Full-Time Torah Study for All: The Greatest Orthodox Jewish Fraud Since the End of World War Two...

 

"Kollel should be a meritocracy — a place for the few who are truly destined for scholarship, not a refuge for the unwilling. Torah learning should inspire men to serve, to build, to defend, to uplift."... Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz/ Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky - Zechuso Yagen Aleinu.

In the long history of Jewish survival, few ideas have caused more internal rot than the postwar fantasy that every Jewish man is meant to study Torah full-time. It is not a mitzvah — it is a distortion. It has become the greatest Jewish fraud since the end of World War II.

The Torah commands us to be a “kingdom of priests” — not a nation of dependents. Our ancestors were shepherds, merchants, craftsmen, judges, warriors, and prophets — men who lived and worked in the real world, sanctifying it through their deeds. Yet somewhere after the Holocaust, a tragic inversion took hold. The noble dream of rebuilding the Torah world turned into an ideology of isolation, dependency, and cowardice — all sanctified in the name of “learning.”

After the Holocaust, Torah scholarship in Europe lay in ruins. The yeshivos of Lita and Galicia, the centers of Jewish intellectual and spiritual greatness, were reduced to ash. It was natural — even holy — that survivors sought to resurrect the world that was destroyed. But rebuilding Torah did not mean abandoning reality.

Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the visionary founder of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in New York, and Torah Umesorah, presently, a network of 760 Orthodox schools throughout the United States, whose mission is to ensure that every Jewish child in Yeshivos, day schools, and Bais Yaakovs receives the highest standards of Torah education, along with the skills to lead a successful life and become a productive member of society.  

Rabbi Mendlowitz understood this clearly. He was no small-time educator; he was a prophet of postwar Jewish survival. His dream was not to create an army of cloistered scholars, but a generation of American Jews who would combine Torah fidelity with productive citizenship. He sent his students into Jewish education, business, and communal leadership. He taught that Torah must illuminate the world, not retreat from it.

Had his philosophy prevailed, American and Israeli Orthodoxy might have looked very different today. But in the chaos of postwar Europe and the birth of the State of Israel, another current — quieter, more insidious — gained ground.

When David Ben-Gurion was negotiating the contours of the new Jewish state, he met with the Chazon Ish, Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, the spiritual titan of the Lithuanian yeshiva world. The Chazon Ish insisted that Torah study must remain free from state interference and that a small number of young men — around 400 — should be exempted from military service to rebuild the ranks of Torah scholars decimated by the Nazis.

Ben-Gurion, ever the pragmatist, agreed. It was a small concession — a symbolic gesture — to the old world that had perished. He never imagined that this modest arrangement would metastasize into a political juggernaut, protecting hundreds of thousands of men from national service and labor.

That meeting in 1947 was the original sin of the “status quo.” It institutionalized the separation of Torah from life. It legitimized the idea that Torah scholars could live on the public dime while other Jews bore the burden of defending and sustaining the state.

What began as a few hundred exceptions turned into an ideology: full-time study for all men, indefinitely. The kollelim that once trained the elite became welfare networks for the masses. The word “Torah world” ceased to mean a culture of ethical refinement and began to mean a bureaucracy of stipends, exemptions, and ignorance of reality.

The Agudath Israel movement, originally formed in Europe to preserve traditional Judaism against secular Zionism, found a new purpose in this arrangement. In prewar Poland, Agudah had been wary of aligning Torah with political power; in postwar Israel, it became addicted to it.

Agudah’s rabbis realized they could leverage the collective bloc of their yeshiva students and their growing families to extract power from the state. Knesset seats translated into subsidies for yeshivos. Subsidies sustained the illusion of holiness without responsibility. The system fed itself: poverty bred more dependence, which bred more loyalty.

And so, a movement that once feared secular politics became one of its most skilled manipulators. Its moral language masked a cynical machine. “Daas Torah” — the supposed divine authority of rabbis over all matters — was weaponized to silence dissent and perpetuate control.

Meanwhile, the Rambam’s ancient words — “Anyone who decides to study Torah and not work, and supports himself from charity, desecrates God’s name” — were quietly erased from the curriculum.

In America, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz’s Torah Vodaath sent out a different message. He encouraged his students to engage the world, to teach, to lead, to work. He famously said: “The Torah must live in America — not hide in America.”

But his philosophy lost the postwar struggle. By the late 1960s, the myth of the “full-time learner” became the new gold standard of Jewish virtue. A young man who entered business or education was considered lesser. The kollelnik became the symbol of piety — even as his wife struggled to feed the children and his community depended on the charity of others.

The fraud was spiritualized: “You work for money,” the kollelnik was told, “but I work for Heaven.” It was a seductive lie — because it cloaked laziness in holiness, irresponsibility in sacrifice.

The true Torah ideal, as Rabbi Mendlowitz and the Rambam understood, was to live in the world and sanctify it. The Torah was not meant to be the privilege of the idle but the compass of the active.

Today, in 2025, Israel pays the price of this seventy-year-old deception. Nearly half of Israel’s Haredi men do not participate in the workforce. Entire neighborhoods thrive on government stipends and foreign donations. Military service exemptions are defended as divine law.

And yet, when war comes — as it did on October 7 — it is not the yeshiva world that runs toward the fire. It is the sons of secular kibbutzim, Modern Orthodox families, and immigrants from Ethiopia and Ukraine who fill the ranks. The Torah world hides behind the soldiers it despises.

This is not faith. This is fraud.

A Torah that forbids its followers from defending their people is a Torah that has been hijacked. A Torah that turns charity into lifetime welfare is not Torah lishmah — it is Torah le-hafsidah, a Torah that corrodes from within.

And the spiritual cost is even greater. Generations of young men grow up believing that work is shameful, that reality is impure, and that holiness lies in detachment. The Torah becomes not a light to the nations but a dark room to hide in.

It does not have to be this way. The Torah world can still be redeemed — but only by returning to its authentic roots. The path forward is not rebellion but restoration.

Restore the balance between Torah and derech eretz — learning and labor — as Hillel, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, and the Rambam all lived. Restore the honor of the Jewish worker, soldier, and builder — as Yehoshua, David, and Nechemiah all embodied. Restore the vision of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, who believed that Torah should sanctify the world, not escape it.

"Kollel should be a meritocracy — a place for the few who are truly destined for scholarship, not a refuge for the unwilling. Torah learning should inspire men to serve, to build, to defend, to uplift." Rabbi Mendlowitz declared. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky agreed.  

The Torah that once built nations has been reduced to a subsidy. The Torah that gave us courage has been turned into a comfort blanket. It’s time to tear off the blanket and reclaim the sword.

The idea that every Jewish man must sit in yeshiva indefinitely is not holiness — it is heresy against the Torah’s purpose. It betrays the essence of what it means to be Jewish: to act, to serve, to create, to take responsibility.

Seventy years of moral decline began with a simple deal — a “status quo” that turned exception into entitlement. Ben-Gurion gave the Chazon Ish 400 exemptions. We now live with 400,000. That is not continuity — that is collapse.

The time has come to end the fraud — not by abandoning Torah, but by rescuing it. Torah must once again be the soul of a living nation, not the slogan of a parasitic sect.

 

 REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/full-time-torah-study-for-all-the-greatest-orthodox-jewish-fraud-running-steady/

We must enforce our laws over the ultra-Orthodox communities that refuse to teach their young people even the most basic modern subjects, much less serve in our army.

 Restoring Sovereignty

Never before in the history of our nation have our leaders had less latitude for decision-making.

Michael Oren Nov 11

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US Army and IDF soldiers at the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel, Oct. 28, 2025

Israel’s victory in the Middle East war that followed the October 7 attack in 2023 was one of the greatest in modern history. Generals will study it for generations. But every victory exacts a price, and the price that Israel paid was especially heavy. In addition to the tens of thousands who were harmed—killed, wounded, or suffered severe trauma—the billions of shekels spent, and the near collapse of our international relations, we paid a price also in terms of our sovereignty. Never before in the history of our nation have our leaders had less latitude for decision-making. Never before has our army enjoyed less freedom of action.

For the sake of fairness, in military matters, Israel has never been completely free. Beginning with the Sinai Campaign in 1956 and continuing with the wars of 1967, 1973, and 1982, as well as in every major operation in Gaza and in Lebanon, the United States told us exactly when to stop. And in almost all cases, we stopped. Only rarely, such as the destruction of the nuclear reactors in Iraq and in Syria, did Israel act contrary to America’s will. Much more typical was the situation in the First Gulf War in 1991, when, while missiles were falling on Tel Aviv, the United States ordered us not to go to war at all—and Israel obeyed.

But there is a huge difference between receiving an order to stop fighting and the need to receive approval every time we must act. This is the situation today when there are 200 American soldiers in Kiryat Gat and American drones are flying over Gaza. Stationed here are also soldiers from France and from Canada, countries that have not been particularly friendly toward Israel, as well as from overtly hostile Spain. Supposedly, they are here to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement that Hamas violates almost every day, but in fact they can restrain Israel’s response to these violations.

Fortunately, as we saw the other week, President Trump understands that Israel “should hit back” when its soldiers are murdered by Hamas and the deceased hostages do not return. There may also be some advantage in having France and Spain lend legitimacy to our military responses. Nevertheless, there exists a feeling that even for a limited military action in Gaza, Israel must receive a green light from Washington.

This is an unprecedented situation—not only for Israel, but for any sovereign state. In planning the period after the war, Israel must strive to restore its foreign relations and to tirelessly seek peace with our neighbors. We must heal the deep wounds within us, but we are also obligated to restore our sovereignty.

We must extend our sovereignty over the Negev—62% of the country—where the Bedouin build illegally and smugglers deal drugs with impunity. We must enforce our laws over the ultra-Orthodox communities that refuse to teach their young people even the most basic modern subjects, much less serve in our army, and over the “hilltop youth” who flout those laws almost daily. Above all, we must reclaim our sovereignty over the main repository of our independence and the principal pride of our state, the IDF.

The Common Denominator Threaded Through the Yom Kippur War, 9/11, October 7 & Zohran Mamdani — For Israel and the USA : Evil Never Dies!

 

There is a single thread — dark, defiant, and utterly familiar — that runs through the Yom Kippur War, through the falling towers of September 11th, through the blood-soaked soil of Israel on October 7th, and through the smooth-tongued, hate-fueled rhetoric of Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in New York City. That thread is the arrogance of evil and the blindness of appeasement. It is the recurring curse of a civilization that refuses to learn from its own wake-up calls.

Every generation of Jews — and Americans — seems to need a new reminder that evil doesn’t politely knock before it enters. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t coexist. It waits until you’re praying, fasting, dreaming, and then it strikes — as it did on Yom Kippur 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian tanks rolled into Israel while her soldiers were wrapped in talleitem and eyes soaked with tears. The attack wasn’t only on a state; it was an assault on Jewish destiny itself, a declaration that the Jewish people’s right to exist could still be contested.

Then came September 11, 2001 — a day every American swore would change the world. But did it? We buried our dead, raised our flags, spoke about “never forgetting,” and then, like tired dreamers, drifted right back to sleep. Within two decades, American campuses, city councils, and even Congress would welcome the same anti-Western, anti-Israel ideology that fueled the hijackers. The same grievance-filled theology that celebrates martyrdom over mercy and blames the victim for being free.

And then came October 7, 2023 — a day when the world’s oldest hatred removed its mask again. Hamas didn’t invade for territory or negotiation leverage. They came for Jews — babies, grandmothers, students, festival-goers — because that’s what evil does when it sees softness, confusion, and the paralysis of moral relativism. The blood of 1,200 Jews cried out, and yet within days, the global chorus — from the UN to American universities — turned its wrath not on the murderers, but on the murdered.

That’s when the fourth link in this cursed chain emerged: Zohran Mamdani, the New York Assemblyman who wrapped anti-Semitism in the language of “justice.” He doesn’t wear a uniform or carry a gun. He doesn’t need to. His battlefield is social media, his weapon is rhetoric, and his target is truth itself. He calls Zionism a crime, brands Israel an “apartheid state,” and defends terrorists with the arrogance of someone certain that America has already forgotten 9/11.

Mamdani is not an anomaly. He is the inevitable product of moral confusion — of a culture that forgot how to distinguish between victim and aggressor, civilization and barbarism, faith and fanaticism. He is what happens when universities reward anti-Western activism, when politicians are afraid to be called “Islamophobic” for defending civilization, and when Jews themselves try to earn survival through silence.

But the thread that ties Yom Kippur 1973, 9/11, October 7, and Mamdani together is not just about hatred — it’s about warning. Each time evil rises, it first tests our courage to name it. And each time, too many among us fail the test. The Yom Kippur War taught us that Jewish complacency invites slaughter. 9/11 taught us that American tolerance without discernment becomes suicide. October 7 taught us that weakness invites annihilation. And Mamdani teaches us that our enemies no longer need rockets — our own moral confusion will do the job for them.

The message for both the Jewish people and the United States is identical: Evil never dies — it adapts. It changes its flag, its accent, its hashtags, but the ideology is the same. It hates freedom, it hates the covenant between God and man, and it despises a people and a nation that dare to live by conscience rather than chaos. 

We must name it. We must reject it — not with polite “statements” but with unapologetic conviction. We must teach our children that moral clarity is not extremism, and that silence is complicity. We must remember that in both Jerusalem and New York, the battle is not between right and left — it is between truth and its erasure.

History has already given us three wake-up calls. The fourth one — Zohran Mamdani’s normalization of anti-Semitism in the halls of American democracy — may be the most dangerous yet. Because when hatred puts on a suit and sits in office, the next Yom Kippur War, the next 9/11, the next October 7 — is already being planned.

  

 

REPUBLISHED: EVIL NEVER DIES: 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-message-for-both-the-israelis-the-americans-evil-never-dies/

Israel Has to Look Post-Trump and Plan Accordingly - Why Trump’s Middle East “Peace Plan” Is Backfiring Badly

 

Donald Trump gave Israel years of unapologetic friendship, biblical recognition, and a kind of political courage the Jewish state had rarely seen from any American president. Jerusalem was finally recognized. The Golan Heights, long treated like a bargaining chip by Washington diplomats, was affirmed as Israeli. And the Abraham Accords broke the suffocating myth that peace with the Arab world must first go through Ramallah.

But history has a brutal sense of irony: the very warmth that binds nations can also lull them into complacency. Too many in Israel began to believe that Trumpism is a new covenant — a permanent rewriting of the American-Israeli bond. It is not. It is a chapter, not a covenant.

Trump, for all his friendship, is a man of impulses, not institutions. He reshaped U.S. foreign policy with flair, not structure. His instincts were often good for Israel, but they were never guaranteed. And Israel, of all nations, should know better than to confuse divine miracles with political moments.

Ben-Gurion didn’t build Israel on miracles. He built it on paranoia — the good kind. He assumed every friend might one day turn fickle. When Eisenhower humiliated Israel in 1956 and forced its withdrawal from Sinai, Ben-Gurion didn’t sulk. He adapted. He vowed never again to be caught dependent on American arms or approval. From that humiliation came the foundations of Israel’s independent defense industry and nuclear deterrent. He understood what too many forget today: gratitude is not a strategy.

Israel cannot afford to be anyone’s client state — not Biden’s, not Trump’s, not anyone’s. It must remain a sovereign moral power that listens politely to Washington but plans relentlessly for the day Washington looks elsewhere. And that day will come.

Look at America: a nation split down the middle, its politics poisoned by tribalism and fatigue. Isolationism is creeping back into both parties. Progressives who despise Zionism grow louder by the month. Even some conservatives now mutter about “foreign aid cuts” while basking in the delusion that Israel can simply fend for itself without consequence.

Israel’s answer to all this must be the same answer it has given to every crisis since 1948: build, defend, and innovate — alone if necessary. The Jewish people waited 2,000 years to return home; they cannot afford to hinge that home on a fluctuating American election cycle.

The Abraham Accords were not just diplomatic trophies — they were prophecy fulfilled in realpolitik form. They proved that Israel can thrive regionally without waiting for permission from Foggy Bottom. The road ahead is through Riyadh, New Delhi, Nairobi, and even Tokyo — a network of alliances based on shared threats, shared technology, and shared survival.

Israel must also steel itself economically and militarily for a post-American world order. The United States will remain an ally — but an overstretched, distracted one. The smart move now is to localize more arms production, train for operational autonomy, and stop assuming the next shipment of precision munitions will arrive on time. The biblical Joseph didn’t wait for famine to strike — he stored grain in advance. Israel must do the same with its Iron Dome missiles, drones, and cyber defenses.

The Jewish story has always been one of preparation. When exile seemed endless, smart Jews with vision built yeshivas. When the nations said “you cannot,” Jews said “we must.” And when the world’s empires fell — Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Britain, the Soviet Union — the Jewish nation somehow still stood.

Trump was a friend. Maybe one of Israel’s greatest. But the lesson of Jewish history is that friendship is never forever — only faith and foresight are.

Israel must thank Trump, bless him, and then do what it has always done best: plan for the next test, the next betrayal, the next dawn. Because when it comes to Jewish survival, the best insurance policy is not a promise from any president. It’s Israel itself.

 

 

 REPUBLISHED:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-to-look-post-trump-and-plan-accordingly/

I Challenge the Orthodox Rabbinate to Express "The Sentiments on Israel and Jews" as Reform Rabbi Hirsch : On the Election of Zohran Mamdani

Agudath Israel Must Publicly Reject and Condemn the Satmar Faction That Supported Anti-Israel, Anti-Semite, Jew-Hating Zohran Mamdani

 

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI)

There are moments in Jewish history when silence becomes complicity. When neutrality morphs into moral cowardice. When the lines that divide ideological disagreement from spiritual treachery must be redrawn — sharply, publicly, and without apology.

Such a moment is upon us.

 

 

Last week, a faction aligned with the Satmar Hasidic community openly lent support to New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — a man who has never hidden his hostility toward Israel and who traffics in the oldest, ugliest antisemitic tropes, now dressed up in the language of “anti-Zionism.” Mamdani, the self-styled “Palestinian socialist,” has accused Israel of genocide, championed the BDS movement, and cheered for the delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state.

That any group of Jews — worse, Jews wearing the banner of Torah — would stand behind such a man is beyond disgrace. It is a moral catastrophe.

And Agudath Israel of America, the historic umbrella organization that has long claimed to represent Orthodox Jewry in the United States, must not look away. If Agudah wants to preserve even a shred of credibility as a voice of Torah in public life, it must do what decency, halacha, and Jewish history demand: explicitly reject and condemn the Satmar faction that endorsed this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish politician.

The Satmar faction’s flirtation with Mamdani is not a minor political gesture. It is an endorsement of hatred cloaked in the pretense of piety. Let us be clear: Mamdani’s record is not one of “principled critique” or “progressive values.” It is one of relentless demonization of Jews who live in their ancestral homeland.

He has marched with those who chant “From the river to the sea,” a slogan whose plain meaning is the eradication of Israel and the Jews within it. He has excused or minimized the October 7 atrocities — one of the darkest days in Jewish history since the Holocaust — as somehow “contextual.”

And in the face of that, a group of Satmar Hasidim smiled, posed for pictures, and called him a “friend.”

This is not Judaism. This is not holiness. This is political opportunism masquerading as righteousness, and it mocks every Jew who bleeds for Am Yisrael.

To understand the poison here, one must recall the Satmar ideology itself — born from the trauma of Europe but hardened into a theology of negation. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, built his empire on the claim that the State of Israel is a heresy, a rebellion against G-d’s will, and that the Holocaust was a divine punishment for Zionism.

It was a theology of exile frozen in amber — one that refused to see the miraculous rebirth of Jewish sovereignty as anything but a sin. In 1948, when the rest of Jewry wept with awe at the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland, Satmar wept in rage.

That ideology might have remained a footnote — eccentric, tragic, but contained — had it not metastasized into political activism. Over the decades, Satmar built alliances with anti-Zionist forces, aligning with the far left, the Islamist world, and anyone else who hated Israel enough to make common cause.

The result? Today we witness the grotesque spectacle of Jews shaking hands with men who would gladly see Jews murdered in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Sderot.

The Rambam writes in Hilchot De’ot that one must distance himself from the wicked, lest he learn from their ways and be destroyed by their company. This is not merely social advice — it is a Torah imperative.

To ally with an avowed hater of Jews is to desecrate the Name of Heaven. The Talmud in Avodah Zarah 18a teaches us that even the perception of association with idolaters or enemies of Israel can bring scandal to Torah itself. How much more so when the association is public, photographed, and celebrated in newspapers and social media?

Agudath Israel cannot pretend this is a “Satmar matter.” Silence here is endorsement. Failure to condemn is partnership.

If the Agudah leadership shrugs this off as "another “local issue", they forfeit their moral claim to speak in the name of klal Yisrael.

It was not always so. The original Agudath Israel of prewar Europe — the movement of giants like the Chafetz Chaim  — sought to protect Torah life through engagement, not isolation. They argued against Zionism politically, yes, but never allied themselves with enemies of the Jewish people.

They fought their battles within the Jewish world, not by empowering our external foes.

The founders of Agudah would have shuddered at the sight of Hasidim applauding a politician who slanders their brothers and sisters in Israel.

And make no mistake: many of today’s Agudah rabbis and lay leaders privately do shudder. They know this alliance is abhorrent. But private revulsion is not enough. The Torah demands public rebuke. “Hoche’ach tochiach et amitecha” — you shall surely rebuke your fellow.

To remain silent now is to invite G-d’s rebuke instead.

Satmar defends its political deals with anti-Israel figures by invoking “Torah values” — claiming to prioritize yeshiva funding, welfare benefits, or community protection over Israel’s fate. This is a grotesque distortion of Torah ethics.

The same Torah that commands us to love every Jew and defend Jewish life cannot be twisted into a tool for transactional politics. To barter away Jewish dignity for state funding is to sell our birthright for a bowl of lentils.

When Satmar activists cozy up to Mamdani, they are not practicing pikuach nefesh — they are practicing political idolatry, worshipping power and money in the guise of faith.

Agudath Israel now faces a defining test. Will it stand for Jewish unity rooted in truth, or will it allow fanaticism to drag it into moral bankruptcy?

It must issue a clear, unequivocal statement declaring that no Jewish organization can support a politician who traffics in antisemitism or calls for the destruction of Israel. It must name Mamdani for what he is — a demagogue — and the Satmar faction that supports him for what they have become — collaborators in our people’s humiliation.

Such a statement would not divide the Orthodox world; it would save it.

Because the greatest threat to Torah is not modernity, not secularism, not Zionism — it is hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of those who cry “Torah, Torah” while standing shoulder to shoulder with those who hate Torah Jews.

Satmar has inverted courage into cowardice. They have mistaken exile for holiness, submission for faith, and betrayal for purity.

And Agudah must not follow them down that pit.

This is not about politics. This is about Jewish survival — moral, spiritual, and historical.

Every yeshiva student who loves Torah should weep when Jews cheer for our enemies. Every rabbi who invokes ahavat Yisrael must condemn those who betray it. Every parent who teaches their child to say “Shema Yisrael” must remind them that Israel — the name itself — means struggling with G-d but standing with our people.

If Agudath Israel cannot find the courage to say that, then it will have surrendered the moral authority it once claimed.

But if it does — if it speaks truth, if it draws the line, if it reclaims the mantle of authentic Torah — then perhaps we can still hope that the rift within Orthodox Jewry can heal, not through silence, but through truth.

The world must know: There is no Torah without loyalty to the Jewish people. There is no holiness in betrayal. And there is no justification, ever, for standing with those who hate the children of Israel.

 

REPUBLISHED: 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/agudath-israel-must-condemn-the-satmar-faction-that-supported-zohran-mamdani/

Satmar Ideology Is Synonymous With Neturei Karta — Mamdani Proved It

 

Top Photo - New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI)

 

 I have said it for years, and I will say it again — this time louder: Satmar ideology is synonymous with Neturei Karta. The difference is one of tone, not theology; one wears shtreimels, the other keffiyehs. One organizes rallies in Williamsburg, the other in Tehran. Both pray for the same outcome: the delegitimization of the Jewish state and the paralysis of Jewish strength.

Now, thanks to Mamdani — the Moslem-born “influencer” who turned anti-Israel venom into viral content — the distinction between the two has evaporated. His public celebration of Hamas propaganda, his sneering dismissal of Jewish suffering, did not erupt in a vacuum. Mandani is not an anomaly; he is a product. A product of an ideology that has spent three-quarters of a century teaching that Jewish sovereignty is a sin, that the State of Israel is illegitimate, and that the blood of Jewish soldiers spilled in defense of Am Yisrael is not the blood of martyrs, but of sinners.

Satmar will pretend to be horrified. They will issue statements condemning the IDF “lack of tznius,” not her lack of morality. But in truth, they should be thanking Mamdani. For in his arrogance, he finally made visible what has long been whispered behind the beit midrash walls: that Satmar’s anti-Zionism is not a “spiritual disagreement.” It is the same poison that animates Neturei Karta — merely refined, repackaged, and sold as “Torah faithfulness.”

To understand how this happened, one must go back to Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the first Satmar Rebbe. Emerging from the Holocaust in 1945, Teitelbaum viewed the Zionist project not as redemption but rebellion. The Jewish people, he argued, had violated the “Three Oaths” mentioned in the Talmud (Ketubot 111a): that Israel must not “ascend the wall” to retake the Land by force, that they must not rebel against the nations, and that the nations must not oppress them too much.

Teitelbaum, in his sefer Vayoel Moshe, took this aggadic passage —never codified in halacha by Rambam, Rif, or Shulchan Aruch — and elevated it into dogma. From that interpretation grew an entire theology of Jewish passivity: that any human effort to restore Jewish sovereignty is forbidden until divine intervention announces the Messiah.

But Rambam himself would have been appalled. In Hilchot Melachim (11:1), he describes the messianic process as a gradual political restoration — a king from the line of David who rebuilds sovereignty, defends the Jewish people, and gathers exiles. Rambam explicitly praises Bar Kokhba, the second-century leader who rose against Rome, as a potential Messiah until he fell in battle. His failure did not make him wicked; his courage made him worthy of hope.

For Rambam, agency is not arrogance — it is faith in action. The Jewish people are commanded to pursue justice, to defend themselves, to inhabit and sustain the Land. Teitelbaum inverted this. He turned faith into fatalism, and paralysis into piety.

It’s impossible to grasp Satmar ideology without understanding the trauma of its birth. Teitelbaum, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, saw his community annihilated while the secular Zionists built their state. In his theology, that tragedy became cosmic proof that Zionism provokes divine wrath. The Shoah, in his mind, was punishment for Herzl’s rebellion.

But what began as postwar despair hardened into permanent ideology. In the early 1950s, as Israel gathered refugees from Arab lands and rebuilt Jewish sovereignty for the first time in two millennia, Satmar built a parallel world — a counter-state of Yiddish-speaking enclaves, defined not by Torah learning but by opposition to Israel itself. They withdrew from the Zionist “impurity,” raised their children on stories of Israel’s wickedness, and built an empire of protest.

The irony is that this protest was sustained by the very state they rejected. Satmar institutions flourished in Israel thanks to Israeli welfare payments, Israeli police protection, Israeli electricity, and Israeli hospitals. Their entire existence was — and remains — parasitic upon the state they denounce.

When the Agudath Israel movement begrudgingly split over cooperation with the state in 1948, Satmar accused Agudah of betrayal. The Agudah, for all its hesitations, chose engagement — recognizing that Jewish sovereignty, however secular, was better than exile. Satmar chose ideological purity over Jewish unity. The consequences of that choice are now visible in every anti-Israel rally where black hats stand beside Hamas flags.

Which brings us to Mamdani. He is not a scholar of Vayoel Moshe, as far as I know. He probably couldn’t quote a line of the Gemara his ideology claims to revere. But he absorbed its essence: contempt for Jewish agency, suspicion of Jewish power, and hostility toward Jewish self-defense. His social media performances were not deviations from Satmar theology — they were digital incarnations of it.

When he mocked Israel during war, when he sneered at soldiers risking their lives to defend the Jewish people, he was expressing Satmar doctrine in 21st-century form. his sin, in Satmar’s eyes, was not his message — it was his  medium. He said publicly what Satmar rabbis teach privately.

And the truth is, Mamdani’s logic is unassailable — if you accept Satmar premises. If Israel is illegitimate, then its enemies are “resisters.” If Jewish sovereignty is sin, then Hamas is divine instrument. If Zionism is rebellion against Heaven, then terror becomes divine punishment. Once you embrace the Three Oaths as binding law, everything else — from anti-IDF protests to alliance with Iran — follows naturally.

Neturei Karta merely pushes that logic to its endpoint. Satmar merely stops one step short, preferring moral hypocrisy to full honesty.

Contrast Satmar’s paralysis with the courage of Bar Kokhba, whom Rabbi Akiva hailed as “King Messiah.” His revolt against Rome failed catastrophically, but Rambam never condemned him. Why? Because in the Jewish moral universe, failure in defense of Am Yisrael is not sin — it is sanctity.

Bar Kokhba’s spirit lives on in the young soldiers of the IDF who carry rifles instead of Gemaras, who build the wall of Jerusalem stone by stone. These are the Jews Rambam envisioned when he wrote that the Messiah will “fight the wars of God.”

Satmar mocks these soldiers as heretics; I call them heroes. When a 19-year-old paratrooper jumps into Gaza to save a kidnapped child, he fulfills pikuach nefesh — the highest commandment in the Torah. When a Satmar protester in Brooklyn waves a Palestinian flag, he fulfills nothing but cowardice.

And let us not forget: the same Rambam Satmar pretends to venerate also ruled (Hilchot Teshuva 3:11) that one who separates from the community, refusing to share in its struggles, “has no share in the World to Come.” By that definition, Satmar ideology — the ideology of separation, detachment, and denial — is spiritual treason.

When the State of Israel fights for survival, there is no such thing as “holy neutrality.” To abstain from the defense of Jews is to side with their enemies. During the Holocaust, that neutrality meant death; today, it means desecration.

In every generation, we face Jews who mistake fear for faith. During the Roman persecutions, they were the minim who sought appeasement. In the Middle Ages, they were the Marranos who rationalized betrayal. Today, they wear the black hats of Satmar, chanting “Down with Zionism” while Iranian missiles rain on Ashkelon.

And yet, there is a tragic consistency to it. A people trained to see exile as virtue cannot tolerate redemption. A theology that exalts victimhood must reject victory. Satmar’s tragedy is that it took the Jewish capacity for faith — our willingness to wait for redemption — and turned it into an excuse for passivity.

The State of Israel is not a rebellion against Heaven; it is Heaven’s response to rebellion. After two thousand years of exile, pogrom, and gas chambers, the Jewish people rose from the ashes — not to defy God, but to live again. That is the greatest Kiddush Hashem in modern history.

To call it sin is to call survival sin. To curse it is to curse the God who kept His promise.

Mamdani’s scandal is therefore not a footnote — it is a revelation. He showed us that Satmar’s polite separatism and Neturei Karta’s treacherous alliances spring from the same poisoned root. One smiles and raises money; the other sneers and raises flags. Both betray the same truth: they cannot accept a living, breathing, fighting Jewish people.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin teaches that when Mashiach comes, “all prophets and all the righteous will rejoice — except those who denied the redemption.” Satmar, with all its money, its schools, its newspapers, has built an empire of denial. And Mamdani, with all his bluster, simply said it out loud.

History will remember the difference between those who prayed for Israel’s downfall and those who fought for her survival. The black-coated spectators of exile will vanish into footnotes. The defenders of Israel will stand with Bar Kokhba, with Rambam, with every Jew who refused to wait for permission to live.

Mamdani proved the point: Satmar and Neturei Karta are not opposites. They are mirror images. One hides behind Talmud; the other hides behind Twitter. But both are preaching the same heresy — that Jewish life without Jewish power is somehow holier.

It isn’t. It’s just weaker. And weakness, in Jewish history, has never been holiness.

 

REPUBLISHED:
 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/satmar-ideology-is-synonymous-with-neturei-karta-mandani-proved-it/

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https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2025/11/jonathan-conricus-on-war-after-war.html

Jonathan Conricus on the war after the war — Shurat HaDin - Israel Law

Fighting Abuse, Trauma, Addiction & Rehab in the Jewish World: The Full Baruch Bergman Story

As of June 2025, Northeast faced 30 child abuse lawsuits–a number that rose to 53 by August. The New York CVA, passed in 2019, allowed previously time-barred cases alleging child sexual abuse to be brought. Survivors can file civil lawsuits against abusers and institutions until they are 55 years old.

 

New York Hospital Insurer Files for Bankruptcy, Citing Child Sex Abuse Claims

 

By Andrew G. Simpson | November 3, 2025

 

 

A Bermuda captive that insured several New York hospitals affiliated with a leading Jewish not-for-profit organization says it is insolvent, citing millions of dollars in child sex abuse claims brought against it under the state’s Child Victims Act (CVA).

Northeast Insurance Co. has filed for “winding-up” of its business in Bermuda Supreme Court and has submitted a Chapter 15 filing in federal bankruptcy court in New York asking it to recognize those Bermuda liquidation proceedings.

The bankruptcy move comes eight years after Northeast stopped writing new policies in December 2017 and began the process of running off its existing liabilities, according to the filing. But the insurer says it cannot meet its obligations under policies it wrote before 2017.

As of June 2025, Northeast faced 30 child abuse lawsuits–a number that rose to 53 by August. Due to this unanticipated exposure, the insurer says its total losses and loss expense reserves have almost doubled, increasing from $15.7 million to $29.1 million, an amount it will not be able to pay.

Northeast’s board has determined it is insolvent on both a cash flow and balance sheet basis and will not be able to raise sufficient funds to meet all of the anticipated settlement payments for the CVA claims.

The company is owned by five health nonprofits affiliated with the UJA/Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and is also affiliated through common shareholders with FFH Insurance Co. Among the hospitals that Northeast insured were Mount Sinai, Montefiore, Beth Israel, Maimonides, and Center Light Health System.

The New York CVA, passed in 2019, allowed previously time-barred cases alleging child sexual abuse to be brought. Survivors can file civil lawsuits against abusers and institutions until they are 55 years old. A number of churches, schools, hospitals, doctors, coaches, municipalities, (yeshivas, synagogues) and other individuals and institutions have been hit with CVA claims. Several Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy as a result.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/mag-features/2025/11/03/845629.htm

“Hamas Has Not Lost” – The TRAGIC Truth Behind This Deal | Haviv Rettig Gur

Jonathan Conricus on the war after the war — Shurat HaDin - Israel Law

Mamdani's Rise and its Consequences - with Reihan Salam

"New York Intifada" On The Line!

 

An Open Letter to the Jews of New York

The NYC mayoral candidate’s constant condemnations of Israel are not merely dog whistles for Jew-haters but clarion calls to action.

Michael Oren Oct 22

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Though I have not lived in New York for many years, I have close family and friends there, and visit it regularly. And while I never interfere in internal American politics, I care far too much about New York, Israel, and the Jewish people to remain silent. For all three, the stakes are alarmingly high.

Soon, my friends, you will have the opportunity and the duty to vote for the mayor of your extraordinary city. The frontrunner in the race is a thirty-four-year-old Socialist, a former housing counselor, hip-hop musician, and state assemblyman who has never run a business, headed a school, or left a serious legislative legacy. He offers to provide free public transportation, a city-wide rent freeze, and discount groceries without explaining how such handouts will be financed.

Yet it is not his qualifications for office or the policies he promises to pursue that I wish to question here. Rather, it is his quality as a human being. I want to urge you to think clearly and deeply about what this person’s candidacy means for you as a Jew and for the Jewish people everywhere.

The candidate insists that, of the 195 states in the world, only one has no right to exist.

The state which the candidate wishes never existed has never known a second of non-democratic governance. Its leader is democratically elected yet the candidate has repeatedly pledged to arrest that leader should he ever set foot in New York. Presumably, the candidate would not arrest the visiting leaders of Russia, North Korea, China, or Iran. Those of Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia—anti-American Socialists—he would likely embrace. But the prime minister of the Middle East’s only democracy could conceivably, if the candidate is elected, be remanded to Rikers Island.

Repeatedly, unabashedly, the candidate has refused to rule out the possibility of destroying that state in a new “intifada.” Previous intifadas were carried out by terrorists who murdered many hundreds of that state’s innocent civilians.

The state is, of course, Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, singling out Israel and holding it to standards different from those of other democracies is, by definition, antisemitic. Singling out its leader for arrest is, by definition, antisemitic. Calling for our violent destruction by U.S.-designated terrorist organizations is simply criminal.

Yes, the candidate is young, charismatic, and brimming with new ideas. So, too, are many of the Jew-hating influencers followed by millions. There can be no obscuring the fact that the candidate wants to see my state, my family, and the home of the world’s largest Jewish community erased from the map. And clearly the candidate would not care if that erasure were accomplished with violence.

The candidate’s vicious positions on Israel come after the two years in which the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism has virtually disappeared. In that time, New York Jews have been threatened almost daily by the haters of both the Jewish people and the Jewish state. For them, the candidate’s constant condemnations of Israel are not merely dog whistles but clarion calls to action.

To the 42% of New York Jews who, according to the most recent polls, are planning to vote for this candidate, I implore you to think clearly and deeply before you do. Consider what this candidate’s victory would mean for your family, for your children and grandchildren. Think what it would mean if the mayor of America’s largest Jewish community calls for the disappearance of the world’s largest Jewish community. The person who denies our right to defend ourselves and our right to exist may well end up opposing your right to self-defense and your ability to live peacefully and securely in the magnificent city you call home.