews — worse, Jews wearing the banner of Torah — would stand behind such a man is beyond disgrace. It is a moral catastrophe.
And Agudath Israel of America, the historic umbrella organization that has long claimed to represent Orthodox Jewry in the United States, must not look away. If Agudah wants to preserve even a shred of credibility as a voice of Torah in public life, it must do what decency, halacha, and Jewish history demand: explicitly reject and condemn the Satmar faction that endorsed this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish politician.
The Satmar faction’s flirtation with Mamdani is not a minor political gesture. It is an endorsement of hatred cloaked in the pretense of piety. Let us be clear: Mamdani’s record is not one of “principled critique” or “progressive values.” It is one of relentless demonization of Jews who live in their ancestral homeland.
He has marched with those who chant “From the river to the sea,” a slogan whose plain meaning is the eradication of Israel and the Jews within it. He has excused or minimized the October 7 atrocities — one of the darkest days in Jewish history since the Holocaust — as somehow “contextual.”
And in the face of that, a group of Satmar Hasidim smiled, posed for pictures, and called him a “friend.”
This is not Judaism. This is not holiness. This is political opportunism masquerading as righteousness, and it mocks every Jew who bleeds for Am Yisrael.
To understand the poison here, one must recall the Satmar ideology itself — born from the trauma of Europe but hardened into a theology of negation. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, built his empire on the claim that the State of Israel is a heresy, a rebellion against G-d’s will, and that the Holocaust was a divine punishment for Zionism.
It was a theology of exile frozen in amber — one that refused to see the miraculous rebirth of Jewish sovereignty as anything but a sin. In 1948, when the rest of Jewry wept with awe at the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland, Satmar wept in rage.
That ideology might have remained a footnote — eccentric, tragic, but contained — had it not metastasized into political activism. Over the decades, Satmar built alliances with anti-Zionist forces, aligning with the far left, the Islamist world, and anyone else who hated Israel enough to make common cause.
The result? Today we witness the grotesque spectacle of Jews shaking hands with men who would gladly see Jews murdered in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Sderot.
The Rambam writes in Hilchot De’ot that one must distance himself from the wicked, lest he learn from their ways and be destroyed by their company. This is not merely social advice — it is a Torah imperative.
To ally with an avowed hater of Jews is to desecrate the Name of Heaven. The Talmud in Avodah Zarah 18a teaches us that even the perception of association with idolaters or enemies of Israel can bring scandal to Torah itself. How much more so when the association is public, photographed, and celebrated in newspapers and social media?
Agudath Israel cannot pretend this is a “Satmar matter.” Silence here is endorsement. Failure to condemn is partnership.
If the Agudah leadership shrugs this off as "another “local issue", they forfeit their moral claim to speak in the name of klal Yisrael.
It was not always so. The original Agudath Israel of prewar Europe — the movement of giants like the Chafetz Chaim — sought to protect Torah life through engagement, not isolation. They argued against Zionism politically, yes, but never allied themselves with enemies of the Jewish people.
They fought their battles within the Jewish world, not by empowering our external foes.
The founders of Agudah would have shuddered at the sight of Hasidim applauding a politician who slanders their brothers and sisters in Israel.
And make no mistake: many of today’s Agudah rabbis and lay leaders privately do shudder. They know this alliance is abhorrent. But private revulsion is not enough. The Torah demands public rebuke. “Hoche’ach tochiach et amitecha” — you shall surely rebuke your fellow.
To remain silent now is to invite G-d’s rebuke instead.
Satmar defends its political deals with anti-Israel figures by invoking “Torah values” — claiming to prioritize yeshiva funding, welfare benefits, or community protection over Israel’s fate. This is a grotesque distortion of Torah ethics.
The same Torah that commands us to love every Jew and defend Jewish life cannot be twisted into a tool for transactional politics. To barter away Jewish dignity for state funding is to sell our birthright for a bowl of lentils.
When Satmar activists cozy up to Mamdani, they are not practicing pikuach nefesh — they are practicing political idolatry, worshipping power and money in the guise of faith.
Agudath Israel now faces a defining test. Will it stand for Jewish unity rooted in truth, or will it allow fanaticism to drag it into moral bankruptcy?
It must issue a clear, unequivocal statement declaring that no Jewish organization can support a politician who traffics in antisemitism or calls for the destruction of Israel. It must name Mamdani for what he is — a demagogue — and the Satmar faction that supports him for what they have become — collaborators in our people’s humiliation.
Such a statement would not divide the Orthodox world; it would save it.
Because the greatest threat to Torah is not modernity, not secularism, not Zionism — it is hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of those who cry “Torah, Torah” while standing shoulder to shoulder with those who hate Torah Jews.
Satmar has inverted courage into cowardice. They have mistaken exile for holiness, submission for faith, and betrayal for purity.
And Agudah must not follow them down that pit.
This is not about politics. This is about Jewish survival — moral, spiritual, and historical.
Every yeshiva student who loves Torah should weep when Jews cheer for our enemies. Every rabbi who invokes ahavat Yisrael must condemn those who betray it. Every parent who teaches their child to say “Shema Yisrael” must remind them that Israel — the name itself — means struggling with G-d but standing with our people.
If Agudath Israel cannot find the courage to say that, then it will have surrendered the moral authority it once claimed.
But if it does — if it speaks truth, if it draws the line, if it reclaims the mantle of authentic Torah — then perhaps we can still hope that the rift within Orthodox Jewry can heal, not through silence, but through truth.
The world must know: There is no Torah without loyalty to the Jewish people. There is no holiness in betrayal. And there is no justification, ever, for standing with those who hate the children of Israel.
REPUBLISHED:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/agudath-israel-must-condemn-the-satmar-faction-that-supported-zohran-mamdani/