An Open Letter to Donald Trump

 

Mr. President,

You have gilded your name in brass and glass from Manhattan to Las Vegas. You have stamped it on towers, golf courses, steaks, and skylines. But history is not impressed by signage. It is impressed by rupture. By men who understood that their moment was not about branding but about breaking something dangerous before it broke the world.

Your legacy will not be measured in square footage. It will be measured in centrifuges.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has waged a four-decade war against the West not merely with slogans, but with strategy. It funds and arms Hamas and Hezbollah. It stains the map of the Middle East with proxies and missiles. It has turned ancient Persia into a modern theology of death, exporting revolution while its own people suffocate under clerical rule.

You understood something many in Washington preferred to forget: that appeasement dressed up as diplomacy is still appeasement. When you withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, you shattered the polite illusion that a regime built on “Death to America” could be bribed into moderation. You did not treat Tehran as misunderstood. You treated it as adversarial.

History will judge whether you finished that thought.

Because dismantling Iran does not mean reckless war. It means clarity. It means recognizing that the regime’s nuclear ambition is not a bargaining chip but a doctrine. It means understanding that a theocracy armed with intercontinental reach is not a regional nuisance but a civilizational threat. It means aligning American power—economic, diplomatic, covert, and, if necessary, military—with the singular objective of preventing a regime of apocalyptic theology from acquiring apocalyptic weapons.

There are moments when restraint is wisdom. There are moments when restraint is surrender wearing a tuxedo.

The Iranian people themselves are not the enemy. They have risen in protest, chanting for freedom against their own rulers. They are heirs to Cyrus, poets, merchants, students who risk prison for the crime of wanting normalcy. The regime fears them more than it fears sanctions. A strategy that isolates the mullahs while amplifying the aspirations of the Iranian public is not imperialism; it is moral alignment with history’s long arc away from tyranny.

Mr. President, you have always understood optics. Understand this optic: if the Islamic Republic crosses the nuclear threshold on America’s watch—any watch—the Middle East becomes a multipolar nuclear bazaar. Saudi Arabia will not sit idle. Turkey will not pretend indifference. Israel will not outsource its survival. The fragile architecture of deterrence collapses into a regional arms race with theological overtones.

And if that happens, no tower bearing your name will look tall enough to cast a shadow over it.

You have often spoken of strength—of projecting it, of restoring it, of refusing to apologize for it. Strength is not measured only by tariffs and rallies. It is measured by whether an American president recognizes that some regimes cannot be managed; they must be contained, rolled back, or fundamentally transformed.

You once moved an embassy to Jerusalem, signaling that symbolic lines on a map can become permanent when backed by conviction. The Iranian question is not symbolic. It is structural. It is the hinge upon which the next half-century of Middle Eastern stability will turn.

This is not a call for impulsiveness. It is a call for doctrine. A clear declaration that the United States will never permit the clerical regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons—and that this is not negotiable across administrations, across parties, across news cycles.

Men who build towers leave monuments. Men who dismantle threats leave peace.

If you wish your name to echo beyond the skyline, let it be attached to the moment America finally closed the nuclear file on the Islamic Republic—not with hopeful signatures, but with irreversible reality.

History is not asking how many buildings carry your brand.

It is asking whether you understood the scale of the threat—and acted accordingly.

 Sincerely,

Paul Mendlowitz 

Cc; The White House   REPUBLISHED   https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-open-letter-to-donald-trump/

America’s Interests Will Not Always Align - Why Israel Must Be Prepared to Go It Alone

 

A dangerous lullaby is being sung in Hebrew and English on both sides of the ocean. It goes like this: America will always be there. The melody is reassuring, almost parental. It has the tone of permanence. But it is not history. It is hope masquerading as strategy. And Jewish history is merciless toward those who confuse the two.

For more than seventy-five years, Israel has lived beneath the protective shadow of the American eagle. Military aid, diplomatic cover, vetoes at the United Nations, joint exercises, intelligence cooperation, Iron Dome funding, aircraft carriers stationed in the Mediterranean like steel mezuzot affixed to the doorposts of the Jewish state. The relationship is real, deep, and unprecedented in Jewish history. But in real life relationships change in scope, narrative, needs, interests and motives.

To say this is not an accusation against the United States. It is an observation about how great powers behave. America is a superpower with global obligations: China, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, oil routes, trade corridors, domestic political cycles, public opinion, and an ingrained reluctance for open-ended wars in distant deserts. At some point—whether in five years or fifteen—a president will sit in the Oval Office and ask a question no Israeli prime minister wants to hear: Is stopping Iran worth risking American lives, American bases, American elections, and American stability? The honest American answer may be no. Not because America hates Israel, but because America is not Israel.

At the moment, Washington and Jerusalem share overlapping concerns: Iranian expansionism, terror proxies, regional instability. But this alignment is conditional. If Iran becomes, in American eyes, a containable nuclear power rather than an imminent one; if Hamas becomes a manageable nuisance rather than a catalyst for regional war; if American voters grow weary of Middle Eastern entanglements; if China becomes the overriding strategic obsession—the calculus changes. For America, a nuclear Iran may become a problem to be managed. For Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential clock. These are not the same category of threat. Pretending that they are is a form of strategic self-deception.

Here an uncomfortable Jewish reflex must be confronted. Jews have a long and tragic habit of believing that powerful nations will ultimately protect Jewish continuity because doing so is moral, rational, and mutually beneficial. Spain. Germany. Russia. France. Poland. The pattern is painfully familiar: they need us, they value us, they understand. Until the moment they do not. 

 The entire purpose of Jewish sovereignty was to end this reflex. The founding idea of Israel was radical in its simplicity: the Jews would never again outsource their survival to the goodwill, political moods, or fatigue of another nation.

Yet, quietly and comfortably, Israel has slipped back into a familiar psychological posture. America will restrain Iran. America will deter Hezbollah. America will manage Hamas. America will supply the munitions and apply the diplomatic pressure. America will draw the red lines. But America draws red lines with erasable ink. Israel writes them in blood.

Tehran understands this dynamic with unnerving clarity. The Iranian regime is patient, strategic, and civilizational in its thinking. It is not trying to defeat America; it is trying to outlast America’s interest. Each year, it enriches a little more uranium, arms Hezbollah a little more heavily, strengthens its regional proxies, and watches American elections, American divisions, and American fatigue. The calculation is chillingly simple: if they wait long enough, the day will come when America decides this is no longer worth the trouble. On that day, Israel will face a problem that can no longer be postponed.

The Hamas catastrophe exposed more than a security failure. It revealed a conceptual one. Israel convinced itself that Hamas could be contained through deterrence, intelligence, and a stable regional equilibrium underwritten by American power. But enemies animated by theology, grievance, and martyrdom do not operate by the logic of containment. They operate by the logic of destiny. Iran and its proxies are not trying to manage the conflict. They are trying to reshape the region over decades. America manages. Iran endures. Israel cannot afford to be the manager in a struggle where its enemies are zealots.

This leads to a thought Israeli leadership is reluctant to voice publicly: there may come a moment when Israel must choose between waiting for American approval that will not come, or acting alone and absorbing the diplomatic, economic, and military consequences. That moment is not a distant hypothetical. It is the predictable outcome of how alliances evolve. Every empire eventually recalculates its interests. When it does, it does not ask Jerusalem for permission.

To speak of “going it alone” is not a call for recklessness or ingratitude. It is a call for psychological independence. Israel must cultivate the capacity—military, economic, and political—to act in a scenario where American support is delayed, diluted, or denied. This means independent strike capabilities, stockpiles sufficient for sustained conflict, strategic doctrines not reliant on Washington’s green light, and a political culture that understands the real cost of sovereignty. Sovereignty is not tested when your ally agrees with you. It is tested when they do not.

There is also a moral dimension deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. Classical Jewish law does not treat delay in the face of mortal danger as prudence; it treats it as negligence. When a threat to Jewish life is imminent, waiting for external permission is not piety. It is abdication. Jewish history did not assume Rome’s approval before defending Jewish lives. It is not obvious why Jerusalem should assume Washington’s.

One can easily imagine a headline a decade from now: U.S. Urges Restraint as Israel Considers Action Against Iran. The phrase “urges restraint” is diplomatic shorthand for something far more consequential: this is your problem now. On that day, Israel will either be prepared for independent action, or it will discover that it spent decades confusing alliance with insurance.

Alliances are blessings. The American–Israeli alliance is one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern history. But alliances are never substitutes for self-reliance. America is Israel’s greatest ally. It is not eternal, not uniform in its politics, and not bound by Jewish fate. Israel is. And only Israel is.

The greatest danger to Israel is not Iranian uranium or Hamas rockets. It is the quiet, comforting belief that someone else will ultimately handle the decisive moment. That belief has followed the Jewish people for two thousand years. It should not be allowed to take root again in the era of Jewish sovereignty.

 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-israel-must-be-prepared-to-go-it-alone/

The Era of No Orthodox Jewish Leadership

We are living in the most religiously crowded and spiritually leaderless era in Orthodox Jewish history.

There are more rabbis than ever, more roshei yeshiva than ever, more kollelim, more batei medrash, more seforim, more shiurim, more conferences, more proclamations. And yet, there is less leadership than ever.

Because leadership is not measured by how loudly one can forbid. Leadership is measured by what one is willing to confront. And nothing real is being confronted.

The Orthodox world today has authorities. It has committees, letterheads, signatures, bans, and gatherings about smartphones, internet filters, artificial intelligence, tznius, music, wigs, and hemlines. But it does not have a single figure willing to stand up and say: we have built a system that is collapsing under its own dishonesty.

No one is addressing the economic suffocation of families crushed under tuition and housing while being told this is the ideal Torah life. No one is addressing the institutionalized dependency created by the “learn forever” model that was never meant to be universal, never meant to be permanent, and never meant to be financed by magical thinking.

No one is addressing the thousands of young men quietly drowning in a system built for the elite but forced upon the masses. No one is addressing the girls raised to marry learning without being told who will pay the rent. No one is addressing the silent crisis of men who feel like failures because they cannot live up to a model that was never realistic to begin with.

No one is addressing the rabbinic culture of pretending everything is working, because admitting it is not would require moral courage. Leadership would mean saying: we made mistakes. And that is something today’s Orthodox leadership cannot afford to say.

So instead, they manage optics. They manage narratives. They manage image. They manage their tens of millions of dollars in tax free real estate!

They fight the internet because the internet exposes reality. They fight AI because AI exposes questions. They fight anything that allows ordinary Jews to think without permission. But they do not fight the one thing that is destroying the community from within: the myth that this system is sustainable, honest, and ideal for everyone.

In previous generations, rabbinic leaders confronted reality. The Rambam fought the misuse of Torah. The Vilna Gaon fought corruption. Rav Hirsch rebuilt Torah with dignity inside modernity. Rav Shraga Feivel built institutions that prepared Jews to function in the world, not hide from it.

Today’s leadership fights Wi-Fi. Because Wi-Fi is easier than truth.

You can ban a device. You cannot ban a question. You can sign a letter. You cannot sign away reality.

You can gather thirty rabbis to discuss the dangers of artificial intelligence. You cannot gather one rabbi willing to discuss the dangers of intellectual dishonesty. And so we have entered an unprecedented era: an era where Torah scholarship is abundant, but Torah leadership is absent.

Torah leadership requires risk. It requires the willingness to be hated for telling the truth. It requires the willingness to lose honor, lose donations, lose control, lose myth. It requires saying to a generation: we must course-correct.

Instead, we are told everything is fine. Just learn more. Give more. Obey more. Ask less. And the community feels it.

The young feel it most of all. They are not rebelling because they hate Torah. They are suffocating because they do not see honesty. They do not see adults willing to admit complexity. They do not see leaders willing to speak plainly. They do not see anyone willing to say that Torah and reality were never meant to be enemies.

So they leave. Or worse, they stay and go numb. This is not a crisis of faith. This is a crisis of credibility.

Orthodox Judaism does not suffer from a lack of observance. It suffers from a lack of courageous rabbinic integrity. The tragedy is that everyone knows it. The donors know it. The parents know it. The rebbeim know it. The roshei yeshiva know it. And the students know it.

But no one at the top can say it, because saying it would require leadership. And leadership today is replaced by administration. Administration preserves systems. Leadership reforms them.

We have administrators. We do not have leaders.

And until someone with rabbinic stature stands up and says publicly and unequivocally, “we must rethink the model—not the internet, the model,” this era will be remembered as the strangest chapter in Orthodox history: When Torah was everywhere, and leadership was nowhere. 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-era-of-no-orthodox-jewish-leadership/

"Moshav leitzim" --- where a company of people literally doing nothing else than engaging in frivolty and lightheaded, empty speech ---- The Technology Circus - Part Two!

 

What is a Moshav Leitzim? (Avodah Zarah 18b): “One who goes to a  circus or to a house of laughter

A second asifa addressing the growing impact of artificial intelligence was held Thursday night in Lakewood, drawing senior dreaming rabbinic artificial unintelligent leadership and continuing a discussion that began earlier this week.

The gathering focused on concerns surrounding AI-driven calling, texting, and content generation, and followed an initial asifah that drew dozens of leading rabbanim and roshei yeshiva, where the gedolim called for a yom taanis u’tefillah over the threats posed by AI. A date has not been set for when that will take place.

Thursday night’s meeting featured remarks from Rav Elyah Ber Wachtfogel, Rav Malkiel Kotler and Rav Yisroel Newman, who addressed both the technological and hashkafic implications of artificial intelligence.

During his remarks, Rav Yisroel Newman warned that artificial intelligence poses dangers he described as more severe than those associated with the general internet. Rav Malkiel addressed the use of AI in Torah learning, stating that Torah learned through AI-generated means would not warrant a bracha, characterizing such a bracha as a berachah levatalah.

 

* 

 

Leitzim Versus Baalei (Hashem Yisborech's) Daas..... 

 

AI can now use sleep to predict your medical future

In A Nutshell

• Stanford researchers trained an AI model on sleep recordings from 65,000+ people and found it could predict risk for 130 diseases years before diagnosis
• The system achieved 84% accuracy for predicting mortality risk and similar high accuracy for dementia, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, and other conditions
• Sleep recordings capture hidden patterns across brain activity, heart rhythms, breathing, and muscle movements that signal future health problems
• The findings suggest polysomnography may eventually become a powerful early detection tool, though current sleep studies require specialized clinical equipment

Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that can predict a person’s risk of developing conditions ranging from dementia to heart failure by analyzing a single night of sleep data. The findings suggest that sleep patterns contain far more information about future health than previously recognized.

Researchers at Stanford University and collaborators trained an AI model called SleepFM on polysomnography recordings from more than 65,000 people, representing over 585,000 hours of sleep data. Polysomnography is the gold standard sleep study that records brain activity, heart rhythms, breathing patterns, and muscle movements throughout the night.

After analyzing these overnight recordings, the model identified elevated future risk for 130 medical conditions, often years before clinical diagnosis. For all-cause mortality, the system achieved a concordance index of 0.84, meaning it correctly ranked patient risk 84% of the time. Similar accuracy emerged for dementia (0.85), heart attack (0.81), heart failure (0.80), chronic kidney disease (0.79), stroke (0.78), and atrial fibrillation (0.78).

“Sleep is a fundamental biological process with broad implications for physical and mental health, yet its complex relationship with disease remains poorly understood,” the researchers wrote in their paper published in Nature Medicine.

AI Analyzes Multiple Sleep Signals Simultaneously

The study examined sleep recordings from four major research cohorts spanning ages 1 to 100 years. Traditional sleep studies focus on specific disorders like sleep apnea or measure isolated metrics. SleepFM takes a different approach by processing all physiological signals simultaneously—brain wave patterns, eye movements, heart activity, muscle tone, and breathing measurements.

The system breaks down sleep recordings into five-second segments, analyzing patterns across different signal types to identify which combinations predict future disease. For disease prediction, researchers paired Stanford sleep recordings with electronic health records containing diagnostic codes and timestamps. They only counted cases where diagnosis occurred at least seven days after the sleep study to avoid detecting existing conditions.

 

Strong Predictions Across Major Disease Categories

SleepFM demonstrated particularly strong predictive power for neurological and mental health conditions, including mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson’s disease. Among cardiovascular conditions, the system effectively predicted hypertensive heart disease and intracranial hemorrhage. Cancer-related risk prediction showed promising associations for prostate cancer, breast cancer, and skin melanomas.

The model maintained accuracy when tested on sleep recordings from 2020 onwards, a period entirely excluded from training. This validation included strong performance for death (0.83), heart failure (0.80), and dementia (0.83).

 These findings reveal that a single night’s sleep contains a wealth of information about future health across numerous conditions. Sleep patterns may serve as an early warning signal for diseases that won’t manifest for years, offering potential opportunities for earlier intervention and prevention.

MORE: https://studyfinds.org/scientists-decode-sleep-patterns-to-forecast-future-health-risks/?

Preventive or Preemptive? The Pros and Cons of a Potential US Strike on Iran

AI has lots of resources with which to understand the Torah, so working on a Torah commentary gives you a better chance for an accurate translation. What makes a text a good candidate for AI translation at this stage? Why did you end up pursuing Kli Yakar?

 

Kli Yakar on Genesis

https://www.sefaria.org/Kli_Yakar_on_Genesis%2C_Introduction.1?lang=bi

To learn more about Sefaria's usage of AI, visit sefaria.org/ai.

 

Interested to hear about more developments at the intersection of Torah and technology? Sign up for email updates from Sefaria, or follow us on Facebook

 

Ohrbit 

Orthodox Union launches AI-powered Torah learning app

Orthodox Union Digital Media

 

 

 

 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ou.org.torahai&hl=en_US

 

READ THE FULL Q&A

The "Elefant" In The Room --- Taking Shameless BS to Unprecedented Heights!

WATCH:From this past week’s Agudah Yerushalayim Yarchei Kallah 5786, a Q & A Panel on Contemporary Hashkafah Issues with Rav Yosef Elefant and Rav Uri Deutsch, moderated by Rabbi Yitzchok Hisiger.

 

 

 WATCH AND BE AMAZED AT THE RESPONSES:

https://www.torahanytime.com/lectures/431333

Preferably together with the United States but if absolutely necessary alone, Israel must act. The overwhelming majority of Israelis, even those identifying with the peace camp, understand that.

 

Why Would Israelis Want War?

 

Today, after countless anti-war demonstrations, Israelis are again poised to protest in favor of war.

Michael Oren Feb 19

READ IN APP

Israeli Air Force fighter jets on their way to attack Iran, June 2025 (Israeli Defense Forces Spokesperson's Unit)

Contrary to what much of the world today believes, Israelis hate war. In our entire history, we have only wanted to go to war twice and both times when there was literally no choice. The first instance took place fifty-nine years ago, in June, 1967.

Starting in mid-May and continuing for three weeks after, Arab armies amassed on Israel’s borders and pledged to throw its inhabitants into the sea, yet still the government refrained from striking first. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sought to exhaust all possibilities of resolving the crisis diplomatically before resorting to force. The IDF was fully ready to attack but Eshkol’s efforts continued one unbearable week after another.Meanwhile, tens of thousands of reservists remained mobilized, leaving their homes, their families, and their fields. Finally, after enduring this traumatic “waiting period,” their soldiers’ mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters had had enough. They gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Office and protested not against war but in favor of it. “No more waiting,” they shouted. “War now!”

Today, nearly six decades later, after countless anti-war demonstrations, Israelis are again poised to protest in favor of war. And the reasons are similar to those that existed in 1967. The state is faced with strategic and potentially existential threats that cannot be removed through negotiations. There is simply no alternative.

That is the danger that Israel confronts today in Iran. Irrespective of whether the United States reaches an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic will rush to manufacture many hundreds of ballistic missiles capable of destroying an entire apartment complex, if not a neighborhood. Under that ballistic umbrella, Iran can rebuild its “ring of fire” of terrorist proxies surrounding Israel and secretly break out to create aromatic weapons. Unless we complete the work begun during last summer’s Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer Operations and fully neutralize the Iranian threat, Israel will return to the untenable situation that existed on October 6, 2023–and possibly much worse.

Preferably together with the United States but if absolutely necessary alone, Israel must act. The overwhelming majority of Israelis, even those identifying with the peace camp, understand that. At stake is not only the IDF’s historic achievements in this last war but its ability to wage one effectively in the future. We, alone among the nations of the Middle East, sincerely care about the Iranian people and wish to see them liberated from tyranny. We know that winning this war will come at a price and that the cost might prove to be heavy. and yet we are willing to pay that price for the simple reason that—as in 1967–there is no choice.

Three weeks passed and at last Eshkol, too, was satisfied. Diplomacy had failed, leaving Israel no alternative. The preemptive strike the IDF then launched saved the state and irrevocably changed the Middle East. Peace with Egypt and Jordan and later with other Arab countries became possible. Today, too, Israel will defend itself and, in doing so, render our region more stable and secure.

The Dangers Of The Microphone --- Asifah Regarding the Danger of Technology for the Bucherim of Bobov-45 Mesivta

Then came the microphone. And we call this progress.

 

They do not pasken.  They magnify whatever is fed into them. Wisdom and foolishness receive equal bandwidth. The tragedy is not that we possess such tools, but that we rarely pause to ask whether our words deserve amplification.

Perhaps the true takanah is not to ban microphones or smash smartphones. Perhaps it is this: before broadcasting nonsense, speak first without amplification—to ten smart Jews in a room. If your words can survive their silence, their skepticism....

ALL PHOTOS OF THIS IMPORTANT EVENT: 

https://www.boropark24.com/news/photo-gallery-asifah-regarding-the-danger-of-technology-for-the-bucherim-of-bobov-45-mesivtah

Risks of contaminated microphones:

https://lilac.works/2023/06/08/risks-of-contaminated-microphones/

 

Letter to a Catholic Friend - Rage against the creeps and the weirdos, against the thrill-seekers and the power-hungry, against those who hijack your voice but do not share your humility, your compassion, and your depth of faith and feeling

 

A warning about what is being advanced in your name

"Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time," Saint Joseph's University.

Editor’s note: I sent this note last week to a Catholic friend, who asked me to publish it. Here goes.—Liel Leibovitz 

Dear Friend,

On my desk, right next to my siddur, or prayer book, I keep a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions, a work I return to often with humility and awe. And whenever asked to give a list of things that the world needs to set it right, among my answers is always a strong Catholic Church, standing between us and barbarity. I’m writing to you, then, because I want you to flourish, and because, right now, I see you getting terribly, cynically, and, if things go very wrong, irreversibly played.

The reason I can see what’s happening to you is because it happened to me. For two decades, loud-mouth lightweights with thin connection to Judaism or Jewish life have rushed into the spotlight, declaring themselves representatives of the Jews. 

Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace, for example, which are neither Jewish nor interested in peace, routinely declare that only by embracing Hamas can one live a truly Jewish existence. Bend the Arc, New York Jewish Agenda—there’s no shortage of groups rising to speak “as Jews” while interested in anything but the actual welfare of actual practicing Jews or, for that matter, in preserving Judaism’s real, core tenets.

And now a similar thing is happening to you. Let me show you how.

“I’m a Catholic,” Carrie Prejean Boller, the now-former member of the White House Religious Liberty Commission thundered as she took the mic in a hearing last week, “and Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know.”

Boller then proceeded to grill each member of the committee whether they considered criticism of Israel to be antisemitic, showing little interest in their considered and nuanced responses and repeatedly accusing Israel of genocide. She also used her time in the limelight to defend her friend and fellow Catholic convert, Candace Owens, arguing that the popular podcaster was “not an antisemite. She just doesn’t support Zionism.”

That would be the same Owens who called Judaism a “pedophile-centric religion”; argued that Jews believed in incest and child rape “as the sacramental rites”; urged her listeners to read a text by the German antisemite August Rohling accusing the Jews of drinking Christian blood; called Judaism “the synagogue of Satan”; and claimed that the Jews were behind every great evil, from the slave trade to the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject the loonies in their midst? What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream.

You may dismiss voices like Boller’s or Owens’s as shrill. You may argue that they’re marginal. But to ignore them is a mistake. Owens was recently invited to keynote the annual gala of a growingly influential group calling itself Catholics for Catholics.

Never heard of that outfit before? That’s the point. It’s part of an astroturfing effort meant to create a new impression of American Catholicism, led by a few high-profile standard-bearers who look and sound nothing like average Catholics.

Which is why, above all of this, the actions and words of America’s most prominent Catholic today have become so important, and so troubling. I admire Vice President JD Vance’s journey, and I want to believe that he respects my people and faith as much as I respect his. But watching him in public these days sends shivers down my spine. With one morally clear statement, he could disempower this entire emerging false idol. Instead, he’s doing the opposite.

Take, for example, his recent interaction with a student at a Turning Point USA event.

“I’m a Christian man,” the student inquired, “and I’m just confused why there’s this notion that we might have owed Israel something, or that they’re our greatest ally, or that we have to support this multi $100 billion foreign aid package to Israel to cover this, to quote Charlie Kirk, ‘Ethnic cleansing in Gaza.’ I’m just confused why this idea has come around, considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the prosecution [sic] of ours.”

It was a question with a very simple answer. Vance could have—and should have—explained President Trump’s Middle East policies and how they served America’s national security interests. He could have—and should have—also informed the young man that whatever he may think about Judaism, it most definitely does not advocate the persecution of Christians.

Instead, Vance went on to assure the young man that the Israelis are “not controlling the President of the United States,” and then went on to wax theological. “It’s one of the realities is that Jews do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah,” he explained. “Obviously, Christians do believe that. There are some significant theological disagreements between Christians and Jews. My attitude is, let’s have those conversations. Let’s have those disagreements when we have them.”

Really? Imagine a prominent American politician standing up and suggesting that as Catholics don’t believe what Protestants do, we ought to have a public, political conversation about whether a Catholic president, say, will obey the Vatican and open America’s borders to comply with the Pope’s teachings. 

Such a statement would be scurrilous, and recall some of the darkest moments in America’s recent history. That the Vice President would choose to center his faith not in deep, meaningful, personal, and evocative ways but as a facile and misdirected talking point is concerning. When we say we want more faith in public life, I’m not sure even the most ardently observant among us has in mind a world in which our elected officials are guided by theological urges rather than by America’s cold, hard interests.

But honestly, even that pales next to the coldest truth about Vance, which is that the most prominent American Catholic today is also the person not just shielding but promoting America’s most prominent antisemite, Tucker Carlson. There’s no need to say more here. It’s poison, and no fancy words will make it otherwise.

As I watch Vance, I can’t help but think of how he could help men like Bill Donohue, the long-time head of the Catholic League, who is in the trenches fighting the hijacking of Catholicism by high-profile charlatans and publicity-seeking frauds. (There is no shortage of these frauds by the Jews. PM)

 Donohue took to the Internet after Boller’s horror show to remind anyone who needed a reminder that for any one person—especially a recent convert to the faith who neither runs an organization nor possesses any special credentials—to claim to speak on behalf of all Catholics everywhere was, at best, “presumptuous and arrogant.” Boller, Donohue pointed out, wasn’t really interested in having a good-faith theological discussion—she was there for petty political hand-to-hand combat, which is why she arrived wearing a Palestinian flag pin.

What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject the loonies in their midst? I’ll tell you, because, again, I’ve seen it happening in my own community. What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream. Before you know it, you have folks like Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, making common cause with the Reverend Al Sharpton, a man who still hasn’t apologized for inciting a pogrom that claimed Jewish lives in 1991. Before you know it, you have the UJA Federation of New York, arguably the largest and most influential Jewish organization in America, writing a million dollar check to Gaza. Before you know it, you have politicians like Chuck Schumer prancing around and talking about how they’re defending the community’s interests while doing everything they can to side with its most prominent adversaries and support policies that outrightly endanger its members. Before you know it, you have people like Phylisa Wisdom being propelled from their role in some marginal, radical left-wing group to become the Jewish liaison to the mayor of New York City, home to the largest population of Jews in the U.S. In other words, before you know it, the Overton Window has shifted so far and so fast that even groups that ought to know better now feel that they have no choice but to amplify or parrot the crazies.

So, friend, beware. We American Jews have been far too slow to reject our kooks. We allowed mendacious and malicious ideologues to sow too much discord, alienate too many potential allies, and cause too much damage. We spent too much time having inane and fruitless theoretical discussions about Zionism before we wised up to the fact that the un-Jews didn’t really care about us, or Zionism, or Judaism at all—they cared only about power, their own and that of their fellow travelers. And now the un-Catholics are treating you to the same playbook.

Do not go gently into this plight. Rage against the creeps and the weirdos, against the thrill-seekers and the power-hungry, against those who hijack your voice but do not share your humility, your compassion, and your depth of faith and feeling.

I realize it’s no easy task to keep your heart and your mind both wide open and your arms outstretched to embrace your fellow believers while at the same time fiercely rejecting those who approach your community and your faith with a bad conscience. But the tension is the key challenge of our time. Rejoice and love like you have no enemies, and fight like you have no friends, and maybe you—maybe we—will find, as we always do, that our faith forever triumphs over even the gravest of challenges.

 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/letter-catholic-friend?

 

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more   Watch now   When the police and the army have to flee the Haredim inside Israel, few red lines remain And predictions are that in 2050, the Haredi population will be close to 25% of Israel. Forget Iran. Forget the Palestinians. If you want to know what may take this country down, just look. Daniel Gordis Feb 17   READ IN APP   If you blinked during the first few seconds of the video above, which was posted by YNet on its Facebook Reels, you missed the important part. So watch it again … What you’ll see are two women wearing white shirts, being hurried away by police from a menacing crowd in Bnai Brak, a Haredi section of greater Tel Aviv. What’s with the white shirts? That’s what many women soldiers wear under their uniforms. Photo for illustration purposes only So what happened to their uniforms? They took them off, hoping that the gathering crowd might get confused and not realize that they were the soldiers that the enraged Jews were hunting for. Why were they in danger? Because a huge, seething, menacing crowd of Haredim—who incorrectly thought the women were there to hand out draft notices—were after them. The police came and extracted the soldiers. From Bnai Brak, right near Tel Aviv. Remember when we used to extract soldiers from some Arab village that they’d mistakenly entered over the green line? No more. Now, soldiers still aren’t safe in Arab villages, but they’re not safe in Bnai Brak either. And the police? Note that they’re fleeing too. Not turning around and facing down the crowd. The police had weapons. Had this been Arabs, what would they have done? Perhaps, some people are asking, it’s time to spread that net wider? Amazingly, the police (ultimately under the command of Itamar Ben-Gvir) had an explanation for the violence—the army screwed up. Main Heading (Red): The Chaos in Bnei Brak Main Headline: Tel Aviv District Commander Accuses: “The female soldiers passed through the city without coordination” Sub-headline: The Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Attacked: “We will not tolerate harm to soldiers” | The reactions to the riots The blame, they said, lay with the army (and not with the marauding Haredim), because the army should have coordinated with the police before sending soldiers into Bnai Brak. But soldiers in Israel go everywhere … to get home, to the playground with their kids at the end of the day, to the mall. What, to protect Haredi sensibilities, the IDF should get permission to enter parts of Israel? And what about when they are there to serve draft notices. Then it will be OK for the Haredim to attack them? You can only say that if you’ve given up on the idea of Israel as a sovereign state.