Rates of leading cancers are projected to rise among the U.S. demographic group known as Generation X—people born between 1965 and 1980

 

Cancer Gaining on Younger Adults

 

Rates of leading cancers are projected to rise among the U.S. demographic group known as Generation X—people born between 1965 and 1980, a new study concludes. The startling result is so pronounced that Gen X is expected to have a higher cancer rate than their parents and grandparents, reports Scientific American editor Lauren J. Young. The finding held for numerous cancers, including colon, rectal, thyroid, ovarian, prostate and kidney.

How they did it: Researchers examined data collected between 1992 and 2018 on 3.8 million people in the U.S. with invasive cancer—cancer that has spread beyond its original site. The team was particularly interested in patterns among birth cohorts such as Gen X, Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation. 

What the experts say: “It’s very clear to us that cancer is evolving from a disease which has traditionally been considered a disease of aging to one which affects, really, all age groups,” says gastroenterologist Andrew Chan.

 

 

 MORE:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gen-x-faces-higher-cancer-rates-than-any-previous-generation/

 

Gen X and Cancer:

 In total, we analyzed 3.8 million cases of incident cancer occurring over 521 million person-years (eTable 2 in Supplement 1). Overall, 51.0% of individuals were male (compared with 49.0% female) and 71.5% were non-Hispanic White (compared with 8.6% Asian or Pacific Islander, 9.5% Hispanic, and 10.4% non-Hispanic Black).

 

MORE:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2819747

The heroic stories of Talmidei Chachamim (Torah scholars), Ra”mim (Yeshiva gemara teachers) and Dayanim (Religious Court judges) from the Religious Zionist community who went into battle and literally endangered their lives to save the Jewish people, cannot leave hearts unmoved.

"My brothers, do not commit this wrongful act"

 

All the arguments of the haredi world cannot stand up to the simple fact that Jewish lives are on the line in Israel as never before and the army must increase the number of combat soldiers asap.

Gedalia Zurger

---

Gedalia Zurger (not his real name) is an avrech (married kollel student) in Bnai Brak. Article translated from Makor Rishon by Rochel Sylvetsky.

To arouse someone who has lost consciousness, sometimes the best thing to do is to slap him in the face. The articles published in the Hebrew press recently, especially one by a haredi writer last week titled “The Religious-Zionist Conceptsia” was a slap in the face to our consciousness. And that article was but one of an entire series of articles, statements and comments by talking heads, all coming from the haredi side of the dispute. And that is why I have written this article.

The prevarications were never as clear as they are now. After seventy-five years of hearing the haredi community, to which I have belonged all my life, tell everyone that they are an integral part of the nation, that they see all Jews as brothers, and that in their world view, they are fighting with them shoulder to shoulder, except that they do battle by learning Torah – the sad truth has been revealed. You probably think that the argument centers around “[the Torah] protects and saves” (“magna umatzla”, Tractate Sota 21) and “rabbis do not need protection” (“Rabbanan la tsrichei netiruta,” Tractate Bava Batra)­­ but I have news for you. That was never the real issue.

So, can someone explain to us what the argument is all about? Not really. It seems that every haredi spokesperson can take the argument to any place he wishes.

According to the aforementioned article, the crux of the issue is opposition to the Zionist ethos. Its author writes that Religious Zionism has an ethos, a “conceptsia” in his words, and that in his view, there is an ongoing debate about whose “conceptsia” is the right one.

What really happens is that Religious Zionist rabbis open the Talmud, Maimonides, and other sources to try to understand if the Torah really does “protect and save” without the necessity of enlisting in the army or whether “even a bridegroom must leave his room and a bride her chuppah,” as is the halakha in case of a war to save the Jewish people from those who attempt to destroy them. They write letters and publish learned explanations, quote sources with exacting accuracy – only to discover that the other side is not only bored - but mocking.

The haredi side wants to avoid discussion and never actually intended to debate the issue seriously. More insulting is that those bringing the haredi point of view are in most cases journalists and spokesmen who are total ignoramuses when it comes to Torah. Their only talents lie in the political and verbal realms. The truth is that the real Religious Zionist “conceptsia” is that sector’s sincere desire to have a serious discussion on the matter – while the haredim avoid it like the plague.

Self-deception

Let us analyze the various haredi claims and present a condensed version of the statements that are the most common. It turns out that the haredi rhetoric we have been subject to lately is disingenuous, to say the least.

This is how the arguments unfold: First the haredi speaker proclaims that the Holy Torah guards the Jewish People. (There is no Religious Zionist argument with that.) Sometimes he adds an emotional element: "Do you know how hard it is to learn Torah ten hours a day?" The person who must contend with this argument is usually a non-religious broadcaster with absolutely no Torah background. His intuition tells him that there is something wrong here, but he is incapable of discussing the “protects and saves” Talmudic dictum in any depth.

That forces him to take another tack: “And what about those who aren’t learning?” This is when the deception comes into play. The more experienced politicians – generally from the soft edges of the Shas party – nod their head and agree: “There is no question that those who are not learning must enlist.” The secular broadcaster will repeat this, as will other media. That is, until one of the haredi spiritual leaders says: “G-d forbid, there is no way a haredi young man can enlist in the IDF.” And they did say just that.

The more honest haredi spokespersons go on to the next stage and adopt a cultural approach: “The army is unsuitable for haredim. A haredi young man who enters the army will not leave it a haredi.” Seasoned broadcasters will protest: “but the Army is willing to create separate frameworks to protect them,” to which the spokesmen retort: “If and when that happens, there will be something to discuss.” Someone usually comes and declares that “there is no chance of that happening.” (However, although that was true in the past, the army has just made a detailed haredi-oriented offer – so let us see what happens, R.S.)

Others will venture a different reason – one which once held water: “The army neither wants nor needs the haredim.” They will usually quote some general or former CoS who said this, except that it was before the cataclysmic reality prevailing since October 7th, a time when Ehud Barak’s “small, smart army” concept was still an accepted mantra. It is true that then, most Religious Zionists saw it as a live-and-let-live issue, not necessitating haredi participation in the army.

That, however, is not the case today. So today, others add, in the same vein: “This does need rethinking, but no one imagines that drafting haredim at this point will help the country or affect the burden falling upon the reservists. Even if a wholly haredi combat brigade were to be formed now, we all hope the reservists will be back home by the time it finishes basic training. If the goal is to ease the burden, wouldn’t it be more logical to try to draft all the fighters who have already had training?" (This using the incontrovertible fact that over 10,000 reservists have not been called up for active service and adding the inexcusable fact that there are tens of thousands of non-religious young men who avoid serving in the army).

Of course, this means that for the foreseeable future, the injustice done to the reservists can be allowed to continue, since if the army refrains from drafting thousands of haredim now, in three years’ time the haredim can say the same thing once again. The fact is, that it really won’t help today’s reservists, but training haredim now can certainly save those reservists in another year or two.

Simchat Torah taught us that the concept of a “small, smart army” has gone up in blood and fire, and that IDF needs large numbers of soldiers, in regular service and as reservists. It needs the haredim, the reservists who were not called up and the non-religious who avoided the draft as well. And as the years pass, that need will only increase.

Better to have dropouts than to let the roots rot

The above points are the ones used mostly when being interviewed by secular media personalities, who admit that they are unable to counter them. If a Torah verse is quoted, even one that angers the interviewer, he has no basis for a counter argument and generally gives in, sometimes, most unfortunately, feeling antipathy towards the Torah that is the source of the quote.

However, when the contender is a Religious Zionist, that is a different story. The haredi public finds itself in some confusion when arguing with what it calls “mizrochnikim.” Many in the haredi world realize that the level of Religious Zionist Torah learning is no lower than theirs. Religious Zionist rabbis do not wear long black coats for the most part and do not call themselves “Maran,” but it is enough to listen to one short shiur (Torah lecture) to understand that they can hold their own in Torah and fear of G-d. The heroic stories of Talmidei Chachamim (Torah scholars), Ra”mim (Yeshiva gemara teachers) and Dayanim (Religious Court judges) from the Religious Zionist community who went into battle and literally endangered their lives to save the Jewish people, cannot leave hearts unmoved.

When arguing with “mizrochnikim” the whole format changes. They cannot be quoted partial verses and Talmudic texts taken out of context. They know how to back up their words with our Sages and the Rambam, and with Tanakh verses that most haredi scholars have never studied. They also prove by their very existence, that one can wear an IDF uniform and stay G-d-fearing, that one can learn more than the average yeshiva boy does in the breaks between battles.

At any rate, when facing Religious Zionists, the discussion goes on to another level, as if to admit that talking about “protecting and saving” will not work and that saying that “we are following the instructions of our great rabbis” won’t work either, because they are liable to ask for the reasons justifying those statements. The haredi side then resorts to politics, saying: You want the non-religious to like you, but that does not happen. Look at you, dying like flies and the Chief of Staff and upper IDF echelons are all leftists. The leftist media ignore your sacrifice and even denigrate you.

Religious Zionists who believe in the “conceptsia” that Jews have to sacrifice their lives to protect their brothers because of the mitzva saying “do not stand idly by while your brother’s blood is being shed” have a difficult time dealing with this kind of cynical political outlook.

Some haredim, at this point, criticize the entire Religious Zionist education system. “You hate us,” they claim, and the ignorant among them dare to say that this is an instance of the “unlearned hating Torah scholars” – the scholars being those with black hats, and the unlearned being those well versed in Tanach, Gemara, and clear Jewish hashkafa (Jewish philosophy).

On the contrary, not only do the Religious Zionists not hate the haredi sector, their youth, over the past few decades, look to the haredim for whatever spiritual content they can glean from Hassidism (without being involved in all the intrigues taking place in the various courtyards) and can be found among those sitting on the Hassidic bleachers at events. Religious Zionists quote the great thinkers and scholars of the haredi world without any censorship. In Religious Zionist study halls, you are apt to see students analyzing the points in the book “Vayoel Moshe” by the Satmar Rebbe more than the Satmar Hassidim do. Talk of “hatred” is totally out of place. It does not exist. (There is, however, anger today, especially among parents of religious soldiers, R.S.)

The haredim also use the numbers of Religious Zionists who have stopped keeping the commandments as a weapon: “Perhaps you are right. But look how many dropouts you have.” Without contradicting the inflated percentages heard in these contexts, and without bringing up the growing percentage of haredi dropouts, the Religious Zionists are much more afraid that the entire tree of the state will rot and forget its mission, turning that rot into an ideology.

Extremism and distancing

There is no way to avoid dealing with haredi opposition to the Zionist venture. One can, however, mention how this is being said by a public which has held decision making positions in that Zionist venture for at least forty years, at the same time enjoying generous financial allocations as well as welfare and health benefits that are way above its percentage of the population and its contributions to the economy, while taking part in cabinet meetings that decide on security issues without its children taking part in the war effort.

When the state was founded, the need for yeshiva exemptions was justifiable. Today the haredi sector gets much more than its fair share. The “society of learners” that rose up in the state of Israel has no precedent. It lives and breathes only because of the Zionist venture that it scorns. The very fact that a small cut in allocations causes the haredim to talk about the collapse of the Torah world is the proof.

The haredi sector which saw itself as the “mezuzah of the state” has not been fulfilling that promise for decades. The feelings of shared responsibility and mutual caring have disappeared. Not only is the claim that “we are learning more during this period” not true – there were very few yeshivas that cancelled their vacation “bein hazmanim” or stopped parties during the war – they are not even trying to seem like they are part of the war effort, continuing petty political maneuvers to get jobs and funding, with no evidence of their rising to the great challenges of the hour.

But all the above is part of an old dispute, it belongs to the time preceding October 6th, or if you wish it, to Hoshana Rabba of this year. All the concepts disintegrated on Simchat Torah. The theoretical arguments about Zionism or saying Hallel on Independence Day are irrelevant. We are facing a clear instance of pikuach nefesh, saving lives. At a time that Jewish blood is being spilled like water, no one can stand on the sidelines. Hundreds of soldiers have fallen, thousands of orphans and widows have had their lives changed forever, and they did not do this because of the sanctification of Zionism but mainly in order to protect their brothers in Bnai Brak, Emanuel, Kiryat Sefer and Beitar Ilit as well as the rest of the country.

And don’t try to say that this is a “process” and that everything must be done patiently through talking to one another. We do have the haredi Netsach Yehuda and Nahal Haredi but they are a drop in the bucket. The last seventy-five years have taught us that that the process is one of distancing and more extremism. It is not the courts that severed the connection between the state and the haredim, but the young haredi men blocking roads shouting “we would rather die that be drafted”, or treating soldiers as if they are beneath them and not saying the prayer for their safety on Shabbat.

“Please, my brothers, do not commit this wrongful act,” is a quote from the book of Genesis. Do not be taken in by empty rhetoric. Religious Zionism cares about the Torah world no less than the haredim, they too are willing to pay huge sums to preserve their spiritual level and their children’s education, they too are pained and worried by the religious dropout rate.

But they are also pained and worried about the physical future of all of us and are not willing to allow old arguments to divert attention from reality: “It is a time of trouble for [the people of] Jacob” as the Prophet Jeremiah said, and the Torah in Leviticus 19 commands us: “Do not stand idly by when your neighbor’s blood is being spilled.”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392689?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

I looked up at the man sitting opposite me and then quickly down again. It felt wrong. We weren't supposed to look unrelated men in the eye.

 

Amid abuse by her schoolteacher, Dassi Erlich married a man she'd known for 8 hours.

 

This is an edited extract from In Bad Faith by Dassi Erlich, with Ellen Whinnett and is out now via Hachette.

I peeked through my eyelashes at the unfamiliar orange beard across the table and dared myself to look up. Eye contact, Mrs Leifer had reminded me on the phone just moments earlier. 'Remember to look up.' I felt my cheeks go red. I was a young woman, dressed in a long-sleeved beige jacket, a blue-and-beige skirt and seventy-denier brown tights, sitting at a round kitchen table, on my first date.

I looked up at the man sitting opposite me and then quickly down again. It felt wrong. We weren't supposed to look unrelated men in the eye.

'My name is Shua Erlich,' he began, and I was grateful it was the man’s job to initiate conversation. I'd tossed and turned all night, worried that my voice would remain constrained by the years of keeping quiet in the presence of a man. At 18 years old, I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a genuine conversation with a male that was not my father. I knew he was 23 years old, 180 centimetres tall, had a childhood interest in cricket, and was currently studying in a yeshivah (men’s religious seminary) abroad.

The matchmaker had informed my parents that his divorced parents were Jewish but not religious, and that Shua had chosen the ultra-Orthodox life as a young teenager. The rabbis he studied under raved about his ability to understand Jewish law in a way that belied his secular upbringing. It was unusual for boys to fly home to pursue a date in February. The yeshivah frowned upon midsemester engagements. I was told that Shua had flown home to meet another girl, and when she had turned him down the matchmaker had called my parents. A trip home midsemester shouldn't go to waste.

I could hear my mother pacing up and down in the adjoining room. She was here to supervise our date and ensure we didn't have any physical contact. She needn't have worried. I wouldn't dream of touching him; I could barely look at him. I spent the hour looking at the laundry door behind him and the swinging pendulum on the clock above his head. Everything I did — the way I held myself, the way I dressed, the way I spoke—was designed to avoid drawing attention to myself. To avoid drawing the attention of the men who were not supposed to see us. Gazing at women was immodest. When a rabbi was invited to address us at school, they sat behind a temporary mechitza — a partition usually made from wood or cloth—to keep them from looking at us. It was a woman's responsibility to ensure the man was not tempted by her to commit an evil sin.

I knew nothing of the sin of sex; we had been taught the sin was in the man noticing us, and being distracted from learning Torah by our femininity.

My parents had spent the last few days with the community matchmaker, finding out everything they deemed important about Shua. I'd been informed of his grades, his parents' wealth and his Torah study. I wasn't asked what was important to me; my input in this process was not required.

It would be my first date. The matchmaker had called with other offers in the last few months, but my parents had turned them down. They were too far away, lived overseas and wouldn't consider a life in Melbourne; the husband was the head of the home, and he would choose where the couple lived.

I'd spent months praying to God that I would meet my husband before I turned 19. The older I got, the more problematic the marriage scene would be for me. We were not related to any revered rabbi and had no status in the community. I could see the black marks growing against my name: my parents hadn't grown up religious, they didn’t come from money, and my mother was a dark-skinned Sephardi. Sephardi Jews, often tracing their roots to the Middle East and Africa, at times encounter racism and discrimination within Melbourne’s predominantly Eastern European Ashkenazi community. Elly, due to her darker coloured skin, had often been taunted at school with the derogatory term 'shvartze' — a Yiddish racial slur for people of colour.

Good grades and youth were on my side, but the older I got, the less often the matchmaker would call. If I turned twenty without any sign of marriage, the community would assume the problem was me. This wasn't just my impression; this knowledge was as intrinsic as the way I breathed. I must get married.

I walked up the garden path with my mother on that February day in 2005 and rang Shua's mother's doorbell, knowing that inside that double-storey house in Caulfield North could be the man I was to spend the rest of my life with.

I met Shua for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon.

We met four more times that week, always in his mother’s kitchen, while my mother supervised our 'dates' from the adjoining living room. After the first date, I mustered the courage to look up at him and quietly answer his questions about the values I envisioned instilling in our future children. The following Saturday night, he proposed, and I said yes. I had spent less than eight hours with this man before making the commitment to spend the rest of my life with him.

I'd been told that Shua would propose that night, and he knew I would say yes. The matchmaker had checked with my parents moments before our meeting. I had been given the weekend to think about this commitment. As soon as Shabbat ended, the phone had rung: the matchmaker wanted a decision.

I could have said no. I could have said no like the girl who saw Shua before I did and turned him down. I was told that I could choose, but really, there was only the illusion of choice. If I said no to Shua, it would only be so long before I sat across the table from some other man, having the same stilted conversation.

I sat across the table from Shua that Saturday night, dressed in my finest, waiting for him to begin the conversation. I looked at him carefully. Was there anything that repulsed me? He began to speak about our shared goals of building a Jewish home in God's ways. I looked harder at his orange beard and brown eyes and wondered if this was a man I could grow to love. I still didn’t understand how babies were born, but I imagined bringing up a family with him. I was filled with anxiety and doubt, but also excitement. For a second, I played out the chaos that would ensue if I reneged on my previous assurance and said no, but I knew this proposal was just a formality; it had already been decided. He finished his speech. 'Will you be my wife?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said quietly without any hesitation.

***

In the week leading up to the wedding, I set up the house with Nicole and Elly’s help, without once contemplating asking my parents if they could find us an alternative place to start our married life. A barrier had developed in my mind, one to separate Mrs Leifer's abuse from the rest of my life. It was similar to the barrier I had created as a young child around my father’s confusing hugs and then again around my mother’s abuse. I didn't consciously build these impenetrable walls; my mind created them to protect me, to allow me to move forward each day despite the trauma I faced.

The therapist I see now calls it dissociation. Back then I didn't know that it was a dissociative barrier that allowed me to climb into the same bed that Mrs Leifer had undressed me on several weeks prior, and undress myself for my new husband. I didn’t think about it at all. I hadn’t realised yet that I would never be abused by Mrs Leifer again. By the time she returned to Melbourne, I would be starting my life in Israel, and my mind would compartmentalise her abuse into a corner, where it would stay for several years.

We made small talk, each of us covering our nerves at the task ahead. He showered quickly first, then it was my turn; the door firmly closed. I put on a long nightgown and went to sit on the edge of one of the twin beds in the room. We both recited the prayer that one must say before sex, which asks God for our children to be conceived through a holy act and not through lust.

 I cried, and he quickly separated himself from me. Now that there was blood and we could no longer be together, I would need to be covered in front of him, just as I would before any other male.

I quickly put on the headscarf that I had made ready and ran out of the room to clean up. Shua changed the sheets and climbed into his bed on the other side of the room.

I crawled into my bed, hiding the pain that was my rite of passage. I felt sure that God would grant me children after the pain I had just endured for His sake.

Shua and I lay and talked until early morning, each of us eager to find out everything about the other. It was the first time we had been allowed to talk unsupervised.

This is an edited extract from In Bad Faith by Dassi Erlich, with Ellen Whinnett and is out now via Hachette.

https://www.mamamia.com.au/dassi-erlich-story/

Sneakers for the Blacks, Bibles for the Xtians, Conventions with lots of Food for the Jews...This Con-Man Got It Covered...His attendance and being honored guest speaker at the Torah Umesorah Convention, solidified his support from the lunatic fringe of the Orthodox Jewish community. How low Does God's Chosen People go?

 

Trump’s Bibles and Sneakers Campaigns Tell an Old Story About the Role of Race,  Christian Nationalism, and Jewish Conventions With Lots of Food...,Idiots & Suckers For Fake Diplomas...

 

A tale of two 3 campaigns. The image on the left comes from the former president's sneaker site, while the image on the right is featured on the God Bless the USA Bible site. 

 

In late June, national news outlets reported that former President Trump had received the largest donation of the 2024 election. Billionaire Tim Mellon’s $50 million contribution, arriving just a day after the former president’s hush-money trial, in which he was convicted on 34 charges of falsifying business records, effectively closed the gap between the pro-Trump super PAC “MAGA Inc” and the Biden campaign’s war chest. 

Although not the only substantive donation Trump has received as of late, Mellon’s contribution is credited with rescuing the Trump campaign from the financial hole it’s been in for much of the election cycle largely due to dwindling donor support and the exorbitant costs associated with his legal fees. Over the years the Trump campaign has resorted to fundraising tactics that have raised eyebrows, including one they referred to internally as the “money bomb” which, according to the New York Times, “steered supporters into unwitting donations.”

In March of this year, just days before Easter, Donald Trump held a press conference to announce the sale of his new Bible. For $59.99, Americans wishing to join the former president in “Making America Pray Again” could own what he claimed to be his “favorite book.” 

The God Bless the USA Bible (GBUSA), the only edition of the holy writ the former president endorses, includes the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible alongside the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, and the US Constitution. Unsurprisingly, Trump hawking the greatest story ever told elicited the expected lambasting social media posts and late-night comedy jokes; what it failed to elicit, however, was any acknowledgment of the role of race in American Christian nationalism.

His attendance and being honored guest speaker at the Torah Umesorah Convention, solidified his support from the lunatic fringe of the Orthodox Jewish community.  How low does God's Chosen People go?

So even as Cavan Concannon observed here on RD that the GBUSA “[ties] the Bible to patriotism and to Trump himself,” and Bradley Onishi noted that “there are folks who are gonna eat this up” (i.e., White evangelicals), I’m not aware of any commentator who read this moment through the lens of anti-Black racism and the history of American Christianity. This is an important distinction from the often ambiguous use of “POC,” which includes Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and others. A recent report noted Latino evangelicals’ increasing grassroots efforts to support Trump, explicitly in favor of Christian nationalism, suggesting, as NBC News’s Dasha Burns points out, that the GBUSA might actually be a move in their direction. So if the GBUSA is a nod to Latino evangelicals, how is Trump courting Black voters? 

Despite the fact that Black Americans remain the most religious demographic in the country, this was not the intended audience for Trump’s Bible. Instead, when Trump sought to promote his latest wares, he didn’t approach Black American voters like some “low-rent televangelist,” as he had with the GBUSA, but rather as the neighborhood sneaker vendor.

Unlike the GBUSA website, The Never Surrender High-Top Sneaker site doesn’t make grand claims about patriotism and values. Moreover, there’s no formal advertising campaign, and the site is much less polished. In addition, unlike its counterpart, it lacks photos of families, celebrities, and politicians proudly brandishing the product. “The Never Surrender” sneaker page is busy, tacky, and cluttered with multi-angle images of the gold footwear (which reportedly sold out within hours), low-top options (in “T-Red” and “POTUS White”), a gold Trump superhero charm, and his Victory47 fragrance line. Anyone familiar with the aesthetics of an urban beauty supply store will unquestionably identify deep resonances on the site. 

This raises some questions: Why did the Trump team choose sneakers over Bibles when looking to court Black voters? And why the local beauty supply store and not the storefront church?

In his recent piece outlining the Republican Party’s play on racial distinctions titled “How Trump is Dividing the Minority Voters,” Ronald Brownstein opens with a line from Republican Representative Matt Gaetz: “What I can tell you,” Gaetz said earlier this year, “is for every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and Jamal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement.” 

Racial coding and gender neutrality be damned! Brownstein rightfully notes that “Jamal,” along with “Julio,” are not only “stereotypical racial shorthand” but also gender-specific placeholders for “ Black and Latino men without a college degree”—namely, those “traditional,” cishetpat individuals who arguably may feel left behind in a so-called progressive, left-leaning, and woke America, but who aren’t entirely aligned with Trump, according to a February 2024 report from PRRI (full disclosure: I’m currently a PRRI Fellow). 

In addition to White evangelicals, the former president needs young, non-White males if he hopes to win the upcoming election. So, it’s unsurprising that when he appeared at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia this past February, although standing before a mixed crowd, including Trump-supporting Cheer Moms, his campaign hoped he would “win over more young and minority voters, particularly young Black men.” 

Or, as Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo now-famously stated: 

This [sneaker line] is connecting with Black America because they love sneakers. They’re into sneakers…This is a big deal, certainly in the inner city. So when you have Trump roll out his sneaker line, they’re like, ‘Wait a minute; this is cool!’ He’s reaching them on a level that defies and is above politics. The culture always trumps politics, and Trump understands culture like no politician I’ve ever seen.

The assumption that Sneaker Con and not the local church is the best place to capture new Black voters is a notable shift in American politics. But the Trump campaign opting to lure Black voters with gold lamé hightops rather than a Bible should give us pause. Whether it’s a pair of kicks or the KJV, Trump’s campaign strategy operates as a curious contemporary echo of the imperial Christianity and commodification of racial hierarchy that underwrote colonial expansionism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

To be clear: this is not an attempt to compare Trump’s campaign strategies to the transatlantic slave trade, but rather to acknowledge that there’s a shared cultural heritage or DNA. Or, as womanist theologian Katie Cannon showed, it is part of a “theologic of racialized normativity,” first implemented by the earliest European colonizer. Within this framework, the earliest European colonizers justified monetizing the spreading of the gospel through the free labor of colonization and slavery. Thinking about Trump’s grifting tactics in this light might help us understand why all of this matters, and should not be taken for granted as politics as usual.  

Could it be that, insidious racial stereotypes aside, the Trump Campaign understands, as Albert Raboteau wrote in 2003, that “For three centuries, white and black Americans have dwelt in the same land. For at least two of those centuries, they have shared the same religion. And yet, during all those years, their national and religious identities have been radically opposed”? 

Consequently, did they opt not to market their Bible to Black Christian America because they honestly know that there’s nothing in a Christian nationalist-laden KJV Bible that will critically, much less sincerely, work to repair the most crippling effects of the Black experience that originated with chattel slavery? If so, at least we can say that, in this respect at least, their honesty is refreshing.

https://religiondispatches.org/trumps-bibles-and-sneakers-campaigns-tell-an-old-story-about-the-role-of-race-in-christian-nationalism/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=daily

Moshiach --- The Delusional Poison That Is Chabad!

It might do well to start by drafting an estimated 8,300 current “full-time Torah students” who, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, are nothing of the kind — who, in a despicable scam, are not in fact genuinely studying in the institutions where they are registered and state-subsidized.

 

Evading national service in the Jewish state is the opposite of authentic Judaism

 

Belatedly outlawed by the High Court, the norm under which the Haredi community is excluded from its responsibilities is an indefensible aberration and a betrayal of Jewish values

 

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Police disperse ultra-Orthodox Jews blocking a highway during a protest against the military draft, in the central city of Bnei Brak, on June 20, 2024.

“There is no power in the world that can cut off the people of Israel from studying the Torah, and anyone who has tried this in the past has failed miserably. No high-handed ruling will abolish the community of scholars in the land of Israel, which is the branch on which we all sit.”

Thus spoke Knesset member Aryeh Deri, chairman of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Shas party and veteran former government minister, immediately after nine High Court judges had unanimously ruled on Tuesday that decades of blanket exclusion from military service for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men is Zionistically untenable, unequal, unfair and illegal, and has to end.

For all Deri’s ostensibly righteous — but actually blasphemous — indignation, nobody, but nobody, on the court or anywhere else in the Israeli leadership or public, is seeking to “cut off the people of Israel from studying the Torah” or “abolish the community of scholars in the land of Israel.” (The Shnorrers' Big Ugly Lie)

Indeed, few Israeli Jews doubt the centrality of Judaism to Israel’s very legitimacy: This is the only ancient and modern homeland of the Jewish people, who were sustained in exile for millennia by fealty to their faith, which has itself been maintained and rejuvenated by the constant study and contemporaneous interpretation and reexamination of its guiding texts.

Nobody needs Aryeh Deri, a recidivist criminal who is an insult to the precepts of Judaism, to tell them this.

Shas chair Aryeh Deri, right, and United Torah Judaism chair Yitzchak Goldknopf

What the nine High Court judges, secular and Orthodox alike, were actually seeking to do is to return the esteemed practice of Torah study to its genuine, traditional framework — as a core element, alongside a broad education and honest employment, in a rich and fulfilling life for all Jews who seek to pursue it, helping to guide its scholars in making their productive contributions to a robust and just society.

In contrast to centuries of Orthodox Jewish tradition, and in contrast to the abiding norm in Jewish communities around the world, only in Israel, and only in the past half-century, has full-time Torah study for the young male Haredi masses become the norm — an aberration indulged by secular politicians in exchange for alliances with the leadership of the growing ultra-Orthodox community, and exploited by the likes of Deri and his Ashkenazi counterpart Yitzchak Goldknopf to accrue power and influence, while condemning their constituents to blinkered, narrowly educated and impoverished lives.

That ultra-Orthodox rabbis have partnered their political representatives in this deviation — insisting that their publics must not share in the practical burden of the defense of our homeland, indeed must not perform any form of national service, and must be subsidized in their isolationism by those who do serve and who do pursue gainful employment and who do pay taxes — constitutes a terrible vote of no-confidence in their approach to Judaism:

Is Israel’s energized and diverse society so compelling, and their separationist approach to the faith so fragile, that to permit their constituents to integrate into the military and the workforce — tolerant and welcoming environments, widely respectful of a multitude of different approaches to life — would be so devastating and so destructive as to necessitate hysterical opposition at any and all cost?

Worse still, by insisting that all young ultra-Orthodox men be subsidized by the state to which they feel such ambivalence if not outright derisive hostility, and that all young ultra-Orthodox men be exempted from any kind of national service, they are undermining the other millennia-old Orthodox tradition in which the very best and brightest of scholars are subsidized by the rest of the community, so as to be able to devote all their time and exceptional skills to the advancement of Torah study.

That tradition was respected at the foundation of the modern state by its first prime minister David Ben Gurion, who exempted what he understood to be 400 yeshiva students from military service, conscious of the decimation of the world of Torah study as a consequence of the Holocaust. Twenty years later, there were still only 800 such exemptions. But in 1977, the government of Menachem Begin lifted the restrictions, and today there are some 63,000 eligible ultra-Orthodox men of military age who are not serving.

A man holds a sign reading ‘It would be better for our children to be killed than to become secular’ during a protest by ultra-Orthodox men against IDF conscription, outside the city of Bnei Brak

Never in the modern history of Israel has there been a greater need for all elements of society to pull their weight in the defense of the nation. Israel is fighting wars or bracing for wars on multiple fronts — against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, terrorists in the West Bank, militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis… The standing army is at full stretch. Tens of thousands of reservists have been at the front for months — separated from their families, away from their jobs. So acute is the strain that the government is busy legislating to demand still more reserve duty to still later an age.

And yet the ultra-Orthodox leadership maintains its refusal to negotiate an arrangement with the government to ensure that the community plays its role in the practical protection of the Jewish state and maintains the pursuit of Jewish scholarship.

Police disperse ultra-Orthodox Jews blocking a highway during a protest against the military draft, in the central city of Bnei Brak

Such an arrangement would, of course, benefit all parties interested in the well-being of this precious country, most emphatically including the ultra-Orthodox community itself — taking an appreciated, constructive role in the vibrant functioning of this extraordinary, and currently extraordinarily threatened nation.

The army is not capable of tomorrow absorbing the tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men who are now, in light of Tuesday’s ruling, required to play their role in the defense of Israel. It might do well to start by drafting an estimated 8,300 current “full-time Torah students” who, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, are nothing of the kind — who, in a despicable scam (Hebrew link), are not in fact genuinely studying in the institutions where they are registered and state-subsidized.

Shaarei Yitzhak yeshiva students on a 2023 skiing trip to Bulgaria

But ultimately all of Haredi society — – 13 percent of the populace and rising fast — and, indeed, all of Israeli society must be obligated to fulfill its responsibilities to the protection of the nation.

After decades of cat-and-mouse games with the politicians, the High Court belatedly on Tuesday took a stand in favor of both authentic Judaism and the survival and flourishing of our imperiled state.

Aryeh Deri and his ilk are not only on the wrong side of Zionist tenability, equality, fairness and legality; they are on the wrong side of authentic Judaism. Of course they are. Because authentic Judaism, as opposed to their self-serving distorted version, stands for precisely such values.

כמה משלמת המדינה כדי שחרדים יישארו בישיבות

https://www.mako.co.il/news-channel12?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/evading-national-service-in-the-jewish-state-is-the-opposite-of-authentic-judaism/?utm_source=Special+Update&utm_campaign=special-update-2024-07-07&utm_medium=email

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The Reform Rabbi --- "I urge Jews of all stripes to drill down to what keeps them Jewish" --- New York Wise Guy Hershel $chachter - "Judai$m My Way or the Highway"

 

The anguished dilemma of a Reform rabbi - No anguish from Hershel Schachter and his "Orthodox" minions!

 

Jews are a particular people with a universal message – If we abandon our particularity, we risk losing ourselves

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  Hershel Schachter's "jew" Celebrating Xmas After Halachic Fraud
  

  
  
  

  
  

Reform Rabbi - Against the notion that you can have 'Judaism your way'

 

How long do I remain a Reform Jew if the institutions of Reform Judaism stray into territories that are untenable for me ideologically?

This past week, the Reform movement’s seminary, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, decided to overturn a long-standing ban and barrier and ordain students who are in committed relationships with non-Jews. That decision was not surprising, given the growing tendency of the Reform movement to prioritize universalism over peoplehood and the needs of the individual over those of the larger community.

We, as a movement, have been justifiably embracing of interfaith families. But that does not mean the rabbi should be permitted to be in such a relationship. Rabbis hold a unique role in the community and ought to be models of Jewish commitment, reflecting the endogamous (in-married) custom and law of our people.

This decision by the HUC Board of Governors reflects a historic crisis in the Reform movement.

Judaism stands on a three-legged stool. If you remove one leg, the stool cannot stand. Those three legs are God, Torah, and Israel (the people and the land). (Schachter's Broken Third Leg)

I recently came upon an expression used in a fundraising letter for the Union for Reform Judaism: “Judaism your way.” It’s hard to imagine anything more antithetical to Judaism than “Judaism your way.” After all, it was in the first person plural that our ancestors stood at Sinai and said, “We will do and we will hear!” (Exodus 24:7). To live Jewishly is to be engaged with the Jewish people.

A product of the Reform movement and a practicing Reform rabbi for nearly thirty years, I owe the very basis of my Jewish education from childhood to graduate school and ordination to institutions in which Jewish history, theology, practice (both the dos and the don’ts), and Hebrew were all central. I learned that to be a Reform Jew meant to be an informed Jew, a proud Zionist, and someone seriously engaged with our Jewish community.

“Judaism your way” – further demonstrated by HUC’s decision regarding rabbinical students – causes me to worry about the future of liberal Judaism: placing the ultra-individualism of American society above the essence of Jewishness.

Reform Judaism was founded to stem the tide of assimilation and to form a Judaism guided by Jewish law without always being beholden to it. Despite breaking from religious authority, Reform Judaism never rejected the importance of community and Jewish peoplehood. Although it gave the individual power to make informed choices, the goal was always to be connected to the Jewish people.

The movement has both suffered and excelled because of its emphasis on the individual. Yet today, this more explicit call replaces the communal with the individual – and the individual is rarely expected to find ways to serve the community. Given the current crisis faced by half the world’s Jews living in our people’s homeland, this is precisely the moment to prioritize the needs of the communal over the individual and to return to the three-legged stool of Jewish life.

While visiting relatives in Israel recently, we discussed their granddaughter’s future army service. I was impressed that instead of entering the army for mandatory service immediately after high school, she, like many of her peers, had volunteered to serve the country in a social service capacity for a year and then begin her military conscription. For those who follow such a path, their total commitment to the country increases by three to five years, depending on gender and branch of service. Israeli teenagers assume that serving the state is part of life.

By contrast, we American Jews do not expect the next generation to consider how they will serve their community. Many of us who serve as Jewish professionals tend to spend more time worrying about providing “Judaism your way” than helping or even demanding that individual Jews work their way into normative Jewish life.

I grew up in an era of activism on behalf of oppressed Soviet Jewry. Counselors from my Reform summer camp who had moved to Israel were regarded as heroes. While I knew I was growing up in a Reform milieu, I also knew that being Jewish meant belonging to a people, feeling a connection to our ancestral land, and approaching Judaism with rigor and reflection.

But a shift has occurred in the past two decades. A few weeks ago, a younger colleague referred to me – or at least to my ideas – as “antiquated.” I have come to take that comment as a compliment.

We now live in an era in which many Jewish educators and rabbis highlight universal Jewish values and present them as the driving force of Jewish living – or sometimes even as its only purpose. And so, biblical concepts like “created in the image of God,” “love your neighbor as yourself,” and “justice, justice you shall pursue” become the rallying cry for a form of Judaism that seeks to advance a progressive vision of society. It became commonplace to break Shabbat for an AIDS Walk or a solidarity march with Black Lives Matter. Given that progressive vision, permitting exogamy for rabbinical students becomes predictable.

Some years ago, I delivered a Rosh Hashanah sermon about the need to be better caretakers of the earth. Given that the Jewish New Year celebrates the birthday of the world, I thought it perfectly appropriate to draw connections between Jewish text and the wisdom of grounding our responsible actions in those words.

I would not give that sermon today, not because the earth doesn’t need attention (see: Genesis 2) but because people are constantly hearing that message in their secular lives. Instead, Jews coming to temple need to explore the teachings of Torah, God, Zionism, and peoplehood. While I am not suggesting we abdicate our communal and universal obligations – after all, they are part of the 613 mitzvot – I urge Jews of all stripes to drill down to what keeps them Jewish, how they reinforce their connection to our people, and what can we do as individuals to uplift the whole.

Much the way the National Transportation Safety Board comes in after a train wreck to assess the cause and the damage, Reform Judaism needs to assess what happened to allow our movement to “go off the rails.” Today the Reform movement’s leaders will issue statements about a Supreme Court decision or a presidential executive order but say little if anything when antisemitic demonstrations threaten college campuses. In their silence, they fail to communicate to our congregations and youth – let alone the world at large – our commitment to Judaism, Zionism, and the Jewish State.

The Jewish people are a particular people with a universal message. Our universal message promotes caring about the other and extending love and kindness. Yet our particularity keeps us engaged and informed, loyal and dedicated to the rituals, ideas, beliefs, and practices that reflect our 3,000-year-old covenant with God and one another. The three legs of the Jewish stool are the anchors by which Jewish individuals and families find meaning and bring our heritage to life.

Part of the strength of the Jewish people is believing that each generation could be the last. The twentieth-century Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz called us “the ever-dying people.” Indeed, either because of forces from the outside or forces from within, we are seemingly forever on the verge of extinction. A sense of preeminent individualism, disengagement from the Jewish people beyond one’s temple, and the notion that you can have “Judaism your way” – including for clerical leaders – all make for an increasingly thin Reform Judaism, let alone Judaism. I know that I am not alone among Reform Jewish professionals and lay people who share these concerns. Together, we recognize the imperative of embracing the “particulars” that define Judaism and making the Jewish people the centerpiece of our thinking and our behavior. Maybe we, Reform Jews, need to be a bit more antiquated. As long as we do, then a Reform Jew, I remain. 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-anguished-dilemma-of-a-reform-rabbi/

The Unlikely Founders of The State of Israel | Rabbi Berel Wein

Western civilization is being destroyed by its own decadence! And boy do they want the only decent, peace-exporting country in the whole Middle East – Israel – to fail.

 

 One doesn’t always appreciate what one has until it’s too late. Cheaters look upon their wrecked families and suddenly see that their pre-affair life was comparatively idyllic. Youth is famously wasted on the young, who use their health and energy to binge on toxic substances and attempt to be as miserable as possible.

A similar phenomenon is at play in the politics of the West. We have built the most peaceful, most prosperous, most humane, most progressive civilisation the world has ever known, after centuries of battle – physical, moral and philosophical; carnage and bloodshed.

And now, just 80 years after Auschwitz and 30-odd years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are apparently already bored of our hard-won liberty and stability. The zeitgeist of the current age is to smash things up while pretending to be building a better world.

Only, as some are beginning to find out, what begins as a performative theory of progressivism ends up in murder, mayhem and misery.

An interesting case study is emerging in Portland, Oregon, where far-Left politics and hard-Left thugs meet violent alt-Righters and skinhead gangs. Once a prosperous city on America’s famously idyllic Pacific north-west coast, it’s become a nightmare that people are leaving in droves.

After the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd – and the insistence that the police were America’s front-running racism delivery service – Portland’s police force was “defunded”, the city’s top prosecutor refused to press charges for low-level crime, and, in 2021, most drug possession was decriminalised.

The result was not the paradise of “equity” that activists were demanding, but rampant homicide rates, a hugely worsening opioid and drug addiction crisis (deaths from opioid overdoses have tripled), the further sprawl of homeless tent encampments, and a general escalation in violence, with car theft having rocketed (30 vehicles a day are reported stolen, according to a report in the Times), along with car and shop window smashing.

In the name of the “safety” of promoting “anti-racism”, Portland has become such a dangerous place that businesspeople are leaving in droves. “Our stores are being broken into. Our merchandise is being taken,” a local businessman told the city council in November 2022. “Our employees can’t go into the office, even if they want to, because they don’t feel safe.”

Having had something so good, and then, through unforgivable decadence, destroyed it (with the bodycount to match), however, Portland is now changing its tune. The drug decriminalisation law has been reversed, low-level crime is once again prosecuted, and the police have been re-funded.

But I’m not just worried about the harm being done to cities and everyday life by social justice ideology – which in the UK is visible in our scaredy-cat approach to stop and search, lenient attitude towards illegal immigrants from countries known to export terror and for the mistreatment of women, and the refusal to tackle low-level crime and shoplifting.

It’s also our stupidity and hubris on the world stage – our grandstanding about meaningless utterances of “peace” and “provocation”. We are forgetting why it is that the free world managed to triumph in the 20th century.

Last week, Nigel Farage outed himself as deeply unfit for leadership by piping the same line as other populists in Europe and the United States: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is effectively our fault because, through Nato expansion, we had “poked” the Russian bear (the accurate reading is that Putin was never “poked”, he is a bloodthirsty madman taking advantage of Western weakness to attack and colonise).

Meanwhile, the soft and useless Left that run the vast majority of international institutions have perhaps read too much postcolonial theory and – while they do tend to champion Ukraine against Russia – they also want, in general, to let rogues, dictators and repressive societies be, while opening the floodgates to an unvetted sea of people fleeing those countries.

And boy do they want the only decent, peace-exporting country in the whole Middle East – Israel – to fail.

Whichever way you look at it, the people in charge, or who are trying to be in charge, don’t get it. Too distanced from the horrors of the 20th century; too comfortable in the stable, peaceful and free societies fought for through blood and tears by their forefathers and mothers, they are embracing appeasement, in the name of a “peace” that literally translates into the triumph of those who want to destroy us.

They remain wilfully blind to the very important lesson of 1945: getting tough on baddies is the only path to meaningful peace.

Instead of shoring our civilisation up, and realising that preserving our societies is a constant battle against forces that want to destroy them, we are choosing to bring our best traditions, institutions and culture to the heel of rotten concepts like populism and isolationism (on the Right), and intersectionality (a Venn diagram of victim statuses), white privilege, equity, inclusion, and a ludicrous gender ideology movement venerating a bewildering array of identities on the Left.

The cost of all this foolery is real and it is apparent. The chickens we’ve laid at home and abroad are already coming home to roost.   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ar-BB1p7LFw

Jewish law has plenty to say about lying — and it certainly does not recommend doing nothing.

"The problem of an unchecked lie matters for all Americans, but it especially matters for the Jewish community — because the big lie of Jewish power, and the antisemitism that often follows it, thrives in an environment where flagrant lies are acceptable."

Trump’s lies are more dangerous than ever — does Jewish law have a solution?

 

After the first presidential debate, it’s clear that Americans must take the threat of a public culture defined by lies seriously

Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made one thing clear: American citizens must figure out how to define and react to a lie, with a particular emphasis on reaction. 

Two of America’s most seasoned journalists, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper — both of whom happen to be Jewish — failed to respond to egregious lies during the debate, highlighting that lies are our greatest social and political challenge, and that non-response to them has wrongly become a norm. 

Jewish law has plenty to say about lying — and it certainly does not recommend doing nothing.

One of the things it points out: Facing a skilled liar head-on can be tough. And when it comes to facing someone like Trump, whose lies have recently earned him a conviction on 34 felony counts, it’s debatable whether he should have the opportunity to show off that skill set.

“Halakhah (Jewish law) treats ordinary lying as a vice, and lying in court as a crime for both witnesses and judges,” said Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, Dean of the Center for Modern Torah Leadership. “Criminally convicted liars lose core privileges of citizenship such as the right to testify. They may also be prevented from taking oaths, which can put them at a disadvantage in business.”

Yet if anything, Trump’s lies seemed to give him an edge on his opponent; left unconstrained, he was free to perform. 

“I’m not sure I’d ever watched Donald Trump lie so incessantly, extravagantly and unabashedly, and that’s saying something,” Frank Bruni wrote in The New York Times. “On Thursday night he lied about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He lied about the violence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He lied about his relationship with the military, about his concern for the environment — about pretty much any and every subject that came up. He lied with a smile. He lied with a shrug. He lied with a sneer.” 

When Trump twisted the truth until it sounded like Democrats support killing babies on arrival, the feminist writer Jessica Valenti wrote on X, “I’m sorry, but Trump just claimed that Democrats allow “after birth” abortion and the moderators’ only response was “thank you”???”

The problem of an unchecked lie matters for all Americans, but it especially matters for the Jewish community — because the big lie of Jewish power, and the antisemitism that often follows it, thrives in an environment where flagrant lies are acceptable.

So what does Judaism have to say about lying? Plenty.

Trump’s lies and Jewish law

I was interested in hearing more about “core privileges of citizenship” that a criminally convicted liar might lose.

“Being judges,” Rabbi Klapper said. “The ability to take an oath was an essential part of participating in public life, because otherwise you couldn’t defend yourself or your property in many situations.”

At what point do we as citizens believe that lying precludes a person from “participating in public life” — like, perhaps, being featured in televised debates? Or being eligible to run for president?

Jewish law also outlines potential physical punishment for lying in court; “Perjured witnesses can also be given lashes, like most halakhic criminals,” Klapper said. But Rabbi Klapper cautioned that such punishment was extremely rare. And of course, this was ancient law — not modern practice.

There is also the famous and, as Rabbi Klapper put it, “weird” case of eidim zomemim, or witnesses who lie. 

“Eidim zomemim are dealt the very same punishment they intended to generate with their false testimony,” writes Rav Moshe Taragin of Torat Har Etzion, summarizing the views of Masekhet Makkot. “For example, if eidim zomemim conspired to obligate capital punishment, they themselves are executed; if they intended to cause financial loss, they must reimburse their intended victim.” 

It’s one of the most unforgettable parts of Jewish law, which shocked me when I first encountered it as a child: If you go to court and undertake a conspiracy to wrongly bring the death penalty upon your innocent neighbor, you might pay with your life for trying to take away his. This extraordinary expression of the high value Judaism places on the truth also shows that Jewish law believes that a liar who meaningfully harms others in a court of law should be penalized.

Thinking about eidim zomemim reminded me of Trump’s involvement in the infamous case of the Central Park Five. After five Black teenagers were arrested on rape charges — which turned out to be false — Trump took out full-page newspaper ads urging that they receive the death penalty.

Even when it was clearly established that the teenagers, who served 6 to 13 years in prison, had been falsely accused, and even when a serial rapist was linked to the crime through DNA evidence and confessed, Trump faced no consequences. And he continued to bear down, and continued to suggest the Central Park Five deserved harsh punishment. “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt. If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case. So we’ll leave it at that,” Trump said in 2019.

Jewish principles regarding eidim zomemim acknowledge that a lie can be damaging and even lethal to others. The idea is worth considering: Certain kinds of lies are a clear and plain danger to life itself.

That was clearly the case in Trump’s involvement in the case of the Central Park Five; it remains so today, as he amply demonstrated in the debate. Consider his lie, highlighted by Valenti, that Democrats support the “abortion” of babies after they are born; such distortions are a direct threat to the lives of people whose pregnancies threaten their health, as maternal mortality is already on the rise amid a national crackdown on abortion rights. 

Returning to the Torah

It’s worth taking another look at the verses in the Torah that address lying. “Leviticus 19:11 forbids lying and Exodus 23 commands us to go even further and distance ourselves from lies,” said Klapper.

There is a danger to having our public lives so structured by lies and liars — and particularly to having such a pernicious one in our living rooms, on national television, and in the Oval Office. 

In 2016, Trump’s outrageousness was rewarded with the presidency. Over the past four years, many of us have let fade the memory of the profound rot in our culture that followed his first term in office; the sense of rot we felt in our own souls. This time, we cannot treat his lies with the same cavalier attitude. We owe it to the U.S. — and the world — to react.

https://forward.com/opinion/628743/trumps-lies-debate-biden/?