There are moments in life when everything we have relied upon suddenly seems uncertain. The plans we carefully constructed no longer appear workable, the future we envisioned recedes beyond our reach, and the ground beneath our feet seems less secure than it did yesterday. We can find ourselves confronting circumstances we never anticipated, struggling with questions for which we have no answers, and wondering why the path ahead has become so difficult.

It is in such moments that we can begin to appreciate the greatness of Avrohom Avinu and the extraordinary significance of the first command Hashem gave him: “Lech lecha mei’artzecha umimoladetecha umibais avicha el ha’aretz asher areka,” to leave behind his land, birthplace, and father’s home, and head to an undisclosed place.

With these words, the Torah introduces us to the father of our nation, the man who would become the embodiment of emunah, whose life would illuminate the path for generations of his descendants.

We first learned the parsha when we were young, too young to appreciate the depth of its meaning. When we get older, we can better imagine what Hashem’s command meant to Avrohom and Sorah. A person builds a life in the place where he was born. He knows the people, understands the surroundings, and develops relationships and routines that provide him with a sense of belonging. Avrohom was asked to leave the world he knew and the foundation upon which he had built his identity. And for what? To go where? He didn’t know.

Hashem did not explain the plan to him. He didn’t provide Avrohom with an itinerary, describe the challenges he would encounter, or assure him that his journey would be entirely pleasant.

Avrohom was promised that if he left home, he would receive tremendous brocha, but he was not given an explanation of the road ahead or the destination.

But Avrohom understood that when Hashem calls upon a person to move forward, He does not always reveal where the road will lead. The obligation is to listen, to trust, and to take the next step.

Rashi, citing Chazal, explains that Hashem did not reveal the destination in order to make the journey more beloved to Avrohom and increase his reward for each step he took.

There are some people who enjoy traveling. I am not one of them. I tend to view a journey as a means to an end. I endure the discomfort of the journey because I want to reach a destination, and the sooner I get there, the better. I recently received an invitation to an out-of-town wedding, and it reminded me how much I dread plane travel, with the inevitable delays, the endless lines, the disappointments, and the hours strapped into a seat, waiting for the ordeal to end. If I want to reach a distant place, however, there is no choice but to endure the journey. The travel itself has little value. What matters is arriving.

The Torah teaches us that life does not work that way. In our journey through life, the road is not merely an obstacle standing between us and our destination. The journey itself is the destination. Every step taken in obedience to Hashem, every moment of trust when the outcome is uncertain, and every struggle through which we remain faithful rather than surrender to fear is itself an achievement. We may be focused on where we hope to arrive, but Hashem values the person we become along the way. We measure success by reaching our destination, but the Torah teaches us, through the story of Avrohom Avinu, that there is profound value in every step that brings us closer to Him.

We want to know where we are going. We want to understand what will happen next and how everything will work out. We seek reassurance that the difficulties we experience will lead to something better, that the sacrifices we make will produce the hoped-for results, and that the uncertainty we endure will ultimately be resolved.

But that’s not how life works.

We may spend years preparing for a particular future, only to discover that events have taken us somewhere else entirely. We may do everything we know to be right and still encounter disappointment. We may daven for a particular outcome, work hard to achieve it, and then find that things don’t work out as we expected.

Life is full of nisyonos. Sometimes, when we face a nisayon, we have no idea what to do or how to proceed. Sometimes, we know what to do, or think we do, but we are afraid to do it. But the toughest nisayon is when we find ourselves in a situation and try to figure out why Hashem put us in that situation.

We live in a world of nisyonos, tests that confront us throughout our lives and are woven into the fabric of existence. A nisayon can come in the form of an illness, a financial setback, a disappointment involving a child, a family difficulty, a failed undertaking, or a door that closes just when we thought it was about to open.

Sometimes a person is tested by a sudden crisis. At other times, the challenge is the slow accumulation of burdens that never seem to be lifted. There are tests of patience, tests of character, tests of faith, and tests of endurance. There are nisyonos that require courage, and there is the simple nisayon of getting out of bed each morning and doing what we know we must do.

Life is rarely simple, and oftentimes things happen that involve pain and hurt. Bitachon and emunah do not demand that we pretend suffering does not hurt. The Torah does not ask us to deny the reality of pain, suppress our tears, or greet every disappointment with a smile.

Emunah is not the absence of pain. It is the knowledge that even when we are in pain, we are not abandoned. It is the conviction that the world has a Master, that our lives are not governed by random forces, and that the circumstances we cannot control remain within the domain of the One who created and sustains us, and that everything He does is for a good purpose.

A nisayon places a demand upon us, and we retain the ability to decide how we respond. We can allow adversity to harden us or use it as an occasion to deepen our compassion. We can become embittered by disappointments, or we can learn from them to become more sensitive to the disappointments of others. We can allow uncertainty to distance us from Hashem, or we can use it as an opportunity to turn to Him with a sincerity we might never otherwise have discovered.

We don’t choose the nisayon. We don’t seek out challenges, but when we know they are presented by Hashem, we are better able to deal with them, confront them, and grow from them.

A person can endure hardship and emerge wounded, exhausted, and struggling. Emunah and bitachon guide us to continue seeking Hashem, to continue doing what is right, and to refuse to let circumstances rob us of the values by which we live.

There is another lesson in Avrohom’s journey that deserves our attention.

After Avrohom obeyed Hashem and arrived in Eretz Canaan, the Torah relates that a famine struck the land. Avrohom was forced to go down to Mitzrayim.

Consider the apparent contradiction. Hashem had told Avrohom to leave his homeland and travel to the land He would show him. Avrohom followed Hashem’s command, but upon reaching the destination, instead of finding the promised abundance, he encountered a famine so severe that he could not remain in the land.

The famine was a nisayon to see if Avrohom would question Hashem’s promise.

What happens when we do what is right and things go wrong? What happens when we make the responsible choice, follow the path we believe Hashem wants us to follow, and discover that the outcome is not what we expected?

We may have worked honestly, treated others fairly, and fulfilled our obligations, yet suffered financial losses. People devote themselves to raising their children with care and love, and then their children disappoint them, forcing them to face difficulties they never imagined. We may have invested our hearts in a worthy endeavor and watched it fail. We may have davened with all our strength for a certain outcome and then found ourselves confronting the reality we desperately sought to avoid.

We imagine that if we are on the right path, the road should be smooth. We expect that doing what is right will protect us from painful surprises and that fulfilling our responsibilities will produce the results we seek. The lives of our avos teach us otherwise.

Avrohom’s greatness lay in responding to each stage of his journey as it came, continuing to live with the knowledge that Hashem was directing his path even when the circumstances were difficult to understand.

This is a lesson we need when life does not conform to our expectations. A disappointment is not a verdict on our choices. A closed door does not mean that our efforts were wasted. And a difficult chapter does not tell us how the story will end.

We are responsible for making the best decisions we can following the Torah, making appropriate efforts, and doing our hishtadlus. We are not responsible for controlling the outcome. That distinction can spare us from a lifetime of unnecessary guilt and frustration.

We do our part. We strive to act properly. We daven for success. And when events unfold differently than we hoped, we continue forward.

As children we thought that every good story has a happy ending. The struggles are temporary, the obstacles are overcome, the right people find one another, and everyone eventually lives the life they dreamed of. We expect our own lives to follow a similar script. People imagine that they are entitled to the perfect job, the perfect family, financial security, a beautiful home, and a life in which everything falls neatly into place. When reality fails to deliver that picture, they feel cheated. They look at what they have and see what is missing, measure their lives against what they imagined they would be, and wonder why the happiness they expected remains so elusive.

Part of growing up is learning that life is not a fairy tale, and part of developing emunah is recognizing that we are not the authors of our own stories. Hashem determines the circumstances into which we are born, the blessings we receive, the challenges we confront, and the roads we travel. To the degree that we learn to live fully and faithfully within the reality Hashem has given us, we attain happiness.

The fairy-tale ending we seek is not necessarily the life in which every problem disappears and every wish is fulfilled. It is the life in which we learn to embrace our circumstances, find meaning in our struggles, appreciate our blessings, and recognize that even the challenges we would never have chosen can become part of our growth. When we stop demanding that life be perfect before we allow ourselves to be happy, we begin to discover a deeper kind of joy, one that does not depend upon everything going the way we imagined it would.

As long as we measure success by the standards peddled by a superficial culture—perfect children, effortless wealth, physical beauty, dazzling white teeth, a sprawling house on a generous lot, and an expensive car in the garage—we will always find someone who has more and something in our own lives that falls short. We will spend our days chasing an image of happiness that keeps receding just as we approach it.

We can spend a lifetime waiting for the perfect life, never realizing that the life Hashem gave us is the one in which we were meant to find our purpose, our growth, and our joy, and that this is the truly perfect life.

The perfect life portrayed in fairy tales does not exist. There is no life in which every dream comes true, every relationship unfolds as hoped, everything follows the path we envisioned, and every day brings only satisfaction and joy. That imaginary perfection distracts us from the perfection we are capable of achieving in the lives Hashem has actually given us.

For the truly perfect life is not one in which a person is spared nisyonos, but one in which he confronts them and triumphs. It is a life in which challenges, as unwelcome and painful as they may be, become opportunities for growth. It is a life in which disappointment deepens our understanding, adversity strengthens our emunah, and struggle brings out reserves of courage, patience, and compassion we might never otherwise have discovered. We may not choose the tests that confront us, and we need not pretend to welcome them. But we can choose to face them with emunah, to learn from them, and to refuse to let them defeat the person we are capable of becoming.

The perfect life is not the life in which nothing goes wrong. It is the life in which, when things go wrong, we grow stronger in emunah, greater in character, and closer to the person Hashem wants us to become.

This is the lesson we learn from Avrohom Avinu, whose life stands in stark contrast to the fairy tales that shape immature expectations of happiness. When Hashem told Avrohom, “Lech lecha,” He accompanied it with extraordinary promises. We could have imagined that Avrohom’s life from that point on would be an upward trajectory of luxurious glory. We would have thought that Avrohom would be spared the disappointments and hardships that ordinary people have to deal with.

Yet, almost immediately after arriving in Eretz Canaan, Avrohom encountered a famine and had to go down to Mitzrayim. He had no children and had to send away his relative who came with him. He had to fight a war with local kings. The journey that began with promises instead brought him deprivation. Though he did indeed live a blessed life, Avrohom’s life was marked by repeated nisyonos, each demanding new measures of emunah and bitachon.

But the first of our avos paved the way for us and showed us how to live, teaching us not to measure the truth of Hashem’s promises by the comfort of our present circumstances.

The fairy tale ends when the obstacles disappear and everyone lives happily ever after. The Torah’s version of a good life emerges through the obstacles themselves, when a person confronts a nisayon without surrendering or abandoning his emunah.

Avrohom did not become Avrohom Avinu because his life unfolded according to a comfortable script. He became the father of our nation because he remained loyal to Hashem’s truth through a series of challenges and difficulties.

We do not choose our nisyonos, but we do choose how we respond to them. Like Avrohom and Sorah, we can choose to live lives of purpose, goodness, and growth, even when circumstances are not what we had hoped or imagined. We learn to appreciate what we have rather than dwell on what we lack, to recognize the many brachos Hashem has bestowed upon us, and to take advantage of opportunities to deepen our emunah, strengthen our character, and become better people.

As bnei and bnos Torah, our mission is to live as Avrohom and Sorah did, bringing kedusha and goodness into the world and striving to become worthy of the continued brachos and protection that Hashem bestows upon us as we continue the chain of the mesorah in our families, preparing the world for Moshiach Tzidkeinu.

I must make a confession. Despite having grown up with the knowledge of Chazal’s words that teach us “Eisov soneh l’Yaakov,” I looked at it through the eyes of emunah. To my mind, the thought was, “If Chazal said it, it must be true…despite the fact that I didn’t see it that way.”

Living in America with minimal antisemitism, we didn’t see the openly ugly hatred, contempt, and cruelty of Eisov in the way that our parents and grandparents had experienced it in Europe. We needed emunah to believe this Chazal, because our yediah seemed to indicate that this was not the case.

Today, that has changed. To think that America may very soon elect a fifth-column senator who represents the Muslim Brotherhood more than he represents Michigan is a chilling thought. More chilling is the fact that so many Americans hate the Jews so much that their Jew-hatred has conversely made them fans of anyone who also hates the Jews. Thus, if Abdul El-Sayed hates the Jews, the fact that he supports a terrorist organization that killed more than three thousand Americans on 9/11 and the fact that he wants to undermine America doesn’t matter.

The same goes for the mayor of New York. It is just amazing to see how his overt antisemitism doesn’t matter to Americans anymore. Not only doesn’t it matter, but for many, it is an endearing factor about him. It makes him more likeable.

No, today in America, you don’t need emunah to see that “Eisov soneh l’Yaakov.” All you have to do is open your eyes. It is everywhere.

Indeed, it was just a wake-up call for me to start working on emunah. Emunah in the words of Chazal and emunah in Hashem, even when what we see appears to be the opposite of what our emunah is telling us. Yes, just a few years ago, you needed emunah to believe that “Eisov soneh l’Yaakov.” Today, anyone with eyes and ears realizes that.

Learning Emunah from Avrohom Avinu

Let’s look at Avrohom Avinu, the father of maaminim and the father of emunah.

Now, we all know why, in this week’s parsha, Avrohom was traveling. He was traveling because Hashem had commanded him, “Lech lecha—Leave your home,” and Avrohom Avinu, without asking any questions, completely uprooted himself, leaving behind his entire life, his birthplace, and everything familiar, and left…for an unknown destination.

Avrohom Avinu left everything familiar and finally arrived in Eretz Yisroel. You would think, “Wow! He passed the test. He went to an unknown destination. Hashem will probably shower him with brocha, with everything he needs. He passed the test!”

But no. That is not what happened.

What did happen? What did Hashem do? He brought about a terrible famine. Avrohom Avinu had nothing to eat. He was starving, poor, and destitute.

Had it been us, what might we have done? We might have thought, “Hashem, I did so much for You. I left everything behind without asking any questions, and now I can’t even find a crust of bread to eat?! I don’t even have a penny in my pocket?!”

Not Avrohom Avinu.

Avrohom Avinu didn’t ask any questions.

He saw that there was no food, so he picked up again and went down to Mitzrayim, where his wife Sarah was kidnapped by the evil Paroh.

So many tzaros!

Only after Hashem performed a great neis by sending a plague upon Paroh and his household was Sarah Imeinu freed. Not only was she freed, but Paroh gave Avrohom a lot of money for his trouble as well.

What did Avrohom Avinu do after so much suffering? He packed up and headed back to Eretz Yisroel. What does he do?

The posuk tells us, “Vayeilech lemasaav—He went on his journey.” Rashi teaches us that this means that when he returned from Mitzrayim to Canaan, he stayed overnight in the lodgings where he had stayed on his previous trips to pay his debts.

A Yid Never Loses by Listening to Hashem

When the Gerer Rebbe, the Pnei Menachem, learned this Rashi as a child, he asked his father, the Imrei Emes, an amazingly insightful question. Avrohom Avinu had no idea that he would get rich in Mitzrayim and thus have money to repay his debts later. How, then, could he put himself in a position where he could incur debt and leave his place of lodging before paying? A person is not supposed to borrow money without knowing how he is going to pay it back.

The Imrei Emes answered that Avrohom Avinu was the first person to bring the idea and ideal of emunah in Hashem into this world. Avrohom Avinu had reached such an exalted level of emunah that he believed with the utmost truth and simplicity that “He who gives life gives substance too.” Not only did he believe, but he also actually internalized and knew that Hashem would give him the wherewithal to pay it back.

Of course, we, who are not on the level of Avrohom Avinu, cannot borrow money without knowing how we are going to pay it back, but Avrohom Avinu, the father of the concept of emunah, was able to.

This offers us a tremendous lesson in emunah. When we follow Hashem’s commands, we must realize with ironclad emunah that Hashem will help us serve Him. Yes, Avrohom Avinu left his home without questioning and then, after such a sacrifice, instead of being rewarded, he was faced with the tremendous nisayon of famine. Nevertheless, Avrohom Avinu never asked questions. He had such complete and pure emunah that a Yid never loses by following Hashem’s commandments that he was willing to borrow money based on that knowledge.

So too, we must always have emunah that when we do the right thing, Hashem will help us out in the end. There are times when we may not see it right away, but, ultimately, we will see how Hashem never remains in debt to anyone who fulfills His desire.

A Bleak Situation, A Reason for…Emunah

When we look at the world today, the situation is very bleak. Whether it is the contentious relationship that the Torah community in Eretz Yisroel has with their secular neighbors, who don’t understand what Torah is and what limud haTorah does for the entirety of the Jewish people, or the difficult situation that Yidden in the Diaspora find themselves in, where hatred of Jews just lehseim hatred is not just tolerated but is almost seen as a political advantage, wherever we look, the situation is bleak and is cause for concern.

That said, we shouldn’t be surprised. The halacha is that Eisov (and his father-in-law, Yishmoel) hates Yaakov. They always will.

Just as those words of Chazal are true, so too are the words of Chazal that teach us that we are Hashem’s beloved firstborn, “beni bechori Yisroel.”

Even as we become so disillusioned with America and it becomes unrecognizable in many ways, we must at the same time not despair. Not because the situation isn’t bleak. On the surface, it does appear to be very bleak, and yet…

Just as we now believe the words of “Eisov soneh l’Yaakov” and see how so many of those whom we thought to be our “friends” have shown their true colors, and we can see it with our eyes, so must we have emunah sheleimah in the words of the nevi’im that tell us that there will come a day when everyone will realize, “Hashem echad uShemo echad.”

When Rabi Akiva saw the foxes coming out of the place where the Kodesh Hakodoshim once was, he laughed. Let’s cultivate the emunah of Rabi Akiva and laugh too, because just as the words of the posuk that tell us that foxes will walk on the Har Habayis came true, so will the words of the posuk in Zechariah, “Old men and women shall yet sit in the streets of Yerushalayimm,” also come true. Bemeheirah beyomeinu.

I hope our dear readers will forgive me a personal moment in these pages. My rebbetzin and I have, boruch Hashem, just come from the chasunah of our granddaughter, Faigy, daughter of our children, Rav Shmuel and Esther Feitman, who married Yisroel Aryeh Levi, son of Rav Yehoshua and Chaya Bracha Levi in Lakewood. Faigy is named after my mother a”h, a survivor of Churban Europa, who was not zoche to see grandchildren during her lifetime, as was my father z”l, who suffered in the same way. My gratitude to Hashem is all the greater because of this great brocha to which my rebbetzin and I were zoche.

I mentioned this fact to someone who has already married off numerous grandchildren and was somewhat unimpressed with our milestone. This leads me to share a few thoughts and feelings upon the incredible gift of our noshim tzidkaniyos, our righteous wives, daughters and granddaughters in Klal Yisroel. I hope and am mispallel that this may inspire some people who take these gifts somewhat complacently when they are actually so amazing and miraculous.

I will begin with this week’s sedra, Parshas Lecha Lecha, which seems to be the source for this divine blessing. At the very beginning of the parsha, the Torah relates that Avrohom Avinu asked his wife, Sarah Imeinu, for a favor: “It occurred, as [Avrom] was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, ‘See now that you are a woman of beautiful appearance… When the Egyptians will see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife;’ then they will kill me, but you they will let live. Please say that ‘you are my sister, that it may go well with me for your sake,’ and that I may live because of you” (Bereishis 12:11-13). Rashi explains that Avrohom was seeking gifts from the Egyptians. Rav Yonasan David, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Pachad Yitzchok in Yerushalayim, asks a powerful question (Sefer Me’iras Einyaim, page 24). First, Avrohom asked for gifts and only later asked that they not murder him. It would certainly seem that, first of all, he should ask that his life be spared and only then request presents.

Rav Yonasan derives from this sequencing some basic conclusions about Avrohom Avinu and the crucial role of women in our lives. He explains that, in truth, Avrohom, then still known as Avrom, did not worry about losing his life at all. He already had a promise at the beginning of the sedra from Hashem that “I will make of you a great nation” and much more. His emunah and bitachon were complete, and so he did not fear death. However, what he did want was that his salvation and hatzolah should come through Sorai, his wife. He did not simply request that “things go well,” but that it should happen “for your sake.” For this reason, he first mentioned the gifts and then life itself, because he already had a divine assurance of life and was actually requesting the seemingly lesser matanos. He added the part about life itself because he wanted his very existence to come from his wife as well.

Rav Yonasan goes on to explain the far-reaching intentions and hopes of Avrohom Avinu for his future progeny and nation. He wanted all of this to come about through the partnership of avos and imahos, particular himself and Sarah. This is what the posuk means when it says, “Look to Avrohom your forefather and to Sarah who bore you, for I have called them One” (Yeshayahu 51:2) Although the general translation of this posuk is “when he was yet one alone,” the posuk also declares that Avrohom and Sarah are one. The Maharal (Chiddushei Aggados to Bava Basra 58a) has already established this, saying that “in the building of the edifice of Knesses Yisroel, Avrohom and Sarah are one.” He even goes on to say that “Avrohom and Sarah are more unified that any other couple in the history of the world.”

Rav Yonasan finds the matrix of this eternal relationship between the avos and imahos even earlier in the Torah: “On the day that Hashem made man…He created them male and female. He blessed them and called their name Man on the day that they were created” (Bereishis 5:2). This statement is the source of the Gemara (Yevamos 63a) that “one who has no wife is not a man.” The Rama (Orach Chaim 6) teaches that when we recite in Asher Yotzar that Hashem does wonders (umafli laasos), it refers to the unification of two near-opposites, body and soul. This differentiates man from all the other creatures in the world. That bond was meant to last forever, but through Adam’s sin, body and soul are destined to part upon death. Man represents the primarily spiritual element and woman the primarily physical element, but together they form a unit wherein the soul elevates the body in both (see Maharal, Tiferes Yisroel 3, and Nesivos Olam, Nesiv HaTorah 15).

As Rav Yonasan concludes, when Avrohom Avinu was beginning his avodah as the father of Klal Yisroel, he wanted to include Sarah Imeinu from the very nascence. The joining of the zochor and the nekeivah mirrors the unifying of body and soul. The Ramban (beginning of Hilchos Ishus) makes clear that after Mattan Torah, marriage took on a new reality. From that moment, marriage in Klal Yisroel brought about kedusha, holiness, because it allowed and mandated the sanctification of both body and soul, spirituality with corporality. This, in turn, begins to restore to mankind the lost grandeur of Adam Harishon, as represented by Avrohom and Sarah and later the other avos and imahos. For this reason, they are all interred in the Me’oras Hamachpeilah, meaning Cave of the Pairs, where both their bodies and souls are present forever in the state of perfection and unity for which they were destined (see Maharal to Bava Basra 58a).

With this approach of Rav Yonasan David, we can now begin to understand the depth of Chazal’s statement (Bava Metziah 59a) that “a person should always be careful about the honor of his wife, because the blessing of the home comes about only because of her.” The Gemara derives this promise from the posuk quoted at the beginning of this essay. Avrohom wanted his blessings to come from Sarah. We now understand that to mean that through marriage, both husband and wife fulfill their eternal task of restoring the lost glory of both Adam and Chava. It is now only in the purview of Klal Yisroel, not the rest of the world, to effectuate this restoration, since we join in kiddushin, holiness, not just a partnership or physical phenomenon. Kiddushin is the way that we restore the full holiness to Hashem’s world, the way that He had originally planned. For that reason, each husband should cherish his wife for helping him to fulfill this cosmic mitzvah.

It is for this reason, amongst others, that I was so moved to hear at sheva brachos of the hopes and aspirations of my granddaughter and her husband to bring the Shechinah into their new home. When this is carried over to a third generation, with one’s children raising their own children to understand this purpose in marriage, it truly justifies all the efforts that generations have poured into their children, grandchildren and, G-d willing, great-grandchildren. At a time like this, I think of my parents who never saw their second generation and their parents who were murdered before they could even see one new generation. Yes, this is a nekamah against Hitler ym”sh, but it is also an even sweeter moment in time to know that traditions, teachings and mesirus nefesh have not been in vain. It is a brocha that I wish upon all our friends and brethren. But we must each try to remember that after the original creation, nothing comes from nothing. We must all continue to daven daily and almost constantly for all our offspring, so that we can restore the glory and together bring Moshiach Tzidkeinu bemeheirah beyomeinu. Amein.

During the final days of this election, the words “conservative” and “liberal” are being bandied about, and some people even toss around “orthodox” and “unorthodox” to describe methods and behavior.

In the world of politics, most of the Orthodox are conservatives, and most of the Conservative Jews I know are liberals. In the world of theology, of course, the word Conservative means something entirely different than in the world of politics. Actually, the theological Conservative movement was originally founded to fight Reform and “conserve” Judaism, but as we sadly learned, you can’t stop a sheker with another falsehood or half-truth.

The concept of the word Orthodox was always interesting. Rav Mordechai Gifter used to say, “I am not an Orthodox Jew. I am a Torah Jew!” But I am not sure if that ever caught on in the world of pulpit rabbis and synagogue creation. In any event, back in the day, Orthodoxy was struggling, and sometimes you had to be unorthodox in order to remain orthodox, and the onlooker would call you very conservative for it. I hope I haven’t confused you. I have certainly confused myself.

I knew a ben Torah whose English vocabulary was not his strong suit, though his hashkafah was as steadfast as they come. Steeped in Torah, he needed someone to help him buy a suit for his wedding, and that someone was me. This was long before there were frum-owned clothing stores on every corner of every Jewish neighborhood, when we would shlep into the garment district in Manhattan and buy direct from the manufacturer. I took him to a man who lived near us on Long Island, and I explained that the chosson needed a few suits, but they had to be conservative.

The bochur was flabbergasted. “Chas veshalom!” he blurted. “They must be Orthodox!”

I find myself thinking about those struggles, even those I recall from my youth, from Parshas Noach through the parshiyos of Avrohom Avinu. I find myself retelling the stories of kiruv, of the battles fought with chochmah and steadfastness in neighborhoods across the tri-state area. Many of those neighborhoods once had thriving Conservative synagogues alongside fledgling Orthodox ones. One by one, the Conservative synagogues now stand empty and are sold to yeshivos and botei knesses.

Many towns had their Noachs, men who saved themselves and their families, and some towns had their Avrohoms, men who transformed the lives of multitudes. Noach and Avrohom are not only two figures in the Torah. They are two types, each of whom makes his mark in a different way.

I thought about this after a long call from my younger brother, Rav Zvi, who was recently driving from Toronto to Chicago and realized that he needed a minyan for Mincha. The closest shul was in Hamilton, Ontario, and he thought that there would perhaps be nine men and a Sefer Torah. When he walked into Adas Israel, he was amazed to find some fifty people davening Mincha. A Mincha minyan in a small Canadian city an hour from Toronto was something he did not really anticipate, and as a native of the once-fledgling community of Woodmere, he asked how it came to be. He learned about the rov, Rav Mordechai Green, who arrived in the 1950s, an era when everyone in the small towns of America and Canada was sure that Orthodoxy was going the way of the dinosaur. Rav Green wrote down his story in a book, Living with Miracles, and my brother pushed me to get it and read it. I was amazed at the steadfastness and confidence of the rov, and I’d like to share a bit of it with you.

When Rav Green went to Hamilton to give a probeh on Shabbos, he gave drashos built on the Rambam that were filled with too much pilpul. By the end of Shabbos, he realized that he was way over their heads. He had given two pilpulim, he didn’t think he was getting the job, and so he came to the Sunday morning breakfast interview with the baalei batim feeling relaxed. Nothing to lose is a wonderful state for a candidate.

Then one of the younger men, Mr. Abe Hotz, stood up. “We need more than a rabbi,” he said. “We need somebody who will get the women down from the balcony into the main sanctuary. If we want to attract people, we can’t have a mechitzah.”

Rav Green was not shocked. Traditional Orthodoxy was under siege across North America. Shuls were leaving downtown for impressive suburban buildings with no mechitzah, and rabbanim had trouble finding Orthodox pulpits at all. He had heard this speech before. But he was relaxed, and so he smiled and asked Mr. Hotz what business he was in.

“I sell scrap metal.”

“If you don’t believe in your product,” said Rav Green, “you can’t sell it. Do you believe in your product?”

“Of course!”

“Do you want to be a winner or a loser?”

“A winner.”

“Winners believe in their product. We’re Orthodox. We’ll build a shul with a mechitzah, and we’ll be the biggest shul in this city.”

Mr. Hotz broke into a grin. “I like the way this man talks. That’s my man!” And that was that. Rav Green had the job.

Now, Mr. Hotz did not want to hear the philosophy of Orthodoxy, and Rav Green knew it. He did not give him a third pilpul. He spoke to him as one salesman to another. “I spoke his language,” he wrote. “We were both in sales, and we both understood that if you don’t believe in your product, you can’t sell it.”

The mechitzah stayed. The Rambam stayed. The rov did not sell Mr. Hotz a discounted version of Torah. He sold him the full version in a vocabulary Mr. Hotz could hold in his hands. He changed the language, not the product, and that is precisely why a rov sometimes has to be a salesman. Somehow, the confidence and clarity were exuded, and everyone was on board.

Well, not everyone. The people of Hamilton were not all Mr. Hotz. In those early years, Rav Green writes how he constantly met people who tried to talk him out of an Orthodox shul. One was a real philanthropist, a man who supported a wide array of Jewish causes in the city. He told the rov that he was going to do him a favor and not give him a penny. If he somehow managed the down payment on a building, he’d never be able to carry it and he’d be stuck. “Let me save you the effort,” he said. “I’m not supporting you now, and so you won’t need to come to me to beg me to bail you out.”

Rav Green answered him in kind. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “We will raise our own money, and we will build our own building. And this will be the only institution in town that does not bear your name.”

And so it was.

I think about Noach and Avrohom. Noach built the teivah with total steadfastness and saved his family. Avrohom opened a tent on the road, fed travelers, and only when they had eaten did he tell them Whom to thank.

I don’t know if they had different convictions, but they certainly had different deliveries. Maybe when Avrohom pitched his tent, he included with it a different pitch.

Just Saying

As speculation intensifies over last week’s surprise pre-dawn raid on the home of far-left Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar, news sources point to a long-running federal probe into alleged immigration fraud by the congresswoman.

The investigation is said to be nearing a dramatic turning point.

“The most likely scenario is Omar and many others will soon receive a surprise in the form of federal indictments,” predicted a Fox News op-ed by attorney and political commentator Mike Davis.

Omar, D-Minn., is reportedly under federal investigation over allegations that she lied about her birth year on immigration documents in order to obtain U.S. citizenship.

The controversy intensified after her staff quietly changed the birth year listed in her official biography in 2019—a change that drew federal scrutiny and has become pivotal to the investigation.

Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told Fox News Digital, “there have been rumors for years” about Omar and, if proven true, if it’s determined that she lied to gain citizenship, she should face consequences.”

As The Washington Post recently reported, “The Library told The Washington Post that Omar’s staff had sought that change [altering the birth year from 1982 to 1981], because it was in the process of correcting Omar’s birth year in various public sources.”

If the earlier birth year of 1982 is correct, she would have been 18 or 19 at the time her family arrived in the United States in 1995, as asylum-seeking refugees. At that age, Omar would no longer be eligible to obtain citizenship through her father, Nur Mohamed. She would have needed to apply for citizenship and meet its requirements on her own.

As records indicate she never did so, Omar may turn out to be a non-citizen, ineligible to serve in Congress. If found guilty of deliberately misrepresenting her age, she faces not only removal from office but denaturalization–being stripped of her citizenship.

“In addition to the DOJ and DHS investigations, the U.S. House of Representatives must investigate this immediately. If Omar isn’t a U.S. citizen, the House must expel her,” the op-ed asserted.

“Federal law provides a process for denaturalizing those who engaged in fraud to procure their citizenship,” the writer, an attorney, pointed out. “No statute of limitations stops the government from pursuing denaturalization in a civil process.”

“Just ask the former Nazis, who came to the United States claiming to be ‘refugees,’ he added. “Decades later, the government sought and won their denaturalizations –they were all stripped of citizenship—because they had lied on their paperwork.”

Judge Who Signed Search Warrant Found Probable Cause

Rep. Emmer argued the raid was not political, as Omar’s allies allege. He said a judicially authorized search warrant [signed by Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, a Democrat with leftist leanings,] meant there was a reasonable basis to believe the allegations could be true.

“That judge had to determine that there was probable cause that a federal crime has been committed. And I’ll tell you that, because it concerned Ilhan Omar, the evidence for a raid was going to be scrutinized to the very last detail,” Emmer said.

“Judge Sharbaugh’s signature on that warrant shows beyond any reasonable doubt that this matter is serious and based on evidence. This is no political hit job,” the congressman said. “Maybe after all these years, someone is finally going to hold Ilhan Omar accountable.”

In an interview with Fox News, Homan said investigators told him they have been following “strong evidence” in the wake of multiple court-authorized search warrants for Omar’s D.C. home.

During the raid, federal agents seized Omar’s cellphone, notebooks, personal computers, passport, family records, documents and photos. Authorities had previously issued more than 15 grand jury subpoenas to her relatives, in some of whose homes similar raids were being carried out.

Federal agents were glimpsed searching through the dumpster outside Omar’s residence, news sources said, ostensibly looking for DNA evidence that are thought to be critical to the investigation.

Federal authorities are reportedly also targeting long-running allegations that Omar in 2009 pretended to marry her brother, Ahmed Nur Said, to help him gain entry to the United States, followed by his obtaining citizenship.

The DNA that agents gathered from “dumpster-diving” will be used to determine if a brother-sister DNA match exists between Ilhan Omar and the alleged brother, informed sources say.

Such a marriage-conspiracy would be blatant immigration fraud, Rep. Mullin noted, adding that if the charges are substantiated, Omar could be prosecuted for “family immigration fraud” under federal racketeering laws.

The Minnesota congresswoman, who was present at the time of the raid and hasn’t yet been charged with a crime, has denied all the allegations. She slammed the investigation as “nothing more than President Trump’s attempt to target political enemies and weaponize law enforcement.”

“The difference between the president and I is that I was raised to be a decent human being and to have compassion and he lacks both of those things,” Omar sniffed self-righteously in a self-posted video.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin rejected the weaponization narrative, telling a Fox News host, “We wouldn’t move forward, and President Trump didn’t want to move forward either, unless we knew that it couldn’t be politically driven. This was about enforcing our nation’s laws, and it’s a strong case.”

He presented a hypothetical scenario in which a person filled out their paperwork unlawfully and allowed others to enter the country under those falsified documents. “Then that can be considered a RICO [Rackateer and Corrupt Organizations] case, right?” he said. “Because there was conspiracy to deceive the American government.”

Dems Denounce Investigation

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, and other Democrats have denounced the probe as “political persecution” of one of President Trump’s harshest critics weeks before a critical election.

[Ironically, back in June, 2023, when discussing special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of President Trump for Mar-a-Lago “offenses,” the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill “insurrection,” and other alleged “crimes,’ Jeffries demonstrated a higher tolerance for “political persecution.”

“No one is above the law – including Donald Trump,” he intoned. “The indictment against Trump must now play out through the legal process, without any outside political or ideological interference.”]

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, defended Omar and questioned the subpoenas and raids. He wrote on social media that “the Federal government turned the full force of the DHS against a sitting member of Congress for the offense of disagreeing with the White House. The promise of citizenship should not be contingent on someone agreeing with the federal government.”

Republicans such as Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican and longtime Omar critic, hailed the investigation.

“Ilhan Omar hates America but loves nothing more than to take from it. Somali fraud isn’t anything new at this point, but doing it from the halls of Congress would take it to a whole different level,” Fine said. “We will get to the bottom of this.”

Fine was using the term “Somali fraud” to refer to separate federal investigations into documented schemes that siphoned billions of dollars in Covid-19 relief funds, by business members of the Somali community in Omar’s Minnesota Congressional District.

Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children.

In 2021, Feeding Our Future alone received about $250 million in funding. In reality, the embezzlers used the money to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya, reported the NY Post.

Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme made campaign donations to, or appeared publicly with Ilhan Omar. In a mark of reciprocity, Omar’s aide, Ali Isse, advocated for Feeding Our Future, and Omar herself appeared in a video promoting the organization, the Post reported.

Ninety-five defendants charged with complicity in the fraud have already been convicted, with the majority serving prison time.

The Omar investigation may also be examining whether the congresswoman herself had any connection to the alleged financial fraud schemes. Its coordination through the Minneapolis office of Homeland Security Investigations could point to a broader inquiry into the sprawling fraud cases that have rocked the state.

Left-wing Islamic Radical

Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. While her family reported fleeing conflict in Somalia, public records and biographical accounts indicate her father served as a colonel in the Somali National Army under President Siad Barre, whose regime was implicated in documented human rights atrocities, including the Isaaq genocide.

If Mohamed failed to disclose his military service under the Barre regime on his asylum filings, both he and his daughter may have entered the country under fraudulent pretenses.

In a bizarre development, it turns out the Department of Homeland Security has no record of Omar’s father’s naturalization paperwork, prompting the question of whether he was ever naturalized at all.

In response to inquiries from A.J. Kern, a former Minnesota congressional candidate who ran against Omar, the DHS issued a certificate of “nonexistence,” essentially stating that they could not find any record of Omar’s father’s immigration history.

Analysts following this part of the investigative trail have pointed out a possible rationale for the missing paperwork. They note that the United States strongly backed Somalia’s Barre regime during the 1950s and 1960s. That military support —a Cold War strategy— began under President Carter, continued under Reagan, and then gradually collapsed under congressional pressure, after reports of regime’s horrific record of war crimes became public.

As U.S. support wound down, the intelligence community may have whisked its Somali allies and assets —even war criminals— back to the United States under various immigration and refugee programs in return for their “help.” Such expedient arrangements would not be without historical precedent: the U.S. government’s postwar recruitment of former Nazi officials and scientists, many implicated in war crimes, is well documented.

Was Omar’s father brought into the United States under some kind of arrangement that allowed him and his family to seek asylum in exchange for services he had provided?

And if so, is it possible that reports of his impending naturalization triggered an outcry after critics learned that Nur Mohamed had served as a high-ranking officer in Somalia’s brutal Barre regime—prompting authorities to abandon the plan?

The questions far exceed the answers at this point. But as the investigation plays out, it’s clear the outcome could be disastrous for Omar. If investigators establish that her father was never naturalized and she obtained her citizenship fraudulently, her reputation, career, finances and future would likely all go up in smoke.

Meteoric Rise in Congress

Despite the above-mentioned irregularities, Omar claims to have become a citizen in 2000, and was duly elected to Congress representing the 5th District in Minnesota, a Democratic stronghold, in November 2018.

Two short years later, she advanced to the U.S. Congress, joining a far-left extremist clique that includes Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, dubbed ‘the Squad.”

The group’s virulently anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-American ranting have been eagerly amplified by the media. Its far-left agenda includes demanding an end to U.S. military support for Israel, accusing Israel of genocide, abolishing ICE and cash bail, redistributing the nation’s wealth in the name of “equity,” and removing almost all barriers to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

In 2019, national Democrat leaders installed the inexperienced, first-term congresswoman to one of the House’s most powerful committees— Foreign Affairs. She was made vice chair of the Africa subcommittee, and by 2021 chaired the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on International Development.

Republicans, with a full chamber vote, stripped her from Foreign Affairs in 2023.

Omar’s early or forced departure from Congress would not change the immediate balance of power in Congress, as her seat would undoubtedly be filled by another left-wing Democrat. However, her removal would bring other benefits, experts say. It would weaken the Squad’s influence, observers say. It would diminish the progressive bloc’s voice in Congress, and potentially disrupt its ability to advance its far-left agenda.

The Disappearing Millions

The Justice Department has confirmed it is also investigating the striking irregularities in Omar’s personal finances.

In her financial disclosures to Congress, Omar claimed that a $30 million filing discrepancy was just a “paperwork error.”

Omar’s required Congressional financial disclosure initially listed interests in two businesses co-owned with her husband at a combined $6 million–to-$30 million, but then, an April 2026 amendment by Omar’s accountant listed those interests as having no net value at all.

It reduced the couple’s net worth from up to $30 million down to between $18,004 and $95,000.

Omar maintained the discrepancy was simply “a mistake” and blamed her husband, Tim Mynett, for giving their accountant ‘incomplete’ figures.

Last month, the Office of Congressional Conduct voted 5–1 to recommend dismissal of allegations of financial impropriety, finding “no substantial reason” to believe Omar had been guilty of foul play.

But U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro dismissed this outcome.

“It doesn’t matter what the House does,” she told a Fox News host, explaining that the Justice Department has opened its own investigation, which is completely separate from the House Watchdog Committee.

Pirro revealed that her office was examining Omar’s financial disclosures, which previously showed, as mentioned above, that the reported value of businesses tied to her husband, Tim Mynett, had surged from as much as $51,000 in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024.

Fueling the Justice Department’s investigation, according to James Comer R-Ky., House Oversight Committee chairman, were revelations about the couple’s winery.

“Not only was there a huge discrepancy in the financial disclosure form, there was the winery that was the big base of her $25 million listing on Ms. Omar’s financial disclosure form,” Comer said. “That winery has, according to the press, been shut down because of fraud. They were apparently selling investors barrels of wine to be aged, but there was nothing in the barrels.”

Comer also referred to Omar’s numerous connections to the Somali fraud network in Minnesota, including through earmarking taxpayer money for an alleged substance abuse clinic that was actually a fraud scam run out of a restaurant.

Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, has also come under intense scrutiny after being linked in press reports to both the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal and an alleged USAID fraud scheme, Fox News host Jesse Watters noted.

According to Watters, text messages recovered from Noor’s phone provided federal agents with enough evidence that a judge was persuaded to authorize search warrants for Omar’s home.

“It is hard to get a judge to order a home raid,” notes attorney Mike Davis in a Fox News op-ed. “This is particularly true against a sitting Member of Congress, who enjoys Speech and Debate Clause immunity under the U.S. Constitution. And this happened three weeks before the midterm elections, by a DC Democrat judge against a leading Democrat politician,” the writer pointed out.

“The simplest explanation is this: the federal government has strong evidence of federal crimes–so strong that even a hardcore leftist judge could not overlook it. The evidence against Omar–and likely many others–must be overwhelming.”

***

‘I Can Live Wherever I Want’

So far Omar has been keeping up a defiant pose. Her campaign is fundraising off the federal raid of her home, calling on donors to “Stand with Ilhan Omar. Donald Trump and DHS have opened a baseless, partisan investigation into Ilhan Omar, and she needs us by her side as they escalate their attacks.”

In public statements, Omar says that she is “not worried” about being deported and does not “know why this is such a scary threat. I am grown, I can live wherever I want!”

“No, Ms. Omar — no, you cannot,” countered the Washington Times in an editorial. “If you and your family lied about your father’s asylum claims, your father’s naturalization and your own derived naturalization, then you are not a U.S. citizen. You may not live here legally, let alone represent Americans in Congress.

“The feds are closing in,” the editorial concludes. “If the allegations are true, Omar deserves a one-way ticket back to Mogadishu, Somalia.”

Election Takes Center Stage

Another week has gone by, and, as always, I have much to tell you about. This weekend will mark the yahrtzeit of two of the rabbonim who influenced our community heavily over the past generation: Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel and Rav Chaim Walkin. On the same day, the 11th of Cheshvan, masses of people will visit Kever Rochel in honor of the yahrtzeit of Rochel Imeinu. I imagine that many people will take advantage of the opportunity this year to daven for the lomdei Torah of this country, who are subject to persecution, and will daven for the religious parties’ success in the election as well. Those are not two separate subjects; in fact, both causes and inextricably intertwined. If the chareidi parties emerge from the election with little political clout, it might jeopardize the future well-being of the country’s bnei Torah. On the flip side, if they increase their political strength, it will add to their influence and will be a statement to the rest of the country as well.

Much has happened over the past couple of weeks. For one thing, more terror plots have come to light. Last weekend, the media reported that IDF soldiers in the Menashe Brigade carried out two arrests, based on intelligence from the Shin Bet, in the villages of Qabatiya and Arraba, taking into custody four terrorists from Islamic Jihad who were plotting to carry out a terror attack in the northern Shomron. In an additional arrest in Beit Rima in the Binyomin region, soldiers from the Duvdevan unit detained a suspect who had been trafficking in weapons. The terrorists were transferred to the security forces for additional questioning. In addition, an attempted terror attack in Yerushalayim was detected and thwarted in time.

We are witnessing Arab violence in Europe, and in France in particular. While this story doesn’t seem directly relevant to us, the truth is that it is very significant. For one thing, the hypocritical Europeans are constantly decrying Israel’s “apartheid” and “genocide” and have recently been harassing Israeli settlers, whom they describe as “terrorists.” The Israelis try to defend themselves by pointing to the Arabs’ barbarity, but those explanations fall on deaf ears. Well, now the Europeans have experienced that barbarity in their lands. It seems that one country after another has been overrun by Muslims, who are leaving mayhem and devastation in their wake. Netanyahu and President Trump have pointed out that they warned Macron this would happen… Many Jews from France have begun making preparations to move to Israel.

With all due respect to these important topics, however, the issue that has attracted the most attention lately is the upcoming election due to take place next Tuesday. In less than a week, ballots will be cast to determine who will hold power in the next Israeli government. All of us, of course, are davening for a favorable outcome. This election may be more critical than ever, since bnei yeshivos have been targeted for harassment over the past year. We cover recent events within the chareidi parties in a separate article, and will not go into excessive detail on the subject here, but I must write about the widespread hatred for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Libels Against the Prime Minister

The closer we get to election day, the more all of Netanyahu’s haters crawl out of the woodwork. They all have stories to tell and accusations to make against the prime minister, in a bid to cast him in a negative light, and while their actions are blatantly biased and politicized, they do not seem to care that their agenda is transparent. They will balk at nothing, even the lowliest tactics imaginable, for the sole purpose of transferring more votes from the right to the left. It has become in vogue to accuse Netanyahu of dragging out the war in order to score points in the election. In fact, this is not a new phenomenon; many years ago, Menachem Begin was accused of attacking the nuclear reactor in Iraq in order to win an election. In any event, now that tensions are rising in the Middle East, many people in Israel are accusing Netanyahu of pushing for war in the hope that it will boost his chance in the election, or even that it will cause the election to be postponed.

One must wonder what these critics expect of the prime minister. If he is weighing the possibility of launching airstrikes on Iran, do they want him to hold back because of the election? If a military offensive is necessary, how can it be postponed? In my opinion, the attacks on Netanyahu from the media and from other politicians amount to poisoning the well. Lately, an endless stream of fabrications has been concocted about Netanyahu and his aides. Even Ronen Bar, the failed former head of the Shin Bet who was in charge of the agency at the time of the October 7 massacre, filed a lawsuit for libel against Netanyahu last week for the prime minister’s claim that he had not been warned in advance about the massacre. Bar claimed that he has evidence that he warned Netanyahu before the invasion and that the prime minister was slandering him by insisting that he had received no such warning; however, the lawsuit has backfired on Bar. After all, it gives rise to an obvious question: If, as he claims, Ronen Bar had clear knowledge of the impending calamity in advance, then why did he merely warn Netanyahu—according to his claims, which Netanyahu denies—instead of taking action to prevent it? If his own story is true, then it points to a serious failing on his own part.

Meanwhile, another accusation turned out to be a libel. Last month, all the media in Israel reported a hair-raising story: They claimed that the head of Egyptian intelligence had visited Israel on September 26, 2023, for a few hours to warn Netanyahu about the impending Hamas invasion. According to all the reports, the Egyptian intelligence chief’s plane landed in Ben Gurion Airport and stayed there for slightly more than two hours while the Egyptian official met with Netanyahu, and then he returned to Egypt. This story, if it were true, would have indicated an unforgivable failure on Netanyahu’s part; if he was warned about Hamas’s plans and took no action, it would have been a horrific lapse. Parenthetically, all the media outlets in Israel based their reports on a story that first appeared in the Atlantic. This was added to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which claimed that the head of Egyptian intelligence had called Netanyahu at the beginning of October 2023 to warn him about an impending attack from the Gaza Strip. Thus, according to these stories, Netanyahu had actually received two warnings from Egypt before the disaster took place. Of course, Netanyahu went on the defensive upon hearing these allegations, but he didn’t know how to begin explaining himself. In a televised interview, Netanyahu said, “I never met with anyone, and I knew nothing. If the head of Egyptian intelligence visited Israel, then let them reveal whom he actually met.” The media’s claims, in any event, made Netanyahu seem guilty of criminal negligence on a horrific scale.

This week, however, the television channel Kan News issued a brief update on the story: The Egyptian plane that landed in Israel a few days before October 7 wasn’t carrying the head of Egyptian intelligence, after all. Instead, there were two Egyptian businessmen aboard, who landed briefly to refuel their plane and then continued their flight. That is how the libelous accusations against the prime minister came to an end: without any apology or explanation, and without anyone taking responsibility or investigating how the media could report such an egregiously false and devastating story. A major brouhaha raised by masses of journalists and politicians, some of them veterans in their respective fields, was exposed as a lowly blood libel, and no one felt the need to apologize.

And if we are speaking about Netanyahu, then we cannot fail to mention President Trump’s endorsement of the prime minister at the beginning of this week. While a similar endorsement didn’t benefit the candidate in Hungary, in this case Trump almost went so far as to stipulate that his continued support for Israel against Iran will be contingent on Netanyahu remaining in the office of prime minister. And that is quite significant.

Hoping to Silence the Enemies of Religion

To be honest, we are trembling with apprehension here in Israel. There is much at stake in this election, and there are many ways that it can end in disaster. What gives us strength is the knowledge that events in this world are not random, and that the world has a Master Who orchestrates all of its events, great or small. Nothing is left to chance, and no matter how bleak the situation seems, we must always keep in mind that everything that occurs is the work of Hashem.

Nevertheless, from a natural standpoint, the situation seems very bad. For one thing, there is much reason to be fearful that the left-wing bloc might win this election, and that would likely spell disaster. They may fight among themselves over everything, but there is one issue on which they are united: They have all pledged to continue persecuting the chareidim after the election and with even greater intensity. Considering that the lomdei Torah have suffered greatly this year, from arrests and legal harassment and from economic sanctions as well, I shudder to think about what might happen if the next prime minister is a person such as Bennett, Lapid, or Lieberman. Then again, experience has shown that these people will pay any price in the world to gain power; perhaps, then, there is reason to hope that they might soften their respective stances if they are elected. At the same time, even if Netanyahu wins the election, we have already seen that he isn’t prepared to make endless sacrifices for the chareidim. In fact, he has already hinted that he would prefer to form a coalition with Eizenkot rather than with the chareidim and the political right.

The bottom line is that we must daven with great fervor for the religious community’s well-being after the election.

In any event, I believe that this election will benefit us in one way: It will remove some very bad people from the political map. There is a Judge in this world, and those who sin will ultimately pay the price. I often think back to the days of the criminal investigation into Aryeh Deri, when Divine hashgocha was clearly at work. Deri’s opponents in the halls of government were certain that if they managed to jail him, the revolution that he had created would be terminated. But what happened instead? For one thing, Yeshivas Shaagas Aryeh was opened, where hundreds, then thousands, and then tens of thousands of people came to attend shiurim and shmuessen in an area adjacent to the prison in Ramle where Deri was being held, on the initiative of Rav Uri Zohar. The Prison Service, the police, and the government officials were shocked and intimidated. At the same time, many individuals in the police and Prison Service were sympathetic to Deri and the religious community. Those who were prepared to tear their hair out in frustration were the eirev rav and the minions of the yetzer hara, who dominated the halls of the judiciary at the time and still control it today.

But today, many years later, we can see what became of their schemes. Think about it: Where are former Justice Minister Dan Meridor and former State Prosecutor Dorit Beinish today? Where are the wicked investigator Meir Gilboa and onetime Minister of Police Roni Milo? Where is Elyakim Rubinstein, who held the office of attorney general at the time? And where are all the others who joined them in their tyrannical crusade? These people have faded from the public scene, but where is Aryeh Deri, the man they tried to wipe off the political map? The contrast is striking.

The same pattern is repeating itself in the political world today. For instance, Yuli Edelstein, who was considered a friend of the chareidi community in the past, is now notorious for obstructing every effort to pass a law providing draft exemptions for yeshiva students. It is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to explain what caused him to mount such fierce opposition to the draft law, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that he no longer holds a position of influence. And then there is Yesh Atid, the party that built its agenda on hatred for the chareidim and persecution for lomdei Torah. Where is that party today? Simply put, it is in a state of complete collapse. Many of the other Knesset members who persecuted the chareidim, such as Yoaz Hendel, Dan Illouz, Ofir Sofer, and Sharren Haskel, are fighting a desperate battle for their political survival today. And while a few of the religious community’s enemies in the Knesset managed to slither into Eizenkot’s party—such as Elazar Stern and Matan Kahana, two men who wear yarmulkes but are bitter enemies of the chareidim and even the religious right—they, too, will ultimately receive their just deserts. For we know that there is a Judge in this world, and judgment will ultimately take place. One by one, the malefactors in the government and suffering their respective downfalls.

The Need for Religious Representation

On the topic of the election, allow me to make a comment about one area where I have some understanding: the Knesset. As the election draws near, it is appropriate to use every tool at our disposal to advance the cause of the chareidi parties. We see the notices in the chareidi presses and on message boards on the street, all of which urge the average voter to make sure to show up at the polls on Election Day and to see to it that the religious parties succeed. The top minds in the religious world are working on these campaigns, but the message must also reach voters in the traditional community or those who are still undecided, and I am not quite certain that those people live in Givat Shaul or on Rechov Sorotzkin (or on Rechov Rashbam or Rechov Rabi Akiva in Bnei Brak). To reach them, the campaigns must expand even further. Within the two weeks prior to the election, however, there is still opportunity to target those voters: Every party is given air time on the radio and on television stations, and millions of Israeli Jews tune in to these programs. Let us hope that the focused, effective campaigns of the chareidi parties will operate successfully through those channels as well, and that their effects will be felt on Election Day. The programming began last Tuesday and will continue until the day before the election, and it is a golden opportunity for the parties to reach millions of non-chareidi voters. If the opportunity is used properly, it may be possible for the chareidim to win another mandate or two as a result of these efforts, especially for the Shas party.

Tragedies in Beitar and in the North

Two tragedies took place in Israel last week, each of which caused endless sorrow. Yes, every death of a child is a dreadful tragedy, whether it is a case of crib death (which also occurred this past week) or a child’s death in a traffic accident (which happened as well), but these two incidents were so unusual and aberrant that they were even more horrifying.

The first incident took place in Beitar Illit, where a young boy named Eliyohu Azriel was killed by an explosion near a burning recycling bin on Rechov HaRebbe MiNadvorna. The boy was critically injured by an object that flew out of the recycling bin and was evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem in Yerushalayim, where the doctors were forced to declare his death. At first, it was believed that the explosion was caused by a deodorant can in the bin, but it is now believed that a battery from an electric bicycle was in the bin and exploded when it was exposed to the extreme heat of the fire. A video of the explosion shows the moment when the boy was struck, but it also indicates the magnitude of the miracle that accompanied the tragedy. At the time of Eliyohu’s death, dozens of curious children had gathered around the recycling bin to watch the fire. Under other circumstances, chas v’shalom, the incident could easily have led to many more injuries. The video also shows another child lighting the fire in the bin prior to the explosion, in an act of mischief that led to a tragic outcome.

The second tragedy occurred in the north, where Elozor Yair Vilensky, a student in the yeshiva high school in Maalot, was killed and 24 students and teachers were wounded in an explosion. This incident took place on a school trip, when the students came across an unexploded warhead from a missile or something of the sort, which subsequently blew up. The IDF declared it a mass casualty event and sent helicopters to the scene, and the police opened an investigation. The images of dozens of wounded victims lying on the ground were too painful to see. The incident occurred at the Ramim Ridge, an area about 50 to 100 meters from the northern border. There is a manned security outpost not far from this area, which was staffed by combat engineers throughout the war and therefore became a target of choice for Hezbollah during the war. It is believed that the deadly explosive that caused the tragedy was a component of a Hezbollah missile or shell that was fired toward the area and did not explode at the time, and was hidden by the lush greenery and went undetected until it was found by the students. According to some accounts, one of the students picked up the explosive and placed it in his bag, and it exploded shortly thereafter.

Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted to the tragedy as soon as it was reported. An official statement from his office announced, “Prime Minister Netanyahu was briefed on the details of the incident in the north and spoke with Eli Bin, director of Magen Dovid Adom, and with Minister of Education Yoav Kisch, as well as his military secretary. The prime minister asked to make certain that the victims would be evacuated as quickly as possible to the hospitals, and he is continuing to engage in regular situation assessments.” Shortly thereafter, Netanyahu visited Rambam Hospital in Haifa and met with the victims of the blast. Five of the hospitalized victims are listed in serious condition! The education minister announced that all school trips in the area will be canceled for the time being.

Ambassador Huckabee: Trump Was Not Pressured to Attack Iran

Ambassador Mike Huckabee was recently interviewed by an Israeli newspaper. When he was asked about what America is prepared to do to defend Israel, his response surprised the interviewer (who is not known as a fan of the right or of Netanyahu). “When the United States acts against Iran, it is not defending Israel; it is defending its own interests,” Huckabee said. “Israel might be the first course for the Iranians, but we are the main course. When someone shouts ‘death to America’ for almost 50 years, it might be worthwhile to pay attention to what he is saying. We are not merely supporting Israel; we are its partners, and that is for our sake as well.”

He went even further when he was questioned about America’s air strikes on Iran. “I disagree with the notion that someone pressured [President Trump], hoodwinked him, or deceived him,” Huckabee said. “I was in the situation room in the White House when the decision was made about Operation Roaring Lion. Most of what happened in that room is classified and I cannot reveal it. Maybe I’ll write a book about it one day. I can tell you that the president did not act under pressure from Israel. Israel never pressured President Trump to intervene; he did it on his own initiative.”

Huckabee studiously avoided making any definitive statements about the future of the war against Iran. “I can’t give you a forecast about additional military operations,” he said. “That decision will be made by the president in Washington. What is clear to him is that Iran is weaker than it has been in nearly 50 years, both militarily and economically, and it is becoming even weaker as time goes on.”

The ambassador described the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump as “still very strong and solid.” He said that Netanyahu and Trump speak regularly and have a personal relationship that was developed over many years. He described relations between Washington and Yerushalayim as particularly close. “We are partners and work together incredibly well, much more than most people will ever know,” he said.

Huckabee was asked for his take on how the American midterm elections would affect relations between the two countries. “I’d like to believe that most Americans understand that Israeli is a valuable strategic partner—not just an ally but a true partner,” he said. To prove his contention, he pointed to the collaboration between America and Israel during Operation Roaring Lion, when he related that Admiral Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM, told him that there had never been such smooth collaboration with the American army before.

Huckabee also weighed in on the topic of Israeli settlers. He recently spoke out against the settlers after witnessing violence with his own eyes, and the interviewer apparently hoped to extract more condemnation from him. However, the result was exactly the opposite. Huckabee admitted that he was surprised to see the settlers entering the property of a Palestinian family in the presence of his bodyguards and the media. “It was disturbing. I was surprised by their brazen behavior,” he said. “People are entitled to defend their own property, but they have no right to trespass on someone else’s property and sometimes even terrorize or intimidate people simply through their presence there.” However, Huckabee said that 99.9 percent of settlers are “incredibly responsible.” He added, “People have built beautiful communities, hospitals, medical clinics, synagogues, and stores. Whether it is in Maale Adumim, Efrat, or any of the many other communities, these are simply wonderful places where people live and want to raise their families.” Huckabee denounced the international media for portraying everything that happens in Yehuda and Shomron as extreme settler violence. “That is not accurate, it is not fair, and it slanders the people who live there,” he said.

Education Ministry Called Out by the Court

I don’t know much about education or about budgets; therefore, one can certainly say that I don’t know much about education budgets. But if I am correctly understanding one particular news item, I can tell you that the Ministry of Education has finally been put in its place.

The news report states that the District Court in Yerushalayim, sitting as a court for administrative affairs, recently overturned a decision of the Ministry of Education to deduct 715,612 NIS from the budget of the Pri Chochmah seminary. The seminary is a special education high school in Yerushalayim for chareidi girls with emotional and behavioral difficulties. Judge Eli Abarbanel ruled that the ministry had made the decision without providing the required justification. The Education Ministry was also ordered to pay 7000 shekels in legal expenses to the nonprofit organization that operates the seminary. The affair began with two inspections conducted by the Licensing, Supervision, and Enforcement Administration of the Ministry of Education in December 2024 and March 2025. The inspectors reported extremely poor attendance at the school; in one class in the twelfth grade, there wasn’t a single student present, and the faculty told the inspectors that the girls came to school only in the afternoon. As a result, the ministry decided to deduct the funding allocated for 14 girls in the two twelfth-grade classes, claiming that the seminary had reported their enrollment improperly.

The organization that runs the seminary, represented by Advocate Yael Tishler, whose office specializes in education law, argued that the Ministry of Education had applied the normal standard to its evaluation of attendance and had failed to take into account that it was dealing with a school for special education. Tishler also argued that the seminary had notified the ministry’s supervisor of inspections in real time about every student who had dropped out, but that government protocol made it impossible to remove students from their enrollment records until alternative placements had been found for them. The lawyer also argued that one of the twelfth-grade classes operated in the afternoons in a personalized program designed to prevent attrition and that the ministry’s supervisor had approved the program’s schedule on a telephone call. She also noted that five other students were enrolled in the seminary without receiving funding from the government, and the retroactive budget cuts would jeopardize its continued existence. The Ministry of Education argued that its decision was professional and based on two inspections.

Until this point, the story is fairly routine. Education Ministry inspectors are notorious for being too quick to pull the trigger. They will hasten to freeze or revoke funding for schools, and any complaints or appeals are ignored. The schools are generally weak, exhausted, and in distress, and they give up. They do not have the strength to fight the ministry. But this time was different. As the news report continues, “The judge ultimately accepted the appeal and determined that the ministry had explained its decision only with a general justification that appears to say everything but actually says nothing.”

After the ruling, Tishler remarked, “In recent times, the Ministry of Education has been conducting inspections in schools categorized as recognized but unofficial, including inspections of student attendance, to ensure that the funding given to these schools is being used for the designated purpose. Very often, even when the organizations behind those schools present substantial arguments and compelling evidence of their claims, the ministry still decides to deduct significant sums from their funding, sometimes even millions of shekels. Its decisions suggest that the arguments of the organizations do not receive meaningful review, and hearings are conducted merely as a formality. The importance of this ruling lies in the statement that it makes: The Ministry of Education has a duty to examine the arguments and evidence presented by the organizations and to review each argument individually and with careful consideration before reaching a final decision. It isn’t sufficient to give the organizations the opportunity to present their cases; it is also necessary for the ministry to review those cases with careful attention. A decision that does not meet this requirement will not withstand judicial review.”

The Ministry of Education responded simply, “The court ruling was received by the ministry today and is currently being studied.”

But there is no real need for the ministry to study it. Instead, what the ministry needs to do is to stop behaving like a king or dictator, to begin listening to the schools, and to stop making arbitrary and unethical budget cuts.

Of course, the chareidi schools suffer the most from this practice.

Rav Ovadiah’s Last Phone Call

I will conclude this column with a story that relates to one of the running themes of these days: the specter of persecution that looms over the Torah world.

Last week, the country marked the 13th yahrtzeit of Rav Ovadiah Yosef. I believe that if a historian decided to conduct an in-depth study of Rav Ovadiah’s decades of speeches and acts of leadership, he would discover one common thread in particular that runs throughout all of them: the determination to protect the yeshivos and botei medrash, which were so precious to Rav Ovadiah, from all harm.

This week, I asked someone to help me reconstruct the events surrounding Rav Ovadiah’s famous telephone call from his sickbed in Hadassah Hospital to Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon, when he begged the minister to do everything in his power to protect the country’s lomdei Torah. This was almost certainly the last phone call he made before he passed away.

Ariel Attias, a former government minister on behalf of the Shas party, recounted that Rav Ovadiah was lying in his hospital bed, exhausted and racked by pain. “As soon as I came into the room,” Ariel recalled, “he turned to me and asked, ‘Nu? What did you do for yeshiva bochurim today?’ His voice was almost inaudible.” Ariel Attias was leading the fight for Torah at that time. “I had been involved in the matter even during the Olmert government, but Rav Ovadiah asked me to become heavily involved in it and to take a firm stand,” he recalled. Many more chapters of this ongoing saga have unfolded since that time.

Ariel Attias is virtually a walking history book; the many chapters of this long struggle are clearly organized within his mind. He remembers the Tal Law, the extension of the law, and when the law was stuck down in 2013 (by the Supreme Court, of course). He remembers the following election and the “Brothers’ Government” led by Bennett and Lapid, and the next draft law that was brought down along with the government in 2014. The next step was the establishment of a government in which the chareidim were members, which was followed by “Amendment 21,” the law that expired in 2023. In retrospect, it is hard to believe how much the chareidi community has endured.

The phone call that I am discussing took place at the time when the chareidi parties were in the opposition during the Bennett-Lapid government. Yaalon was the minister of defense, which made him responsible for advancing the draft law that was taking shape. “They planned to enact a very aggressive law with strict quotas for Torah learners. The law would have required everyone who exceeded the quotas to join the army, and there would have been criminal sanctions,” Attias said. At that time, Ariel Attias entered Rav Ovadiah’s room in the hospital, where the gadol lay feebly on his bed. “He had been sedated and intubated prior to that,” Attias recalled. “A week before he passed away, he woke up and we believed that he would still return home and continue leading Klal Yisroel from his home. He was on dialysis and was very frail and could barely speak, and I rushed to get to his bedside as quickly as possible.”

When he entered the room, Rav Ovadiah managed to ask him, with the last dregs of his strength, what he had done for the yeshiva bochurim that day.

“I told him that it was a complicated issue,” Attias recalled. “The ball was in Yaalon’s court, even though he wasn’t the only one who would ultimately make the decision. When I said this, Rav Ovadiah replied, ‘Let me speak to him.’ I was aghast. The rov was barely able to breathe and certainly unable to talk; how did he expect to make a telephone call? I tried to dissuade him, pointing out that the doctors had instructed him to avoid exertion and they would certainly want him to refrain from becoming emotional. I knew that he had spoken to Yaalon several times in the past, and the defense minister had visited his home on multiple occasions. But despite my remonstrations, the rov insisted on speaking with him.”

Attias grew emotional as he recalled that conversation this week, despite the passage of thirteen years. “Rav Ovadiah was already halfway out of this world,” he repeated. “He was barely breathing, and the entire world was concerned about his health, but his only concern was the well-being of the lomdei Torah. Despite the massive effort that it required, he wanted to speak to the minister of defense. There wasn’t a very high likelihood that Yaalon would agree to do anything, but as far as Rav Ovadiah was concerned, any effort that he could make to promote the cause of yeshiva bochurim was worthwhile, even if the chances of success were slim.” Apparently, just as Rav Ovadiah had asked Attias what he had done for yeshiva bochurim that day, the rov made the same demand of himself: If there was something he could personally do to advance the cause, then he was required to do so.

Attias sent a message to Yaalon, and the defense minister called him back immediately. “I explained that we were in the hospital and the rov was gravely ill, but he wanted to speak to him,” Attias recalled. “The rov took the telephone, and they had a difficult conversation. It was hard to understand him, and the exchange was uncomfortable as well. ‘This is a vital issue to us,’ Rav Ovadiah said. ‘Eretz Yisroel needs the Torah world. I am begging you: Do not let the yeshiva bochurim be harmed. That zechus will support you forever.’ The rov then blessed him and asked him to do everything in his power for their benefit.”

Discovering the Extraordinary Shiur Komah of the Chazon Ish Through His Chiddushim, Psakim, Hora’os and Hanhagos

As the 73rd yahrtzeit of the Chazon Ish approaches, the Yated is privileged to present an essay by Rav Michoel Sorotzkin, whose Torah writings have earned the appreciation of discerning bnei Torah.

Much has been written about the extraordinary gadlus of the Chazon Ish, but conventional accounts of his life can convey only part of his greatness. His chiddushei Torah, the subtlety of his sevaros and the depth of his halachic reasoning offer another way to understand the towering personality behind them.

Rav Sorotzkin brings his exceptional koach ha’iyun to this undertaking. Drawing on the Chazon Ish’s vast Torah legacy, he examines carefully selected sugyos and yesodos that reveal the qualities underlying his brilliance: ameilus baTorah, yiras Shomayim, an uncompromising pursuit of emes and an extraordinary sense of responsibility.

To identify, among thousands of intricate chiddushim, the principles that illuminate the character of a gadol requires both breadth of knowledge and depth of understanding. These qualities have long distinguished Rav Sorotzkin’s contributions to the Torah public.

We are deeply grateful to Rav Sorotzkin for sharing his scholarship with our readers once again. His essay invites serious bnei aliyah to appreciate the greatness of the gedolei hadoros through their Torah itself.

His Torah Bears Witness to His Greatness

As the fifteenth of Marcheshvan approaches, marking the 73rd yahrtzeit of Rav Avrohom Yeshayahu Karelitz, the Chazon Ish, we consider an aspect of his greatness that receives less attention in accounts of his life. His gadlus baTorah, extraordinary hasmodah, exalted kedusha and influence on the Torah world are well known. But what does his Torah reveal about the man who produced it? What can we learn from the way he developed a sevara, arrived at a hachra’ah and issued a hora’ah about the character of his intellect and the stature of his nefesh?

To approach these questions, we turn to the Chazon Ish’s writings. By examining the yesodos of selected chiddushim and psokim, we can see how his derech halimud and practical hora’ah expressed the qualities that shaped his life. A single sevara may reveal more about his approach than a lengthy biographical account; a halachic ruling may show the depth of his yiras hora’ah, his responsibility toward another Yid and his devotion to emes. Our purpose is to understand the man through his Torah.

This approach is especially fitting for the Chazon Ish, whose Torah and personality were so closely intertwined. The precision with which he established the geder hadin in his writings also governed decisions affecting the lives of others. His ability to distinguish between similar halachic concepts helped him discern the difference between genuine rachmonus and sentiment that was inconsistent with mishpat haTorah. His concern for almanos, yesomim and brokenhearted individuals grew from the same foundation as his gadlus baTorah. In his life, iyun and ma’aseh, din and chesed, were inseparable.

The comprehensive character of his gadlus recalls the extraordinary Torah greatness of the Vilna Gaon. The point is not to compare the stature of these two luminaries of Klal Yisroel, but to recognize a particular form of Torah attainment embracing all the chelkei haTorah while penetrating to the essential yesodos of every sugya. The Chazon Ish, in Kovetz Igros, cheilek alef, iggeres 32, describes the greatness of the Vilna Gaon in terms of yegiah, bekius, tevunah and chassidus. Gadlus baTorah, in this conception, is measured neither by the accumulation of knowledge alone nor by brilliance of reasoning considered independently, but by the completeness with which every faculty of a person becomes devoted to Torah. Whoever examines the writings of the Chazon Ish, extending across vast portions of Shas and Shulchan Aruch, encounters an extraordinary manifestation of such comprehensive greatness.

The Derech Halimud: Establishing the Emes of the Sugya

A fundamental principle of the Chazon Ish’s derech halimud was his insistence that the obligation of iyun is not discharged merely through familiarity with the accepted maskonah. A sugya must be examined from its sources until its essential gedorim and limitations have been established. In his Igros, he explains that even where the hachra’os of the Rishonim stand before the learner with an authority which he has no standing to dispute, he remains obligated to employ his own understanding in examining the sugya. The process of clarification itself constitutes an indispensable part of limud haTorah. This does not grant license to advance arbitrary chiddushim against the Rishonim. It demands that the learner exert his full abilities to understand their words and the manner in which their conclusions emerge from the Gemara.

Submission to the authority of the Rishonim might appear to leave little room for independent iyun. The Chazon Ish understood the relationship differently. Precisely because he revered the Rishonim, he was careful not to attribute to them explanations that could not withstand scrutiny of the sugya. The learner must distinguish between seeking to defend his own opinion and seeking the emes. An ingenious chiluk has value only if it accounts for the entire sugya. The worth of a chiddush lies in the clarity and necessity of its reasoning.

This helps explain the distinctive style of the Chazon Ish. He often begins without spelling out the kushya that prompted his discussion and proceeds directly to a concise chiluk. Its significance becomes apparent only after the learner has struggled with the relevant sugyos and considered other explanations. To understand his maskonah, one must return to the Gemara and Rishonim, examine the alternatives and discover why he found it necessary to define the din as he did.

Rav Yitzchok Hutner observed that the Chazon Ish’s derech halimud could not be imitated except through extraordinary yegiah and prolonged immersion in the depths of halacha. The Chazon Ish did not merely possess a collection of methods that could be reproduced by studying the form of his chiddushim. His derech was rooted in ameilus, which would not permit the learner to abandon a sugya while an essential detail remained unresolved. A learner may imitate a chiluk without acquiring the disciplined thought that produced it. Genuine attainment requires that uncompromising demand for clarity that governed the Chazon Ish throughout his learning.

The Yesod of Muktzah Machmas Chisaron Kis

A striking illustration appears in Chazon Ish, Hilchos Shabbos, siman 43, se’if koton 17, concerning muktzah machmas chisaron kis. The Gemara in Shabbos 123b teaches that certain implements, including a large saw and a particular agricultural instrument, may not be moved on Shabbos because their owners are makpid that they should not be employed for other purposes. The fundamental chakirah is whether the owner’s hakpodah is what confers upon the utensil the status of muktzah or whether it removes the basis upon which moving it might otherwise have been permissible.

The Chazon Ish examines the matter through the distinction between a kli shemelachto l’issur and a kli shemelachto l’heter. A kli shemelachto l’issur may not ordinarily be moved for the performance of its designated melocha on Shabbos. Its permissible movement is restricted to letzorech gufo or letzorech mekomo. Where the owner is makpid that it not be employed for any other purpose, the possibility of permissible use letzorech gufo has effectively been removed. A kli shemelachto l’heter, however, remains designated for a function permissible on Shabbos, and the owner’s unwillingness to employ it for other purposes does not necessarily render it muktzah machmas chisaron kis. The Chazon Ish further examines the separate consideration of kevius makom, whose effect must be determined according to its own particular geder.

The crucial question is the sibbas ha’issur. The owner’s hakpodah is not treated as an independent prohibition that applies equally to every valuable object. Its effect depends on the grounds that would otherwise permit the object to be moved. Once that relationship is understood, the distinctions follow from the definition of the din itself.

Ameilus BaTorah and the Measure of Genuine Attainment

The Chazon Ish’s extraordinary yegiah is illustrated by an account of his prolonged study of a single Mishnah in Maseches Mikvaos. According to one version, he returned to its difficulties over a period of three months. The importance of the account lies in what it reveals about his understanding of learning. One person may complete a masechta in a relatively short time and grasp its principal sugyos. Another may spend weeks on a single Mishnah because it contains yesodos that bear on an entire area of halacha. For the Chazon Ish, progress depended on how thoroughly a matter had been clarified rather than on the number of dapim covered.

The Chazon Ish’s yegiah went beyond hasmodah in its ordinary sense. Hasmodah denotes the ability to devote one’s time consistently to learning. His yegiah included an unwillingness to leave a difficulty merely because a plausible explanation had been found. Where another learner might accept an interpretation and proceed, he continued until the explanation established all relevant details satisfactorily. This illuminates his extraordinary mastery of the entire Torah. His vast bekius served his iyun. At times, a din in one masechta illuminates an apparently unrelated halacha. At other times, the distinction between seemingly similar dinim establishes the proper geder of each. The scope of his knowledge enabled him to examine every sugya in light of its relevant parallels without obscuring its particular halachic character.

Shiurei Torah: The Metzius and the Geder Hadin

His iyun also had far-reaching practical consequences in his examination of shiurei Torah. The subject appears to concern the numerical relationship among the amah, tefach, etzba, beitzah and the measurements of length and volume mentioned by Chazal. In truth, it involves fundamental questions regarding the transmission of halachic measurements and their proper determination where different methods of calculation appear inconsistent. The Noda B’Yehudah had already examined the difficulty concerning measurements derived from the etzba and beitzah. The Chazon Ish, in his Kuntres Hashiurim, investigated the matter through a comprehensive examination of the sugyos and the poskim.

The Chazon Ish’s adoption of larger shiurim should not be understood simply as a preference for chumra. He sought to determine which measurement the din actually required. A larger shiur may be a chumra in one context and a kula in another, so its consequences cannot determine the maskonah. The evidence must establish the shiur, after which the posek must determine how to apply it using available measurements. Even a question that appears to involve practical calculation demands a full examination of its halachic yesodos.

Electricity On Shabbos and the Geder of Boneh

One of the Chazon Ish’s most widely discussed chiddushim appears in Orach Chaim, siman 50, se’if koton tes, concerning the closing of an electrical circuit on Shabbos. The essential chakirah is whether completing such a circuit constitutes ordinary use of an existing apparatus or whether bringing the system into its operative state involves tikkun mana or boneh. Externally, no conventional structure is erected, since the wires and apparatus already exist. Nevertheless, until the circuit is completed, the system does not possess the capacity to perform its intended function. There is therefore room to consider whether establishing its operative condition falls within the halachic concept of tikkun or banyan.

The Chazon Ish developed the position that completing the electrical circuit involves tikkun mana and discussed its severity under the melocha of boneh, particularly where the system forms part of a structure attached to the ground. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach addressed the foundations of this sevara, particularly the distinction between an enduring act of construction and the temporary activation of a system intended to be opened and closed during ordinary use. Their discussion concerns not merely the practical question of electricity on Shabbos, but the definition of the halachic act. Does the operative completion of an existing system constitute boneh or does it remain an act of ordinary use? This cannot be determined merely by describing the physical operation of electricity, but requires examination of the gedarim of the melachos. The Chazon Ish thus approached a phenomenon unknown in the time of Chazal by returning to the accepted principles of hilchos Shabbos and examining whether the new metzius fell within their scope.

Shvi’is and the Search for Permissible Cultivation

The Chazon Ish’s responsibility as a posek was particularly evident in hilchos Shvi’is and the mitzvos hateluyos ba’aretz. Following his arrival in Eretz Yisroel, many questions in Seder Zera’im that had long been studied primarily as matters of Torah learning became practical issues affecting the parnossah of farmers and the yishuv. The Chazon Ish examined the melachos of Shvi’is, kedushas Shvi’is, otzar bais din, and the halachos of agricultural cultivation, establishing guidance for those determined to observe Shvi’is in accordance with halacha. Although he rejected reliance upon the heter mechirah, he also sought legitimate ways for farmers to sustain themselves. His concern was to establish what the Torah prohibited and permitted, and to discover legitimate means by which those working the land could maintain their parnossah while fulfilling the mitzvah.

Particularly instructive was his interest in giddulei mayim during Shmittah. The question whether cultivation in water without ordinary soil constitutes the prohibited melocha of zeriah involves several considerations, including the status of an atzitz she’eino nakuv, the din of zeriah b’bayis and the definition of the medium in which the plants grow. Each depends upon its own halachic foundation. The Chazon Ish examined the circumstances under which a heter might be established, with particular attention to separation from the ground and the conditions governing the place of cultivation. In accordance with his guidance, experiments with giddulei mayim were undertaken at Kibbutz Chofetz Chaim, seeking a means of growing produce during Shvi’is without violating the issurim of working the land.

His work on Shvi’is illustrates the responsibility he felt toward those who depended on the land for their parnossah. He insisted on uncompromising observance while actively searching for permissible methods of cultivation. Neither economic hardship nor a desire for stringency could replace a careful determination of the din. Accurate knowledge of agricultural conditions was essential, since a mistaken understanding of the metzius could lead to an incorrect halachic conclusion.

Hilchos Treifos and the Changing Metzius

Another yesod appears in the Chazon Ish’s discussion of hilchos treifos and developments in medical knowledge. Chazal established particular categories of treifos, and the question arises how these relate to subsequent advances in treating conditions formerly regarded as fatal. Are the halachic definitions dependent at every moment upon the medical possibilities then available, or were certain classifications established as enduring gedarim? In Chazon Ish, Even Ha’ezer, Hilchos Ishus, siman 27, he addresses the distinction between established gedarim of treifos and other halachos whose application depends upon the actual medical condition of the person concerned.

The question is whether a change in medical metzius changes the geder hadin. Some halachic classifications were established for all generations and do not necessarily change with advances in treatment. Other halachos depend on a person’s present medical condition and prospects for recovery, making current medical knowledge directly relevant. The Chazon Ish examined the character of each din before determining which facts governed its application.

The Choleh and the Responsibility of Hora’ah

In this connection, a remarkable incident is related concerning a man who was afflicted with a grave pulmonary illness. Having examined his condition, the physicians advised him to travel abroad for an operation under the care of a renowned specialist, maintaining that his prospects for recovery in Eretz Yisroel were exceedingly remote. The patient presented his predicament before the Chazon Ish, who, according to the account, instructed him to remain in Eretz Yisroel and undergo the procedure there.

The explanation attributed to the Chazon Ish reflects the central place of halachic categories in his thinking. The patient’s lung condition was said to involve a defect about which the Mechaber and the Rama differ in hilchos treifos. According to the Rama, it renders an animal a treifah; according to the Bais Yosef, it does not.

The Chazon Ish is said to have observed that the Bais Yosef is the mara d’asra of Eretz Yisroel, where his rulings possess particular halachic authority. Consequently, in Eretz Yisroel, where the psak of the Mechaber governs, this condition is not deemed a treifah. In chutz la’aretz, however, where the ruling of the Rama is followed by Ashkenazic communities, the very same condition is regarded as a treifah. It would therefore be preferable, he advised, for the patient to remain in Eretz Yisroel, where the halachic determination was in his favor. The patient accepted his counsel, underwent the operation in Eretz Yisroel, and, bechasdei Shomayim, recovered.

As transmitted, the account shows how naturally the Chazon Ish approached even a medical predicament through the categories of Torah. His study of halacha shaped the way he considered the circumstances of daily life, far beyond the walls of the bais medrash.

It is important to emphasize that the halachic definition of a treifah in an animal does not necessarily correspond to the medical prognosis of a human being suffering from a comparable condition. The account also does not establish that halachic reasoning displaces the findings of competent physicians in matters of pikuach nefesh. On the contrary, the considered judgment of medical experts occupies an indispensable place in the halachic determination of circumstances involving danger to life. Nevertheless, the incident conveys something of the singular depth of the Chazon Ish’s emunas chachomim and his unwavering conviction that the ultimate framework of judgment must remain firmly rooted in the wisdom of Torah.

His mastery of halacha did not relieve him of the obligation to establish the facts accurately. Each situation required careful investigation, an assessment of the reliability of the information available and a practical conclusion grounded in the relevant halachic principles.

This combination of clarity and responsibility characterized the Chazon Ish as a posek. Questions affecting human life demanded especially careful judgment and the yiras hora’ah appropriate to decisions of such consequence.

Mussar and Halacha Are Not Separate Domains

A particularly revealing source for understanding the Chazon Ish’s personality is Emunah Ubitachon, particularly the third perek, in which he examines the relationship between mussar and halacha. A person may possess a naturally compassionate disposition and considerable generosity without his conduct necessarily conforming to the emes of Torah. At times, rachmonus may be directed toward someone not entitled to it under the circumstances, while a person may regard himself as the victim of injustice when he is actually infringing upon another’s rights. Middos cannot attain their proper form unless they are governed by mishpat haTorah. It is halacha, rather than natural sentiment alone, that determines the conduct required.

To explain this principle, the Chazon Ish cites the Gemara in Bava Basra 21b concerning melamdei tinokos seeking to establish themselves in a town where other melamdim are already teaching. The established melamdim cannot prevent the newcomers through the claim of pasakta lechiyusi, because of the takanah concerning Torah learning. The Chazon Ish describes the earlier melamdim, whose parnossah may suffer through the arrival of competitors. They may sincerely consider themselves injured parties and regard the newcomers as wrongfully depriving them of their livelihood. Yet, according to halacha, they have no right to prevent the newcomers from teaching.

The choice of this sugya is revealing. Both sides may sincerely believe that they are in the right, yet the established melamdim have no halachic claim to prevent the newcomers from teaching. Their sense of injury cannot determine the proper course of action. The Chazon Ish showed that halacha gives mussar its direction, even when natural sympathy points elsewhere. His precision in din sharpened his understanding of what one person owes another.

“It Is Even More Difficult to Forbid”

An account concerning a difficult question of agunah illustrates this responsibility. A serious case was brought before the Chazon Ish, and after examining the sugyos and relevant poskim, he reached the maskonah that the woman could be permitted to remarry. A relative who had participated in the discussion remained troubled and presented further arguments concerning the severity of the issur of aishes ish. The Chazon Ish is reported to have replied that while it was difficult to permit, it was even more difficult to forbid.

The suffering of an agunah cannot justify a heter that lacks sound halachic foundations. Once a heter has been established, however, a posek cannot turn what is permitted into an issur merely because he fears the responsibility of ruling leniently. Refusing to permit is itself a halachic decision, with consequences for the person affected. A chumra is not automatically an expression of yiras hora’ah, just as a kula is not necessarily a sign of insufficient caution. The question is what the sugya requires. The Chazon Ish accepted the responsibility to determine the din without allowing either fear or sympathy to distort it.

 The Chazon Ish’s Extraordinary Consolation to Rav Yaakov Galinsky

The Chazon Ish’s concern for people in distress emerges powerfully from an account related by Rav Yaakov Galinsky. After surviving Siberia and reaching Eretz Yisroel, Rav Yaakov found himself among the remnants of a devastated generation. Many survivors had lost their families, possessions and almost everything connected to their former lives. His own suffering had left him close to despair. When he came to the Chazon Ish and described his anguish, the Chazon Ish responded with a ma’aseh involving a psak of Rav Yitzchok Elchonon Spector.

There was once a Yid who earned his parnossah by traveling to commercial fairs, purchasing merchandise and selling it at a profit. Eventually, he fell ill and was unable to undertake the journey. He entrusted his money to his wife and sent her to purchase merchandise on his behalf. Upon arriving at the fair, she fainted, and when she recovered, she discovered that the money had disappeared. She raised an alarm, and someone reported seeing a particular individual pick up the money from the ground. Confronted, the man admitted taking it but maintained that he was under no obligation to return it. Since the money had been lost in a town whose inhabitants were predominantly non-Jews, he argued, the owner would naturally have despaired of recovering it. Consequently, the finder had acquired the money through yi’ush.

The matter came before Rav Yitzchok Elchonon. The woman provided clear simanim, identifying the two separate bundles and the particular amount contained in each. Rav Yitzchok Elchonon instructed the finder to return the money. When the man protested that according to the din of yi’ush it belonged to him, Rav Yitzchok Elchonon directed him to comply with the psak and explained its foundation. Even accepting that money lost in a town inhabited predominantly by non-Jews is subject to immediate yi’ush, that principle could not establish the finder’s ownership here. The money did not belong to the woman, but to her husband, who entrusted it to her for his business. The husband had no knowledge of the loss, and no yi’ush had occurred on his part. The woman might have despaired of recovering it, but her yi’ush could not divest her husband of ownership, since she possessed no authority to effect yi’ush concerning property belonging to another.

The decisive question was not merely whether the circumstances ordinarily produced yi’ush, but whether the person experiencing yi’ush was the baal hamamon whose ownership could be affected. Having completed the account, the Chazon Ish turned to Rav Yaakov Galinsky and asked: “Who gave you permission to despair?” Your life, strength, gashmiyus and ruchniyus are not possessions over which you enjoy absolute ownership. They are entrusted to you by the Ribbono Shel Olam. Just as a person cannot effect yi’ush concerning money that does not belong to him, neither may he surrender to despair over the life and abilities Hashem has placed in his keeping. As Chazal teach in Brachos 10a, “Afilu cherev chadah munachas al tzavaro shel adam al yimna atzmo min harachamim.”

The Chazon Ish offered Rav Yaakov no promise that his circumstances would improve. Instead, he challenged the very premise that a person may surrender to despair. The halachic rule governing yi’ush of an aveidah and its application to avodas Hashem are distinct: In hilchos aveidah, yi’ush has a defined legal effect on ownership. Here, the Chazon Ish drew on that distinction as a moshol. Just as a person cannot relinquish property belonging to someone else, he cannot treat the life and abilities entrusted to him by Hashem as his to abandon.

This was a distinctive expression of the Chazon Ish’s chesed toward the impoverished, the bereaved and those who felt unable to continue. Alongside his sympathy, he sought to restore their awareness of life’s purpose and their ability to meet its obligations. He brought comfort through the Torah in which he was immersed.

Middas Habitachon and Its Proper Geder

The Chazon Ish applies similar precision in the second perek of Emunah Ubitachon, where he establishes the proper definition of middas habitachon. It is sometimes assumed that bitachon requires a person to be certain that whatever occurs will conclude as he desires, and that apprehension concerning an unfavorable outcome indicates deficient bitachon. The Chazon Ish explains that this is not its proper geder. Unless a person has received specific knowledge concerning the future, he cannot be obligated to regard a particular outcome as certain. Rather, the foundation of bitachon is the recognition that there is no mikreh in the world and that everything occurs under the Hashgocha of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

This establishes a fundamental chiluk between bitachon and the expectation of a favorable result. The latter concerns the outcome a person desires, whereas bitachon concerns his relationship to the Hashgocha through which that outcome is determined. A person may possess genuine bitachon while remaining uncertain of what awaits him, for his bitachon rests not upon knowledge of the future but upon awareness of the One Who governs it. This is iyun in Chovos Halevavos in the fullest sense. The Chazon Ish distinguishes two closely related concepts according to their essential gedarim and determines what each requires. The same intellectual discipline governing his discussions in hilchos Shabbos and taharos is employed in defining the obligations of emunah and bitachon.

The same understanding of bitachon gives added meaning to his words to Rav Yaakov Galinsky. No one is promised the outcome he desires and the future may remain uncertain. But a person who recognizes Hashem’s Hashgocha must continue the avodah entrusted to him. His life and abilities remain a pikadon to be used in Hashem’s service.

The Brisker Rov and the Chazon Ish: A World That Was and a World That Is No More

The Brisker Rov’s esteem for the Chazon Ish provides another measure of his stature. The Griz, whose own sevaros and hachra’os were subjected to exacting scrutiny, recognized the Chazon Ish as an exceptional authority in hora’ah. His presence, in the Brisker Rov’s view, was a source of strength for Klal Yisroel, and his daas Torah carried unusual weight.

It is related that a particularly grave shailah, involving matters of dinei nefashos, was once brought before the Brisker Rov. Having heard the particulars, he instructed the questioner to travel to Bnei Brak and present the matter to the Chazon Ish. After the Chazon Ish had carefully examined the circumstances and rendered his hachra’ah, the questioner returned to Yerushalayim and conveyed his ruling to the Brisker Rov. The Griz replied that he himself had been of precisely the same opinion, but he had nevertheless refrained from issuing a practical psak until the matter had been brought before the Chazon Ish. The episode shows the esteem in which the Griz held the Chazon Ish. It was not any deficiency in his own birur hahalacha that occasioned his restraint, but rather his recognition of the exceptional authority of the Chazon Ish in matters touching upon the lives of Yidden.

Yet, an even more extraordinary expression of this recognition is attributed to the Brisker Rov upon the histalkus of the Chazon Ish. He is reported to have declared: “We are now living in an entirely different world. Until now, ours was a world in which the Chazon Ish was present. From now onward, it is a world without the Chazon Ish.”

The Brisker Rov’s words conveyed more than grief over the loss of a great gaon. He believed that the Chazon Ish’s presence had given the dor a particular measure of assurance and guidance. With his histalkus, that source of strength was gone.

Rav Chatzkel Levenstein mrelated that after the petirah of the Chazon Ish, the Brisker Rov changed his customary hanhogah and began answering the public’s shailos more extensively. His conduct reflected the responsibility he felt in the absence of the Chazon Ish.

For the Brisker Rov, the loss of the Chazon Ish meant that the Torah world had lost an irreplaceable source of guidance in Torah and hora’ah.

The Status of Bnei Yeshiva and the Meaning of Toraso Umnaso

The Chazon Ish’s approach to bnei yeshiva remains particularly relevant as the question of their status continues to occupy Klal Yisroel in Eretz Yisroel. Central to that discussion is the meaning of Toraso umnaso and its role in preserving Torah for future generations. In Shabbos 11a, Chazal describe the exceptional status of Rav Shimon bar Yochai and his companions, whose Torasan umnoson was such that they did not interrupt their learning even for tefillah. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim, siman 106, se’if 2) distinguishes between those who attain that madreigah and other lomdei Torah. Enrollment in a yeshiva does not automatically confer the identical halachic status in every respect. Nevertheless, the concept expresses an essential ideal: for one whose Toraso is umnaso, learning is the defining avodah of his life.

The Chazon Ish, who devoted his own existence to ameilus baTorah, appreciated the necessity of enabling bnei Torah to immerse themselves in learning without outside occupations interrupting their formative years. This was not merely a matter of securing favorable circumstances for the individual learner. It concerned the perpetuation of Torah and the possibility of producing talmidei chachomim capable of transmitting its mesorah to succeeding generations. His approach must therefore be understood as an expression of his conception of the Torah world rather than as an isolated communal arrangement. Already during 5708 and 5709, the question of military service for yeshiva students was raised with roshei yeshiva and communal representatives. The arrangements then discussed were particularly concerned with those genuinely devoted to limud haTorah as their principal occupation, while distinguishing them from those who did not fulfill the conditions of Toraso umnaso.

Two halachic considerations require separate examination. The first concerns the standing of limud haTorah and preservation of bnei yeshiva devoted to its acquisition. The second concerns obligations arising from the needs of the tzibbur, including pikuach nefashos, each to be determined according to its own gedarim. Hatzolas nefashos is among the gravest obligations of the Torah, and Toraso umanuso cannot serve as an indiscriminate exemption from an obligation of rescue where the din requires participation. Conversely, the cultivation of bnei Torah cannot be treated as a private undertaking measured solely by its immediate practical consequences. The existence of a Torah world capable of producing gedolei Torah is itself a fundamental concern of Klal Yisroel.

The issue extends beyond the hours a person spends learning. Exceptional gadlus baTorah generally requires years of sustained ameilus and uninterrupted iyun. Although few bnei yeshiva will reach the stature of the Chazon Ish, the yeshiva provides the conditions in which a young learner can grow into a talmid chochom, a moreh hora’ah or a bearer of the mesorah. The value of his dedication must therefore be considered in light of both his present learning and the Torah he may yet acquire and transmit.

A Gadol Hador Without the Authority of Office

Although the Chazon Ish never held a formal rabbinic position and was not a rosh yeshiva in the conventional sense, he became one of the principal authorities in hora’ah and communal leadership for Klal Yisroel. His standing arose from the recognition that his hora’os were founded upon extraordinary iyun and judgment devoted exclusively to emes. One account concerns the dispute between the Novardok yeshivos and the Vaad Hayeshivos in Vilna over their allocations from the Vaad’s funds. The question was whether the numerous Novardok branches should be regarded as independent yeshivos for allocation or as one network receiving a collective share. According to the account, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky entrusted the determination to the Chazon Ish, who heard the arguments and established the share to which the Novardok yeshivos were entitled.

The account also reflects the Chazon Ish’s middas ha’emes. His authority rested on the confidence that he could judge without being swayed by relationships, prestige or position. In his Igros, he observes that chachomim may take greater pleasure in a penetrating kushya than in ready agreement, since the purpose of iyun is to reach the emes of Torah. That commitment gave particular force to his decisions on matters affecting the tzibbur.

Sensitivity Through Dikduk Hadin

An account describes the Chazon Ish’s conduct when an elderly and weakened individual was present for tekias shofar and did not wish to eat before the tekios. The Chazon Ish instructed that the pesukim customarily recited beforehand be shortened so that the elderly man would not have to wait. Despite his extraordinary attention to every detail of halacha, he distinguished between the essential chiyuv and an additional practice. He saw no justification for imposing discomfort upon a weakened person where the practice could be shortened without compromising the mitzvah. Dikduk hadin and consideration for another were not competing demands. Proper dikduk itself required the distinction,

There is likewise the account of an epidemic in Stoibetz, when members of the chevrah kadisha feared attending to the burial of those who had died because of infection. The Chazon Ish became actively involved in ensuring that the niftarim would receive proper kevurah. The circumstances also involved concern for danger to the community if the deceased were not dealt with appropriately. The incident illustrates the seriousness with which he approached obligations affecting the living and the dignity of the departed, while the requirements of pikuach nefashos retained their independent force. The dinim of tumah v’taharah and kavod hameis that he examined in the bais medrash were also practical obligations demanding action when circumstances required.

The Character of Gedolei Torah

In Kovetz Igros, cheilek 2, iggeres 133, the Chazon Ish writes of the importance of knowing the gedolei Torah in their true character and appreciating the hearts and middos of the chachmei hador. Understanding a gadol therefore requires attention to the qualities that shaped his Torah. Along with his chiddushim, he leaves succeeding generations a derech hamachshovah, a relationship to emes and a model of the middos that accompanied his attainment.

The subjects examined here—from muktzah, electricity and shiurei Torah to Shvi’is, mussar, emunah and the obligations owed to another Yid—reflect a consistent approach. The Chazon Ish sought the precise geder hadin and followed the evidence of the sugya wherever it led. That devotion to emes shaped his conduct as surely as it shaped his learning.

His greatness extended beyond the brilliance of individual chiddushim and psakim. Through a lifetime of ameilus baTorah, Torah became the foundation of his thought, judgment and conduct. Seventy-three years after his petirah, his writings continue to engage lomdim, his hora’os remain central to difficult sugyos, and his yesodos are examined in botei medrash throughout the Torah world.

He left succeeding generations more than a treasury of Torah. His life showed what a person can become when his entire being is devoted to its acquisition.

The words of the posuk are especially fitting: “V’es yirei Hashem yechabed.” And likewise, the words of Chazal: “Ein kavod ela Torah.” His standing did not come from public office. It was the Torah he acquired through lifelong ameilus that established his place among the gedolei hadoros, and its light continues to illuminate the botei medrash of Klal Yisroel ad hayom hazeh.

While Republican candidates clearly face an uphill battle against consumer anger at President Trump over high gas prices at the pump, and the well-established historic trend of the president’s party losing a large number of House seats in midterm elections, some Republican political analysts still hold out hope that their advantage in campaign funding and the selection by Democrats of extreme left-wing candidates gives them a fighting chance to narrowly retain their current control over the U.S. Senate during the final two years of Trump’s presidency.

Less than 2 weeks before the November 3 midterm Election Day, Democrats look increasingly likely to regain control of the House of Representatives, based upon nationwide polls showing that many working-class voters who helped to elect President Trump in 2024 now hold him responsible for $4 a gallon gasoline and $6 a gallon diesel fuel. Fairly or not, many of them blame their current economic distress on President Trump for having started a war with Iran, which he failed to win within a few weeks, as he had promised to do, enabling Iran to restrict the vital flow of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to create a global shortage and drive up energy costs.

According to the RealClearPolitics current average of polls, Democrat candidates in the midterms are expected to flip about 23 Republican seats in the House of Representatives, more than enough to wipe out the GOP’s current slim 219-214 majority in that chamber. While the non-partisan Cook Political Report predicts smaller gains for Democrats in the House, ranging from 9 to 19 seats, that would still be more than enough for the Democrats to gain majority control over the chamber and make New York Democrat Congressman Hakeem Jeffries the new Speaker of the House.

Such an outcome would be consistent with the common belief that midterm elections are referendums in which voters who are unhappy with the performance of a sitting president take their political revenge by defeating the candidates of the president’s party.

Gop Still Clinging To Hope For Retaining Control Of The Senate

That is what happened to President Trump during his first term as president, when Republicans lost their majority in the House in the 2018 midterm election. However, because the GOP was able to retain its control over the Senate in that election, Trump was still able to govern, albeit somewhat less effectively, during the last two years of his first term in office.

That is why even Republican strategists such as Doug Hey, who recently told the Wall Street Journal that he expects the Democrats to flip as many as 30 House seats in the midterm election, say that he still holds out hope that the current GOP 53-47 majority in the Senate might still survive, despite Trump’s historically low job approval ratings. They believe that Democrats made a serious mistake by choosing several Democrat senatorial candidates whose left-wing political beliefs are so extreme as to make them unelectable in competitive “battleground” states. Like New York City’s antisemitic Muslim mayor, Zohran Mandani, they have associated themselves with the anti-American, anti-Israel, and “woke” policies of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which are unacceptable to all conservative and most mainstream American voters. They include Abdul El Sayed, running for an open Democrat Senate seat in Michigan; James Talarico running for an open Republican Senate seat in Texas; Peggy Flanagan running in traditionally Democrat-voting Minnesota; and Troy Jackson, who is challenging the last remaining moderate Republican in the U.S. Senate, Susan Collins of Maine, who is seeking re-election to her sixth term in that Senate seat.

The current lead of all four of these Democrat senatorial candidates is less than 3%, smaller than the margin of error in most of the polls. That makes all of them vulnerable to a late Republican surge during the remaining two weeks before Election Day, or a larger-than-expected turnout of the working-class voters who were responsible for Trump’s victory in 2024.

During the past several weeks, Trump has been traveling around the country to urge those who voted for him two years ago to make believe that his name will appear on this year’s midterm ballot, and show up to vote for the Republican candidates whom he has endorsed.

The current senatorial election map on the widely followed RealClearPolitics website identifies 8 toss-up states, including all four of those mentioned above, where the extremely liberal positions of the Democrat candidates are seen as too extreme for most mainstream voters. If all four of those vulnerable Democrats are defeated, the Republicans are virtually assured of retaining their current control over the Senate for the final two years of Trump’s presidency, with at least a 50-50 split of Senate seats, plus the tie-breaking vote of Republican Vice President JD Vance, if needed.

Republican Candidates Facing Iran War And Inflation Headwinds

The biggest political problem shared by all Republican candidates running in the midterms is their association with President Trump and the war that he started against Iran eight months ago, which he has been unable to finish. As a result, Iran’s attacks on crude oil and petroleum product shipments in the Persian Gulf have driven up gas prices at the pump in the U.S. by roughly 50 percent since the start of that war, and raised the cost of diesel fuel by about 70 percent.

The record high prices for diesel fuel have further stoked inflation by increasing the transportation costs for virtually every product that American consumers purchase. Diesel prices have also increased the cost of food by driving up expenses for American farmers planting, fertilizing, and harvesting their crops using diesel-fueled agricultural machinery.

A recent Pew survey found that only a third of American voters approve of Trump’s handling of the Iran war. The RealClearPolitics average for Trump’s presidential job approval rating currently stands at about 38 percent, a near-record low.

This suggests that the outcome of this midterm election should be comparable to 2006, when President George W. Bush’s approval was also at 38 percent. Democrats that year achieved a net gain of 31 seats in the House, gaining the majority that enabled them to name Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House. In the Senate, Democrats in the 2006 midterm election posted a net gain of 6 seats, enabling them to take control of the chamber with a narrow 51 to 49 majority.

That outcome was not an anomaly. With the exceptions of 1998 and 2002, the president’s party has lost seats in the House in every midterm election since 1946.

Current polls of voter preferences in a generic ballot also show Democrats ahead of Republicans by roughly eight points, although the history of recent elections suggests that their actual margin of victory is likely to be somewhat smaller when the midterm votes are counted.

High Gas And Diesel Prices Hurting Trump’s Supporters The Most

The high prices of gasoline and diesel fuel have been especially harmful to Trump’s popularity among the same coalition of non-college-educated voters who enabled his election victory in 2024. They include the working-class voters who are dependent upon their cars for travel to and from work and other routine daily activities, and American farmers who have not only been hard hit by the elevated cost of diesel fuel and petroleum-based fertilizers, but also by the loss of their sales to foreign buyers due to Trump’s controversial tariff policies.

A Washington Post article revealed the current dynamics of the unexpectedly close senatorial race in Kansas, where elections have long been dominated by traditionally Republican-voting farmers. The story focused on the fourth-generation farming family of John and Nancy Bowden, both age 74, who live in the small rural town of Salina, Kansas.

John Bowden said that he has consistently voted for Republican presidential candidates since Richard Nixon more than fifty years ago. The sole exceptions were his one-time votes for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, which John now says he regrets. He says that everyone in his family has always voted Republican ever since his maternal grandfather lost his job working for the government as a road-grader due to the fact that a Democrat candidate had won election to a local office. John’s wife Nancy said that the only time she voted for a Democrat candidate was when Kathleen Sebelius made 2 successful runs for governor of Kansas in 2002 and 2006.

Both John and Nancy say that they voted for President Trump without hesitation in 2024, but now admit to having some reservations about him.

John objects to Trump’s effort to reduce the cost of raw beef to American consumers by importing what he calls “substandard meat” from South America for fear that it will reduce the market value of the 80 cattle now living on the 900-acre Bowden family farm. John also notes that he is paying a lot more for the diesel fuel needed to run his tractors, and is concerned that Trump’s tariffs will increase the cost of the new farm equipment that he is planning to buy. But he also told the Washington Post reporter that he will probably vote to re-elect the Republican incumbent first-term Senator Roger Marshall anyway.

Nancy says she strongly supports Trump’s policies, but that she objects to “The way he talks, [because] it’s kind of demeaning.” She also described her support for the GOP’s senatorial incumbent candidate Marshall, a former Kansas congressman, based upon his record, as only “lukewarm.”

A Family Feud Over The Choice Of A Senate Candidate

Nevertheless, when their son James, age 39, who lives next door to the family farm, persuaded his mother Nancy to join him at a recent campaign event in Salina for Democrat senatorial candidate Adam Hamilton, she admitted to feeling uncomfortable “like a duck out of water,” because she remains a Republican at heart. Even though she thought that Hamilton, who is a Methodist preacher, was well-spoken and open to new ideas, Nancy said, “I have to vote my conscience,” for Marshall, primarily because of her strong Christian pro-life religious beliefs. She also said that she hadn’t been paying much attention to the campaign ads and accusations from both candidates for the Senate seat because her mind was already made up.

Nancy’s husband John also said that his mind was made up to vote for Marshall, despite his objections to the way that Trump’s policies have hurt his family farm business. “I’d rather vote for a known commodity than an unknown one, [and] I think he [Marshall] is the one,” John said.

But James Bowden, who is currently running as an independent candidate for a seat on the local county commission, did not give up. When he asked his father John, “What about Hamilton talking about wanting to build bridges, and unite people, just like I do in my own campaign?” the old man threw up his hands in disgust and replied cynically, “I’ve been here for 74 years, and that’s what every one of the [candidates] has been saying since [then].”

Switching Parties Is Hard Even For Angry Lifelong Republicans

Such long family histories of voting for Republican candidates are very common in rural Kansas, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since the depths of the Depression in 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and his fellow Democrat candidates won by a landslide nationwide.

While President Trump carried Kansas in the 2024 presidential election, defeating Democrat Kamala Harris by a 16-point margin (57%-41%), the latest polls show the race between Marshal and Hamilton to be virtually a dead heat, with liberal voters in Kansas City and its affluent suburbs roughly counterbalancing the much more conservative rural farm vote in small cities like Salina, where Trump won in the 2024 election by a 2-to-1 margin.

But Republican activists like Randall Hardy, who formerly represented Salina and the surrounding area in the Kansas state senate, believe that enough lifelong Republican rural voters like John and Nancy Bowden will get over their current anger at Trump due to high diesel prices and his tariff policies to re-elect Republican Marshall anyway, either due to their sense of family loyalty or their principled opposition to liberal Democrat policies.

Even Cheri Koochel, who is currently running for a seat in the state House of Representatives in a district near Salina, admits that she and her fellow Democrats candidates are facing an uphill battle in Kansas, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrat voters by a 45% to 25% margin. While Koochel said that she had met a lot of frustrated lifelong Republican voters during her door-to-door campaigning in the district, she admitted that still “it’s tough convincing people to abandon their political roots.”

Political analysts agree that the key to Marshall defeating Hamilton is to motivate enough of those Kansas voters who elected Trump in 2024 to go to the polls in two weeks and cast their ballots according to their lifelong conservative Republican beliefs instead of staying home to nurse their current grudge against Trump for high gasoline and diesel fuel prices. For that purpose, Trump made a personal appearance on Monday in Wichita, Kansas, in order to rally support for all of the local and statewide Republican candidates whose names will be on the midterm ballot on November 3, including Marshall.

Trump Going All Out In His Last Political Campaign

Trump will continue to make similar campaign stops across the country during the final two weeks of the midterm election campaign, not only in battleground states where Democrat and Republican candidates are generally evenly matched, but also in traditionally Republican-voting states such as Iowa, Alaska, Texas, Ohio and Florida where the latest polls show Democrat candidates to be surprisingly competitive, largely due to voter anger with Trump over high prices for gas, food and housing.

Trump’s presence at these rallies is intended to boost the attendance of those who voted for him in 2024, where he will continue to make the argument that the Democrat candidates on the ballot support the “too extreme” liberal views of the Biden administration, which subjected Americans to open borders, race-based policies, and much higher energy costs through a forced transition to unreliable green-energy sources, as well as electric vehicles that most American consumers didn’t want. Trump and the GOP candidates will also cite the takeover of the Democrat Party by GOP candidates and rally speeches that Democrats favor. They also say Democrats have candidates pushing the radical agenda, as well as the rabidly anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as espoused by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and avowed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

Some Moderate Democrats Still Know How To Win Over Voters

It is also interesting to note that those Democrat candidates who are doing better than expected in normally Republican-dominated states have made a clear effort to dissociate themselves from the most unpopular ultra-liberal Democrat domestic policy and social issues during the four years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

For example, the Democrat gubernatorial nominee in Texas, Gina Hinojosa, who is running against the popular Republican incumbent, Greg Abbott, conceded that since Trump took office, the massive wave of illegal immigration which flooded Texas towns along the Mexican border has virtually disappeared.

Relatively moderate Democrat senatorial candidates Dr. Annie Andrews, running in South Carolina, and Roy Cooper, running in North Carolina, have both rejected the continuing calls by far-left Democrat activists, as well as the national platform of the DSA, not only to defund the police, but also to do away with prisons, allowing criminals to continue to roam free on the streets of America, shoplifting and preying on innocent civilians without fear of arrest or prosecution.

Cooper’s relatively moderate positions and his popularity as a two-term former governor have forced Republican strategists to quietly concede that he is most likely to flip the open Senate seat in North Carolina into the Democrat column. National GOP party leaders have therefore been shifting campaign funds originally earmarked for the North Carolina Senate race to other states where GOP midterm candidates have a much more realistic chance for victory.

Andrews has also run a surprisingly strong race in South Carolina against Darline Graham, who was appointed to take over the Senate seat of her late brother, Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, who passed away suddenly a few months ago. Even though she had no previous political experience, Darline Graham is now running to be elected to a new six-year term of office in her brother’s Senate seat, by promising to continue to fight for the conservative Republican issues that he stood for, including a strong national defense and American support for Israel.

More generally, Republican candidates nationwide have been emphasizing two different issues during the midterm election campaign. They condemn most Democrats for meekly supporting the anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-free market, and racially biased policies of the DSA, which would largely do away with the democrat checks and balances of the federal government as we know it under the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Republicans Highlighting The Many Failures Of Democrat Socialism

President Trump and his fellow Republicans point out that the DSA-inspired liberal Democrats are calling for the elimination of key aspects of the American way of life, including private enterprise, private property, and the free-market capitalism which made the United States the richest country in the world. Instead, many Democrats would substitute the kind of authoritarian, centrally planned socialist economy that has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried, including the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, the Iron Curtain states of Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and communist China during the Mao era. Even in the Western European democracies, where socialist-style central planning and overly generous social welfare programs have been instituted, the results have been stagnation of the economy due to excessive taxation and state regulation, a growing inability to remain competitive in the global marketplace, a lack of sufficient private sector and individual incentives to stimulate investment and innovation, and growing public discontent with the suffocating government bureaucracy.

However, because advocates for extreme socialist ideologies have dictated which ideas may be taught on American college and university campuses for the past 60 years, three successive generations of American youth have been indoctrinated with these failed ideas. As a result, it is doubtful that the current belated efforts to expose the many failures of socialism will be able to blunt the enthusiasm for it among brainwashed young Democrats who grew up after the end of the Cold War.

The Leftist Abandonment Of Traditional American Values

Republicans are also attacking Democrat candidates for adopting the extremist policy goals of the college-educated elitist liberals which are alien to the beliefs, practical needs, and traditional religious values of most working-class and rural Americans. These include open borders, radical “woke” racial and social policies, the demonization and forced redistribution of wealth, the demand for equal outcomes as a substitute for the traditional American standard of equal opportunity, the condemnation of the American dream of achieving material success as a rewards for merit and hard work, disrespect for the institutions of law and order in society, defunding the police, emptying the jails, and decriminalizing criminal and violent behavior, the condemnation of the traditions of American democracy as expressions of white racism and oppression, denying law abiding citizens the right to self-defense, imposing limitations on parents’ rights to raise and educate their children as they see fit, growing government suppression of an individual’s right to free speech and to practice their religious beliefs, and last, but by no means least, the abandonment of Israel, America’s most loyal and only democrat ally in the Middle East, combined with an alarming tolerance for the open expression and commission of violent acts of antisemitism.

Republican candidates can also make a convincing argument that Trump’s supply-side economic policy innovations are working. They can cite the benefits to working-class Americans due to Trump’s tax cuts for tipped workers, overtime pay and Social Security recipients, along with the business-friendly tax measures and the wholesale elimination of unnecessary federal regulations, which have cut business costs, increased corporate profits, attracted new investment, accelerated the rate of economic growth and pushed stock prices to record highs. While the largest gains from these policies have been realized by higher-income households, Trump’s economic policies have also led to large wage increases and many new economic opportunities for workers and members of minorities at the lower end of the income scale.

Can The Polls Predicting A Democrat Landslide Be Believed?

Republicans’ best hope for an acceptable outcome from the upcoming midterm elections is that the predictions of the current polls are wrong. It is a fact that the national polls at the end of the last three presidential campaign cycles overestimated the level of Democrat voter support by three to five points. Minnesota Republican Congressman Tom Emmer recently told a GOP rally in Wisconsin that the polls are more often inaccurate these days because many Republican voters believe that pollsters are biased and therefore won’t talk to them, or will deliberately answer their questions incorrectly to skew the results, which is also a common phenomenon in Israel.

Polls ahead of the midterm elections in 2018 and 2022 predicting Democrat gains were more accurate, primarily because many of the less motivated voters, whose attitudes are much harder for pollsters to predict, stayed home. On the other hand, in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections, Donald Trump succeeded in motivating a lot of less likely voters to go to the polls, throwing a monkey wrench into pollster predictions based primarily upon the surveys of what pollsters call the most likely voters.

That fact is the reason why President Trump has been making such a strong effort to bring the same less likely voters who were responsible for his victory in 2024 back to the polls in the upcoming midterm election because that would undermine the accuracy of the assumptions behind the current polls predicting a major Democrat landslide.

Furthermore, this writer is not the only one who realizes that the current polls predicting a major Democrat victory in the Senate are mostly based on races in which the size of the Democrat candidate’s lead is small enough to change by Election Day. A Washington Post campaign analysis published last Friday explaining why some leading Democrats are nervous:

“Even former president Barack Obama appears to be stressing, as he provided a reality check about Democrats’ sprawling Senate map at a private fundraiser in Virginia this month.

‘All these races that are showing we’ve got a two- or three-point lead, or it’s a toss-up, we could end up losing all of them by two points,’ he [Obama] said. ‘It’s within the margin of error.’”

Iowa’s Lesson Showing That Even The Best Pollsters Can Be Wrong

The same Washington Post analysis notes that Democrats suffered a painful disappointment by putting too much faith in a favorable poll prediction. In Iowa a few days before the 2024 election, The Des Moines Register published a Mediacom Iowa Poll by J. Ann Selzer, which, over the course of many previous elections in that state, had earned its reputation as the “gold standard” for accuracy. It predicted an upset in which Kamala Harris would defeat Donald Trump by a 3-point margin, 47%-44%, which would have been the first time in nearly a decade that a Democrat candidate had won a statewide election in Iowa.

But for Democrats, the prediction was just too good to be true. The actual vote count on Election Day revealed a landslide 13-point victory by Trump (56%-43%), a prediction miss which was so embarrassing to Selzer professionally that she announced her immediate retirement from polling.

That experience still serves as a painful reminder and warning to Democrats to be careful about accepting at face value optimistic polling predictions that go very much against recent electoral trends. That is why Democrats in Iowa are very cautious about the polls in the current senatorial race in which Republican Congressman Ashley Hinson is in a virtual tie with Democrat Congressman Josh Turek.

In addition, Iowa is a largely rural state with an agriculture-based economy, where many families have a long history of voting for Republican candidates that is not easily broken. That is why, based upon Iowa’s recent electoral history, including Trump’s 13-point 2024 victory, political oddsmakers are giving Republican Hinson a 59% chance of victory.

Maine’s Susan Collins, The Last Moderate Senate Republican

The same political conclusion applies to the senatorial campaign in Maine, where Democrats made the mistake of originally putting up a little-known extreme left-wing candidate named Graham Platner, who wore a Nazi tattoo on his chest, against five-term incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins, who’s been winning statewide senatorial elections in Maine for the past 30 years. Platner was eventually forced to drop out of the race because of his reputation for scandalous behavior.

He was quickly replaced as the Democrats’ senatorial candidate by Troy Jackson, who at least had some political credibility as the former president of the Maine State Senate. But Jackson is another elitist liberal who supports Medicare for All (which would immediately destroy the quality of medical care for the 70 million current Medicare participants). He would protect the criminal illegal aliens living in this country by abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), and he would also end all U.S. funding for the IDF so that Israel would no longer be able to defend its civilians properly from another attack by Iran or one of its terrorist proxies.

Today Maine is another one of those states that former President Obama was referring to, where the Democrat candidate for the Senate is currently leading the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, by less than 2 points. But Republican supporters are not worried, because six years ago, in 2020, when Collins was running for her fifth term as senator, she also trailed her Democrat opponent in every opinion poll taken in the month of October. But on Election Day that November, Susan Collins won by a comfortable margin of 8 points, because Maine voters realized that she was in a position to deliver valuable federal benefits to the state due to her powerful post as the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. There is no reason to believe that she won’t be able to come from behind in the polls again this time, in light of the fact that Jackson is currently holding a scant 1.6-point lead over Collins in the latest statewide polling average.

 Which Party Is Winning The Election Campaign Money Wars?

With most Democrat activists now confident of a major midterm victory, others realize that it will not be easy for them to deliver on their high expectations for denying President Trump the ability to implement his non-legislative policy goals and govern the country effectively during the last two years of his presidency.

While there is no state in the country where an incumbent Republican senator or candidate for an open Senate seat is not facing a competent Democrat opponent, the Democrats also realize they have no room for error as they try to gain control of the Senate by picking up four new seats without losing any of the ones that they currently hold.

More than a dozen high-level Democrat campaign managers, strategists, and party officials have told CNN that their main worry heading into the final two weeks of the midterm campaign is financial. Democrat candidates in most Senate races have raised more campaign money than their Republican opponents. However, due to a huge flood of new campaign donations from outside GOP-aligned Political Action Committees (PACs), supported by generous Republican contributors with deep pockets, Republican candidates nationwide now enjoy a significant campaign finance advantage over their Democrat opponents in the final weeks of the campaign. This new money has also enabled President Trump and Republican Party leaders to build an effective political-economic firewall in the “red” states that is designed to protect the current Republican majority in the Senate.

Huge Spending By Both Sides In Texas

As a result, the Senate campaigns by the candidates of both parties leading up to the November 3 midterm election are setting records for spending. In Texas, since the beginning of this year, Democrat contributors have raised a staggering $114 million for their Senate nominee, James Talarico. At the same time, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton mounted a primary challenge from the right to the re-election bid by Texas’ relatively moderate Republican Senator John Cornyn. Before their contest was over, the combined spending by the campaigns of Cornyn and Paxton had spent more than $120 million, making it the most expensive senatorial primary contest in U.S. history. But despite the fact that Cornyn’s campaign outspent Paxton’s campaign by more than a 6-to-1 ratio, because of Trump’s last-minute endorsement of the much more conservative Paxton, he defeated Cornyn in the May 26 Texas primary runoff by a 28-point margin.

Cornyn’s primary loss to Paxton was a bitter defeat for many Texas Republicans who felt that the multiple scandalous charges of illegal conduct against him, even though he ultimately survived them all, made Paxton unfit to serve as a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate. Cornyn also never forgave him and has refused to campaign for Paxton in his general election contest against Talarico.

Instead, Cornyn has focused his recent campaign fundraising efforts on helping GOP Senate candidates running in other states. This has infuriated some of Paxton’s GOP supporters, who believe that an endorsement by Cornyn would help Paxton with the moderate Texas voters who have been put off by the allegations of illegal conduct that were filed against him. President Trump also said in a Truth Social post last week that if Paxton loses to Talarico in the November 3 election, he would blame the defeat on Cornyn’s refusal to work on Paxton’s behalf.

In Talarico’s primary race for the Democrat Party’s Texas senatorial nomination, he was harshly criticized for referring to one of his opponents, Colin Allred, as a “mediocre Black man, and for having accepted a campaign contribution from the late Sheldon Adelson’s family, long-time political supporters of Israeli prime minister Binyomin Netanyahu.

During his four terms as a Democrat member of the Texas House of Representatives, Talarico’s voting record featured opposition to legislation which would have required the display of the Ten Commandments in Texas public schools.

In his campaign for the U.S. Senate, Talarico has accused Israel of committing “war crimes” and “atrocities in Palestine.” He has also called for reforms to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the elimination of the filibuster rule, imposing term limits on the justices, and increasing the total number of justices in order to overturn the court’s current majority block of 6 conservative justices.

Before entering politics, Talarico graduated from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. During a 2021 debate in the Texas House of Representatives over gender issues related to women’s sports, Talarico made a deliberately provocative claim about his liberal Christian theological beliefs that has outraged many devout Republican and Democrat Christians.

Elon Musk Puts His Money On The Republican Candidate In Texas

In the Texas senatorial race, the fundraising bonanza of Talarico’s campaign was overshadowed by contributions from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who is the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, both of which have their corporate homes in Texas. Musk gave Paxton’s campaign a total of $158 million through two separate donations to the GOP’s Senate Leadership Fund.

Talarico has consistently held a narrow lead in polls over Paxton, raising Democrats’ hopes that they could finally win statewide office in Texas for the first time since 1994. Over the next 30 years, hopes for a Democrat statewide victory in Texas have repeatedly fallen short, most notably when former Congressman Beto O’Rourke narrowly lost in his bid to deny Ted Cruz another term as senator in 2018.

During the current midterm election cycle, Cruz has made a major effort to support Paxton, who was Cruz’s political protégé when he first ran to be Texas Attorney General in 2014. In the years since then, Cruz has continued to praise Paxton and has called him the “best state attorney general in the entire country,” for filing more than 100 lawsuits against the Biden administration’s liberal policies. Cruz also praised Paxton for his consistent support for Trump, which resulted in the president’s endorsement of Paxton just a few days before he defeated Cronyn in the Texas GOP state primary runoff election. Cruz also stood by Paxton as he successfully withstood a federal indictment in 2015 on security fraud charges and was acquitted by the Texas state legislature in 2023 on impeachment charges accusing Paxton of bribery and abuse of public trust. Cruz then helped Paxton mount his ultimately successful challenge from the right to Senator Cronyn’s re-election bid by introducing Paxton to Cruz’s own large network of conservative Republican campaign donors.

Ted Cruz Using The Midterms To Prepare For A 2028 Presidential Bid

Cruz has also been active in the support of other Republican candidates currently running for office in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alaska, Michigan and Kansas, in preparation for what many believe will be a bid by Cruz to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2028 against the current unofficial front-runners, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

But very much like both Vance and Rubio, whenever he was asked in an interview about a potential presidential bid in 2028, his response was, “I am devoting every waking moment to fighting to hold the Senate and grow our majority in the Senate, and to hold the House and grow our majority in the House.” He then added that, “The 2028 conversation will come for everybody, but it’ll come after the midterms.”

During his appearances on the campaign trail in support of Paxton’s senatorial candidacy, Cruz has ridiculed Talarico’s controversial comments about his own liberal Christian beliefs and support for an open-border immigration policy, saying that those would be more fitting positions for an elected politician representing liberal Berkeley, California, than conservative Texas. Cruz also declared that, “We are witnessing a hostile takeover of the Democrat Party, a Marxist and Islamist takeover that is really dangerous, and Texas is a battleground [in that takeover].”

Cruz has acknowledged that the senatorial race in Texas is currently “effectively tied,” and that “the consequences of losing [that Texas seat in the U.S. Senate] would be massive.” However, Cruz also said that he is “all in” in his support for Paxton, and expressed his confidence that Republicans will be able to hold that Senate seat so long as they are able to get their political message out and get enough Republican voters to the polls.

All Eyes On The Controversial Muslim In Michigan’s Senate Race

Meanwhile, the closely watched senatorial campaign in Michigan between the still controversial far-left Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who, if elected, would become the first Muslim ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, and the Trump-backed former Republican congressman, Mike Rogers, has taken an interesting turn. Despite endorsements from far-left leaders, including Vermont’s socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and AOC, the leader of the progressive “squad” in the House, El Sayid managed to win the Democrat nomination for senator by the slimmest of margins against relatively moderate Democrat Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who was supported by the state Democrat Party’s leadership in the August primary.

Now, two of the state party’s leaders, Lon Johnson, a former Michigan Democrat Party chair, and David Kramer, a longtime Democrat strategist, have published an op-ed in the Detroit News calling upon their fellow Democrats who still feel uncomfortable with voting for El Sayed in the November 3 general election to leave that section of the ballot blank and unmarked as a silent protest against El Sayed’s candidacy, but without actually voting to help Donald Trump and Republicans maintain their current control over the U.S. Senate.

Disappointed Michigan Democrats Urging Voters To “Leave It Blank”

This “leave it blank” campaign is actually aimed primarily at liberal Jewish voters in Michigan who routinely vote for Democrat candidates, but who would feel guilty for casting their votes for a candidate like El-Sayed, who has openly expressed his hostility toward Israel and who repeatedly campaigned during the primary season with avowed antisemites and anti-Zionists such as the notorious leftist social media influencers, Linda Sasour and Hasan Piker.

“Our gravest concerns involve El-Sayed’s associations with figures who have excused or minimized terrorism, his reluctance to unequivocally condemn dangerous rhetoric and his support of extreme policies,” Johnson and Kramer wrote in their Detroit News op-ed.

In an effort to ease the conscience of lifelong Democrats who still feel an obligation to vote for even the most dubious of Democrat candidates, Johnson and Kramer argue in their op-ed that even though they agree that, “supporting a candidate after a hard-fought primary is an act of party unity, not a surrender of principle,” they still believe that “Democrats [who were] asked to set aside their differences for Abdul El-Sayed had every right to expect … a commitment [from him] to earn their trust, address their legitimate concerns and unite a party whose nomination he won with less than 50% of the vote.”

But according to Johnson and Kramer, “He [El-Sayed] has failed that test,” and therefore he no longer has any legitimate claim to their votes.

Since publishing their op-ed, the message from Johnson and Kramer seems to be breaking through to Jewish Democrat voters in Michigan. On October 12, a rally at Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, which was the site of the terrorist attack last spring, drew 1,000 Jews who strongly disapproved of El-Sayed infuriating reaction to the incident. Although the gathering was not explicitly labeled as a pro-Rogers political event, the intent to generate anti-El-Sayed political sentiment in the Greater Detroit Jewish community was clear.

Since that gathering, several more prominent Detroit area Jewish Democrats have come out explicitly in favor of Rogers instead of El-Sayed. They include Gary Torgow, a prominent Detroit area banker and business executive who is the president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and of the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah, and who was selected to serve as the chairman of the board of directors of the Jewish Federations of North America, with nearly 150 members of local Jewish federations across the United States and Canada.

In addition, Larry Deitch, a former University of Michigan regent, has written letters published by the Detroit News denouncing El-Sayed for his opposition to Israel and urging all supporters of Israel in Michigan to vote for Rogers in the November 3 election.

Johnson and Kramer have also said that their “leave it blank campaign was designed to give voters who fear El-Sayed but loathe Donald Trump a way to punish the president while helping defeat El-Sayed, while remaining true to their liberal Democrat political ideals.”

“For many of us, there is dignity in leaving it [the senatorial part of their midterm election ballots] blank,” they wrote in their op-ed.

What Makes A Democrat Voter A True Democrat?

Even though they refuse to vote for El-Sayed and are actively working to defeat him, Johnson and Kramer still insist in their op-ed that, “We remain Democrats, committed to electing outstanding candidates up and down the ballot and protecting the party’s future. We reject the notion that declining to support one [uniquely objectionable Democrat] nominee makes anyone less of a Democrat.”

However, political strategists say that their unique “leave it blank” approach is not the perfect way to prevent El-Sayed from winning the senatorial election, because converting a Democrat voter for El-Sayed into a vote for Rogers yields an effective net gain of two votes for Rogers, while convincing that same Democrat voter not to vote for either candidate effectively yields a net gain of just one vote for Rogers. However, it also lowers El-Sayed’s vote tally and therefore lowers the number of votes that Rogers needs to actually win by one vote.

Two years ago, Rogers also ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan and lost to now-Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin by less than a percentage point in a race in which each candidate was supported by virtually all of the voters in their respective political parties.

If the November 3 senatorial vote in Michigan remains just as evenly divided as the race two years ago, then it would only take a relatively small number of Democrat voters boycotting El-Sayed’s candidacy to give Rogers a narrow victory in the election.

Johnson and Kramer address Democrat concern that a Rogers victory could give Republicans, and Trump, a Senate majority. They say a surprising blue wave building in traditionally GOP stronghold states should mitigate that threat. And even if El-Sayed should win, they write, his extreme views would make him an outlier in the Senate and render him ineffective for Michigan.

El-Sayed’s Troubling Ties To The Muslim Brotherhood

Meanwhile, in a nationally televised NBC News “Meet the Press” interview, host reporter Kristen Welker asked El-Sayed if he would “set the record straight” about his reported family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been formally declared to be an Islamic terrorist organization by the governments of Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood was founded, and in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was also the parent organization that created Hamas.

In response to the question, El-Sayed quickly replied, insisting that neither he nor his family have any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood’s international Sunni Islamist terrorist network.

But according to anti-radical leftist and anti-Islamo-fascism activist Josh Hammer, writing in the New York Post, “El-Sayed is lying.

“He’s running as the most thinly veiled Trojan horse in American political history — on behalf of the Brotherhood and the Islamism it embodies.”

To support his accusation, Hammer cites a report published by the Washington Free Beacon which reveals that El-Sayed’s half-sister, a University of Chicago professor named Eman Abdelhadi, explicitly lauded their family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2012, Abdelhadi publicly claimed that Fatten Elkomy. who was the mother of both her and El-Sayed, “Had an amazing talk. . . about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 1970s.”

That was the same year that a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, briefly took over as the elected president of Egypt until he was ousted in a 2014 military coup engineered by the army general who is now Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

In addition, according to Hammer, on September 11, 2001, the day when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked 4 airliners to stage deadly mass terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, was working for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which was designated by the Treasury Department as a terrorist organization in 2004 for providing “direct financial support” to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

It has also previously been established that El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, a founding committee member of the Islamic Society of North America, has donated $200,000 to El-Sayed’s senatorial campaign.

El-Sayed’s campaign has also received a six-figure donation from current or former officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named by the U.S. government’s Justice Department in 2008 as an American front group for the international Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist network, during the criminal investigation into the Holy Land Foundation.

Will A Senator El-Sayed Serve As A Double Agent For Terrorists?

According to Hammer, these family associations are “why these terrorist front groups are now trying to elect Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate.”

Hammer also warns that as a sitting U.S. Senator, El-Sayed would immediately gain access to a lot of highly sensitive U.S. intelligence information, which is why his election to the Senate “would pose a massive threat to American national security.”

Hammer believes that as a senator, “El-Sayed wouldn’t advance America’s interests: He would advance the interests of the Brotherhood, and of Islamism more generally,” including Hamas, al Qaeda, and ISIS.

Hammer also notes that when El-Sayed was asked for a comment on the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war against Iran in February, El-Sayed would only say, “There are a lot of [Muslim] people in Dearborn [Michigan] who are sad today.” That is why Hammer also questions whether El-Sayed is on the side of the United States in its ongoing war against Iran.

The outcome of the Michigan Senate race is also crucial to determining the balance of political power in Washington over the next two years because an electoral victory by Rogers over El-Sayed would mean that Republicans had flipped the seat currently held by retiring Democrat Senator Gary Peters. This would make it necessary for Democrat candidates to win a net total of 5 Senate seats instead of just 4 currently, in order to win clear 51-49 majority control over the U.S. Senate.

An Unexpected Gop Pickup Opportunity In Minnesota

Republicans also now have an opportunity to flip another open Democrat Senate seat in the state of Minnesota, whose Democrat political establishment has been rocked by a series of welfare fraud scandals involving billions of dollars of stolen government money due to the gross negligence and/or incompetence of Minnesota’s top Democrat elected officials. These include Governor Tim Walz (Kamala Harris’ 2026 vice presidential running mate), his 2-term lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, and Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, who became the first Muslim member of Congress in 2007.

They have been accused of turning a blind eye to the welfare fraud schemes, many of which were run by members of Minnesota’s large Somali refugee community. One of the schemes involved a non-profit organization called “Feeding Our Future” which stole $250 million by falsely claiming to have provided millions of free meals to children in Minnesota during the Covid pandemic. In a second set of schemes, fraudsters billed 14 different Minnesota state autism, housing, and personal care programs for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of services that were never provided, and paid kickbacks to the parents of the children who were supposed to have received services from those programs. While the federal investigations into the Minnesota fraud cases are not yet complete, total losses of up to $9 billion in government funding have been reported so far.

Because Flanagan is now the Democrat candidate running for Minnesota’s open Senate seat, those scandals are now a serious campaign liability that is being exploited by her Republican candidate, Michele Tafoya, who is already well-known in the state because of her previous career as a television sportscaster.

In the Minnesota state primary to select the Democrat senatorial candidate, Flanagan ran on endorsements from leaders of the far left, such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Democrat Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Pramila Jayapal, and the notorious antisemite, Ilhan Omar. In that primary, Flanagan defeated a much more moderate Minnesota Democrat running for the senatorial nomination, Congresswoman Angie Craig.

Tafoya has turned out to be an effective candidate, with plenty of public speaking experience and formidable communications skills. In their only broadcast debate hosted by Minnesota Public Radio News, Tafoya delivered what the Washington Post described as a “feisty” performance, including several sharp one-liners, while effectively positioning herself as an independent-minded Republican candidate who is ready to stand up against President Trump when they disagree.

Minnesota Democrat Dodges Responsibility For A Notorious Scandal

Flanagan tried to distance herself from her longtime political partner, Governor Walz, because of his close association with the still unfolding welfare fraud scandal. At the same time, Flanagan accused Tafoya of being totally beholden to President Trump and his policies. But Tafoya would not stand for that, and answered quickly by saying, “Peggy, Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot. You and I are on the ballot.”

When Flanagan noted that President Trump had publicly endorsed Tafoya and had urged his followers in Minnesota to vote for her, Tafoya replied that Flanagan had to be held accountable for being part of “an historically bad, failed administration” responsible for one of the most costly government fraud scandals in American history. Flanagan was asked whether she could have done more to prevent the fraud as Minnesota’s lieutenant governor. Her response was to cite Walz’s paraphrase of a famous sign that used to sit on President Harry Truman White House desk when the Minnesota governor said that “the buck stops with me,” with regard to responsibility for the scandal.

While Minnesota has long had a political reputation for being a “blue” voting state, and has not elected a Republican senator for more than 20 years, or voted for a Republican for president since 1972, President Trump narrowly lost the state by less than two points in 2016 and 4 points in 2024. That shows that for a highly effective Republican senatorial candidate like Tafoya, overcoming Flanagan’s current less-than-3-point lead in current polls before Election Day, and flipping Minnesota’s open Senate seat that was formerly held by Democrat Amy Klobuchar, who is now running to replace Walz as governor, should not be an insurmountable political task.

Ohio, Alaska And New Hampshire

Two other states which have traditionally elected Republican candidates in recent years, but where a Democrat challenger currently holds a small polling advantage over the current Republican senatorial incumbent, are Ohio and Alaska. The Democrats do have an advantage there, but neither state is out of reach for the Republicans yet.

Then there is the race for New Hampshire’s open Senate seat, which had been held by a Democrat. The Republican senatorial candidate is the state’s popular former governor John Sununu, a member of a famous political family in the state who is also trailing his Democrat opponent by about six points, which is a significant but not insurmountable lead.

The only currently Republican open seat in the Senate the Democrats now seem to be assured of a pickup is in North Carolina, where Roy Cooper, the popular Democrat former two-term governor, seems to be holding an insurmountable lead over the much less well-known Republican candidate, Michael Whatley. But after conceding that seat to the Democrats, they would still need to flip a net total of at least three more Republican seats to take control of the Senate, which is certainly possible, but far from certain, given the current polling data and state-by-state election outlook.

Sit Back And Enjoy American Democracy’s Best Show

The outcome in several of the senatorial races in November 3 election appears likely to be very close. The final determination of which party will emerge in control of the Senate might not be known for some days, especially if it comes down to the complicated ranked voting results in the states of Alaska and Maine. As in every national election, there will be some surprises, and many predictions that will turn out to be wrong. So be prepared on Election Night to sit back and relax while watching as American democracy’s most entertaining political show slowly unfolds as the midterm vote counts come in.

As we learn this week about Noach and the Mabul, we encounter a description of the world that is devastating and unsettling. The pesukim (Bereishis 6:11-12) tell us, “Vatishocheis ha’aretz lifnei ha’Elokim vatimolei ha’aretz chomos — The world had become corrupt before Hashem, and the earth was filled with thievery.” The Torah continues, “Vayar Hashem es ha’aretz vehinei nishchosah — Hashem saw the earth, and behold, it had become corrupt.”

Acharonim note a striking feature of these pesukim. The Torah describes a world consumed by corruption, a society steeped in theft, violence, immorality, and the abandonment of basic decency. Yet, when the Torah speaks of seeing the corruption, it singles out that Hashem is the One who observed what was happening: “Vayar Hashem.” Hashem saw what had become of His world. The implication is that the people inhabiting that world did not see what was unfolding around them. Either they were so deeply implicated in the wrongdoing that they could no longer see it clearly or they had become so accustomed to their surroundings that nothing about the prevailing behavior seemed unusual.

How could an entire civilization descend to such a level without recognizing what was happening? How could people live amid rampant theft and violence, surrounded by moral decay, and carry on as though everything were perfectly normal?

Perhaps the answer is that corruption rarely announces itself as corruption. It advances gradually, one compromise at a time, until yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s accepted practice. What once would have shocked the conscience becomes commonplace. What once demanded protest becomes a subject of indifference. Eventually, people no longer ask whether their behavior is right or wrong. They ask only whether it is customary, whether others are doing it, and whether they can get away with it.

Not only were the people of Noach’s generation committing terrible sins, but their society had lost the ability to recognize those sins for what they were. The corruption had become so pervasive that the distinction between right and wrong had blurred, until the abnormal had become normal and the indefensible had become accepted.

When an individual sins, there may still be a conscience that troubles him, a voice that reminds him that he has crossed a line. But when an entire society embraces the wrongdoing, that voice becomes easier to silence. People reassure one another that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. They point to their neighbors, their friends, and the accepted practices of their time. The oldest excuse in the book is that “everyone is doing it,” and if everyone is doing it, then it can’t possibly be wrong.

Yet, the fact that an entire world accepts something does not make it right. A society can reach a consensus and still be profoundly mistaken. An entire generation can lose its moral bearings while remaining convinced that it is right.

We see this in the way nations condemn Israel and promote the modern-day blood libel that the Jewish state is guilty of genocide. We see it in the world’s most prestigious award being given to a Jew-hater who promotes the genocide charge. We see it in the antisemitic marches in European capitals, in the legislation Western nations enact against Israel, and in the growing hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people within the American Democratic Party.

And this lesson must give us pause closer to home as well. At a time when more Jews are devoting their lives to Torah, and when chesed and tzedokah are being performed on a scale that may be unprecedented in our long history, we must also confront the troubling reality that certain forms of contemptible conduct within our own community are becoming increasingly accepted. The extraordinary growth of Torah and chesed does not absolve us of the responsibility to recognize what is wrong among us.

The Torah’s description of the Mabul teaches us that this is not merely a historical curiosity. It is one of the great dangers facing human society in every age. When the standards of right and wrong are determined by what people do rather than by what they should do, the very idea of a moral standard begins to disappear. Instead of asking whether our behavior meets the demands of truth and justice, we judge truth and justice by whether they accommodate our behavior.

The tragedy of Noach’s generation was that its people apparently no longer saw the tragedy.

There is a remarkable lesson in the Torah’s identification of the particular sin that filled the earth, namely chomos, thievery. Chazal teach that the people of that generation had become so accustomed to stealing that they devised ways of taking from one another in amounts so small that the victims could not obtain legal redress. Each individual act might have appeared insignificant, but when everyone participated, the cumulative result was the destruction of society.

This is what happens when people stop respecting the rights of others. The first theft may be accompanied by discomfort, the second by a little less hesitation, and eventually a person can reach a point where he no longer finds anything wrong with taking what belongs to someone else. He finds excuses, identifies loopholes, and persuades himself that what he is doing is acceptable. Others do the same, and soon the entire society operates by standards that would once have been unthinkable.

The members of the generation of the Mabul did not necessarily need to become spectacular villains, each committing some extraordinary act of wickedness. They needed only to create a world in which everyone felt entitled to take a little, excuse a little, and disregard the other person a little. When those small acts became the accepted way of life, the society became corrupt.

The lesson reaches far beyond theft. Whenever people become accustomed to dishonesty, cruelty, exploitation, or the humiliation of others, they gradually lose their sensitivity to the damage they cause. The question is no longer whether another person has been wronged, but whether the wrongdoing is common enough to be excused. The more widespread a practice becomes, the less likely people are to challenge it, and the less likely they are to recognize the harm it inflicts.

This is how a society can deteriorate without experiencing a moment of collective alarm. There is no single morning when everyone awakens and announces that right and wrong no longer matter. Instead, the standards erode little by little, until people look around and see nothing unusual in what has become of them.

And that is the lesson of Noach.

The Torah tells us, “Noach ish tzaddik tomim hayah bedorosav es ha’Elokim hishalech Noach — Noach was a righteous and wholehearted man in his generations; Noach walked with Hashem.”

Noach lived in the same world as everyone else. He breathed the same air, encountered the same people, and witnessed the same conduct that had become ordinary in his surroundings. He was spared the influence of his society because, while the others accepted the standards of their generation, Noach measured his conduct by the will of Hashem. If Noach knew that Hashem considered that conduct wrong, Noach’s guide was Hashem, not public opinion, not what everyone did, what everyone bought, or where everyone went. He kept himself accountable to a higher standard.

Noach measured the world against the will of Hashem rather than measuring the will of Hashem against the world.

That distinction is fundamental.

It is relatively easy to recognize wrongdoing when everyone around us condemns it. When a society agrees that an act is shameful, a person can maintain his integrity without having to question the assumptions of his friends or challenge the practices of his community. The real test arrives when the prevailing culture has accepted something that the Torah rejects, when a person must choose between the approval of those around him and his responsibility to Hashem.

That is when a person discovers whether his standards are rooted in Torah or merely borrowed from his surroundings.

Hashem instructed Noach to build the teivah over an extended period so that he could carry on discussions with the people of his day and seek to influence them to mend their ways. Though Noach’s efforts proved fruitless, he himself wasn’t swayed by the degradation of the society around him and remained committed to acting according to the will of Hashem. Though he was constantly mocked, he continued building the teivah as Hashem had commanded him.

That is the responsibility of a Jew in every generation. We cannot control the moral climate of the world, and we cannot always persuade others to recognize what is wrong. But we are responsible for ensuring that the standards by which we live our lives do not become casualties of the society around us.

We live in a world in which the language of morality is constantly invoked, but the meaning of morality is increasingly contested. Conduct that was once regarded as shameful can be celebrated, while those who object are dismissed as backward, intolerant, or out of touch.

Just because something is popular, widely promoted, and accepted by influential people does not mean that it is right. Popularity is not proof of truth, and acceptance is not evidence of righteousness.

The world can applaud something that is wrong, just as an entire generation can become accustomed to behavior that destroys the fabric of society. If we allow the prevailing culture to determine our standards, we risk losing the ability to distinguish between what is right and what is merely fashionable.

This danger is not confined to the larger society. It exists within our world as well. A person can become accustomed to speaking improperly, treating another person unfairly, wasting precious time, or making compromises in his hanhogah until what once troubled him no longer registers. He may continue to regard himself as an honest person, a responsible person, and a ben Torah, even as he gradually adjusts his standards to accommodate his behavior.

The danger is not only that we may do something wrong. It is that we may reach a point where we no longer recognize it as wrong.

A person who knows that he has stumbled can seek to correct himself. A person who has convinced himself that there is nothing to correct has closed the door to improvement.

That is why the Torah’s description of Noach’s generation should give us pause. It teaches us to consider not only what we are doing, but how we judge what we are doing. Are our standards determined by the Torah, or do we slowly, and perhaps unknowingly, adjust our understanding of Torah to accommodate the standards around us? Are we troubled when we see something wrong, or have we become so accustomed to it that we no longer notice or care? Do we examine our conduct honestly, or do we find comfort in the knowledge that others behave the same way?

Noach’s generation became so immersed in its conduct that its people lost the ability to recognize where their choices were leading. The world was filled with chomos, and yet the corruption had become ordinary. What should have been a cause for alarm had become the background of everyday life.

Noach teaches us that we must preserve the ability to see clearly, even when those around us have lost it.

There is a reason that the Torah tells us that Noach walked with Hashem. A person who leads his life by what everyone else does gets swept away in the tide of hedonism, self-indulgence, and a way of life incongruous with Torah values.

Noach reminds us that when the entire world goes astray, righteousness may look strange and may feel lonely. When everyone goes somewhere and you don’t, it may appear as if you are the one missing out, but, in fact, you are like Noach in the teivah, living life the way it was meant to be lived.

Over the Yomim Noraim and Sukkos, we invested much effort in reaching higher levels of ruchniyus, striving to improve ourselves, strengthen our connection with Hashem, and carry the inspiration of those exalted days into the year ahead. The task of those days was to work to elevate ourselves above the distractions of the world and draw closer to the person we know we can become.

As we return to regular life, what we gained over Tishrei is vulnerable to the murky floodwaters of a society in which the lines between right and wrong are increasingly blurred and our generational values can gradually be eroded.

As we learn this week’s parsha and return to school and yeshiva, we must take the lesson of Parshas Noach to heart and work to go against the flow rather than get swept away by the challenges to our mesorah and Torah way of life.

We can choose the standards by which we live, the influences to which we expose ourselves, and the values we transmit to our children. By remaining loyal to Torah and its values and doing what we can to bring goodness and ruchniyus into the world around us, we build our personal teivah, a place of refuge in which our families can remain anchored even as the waters rise around us.

We may not be able to keep the world from sinking, but we can ensure that we do not allow ourselves to sink with it. We can act as our grandfather Noach did, attempt to influence those around us, seek to make the world a better place, and help prepare the world for the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu bekarov.

I recently saw an ad that got me thinking. I believe it was an advertisement for someone who was organizing a girls’ choir. I just saw it in passing. It wasn’t much more than a glance, and I even forgot where I saw it, so I haven’t been able to look it up. Either way, I think it is interesting to note how it was marketed.

If I am not mistaken, the advertisement spoke about how being part of a choir brings out confidence in girls and shows them how to shine and work together as a team. Wonderful! We are all for kids being confident, and we are definitely proponents of teamwork, of learning how to work together rather than having individuals swallow up all of the air in the room. Right?

Then I remembered another line in the ad, a promise made by the organizers. It said something like, “The songs and productions will not appear on Instagram or other similar kinds of platforms… The only place where it will be uploaded is to 24Six…”

It was that line that reverberated in my brain and got me thinking. First of all, the very fact that the organizers were reassuring the public that the recordings would not appear on Instagram, etc., made me understand that there is such a thing as a choir performance by frum girls who attend mainstream Bais Yaakov elementary schools being uploaded to Instagram!

Yes, it means that there are people who have no problem publicizing the performances of pure bnos Yisroel, showing them off to the world as if they were mannequins on display in a department store. In this case, however, it is even worse, because the department store is the entire world. (Yes, I know that they write the perfunctory disclaimer, “For women and girls only.”)

Am I Missing Something?

Now, the second part of the ad, the assurance that it will only be uploaded to 24Six, warrants an entirely separate article, but that is not the subject of our discussion now.

I was thinking: What is going on? Parents are supposed to be the greatest protectors of their children. They have been entrusted with these precious pikdonos by Hashem so that they can watch them, guard them, and preserve the “neshomah shenosata bee tehorah hee — the pure neshomah that was entrusted to them.” Why would a parent even have the desire to publicize his daughter’s singing, and why would someone leading a choir have the audacity to take recordings and videos of pure Jewish frum girls singing and put them out there for Charlie, Peter, Chris, Jack and Jill, and anyone in the world to watch?

Am I missing something?

“Venaaseh Lonu Sheim!”

That very day, I happened to be learning Parshas Noach, this week’s parsha, and I noticed the wording of a posuk that, interestingly enough, during all the previous decades that I have learned this posuk, never hit me the way it did now.

The posuk, which appears during the story of the Dor Haflagah, says, “Hava nivneh lonu ihr umigdal verosho bashomayim venaaseh lonu sheim — Come, let us build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.”

I never fully paid attention to that part of the posuk.

It never hit me that they wanted to “make a name for themselves.” What does that mean? Even more, what did it mean back then?

In those days, they didn’t have mass communication like we have. There were no podcasts, no Instagram channels, no social media. There wasn’t even a simple video or radio. How was a person supposed to “get his name out there”?

The only way was to build a tower that could be seen from everywhere in civilization.

They wanted the entire world to know that they were the ultimate. They were the strongest. They would build the most towering skyscraper. They would conquer the very heavens. The entire world would recognize them and be in awe of them. “Venaaseh lonu sheim — We will make a name for ourselves.”

My dear friends, I know that the Yated readers are the public that perhaps least needs to be told and warned about the dangers of naaseh lonu sheim—getting your name out there—but there are two reasons why I would nevertheless like to utilize the Yated to talk about this.

Firstly, because this is my shofar; this is the place where I write and where I want to write. Secondly, the very fact that Yated readers may be less exposed to these mediums means that perhaps they are not yet lost and can still protect themselves and understand what they and their children will be dealing with.

The “Who” Who Are Getting “Their Names Out There”

We are living in a society that screams, “Venaaseh lonu sheim.” If you don’t have your own podcast, your own YouTube channel, your own Twitter feed or Instagram feed, then you don’t really exist.

Now, who do you think is getting their name out there?

The role model who is sitting and horuving in one of the botei medrash of Bais Medrash Govoah? The rebbetzin or mechaneches who is being moser nefesh to help bnos Yisroel be happy, confident servants of Hashem?

Of course not. Those are the people who are running away from naaseh lonu sheim. They want to do so much for Klal Yisroel while trying their hardest to make sure that they themselves are not part of the story.

Today’s culture, which unfortunately has not just seeped into our collective communities but has saturated them, is to get your name out there and take credit for everything, even things that you have not done.

The main objective is for you to be part of the story. The podcaster thinks that he or she is the story rather than the person telling the story.

The talmid chochom in Bais Medrash Govoah, Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, or any of the other myriad yeshivos and kollelim who has just been mechadesh a new mehalech in a difficult sugya is not the one who wants to get his name out there.

What Sells Today? Appealing to the Basest Instincts of Kinah, Taavah and Kavod

Now, let us think: What sells today? Who gets the most traffic on their social media feeds?

My understanding is that those who get the most traffic are the people who appeal to the basest instincts of kinah, taavah and kavod. Look at Hasan Piker, one of the most influential people in politics today, who is a rabid antisemite who wants to see Hitler come again and kill everyone. He believes that America deserved 9/11. He literally cannot complete a sentence without a whole bunch of ugly curse words streaming from his mouth…and he has more people watching and listening to him than almost anyone else. He is less than a nothing! But because he is brash, angry, evil, and knows how to harness grievance, he is popular.

Now, I am not comparing any frum person who wants to get their name out there to him. Chas veshalom to even think of doing that!

What I am, however, doing is saying that most of those “Let’s get our names out there” people are appealing to the baser instincts of their followers and viewers. It may just be curiosity, and it may be a lot of kinah, taavah and kavod mixed in, but one thing is for sure: The person who is getting their name out there is not the person you are going to consult when you need a brocha for your child. You know that, and he or she knows that too.

Why Did Hashem Destroy the Dor Haflagah?

So why did Hashem destroy the Dor Haflagah? Why did He hate what they were doing?

Simple. Hashem hates gaavah. He simply despises it. Hashem is, kevayachol, allergic to it. He can’t be together with it, as the Gemara teaches us that when it comes to the baal gaavah, Hashem says, “I cannot live in the same world [as the baal gaavah].”

Perhaps it was the terrible middah of arrogance that the Dor Haflagah possessed that sealed their fate.

We must realize that as good and talented and powerful as we think we are, we are really nothing.

Remember how, less than a month ago, on Yom Kippur, we said, “Mah anu — What are we? What is our life? What is our kindness? What is our righteousness? What is our salvation? What is our strength? What is our might? What can we say before You, Hashem?”

Hashem controls everything, and the second we think that we are in control, the second we think it is us, our prowess, and our “name” that will be famous, Hashem does not want to be near us. We live in a world just like the Dor Haflagah, where everyone is fighting for publicity and everyone wants to “get their name out there.”

It is important for us to understand that world even as we despise it, because that is the world in which our kids live.

Your child will walk into a shul, and if he sees a famous (or even not-so-famous) singer or entertainer davening there, he will notice him before he notices the rov of the shul. Don’t think I am making this up. I have seen it with my own eyes.

When Small Is Big and Less Is More

We learn that at the time of the Dor Haflagah, there were two brothers, the children of Eiver. One was named Peleg and the other was named Yokton. Peleg was named Peleg because it was in his days that the world split into many different groups — “niflega ha’olam.”

Yokton’s name comes from the root of the word “koton,” small. Chazal teach us that Yokton was given that name because he was an anav; he was humble and would always make himself small. Chazal teach us that the s’char for his humility was that he merited to have many, many children.

(By the way, we see from here that a segulah for children—and many children—is conducting oneself with humility.)

Yokton received such a great reward because he went against the tide. While everyone in his generation was behaving with such arrogance, thinking that they could take over the world and even overcome Hashem, Yokton remained humble and small and didn’t let himself get swept up in what “everyone” was doing.

Let’s remember that we Yidden are different. The more we make ourselves small, the more we take the spotlight off ourselves, and the fewer people know about us and what we do, the better it is.

Yes, Yokton teaches us that small is really big and less is really more.

A “small” thought to think about…in a “big” way.

There was a well-known but somewhat verbose rov who used to avoid the time limits imposed upon his pronouncements. His opening words were always, “Before I begin speaking, I would like to say a few words.” I, too, will begin with two stories to introduce this subject. The great Rav Berel Wein was sadly blind toward the end of his life but used AI to help him find the sources he needed. After a few attempts, he accused his AI aid of anti-Semitism. The explanation? He dictated an article about a Jewish prophet, but the AI took his reference to be profit, “a clear reference,” Rabbi Wein suggested, “to a classic anti-Semitic canard about Jewish love of money.”

The second story before the actual column is from my long-ago youth. My father used to listen to the Yiddish-language radio station WEVD. During those days, the weather reporter was called the vetter novi, loosely translated as the weather prophet. One winter day, he predicted beautiful sunshine, but soon, 18 inches of snow whitened the streets. My father commented, tongue firmly planted in cheek, “a novi sheker.”

I share all this because I haven’t skewered the New York Times for a while, but someone sent me this and I couldn’t resist. On Shabbos, October 11, 2026, page 1, the so-called paper of record ran the headline that “Peace Prize Goes to a Jurist Who Rebuked Israel.” Now, this is, of course, no chiddush and nothing to write about. However, I was struck by her name. Hence this analysis. Although her true cognomen is Navanethem Pillay, she is known perhaps aptly as “Navi.” She has, naturally, led a “U.N. commission that said Israel had committed genocide.” Also, naturally, this earned her a Nobel Peace Prize this past Friday and the adulation of the Times and other anti-Semites around the world. We, however, need only add the prefix sheker to her nickname so that it is now Navi Sheker.

This is not merely a play on words or playing with names. It has become a metaphor and definition for our times. As Rav Eliyohu Eliezer Dessler (Michtov M’Eliyohu 5:412) taught us, “When the Anshei Knesses Hagedolah nullified the evil inclination for avodah zarah (idolatry), they did not do so completely. As the Gemara (Yoma 69b) concludes, they just moved it into a different vessel. In other words, just as people irrationally believed in false gods and worshipped them, our age has created such obsessions as the various isms of our time. Some of these have just recently reared their ugly heads again in the form of socialism and communism. It seems that no amount of proof that these false prophets have failed wherever they came into power have halted the mad march of the lemmings to their altar of self-destruction.

These same academics, politicians and purveyors of falsehood have poisoned an entire generation of young people with the toxic education of decades of sheker. It is interesting to note that even sincere followers of President Obama were puzzled when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize seemingly moments after he was elected, when he had done absolutely nothing for world peace. Here, too, the ostensibly “respected international jurist” Navi was also an ad hoc judge on the so-called “International Court of Justice” that convicted Prime Minister Netanyahu of war crimes. This, in turn, led to the other anti-Semite, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, to issue his ill-fated threat to arrest the prime minister if he sets foot in New York. This, too, was sheker, but surely contributed to the horrific atmosphere of anti-Semitism in the city housing the largest number of Jews outside Eretz Yisroel.

To continue with our study of neviei hasheker in our time, we may point to the Binah L’itim (Drush 23), who says that the posuk of “Hashem is not a man that He should be deceitful, not a son of man that He should relent” (Bamidbar 23:19) is a harbinger of the many charlatans in our and world history. He explains that some of them, such as Paroh and Chirom, made believe that they were divine, while others just spewed illusions and treachery. Today, the now rapidly crumbling academic world is the source of the new prophesies and pseudo religions that began with belief in evolution, ushering in societies unanchored in any religion at all. It is ironic and horribly dangerous that the once-seemingly great citadels of academia have been bought up by an odd cabal of atheists and radical Moslems, resulting in something akin to the fall of Rome millennia ago. Interestingly, the true novi Yechezkel long ago railed against these imposters when he thundered, “Woe unto the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and things they have not seen” (13:3).

So, what is the antidote to this plague of false prophesy? The Gerrer Rebbe, the Pnei Menachem, quoted his father, the Imrei Emes, with an amazing answer. The great pre-war Gerrer Rebbe contrasted two pesukim. In Parshas Eikev, the Torah states, “Hashem, your G-d, you shall fear, Him you shall serve, to Him shall you cleave and in His name you shall swear” (Devorim 10:20). Here all these mandates are stated in the singular. However, later, in Parshas Re’eh (13:5), this same mitzvah is presented in the plural. Why this apparent discrepancy? The rebbe answers that “in essence, each and every individual can come to the proper conclusions about Hashem himself. However, Parshas Re’eh comes after the warning about the novi sheker. In generations when there has been the infection of the false prophets, only the power of the tzibbur, the public, can overcome the brainwashing and lies of the false prophets” (Sefer Nafshi Taarog 2:258). The Imrei Emes spoke these powerful words after making a siyum on Yerushalmi Kiddushin and endorsing the work of Agudas Yisroel.

In short, we must strengthen our own Yeshivos, Kollelim, Bais Yaakovs and Botei Medrash with shiurim and teachings which are an antidote to the modern fabrications which are thrown at us. Let us imagine that these exhortations were spoken before the Internet, AI and all the other forces of evil our children must now deal with on a daily basis. This is a call from the past that very much resonates with our time for learning more, plumbing ever deeper into the penimiyus of our Torah to counteract the mendacity of our time.

On the Litvishe side, Rav Elchonon Wasserman, too, thundered about the fact that “while we no longer have true nevi’im of our own, there is no lack of neviei hasheker in the world” (Kovetz Maamorim, old edition, page 125). He went on to quote that when the true nevi’im were commanded to “inform Yerushalayim of her abominations” (Yechezkel 16:2), the neviei hasheker responded by calling us names and vilifying us (see Melochim I 18:17 and Ohr Elchonon 2:133).

A fascinating lesson about these dangers was taught to us by Rav Yechezkel Levenstein (Ohr Yechezkel, Letters, page 134). He notes that even in ancient times, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the true nevi’im and the false ones because one could discover some truth in the midst of the sheker and even some seeming inconsistencies in the authentic leadership. This applies so incredibly in our time to those who have become enamored of AI. They ask it shailos, consult with it on crucial life decisions and sometimes take solace from it in times of distress. Yet, at the same time, AI has misled, caused tragedies in families, and driven people apart when they could have received positive human help. On at least one level, these, too, are the neviei hasheker of our time. We must not think for a moment that because they were found to be correct once or twice that they carry the truth. They are not only machines and are not human, but are actually subhuman in their inability to feel and perceive the world of the heart, soul and holiness within us.

May Hashem send us the wisdom and the courage to make the proper havdolah in our lives and to seek guidance only from our precious gedolim, who have never failed or lied to us. Just remember from Miss Navi how far a novi sheker can lead us, and we will, hopefully never go astray.

When one of my children was about ten years old, he became a juggler. Well, sort of.  He practiced, and dropped, and practiced, and dropped, until three balls became four and he really was getting good at it. He was good, and he knew it, and I like to think that I had the sense to say so.

Then, out of nowhere, he decided that he was going to be a magician. There was no Chinuch Roundtable at the time, so I don’t know how to explain the hows and whys, nor the reasons he switched and what we were to do about it.

Newly inspired, one Chanukah, he arranged a show for the (immediate, nuclear) family. Chairs were set up. A tablecloth was draped over a table. There was a sort of program, and even a younger sister as a helper. Then the tricks began. Well,  sort of. They poshut did not come off. The coins refused to vanish. The cards were regrettably the ones we saw him try to hide, and somehow, the cut rope did not come together. Sadly, the handkerchief that was supposed to become something else stayed a handkerchief with great dignity. Everyone clapped much too hard, the way that families do.

Maybe for lack of parenting skills, I said the wrong thing afterwards. It was the first thing that came to mind: “Maybe you should stick to juggling.”

I was rightfully chided by my wife, but the sentence and its theme have followed me around ever since. It has become a kind of mantra in our house, and I think of it far more often than I would like to admit, usually when I hear someone step out of their “zone” and into a place where they perhaps don’t fit, used when one suddenly switches from the thing they are good at into the thing they aren’t.

I thought of it this week when I read who had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

For those who wisely don’t follow this pageantry of hypocrisy, let me remind you what this prize is and why it was established. It is awarded each year in Oslo, Norway by a committee of five, and it is considered, by the measure of the world at large, the highest honor a human being can receive for the cause of peace. The laureates’ list reads like a roll call of the conscience of the century. The ceremony is held with a medal, a diploma, and a sum of money that would make an executive director dream of a bonus for hundreds of rabbeim or maybe even a new building. Frankly, it’s not klein gelt. But more so, when the committee speaks, the world holds its breath. Whoever walks away with it, for that year at least, becomes the spokesperson for the cause of world peace, the world’s official peacemaker, the gentile’s view and version of Aharon Hakahein, lehavdil alfei elef havdalos.

This year’s recipient is Navanethem Pillay, a South African jurist who, until last year, chaired the UN commission that accused Israel of genocide. Israel’s foreign ministry responded with a line I won’t repeat here, other than to say that it invoked a man who is not usually invoked as an applauding critic and the foremost spokesman for anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish propaganda. His name is always followed by a “yemach shemo.” I’m not saying that I always take much faith in official Israeli spokespeople, but, sadly, they do know the slippery slope that merges the genocide story into the global Jewish plot to take over the world, et al.

I’m not a political columnist, and I would be the first to tell you that I make a poor one. I’m just a man who reads a few columns here and there and decides to comment in another column. But it got me thinking about the prize itself, why it was founded, and where it is heading. So I’ll leave the argument over her record to those who have the credentials for it. I want to talk about the prize itself, because the story behind it is stranger than the story in front of it.

The prize is named for Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and the inventor of dynamite. That is not a small detail. The man who gave the world the most lethal tool of his age is the man whose name now stands for peace. The two are not unrelated, as it turns out.

The story, as it is usually told, goes like this. In 1888, Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, died while vacationing in Cannes, and a French newspaper, confusing the brothers, printed an obituary for the wrong Nobel. The headline, as the story goes, went, “The Merchant of Death is Gone,” and the article added that he had grown rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. Well, Alfred Nobel sat down at his breakfast table and read his own eulogy.

The obituary, mind you, was a mistake. Alfred was alive. But he was shaken, and he wanted to be remembered otherwise, and so he set aside his fortune to reward those who advanced peace. The prize was made to correct a headline.

So here it is. Mr. Nobel was horrified to be remembered for the wrong thing. He tried to fix his legacy so that it would never be misread. That’s why I laugh, albeit sardonically. He wanted to be remembered for promoting peace, and his award has legitimized a person whose life mission is to create a narrative that will only promulgate hate, lies, and violence toward Yidden. Instead of being shaken by his own obituary, they are handing the prize to one who would have liked to see an obituary on the Chosen People.

Which brings me, not unnaturally, to the Dor HaMabul and, of course, Sedom.

For an entire world to be so corrupt as to have only one man and his family find favor in the eyes of Hashem seems preposterous. But that is how it went. The corollary, of course, was Sedom, but perhaps with an Avrohom in the world, that depravity could not have spread worldwide and was limited to a few cities. But Sedom did not just behave badly. They legislated it. Kindness was a crime, and those who enacted it could be punished for it. They did not see themselves as villains. They saw themselves as a functioning civilization with laws and judges, and Lot, remember, sat at the gate among them as a judge. They probably gave out Nobel prizes as well. The depravity was not an aberration. It was the talk of the town.

That is what frightens me about our own time. Not that the world has lost its mind, but that the mind has lost its world. When a lie is repeated often enough, it is first tolerated, then adopted, and finally honored. It is awarded a medal. And the person who stands up and says, “Wait, this isn’t normal,” is the one who looks abnormal.

Which brings me to a story I’ve told before but never needed as much as I do now.

In the early 1940s, a man was committed to an asylum. After months of treatment, the doctors pronounced him cured and told him that he could go home. He refused. “I will not leave,” he said, “unless you sign a paper stating that I am sane.” Having already declared him well, they saw no reason not to.

Not long after, he went for a job interview and answered every question brilliantly. Then he leaned forward and said, “You’ve asked me about myself. May I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“Sir, are you normal?”

The interviewer was taken aback. “I certainly think so. Why do you ask?”

The applicant reached into his jacket and produced his paper. “You see, sir, you only think you’re normal. I have a certificate.”

I used to laugh at that story. But it speaks to me quite clearly now. We need and have the document. Eidus Hashem ne’emanah machkimas pesi — the testimony of Hashem is faithful; it makes the simple wise. The word eidus means a testimony, a certificate, a document that testifies on your behalf. The Torah is the document that says what is normal, and it does not change when the world’s opinion does. When Noach built the teivah, the world derided, but he had the document. When all the world stood on one side, Avrohom was called ha’Ivri, the one on the other side, and he was not apologizing for it. They thought they were normal. We had documents.

It is no longer enough to feel normal. Everybody feels normal. The people of Sedom felt normal. The Oslo committee, I’m sure, feels very normal this week. Feeling normal was never the test. The test is whether you have something outside yourself, something that doesn’t flinch when the room applauds, to check your feelings against. I would like to be the man who carries that certificate in his jacket and doesn’t need to take it out. But I know myself, and I suspect that most of us need to take it out more often than we think.

So enough with Mr. Nobel and his “Peace Prize.” Maybe he should have stuck to dynamite.

Indeed, the Merchant of Lies lives on.

Just saying.

Imagine believing that speaking up at a school board meeting could get you branded as a “domestic terrorist” by the federal government. Imagine it could make you a target for arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment.

For parents who dared to challenge the Biden administration’s education agenda, this was more than a hypothetical scenario. It was a living nightmare.

A bombshell report by President Trump’s task force on the “Weaponization of Government Against Parents” in the Biden era exposes how federal authorities demonized parents who protested the teaching of radical “woke” ideology in the classroom.

In addition, the newly released report describes how the Biden White House pressured the DOJ and FBI into going after parents who opposed the forced masking of children. They also took aim at parents who fought against one of the Left’s greatest insanities –“woke” school administrations allowing boys disguised as girls to use girls’ restrooms.

The implications are staggering: a government entrusted with protecting its citizens was turning its power against mothers and fathers, whose only “offense” was demanding a voice in their children’s education and the protection of their children from harm.

Such tactics belong in the playbook of fascist and communist regimes that criminalize all who dare to challenge the ruling ideology as “enemies of the state,” and who weaponize government power to silence dissent.

As the report makes clear, this form of tyranny began to take hold under the Biden administration and was halted only when President Trump took office and rescinded the policies that enabled it.

How the Scandal Began

As with a string of recent revelations about government abuses during the Biden era, the disturbing details of the administration’s efforts to crush dissent are not new, although media outlets are treating them as if they have just been uncovered.

As reported in Yated’s pages almost five years ago, these facts were already emerging when Senate hearings grilled Attorney General Merrick Garland over his 2021 memo calling for the DOJ to mobilize against protesting parents.

Yet the administration’s media allies minimized or ignored these explosive hearings, keeping the story largely untold.  As a result, the public never realized how the federal government brought its overwhelming power to bear against parents seeking a voice in their children’s education.

The scandal began with heated confrontations at school board meetings across the country, as parents rose in protest against the hijacking of their children’s school curricula and the imposition of forced masking.

Their outspokenness alarmed the left-leaning National School Boards Association (NSBA), a powerful advocacy group closely aligned with teachers’ unions, which responded aggressively to the mounting criticism of school board policy in liberal states.

As Yated readers may recall, this paper reported on the NSBA’s heavy-handed response back in 2021, amid allegations that the association secretly teamed up with the Biden White House to crack down on dissenting parents.

In late September of that year, the article recounted, the NSBA sent a letter to President Biden urging federal intervention against families and community members who had noisily participated in school board meetings.

Instead of recognizing those events as the legitimate exercise of parental rights, the NSBA framed them as potential security threats warranting federal scrutiny. The letter referenced “a growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation,” without offering details about any of the alleged incidents.

“As these acts of malice against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the NSBA’s overblown rhetoric continued.

The letter asked the president to enlist the Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security and Secret Service in investigating these “domestic terrorists” – an idea which the record shows clearly resonated with White House officials.

The NSBA suggested that activist parents could be found guilty of violating federal laws such as the PATRIOT Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and urged the government to subject violators to “arrest, prosecution and incarceration.”

Within days of the NSBA’s vicious letter going public, Attorney General Merrick Garland—largely remembered for his inept handling of the U.S. border crisis—sprang into action, swiftly translating its recommendations into federal policy, the Task Force report attests.

Acting as though he were carrying out the Biden administration’s orders, Garland issued a directive instructing the FBI to organize a task force and convene meetings with federal, state, and local law enforcement.

Their high-level mission? To devise a coordinated response to “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school board officials.

NSBA Buckles

The incident sparked a nationwide uproar. Several educational groups, state school boards, and even some NSBA executive board members slammed the organization for involving federal law enforcement “in matters belonging to local state jurisdiction.”

Critics noted the disorder at school board meetings mostly involved people shouting and talking out of turn, perhaps an occasional scuffle—nothing local law enforcement could not handle.

In a blow to NSBA’s arrogant leadership, 19 member states cut ties with the organization over its inflammatory letter equating parents who sought more input in their children’s education with “domestic terrorists.”  Large school districts pay more than $8,000 annually; their membership cancellations resulted in a significant financial setback to NSBA.

Some federal prosecutors found the DOJ’s initiative clearly out of bounds. In a letter to Garland, AG Eric Schmitt of Missouri blasted his directive as “outrageous” and “unconstitutional.”

“Joe Biden is weaponizing his DOJ and using the FBI to pursue parents advocating for their kids at school board meetings,” Schmitt told The Heartlander, a Missouri paper. “It’s meant to quell dissent and intimidate. It’s dangerous and they have no jurisdiction. Not in Missouri. Not in any state.”

Schmitt pointed out that the federal government lacks jurisdiction over local school issues and noted the potentially dangerous precedent this could set in restricting citizens’ freedom of speech.

The powerful backlash, combined with the loss of revenue from states that canceled or threatened to cancel their NSBA membership, forced the organization’s leadership to buckle.

Just two weeks later, a contrite-sounding NSBA wrote apologies to both the White House and member states. “On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter,” the leadership said, noting that “there was no justification for some of the language included in it.”

“[W]e deeply value not only the work of local school boards that make important contributions within our communities,” the board of directors said, “but also the voices of parents, who should and must continue to be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety.”

Collusion at the Highest Echelons?

But the genie was out of the bottle. Although CEO Chip Slavin, who had spearheaded the notorious letter, was shown the door, the damage had already been done.

Once the now-infamous “Garland memo” was issued, the FBI opened 25 “assessments” of parents, six of them launched by its Counterterrorism Division.

Consider the distorted priorities that lay behind these developments: FBI elite counterterrorism personnel—whose mission should be to track genuine national security threats, including terrorist networks and violent criminal organizations—were being deployed against parents who had done nothing more than vocally challenge the policies of their children’s schools.

Tellingly, of those 25 investigations, where federal authorities scraped the bottom of the barrel to find “a hook” to justify targeting school parents, not even one led to a prosecution. According to a 2023 House Judiciary Committee report, the FBI failed to bring charges against a single individual they had investigated on the basis of the Garland memo.

The DOJ operation was ultimately exposed as an intimidation campaign that public outrage had effectively collapsed.

During a dramatic 2021 Senate Hearing with AG Garland, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, voiced this very charge. He also alleged NSBA-White House collusion in co-opting the DOJ into using the NSBA letter as a basis for its own law enforcement memo.

Sen. Sasse to Garland: I’m pretty sure you believe that local law enforcement is more than able to handle some clowns at school board meetings, okay? But you made it a federal issue, and I don’t have any idea why. And at no point today have you offered us a shred of data.

Garland: I will be happy to get a report back to you, but this is not about American parents being targeted.

Sen. Sasse: No, it’s about the politicization of DOJ, and you decided to play along even though you know better.

Garland: Actually, we received a letter from the National School Boards Association—

Sen. Sasse: No, that is not what happened. You did not receive some anonymous letter.  White House political staff co-wrote that letter with this [NSBA] organization. You then wrote a memo, coordinating with political staffers at the White House. You exaggerated a threat so that you could be certain parents would feel intimidated, isn’t that correct?

During the hearing, senators repeatedly asked Garland whether, in view of the NSBA’s retraction of its letter, he regretted his law enforcement initiative against dissenting parents and would finally call a halt to the investigations.

“Will you rescind your letter?” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, pressed Garland during the stormy hearing. Garland sidestepped the question, saying the memo only applied to people who made violent threats.

Sen. Lee responded that he and his staff went through every news source mentioned in the NSBA letter and found no credible evidence of violent threats.

“Not every outburst or expression of concern by neighbors among neighbors, at a local school board meeting, warrants a federal investigation,” Lee said pointedly. “It certainly doesn’t warrant the involvement of 94 U.S. attorneys in a way that threatens and intimidates people for no good cause.

 ‘Thank G-d You’re Not on the Supreme Court’

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., went a step further, accusing Garland of abusing his power by “inciting” the FBI against law-abiding parents.

“Your memo, your performance is shameful,” Cotton said. “Thank G-d you’re not on the Supreme Court. [Obama had nominated Garland to the Supreme Court in March 2016.] You should resign in disgrace, judge.”

Garland continued to argue that his memorandum was not aimed at curtailing parents’ right to object at school board meetings. that as long as there are no threats of violence, “parents are completely protected.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., then exposed the truth—that “nonviolent parents,” far from being protected, were in fact being targeted for criminal prosecution. He cited a separate memo to this effect from the U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana, issued after Garland’s directive.

A passage from the Montana memo, which Hawley read aloud on the Senate floor, listed a range of nonviolent offenses for which parents could potentially face federal prosecution.

The “criminal” conduct included sending too many angry emails or making an excessive number of phone calls to school board officials. The memo explicitly encouraged prosecutors to enlist the FBI in their investigations of this conduct.

“You’ve testified today you’re focused only on violence. That’s not what your U.S. attorneys are saying,” Hawley pointed out. “They’re treating angry emails and phone calls as federal crimes.”

Garland insisted he hadn’t seen the memo in question before the Senate hearing “because no one sent it to me.”

“What do you mean no one has sent you the memo? You run the United States Department of Justice, do you not?”

“I’ll leave it at this, General Garland,” Hawley concluded. “Your attorneys are now cataloguing all the ways they might prosecute parents merely because they want to be involved in their children’s education. You have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. This is wrong. It is unprecedented to my knowledge of the history of this country.”

Hawley called for Garland’s resignation, singling out his abuse of his position for political ends.

“Merrick Garland mobilized the FBI to intimidate parents without legal basis and, we now know, premised on misinformation he didn’t bother to verify,” Hawley posted online. “It was a dangerous abuse of authority that has badly compromised the Justice Department’s integrity.”

Dissent and Ridicule in DOJ Ranks

The DOJ report on the weaponization of government against school parents reveals a fact the Garland team carefully kept from the public: Garland’s memo provoked a sharp backlash—even ridicule—from within his own department. Career attorneys condemned it as politically motivated and a glaring example of government overreach.

As the report shows, more than a dozen DOJ and FBI personnel objected in writing–albeit quietly. Kevin Driscoll, a Biden-era deputy assistant AG, wrote to a colleague, “I don’t think it’s possible to state how strongly I object to this … (we) might as well rename the thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.”

Civil Rights Division lawyer Paige Fitzgerald noted that “almost all of the language being used [by parents at school board meetings] is protected by the First Amendment.”

Another DOJ attorney whose emails were cited in the report concluded that “the vast, vast majority of the behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law. So, it seems we are ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently non-federal conduct.”

The chief of the Public Integrity Section, Corey Amundson, slammed the Garland memo as “stupid.” Another called the Garland initiative “out of her lane,”    “a local issue,” and “ridiculous.”

While they did voice complaints–mostly to one another, according to the documentary record, these careerists ultimately yielded to Merrick Garland’s directive. The AG then sent the memo to the FBI, U.S. attorneys, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and police agencies nationwide.

Inside the FBI, officials greeted the AG’S directive with skepticism, the DOJ Task Force noted. On October 5, the day after it became public, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jay Greenberg wrote: “DHS is writing what I think will be a politically charged paper on threats to school boards.”

He said the FBI should not contribute or be named as a participant, because the Homeland Security paper would quickly become “a political controversy.”

A senior counterterrorism official agreed, adding that his “initial preference” was for the FBI not to coordinate, comment, or be identified in the DHS paper.

The Parents They Interrogated

Despite reservations among senior officials, the FBI opened investigations as Garland had urged. The examples below from the Task Force’s report show how low officials set the bar for finding parents in alleged violation of the law.

In one example, the FBI interrogated a father who opposed masking at his child’s school. An informant had reported the parent as an “insurrectionist” who “rails against the government.” The informant later admitted the individual had committed no crimes.

In another example, the FBI investigated a mother who allegedly warned her school board it would be fired and replaced over the forced masking of young children. “We’re coming for you,” she had allegedly said.

She was reported for that “threat” and for belonging to a “right-wing moms’ group” called Moms for Liberty, and for (legally) owning a gun.

In another state, a Democratic official reported several Republican elected officials for “inciting violence.” Their offense? Opposing vaccine mandates.

In spite of the harassment from law enforcement, none of these parents or any others admitted to crimes and none were charged. The “Garland memo” ultimately became an embarrassment to the Justice Department.

***

‘Parents Were the Enemy’

Last Monday, the Justice and Education Departments sent a joint letter to state attorneys general pledging to protect parental rights, Fox News reported.

“Under the Biden Administration, parents were the enemy,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. “They were labeled as terrorists, targeted, and investigated by a government weaponized against them.”

Acting AG Todd Blanche announced the DOJ is now notifying people whom the Biden team targeted. Anyone cited in the records can come and review their files. DOJ will review every file for constitutional violations by law enforcement and will issue “a formal apology” wherever it finds one.

Blanche added that the point of releasing the records is “to put the facts on the public record, so federal law enforcement is never used this way again.”

As the midterm elections approach, Americans would do well to heed the warning behind the DOJ’s disturbing revelations. They must recognize how perilously close the country came to accepting government tyranny as the new normal. And how easily their freedoms could once again be threatened under a socialist-style regime.

Back To The Real World

It is not easy to make the transition from the Yomim Tovim to year-round life, but that is where we find ourselves right now. And that means a return to the usual news stories, rather than the uplifting experiences of Yom Tov and Chol Hamoed.

This past Shabbos, however, we were all able to enjoy the atmosphere of Parshas Bereishis. Of course, many shuls hosted the kiddush of chosson Bereishis; in fact, yours truly was honored with the aliyah of chosson Bereishis this year after someone purchased it for me, and I was therefore one of the chassanim at our kiddush. Not only that, but this Shabbos segued directly into Rosh Chodesh, making it even more of an exceptional day. At the same time, winter was already in the air. Today (Sunday) and tomorrow, we will watch as bochurim around the country stream back to their yeshivos. An opening shiur will be delivered in every yeshiva, and the zman will begin. At the same time, yungeleit will return to their kollelim. Standing outside the Mir yeshiva on the first morning of zman, one can watch dozens of buses discharge thousands of yungeleit, turning the streets into a sea of black as they make their way to their respective botei medrash. It is a sight that defies description. Even a thousand of the cruelest, most wicked attorneys general could never extinguish the love for Torah that blazes in the hearts of lomdei Torah—and, in fact, of all religious Jews.

The Media Joins the Battle Against Netanyahu

The election is on the way; in less than two weeks, the day will arrive when voters around Israel go to the polls to cast their ballots. Meanwhile, we are witnessing again how the media in Israel tends to be biased and politicized. And while we have always known this, one cannot help but be amazed time and again by the depth of their hypocrisy. There isn’t a single red line that they will refuse to cross. The anti-Bibi media has thrown itself into the battle to cause the prime minister to be reviled by the public. They hope that there are still a few mandates hanging in the balance, and they will succeed in convincing those voters to vote for the left-wing bloc, which has renamed itself the bloc of change or hope. And to change those voters’ minds, the media is willing to do anything, even if it means mounting a massive campaign to tarnish Netanyahu’s name with even the wildest accusations.

Last week, I reported that the media was claiming that Netanyahu had been warned about the October 7 massacre in advance and that he chose to ignore the warnings. This week, they added two more claims: that Netanyahu continued to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza even after October 7, and that his former military secretary, General Avi Gil, was interviewed by two media outlets (a television station and a newspaper) and claimed that he had personally warned Netanyahu several hours before the massacre began in the south. Now, it is certainly relevant to note that this military secretary was appointed by Naftoli Bennett when he was prime minister. Netanyahu inherited Gil and did not want him, but the chief of staff at the time, Herzi Halevi, refused to replace him.

This should give you an idea of what Netanyahu is facing.

Avi Gil made a very serious and specific accusation: He claimed that Netanyahu received information about the worsening situation and did nothing about it. The problem is that Gil himself was the conduit for most of that information to reach Netanyahu, which means that, by his own admission, he himself did nothing as well. Avi Gil has therefore quickly gone from being the accuser to being the accused, much like former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar. After all, whenever someone claims that he transmitted information to the prime minister and the latter did nothing about it, the obvious question is whether the accuser himself took action. And if he did not, then it makes him no less culpable than Netanyahu, and perhaps even more so.

In any event, Gil’s claims must be taken with more than a grain of salt. Avi Gil left the army two years ago; one year later, he was a business partner of Yoaz Hendel, who is running in the election. (The party led by Hendel and Zelicha is hovering in the vicinity of the electoral threshold.) Therefore, there is ample reason to suspect that Gil has his own political agenda. Besides, one must question why he kept his silence for three years. Gil’s answer to that question is that he refrained from speaking out publicly for three years because he planned to deliver the information to an investigative commission, but none was established. When he realized that there would be no committee, he reconsidered his decision.  He claims that he was influenced most of all by the requests he received from bereaved families, former hostages, and friends and other civilians whom he met on the street and who urged him to speak out. He said another factor that led to his decision was the attempted hijacking on the flight from Dubai, which he said made the importance of properly investigating such incidents even more tangible and immediate.

Forgive me for saying this, but I do not believe him. Personally, I think that he appeared on the scene three weeks before the election for the sole purpose of harming Netanyahu. But for the time being, he seems to have managed to harm only himself. The Likud attacked Gil harshly, proving that he had received intelligence on the night of October 7 about unusual events in the Gaza Strip and that he did not wake the prime minister. Even a focused warning that he received 14 minutes before the attack began did not prompt him to notify Netanyahu. It was only at 6:44, about 15 minutes after the Hamas invasion began, that Gil relayed the information he possessed to the prime minister.

In short, it seems that there is much more to investigate about this topic, but at this time, nothing has emerged that incriminates Netanyahu.

Yeshiva Bochur Arrested in His Home in Beer Sheva

There is much to write about the machinations of the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, who has resumed pressuring both the military police and their civilian counterparts to step up the arrests of yeshiva bochurim. We had a brief reprieve over the Yomim Tovim, but now the pressure has returned. The army and the police, neither of whom are especially eager to carry out the arrests, took advantage of the Yom Tov period to relax those efforts, but even before families across the country had a chance to dismantle their sukkos, this wicked woman—and I have no other word to describe Baharav-Miara—hurried to order the army to increase the pace of arrests. There were indeed a few arrests in recent days, which was infuriating. And what is no less infuriating is that the attorney general seems to be blatantly working to help the opposition win the election.

There are two core issues in the upcoming election: security and the economy. Prime Minister Netanyahu has outperformed his rivals by a wide margin on both counts. What can they offer to appeal to voters instead of him? Absolutely nothing! For that reason, all of Netanyahu’s political rivals—from Bennett to Lieberman, including Eizenkot and even the right-wing Ofer Winter—would rather refocus the election on a totally different topic—drafting chareidim. They hope to exploit the issue to stir up public animosity toward Netanyahu, who doesn’t appear to have taken any steps to see to it that “draft dodgers” enlist in the army. Nevertheless, the public isn’t particularly interested in this issue. According to polls published this week, forcing chareidim into the army is not an issue of concern for the average Israeli citizen. This left the anti-Netanyahu camp with a dilemma: How do they fan the flames of controversy and stir up passions over an issue that doesn’t really interest anyone? For that purpose, they have the attorney general, who can thrust the topic into the spotlight. The equation is simple: Arrests lead to protests, and protests stoke hatred for chareidim. And when the people hate chareidim, they may turn their wrath against Netanyahu and thus add another two or three mandates to the opposition, which might completely shift the balance of power when the new government is formed.

One of the incidents that sparked widespread anger was the arrest of Eliyohu Davda, a talmid in Yeshivas Orchos Meir in Yerushalayim. His rosh yeshiva, Rav Meir Vaknin, described him as a young man who is completely immersed in Torah learning. “This bochur has nothing in his life other than the four amos of halacha,” the rosh yeshiva asserted. “He is constantly immersed in Torah learning, davening, and serving Hashem.” Eliyohu was arrested at his home in Beer Sheva during bein hazemanim, when the military police took him from his bed. The issue became a highly politicized topic; some rumors were spread that the rosh yeshiva had asked for a meeting with Rav Yitzchok Yosef and was turned down, but these reports were false. In a radio interview, Rav Vaknin revealed that his family has received many offers of support: “All the organizations and rabbonim have been calling and trying to help.” Among others, he mentioned that Aryeh Deri and MK Moshe Abutbul have been active on behalf of the bochur. Davda and one other bochur who was arrested were tried in whirlwind proceedings and sentenced to twenty days in prison. How sad!

Former Attorney General on the Witness Stand

Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be enjoying special siyata d’shmaya. This week, Dr. Avichai Mandelblit, who served as attorney general when Netanyahu was first indicted many years ago, in November 2019, took the witness stand in his trial. Mandelblit had tried to avoid testifying in the trial, and the prosecution did not call him as a witness, but the defense team took the initiative of bringing him to court, and for good reason. They wanted to hear from Mandelblit if it is indeed true, as he has hinted several times, that the investigation was plagued by misconduct on the part of the prosecution and the police.

Mandelblit came under fire even before he took the witness stand. Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote, “Good morning, Avichai Mandelblit. Today you will be appearing as a witness on behalf of the defense in the trial of Prime Minister Netanyahu. You have a golden opportunity to respond to several questions to which the people of Israel would very much like to hear the answers: What was the explanation for the bizarre timing of the indictment of Prime Minister Netanyahu, which was filed while he stood on the White House lawn in the middle of the signing ceremony for the Deal of the Century? Why were you in such a rush to file an indictment against a sitting prime minister 34 days before an election, when the indictment wasn’t ready and additional work was still required? How did your comment about Shai Nitzan holding you by the throat affect your judgment when you filed the case? Were you actually extorted by him? Were the criminal extortion tactics used against the state witnesses carried out with your approval? When did you become aware of them? When did you find out that investigations were opened against the prime minister without the attorney general’s approval as required by law? Mr. Mandelblit, if you have even a drop of decency left, after the terrible injustice that has been committed against the prime minister, his family, the right-wing camp, and the entire State of Israel, you will tell us the entire truth.”

Indeed, these questions were posed to Mandelblit in the courtroom.

During the cross-examination of the former attorney general, there was a bit of a confrontation between Mandelblit and Netanyahu’s attorney, Amit Chadad. Chadad announced to Mandelblit, “I intend to question you only to uncover the truth, not for the audience. In my view, there are large parts of the truth that were hidden, and you have made statements that imply that there were things that were hidden from you as well. We will explore that together.” Later in the questioning, Chadad asked, “You did not approve an investigation into the prime minister in Case 3000, correct?”

“Correct,” Mandelblit said. “I have clarified that publicly and in conversation with the investigators as well…. When the evidence was presented to me, I made it clear that there was no evidence against the prime minister. I did not identify any grounds to suspect him of criminal activity in Case 3000.”

Mandelblit explained, “There was a lot of noise in the media, and I thought it was proper to explain that to the public.” He added that if evidence against Netanyahu had been discovered, it would have been possible to open a probe or investigation at a later time. “I did approve collecting testimony from him, but I never identified any grounds for suspicion of Mr. Netanyahu in the case,” he emphasized.

When Chadad asked him to confirm that he had never ordered an investigation in Case 3000, the leading prosecutor, Yehudit Tirosh, objected to the question.

“Did you ever tell someone that the police were acting behind your back in that case?” Chadad asked.

“That’s possible,” Mandelblit acknowledged.

A Witch Hunt

Mandelblit’s testimony on Sunday evoked pained reactions, as it became clear that the police had broken the law while investigating the prime minister. Some of their actions, he revealed, angered Mandelblit when he later learned about them. Many details of the indictment, especially concerning the favorable news coverage of Netanyahu that was labeled as bribery, were never examined by the attorney general at all. During his cross-examination, Mandelblit discussed his oversight of the investigators’ activities and revealed that they did not seek his approval for all of their actions, although he had asked to personally approve their principal activities. Mandelblit explained that alongside examining the allegations, he also wanted to protect the office of prime minister. “The other leg of investigating the suspicions is protecting the standing and dignity of the prime minister,” he said. “I wasn’t willing to allow the involvement of political or diplomatic considerations; I needed to show sensitivity. Even in this case, I didn’t intend to exercise responsibility for approving every action, but I did want the principal actions to be referred to me.”

When Chadad asked if it was true that some actions were taken without his approval, Mandelblit said, “In retrospect, some things were done that I did not approve of. Yes, there were such things.”

“Including very serious matters?” Chadad asked.

“Correct,” Mandelblit said.

That day, a few senior figures in the Likud party were present in the court to show solidarity with Netanyahu, including Knesset speaker Amir Ochana. “Just as I have attended Netanyahu’s trial here before, on many occasions throughout the proceedings, I came again today to witness the truth emerging,” Ochana said. “It is unfortunate that this trial isn’t being broadcast publicly. Had it been broadcast to the public, the people of Israel would have seen that I am correct in my argument that the indictments are absurd and baseless. The general prosecutor who filed these indictments is standing here and saying that there were illegal acts on the part of the investigators and the police that were conducted without his knowledge, and based on those actions, this indictment, which is perhaps the most dramatic indictment in the history of the State of Israel, was filed against a sitting prime minister. They tried to evade this. They tried to avoid having this testimony heard before the elections. But the people of Israel need to see that this is an absurd, baseless indictment that should never have existed, and that it would be best if it were withdrawn immediately.”

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar was present in the court as well and spoke out strongly against the “tainted” proceedings, asserting that Mandelblit’s testimony was evidence that a witch hunt had been conducted.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, for his part, asserted that he was confident that the truth would come to light.

Incidentally, Mandelblit made every possible effort to avoid appearing as a witness in the trial. He knew that he would face tough questions, such as whether he had approved the investigative measures that turned out to have been illegal, or what he meant when he said that the state prosecutor was “holding him by the throat.” But his efforts were in vain. He and his ilk, apparently, can flex their muscles when they sit in their comfortable offices in the Ministry of Justice, but they become cowards when they are out in the open. Avichai Mandelblit, the civilian, took the witness stand on Sunday; the only question now is whether he will testify there for only three days, as the prosecution insists, or for seven days, which the defense is demanding. Either way, it will certainly be interesting. Netanyahu only stands to benefit from every minute that Mandelblit spends on the stand.

Fears of a Loss of Right–Wing Votes

With less than two weeks remaining until the election, tensions are steadily mounting. United Torah Judaism (the party consisting of the merger of Degel HaTorah and Agudas Yisroel) is working hard to display a united front, despite the fact that there have been a number of splits within Agudas Yisroel. Their message to the public is simple and true: The chareidi community is in grave danger. Almost everyone who speaks on behalf of the opposition has been focusing their rhetoric on drafting bnei Torah, and Yair Golan has gone even further, calling for the draft of religious girls as well. The danger that awaits the chareidi community if the enemies of Judaism win this election cannot be overstated.

The Shas party, too, has focused on the threat to the Jewish identity and practice of the State of Israel, in election propaganda aimed at the traditional community as well as religious voters. We can only hope that these messages will penetrate the periphery of the country as well and that the chareidi parties will amass enough political power that they cannot be ignored. The working assumption is that even if the left-wing bloc wins the election, they will be willing to compromise on the draft issue if it allows them to come to power. It is presumed that the left-wing bloc will not be able to win 61 mandates on their own, and if they need a handful of mandates to form a coalition, they will prefer the chareidim over the Arabs as political allies. Therefore, if the chareidim have a substantial presence in the Knesset, they are more likely to be able to exact concessions from the left-wing bloc.

Meanwhile, UTJ and Shas have signed a surplus-vote agreement, with the goal of preventing the parties from losing votes. Whenever such an agreement is signed by two parties, it increases their chances of gaining an additional mandate, since the surplus votes earned by both parties can be combined to award an extra mandate to one of them. In this case, the surplus votes are those that remain after all the votes have been tallied and the mandates have been distributed. There are many calculations involved, which I may discuss in greater detail next week. The leaders of both parties, Yaakov Asher and Aryeh Deri, emphasized that the agreement indicates the continued collaboration between the two parties, “which takes place on the instructions of the zekeinim and chachamim of the generation.” They also emphasized that the two parties will continue to work together completely, in full collaboration and with a shared vision, on all the issues concerning the protection of the Torah world, the status of yeshiva students, and the needs of the chareidi educational systems.

There is much more to write about the election, but perhaps the most important point to note is the very real concern that right-wing votes might be squandered. For instance, if Avi Maoz decides to remain in the race until the end—and it seems that his rebbi, Rav Tzvi Tau, is guiding him in that direction—there is no question that one or two mandates will be lost. And then there is a bizarre party run by the talmidim of Rav Aberjil of Netivot. They will not even come close to the electoral threshold, but they are liable to cause a loss of 10,000 votes, and possibly even more than that—and no one can be certain that those votes will not cost us the crucial mandate that would have been the key to a right-wing government. There are also a few other parties that are bound to be short-lived but might cause damage to the right wing in the interim. Alas, this has been the case in every election, as politicians have allowed their egos to blind them to the greater good.

Netanyahu: Winter Is the Next Bennett

One of the people who is liable to cause significant harm is Ofer Winter, leader of the party known as Amcha Yisroel. Winter, who is alternately rising and falling in the polls, seems to present a double-edged threat. If he does not cross the electoral threshold, his failure is liable to cause a loss of almost four full mandates’ worth of votes for the political right, which would undoubtedly be a disaster. But Netanyahu fears that even if Winter makes it into the Knesset, he might join forces with Lieberman and the left-wing bloc. Of course, Winter has publicly scoffed at this notion, repeatedly emphasizing that he considers himself part of the right. But one does not need to have a long memory to recall that the same assertion was made by Naftoli Bennett, who went on to award power to Yair Lapid and Mansour Abbas. That is the reason that the Likud has chosen to wage a fierce campaign against Winter, attacking both him and his running mate, Arab activist Yuseph Haddad.

In his most recent interview with the media, Winter insisted that his party will remain in the race until the very end, irrespective of its performance in the polls. He also reiterated that he plans to recommend Netanyahu for the office of prime minister, although he stressed that his support is not unconditional. Winter ruled out sitting in a government with Yair Golan and did not reject the possibility of an alliance with the chareidim; however, he declared that he would demand a government that would not be dependent on Goldknopf as the 61st vote. “I have never abandoned my soldiers, and I will not abandon them now,” he said. “I will run until the end, regardless of the results of the polls.”

Winter’s rhetoric in recent times has been extremely anti-religious. In the same interview, trying to remain ambiguous, he said, “We are here to make demands and to make the decisions. Otherwise, let me tell you; Bibi can jump in a lake. I am saying this in all seriousness. I do not work for anyone else.” Regarding the possibility of a government with Eizenkot, Winter said, “That type of narrow government would be a problem for Israel.” But despite his protestations, the Likud and the chareidim fear that he might ultimately join with the left. When Netanyahu was asked about Winter’s interview, including his comments about the prime minister himself, he said, “Winter is the next Bennett.”

According to political commentators, the election is likely to result in a deadlock. This has sparked competition between the parties to recruit defectors from each other’s ranks. This week, it was reported that the Likud has been working behind the scenes to attract defectors from the opposition, especially Gadi Eizenkot’s Yashar party. In response, the opposition decided to launch their own initiative to attract politicians from the right. What this demonstrates is that both sides understand that in the current political reality, with the two blocs essentially running neck and neck, even one or two defectors would have the ability to determine the fate of the next coalition. As a result, the best strategy for each side is to search for the cracks in the opposing bloc.

Alongside the efforts to attract defectors, the opposition has been working on a plan to take over the position of Knesset speaker. The speaker of the Knesset controls the Knesset’s daily agenda, and when the two blocs vie to be appointed by the president to put together the next government, the speaker may wield critical influence.

Left-Wing Leaders Were Asked to Be Silent

Several of the candidates in the election were clearly told by their media advisors to take a very simple step—to be silent. Yair Golan, for instance, has managed to anger innumerable people with every word he utters; in his case, no matter how much he is begged to remain silent, it seems that he is simply incapable of it. Bennett, too, cannot seem to hold his tongue and has been causing himself damage. Yair Lapid, on the other hand, has managed to remain silent, and the reason is clear: Every one of his statements has backfired on him, since someone typically manages to locate a past statement in which he said the exact opposite. That, of course, is quite embarrassing. Yair Golan, too, has demonstrated his capacity for reversals; most recently he attacked the government for assassinating Nasrallah, even though he praised Netanyahu for the operation when it occurred.

Speaking of Lapid’s reversals, a journalist named Geulah Even-Saar wrote on Friday, “Not long ago, Lapid issued a letter demanding that the foreign minister (full disclosure: my husband, Gideon Saar) refrain from appointing diplomats to head diplomatic missions during the election period. The argument was that this was supposedly an attempt to establish facts on the ground during an election campaign.” The minister’s wife emphasized that she wasn’t referring to the quota of political appointments, which does exist, but rather to the professional appointments made by the Foreign Ministry. Not only is there no reason to delay those appointments until after the election, she pointed out, but any delay is also damaging to Israel’s foreign policy. Furthermore, she wrote, “Lapid himself, as both prime minister and foreign minister, did exactly what he is calling on the current government not to do. During the previous election period, less than a month before Election Day, Lapid personally brought five new appointments of heads of diplomatic missions before the government for approval. The government held a brief discussion and approved all of them.”

The article goes on to take another swipe at Lapid: “Lapid attacked Netanyahu, accusing him of using IDF soldiers and facilities as backdrops for his election videos. A bit of cursory research leads to a video of Lapid himself on an air force base during the previous election campaign, with a fighter jet in the background.”

Let us put aside, for a moment, the issue of Gideon Saar, who is universally recognized as a highly successful foreign minister whose track record puts him light years beyond Lapid. Instead, we’ll focus on the second point, which gives rise to a compelling question: What, exactly, takes place in Lapid’s psyche when he publicly criticizes a public figure for something that he has done as well? One must wonder if there is some sort of deficiency that requires evaluation. Did Lapid actually think that the public would forget the things he did in the past? Or does he believe that what is permissible for him is forbidden to others? I am really posing a simple question: What psychological mechanism within Yair Lapid causes him to trap himself repeatedly in foolish statements and meaningless rhetoric?

Arab–Israeli Pharmacist Caught Planning Mass Slaughter

There is much more to write about this week. For instance, there were the October 7 memorial events that became highly politicized, and the hostage survivors who were pilloried by the media after speaking in favor of Netanyahu. There is the Nobel Prize that was awarded to Navi Pillay, a woman who is an outspoken opponent of Israel, and there is the ominous sense that we are on the eve of another war, perhaps even before the election. But I will focus instead on a subject that I have warned about in the past: the Arab Israelis who reside in this country and have been recruited by terror organizations. Last week, I wrote about an Arab who had performed national service in the firefighting service and went on to plot a terror attack. There has also been much talk recently about Arab doctors who support terror and are in a position to harm helpless Israeli patients. This week, another story broke, about an Arab pharmacist who was plotting a terror attack.

This weekend, the state prosecution filed an indictment against Mohammed Shalbi, a 22-year-old pharmacy student from Beit Chanina in Yerushalayim, for preparing to carry out murder for terrorist purposes and receiving training for terrorism. According to the indictment, Shalbi planned to carry out terror attacks against Israeli civilians and security personnel using explosives and deadly toxins, with the aim of committing mass murder. Shalbi is a third-year student in pharmacy school who also worked as an assistant pharmacist and underwent a process of radicalization partly in the wake of the events of October 7 and the Iron Swords War. The prosecution claims that he systematically studied materials associated with Hamas and ISIS and that he decided to use the knowledge he had obtained through his studies, as well as his access to chemical substances, to carry out deadly terror attacks.

The indictment states that at the beginning of 2025, Shalbi planned to hide an explosive device near a place where law enforcement personnel typically stood outside the mosque in his neighborhood of Beit Chanina. He was allegedly motivated by anger over parking tickets issued to worshipers in the mosque. Shalbi spent about two months observing the Israeli police stationed in the area while studying how to prepare homemade bombs. Nevertheless, his plan did not come to fruition since the police stopped arriving in the area. The indictment goes on to claim that Shalbi later planned a broad-scale terror attack in which he asserted that he hoped to kill many Jews. For that purpose, he joined social media groups identified with terror organizations, including a group linked to ISIS, and received dozens of files containing instructions on the preparation of explosives, incendiary devices, and toxins. The indictment also claims that Shalbi copied instructions into a notebook for the preparation of toxins that could kill through touch, smell, or consumption, and took pictures of substances that could be used to create explosives. He also made two trips to Ramallah, where he acquired chemicals and equipment, splitting his purchases to avoid attracting suspicion. The materials were then stored in his bedroom.

This is a chilling reminder of the sort of terrorists who are being developed right here, in the heart of the State of Israel, and the nefarious plans being hatched by citizens of Israel who move freely through the country and receive all the rights and entitlements of any Israeli citizen.

Rav Avigdor Miller’s Prescience

Let us conclude with some hashkofah. The year 5786 has become known as a year of persecution of the Torah and those who learn it. It is deeply saddening to see how the representatives of the Jewish state repeatedly raised their hands against the Torah while ensconced in their ivory towers. It is chilling to think about the kitrug they are eliciting at a time when Heavenly judgment is in force and our enemies sharpen their swords. The year was also a time of polarization and division between the religious and secular, and between the right and the left.

Rav Avigdor Miller once made the following comments: “Our sages wanted us to know that an apikores isn’t necessarily someone who doesn’t have emunah. It can include a person who rebels against the Torah, someone who says, ‘What do these rabbonim do for me? Their learning benefits only themselves.’ This apikores concedes that it is good for a person to learn Torah, and he even recognizes that it is good for a person in this world and in the next, but he remains an apikores! An ordinary Jew, someone who isn’t an apikores, is expected to understand and believe that a Jew who learns Torah is not only benefiting himself in this world and for eternity but is also evoking tremendous blessings for the entire nation.”

This is a concept that an apikores finds difficult to accept, even if he wears a yarmulke, and even if he sits on the Supreme Court. There is a limit to his capacity for emunah. Rav Miller continued, “An ordinary Jew must understand and believe that when Jews in Bnei Brak, Yerushalayim, Brooklyn, or anywhere else sit all day and toil over the sugyos of Shas, they are performing the greatest favors for the nation. A kollel student in Lakewood is protecting the entire nation from its enemies…. That is why Reish Lokish disagreed with Rabi Yehuda Hanasi and said that talmidei chachomim do not require protection; on the contrary, they protect the city. They must continue learning; they should not be required to engage in fortifying the city. We need to build fortifications, but we must recognize that they are useless without the people who sit in the bais medrash and learn Torah…. We need walls, a police force, and an army, but those things will help us only when there are talmidei chachomim learning Torah. Protection, peace, and parnossah come to us in the merit of those who learn Torah. What use are defenses, weapons, and military might if we lack this basic recognition?”

These words, spoken over 25 years ago, are followed by a few lines that could easily have been written today: “This is what is happening in Eretz Yisroel today. How can the army help if Hashem sees that the nation does not value people who learn Torah? The apikorsim in Israel, including religious apikorsim, think that their little toy army is what protects them. I know that it is hard for them to hear these words, but I hope that they will not have to discover their mistake in a tragic way….”

Three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, President Trump has sought to place most of the blame for record-high diesel fuel prices and at least $4 a gallon at the pump for American consumers on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for retaliating against escalating Russian missile attacks on Ukraine by launching precision drone attacks targeting vulnerable oil refineries across Russia. Reducing Russia’s ability to export gasoline and diesel fuel has eliminated a major source of international income that Putin had been using to finance Russia’s war budget. The Ukrainian drone attacks have not only created serious problems for Russian civilians seeking gas for their cars, but also for many countries that have long relied upon exports of Russian diesel fuel to power the trucks, trains, agricultural equipment and cargo ships which are vital to their internal commerce and economies.

Ukraine’s elimination of Russian diesel oil exports in recent months is combined with Iran’s disruption of shipments of Persian Gulf crude oil and refined petroleum products through the Strait of Hormuz, and from the Red Sea due to the Houthi war against Saudi Arabia. Together, they have created an ongoing global energy shortage and stubbornly high energy prices with no end in sight.

This is especially problematic and politically dangerous for President Donald Trump and the Republican candidates who support him running in the upcoming November 3rd midterm elections. Bringing down the cost of energy and promoting America’s energy independence was one of Trump’s key campaign promises to voters in the 2024 presidential campaign. Many of the working-class voters who supported Trump now say they believe that by starting a war against Iran, regardless of his justification for it, he has broken that promise to them.

Gas prices at the pump were even higher during the Biden administration than they are now because of Biden’s undeclared war against the American fossil fuel industry. However, voters are painfully aware that the cost of gas at the pump was more than $1 a gallon cheaper one year ago, before Trump started the war against Iran, than it is today, straining the budgets of most of Trump’s voter base, made up primarily of traditional and working-class American households.

Trump Missed His Best Opportunity To Beat Iran Earlier This Year

Trump had an opportunity to finish off the radical Islamic regime running Iran by allowing the combined forces and the Israeli military to complete Iran’s destruction, forcing its remaining leaders to capitulate to Trump’s demands. But instead, he succumbed to Iranian’s negotiating tactics by agreeing to a ceasefire. Instead of peace, the ceasefire only gave the new, even more radical Islamic leaders of Iran enough time to recover from the shock of the initial attacks sufficiently to make the global economy a hostage to energy blackmail by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

The suspension of most energy shipments from the Persian Gulf combined with Ukraine’s successful retaliatory drone attacks on Russian oil refineries led to record-high prices for diesel fuel. It is now, on average, more than $6 a gallon in the U.S., almost double the cost from a year ago. The high price of diesel fuel has also become a major factor driving up the cost of nearly everything that American consumers buy that has to be delivered to local stores or homes by diesel truck, ranging from groceries to household goods.

American voters in recent polls have consistently named the continued increase in the cost of living as a major concern, with the increased prices of gas at the pump, as well as food at the supermarket and other essentials, as a constant reminder. It is also the main reason why Democrats candidates, based upon the most recent polls, are increasingly confident of winning back majority control over both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate during the midterm. If that happens, the Democrats have promised to cripple Trump’s ability to govern the country effectively during the last two years of his presidency.

When Trump launched the U.S. air war against Iran on February 28, in conjunction with Israel, he initially predicted that it would last for four to six weeks at most, before the overwhelming attacks would force the remnants of Iran’s decapitated Islamic regime to surrender to Trump’s demands that Iran give up its nuclear weapons program. When Trump launched the war, he believed the assurances that he had received from Pentagon officials that the U.S. arsenal was well-stocked with the precision weapons and air defense missiles it needed to crush Iran, and that the U.S. warships and warplanes deployed to the region would be easily able to foil Iranian attempts to harass Persian Gulf energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

But to his sorrow and growing frustration, Trump has now learned that these assurances were false. Before he started the conflict with Iran, the Persian Gulf oil states were the world’s top exporters of diesel fuel. That ended when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and the additional disruption of the global supply of diesel fuel due to the successful Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries has made that shortage worse. Even with U.S. and other worldwide refineries now running at near 100% of capacity, there is simply not enough global refining capacity now available to meet current demands for diesel fuel.

Why Ukraine Is Bombing Russian Refineries

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, Russian forces have attempted to undermine the morale and quality of life of Ukrainian civilians by repeatedly attacking Ukraine’s vulnerable national electrical grid, especially during the winter months, when electricity is vital to stave off the bitter cold. As another winter approaches, the annual Russian attack on Ukraine’s electrical grid has already reached a new record high level of intensity. But for the first time since the war started four years ago, Ukraine has been able to respond with its own systematic campaign against Russia’s energy infrastructure.

In response to Trump’s public complaints about the attacks on the Russian refineries, President Zelensky has defended them as a necessity. He argues that the drone strikes are a response in kind to the renewed Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. They also aim to increase the internal political pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring the war to a negotiated end that would not require unacceptable concessions to Putin’s demands for some Ukrainian territory that is not yet under Russian military control.

Zelensky sharply condemned the deal that Trump announced last Friday to temporarily waive U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel fuel, in the hope of lowering the record high cost of diesel fuel before the midterm elections. Zelensky called the resulting relaxation of the pressure on Russia’s energy-dependent economy a “birthday gift to Putin.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also slammed Trump’s deal to waive sanctions on exports of Russian diesel fuel for providing Putin with “more revenues to wage war” against Ukraine.

Trump Angrily Suggests Regime Change In Ukraine

Trump’s reaction to Ukraine’s protests against his deal with Putin to resume the export of Russian diesel fuel was to angrily tell reporters that, “Zelensky could have settled this war many times, and he chooses not to. [So] it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Trump repeated his familiar claim that if he had been president instead of Joe Biden in 2022, he would have been able to convince Putin not to invade Ukraine and “that war would have never started.”

He went on to complain that Zelensky “wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers … because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.”

Trump said that because Russian refineries provide a “large portion of the diesel fuel used throughout the world. . . we told him [Zelensky], ‘Do whatever you want, but don’t hit the diesel fuel because there’s a big problem, big shortage.’ And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel.”

Trump also said that because of the stubbornness of both Putin and Zelensky, their two countries have lost “over 2 million people” since the war started four years ago, with no end to the killing yet in sight.

Trump has previously argued that any serious peace negotiations with Putin must reflect the current reality on the battlefields of Ukraine, which is that Russia is in firm military control of about 20% of Ukraine’s territory. That includes all of the strategically important Crimean Peninsula, which Putin invaded and annexed to Russia in 2014, and most of the eastern industrial region known as the Donbas. It consists of the oblasts [provinces] of Donetsk and Luhansk, in which the majority of the population is Russian-speaking. Over the past two years, it is estimated that since the start of the war, more than a million troops have been killed and wounded, most of them suffered in the Russian army’s “human wave” attacks on the remaining Ukrainian strongholds in the Donbas region.

Why Ukraine Is No Longer Winning Its War Against Russia

In fierce, grinding battles, Ukraine’s superior home-grown drone technology had, until recently, enabled the outnumbered Ukrainian ground forces to hold their defensive positions on that front. But the recent introduction of a new generation of jet-powered Russian drones, which fly too fast and too high to be easily shot down by Ukraine’s existing air defenses, now threatens to change the balance of power and end the bloody stalemate on the Donbas front in Russia’s favor.

Zelensky responded to Trump’s unprecedented call for him to step aside as Ukraine’s president by issuing another direct challenge to the American president. In a televised interview with ABC News, Zelensky said that, “If President Trump really wants to have some changes during the election [season]… please tell Putin [to] give us two months, 60 days of a total ceasefire… and we will organize elections [in Ukraine].”

National elections in Ukraine have been suspended since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 because Ukrainian law explicitly prohibits holding a vote while the country is under wartime martial law. Zelensky also argued that organizing a national election while all of Ukraine is under active Russian bombardment by drones, cruise missiles, glide bombs, and ballistic missiles would be unsafe and logistically very difficult due to the millions of displaced citizens across the country who have fled their homes to escape the fighting.

Zelensky insisted that the decision to appoint a new national leader must be made exclusively by the people of Ukraine, not a foreign head of state like Trump. He also said that he would readily accept any new leadership choice made by a majority of Ukraine’s citizens, but only after the security of the electoral process has been guaranteed by a ceasefire so that the results of the election will be both democratic and fair.

He also said that if a new presidential election is held in Ukraine, with the required permission from Ukraine’s parliament, “Of course, we will be ready [to accept] any choice of our people.” However, the Ukrainian president also said in his interview with ABC News that, “It’s more difficult to stop Putin than to pressure other” world leaders because he is determined to restore the Soviet-era Russian empire over Eastern Europe, including current members of the NATO alliance which share a border with Russia, such as Poland and the three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Ukraine’s Friends In Europe Back Zelensky In His Feud With Trump

Therefore, it was not surprising that leaders of the European Union, the NATO alliance, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Finland and Norway, all of whom have good reason to fear Putin’s appetite for additional Russian territorial conquests, were quick to call Zelensky and give him expressions of their support for his continued fight against Russian aggression.

Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote in a post on X following a phone call with Zelensky, “I am absolutely certain that nothing and no one will break Ukraine and its president in their fight against Russian aggression.” Tusk also said that, “I assured him that he can count on the full solidarity of Poland and Europe with the Ukrainian people.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, also reiterated his public support for Zelensky, who “leads our nation in a time of war — a war for independence, freedom, and dignity. He has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the [sole] right to decide,” who their leader should be, adding that, “Statements from abroad only confirm that he is doing his job well [and] deserves support.”

To protest the relaxation of the U.S. sanctions on the sale of Russian diesel fuel, Ukrainian negotiators cut short their talks in Miami, Florida, with Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. According to a report by the British Financial Times newspaper, Kushner and Witkoff reminded their counterparts that Ukraine remains heavily dependent on a continued supply of American-made munitions and armaments [purchased by Ukraine’s European allies], as well as real-time American satellite intelligence which provides the Ukrainians with precise targeting information for their attacks on Russia’s oil refineries.

Behind Trump’s Controversial Diesel Deal With Putin

Trump was clearly scrambling to salvage Republican hopes for retaining their current razor-thin majority in the House, and their vulnerable 53-to-47 margin in the Senate in the midterm election by making a public effort to provide relief for farmers and truckers who usually vote Republican, but who have been angered by the current record-high prices for diesel. Trump’s Russian diesel deal with Putin was also meant to send a positive signal to millions of other working-class voter households which are now struggling with the $4-plus cost of a gallon of gas at the pump for their cars. However, industry and financial experts who follow the energy market warn that the extra Russian diesel oil will not bolster global supplies enough to materially lower its price by Election Day.

The deal with Putin also unleashed a strong geopolitical backlash among Ukraine’s supporters, including a bipartisan group of four Republican and three Democrat senators. They released a statement claiming that the deal was illegal because Congress had banned all imports of Russian energy when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Republicans Attacking Trump’s Suspension Of Sanctions On Russia

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said in a televised NBC News interview that “The president [Trump] needs to realize that tens of thousands of people have died over this [Russia’s] illegal invasion [of Ukraine], and I get it that he may be frustrated, but he needs to understand who the good guys are in this agreement and who the bad guys are, and it’s not even close.”

Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, said that after he returns from Congress’ current midterm election recess, he would try to force a vote in the House on bipartisan legislation to block the purchase of any Russian oil.

Mike Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president during his first term in office, but has since become one of his most outspoken Republican critics, said that “President Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian fuel amidst Putin’s ongoing and brutal attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine makes no sense and is a betrayal of the legacy and leadership of the late Senator Lindsey Graham,” who was a strong public advocate for the continuation of strong U.S. military support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of “doing a deal with the devil [Putin] to help his flailing political fortunes.

“This filthy deal will only aid and abet the same Putin who is helping the Iranians to target and try to kill American troops in the Middle East and who illegally and viciously invaded our ally Ukraine,” Schumer continued.

Some Doubt That Putin Will Keep His Diesel Fuel Promises To Trump

There is also some question about whether Russia currently has enough diesel fuel on hand in storage to fulfill Putin’s promise to release 2.25 million barrels of diesel fuel to the global market immediately, another 3.7 million barrels in November, and yet another 7.4 million barrels before the end of the year, provided that Russian refineries are able to resume full operation. But in response to these promises from Putin, Trump has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to issue a temporary license allowing Russia to export its diesel fuel and waiving the threat of sanctions on its foreign customers through April 2027.

Over the weekend, Trump also made the surprise announcement that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a ceasefire under which Ukraine supposedly agreed to suspend its attacks on Russian oil refineries in return for a suspension of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electrical grid and generators. “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social media account.

Trump Announced A Ukraine Ceasefire That Was News To Zelensky

After Trump posted his announcement of the ceasefire on social media, Zelensky’s initial reaction, in a brief interview with the Axios news service, was that word of the agreement “was news for me.” However, he then added that, “If President Trump negotiated it with Putin, [then he should] please tell us when the ceasefire begins. We are ready, and we will accept it.”

In a later statement, Zelensky qualified his position by saying that he is willing to accept the ceasefire, but only if Russia does too. “Ukraine supports the ceasefire, and it is important that Russia support it as well,” Zelensky commented on social media, and added that he is “awaiting details from the U.S. side” on the deal.

He added that, “For our part, Ukraine always FULLY supports steps toward de-escalation, the protection of lives, and the decisions needed to end the war and guarantee lasting peace.”

Is Trump’s Energy Ceasefire Deal With Putin Real?

However, Zelensky also made it clear that he was very doubtful, based upon bitter experience with previous attempts by Trump to broker a peace deal with Putin, that the Russian leader would actually suspend the attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Since Trump made the ceasefire announcement, the Kremlin has not officially confirmed any such agreement. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stated only that contacts with the U.S. on the issue were ongoing. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities and power plants in the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv continued without interruption following Trump’s ceasefire statement.

The History Of Zelensky’s Up And Down Relationship With Trump

Trump has had bitter public disputes with Zelensky before, largely because the Ukrainian president has rejected numerous attempts by Trump to get him to agree to a negotiated settlement of the war with Russia on terms that would require major strategic and territorial concessions by Ukraine to Putin’s demands.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would put an immediate end to both the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Trump was successful in getting both sides to agree to a temporary ceasefire in Gaza shortly after he took office, and he eventually helped to secure the return of all 251 Israeli hostages, both alive and dead, that Hamas kidnapped during its October 7, 2023 attack and then held prisoner in Gaza, some of them for more than two years.

However, while Trump had several friendly phone conversations and a face-to-face meeting with Putin in Alaska to discuss conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, Zelensky remained adamant in refusing Trump’s demands during their first, very contentious face-to-face meeting in the White House Oval Office on February 28, 2025, that he agree to negotiate Putin’s demands. The meeting was originally arranged to discuss continued U.S. military and economic support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. In return, Zelensky was expected to agree to finalize a framework agreement under which Ukraine would provide the U.S. with strategically vital rare-earth minerals for which China has been the major global supplier.

A Bitter Confrontation With Zelensky In Trump’s Oval Office

The discussion quickly devolved into an internationally televised shouting match as Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, criticized Zelensky’s handling of the war and his stubborn refusal to even consider Putin’s demands for major territorial concessions from Ukraine.

Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War III” by provoking Russia to increase its attacks, being unwilling to negotiate a peace agreement with Putin due to his personal animosity, and publicly disrespecting both the president and the vice president of the United States in the Oval Office.

Vice President Vance, with Trump’s tacit approval, then challenged Zelensky on whether Ukraine had shown sufficient gratitude for the generous amount of American aid to Ukraine since the war started and accused Zelensky of being unwilling to compromise at all with Putin on his territorial demands.

Zelensky then pushed back strongly at the criticism from both Trump and Vance. He emphasized Ukraine’s need for real security guarantees from the U.S. and its Western allies, and questioned the nature of Trump’s proposed diplomatic initiative with Russia, implying that it would involve a sellout of Ukraine’s vital interests.

The Oval Office meeting was ended abruptly by an angry President Trump. A planned post-meeting joint press conference and the formal signing of the rare earth mineral agreement were both cancelled. Zelensky was then forced to depart from the White House unescorted and earlier than expected at Trump’s request. Later that day, he posted a statement on social media saying that Zelensky was not ready for a peace agreement with Russia while U.S. support gave him a negotiating advantage.

Trump also made it clear that after delivering the last shipment of arms and munitions that the Biden administration had promised to Ukraine, there would be no further U.S. military or economic aid for Ukraine at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

Europe Takes Responsibility For Supporting Ukraine Against Russia

However, at that point, several of America’s European NATO allies agreed to take over responsibility for supporting Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion both militarily and economically. They realized that as long as Russia was militarily fully engaged in Ukraine, Putin would not have enough spare capacity to attack them in order to satisfy his expressed desire to reconstruct the Cold War-era Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.

The abrupt rupture in U.S.-Ukrainian relations proved to be short-lived. Zelensky made several attempts to mend fences with Trump, in recognition of the fact that Ukraine’s armed forces depend heavily on U.S.-supplied military intelligence. Ukraine also uses the satellite-based Starlink telephone communications technology for its battlefield operations, which the American company’s owner, Elon Musk, has denied to the Russians.

Why The Latest Trump Confrontation With Zelensky Is More Serious

However, Trump’s latest public criticism of Zelensky includes, for the first time, an open call for his replacement as Ukraine’s president. This prompted Fiona Hill, who served as a top adviser on Russian policy for the U.S. National Security Council during President Trump’s first term and who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, to tell the Washington Post that if Trump “starts to actively play a role in Ukrainian politics, in this way essentially engaging in political subversion, he can do a lot more damage.”

While Zelensky has previously shown an ability to push back successfully against public criticism by Trump and to withstand the immediate fallout, Ukraine needs a significant amount of continued American support as it enters the fifth winter of its war with Russia because it does not have enough U.S.-made interceptors for its Patriot air defense systems, which are its only effective defense against Russian ballistic missiles. Furthermore, even though Ukraine’s European allies are now shouldering most of the financial cost of fighting against the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s military remains highly dependent on a constant flow of American weapons and munitions, as well as American satellite intelligence.

Furthermore, the Russian military has shown no signs of easing the intensity of its attacks in Ukraine, despite having suffered more than a million casualties since the war began, and having had to convert much of Russia’s industrial base to the production of weapons and munitions in order to intensify its efforts to defeat Ukraine.

Russia Is Still Stepping Up Its Attacks On Ukraine

President Zelensky posted a report on his X social media account saying that last week alone, Russia attacked Ukraine with 1,450 precision-guided aerial bombs, 75 missiles of various types and more than 1,640 attack drones, about 60% of which were the latest jet-powered models. As a result, Zelensky said, Ukraine has redoubled its efforts to acquire more interceptor missiles for its Patriot air defense systems, as well as increased efforts to keep more of the old, second-hand F-16s available to shoot down the dangerous Russian jet-powered drones.

As part of their commitment to help Ukraine push back against Russia’s aggression, the European countries agreed to buy up to $100 billion worth of U.S.-made weaponry for Ukraine’s use. Four NATO allies, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgium, also got permission from the United States to give Ukraine a total of 87 used American-made F-16 warplanes as they are being replaced by deliveries of new, American-made state-of-the-art F-35 stealth multi-purpose warplanes.

Earlier in the war, the former Eastern European Warsaw Pact member countries of Poland and Slovakia, now members of NATO, agreed to transfer a total of 27 obsolete Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to replace its own MiG-29s lost in combat against the Russians. It was not until May 19, 2023, 15 months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that President Joe Biden announced at a G-7 summit meeting that he would allow the four European nations to transfer their old F-16s to Ukraine, as well as a hurried international effort to retrain veteran Ukrainian air force pilots on how to fly them in combat missions against the Russians.

Why Used American F-16 Fighters Are More Important To Ukraine Now

At the start of the war in 2022, Ukraine requested replacements for its fleet of obsolete Soviet-era MiG-29s primarily to provide close ground support for Ukraine’s troops in conventional infantry battles and later as the conflict evolved into classic World War I-style trench warfare. But as the use of cheap but effective drones again changed the nature of the ground war in Ukraine, the obsolete Cold War-era recycled jet fighters have turned out to be Ukraine’s most effective answer to the threat from the new generation of jet-powered, faster and higher-flying Russian drones.

The main problem with many of the recently arrived second-hand F-16s is that they are well past their normal life expectancy as first-line warplanes, and they now need more extensive maintenance support in order to remain safely flyable and effective in a combat environment. Furthermore, the necessary maintenance support has been outsourced to a Belgian company which has previous experience with Belgium’s F-16s, but which has recently encountered problems acquiring the spare parts needed to complete the work in a timely manner.

Zelensky’s government in Kyiv is also facing a new financial crisis because Russian attacks have disrupted its large shipments of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, threatening an important source of government revenue. Because of these attacks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Ukraine will face a funding gap of more than $30 billion in 2027. As a result, Ukraine’s parliament is urgently considering a broad package of new legislation needed to close major loopholes in the country’s tax code and weed out corruption that is bound to be unpopular with both the general population and members of Ukraine’s wealthy elites.

Trump’s History Of Opposition To U.S. Support For Ukraine

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump also harshly criticized the Biden administration for providing more than $175 billion worth of American economic and military aid to Ukraine. That included sending Ukraine over $45 billion worth of weapons and munitions drawn down from existing Pentagon stockpiles, and additional billions of dollars worth of arms produced by U.S. defense industries for Ukraine under U.S. government contracts.

Those U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine were a major contributing factor to the Pentagon’s current critical shortages of certain types of precision weapons, long-range ground rockets, and air defense interceptor missiles, which have forced Trump to cut back on U.S. military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its attacks on civilian shipping in the Persian Gulf.

The Biden administration, through the U.S. Treasury, also provided the Ukrainian government with between $30 billion and $57 billion in direct economic aid to help pay the salaries of its public employees and the cost of providing basic government services.

Why U.S. Support For Ukraine Remains Critical To War Against Russia

Even though the U.S. is no longer supplying Ukraine’s military needs by drawing down weapons and munitions from War Department stockpiles, the dangerous shortage persists for a variety of key American weapons, such as Patriot anti-missile interceptors, long-range ground rockets and Tomahawk cruise missiles, because the once formidable U.S. military-industrial base no longer has enough production capacity to keep pace with demand from several active battlefields. These include the U.S. military buildup around the Persian Gulf, European orders for U.S.-made weapons to be sent to Ukraine to be used against the Russians, as well as orders from the Pentagon to restock its badly depleted stockpiles of munitions and weapons, so that the U.S. military will be able to respond effectively to any new threat to American national interests that may emerge in other parts of the world.

Concerns About China Limit The U.S. Buildup In The Middle East

There is great concern about China, which has become increasingly belligerent in clashes with its Asia-Pacific neighbors regarding claims of sovereignty over islands in the adjacent South China Sea. U.S. military strategists have long worried about repeated threats by China’s communist leaders to attack the pro-Western renegade island province of Taiwan, whose advanced semiconductor factories are essential to the high-tech economies of the U.S. and its allies. Trump’s determination to continue selling U.S. weapons to Taiwan to deter China from carrying out its threat to take control of the island by force has been a major point of contention in the otherwise mostly cooperative but competitive relationship between Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping.

Concerns about U.S. military readiness have recently been magnified by the need of the Trump administration to reassign many of the U.S. warships and warplanes, which had been stationed to protect important U.S. allies, such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, in the Asia-Pacific region, to the Middle East. They are required to support the U.S. air strikes on Iran, and then to counter Iran’s efforts to control all international shipping traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Ukraine’s Attack On Russian Energy Has Been Highly Successful

Meanwhile, after years of suffering from devastating Russian aerial barrages using drones, missiles and glide bombs that have not distinguished between civilian and legitimate targets, Ukraine has developed an increasingly effective retaliatory strategy. It has attacked the most sensitive parts of Russia’s energy export-based economy using its own long-range drones and cruise missiles in an effort to undermine Putin’s ability to continue financing the war. The increasingly effective Ukrainian attacks have forced the Russian government to pay steep subsidies to its national oil companies to keep gasoline available to the domestic market and to impose a ban on the export of Russian-produced diesel fuel, which has now been rescinded with Trump’s announcement of the deal with Putin.

Growing Fuel Shortages Inside Russia

Nevertheless, Russian consumers today face growing difficulties in finding gas stations that will sell them enough to fill their car’s gas tank. Hundreds of gas stations have suspended their operations, while others limit purchases to as little as five gallons. In many regions across Russia, drivers are served by gas stations only on certain days, depending on their license plate number, in a throwback to one of the strategies used across America when it was hit with an Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. In addition to these government efforts to ration and reduce Russian domestic energy usage, retail prices across Russia for both gasoline and diesel fuel have typically risen by about 20% since the start of this year, contributing to the Russian economy’s already serious inflation problem. But some independent Russian energy distributors have taken advantage of the widespread spot gas shortages by raising their prices by 50 percent or more.

But in general, instead of letting energy prices soar even higher, as other countries have done, the Russian government has generally chosen to restrict consumer access instead. The result is another throwback, this time to the long lines of Russian consumers during the Soviet era, waiting for hours and hoping to buy essential goods from state-run stores before their shelves are completely emptied.

“If it takes you half an hour to fill your tank in any Russian region, you have been extremely lucky,” Sergey Kanaev of the Federation of Car Owners of Russia told the Washington Post.

But it does not appear that Putin is under much political pressure from long-suffering Russian consumers to bring his war effort in Ukraine to a close. As has always been the case in Russia, the military is first in line for available Russian fuel supplies and has not yet been forced to cut back on its energy usage. Russia has also been importing some gasoline from refineries operating in India, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and the ban on diesel fuel exports before Trump announced his deal with Putin last has kept delivery trucks rolling across Russia. Also, because global prices for crude oil are now so high, despite the European and American export sanctions they are under, Russian revenues from its crude sales in the month of September were the highest since the war with Ukraine started four years ago.

Furthermore, last month’s nationwide Russian elections for its parliament, called the Duma, produced a predictably large pro-Putin majority, suggesting that any discontent among Russian voters with Putin’s Ukraine war policies has not yet resulted in the rise of any serious political opposition.

A Detailed Analysis Of The War Damage To Russian Refineries

The Washington Post has published a detailed analysis of the Ukrainian drone and cruise missile attacks aimed specifically at Russian oil refineries, which finds them to be both precise and highly effective. At least two-thirds of Russia’s 36 major oil refineries, including some that are more than 1,000 miles from the Ukrainian border, were hit between April 1 and August 31, some as many as five times, averaging about one strike every three days. By the end of August, half of Russia’s total nationwide oil refining capacity was offline due to the damage caused by the Ukrainian attacks. As a result, the volume of refined Russian petroleum products exported to its foreign customers so far this year has been cut in half compared to last year.

Three oil refinery experts who analyzed Ukraine’s air campaign for the Washington Post found that the long-range attacks using large numbers of cheap drones that Ukraine now mass-produces in its own factories have been especially effective. More than half of them have been aimed at the specialized desalting and distillation equipment at the heart of the refining process that is hardest for the Russians to replace. That is because both the European Union and the United States specifically banned exports of such equipment to Russia shortly after Putin launched the initial invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.

According to the Washington Post report, on June 16, Ukraine staged a devastating major drone attack against “one of the most well-defended oil refineries in Russia, on the southeastern edge of Moscow…Videos of the aftermath show a cluster of tightly packed towers engulfed in flames.”

One of the flaming towers was part of a specialized unit that electrically removes water and salt from crude oil, which is a necessary first step before the crude oil enters the distillation units to be separated into gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and other valuable petroleum-based compounds.

The same Ukrainian drone strike also damaged one of the refinery’s main distillation units, putting the refining plant offline and out of commission well into September, according to the Kpler global commodities data and tracking firm.

Ukraine Attacking Russia’s Most Vulnerable Energy Targets

According to financial analyst Alexander Kolyandr, director of the Eurasia Group at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), “The problem [for Russia] is the frequency of attacks is shorter than the time needed for repair.” The Ukrainian drone commander who goes by the call sign Tango explained the strategy to a Washington Post reporter bluntly. He said: “We know where to hit so that it [the Russian oil refinery] stops [working] and does not recover.”

In order to make its mass drone attacks more effective, Ukraine also launches decoy drones that carry no explosives. Their mission is to confuse and waste the ammunition and resources of the Russian air defenses, which are already deployed too thinly to fully protect Russia’s vast airspace. However, Russia’s troops manning its air defenses have no choice. They must launch against every suspected decoy, because if they fail to do so, they risk losing too many of their expensive military installations.

Ukraine also uses lighter-than-air balloons which can lift small drones to very high altitudes before they are launched, extending their range and enabling them to carry less fuel and more explosives to their targets. Ukraine is also effectively using precise intelligence on potential targets in Russia provided by the U.S. and Ukraine’s other Western allies, and augmented with further analysis by artificial intelligence.

While Putin has remained defiant in the face of the increasingly effective Ukrainian drone campaign, he was forced to publicly acknowledge earlier this month that Ukraine’s attacks have “partially” succeeded by costing Russia about 1 percent of its annual economic output (GDP) for this year.

How Ukraine’s Drone War Crippled Russia’s Energy Infrastructure

The mass Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries began in earnest in August of 2025, but the pace of the attacks dropped over the winter months, only to accelerate this April again and then reach a new high this August, according to data compiled by Tochnyi, an independent Ukrainian open-source research group.

According to Christina Harwood, a Russia researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, in addition to targeting Russia’s refineries, many other Ukrainian drone strikes this year have inflicted considerable damage on fuel storage tanks, pumping stations and pipeline infrastructure across Russia, making the transportation of refined petroleum fuels and other products more difficult even as the supply of them is reduced due to the growing damage from drone strikes on Russia’s refineries.

One unnamed Ukrainian source told the Washington Post that a crash program launched by Ukraine’s government to build up its military-industrial base has resulted in a growing ability to mass-produce the components of cheap drones. That effort has effectively doubled the number of drones in current strikes against Russian targets in each wave, compared to last year.

The increase in the number of drones in each Ukrainian wave attack is significant because, according to András Rácz, a researcher into drone operations in Ukraine for the German Council on Foreign Relations, even if only 2 to 3 percent of the drones reach their target, a number he called “realistic,” they will inflict significant damage.

In short, he said, “The [current Ukrainian drone] strike packages are just too large [for Russia] to defend.”

Russian Air Defenses Are Too Small To Protect All Of Its Territory

The mass waves of attacking Ukrainian drones have turned Russia’s vast size, which historically has been one of its great strategic advantages, into a liability, because Russian air defenses are spread so thin that it is impossible for them to defend every refinery across the country all of the time. According to a Ukrainian drone commander who is identified by the Washington Post by his code name, Tango, the locations of the Russian air defense systems and radars provided by the U.S. and other Western allies have been crucial. This has allowed Ukrainian military planners to map out routes across Russia for drone and cruise missile attacks that can often evade or delay their detection until they have reached their targets.

Trump Frustrated By Persian Gulf And The Red Sea Shipping Closures

Trying to end the Ukraine war matters so much to Trump in large part because of the simultaneous Iranian efforts to shut down Persian Gulf energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. The result is that there is not enough spare capacity to make up for the gasoline and diesel fuel shortages through increased crude oil production and refinery operations in the U.S. and other global energy producers. U.S. Navy efforts to restore the free flow of Persian Gulf oil through the Strait of Hormuz are being hampered by continuing attacks on shipping by Iran’s IRGC. Even the alternative route for shipping Saudi Arabian oil through its East-West pipeline to a Red Sea port and from there through Bab el-Mandeb Strait to the Indian Ocean is now under fire from Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen.

Trump Realizes He Has No Good Options Left

The combination of stubborn ongoing wars in Ukraine and across the Middle East has left President Trump with no good options for ending the global energy shortages that those conflicts have triggered. Even his last-minute measures to relieve the political pressure from the upcoming midterm elections, involving his dubious and desperate deal with Vladimir Putin to boost diesel fuel supplies at Ukraine’s expense, and his announcement of an energy ceasefire agreement with Putin that might not exist, are coming far too late to help Trump and the Republican candidates running in the midterm election. It increasingly looks like there may be an easy Democrat victory based largely on the high price of a gallon of gas at the pump and at the supermarket, which is actually largely the fault of the Democrats during the Biden administration.

Over the past weekend, Houthi missiles hit two passenger terminals at Saudi Arabia’s main airport, killing at least 12 people and injuring hundreds more. Saudi Arabia has asked the U.S. for military help against the Houthis, and President Trump has responded by saying that he is seriously considering the request. But Trump also knows that joining the Saudi air strikes against the Houthis would probably be counterproductive, because it would give the Houthis the ability to extend their attacks to all of the ships using the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, further worsening global energy shortages and price rises rather than reducing them.

Trump’s High Energy Price Predicament

All of these interlocking circumstances mean that President Trump and his Republican supporters are left with no short-term strategic or domestic political solutions available for their current high energy price predicament as well as the now painfully obvious limitations on the application of America’s military power to its problems in the Middle East.

Ukraine’s effective drone strikes on Russian refineries have only further squeezed a global fuel market already badly strained by the consequences of the U.S. war on Iran that Trump started this past February, and the counterproductive recent Saudi revival of its air war against Iran’s Houthi proxies.

Easing sanctions against Russia in a feeble attempt to relieve the global diesel fuel shortage has only angered some of Trump’s allies in his own political party at home, and his public feud with Ukraine’s President Zelensky has infuriated America’s NATO allies, especially those in Eastern Europe, who are justifiably afraid of attacks against their own countries by Putin.

Meanwhile, Russia’s new generation of jet-powered drones have been getting through Ukraine’s air defenses about 45 percent of the time, meaning that the people of Ukraine are now facing the prospect of a very tough, cold and dark winter.

Trump And The Gop Widely Expected To Suffer A Midterm Defeat

At this point, there is not much that Trump, or anyone else, can do to save Ukraine, or the many Republican candidates who now seem doomed to go down to defeat at the hands of socialism-crazed Democrat candidates.

Those Democrats are now confidently expecting to regain control of Congress as a result of their victory in the November 3rd election, so that they can undo everything that President Trump has accomplished for the American people so far in his second term as president.

I know there’s no point bemoaning things lost to us from an earlier age in time. Life was different yesterday, and it’ll be different in other ways tomorrow. The world will continue changing because that’s what the world does. And mostly, it’s a good thing. Progress.

That said, there’s something gone that I think we, as individuals and as a society, are missing. I guess you could call that something stillness.

We live in a frenetic age. In so many ways, it’s become rare, if not impossible, to sit still. If there’s an empty slot of time, we rush to fill it. If there’s a vacation marked on our calendars, we hurry to find a new and ever more exciting way to spend it. Despite all our modern conveniences, our to-do lists grow longer instead of shorter.

With travel so easy and convenient compared to previous eras, many people commute long distances to earn their livings. Many also travel for recreation, far more often than used to be the norm. While it’s wonderful to be able to connect with others who live far away, constant motion deprives us of the chance to spend quiet time with those who are nearby. And even when we are together, we don’t always avail ourselves of the gift that togetherness ought to provide. We’re too busy looking over each other’s shoulders at the next thing barreling down the tracks. And there always is a next thing.

Children used to be a breed apart, a group for whom time meant nothing. Summer days, no-school days, any kind of days, flowed seamlessly from one game to the next until our mothers called us home for supper. When I used to go to bungalow colonies as a kid, my parents preferred a place where there was no structured day camp. We got to run and play and devise our own entertainment all day long. And what fun it was!

Today, kids’ lives are much more regimented. We’re ambitious to let our offspring fulfill their potential and make good use of their talents. It doesn’t hurt that their busy timetables afford us time to attend to our own. All of this is indubitably good. But there’s such a thing as overdoing a good thing. And sometimes it feels as if we may be doing just that.

Our busy-ness, though it often comes from a positive place, can also be detrimental. On the domestic front, for instance, we’ve upped our game to the point where simplicity is looked at askance. Houses must be professionally decorated and wardrobes meticulously coordinated. Multi-course gourmet Shabbos and Yom Tov fare has become the norm. And all of that’s fine, except for the time and energy that it steals from everything else… not to mention the toll it takes on our nerves, stamina, and even sometimes on our shalom bayis.

Another example is the world of medicine. Where we once had only a single general practitioner to address our medical issues, we now have a plethora of specialists available for consultation. The growing list of medical niches means a growing list of appointments. For someone charged with caring for a large family or aging parents, that can add up. Yet another good thing with the potential to pull us into a million harried pieces…

A Tangled Tapestry

Once upon a time, you knew your neighbors as well as they knew you, because all of you, and your parents and grandparents, had lived side by side forever. Now, old friends are threads to be picked up occasionally, when time and location permit. The tapestry of our lives has grown more tangled. And sometimes a little threadbare.

I know that shtetl life has been romanticized almost out of recognition, but there’s something to be said about staying in one place, with one group of people, for the entirety of your life. Our present-day reality includes a lot of picking up and moving on. New jobs, new neighborhoods, new people to incorporate into our lives. More breadth of experience, certainly. But perhaps at the expense of sacrificing some depth?

All these new beginnings can be exciting, but they can also be stressful. There’s a need to prove ourselves, and to sell ourselves, repeatedly. No sooner are you settled in one job or one location than you start wondering if it’s time for a change. There are so many options open to us that, instead of providing a sense of space that comes with having choices, they can grip us in a stranglehold of indecision.

It’s hard to relax without being internally bombarded by a host of things that need doing. I love crossing things off my list, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with that. But somewhere along the way, I’ve lost the ability to just peacefully… sit. Does anyone relate?

Jigsaw Pieces

Fed on this frenzied lifestyle diet, society as a whole and the people within it can start to feel fragmented. As if we’re a sum of many parts, each of them committed to one small area of responsibility. This person knows one aspect of me, that one another, and a third something else entirely. We show once face to each, until we begin to wonder which is the most authentic.

Even with our nearest and dearest who know us the best, we can find ourselves compartmentalizing. Doling out portions of ourselves as time and context permit. Ten minutes with this child, ten minutes with that, a date night with a spouse you rarely get to see, let alone have a long, meaningful conversation with. Our parents, siblings and friends get pieces of us when we can spare the time.

When life is so fast-paced and multi-faceted, it’s not easy to hold onto your sense of yourself as an integrated person. Instead, we can feel like a mass of different jigsaw pieces, each of which we pull out of the bag at the appropriate moment. I know it’s been said before, particularly in Erich Fromm’s The Art of Being, but important truths are worth repeating: it’s important to move our focus at least occasionally from doing to being.

When we fill our kids’ lives with non-stop structure, and our own lives with non-stop movement, we rob them, and ourselves, of something precious. Time to really be with each other, and with ourselves. Time to get in touch with our neshomah. To be actively conscious of the simple, awesome fact that we exist within Hashem’s embrace. Time to sit still and just be.

There’s so much beauty and connection waiting to happen, both with other people and among the flying fragments within our own heads. Talks to be had, ideas to be explored, hands to be held and smiles to be shared.  So many mysteries of the human heart waiting to be unraveled. Untapped layers waiting to be excavated. Untested frontiers of friendship and possibility waiting for a free moment when we can advance unhampered to meet them.

Maybe it’s time to slow down and seize the moment. We don’t want to wait until life forces us to slow down. Right now is the best time to carve out the slower-motion space we’re so sorely missing in this frenetic age.

Right now might just be the best time to catch our breaths and be.

The Torah begins by telling us the story of creation, Bereishis. The Torah introduces us to the creation of the universe, the formation of the world in which we live, and the emergence of mankind, the one creation entrusted with the ability to recognize its Creator and choose how to live.

Yet, as Rashi reminds us at the beginning of the parsha, the Torah is not a history book. It is not intended merely to tell us how the world came into existence or to provide us with an account of the earliest generations of mankind. The Torah is our guide to life, teaching us how to conduct ourselves, how to relate to Hashem and to one another, and how to fulfill the purpose for which we were created. Why, asks Rashi, does the Torah begin with the story of creation and devote the entire first parsha to creation and the lives of Adam and Chava, Kayin and Hevel, and the generations that preceded Avrohom Avinu? Why not begin with the mitzvos, with the commandments that define our obligations as Jews?

Rashi explains that the Torah begins with Bereishis to establish that the entire world belongs to Hashem. He created it, and He determines who will inhabit its lands. When the nations of the world accuse Klal Yisroel of stealing Eretz Yisroel, we can respond that the One Who created the world gave the land to us.

This is a fundamental lesson in our understanding of the world and our place in it. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world and placed us in it, entrusting us with the responsibility to live in accordance with His will. The land we inhabit, the resources we enjoy, the talents with which we were endowed, and the very lives we lead are gifts from Hashem. Everything we possess comes with an obligation to use it properly.

Before the Torah tells us what to do, it tells us why we are here. Before it presents the mitzvos that shape our lives, it establishes that the world was created deliberately, with purpose and with direction. The universe is not a random collection of events, and human life is not an accident without meaning. Everything begins with Hashem, and everything we do must be understood in the context of His creation and His will.

The Torah tells us that man was created b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of Hashem. This is perhaps the most profound statement about the human condition. Man is not simply another creature inhabiting the earth. The posuk tells us that Hashem created man from adomah and blew into him the spirit of life, nishmas chaim. He endowed us with a neshomah, the ability to speak, the capacity to think and understand, the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, to exercise bechirah, and to make choices that have eternal significance.

The greatness of a person does not lie in his physical strength, his wealth, intelligence, or accomplishments in the eyes of the world. His greatness lies in his ability to transcend the adomah from which he was created, from which flow his physical instincts and desires, and to give sustenance to his neshomah, as our lives are meant to be dedicated to fulfilling the spiritual purposes for which we were placed in this world.

That is the challenge of tzelem Elokim. We are given extraordinary abilities, but those abilities carry extraordinary responsibility. We can build and destroy, encourage and discourage, bring happiness and cause pain. We can use our intelligence to discover new ways to improve the world or to devise ways to harm others. We can use our words to comfort a person who is suffering or to inflict wounds that may never heal.

We are not passive observers in the world. We are active participants. The first human beings were placed in Gan Eden, a world of extraordinary beauty and abundance. They were given everything they needed, with one clear restriction.

Adam and Chava’s failure to heed that command introduced a fundamental reality of human existence. Having free will means that a person can choose incorrectly, even when the right path is clear. The challenge of life is not merely to know what Hashem wants from us, but to overcome the inclinations and temptations that lead us away from it.

And when Adam sinned, Hashem asked him, “Ayeka? Where are you?”

Hashem certainly knew where Adam was. The question was not about his physical location. It was an invitation to confront what had happened, to recognize his responsibility, and to consider where his choices had brought him.

That question echoes throughout the generations. Where are we? What are we doing with the lives Hashem has given us? Are we using our abilities to fulfill our purpose, or are we allowing ourselves to be distracted by pursuits that have little lasting value? Are we moving closer to Hashem, or are we allowing the pressures and attractions of the world to draw us away?

It is a question that each of us must ask ourselves, not only during the introspective days of Elul and the Yomim Noraim, but throughout the year. A person can be busy from morning until night, accomplishing one task after another, and still lose sight of where he is going. He can accumulate wealth and achieve recognition and relevance without addressing the most important question of whether he is living the life Hashem wants him to live.

On Shemini Atzeres, in the diaspora we lained Koheles. Various reasons are given for this minhag, but perhaps one of its messages is that Koheles helps seal in the gains we made during Elul and Tishrei. After spending these weeks examining our lives, our priorities, and our relationship with Hashem, we are reminded that so much of what occupies people in this world is ultimately hevel, fleeting and without lasting significance. The challenge is not to withdraw from the world, but to learn to distinguish between what is hevel and what is important, between what demands our attention and what deserves our attention, between what fills our days and what gives those days meaning.

Along with that comes the responsibility to recognize Hashem and see His hand in all aspects of our lives.

We are required to do hishtadlus. We work and seek to earn a living, but we recognize that whatever we have is because Hashem gave it to us. The work is a means, but the income comes from Hashem.

We build armies, establish security services, create sophisticated intelligence systems, check credentials, erect fences, and take every reasonable precaution to protect ourselves. But we must never confuse the means with the source. The systems are tools. The protection comes from Hashem.

This week, Israel and Jews throughout the world marked the third anniversary of the October 7th massacre, a day on which we were reminded of that truth in a most painful way.

Israel possesses one of the world’s most powerful armies and most sophisticated security establishments. It has intelligence agencies considered among the finest anywhere, advanced surveillance systems, layers of fences and barriers, and countless people whose responsibility is to identify threats and protect the country’s citizens.

And yet, on that morning, those systems failed simultaneously. Warnings were missed. Signals were ignored. Assumptions were wrong. The people whose job it was to prevent such an attack were unable to do so. It was a fulfillment of the posuk, “Einayim lohem velo yiru oznayim lohem velo yishma’u.” The eyes of the nation’s security apparatus were simply closed.

We were reminded that, ultimately, it is not the army that protects us, not the intelligence agencies, not the fences, and not the technology.

Hashem Hu Ha’Elokim.

The One Who created the world is the One Who runs it.

And just last week, we received another extraordinary reminder of that truth, this time in the skies.

The attempted terrorist attack aboard a flight bound for Tel Aviv could easily have ended with the deaths of everyone aboard and potentially many on the ground. The co-pilot, who had previously been identified by his former employer as a security risk, attacked the captain in the cockpit and attempted to take control of the aircraft. The plane plunged thousands of feet in a matter of seconds. Passengers were thrown from their seats. The cockpit became a scene of violence and chaos.

And yet, the plane did not crash. The passengers did not die.

The subsequent investigation revealed serious questions about the security procedures governing foreign airlines and their crews. Israel had systems in place, protocols, departments, and databases, but it emerged that foreign pilots were not being independently vetted in the manner one might have assumed. The responsibility was divided among different agencies, but the crucial information was not being acted upon. Had they been doing their jobs, the Jew-hating co-pilot never would have been allowed to board the plane and be seated in the cockpit.

If the flying public’s safety depended on human beings, people would have every reason to be terrified every time they get on a plane.

Instead, we are reminded that our safety rests with Hashem.

And the miracle of the FlyDubai flight went far beyond the failures of the security system.

The heroism of people aboard the plane is credited with saving the plane from crashing to the ground and killing everyone on board, but it was a series of miraculous occurrences that allowed that heroism to occur. The passengers have rightly been hailed as heroes. They saw what was happening and acted with extraordinary courage.

A woman who happened to be standing near the cockpit heard the commotion and began screaming. Several passengers rushed toward the cockpit, overpowered the attacker, and restrained him. Others cared for the wounded captain. They guarded the cockpit and helped ensure that the plane could be landed safely.

But even their heroism was possible only because of a remarkable chain of events that unfolded at precisely the right moments.

The captain, gravely wounded, losing much blood and under continued attack, miraculously retained the strength and presence of mind to open the cockpit door. Had that door remained closed, the passengers would have had no way to reach him or the attacker.

A plumber who happened to be sitting relatively close to the cockpit heard what was happening and rushed forward. He pulled the attacker away from the captain, and as others dealt with him, the plumber, with no previous flying experience, found himself in a cockpit with a plunging aircraft. He had once seen how a plane’s control stick raises and lowers the plane, and he lifted the controls with all his might to get the plane to fly upward.

He had no training that should have qualified him to fly a Boeing 737. Yet, at that moment, when 170 lives were in jeopardy, Hashem put the idea into his head of how to save them.

There were other seemingly unlikely occurrences as well.

Additional pilots happened to be aboard the flight as passengers. A dentist who happened to be on board was able to provide critical medical assistance to the wounded captain. Passengers found charging cables and other materials that could be improvised to restrain the attacker. Men and women who had been strangers only minutes earlier suddenly worked together as a team, each one doing whatever he or she could to save the lives of everyone aboard.

The world calls such things coincidence. It calls them luck. It speaks of fortunate circumstances and improbable happenstance.

We know better.

We know that there is no happenstance. There is only the Ribono Shel Olam, Who runs the world and Who can arrange a thousand details, many of them invisible to us, so that they converge at precisely the moment they are needed.

It is interesting that both of these events occurred during the days of Sukkos and Shemini Atzeres, when we celebrate how Hashem protected us from the elements in the midbar and as we were about to begin studying Bereishis.

We left our homes, the places that provide us with walls, roofs, locks, alarm systems, and the illusion of permanence, and we entered the sukkah. We sat beneath a roof that does not really protect us from the elements, as we experienced when it rained over Yom Tov. We left behind the physical structures in which we invest so much of our energy and reminded ourselves that our true protection does not come from them.

We sat in the sukkah, in the tzila demehemnusa, the shade of the Shechinah, and proclaimed that the walls around us are not what guarantee our safety. The roof over our heads is not what determines whether we will be protected. We have to take reasonable precautions. But after all the hishtadlus has been made, we recognize that the One above is the One Who protects us.

And then we return to Bereishis.

Why does the Torah begin by telling us that Hashem created the world?

Because we need to know that the world is not governed by chance, that history is not a series of random events, and that our lives are not determined solely by the decisions of men and the systems they construct.

The same Hashem Who created the heavens and the earth can cause the most powerful security establishment to overlook a threat. He can cause a warning to be missed. He can allow a plane to descend thousands of feet and then, through a series of seemingly random events, provide the precise people and abilities needed to save it.

He can place a plumber in a particular seat and turn him into a pilot. He can place a dentist on a particular flight and turn him into an emergency doctor. He can place additional pilots on a plane and give a dying captain the strength to open a door. And He can bring all of those seemingly unrelated details together at exactly the moment when they are needed.

That is not merely the lesson of last week’s FlyDubai flight, nor is it only the lesson of October 7th, when the army couldn’t prevent the rampage and was powerless to stop it.

It is the lesson of our daily lives, when every day is filled with miracles we take for granted.

Bereishis bara Elokim — Hashem created it all. He runs it. He guides it. He determines its course.

We do our hishtadlus. We are not permitted to sit back and rely on miracles. But after we have done what we can, we recognize the truth with which the Torah begins and upon which everything else rests — namely, that Hashem runs the world.

His ways are mysterious and not always understood. We cannot always see why one person is saved and another is not, why one warning is heard and another is missed, or why one seemingly insignificant event becomes the link that saves hundreds of lives.

We don’t know why one person becomes ill and another remains healthy, why one person becomes wealthy while another struggles financially, or why one person’s life seems to contain far more suffering and challenges than another’s. We cannot understand the ways of Hashem or the reasons for the individual tests He sends to each of us. But we know that nothing happens by itself and nothing happens without purpose. Hashem sends us the challenges we need to help us grow, to strengthen our emunah, and to bring us closer to Him.

We must never give up. We must never convince ourselves that our challenges are insurmountable or that we cannot overcome them. Those who recognize the Yad Hashem, place their trust in Him, and believe that He is with them through every challenge can face life with confidence, knowing that Hashem will give them the strength to persevere and overcome.

Bereishis bara Elokim. Chazal teach that the world was created for reishis, for Klal Yisroel and for Torah. Hashem created the world for us. He created it with the expectation that we would be able to accomplish our mission in it. The world was not created to defeat us. It was created to provide us with opportunities, challenges, and circumstances through which we can fulfill the purpose for which we were placed here.

We should therefore never allow anything or anyone to break our spirit, and we should never allow anyone to convince us that we cannot succeed. No matter what happens, no matter what challenges confront us, we must remember that we are living in Hashem’s world and that the One Who created the world is with us every step of the way. With emunah, bitachon, and the determination to continue moving forward, we can overcome the obstacles placed before us and accomplish what Hashem expects of us.

This week, as we return to the rhythm of life after Yom Tov, and as we begin studying Parshas Bereishis, we need to carry these lessons with us. The warmth and inspiration of Elul, the Yomim Noraim, Sukkos, Shemini Atzeres, and Simchas Torah should not remain behind with the Yom Tov.

The days ahead may be colder and darker, and the long winter may sometimes seem bleak. But we enter it with the light of Bereishis bara Elokim. Hashem created the world, He guides its every detail, and He placed us here because He knows that we are capable of fulfilling the purpose for which we were created.

We have every reason to move forward with emunah, with bitachon, and with confidence that, with Hashem’s help, we can succeed.

May we all be zoche to a gezunteh vinter and the geulah sheleimah bekarov.

On Erev Sukkos, like the rest of us in the Northeast, I was busy halachically ensuring that my s’chach would remain kosher in advance of the storm. Amid klerring about zip ties, and jute, and finding old beams to place on top of the bamboo, I suddenly remembered something. I had spent hours picking out a beautiful esrog, and then more time picking out hadassim, a lulav and aravos. But with all of that, and with all my attention now on securing my sukkah, I realized that I had forgotten to buy a koishekel. I had tied down everything except the lulav. So, mere hours before Yom Tov, I ran out and found a local shuk, here in the Five Towns, that was in its last minutes before closing. They had a variety of koisheklach, from the simple Litvishe ones to the grandiose, rebbe-style ones. Despite the late hour, I could not bargain. (And unlike lulavim and esrogim, a koishekel lasts forever!)

As I was paying, something caught my eye. It was something that we have all been looking at for the past few weeks, but this time it hit me differently. Very differently. I looked down and saw tables with esrogim. I felt really bad for them. The place was closing in 20 minutes and there they were. These esrogim had been planted, nurtured, watched, picked, carefully packaged and shipped. They were then vetted and selected by mochrim, put out on tables, shown by private appointment, and scrutinized by hundreds of Yidden, young and old, rich and poor. But now, hours before Yom Tov, their destiny looked all but sealed. They would not be used for the mitzvah de’Oraysa of “ulekachtem lochem.”

The fortunate ones would be carted off to become esrog jelly, and the rest would be carted off to the garbage. I found it terribly sad, and I am aware of how that sounds. Fruit does not think. But Chazal made certain to tell us about mountains that quarreled over who would host Matan Torah, or about how the moon came before the Ribono Shel Olam with a complaint, so I allowed myself, standing there with my koishekel (the rebbishe one, for those curious; I am an Ostrov-Kalushiner ainikel after all!), to wonder what the esrogim were thinking.

They all started out the same, some of them on the very same tree, and every bit of that care was for one posuk. Ulekachtem lochem. The mitzvah of an esrog is lekicha. They were born to be taken. Their entire purpose in this world is to be taken, and these were the ones that nobody took.

The seforim hakedoshim, building on the Arizal, describe the briah as a ladder of levels. Beginning with the domeim, there is the tzomeiach, chai and medaber, and each level waits to be lifted by the one above it. An animal that is shechted properly and eaten by a Yid who makes a brocha, and who then uses that strength to learn and to daven, is brought up to a place it could never have reached in the pasture, while the neveilah and the treifah are left where they were. If that is true of a steak, I would imagine that it is certainly true for an esrog, held together with the daled minim in the hand of a Yid, with a brocha and a Shehecheyanu and the naanuim of Hallel, for a mitzvah de’Oraysa.

The Gemara in Bava Metzia (85a) tells of a calf that was being led to shechitah. It went and hid its head in the folds of Rebbi’s garment and cried. Rebbi said to it, “Zil, lekach notzarta — Go, because for this you were created.” It was true, of course, and according to the mekubalim, it was more than true, because the calf was crying on the way to the greatest aliyah it would ever have. And still, they said in Shomayim that because he did not have rachmonus, yissurim should come upon him, and they did, for thirteen years.

The Gemara does not say that Rebbi was wrong. But being right was not what the moment asked of him. So, I am not going to stand in front of a table of unsold esrogim and explain to them why their fate had to end up this way. Rather, I want to point out two things that I noticed on the way home.

The first, perhaps, is that there is no hiddur with only one esrog. The posuk tells us “pri eitz hadar — a beautiful fruit.” We have all seen the man who spends forty minutes at the stand turning esrogim over one at a time. I sometimes have been that man, and I certainly have been the person waiting on line behind that man. But he never chooses one esrog without comparing it to the one he will not use. He can only choose because there is something to choose from. Suppose a single esrog was put on the table. Somehow, no matter how beautiful it is, you would feel like you walked out with a kosher esrog and nothing more. The one that goes home in the silver box is mehudar because its beauty was superior to the dozens that remained behind. Those were not taken to be used for the mitzvah, yet their presence, somehow, enhanced the beauty of the mitzvah.

The second point belongs to the Bnei Yissoschor. He writes (Maamorei Chodesh Shevat) that we have a kabbolah from his rabbeim to daven on Tu B’Shevat for a beautiful, kosher esrog, and he is medayeik that the Mishnah calls the day “Rosh Hashanah la’illan,” one tree, the tree from which a Yid will need a fruit when Sukkos comes. And what is on the table in many homes on Tu B’Shevat when that tefillah is said? Esrog jelly. The esrog that nobody wanted sometime during Tishrei is right there during Shevat, with a brocha said over it, while a Yid davens for the esrog that he will take next year. It did not become a mitzvah. It became part of a tefillah for next year’s esrog. The jelly and its brocha became the hope for the future. It certainly was not a piece of refuse.

But even after most of the leftover esrogim are taken to be used for esrog jelly, there are still a handful that remain behind. And for them, we need another nechomah. The same Gemara in Bava Metzia continues and teaches us that the yissurim that Rebbi received for his lack of sympathy for the calf left him the same way they came — through a maaseh. His maidservant was sweeping the house and was about to sweep out some young weasels, and he told her to leave them be, because the Torah teaches us about the Ribono Shel Olam, “verachamov al kol maasov.”

Kol maasov. All of them. Every one of us knows somebody who was grown with the same care and was every bit as ready, and who, for reasons that no one will ever explain to him, was not the one who got picked.

It is the girl whose résumé has been examined like an esrog in the shuk, or the bochur who has been told for years how special he is among everyone, yet both are still waiting for the phone to ring. It is the talmid, or the talmidah, who sits in the same seat every day and has yet to be noticed by a rebbi or a morah. It is the child to whom nothing comes easily, who puts in twice the hours of the boy next to him and has never once heard his name called out for it. It is the man who is out looking for a job, or even the man who has one and can work for 10 hours a day to support his family yet still cannot pay his bills at the end of the month. It is the choshuve yungerman who learned with hasmodah for years, who can say a shiur with such clarity, yet although he has put his name in for every shteller opening, he’s still waiting for one of them to call back.

They did everything that was asked of them and nobody asked for them.

They do not need a p’shat from us. They certainly do not need to hear, “Lekach notzarta.”

I do not know the cheshbon of the esrog that was left on the table, and I am not going to pretend that I do. But Chazal tell us (Shabbos 77b) that of everything Hakadosh Boruch Hu created in His world, He did not create even one thing levatolah, and Ben Azzai teaches (Avos 4:3), “She’ein lecha adam she’ein lo sha’ah, v’ein lecha dovor she’ein lo makom — There is no man who does not have his moment, and nothing that does not have its place.” If there is nothing without its makom, then that esrog had its makom too, even if its place was on a table in the Five Towns twenty minutes before closing. And if that is true of a mere physical entity, it is certainly true of an adam. The only difference is that the esrog’s place was on a table where I could see it, and a person’s makom is often somewhere that none of us are looking. The girl who is still waiting, the yungerman without a shteller and the father who works ten hours a day and still comes up short are not waiting for their tachlis to begin. The fellow who just can’t close the deal. They are in the middle of it. Nobody chose them yet, but Somebody put them there, and His rachamim is on kol maasov, the ones who have been recognized and selected already and the ones who still eagerly wait to be.

I walked out of that shuk feeling bad for the esrogim that had been left on the table. But as Ben Azzai taught us, nothing that is left on the table has been left behind. Somehow. Somewhere. Sometime.

Just Saying.

This column is not usually parsha-based. But the opportunity to begin a new series of Torah columns requires starting fresh. And that can only be done with the power of Bereishis.

Rav Menachem Kasher once published an entire volume of his Torah Sheleimah on the one word Bereishis. One of the lessons we can derive from this achievement is that there are many beginnings. The point is to get started.

Rav Meilech Biderman tells the story of a man who rented an apartment in Eretz Yisroel to a gentile. Each month, the man neglected to pay the rent, despite repeated reminders and pleadings. Not wanting to make a chillul Hashem, the Yid tried many approaches, using gentle persuasion, begging and appeals to his decency. Nothing worked, so he finally took him took court. It was not a din Torah, so the judge used his own sources and intuition. The defendant claimed that the Yid had not provided heat or water, the walls were constantly broken, etc.

The judge asked one question: “Did you ever pay any rent at all, even the first month?”

The man responded impudently, “No, I did not. It wasn’t worth it.”

The secular judge ruled with a bang of the gavel, “If you had paid at least once, that would have been a sign that you intended to do so but things changed. But since you didn’t even begin, that is an indication that you never had any intention of paying. You will therefore go to prison unless you pay for the entire year.”

Rav Elchonon Halpern, the rov of London, applied this to our time of year. We have made many commitments and kabbalos. If we haven’t kept any of them, we are in trouble. But if we tried hard and kept at least one, Hashem will see that we are doing our best and will give us the siyata diShmaya to succeed.

The Gemara (Brachos 6a) teaches that we should be extremely careful about davening Mincha. Many reasons have been given for this warning. One is that this is our daily difficult test. It is easy to daven Shacharis because we have not yet started our busy day. At the end of the day, too, we can always daven Maariv before we go to sleep. But when we take time off from our work and busy schedule, we are showing Hashem that we truly care.

The Arizal, however, taught a profound lesson about Mincha. The Gemara (Sanhedrin 38b) reveals that Adam was created, sinned and was evicted from Gan Aden on the same day. After he sinned, he davened Mincha and begged forgiveness from Hashem. In other words, the very first tefillah anyone ever davened was Mincha. The Maharal always tells us that the matrix of every event and action is the first time it was done. Hence the importance of Mincha.

Rav Goel Elkarif adds a beautiful thought. The Medrash (Bereishis Rabbah 22:13) tells us that Adam Harishon met his son, Kayin, and asked about his situation after murdering Hevel. He answered, “I did teshuvah and made up with my Creator.” Adam began striking himself on his face. “Look at the power of teshuvah, which I didn’t know.” Immediately, he composed the beautiful prayer we say every Shabbos, Mizmor shir l’yom haShabbos.

It turns out that all the zemiros we sing on Shabbos evoke that very first act of repentance. That is what the Arizal means when he says that singing zemiros has the power to inspire true teshuvah. Let us therefore take the initiative to sing zemiros on Shabbos, to make new beginnings and to seize these moments when we have been uplifted with teshuvah, mitzvos and simcha.

Rav Elkarif proceeds to relate a story with two gedolim of the last generation, Rav Boruch Toledano and Rav Yaakov Galinsky. They heard that there was a moshav near Be’er Sheva that had no mikvah. The town was half Sefardi and half Ashkenazi. They decided to travel there and raise funds to build a mikvah. Rav Toledano would speak to the Sefardim and Rav Galinsky to the Ashkenazim. The two rabbonim, who were elderly at the time, made the difficult journey, but were greatly disappointed to find only one person in the audience. Rav Toledano suggested to Rav Galinsky that since the man was Ashkenazi, he should give the drosha.

The diminutive but powerful speaker, Rav Yankele thundered from the bimah as if there were thousands there, explaining the importance of having a mikvah on the moshav. All of a sudden, a woman descended from the ezras noshim, the wife of the lone man present. She spoke directly to her husband, who appeared somewhat overwhelmed. “Did you hear the rabbi?” she demanded. “We are Holocaust survivors. The rabbi is right. We must build the mikvah. Let’s give half the sum needed.”

The man agreed and the rabbonim went to the mayor of the moshav to ask for help with the funding, but he claimed they had no money. This time, it was Rav Toledano who convinced his fellow Sefardi. “You have the money for gardens and roads, dance centers and entertainment. You must help build the mikvah.” The mayor relented and the rest is in the history books of the moshav, which today boasts yeshivos, shuls…and a mikvah.

Sometimes, you just have to get started.

I must share a story that I love to tell, but this is the right time, so I, too, will start. When I was a rov in Cleveland, there was a senior citizens home named Menorah Park. I was visiting a congregant who had retired there and was leaving when I heard my name called.

“Rabbi Feitman, I want you to see something.”

It was the chaplain of the home, but I was in a rush to leave.

“You won’t regret this. Just give me a minute,” he whispered.

He took me to the door of the shul and invited me to look through the window. Sitting there, bent over, was an elderly Yid learning Gemara with a beautiful niggun. “Okay, Reb Dovid,” I said, “I’m not that impressed. I used to visit the Home for the Sages of Israel on the Lower East Side and I saw this all the time.”

“Reb Yaakov, you don’t understand,” he responded. “Listen to his story. Ten years ago, this man entered the home but didn’t leave his room. We tried to have a daily minyan, but most of the residents were incapable of davening an entire tefillah and were wheelchair-bound or bedridden. This man was in better shape than most, but never came down to daven. I visited him in his room, inquiring why. ‘Rabbi, you don’t want me to attend your services.’ ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ I inquired. He answered that he was a Reform Jew, but his children had become religious and wanted him in a kosher facility. ‘I don’t know how to pray in Hebrew and I don’t even have any interest. I’m too old to learn new things.’”

The chaplain picked up the narrative. “I convinced him to just come once for Mincha and try it. It can’t hurt. We davened and the man held the siddur upside down. Between Mincha and Maariv, I shared a simple, short devar Torah and then we davened Maariv. After both tefillos, I was afraid I had lost the man’s interest totally. He seemed lost in thought. I was afraid he was going to ask for a transfer out of this prison. He emerged from his reverie and asked, ‘What was that thing you did between the prayers?’ ‘What thing? Oh, that was a devar Torah.’ He asked, ‘A what?’ I explained that the Bible says many things and I derived one of the many lessons from this week’s portion.

“‘That was great,’ he responded. ‘I’m in.’

“Well, Reb Yaakov, that was ten years ago. Since then, I’ve had a team of bochurim and yungeleit learning with him day and night. He came in at 80 and just turned 90. He will be making a Siyum Hashas on Sunday and you are invited.”

It is not only never too late to start. Actually, all you have to do is start.

That is the magic of Bereishis and the power of the first week of the first sedra of the year.

We bring with us the awe of the Yomim Noraim, the joy of Sukkos and the glory of Bereishis, the beginning of all beginnings. It is not just for an eighty-year-old baal teshuvah. It is not only for a child starting school. It is for all of us who need to recharge our spiritual batteries and fire up our hearts and brains.

We Daf Yomi-nicks had the pleasure of starting Bechoros just before Yom Kippur. That and bikkurim remind us that all beginnings have kedusha. All are precious and every day can be that new beginning with the Modeh Ani that reminds us of our newly purified soul. The summer may have ended and we are entering autumn, with winter ahead, but for us, it is the spring of our year. It is our youth beckoning us to learn with a new bren, with the fire ignited from Elul to Ne’ilah. It is the joy of Simchas Bais Hashoeivah and taking the kedusha of the Ushpizin into our lives. Let’s start now and, be’ezras Hashem, He will say about us all, “And Hashem saw all that He had made and behold it was all very good” (Bereishis 1: 31).

Hashem made us a beautiful world. All we have to do is to begin doing our part and all will indeed be “very good.”

You know those people who dream about how their wedding is going to look? They have built a blissful picture in their mind of every last detail: how their intro will sound; how they will bound into the ballroom and dance with their parents, rosh yeshiva, and then their friends; how they will be gracious, geshmak and full of life; how they will be hoisted on chairs and everyone will look at them adoringly…

I don’t have to go into the nitty-gritty details. You know what I mean.

Now, Moshe* was exactly that kind of chosson. He crossed off the days on his wedding clock one day at a time. He was so excited on the morning of his chasunah that after saying Modeh Ani and washing negel vasser, he began to dance a jig on his bed.

So, what happened at the chasunah? Moshe fasted on the day of his chasunah. After breaking his fast, he began to feel so woozy and unwell that he could barely dance at the wedding. They had to constantly sit him down and bring him water. He was so nauseous that poor Moshe couldn’t even appreciate the few hours that he had been so excitedly anticipating for so long.

Now, I want to ask you: Is Moshe married? Was the kiddushin chal even though he didn’t really perform much or even enjoy his own chasunah? Of course! He is married, and we all wish him a life of bliss.

No one would say that because the chasunah wasn’t what he had envisioned and because it wasn’t so geshmak, he isn’t married. Right?

The Seder of the Jewish Year = The Seder of a Person’s Young Life

We have just completed almost two months of elevated zemanim. First came Elul, then Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah, the most hallowed and elevated days of the year.

I once heard from Rav Shimshon Pincus that the whole seder of the Yomim Tovim is akin to the seder of a person’s young life. Pesach marks our birth. Just like a newborn baby must be extremely careful about what he or she eats because its system is still so fragile, we, too, must be extremely careful about only eating spiritual food that we can digest. That is why we are so careful about chometz on Pesach. At that young stage in our “lives,” any other “food” can be catastrophic.

Then comes Shavuos, our “bar mitzvah.” Just like a bar mitzvah bochur starts learning Torah earnestly at that age, so too, we, as a nation, received the Torah and became “bar mitzvah.”

Shavuos is followed by Elul and the first part of Tishrei, the preparation for our chasunah. Just like a bar mitzvah bochur shteigs and matures during the years between his bar mitzvah and chasunah, ultimately culminating in doing teshuvah and fasting as a chosson on the day of his chasunah, so too, we shteig during the period of Elul and Tishrei, culminating with doing teshuvah and fasting on Yom Kippur at the conclusion of the yemei teshuvah.

After we have done teshuvah, it is time for the chupah. That is Sukkos. On Sukkos, we sit under the sukkah’s canopy together with Hashem, together with the Shechinah, in “matrimony.”

Yet, that is still not the climax. The climax is Shemini Atzeres, when Hashem says, “Please, let’s just sit together. Let’s just be together, you and Me. Please, stay with Me for one more day.” That is the yichud, the peak, the zenith of what we have been working toward since Pesach.

Yes, we have just concluded this amazing journey that has culminated with our yichud, our unification with Hashem in the most sacred of bonds.

Now What?

The question is: Now what?

What do we do now? Yom Tov is over. We have a long, cold winter ahead of us, a leap year with an entire extra month of Adar. Yes, seven long months until Pesach. Do we just go back to the way life was before our “marriage”?

In our moshol with the chosson and kallah, what do they do after sheva brachos? Suddenly, they are no longer the focus. They go to their small apartment and begin to live a new life. They don’t return to their old life. That doesn’t mean that their daily schedule is that different.

The chosson may return to yeshiva and sit in the same place in the bais medrash where he sat before he was married. He may even learn the same masechta that he had been learning before.

The kallah may return to the same place of employment where she works from nine to five, just like she did before she was married. Still, it is a different life.

When Life Feels the Same But Is Different

Now, each of them has a true partner in life. They are living their lives together even as they go about many of the same things that they did before they were married.

We, too, have just finished the great chasunah that we had with Hashem. We have become bound with Hashem with an inseparable bond. As we return to “regular” life, we may sometimes feel that nothing has changed, that Simchas Torah was many months ago. It is difficult to believe that it was just a few days ago. The fact is, however, that the chasunah happened, and we are not the same people we were when Rosh Chodesh Elul arrived less than two months ago.

Is there any chosson in the world who has to be reminded that he is married? Do you know a chosson a few days or weeks after his wedding who might mistakenly head up to his bedroom in the dorm of Bais Medrash Govoah at night instead of heading to his apartment?

Do we have to remind him and tell him, “You are married!”?

Do you have to remind him, “You have a life partner. You have someone with whom you can talk, with whom you can share secrets and aspirations. You have someone who (hopefully) understands you”?

None of us should say that the Yomim Tovim are over and just flew away. When a chosson and kallah feel a bit stale, one of the things they might do is look at the pictures of their wedding to remind themselves of the wedding and refresh their memories of their feelings at the time.

Similarly, when we forget what things were like at our wedding with Hashem and the process that led to that wedding, we must remember how we danced with the Sefer Torah and the feelings we had at that time. We must think about the hallowed moments of Ne’ilah on Yom Kippur or tekias shofar on Rosh Hashanah. Those things will remind us that we are “still married.”

The Kiddushin Is Still Chal

Now, let’s say a person thinks, “I didn’t really have a special Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos or Simchas Torah.” Imagine if the person says, “I wasn’t really focused on Yom Kippur. I was so hungry and feeling so unwell that I just wanted it to be over.” Imagine if he says that he didn’t dance with enthusiasm on Simchas Torah. He just wasn’t in the mood.

Does that mean that the kiddushin with Hashem was not chal? No!

Rather, he is just like the chosson who felt lousy at his wedding. It doesn’t matter that the wedding wasn’t the picture-perfect dream that he had envisioned. It is still chal, and he can certainly start a new life and relationship together with his kallah, no different from the new life and relationship built by his friend who did enjoy his own chasunah.

The fact is that no matter how much we were or were not truly engaged and immersed in the Yomim Tovim, the Yomim Tovim are still chal in our neshamos and we have changed.

We are now “married” to Hashem. The kiddushin was chal.

Now, just as any chosson and kallah have to work on cultivating and improving their relationship and their understanding of each other, we can utilize this winter to build on that relationship, even as we return to many aspects of our previous lives.

Let us just remember: We are not the same.

We are married! You can’t forget that you are married, right?

The Uplifting Yomim Tovim Have Passed

I can’t possibly report fully on everything that has happened in Israel since my last report; there is no point even in trying to draft a comprehensive overview. The miracle of the thwarted plane hijacking alone could provide enough material for an entire newspaper, not just a single column. There is so much to report about what happened on the flight, about the terrorist’s nefarious intentions, and about the series of miracles that prevented a disaster—not to mention the many questions that arose in the wake of the incident. I could also easily write at great length about the political world getting into high gear as the election draws closer. And there were plenty of events on Chol Hamoed that deserve to be covered as well.

Sadly, as soon as Isru Chag arrives, we feel ourselves descending from the sublime world of the Yomim Tovim to the mundanities of our everyday existence. Every year, there is much focus on how to preserve the elevation we experienced during the Yomim Tovim. As I write these lines, it is less than 24 hours after we danced with the Torah on the last day of Yom Tov, feeling almost as if we were raised to the level of malochim. It is hard to return to our daily routines in the wake of those experiences. I find myself envying the Americans in Eretz Yisroel (and in America as well, of course), who are still celebrating Yom Tov Sheini at this time. They, at least, have another day to celebrate with the Torah and bask in its embrace.

Should I report to you about the major events held in the sukkos of American philanthropists here in Eretz Yisroel? I can’t imagine that it’s the most important topic to discuss, even though there were some very interesting events in large sukkos in Rechaviah, Shaarei Chesed, and near the Kosel.

I enjoyed attending the simchas beis hashoevah at Yeshivas Shaarei Shemuos on Moshav Bais Chilkiya. The yeshiva itself is a miraculous story. It was opened 15 years ago in a small shul in Kiryat Sefer, but it quickly blossomed into one of the leading yeshivos in Eretz Yisroel; today, it has a student body of almost 1000 bochurim. I have maintained a connection to the yeshiva since it was first established; after all, it is practically a branch of the Yeshiva of Beer Yaakov. The rosh yeshiva, Rav Aryeh Shapiro, is a renowned grandson of the illustrious rosh yeshiva of Beer Yaakov, Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro.

I attended an event at the Yerushalayim home of Sander Gerber, where I met Malcolm Hoenlein, Yitzchok Pindrus, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, and MK Simcha Rothman at the event, along with many others who enjoyed the experience as well.

Shiurim on Chol Hamoed

I also attended various shiurim that I attended during Chol Hamoed. While I went to only one shiur a day, I prepared a list in advance of two or three shiurim each day that seemed the most appealing to me, out of the many that were announced in a veritable deluge of advertisements. One notable example was a shiur delivered by Rav Yisroel Bunim Schreiber. You may recall that I wrote about a shmuess delivered by Rav Schreiber even before I interviewed him for the Sukkos edition of this newspaper, but I decided that I also needed to attend a shiur so that I would have a firsthand encounter with the brilliance that has made him so renowned. Sure enough, I was amazed. His presentation of his opening question and the development of his thesis were both ingenious. One of the attendees tried to quote a Gemara that seemed to contradict Rav Bunim’s position, and Rav Bunim cut him off by exclaiming, “That Gemara doesn’t exist!” The questioner tried to press his point, but Rav Bunim repeated firmly, “I am telling you that there is no such Gemara in the entire Talmud Bavli. Perhaps it is in the Yerushalmi; I do not have full knowledge of it.” Of course, the shiur ended with another brilliant explanation that shed new light on the entire topic.

Another shiur that I attended was delivered by someone whom I had never heard of. The advertisements referred to him as Rav Chaim Meir of Dzhikov, and I discovered that he was a talmid of Rav Avrohom Genechovsky, who was known as a world-class Torah genius. Rav Chaim Meir founded a community or chassidus of some kind in Givat Zeev about 15 years ago. Five years later, after the passing of his father—Rav Yechezkel of Dzhikokv, a great-grandson of the Ahavas Yisroel of Vizhnitz—Rav Chaim Meir took his place as the Rebbe of Dzhikov. Today, he lives in Givat Zeev and heads a bais din for monetary cases, as well as serving as the rov of a shul known as Ateres Yeshuah and a community known as Ayelet Hashachar. In addition, he is an author of seforim. My son attended a shiur he delivered last Sunday at Shaarei Tevunah, a large shul in the neighborhood of Ramot, and urged me to attend a shiur as well. A little research led me to discover that he was scheduled to speak on the following day in Neve Yaakov, and I made sure to be present. Needless to say, I enjoyed every minute of the shiur.

Some of the other shiurim were delivered by rabbonim whom I had heard in the past, but there was one other speaker whom I heard for the first time: Rav Yishai Toledano. But this wasn’t my first encounter with him. On the contrary, we grew up together; Rav Yishai is several years younger than I am and is the son of Rav Nissim Toledano, who was the rosh yeshiva of Sheeris Yosef in Beer Yaakov and a close friend of my father, who served as rov of the community. I knew that Rav Yishai had become a marbitz Torah and a distinguished rosh yeshiva in Yerushalayim, and I had been told that he was as brilliant as his father. This Chol Hamoed, I decided to attend his shiur in Ramot. Sure enough, I found out that the resemblance between Rav Yishai and his father was astounding, and the style and delivery of his shiur were reminiscent of his late father’s oratory as well.

These were some of the highlights of my experiences on Chol Hamoed, but it is not a comprehensive overview of the events of this holiday by any means. The Kosel Hamaaravi received large crowds of visitors, and the sukkos that appeared in yards and on balconies across the country, as usual, were the barometer of the level of feeling for Yiddishkeit among the people of Israel. There were also many events attended by the gedolei Yisroel. Nevertheless, we must put these topics aside and move on to other issues.

The Miracle of the Plane That Didn’t Crash

On Chol Hamoed, we experienced a miracle—or, better yet, a series of miraculous events, as you heard and read in a different section of this newspaper. The story of the aborted hijacking of the Flydubai flight to Israel has rightfully garnered international attention. Even President Trump posted a video praising the heroes who banded together to save all 174 passengers on the flight, including 27 children, from certain death. Every passenger on that flight attested that they stared death in the eyes in the most literal sense: They were able to look out the windows and watch helplessly as the plane raced toward the ground. And almost all of them acknowledged that their salvation came from Hashem. It was an inescapable conclusion; in this case, there were no Mossad agents or air force pilots to take credit for averting the disaster. One woman on the flight declared, “I don’t believe in anything, but I spoke to the Creator today, and I begged Him to keep me and my children alive.”

Flydubai flight FZ 1073 to Israel on Wednesday morning ended with an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after one of the pilots attempted to hijack and crash the plane. The copilot, from Oman, was the attempted hijacker, and the captain, from the United Arab Emirates, managed to open the door to the cockpit despite his injuries, which made it possible for several passengers to enter the cockpit and overpower the copilot. The flight took off from Dubai at 6:05, and it began losing altitude sharply at 8:21, dropping over 14,000 feet in less than half a minute. At 8:31, the plane broadcast a general distress call. Seven minutes later, it transmitted code 7500, which indicates a suspected hijacking.

When the signals were received, two air force jets were scrambled to intercept the plane and urgent situation assessments were held by security officials. At 9:20, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yisroel Katz held an urgent security meeting. At 9:45, the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, and it very quickly came to light that the incident was more than a mere hijacking; it was an attempt to murder all the passengers on the plane. Two days later, the copilot revealed under interrogation that his original intent had been to crash the plane somewhere in Israel, perhaps even deliberately targeting a tower in Tel Aviv.

In the aftermath of the aborted catastrophe, many tough questions are being asked, especially how a pilot with ties to terror organizations and a known interest in their activities managed to be given responsibility for a flight landing in Israel. The time has come to investigate which authorities should have prevented his presence on the plane and why they failed to achieve that.

Was Netanyahu Warned Before the October 7 Massacre?

Another story that cannot be ignored is the plethora of recent claims that Prime Minister Netanyahu was warned very specifically before October 7 about Hamas’s plans to carry out a murderous onslaught. This week marks the secular anniversary of the horrific massacre, and the latest claims have become the talk of the country, especially with an election looming in the near future. According to reports in America, which were publicized in Israel as well, Netanyahu received a series of warnings and alarming messages during the weeks before the October 7 massacre: The head of Egyptian intelligence supposedly made a brief, clandestine visit to Israel, and Cairo continued transmitting messages until two days before the attack. According to the New York Times, Netanyahu also received a personal warning from Mohammed bin Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates, that Hamas was considering a large-scale attack. Netanyahu, for his part, vehemently denies having received such a warning. And there is one very significant detail of all these claims: Even if it is true that the prime minister was warned, there is no indication in any of the reports that he was notified about the date of the planned massacre or its target, or that he received any detailed information at all about the broad invasion carried out by Hamas.

According to an investigative report that appeared in the Atlantic, based on interviews with dozens of sources, a rented Cessna plane associated with Egyptian intelligence landed in Ben-Gurion Airport on the afternoon of September 26, 2023, exactly 11 days before the massacre. The plane was directed to an isolated area of the airport that sometimes serves as a venue for sensitive diplomatic or security meetings. The plane was carrying Abbas Kamel, then the head of Egyptian intelligence and a close associate of Egyptian president a-Sisi. It remained in Israel for only 67 minutes before taking off for its return flight to Cairo. According to the Atlantic, the flight was logged in the Airport Authority’s official records and was verified by independent flight tracking systems as well. Nothing has been revealed about who met with Kamel during those 67 minutes; however, it is claimed that the purpose of his visit was to convey an urgent message that Hamas appeared to be preparing for a massive attack and the window of opportunity for preventing a calamity was steadily closing. The report adds that Kamel advised Israel to provide economic relief for Gaza in a bid to prevent conflict. This report, too, indicates that the warning did not provide any concrete information about the massacre that would take place on October 7.

Naturally, these reports have generated many headlines in Israel. Netanyahu completely denies having received any warnings from anyone; he has even filed libel suits against Israeli reporters who presented the claims as verified facts. In fact, even according to the New York Times, five former senior officials in Israel have attested that the warnings were not relayed to the heads of the security services. The newspaper also reported that it had received the protocols of a security discussion held by Netanyahu on October 1, six days before the massacre, and that there was no mention of a warning from the president of the UAE.

Netanyahu’s Secret Visit to the UAE

Mohammed bin Zayed has perhaps become one of the people most capable of influencing the Israeli election. If it is true that he warned Netanyahu in advance of the October 7 massacre and that the Israeli premier did nothing with the information, it would constitute an unforgivable offense on Netanyahu’s part. But if he did not convey the warning, then the accusations against Netanyahu are nothing less than a vicious libel. What, then, is the truth? Did the UAE president warn Netanyahu before October 7, or didn’t he? For now, bin Zayed refuses to answer the question.

In the interim, it has been revealed that Prime Minister Netanyahu recently left Israel for several hours for a secret visit to the UAE, where he met with President bin Zayed. The meeting was supposed to remain under the radar, while Israel planned to issue a joint statement with the UAE only after the delegation returned; however, a media outlet learned of the prime minister’s trip and publicized it prematurely. They were within their rights to report on the meeting before the official statement; however, the story was released while the prime minister and his companions were still on their return flight, and that is much less tolerable. In addition to Netanyahu, the meeting was attended by Mossad director Roman Goffman and National Security Council director Shmuel Ben-Ezra, as well as a senior figure in the Shin Bet’s Personal Security Division and other high-ranking officials in the Prime Minister’s Office. Netanyahu traveled to Abu Dhabi in a private plane that was previously used by high-ranking Mossad officials and by the prime minister himself on other trips to the United Arab Emirates. The meeting with bin Zayed was scheduled in recent weeks and was intended to take place under cover of secrecy until the Israeli delegation was ready to return to Israel; the two countries planned to issue a joint statement only after their return.

What did Netanyahu and the other participants discuss during their meeting? No one knows. However, it is known that the meeting included leaders of numerous Arab states. Rumor has it that Netanyahu took advantage of the occasion to pressure bin Zayed to publicly deny the allegations that he had warned the Israeli premier before October 7 about Hamas’s plans.

Nevertheless, the news of the meeting may actually be eclipsed in its importance by the fact that an Israeli television station reported it while Netanyahu was still in transit back to Israel. This created a genuine, serious danger to Netanyahu and his men—a threat that can only be considered even more severe in light of the attempted hijacking of a commercial flight from Dubai.

Former Fire Service Volunteer Plots Terror Attack

There were some other security incidents that must be mentioned here as well. First, the IDF and Shin Bet announced over Sukkos that they had eliminated the terrorist who was filmed during the Simchas Torah massacre abducting Noa Argamani and Avinatan Ohr from the Nova festival. According to the report, “The IDF and Shin Bet, together with the Gideonim unit, launched an aerial attack on the Nuseirat area yesterday and eliminated terrorist Sahar Nadal Lutfi Saqar, who drove the motorcycle used to abduct Noa Argamani and Avinatan Ohr to Gaza from the Nova festival. Aside from his direct involvement in the kidnapping, Saqar was affiliated with global jihadist organizations operating within the Gaza Strip and supplied weapons to Hamas during the war. In recent times, he collaborated with the military wings of both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to plan attacks against Israeli troops and civilians, in direct violation of the ceasefire agreement. He was eliminated to remove the threat that he had become.”

This is the latest in a series of targeted eliminations carried out by Israel in Gaza and in Lebanon. The goal of the operations in Gaza is to ensure that no commander in service of Hamas remains alive and to kill everyone who was involved in the October 7 massacre. In Lebanon, the purpose is to eliminate the entire command hierarchy of Hezbollah. Over Yom Tov, attempts were made to eliminate a terrorist who is considered the direct successor of Nasrallah. It is unclear if the attack was successful.

In other news, a resident of the Old City of Yerushalayim was arrested on suspicion of setting fire to a sukkah in the area of Rechov Agrippas in the center of the city. Investigators from the Lev Habirah police station launched a focused investigation after suspicions arose that the fire in the sukkah had been deliberately set. The suspect was transferred to the police station on suspicion of arson with a racist motive.

Finally, a 19-year-old resident of Kfar Kassem, who served as a volunteer firefighter during his period of national service, was recently arrested for allegedly plotting a terror attack targeting an Amdocs server farm in the center of the country. This report is quite alarming: The Arab suspect was a volunteer at a fire station, and while he was only a member of the support staff and not an actual firefighter, he managed to pass all the required security checks to obtain the position and served for about a year in the context of national service. This revelation comes alongside mounting fears over the large number of Arabs serving on the staffs of hospitals and medical clinics throughout Israel. One must wonder if we are looking at a ticking time bomb.

Right and Left Evenly Balanced in Polls

The election campaign is in its final stretch. The floor of the Knesset building where I work is also occupied by the Central Elections Committee, and they have mounted a large countdown clock on the wall. At the time of this writing, it shows another 22 days remaining until the election.

The most important question that will be decided by the election, of course, is the balance between the two blocs. There is the bloc of Netanyahu’s supporters, which some describe as the right-wing bloc, and then there is the center-left bloc, which is known by some as the bloc of repair or change. From our standpoint, however, it is the bloc of hatred for the Torah. Every single member of that group has been talking ceaselessly about their intent to impose severe penalties and other sanctions on anyone who doesn’t join the army; they are promoting punitive measures that no one ever dreamed of introducing in the past. Lieberman is even talking about stripping draft evaders of their drivers’ licenses and the right to vote for the Knesset. It is very sad to hear the rhetoric emerging from that side of the political map.

Not long ago, there was a meeting of the leaders of the bloc: Eizenkot, Bennett, Lapid, Yair Golan, and Avigdor Lieberman. (They do not consider Benny Gantz to be relevant at all; after all, the polls indicate that he will not cross the electoral threshold.) It seems that the glue that holds these politicians together is their shared hatred for chareidim and Netanyahu. There is no other conceivable force that could unify them. During that meeting, they agreed to avoid making problematic statements that might alienate right-wing voters (who do not wish to vote for Netanyahu). Nevertheless, Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats party and a master of unwise statements, was apparently unable to hold himself back. Several hours after the meeting, he announced that the Arab parties would be worthy political partners and that he would consider forming a government with them. This angered Lieberman, who announced that he would not support a government that includes Arabs. The Likud party seized the conflict within the left-wing bloc as an opportunity to warn the public that the left would certainly establish a government relying on the Arab parties, which would be extremely dangerous. As an example, they pointed to the Bennett-Lapid government, which was blocked from carrying out certain important measures by Mansour Abbas, who was a partner in the government. Gadi Eizenkot, who is eager to portray himself as a friend of the right, also quickly denied the rumors: “Since they do not accept the three basic rules, including recognizing Hamas as a terror organization that must be destroyed, they will not be part of the next government,” he asserted.

Meanwhile, according to most of the polls, the blocs are evenly balanced. Neither of the two blocs seems to be independently capable of garnering the 61 mandates required to form a government. That seems to give the upper hand to the so-called change bloc, since they have the apparent option of partnering with the Arabs. On the other hand, Lieberman, who is a member of that bloc, has gone on the record asserting that he will never cross that line. At the same time, in a deadlock where neither side can reach 61 mandates on their own, Netanyahu might reach some sort of agreement with Eizenkot (or even Bennett and Lapid) to form a national unity government of sorts; the chareidim would undoubtedly be the victims of such an arrangement.

I should also note that some polls indicate that the right-wing bloc will defeat the left-wing bloc, and we have learned from previous election cycles that the polls are often misleading.

There is much room for commentary on events within the right-wing bloc as well. One thing bears mentioning: Ofer Winter is currently the greatest headache for the chareidim. While he seems likely to cross the electoral threshold and even to help boost the right-wing bloc to 61 mandates or more, his public statements about drafting chareidim are extremely concerning—and very different from the tone he adopted when he was in the army. His presence is probably good for Netanyahu, since he attracts right-wing voters who are not interested in voting for Netanyahu. However, there is another side of the coin, which makes him pose a significant threat: If he fails to cross the threshold, he will cost the bloc two or three mandates, which might be just enough to tilt the scales in favor of the opposition. As I’ve mentioned in the past, this would be an echo of a disastrous election earlier in Israeli history, when the Techiya party failed to cross the threshold and caused the left-wing Rabin government to come to power, bringing about the Oslo Accords. This has left the Likud with a serious dilemma whether to support Winter or to fight against him.

Europe and the Netherlands Against the State of Israel

Meanwhile, we are dealing with hostility from Europe. It is somewhat hard to understand this antipathy, since Islam is rapidly spreading across Europe and creating hardships for them, but it seems that their hatred for the Jews or Israel has made them oblivious to their own suffering. The most extreme anti-Israel stance of late has been adopted by the Dutch government, which imposed an extreme ban on all products and economic activities associated with Yehuda, Shomron, East Yerushalayim, and the Golan Heights. The latest edict of the Dutch government is a sweeping ban on the import, purchase, or sale of any goods produced in those areas. The Netherlands has prohibited even carrying such products in one’s personal luggage; just before Yom Tov, Dutch authorities were conducting intensive searches of the luggage of Israeli passengers arriving in their airports, with the goal of locating any such contraband. Even Dutch citizens are banned from carrying these forbidden products in their personal luggage. And the penalty for violations of the law is exceedingly draconian: Instead of a mere administrative offense, it is treated as a serious criminal act punishable by up to six years in prison and heavy fines.

Israel’s reaction to the Dutch decree was extreme. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar canceled the diplomatic passports of several citizens of the Netherlands who were visiting Yehuda and Shomron to monitor Israel’s “cruelty” to the Palestinian populace. At the same time, the king of the Netherlands visited the historic “Beth Jehoeda” shul in the Hague as a gesture to the Jewish citizens of the Netherlands. While the visit was ostensibly meant as a protest against anti-Semitism, it might have conveyed an unintended message against the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Dutch government as well.

Rav Dovid Batzri, Rosh Yeshivas Hashalom

This column would not be complete without mention of the passing of the renowned mekubal Rav Dovid Batzri, a beloved and revered figure and senior mekubal who headed Yeshivas Hashalom in Yerushalayim, a yeshiva for the study of Kabbolah. Rav Batzri passed away on erev Sukkos at the age of 85 in Bnei Brak, where he moved in recent years to live near his son as he grew weak and frail. Rav Batzri was born in Yerushalayim in the month of Av 5701 and was a scion of the magnificent dynasty of chachamim of Iraq. His mother was a great-granddaughter of Rav Yosef Chaim, the author of the Ben Ish Chai, and of Rav Yehuda Petaya, an illustrious mekubal. His three brothers were prominent figures as well: Rav Ezra Batzri was a former member of the Bais Din Hagadol, Rav Sasson Batzri was a dayan on the Ahavas Shalom bais din, and Rav Menachem Batzri was the menahel of Sukkas Dovid Institutes. His brothers-in-law were Rav Benzion Mutzafi and the late Rav Yehuda Mutzafi.

As a bochur, Rav Batzri learned in Yeshivas Porat Yosef in the Old City of Yerushalayim, under the tutelage of Rav Ezra Attiya. Acquiring a reputation for his exceptional hasmodah and tzidkus, he learned under the greatest talmidei chochomim of Yerushalayim, chief among them Rav Ovadiah Yosef. His wife, Rebbetzin Tzipporah Batzri, was the daughter of the mekubal Rav Salman Mutzafi. After his marriage, Rav Batzri founded Yeshivas Hashalom in the neighborhood of Mekor Boruch in Yerushalayim. The yeshiva was named for the mekubal Rav Shalom Sharabi, otherwise known as the Rashash, and quickly became a bastion of the study of Kabbolah. In the yeshiva, Rav Dovid Batzri instituted the study of the kavanos of davening according to the siddur of the Rashash and conducted special tikkunim for all sorts of needs: There were tikkunim for teshuvah or kareis, pidyon nefesh, and special procedures for salvation for married couples, healing, parnossah, and shalom bayis. Thousands of Jews from across the country and throughout the world streamed to his doorstep to receive his brachos and to participate in the tikkunim, which he conducted while shedding copious tears, as well as to receive his advice. Rav Batzri’s efforts often resulted in miraculous resolutions to the problems that were brought to his attention.

In addition to running the yeshiva, Rav Batzri was an outstanding orator who made the rounds of the cities of Israel and encouraged his audiences to strengthen their commitment to Shabbos observance, taharas hamishpocha, tznius, and fear of Heaven. He was especially known for his relentless efforts to uphold the sanctity of Yerushalayim and to stand guard against breaches of the standards of Yiddishkeit. With his passing, the Torah world has lost a spiritual giant who was a throwback to earlier generations and who tapped into the Torah’s mystical secrets and often brought about miracles. He was survived by a large, illustrious family that is carrying on his spiritual legacy. The levayah, which was held on erev Yom Tov, was attended by a huge crowd, including the leading rabbonim of the Sephardic community.

Where Would We Be Without The Experts?

What would we do without the media pundits, foreign policy scholars, brilliant analysts, and all the oracles of wisdom who repeatedly predict disaster and tell us how frightened we should be, and what we should do about it?

And if their predictions turn out to be spectacularly wrong? By then, the news cycle has moved on, the headlines have faded, and the experts save face by explaining what they really meant, which was different from what they said.

Consider, for example, the doom-and-gloom forecasts surrounding two of the biggest stories dominating the daily news: the war with Iran and the state of the American economy.

The mainstream media has repeatedly warned Americans that Iran is set to prevail over the United States and that the economic consequences to this country will be devastating. Some of the nation’s most respected commentators painted a picture of an America sliding toward military and economic disaster.

But predictions are one thing. Reality is another.

Perhaps the best way to gauge the experts’ competence is to look back at what they confidently told us would happen—and then contemplate what actually happened. The following headlines from the liberal mainstream press quoting the ‘experts’ are very revealing in hindsight.

“In Iran, the U.S. Appears Headed for a Strategic Defeat, Allies Fear” the NY Times wrote on Aug. 1, quoting leading foreign policy strategists.

“Iran Holds all the Cards Against Trump” ABC News warned in July, citing a Middle East expert who said Iran is winning the long game due to “its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz.”

More doom and gloom came at this time from the Brooking Institution, a liberal think tank. The article entitled “A Sinking Feeling: The Strait of Hormuz and Strains on US Naval Power” emphasized “critical shortfalls” in the Navy’s overall capabilities that may doom it to “strategic failure in the maritime conflict with Iran.”

A major assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) argued that while the U.S. has achieved success “on paper,” Iran is achieving its core goals simply “by surviving,” and that it is “forcing massive political and economic costs that the United States cannot long [sustain].”

“These facts,” the article jeered, “contrast sharply with official White House rhetoric, where President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth maintain that the U.S. is “one step ahead” and will win the war “very soon.”

Experts Predictions Collapse

The headlines that followed Trump’s and Hegseth’s remarks painted a strikingly different picture—one in which the experts’ predictions collapsed.

Consider the Wall Street Journal headline: “Oil Prices Fall as Gulf Crude Exports Recover.” The article reported that oil output from Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline was coming through “faster than anticipated,” helping to lower oil prices.

“Middle East Crude Oil Exports Back at Pre-war Levels,” a follow-up WSJ article detailed. “The Gulf has rewired its oil export infrastructure to no longer depend on a single route [such as the Strait of Hormuz].”

“The 10-day average of crude exports from the Middle East has rebounded to 17.5 million barrels a day, or 98% of prewar levels,” J.P. Morgan analysts attested.

The same media outlets that eagerly hyped up warnings of economic devastation, crippling oil shortages, and an American economy falling apart have been noticeably quiet as those predictions failed to materialize.

In a few short months, President Trump’s plan has overcome a historic setback the experts called ‘insurmountable.’

Remember what they said? They said reversing the biggest-ever setback to global oil supply was impossible. In March, international-relations ‘expert’ John Mearsheimer told the Financial Express and anyone who would listen that “the Israelis bamboozled Trump into launching the war with Iran,” and that “Iran holds all the cards in the war.”

[This is the same ‘expert’ who twenty years ago wrote an inflammatory book accusing the pro-Israel lobby of “controlling Washington,” of “orchestrating” the Iraq war and a host of other evil deeds. When public officials and civic-minded groups slammed his work for peddling classic anti-Semitic tropes, Mearsheimer defended his bigotry. He argued that the fierce blowback was “proof” that pro-Israel elements controlled the media and the government_._]

Turnaround

In April, former U.S. negotiator Alan Eyre agreed with Mearsheimer, informing PBS that the Strait was Iran’s “single most important piece of strategic leverage” which the United States had failed to neutralize.

And now?

“Iran has Lost Considerable Leverage in the Strait of Hormuz,” a CNN headline proclaimed last week. “It Can’t Go on Like This Forever.”

“Given such a strong volume passing through the strait, it is clear Iran is losing its influence over it,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at maritime research firm Kpler.

What explains such a turnaround?

Rather than credit the Trump administration’s military and economic policies for breaking Iran’s chokehold on the Strait, CNN found a more convenient explanation. The oil market simply had “unlimited tricks up its sleeve to get oil to customers.”

And the experts who had predicted disaster? They were apparently blindsided by the oil market’s astonishing “tricks.” How could they possibly have anticipated them? After all, they’re only experts—not fortune-tellers.

Ironically, experts have been wrong so often that some are playing it safe by avoiding any further predictions. CNN reported that JP Morgan’s head of global commodities strategy has given up trying to predict US-Iran war moves. “For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don’t have a baseline view,” the strategy chief admitted in an advisory to investors. “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.”

Doomsayers’ Latest Dud

If experts can no longer predict where the Iran war is headed, they’ve been equally inept in forecasting the direction the American economy has been taking.

“America Growing More Pessimistic about the Economy as Gas Prices Remain Elevated,” ABC News reported last week.  “Americans’ View of the Economy Sinks to Lowest Level in More Than a Decade,” echoed US News and World Report.

Amid the chorus of doomsayers, some independent voices challenged the media narrative. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, scoffed at recent polls that purportedly show Americans’ negative feelings about the economy.

“Ahead of an election cycle, the fact that there’s possibly partisan pollsters telling us that the people are really depressed—it’s a classic Democrat move, and I just don’t buy it,” Hassett told CNN on “State of the Union.”

“Because if it were true, if the polls were of any value for thinking about what’s going on with consumers, then we should look at the consumption data and say, ‘Yeah, that’s right. People aren’t spending.’ But, in fact, the retailers are doing well,” Hasset pointed out.

According to a Sept. 20 WSJ article, the economy is actually humming. “The U.S. Economy is Accelerating,” the headline read. “Evidence keeps coming that investment and growth are picking up.”

Things are moving forward strongly enough that even government revenues are benefiting. As the Wall Street Journal noted, faster economic growth has buoyed tax revenue, which increased 3% during the first 11 months of the fiscal year.

“Even higher gasoline prices don’t seem to be restraining consumers,” the paper noted.

“The larger story here,” the editors concluded, “is that the economy as a whole, looks to be on a stronger footing than during the Biden years, when growth was driven by government handouts.”

Bold Educational Initiatives

The administration is not stopping at economic policy. One of President Trump’s newest initiatives puts the same emphasis on letting Americans direct more of their own resources based on their own values and priorities.

Politico reported on the Trump administration’s rollout of the Education Freedom Tax Credit, a program enacted as part of the administration’s 2025 tax law and now being put into operation.

Trump’s initiative is a national “school-choice” framework built around private contributions to scholarship organizations.

Under the Treasury’s proposed rules, taxpayers will be able to receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to scholarship organizations, or up to $3,400 for married couples filing jointly. The program is scheduled to begin in Jan. 2027.

In other words, alongside an economy that is showing signs of renewed momentum, the administration is advancing a policy that emphasizes tax relief, private initiative and greater choice for families.

Rather than sending millions in tax dollars to Washington, where the government decides how to spend it, the program allows citizens to use their own tax money, dollar for dollar, for scholarships to K-12 institutions of their choice.

Scholarship recipients could use their funding to pay for religious or private school tuition, homeschooling costs, tutoring and special education therapies, books, computers and other expenses connected to enrollment or attendance, according to officials at the Treasury Department.

“The Education Freedom Tax Credit marks a new chapter in educational freedom and opportunity by establishing America’s first nationwide school choice program and empowering states to give students and families more options,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“This tax credit has potential to be a game-changer for mosdos across the country,” an executive director of a Bais Yaakov school in Rockland County commented to Yated. “Community leaders need to do a good job of educating donors and parents as to how to obtain the program’s full benefit—it has huge potential in making yeshiva tuitions more affordable.”

Thirty states, including New York, have so far opted into the tax credit program, and experts predict many governors of Democrat-majority states will join as well.

Agudath Israel, which lobbied for the measure alongside other school choice advocates, hailed the new rules. “Today’s announcement is great news for American families and allows states and scholarship organizations to implement the tax credit in time for its launch in January 2027,” said Rabbi Motzen of Agudath Israel.

Outraged Democrats have filed a bill to repeal the tax credit, which legal experts say will likely go nowhere.

“For every precious public dollar funneled to private schools under this scheme—money that could be spent on instruction, lowering class sizes, modern buildings or new books in the library—public school parents will be hunting for stray pennies on the floor,” Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten complained.

“State governors should reject it,” she declared.

That may prove easier said than done. Governors will face substantial pressure from parents who may not look kindly on being denied the tax-credit benefits available under the new program. For families eager to exercise greater control over where their education dollars go, the political pressure to embrace the program could be enormous.

So far, thirty states have already signed on, leaving twenty “blue” states on the fence. “Thursday’s announcement will likely increase the pressure on the governors of those states,” Politico noted.

***

Trump: We’re Putting Parents Back in Charge

“From the very beginning of our country, Americans have understood that there’s no job more important than teaching our children to become happy, healthy, proud, productive, and flourishing citizens,” said President Donald Trump at a Rose Garden event in early September.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and dozens of parents and educators from around the country were in attendance.

Trump used the event to champion his new educational initiatives.

“Before I got here, the educational system was weaponized like everything else in our government,” he said.

Under the Biden administration, added Trump, “extreme ideologies” such as critical race theory and “deviant insanity” were forced upon children as young as 4 and 5 years old.

“Students were taught that our heroes are villains. The FBI was used to target patriotic parents at school board meetings. [Under the Biden Administration, the DOJ ordered the FBI to investigate activist parents who protested against school curricula that taught woke ideology to their children, even characterizing such parents as ‘domestic terrorists.’]

“And meanwhile,” the president added, “far too many government-run schools failed at the basics.”

Only 30% of American K-12 students, he added, were proficient in reading and math.

“Under the Trump administration, we’re systematically ending every single one of these radical-left betrayals and we’re putting the parents back in charge,” noted Trump. “They’re the ones that love our children. They’re the ones that should be in charge.”

By removing far-left extremism from the classroom, “we’re taking historic action to ensure that every child in America has access to a first-class education,” he said.

Trump also hailed the passage of the Education Freedom Tax Credit that was part of last year’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill Act.’

As mentioned above, the Education Freedom Tax Credit allows taxpayers to receive a credit of up to $1,700 for contributions made to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO).

SGOs, according to the Education Department, are nonprofits that accept contributions from individuals and use the funds to provide scholarships for education-related services at private, public, or religious schools — including tuition, fees, academic tutoring, and classroom supplies.

Unlike a traditional deduction, which decreases taxable income, the Education Freedom Tax Credit reduces the federal income taxes a person owes dollar-for-dollar.

Trump added Monday that his administration has presided over “the largest ever expansion” of school choice — “and we want every parent to have the power to send their child to a high-quality school that shares their values.”

The president also heralded the recently launched “Trump Accounts” — a government-managed investment program for American kids designed to help them invest money for college or other “qualified expenses” such as purchasing a first home or starting a business.

***

Victory ‘Around the Corner’

President Trump declared last Monday night that the United States is defeating Iran and predicted that the months-long war will soon come to an end.

He repeated his pledge that Washington will not permit Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon, promising that energy prices will fall sharply once the conflict is resolved.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump portrayed Iran as increasingly weakened politically and economically. He predicted that an end to hostilities would quickly relieve the pressure the fighting has imposed on global energy markets and American consumers.

“The war will end very quickly, and prices are going to come down very sharply. You might say, ‘Please, please, sir, it’s going down too fast!’ You watch what’s going to happen in a very short period of time,” he added.

“We’re saving the world from what could be one of the worst tragedies ever,” he told his audience. “They won’t have – that’s decided – they will not have a nuclear weapon. They understand that,” Trump said.

The president’s comments came at the same time as a renewed diplomatic effort to end the conflict, together with increased military pressure on Tehran as additional U.S. forces surged into the Gulf region.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the USS Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group are being deployed to the Middle East, adding 9,000 American soldiers to the U.S. military presence there.

The White House has simultaneously tightened economic pressure on Iran, sharply reducing international flights to Tehran. At the same time, sanctions and American military operations have significantly curtailed Iran’s ability to move oil and other goods through the region.

This past month, Iranian oil exports have been reduced to zero. Trump has repeatedly argued in recent days that Iran is approaching the point at which it will have little choice but to accept Washington’s terms.

Last Thursday, during an appearance at a Peterbilt Motors facility in Denton, Texas, Trump said Iran was “ready to fold up.” He suggested that the war could wrap up around the time of the November 3 midterm elections — or even sooner.

Trump has consistently maintained that Iran was dangerously close to developing a nuclear weapon when the war began at the end of February. He has always claimed that Tehran was only weeks away from reaching that point.

Iran had been “three to four weeks away, maybe less” from crossing the nuclear threshold, the president noted.

“And once they have a nuclear weapon,” he said, “the whole game is over.”

The United States removed some of its most powerful conventional bombers, which had been positioned to attack Iran from one of the most important NATO airbases in Europe. All twelve B-1B Lancer bombers stationed at RAF Fairford, in the county of Gloucestershire, about 80 miles west of London, were flown back to their home bases in the United States.

The Air Force has described RAF Fairford as its “preferred” European “bomber forward operating location.” It has been used extensively by U.S. military aircraft in previous conflicts going back to D-Day in 1944, including “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in 2003.

The planes were brought back to the U.S. following the arrest of suspected terrorists who were plotting to attack the base. The Pentagon’s European Command said the aircraft are still capable of striking Iran after taking off from their American home base.

President Trump confirmed that the planes were removed because of a specific threat to the British airbase. “Yeah, I think we can say that. They didn’t fly out by accident,” Trump said. “There were some threats, and rather than tempting the enemy… why should we leave them there? We moved them around a little bit.”

Vice President JD Vance said that the Pentagon moved the bombers “out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys.” The vice president then added that, “We do feel with some confidence that the Iranians are trying to do what the Iranian state has done for 49 years, which is engage in acts of terrorism against the United States and against a lot of other people as well.” He told reporters that, “We are being extremely cautious.”

British Prime Minister Burnham insisted the British base is safe, but refused to comment specifically on the military operations of “foreign nations” using the base.

British defense officials said that security has been enhanced at other RAF air bases in England being used by American F-35 and F-15E warplanes, with a special effort being made to improve their protection against drone attacks.

The series of events that triggered the withdrawal began when British police received a report of three suspicious white vans heading toward RAF Fairford. Police arrested five men in their 20s, all British citizens living in London. Police also evacuated 85 homes in the nearby village of Whellford as a precaution, and used a bomb disposal robot to search the three vehicles.

British police say they were first alerted to the possible attack by one of the five men arrested at the scene, who called Britain’s emergency phone line at 12:45 a.m., roughly an hour before a second call came in from a local citizen who saw the men heading toward the base and thought they looked suspicious.

The Suspected Terrorists Were Released For Lack Of Evidence

The five men were arrested under the British Explosives Act and on suspicion of preparing for a terrorist attack. However, no explosives were found in the vans, only containers filled with gasoline. Since no direct evidence of their guilt was found, the five were released the next day, but kept under close surveillance as British authorities looked into their backgrounds.

A sixth man, a 25-year-old dual British-Iranian citizen, was arrested in central London by British counterterrorism police a few days later, but he was also released on bail for lack of sufficient evidence to hold him.

British investigators are going through the suspects’ cellphones, dashboard cameras and other devices looking for clues and potential links to Iran, which in recent years has repeatedly mounted plots on British soil using criminal networks and other proxies.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that, “There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened at RAF Fairford, but of course it remains an ongoing, complex, and serious police investigation.” He also said that British forces were “working closely” with their U.S. counterparts in trying to get to the bottom of the suspected terrorist incident.

President Trump said that the five men had been under “investigation” prior to their arrests on September 27, and that they apparently intended to cause “big damage” at the British air base. Asked whether Iran was involved in the suspected terror plot, Trump would only say that “it might be,” but offered no further details.

Trump also said the five suspects intended to do serious damage to American planes and personnel, and criticized the British government’s decision to free them on bail.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also told Fox News last week that “what almost happened” in Britain was “a very serious situation … that clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor.”

In its initial reaction to the arrest of the five men, the Iranian embassy in London said it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” any attempt to “link Iran to” the alleged plot to attack the RAF Fairford base. After Prime Minister Burnham suggested that Iran was responsible for the plot, Iran doubled down on its denial, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accusing the U.K. of “barking up the wrong tree.”

U.S. Warned Of A Drone Swarm Attack Against The British Air Base

However, security officials in Washington, London, Berlin and Israel said they believe the terrorist plot against the British air base was real and was originated by either the IRGC or Iran’s military headquarters in Tehran.

According to the Washington Post, one of the intelligence warnings included a threat that the American bombers at Fairford could be hit in a swarm drone attack similar to one that Ukraine launched against Russian airbases in June 2025.

In that attack, called “Operation Spiderweb,” Ukraine smuggled 117 small quadcopter armed drones into Russia. They were concealed in hidden compartments in wooden cabins being transported in cargo trucks to the vicinity of four remote military air bases located deep in Siberia and Russia’s Far North. When the drones were guided by their remote Ukrainian pilots to their targets and detonated, they destroyed 41 military aircraft comprising one-third of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet and caused an estimated $7 billion worth of damage.

Robert Tollast, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based military think tank, said that other NATO bases across Europe face the same potential threat. He cited Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, which serves as both a civilian field and a NATO base. Its security was breached by an explosive drone in August that German technicians managed to defuse before it could blow up. The German government blamed Russia for the attack and reacted by ordering the closure of a Russian consulate, while Russia denied that it was responsible for the drone intrusion.

Israel’s Mossad orchestrated similar attacks during its twelve-day war against Iran in June 2025. The Mossad concealed swarms of explosive-laden drones in ordinary-looking vehicles, which drove them into position to destroy Iranian missile launch sites, air defense batteries and other military targets.

Piecing Together The Picture Of A Terrorist Plot

British government officials say that their investigation of the suspected plot against RAF Fairford is ongoing, but the exact nature of the terrorist scheme and the intelligence picture of it remains murky. Reportedly, American and other Western agencies pieced it together from a variety of different intercepts and informants.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, U.S. officials had discovered an Iran-linked scheme to attack the American bombers at Fairford and kill their personnel. The report said that the British nationals had been recruited by a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to carry out a multi-step plot that included the staging of a diversionary attack near the airbase.

Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu said that Israel’s intelligence services had warned Britain of a probable Iranian-sponsored terrorist attack, possibly followed by a long-range Iranian drone strike. Israel also warned Germany that the large American military bases in that country, at Ramstein and Spangdahlem, also face an elevated risk of attack from Iran.

On the other hand, some British officials have been more cautious in their comments about the plot against Fairford and have questioned just how sophisticated the planned terrorist attack on the air base was.

While Iran has previously launched attacks on British military bases in Cyprus and on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, a terrorist attack on a target in Britain’s homeland would be seen as a major Iranian escalation in the war. Such an attack would also be in line with a threat that was issued in July, in which the IRGC declared that “Any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory is a legitimate target for our forces.”

The Strategic Advantages Of Britain’s Fairford Air Base

Fairford has long served as the primary base for American bombers in Europe. During the active U.S. air war against Iran earlier this year, about two dozen American B-1Bs and B-52 bombers were based there.

One of Fairford’s main advantages is its heavily reinforced, 10,000-foot-long runway, enabling the largest U.S. warplanes to take off from there with a full load of bombs. Fairford is also less than half the distance from targets in Iran compared to the home bases of those bombers in the continental United States. That proximity to Iran enables American bombers to fly many more missions from Fairford during the same amount of time, without the need for mid-air refueling. However, Fairford is also far enough away from Iran that it is beyond the maximum known range of Iran’s ballistic missiles.

After the April ceasefire with Iran took effect, all of the B-52s at Fairford were sent back to their home bases in the U.S., as well as some of the B-1Bs, but twelve of them remained in Fairford so that they would be immediately available to resume the bombing of Iran in case President Trump decided that such a move was necessary.

Britain’s Prime Minister Starmer Was A Reluctant U.S. Ally

In February, as the U.S. military was massing its forces near Iran, President Trump said that the U.S. might need to use the air bases in Diego Garcia and Fairford to head off a feared Iranian attack. But Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to allow either base to be used for a U.S. strike against Iran.

When the U.S. and Israel launched joint pre-emptive strikes on Iran on February 28, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many other Iranian leaders, Starmer refused Trump’s invitation to join in. However, in an address to the English people a few hours after the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran began, Starmer said, “Even in the United Kingdom, the Iranian regime poses a direct threat to dissidents and the Jewish community. Over the last year alone, they have backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on U.K. soil.”

Starmer relented a few days later, after Iranian drones and missiles hit targets in other Persian Gulf countries hosting U.S. forces, including civilian targets such as hotels and airports. An Iranian drone also hit the RAF base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, even though Britain refused to play any part in the U.S.-Israeli pre-emptive strikes.

In reaction to those attacks, Starmer announced that he would allow the U.S. to use the British bases in Diego Garcia and Fairford for “specific and limited defensive” operations to protect British citizens, forces and allies in the region. The British prime minister also ridiculed the suggestion that the U.S. and Israel could overthrow the Islamic regime using air power alone by declaring, “This government does not believe in regime change from the skies.”

After Iran fired two intermediate-range missiles at the British base in Diego Garcia, Starmer extended the permission for the U.S. warplanes to use British air bases to include missions intended to protect commercial shipping from Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

Starmer’s About-Face On Iran Came Too Late For Trump

However, President Trump was not appeased by Starmer’s about-face. He publicly complained that Britain’s prime minister had waited far too long to allow the U.S. to use its bases. Trump said that the so-called “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, which dates back to the darkest days of World War II, is “not what it was” then. He suggested that Prime Minister Starmer was acting more like Neville Chamberlain, who tried to appease Adolf Hitler by surrendering Czechoslovakia in the notorious 1938 agreement at Munich, rather than Winston Churchill, who inspired the British nation with his determination to stand and fight the Nazis to the bitter end, even after the fall of France in June of 1940.

Trump also criticized Starmer for agreeing to hand British sovereignty over the island of Diego Garcia to the nearby African country of Mauritius, even though Britain received in return from Mauritius a 99-year lease permitting it to continue using the island’s military base.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth singled out the British Royal Navy for criticism for its failure to assist the U.S. Navy in its efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, even though other NATO allies, including Italy, Spain, Germany and France also refused to participate. However, Hegseth argued that Britain’s actions were particularly inexcusable because of the crucial role that the U.S. played in saving that country from defeat by the Nazis after the fall of France in 1940.

The U.S.-British “Special Relationship” Is Now In Jeopardy

Historians describe the level of cooperation between Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and U.S. military support for Great Britain as completely unprecedented, especially because the United States had declared its neutrality in the war before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. 1941.

The “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, the phrase which Churchill coined during a wartime speech in 1944, continued into the postwar era. In Churchill’s famous speech, delivered in March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, he observed that, “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent [of Europe].” As a result, Churchill insisted that the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, including the sharing of intelligence, strategic cooperation, and the joint use of military bases, had to continue in order to halt the worldwide spread of Soviet-style communism.

However, there were significant challenges during the years that followed to that “special relationship,” because the U.S. was growing stronger, while Great Britain had entered a long period of economic decline as it gradually disbanded its global colonial empire.

Earlier Crises In The U.S.-British Special Relationship

In 1956, the “special relationship” was sorely tested by the Suez Crisis, which was triggered when Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal and, at the same time, to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, effectively blockading the port of Eilat. Israel also feared that Nasser was preparing for an attack after Egypt received a massive shipment of modern Soviet-designed arms from Czechoslovakia. Britain allied itself with France and secretly with Israel to launch a joint attack on Egypt.

British and French forces succeeded in seizing control of Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, and Israeli troops conquered the Egyptian troops guarding Gaza and the entire Sinai peninsula, including the Red Sea choke point known as Sharm el-Sheikh. President Dwight D. Eisenhower feared that the Soviet Union would use the joint attack as an excuse to intervene on Egypt’s side, and reacted by condemning the British, French, and Israeli military operations. Eisenhower also threatened to withhold crucial U.S. financial support from all three countries, and to undermine the value of the British pound, unless they agreed to a U.N. ceasefire resolution, the withdrawal of their troops occupying Egyptian territory, the reopening of the blocked Suez Canal, and its return to Egyptian control.

Eisenhower’s ultimatum stopped the British-French military effort to recapture the Suez Canal within a few days. Britain’s newly installed Labour Party prime minister, Harold Macmillan, then expressed Great Britain’s dilemma: finding a way to maintain its friendly “special relationship” with the United States, without becoming its puppet state. As Macmillan observed at that time, “Any partners are bound to have their differences now and then. … We don’t intend to part from the Americans, and we don’t intend to be satellites.”

The next crisis in the “special relationship” was triggered by the April 1982 invasion by Argentina of the British-ruled Falkland Islands, located 250 miles off the coast of Argentina in the southern Atlantic Ocean. At first, President Ronald Reagan tried to broker a negotiated settlement and refused to provide Britain with military support against Argentina, a NATO ally. However, after the Reagan administration’s diplomatic efforts failed, the U.S. imposed diplomatic sanctions on Argentina and provided Great Britain with intelligence and military support that eventually enabled the British military to retake the islands.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton decided to grant a visa to Gerry Adams, the leader of Northern Ireland’s pro-independence Sinn Féin political party, over the strong objections of British Prime Minister John Major. Adams was accused of being a member of the Irish Republican Army, which conducted a campaign of terrorist bombings in an effort to force Great Britain to give up its control over Northern Ireland and enable it to be reunited with the rest of Ireland. While Prime Minister Major responded to Adams’ visit to the U.S. by refusing to take phone calls from President Clinton for several weeks, the move ultimately drew the U.S. as a mediator into the peace talks between England and Sinn Féin. Those talks eventually resulted in a 1998 agreement which ended the decades-long conflict over Northern Ireland’s status as part of Great Britain.

Starmer Expresses Regret Over Cooperation With The U.S. In Iraq

In March, 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made the unilateral decision to support President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq by contributing tens of thousands of British soldiers as well as intelligence support. However, the British involvement in the war in Iraq was deeply unpopular with most British voters and triggered one of the largest public protests in British history, bringing more than one million demonstrators into the streets of London.

In a speech to the British Parliament earlier this year by then-Prime Minister Starmer explaining why he rejected Trump’s invitation to join the attack on Iran, he cited Britain’s decision to join the U.S. effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power, based upon claims by Bush administration officials at the time that they had irrefutable evidence that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

“We all remember the mistakes of Iraq, and we have learned those lessons. Any U.K. actions must always have a lawful basis, and a viable, thought-through plan,” Starmer said.

Is The U.S.-British Special Relationship Still Real?

Some foreign policy experts have long disparaged the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain as a myth. It is no longer the partnership between equals that it was during World War II because Britain’s economic and military power has steadily diminished over the past 80 years.

Britain’s former national security adviser, Lord Peter Ricketts, says that the U.K. should “completely forget” the special-relationship idea. He told the BBC that because the suspected terrorists managed to convince the U.S. to remove its bombers from RAF Fairford without detonating anything, “It’s hard to conclude anything other than that this [incident] will be seen as a success by Iran.”

King Charles’ April Visit To The U.S. Was A Rescue Mission

This visit by Britain’s King Charles III to Washington, D.C., in April was widely described in the media coverage as a rescue mission for the “special relationship.” In his address to a joint session of Congress, King Charles noted that the centuries of interaction between the U.S. and the U.K. have been characterized by “reconciliation and renewal.” He acknowledged that the U.S. and the U.K. have not always seen eye to eye, and that both countries are now living through “times of great uncertainty.”

King Charles stressed that when the interests of the two nations are in alignment, they can do great things “not just for the benefit of our peoples, but of all peoples.” For example, he noted that the concept of checks and balances on government, which is a bedrock principle of the U.S. Constitution, is based on a British legal tradition that can be traced all the way back to the Magna Carta adopted in the year 1215.

He also declared that today in Great Britain, “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since [it won its] independence,” and that “the actions of this great nation matter even more.”

The British monarch noted that despite their differences, “Our two countries have always found ways to come together.” He said that the NATO alliance is not a one-sided agreement, as President Trump has often complained, and recalled that the only time that the NATO alliance invoked Article 5 of its charter, declaring that an attack on any NATO member is an attack on all, was in response to the 9/11 terror attack by al Qaeda on the United States.

King Charles concluded that, “The commitment and expertise of the United States armed forces and its allies lie at the heart of NATO, pledged to each other’s defense, protecting our citizens and interests, [and] keeping North Americans and Europeans safe from our common adversaries.”

The perceived terrorist threat to the American B-1B bombers based at the Fairford Air Base highlights the fact that the U.S. war against Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of international terrorism, has important national security ramifications for other countries around the world, including Great Britain, which is more than 3,000 miles from Iran.

A Brief History Of The B-1b Bomber

The B-1B Lancer entered service with the U.S. Air Force in 1986 as a strategic bomber capable of penetrating enemy airspace carrying both nuclear and conventional weapons.

The original B-1 was intended to serve as a supersonic replacement for the 1950s-era B-52 bomber. However, the B-1 program was canceled in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter because of the development of much cheaper cruise missiles which could be launched as standoff weapons by the B-52, as well as initial plans for the development of a radical new type of radar-evading stealth bomber.

However, because of long delays in the development of the B-2 stealth bomber, President Ronald Reagan announced in 1981 that he was ordering 100 modified B-1B bombers as an interim solution to keep the U.S. strategic nuclear bomber threat viable until the B-2 could be deployed. The redesigned B-1B was capable of carrying a much larger bomb load than the original B-1. The B-1B also incorporated new “stealth” radar-evading design elements, improving its ability to penetrate hostile airspace undetected.

As part of the START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreement with the Soviet Union, which was signed in 1991, the U.S. modified all of its B-1B bombers so that they would no longer be capable of using nuclear weapons.

However, the B-1B remains capable of carrying a payload of up to 75,000 pounds of conventional weapons, including a mix of JDAM precision-guided bombs, JASSM cruise missiles, as well as a large variety of other non-nuclear weapons.

The B-1B is capable of flying more than 7,400 miles without refueling, with a top speed around Mach 1.2. It can also approach well-defended targets undetected by flying at low altitudes at high subsonic speed. Because of its variable swept wings, a fully loaded B-1B can take off from much shorter runways than the B-52 needs, making it much easier to deploy than the B-52 at the air bases of U.S. allies around the world.

Since entering service forty years ago, the U.S. Air Force has used the B-1B very effectively as a conventional bomber against targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and, now, Iran. Of the 100 B-1B warplanes that were ordered by the Reagan administration more than 40 years ago, 45 of the planes remain in active service with the Air Force today.

U.S. And Britain Still Searching For Answers To The Terror Threat

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are still trying to find more evidence to determine whether the suspects arrested at RAF Fairford were recruited and directed by Iran. They are also re-evaluating the seriousness of the terrorist threat to U.S. warplanes stationed at British air bases, and whether it is possible to strengthen the defenses of those bases sufficiently to protect them against Iranian-directed drone attacks.

New York City Zohran Mamdani released a statement Wednesday marking the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre.

The statement read, “This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss. The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment. To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”

The statement drew sharp condemnation from Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, who accused the mayor of attempting to exploit the anniversary for political purposes.

Danon denounced Mamdani’s statement as an “attempt to hijack the anniversary of October 7 and turn it into yet another propaganda attack against Israel.”

“It is like turning September 11 into a day of mourning for al-Qaeda terrorists,” Danon accused.

The Anti-Defamation League also criticized Mamdani’s statement, accusing him of using the anniversary of the massacre to promote anti-Israel messaging.

“You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual antizionist talking points. The city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel deserves a mayor who can honor the dead without exploiting them,” the ADL said.

Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel said that, “The statement by NY Mayor Mandami is an outrageous & disgusting rant & made on a day that ought to honor the over 1200 civilians butchered by Hamas including 46 Americans.  His comments are as insensitive & insulting as saying on the 9-11 Anniversary that “While we mourn the loss of those murdered by terrorists we condemn the response of the United States equally.”  There is NO genocide in Gaza…  An apology for his obtuse and utterly ignorant remarks are not enough. G-d help the people of New York for electing a jihadist sympathizer.”

Israel’s Consul-General in New York, Ofir Akunis, denounced Mamdani’s statement, calling him “a disgrace, source of shame, and an insult to the memory of the murdered victims.”

“Anyone with a human heart should be ashamed of Mamdani’s response to the October 7 massacre, a day when human monsters invaded the State of Israel on a holiday, murdering, kidnapping, beheading hundreds, and raping hundreds of women,” Akunis said.

“Mamdani, displaying a complete lack of human sensitivity, continues to spread his antisemitic blood libels against the Jewish state. It is a disgrace to New York City that such a man stands at its helm, and chooses, on this day, to show disrespect for the memory of the murdered victims,” he said.

“Mayor Mamdani chose, once again, to use the day to accuse Israel of “genocide.” That claim is demonstrably false. The IDF has taken extraordinary steps to minimize civilian casualties, far beyond what the law of armed conflict requires, while fighting an enemy that systematically hides behind women and children and uses civilians as human shields,” the Israeli-American Council said, adding that “rhetoric like this doesn’t stay online – it is exactly the kind of messaging that has fueled a documented rise in antisemitic incidents across New York City.”

“The mayor’s job is to keep New Yorkers safe and ensure Jewish and Israeli residents can mourn without their grief being hijacked for a political attack. The mayor today has betrayed his duty and continued to fuel anti-Jewish hatred,” Akunis concluded.

One of the great ironies of life is that we spend so much of it trying to achieve the very thing that we often find most difficult to hold on to.

We want to be happy. We want our homes to be happy, our families to be happy, and our children to be happy. We want to be surrounded by happiness. Yet, too often, happiness is elusive. We can spend years working toward something we are certain will bring us satisfaction, only to discover that once we have attained it, the feeling we anticipated does not quite last. The new home becomes familiar, the accomplishment becomes yesterday’s news, the long-awaited vacation ends, and the thing we once imagined would make everything feel right simply becomes another part of our lives.

It is not that these things do not bring happiness. They do. A beautiful simcha, a nachas-filled moment, a meaningful accomplishment, a family gathering, a good piece of news – these are genuine sources of joy. The question is why the joy they bring so often seems to fade and why a person can possess so much of what he once dreamed of having and still find himself searching for something more.

Perhaps the answer begins with the simple distinction that there is a difference between having reasons to be happy and knowing how to be happy.

A person can have many blessings and fail to experience them as blessings. He can live surrounded by people he loves and remain preoccupied with what is missing. He can be blessed with health, family, Torah, parnossah, and steady kindnesses from Hashem, yet spend his days measuring his life against someone else’s and wondering why he does not have what the other person has. Happiness is not determined by what a person possesses. It is determined by what he sees when he looks at his life.

The Torah understands this profoundly. Simcha is not presented as a luxury, an emotional bonus that comes naturally when circumstances happen to cooperate. It is something we are commanded to pursue and cultivate. And when the Torah speaks of the Yomim Tovim, it commands us, “Vesomachta bechagecha – You shall rejoice on Yom Tov.”

Yet, one Yom Tov is singled out in a remarkable way.

Chazal refer to Pesach as Zeman Cheiruseinu, the time of our freedom, when we went from slavery to freedom; from being under the control of Mitzrayim to becoming a nation.

Shavuos is referred to as Zeman Matan Toraseinu, the time when we received the Torah.

Sukkos is referred to as Zeman Simchoseinu, our time of joy.

The name bears a strong message for us, especially in our day.

As the posuk (Vayikra 23:43) says, the Yom Tov of Sukkos commemorates the sukkos in which Hashem sheltered us in the midbar. Sukkos has distinctive mitzvos: the obligation to dwell in the sukkah and the mitzvah of daled minim.

Yet, when Chazal seek to tell us what Sukkos is, they do not call it the time of the sukkah or the time of the arba minim. They refer to it as a time of simcha.

What did Chazal see in Sukkos that makes simcha not merely one of its themes, but its very identity?

Chazal saw in Sukkos the root of happiness.

Happiness always seems to be just a little bit ahead of us. We can almost see it, and we are certain that we will catch up with it when the next thing happens, when the next problem is resolved, when the next accomplishment is achieved, or when the next long-awaited moment finally arrives. And then it does arrive, and we enjoy it, sometimes immensely, but before long, we find ourselves looking ahead once again, waiting for the next thing that we believe will bring us the happiness that seems to have slipped just beyond our reach.

What is it that makes a person happy? Happy people are not necessarily those who have the most, and unhappy people are not necessarily those who have the least.

Quite often, in Yerushalayim, you will meet people who live with their ten children in tiny apartments, and they seem to be the happiest people alive. And then you can read about the wealthiest people and they are miserable. The richest man in the world recently wrote that “whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.”

So how do we attain happiness? What is the secret?

We are commanded to serve Hashem with joy, and when the Torah speaks about the Yomim Tovim, it repeatedly emphasizes the obligation of vesomachta bechagecha, to rejoice on this Yom Tov.

What is it about Sukkos that makes simcha its defining characteristic? Why is this the Yom Tov that Chazal identify specifically with happiness? What does Sukkos teach us about something every human being wants so desperately – the secret of being genuinely happy?

We are taught to serve Hashem with simcha, and the Yomim Tovim are specifically associated with the obligation of “vesomachta bechagecha,” to rejoice during the Yomim Tovim. Yet, although this command applies to all the Yomim Tovim, Sukkos possesses a unique distinction. It is not merely a time when we are instructed to be happy. Chazal define the very essence of the Yom Tov as Zeman Simchoseinu, the Time of Our Joy.

Why does its name focus on the joy of the Yom Tov rather than on the sukkos in which Hashem protected us in the midbar, or on the daled minim that occupy such a prominent place in our observance of the Yom Tov? What is it about Sukkos that creates and mandates such an extraordinary degree of happiness that simcha itself becomes the name by which the Yom Tov is identified?

Perhaps the answer begins with something that seems almost paradoxical. On Sukkos, the Yom Tov that is called the Time of Our Joy, we leave our homes.

We step away from the permanent structures that normally provide us with a sense of security and stability and enter a temporary dwelling. We leave behind our solid walls and sturdy roofs, our comfortable bedrooms and dining rooms, and all the physical structures that make us feel that we have established ourselves securely in this world. For seven days, we eat our meals, spend time with our families, and, as much as possible, conduct much of our daily activity in a structure whose very temporary nature is central to its mitzvah.

And perhaps that is precisely where the secret of simcha lies.

One of the greatest impediments to happiness is the mistaken belief that happiness depends upon what we possess and upon the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We imagine that if our house was a little larger, our finances a little more comfortable, our business a little more successful, or our lives a little less complicated, we would finally be able to relax and enjoy what we have. We spend so much of our lives looking toward the next improvement, the next acquisition, or the next hoped-for change that we can easily overlook the blessings already surrounding us.

The sukkah comes to challenge that way of thinking.

For seven days, we deliberately leave the permanent structure that represents the physical security we have worked so hard to establish and place ourselves in a temporary dwelling, beneath a roof that is not even a conventional one. We are reminded that the walls around us were never the ultimate source of our security, that the things we own can provide us with comfort but cannot provide us with the inner sense of peace for which we yearn, and that the difference between a house in which a person is happy and one in which he is miserable has very little to do with the quality of its construction.

A magnificent home without shalom bayis cannot create happiness. A beautifully set table cannot compensate for a lack of warmth among the people gathered around it. A person can surround himself with every physical comfort and still feel empty, while another person can sit at a simple table in a modest home, surrounded by people he loves and with gratitude in his heart, and experience a happiness that no luxury could purchase.

The sukkah strips away the illusion that the structure itself is what makes us secure and comfortable, and it teaches us that we can leave our physical permanence behind and still be happy. We are commanded to be happy precisely there, in that temporary dwelling. Vesomachta bechagecha.

This lesson comes at a particularly significant time of year. We have just emerged from the Yomim Noraim, when we stood before Hashem and confronted the fragility of our existence. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we asked Hashem for life, health, sustenance, and the ability to continue serving Him. We acknowledged how dependent we are upon Him and how little is actually within our control, despite the tremendous effort we invest in creating a sense of security and predictability in our lives.

And then, almost immediately, Hashem gives us the mitzvah of Sukkos and tells us to rejoice.

Hashem gives us a remarkable progression. After the introspection of the Yomim Noraim, after we have stood before Him and asked to be granted another year, after we have examined our lives and contemplated what truly matters and what does not, we are told to leave the security and permanence of our homes, enter the sukkah, gather our families and friends around us, take the daled minim in our hands, and rejoice in the blessings Hashem has given us.

After experiencing Yom Kippur and teshuvah, we are best able to hear the message of the humble sukkah. Now, rather than immediately returning to our routines and comforts, we step outside of them and enter a temporary dwelling, where we look at our lives with fresh eyes, recognize the goodness that is already there, and rejoice in it.

Because one of the greatest sources of unhappiness is not necessarily what we lack, but our preoccupation with what we lack. A person can be surrounded by blessings and yet be unable to enjoy them because his eyes are constantly directed elsewhere. He sees what someone else has, the house someone else lives in, the vacation someone else takes, the success someone else has achieved, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the blessings in his own life become invisible to him. The more we compare, the more our sense of what we have is diminished by what we imagine we should have.

There will always be someone who has more. There will always be another person with a larger house, a greater accomplishment, a more impressive position, a nicer car, or a more seemingly perfect life. If a person looks outward at what others have, he will never have enough. He can spend his entire life surrounded by gifts and still view himself as deprived.

On Sukkos, we step away from the pursuit of more and recognize what we have. Sukkos changes our field of vision. Instead of focusing on the permanent structures that distinguish one person from another, everyone leaves them behind and enters a simple sukkah, where the important things become much clearer. The family sitting around the table matters more than the table, the people sharing the meal matter more than the chairs they are sitting on, and the mitzvos surrounding us become more precious than the physical comforts we have temporarily left behind.

The daled minim reinforce that lesson in another way. We take four minim that are different from one another and bring them together because the Jewish people are not meant to be a collection of individuals, each concerned only with his own accomplishments and possessions. We need one another, and there is a special joy that comes from recognizing that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

The sukkah teaches us to appreciate what Hashem has given us, while the daled minim teach us to appreciate the people with whom He has surrounded us. Both lessons lead us toward the same destination. A person becomes happier when he stops measuring his life according to what he thinks is missing and begins to recognize the abundance that is already present.

There is yet another dimension to the simcha of Sukkos. On Pesach, we celebrate what Hashem did for us when He took us out of Mitzrayim, and on Shavuos, we celebrate the Torah that He gave us at Har Sinai. On Sukkos, we experience the relationship itself. We place ourselves under the protection of Hashem and live in the sukkah, which Chazal describe as tzila demehemnusa, the shade of faith.

We are reminded that the security we imagine comes from our homes, our resources, and our plans was never absolute. We were always dependent upon Hashem, though we don’t always notice it. The temporary nature of the sukkah reminds us that the world itself is temporary and that our security does not come from the walls we construct around ourselves, but from the One Who sustains us within those walls and beyond them.

Recognizing that dependence does not make us fearful. It makes us joyful, because once a person understands that Hashem is holding him, he no longer has to feel that he is responsible for holding his entire world together.

Perhaps that is why Sukkos follows immediately after Yom Kippur. We have just spent the holiest day of the year asking Hashem to forgive us and grant us another year. We have confronted our shortcomings, acknowledged our mistakes, and promised to do better. We stood before the Melech with nothing to hide behind, and then Hashem tells us that the next step is to rejoice.

Build your sukkah. Take your daled minim. Invite guests. Eat and drink. Learn Torah. Sing. Dance. Celebrate that you have been given another year and another opportunity to draw closer to Hashem.

This is not a command to manufacture happiness. Rather, it is an invitation to discover the source of happiness. We do not need to wait until every problem has been solved or every aspiration has been fulfilled before allowing ourselves to appreciate the goodness in our lives.

The world around us constantly tells us the opposite. We are encouraged to look at what we don’t have, to notice what we could buy, to compare ourselves with people who appear to have more, and to believe that the next acquisition or accomplishment will finally give us the satisfaction we seek. Sukkos teaches us to step away from that pursuit and to sit beneath the s’chach with the people and the blessings that are already ours.

When we do that, we can begin to understand the words Zeman Simchoseinu in a deeper way. The Torah is not simply telling us that Sukkos is a time during which we are supposed to smile more. It is teaching us how to become capable of experiencing simcha, namely by recognizing that our lives are gifts, that our families are gifts, that our Torah and mitzvos are gifts, and that the opportunity to stand before Hashem and serve Him is itself an extraordinary reason for gratitude.

And then we understand why Chazal did not define Sukkos by the temporary dwelling in which we live, even though the sukkah is central to the Yom Tov, nor by the daled minim that we hold with such care. They called it Zeman Simchoseinu because after Pesach we were free, after Shavuos we had the Torah, and after Sukkos we have simcha.

In our modern world, people are driven to buy things. Since society teaches that having more things makes people happier, it follows that the act of purchasing things brings happiness. In the language of science and psychology, people experience a dopamine rush from shopping and acquiring new things. And while in earlier times a person had to get dressed, leave the house, and travel to a store to obtain something new, today the process has become almost effortless. From the comfort of home, people can click away and purchase virtually anything they need or want.

People have become so accustomed to the experience of buying that there are now, believe it or not, sites where the products do not even exist. The sites do not actually sell anything. They do something else. They provide the experience of shopping.

Think about what that means. A grown person who seeks happiness goes through the motions of browsing, selecting, and purchasing items, even though nothing is actually being purchased and nothing will arrive at his door. The experience itself has become the source of the pleasure. It is simulated; it is not real. And yet, the desire behind it is very real: the desire to be happy, the desire to buy, to have, to accumulate, because people think that having more will make them happier.

But much of the pleasure of indulgence comes from anticipation. People look forward to having something and imagine how good it will feel when it arrives, and then, once they have it, the excitement begins to fade, and before they know it, their attention turns toward the next thing they want to acquire.

The happiness they imagine they will obtain from having more things – a nicer house, a nicer car, a fancier tie or scarf – is all an illusion. And that is precisely part of the message of the sukkah.

There is a classic Yiddish tune about the sukkah, which celebrates that a Yiddele sitting in his little sukkaleh, bundled up against the elements, can be happier and warmer than the wealthiest man whose butler is throwing logs into his fireplace to warm him. The Yiddele sitting in his rickety sukkaleh feels safer and more secure than the wealthy landowner ensconced behind his iron gates.

The world tells us that the more we have, the happier and more secure we will be. The sukkah teaches us the opposite. It takes away the permanence, the comfort, and the possessions that we imagine are the foundations of happiness and shows us that a person can have very little and still be genuinely someiach when he knows that what he has is from Hashem and that he sits betzila demehemnusa, under His protection.

Happiness does not come from having more. It is a simple message, one we have heard many times. On Sukkos, it is no longer a soundbite or a cute saying to hang on the refrigerator. On Sukkos, we sit in the sukkah and discover that it is true.

May we all merit true simcha on Sukkos and all year round, and may we merit the coming of Moshiach bekarov.

Thoughts on the Permanent and the Temporary

Let me tell you something personal. I always used to get two copies of the Yated, one for the family to read and the other to put away, to archive. When I started writing, I decided that I wanted to have one hard copy of everything that I wrote. I would store the papers in large plastic totes in my attic. I thought that it was important for the historical record.

I changed my mind, however, m’pnei maaseh shehoyah, because of a story that happened.

This is the story. Seven years ago, my father passed away. Although my mother, may she live and be well, continued to live in the house, after a period of time, it became evident that she needed to move out of the big house.

The task of cleaning out the house was left to my siblings and me. We are spread across Canada, the United States, and Eretz Yisroel, but we all decided to set aside a full week to come together at the house we had called home, the house in which we all grew up together, and systematically clean it out. We would keep what was important, valuable, or sentimentally valuable, and give away or throw away everything else.

It was an emotionally wrenching week. There was a lot of nostalgia, with good memories and sadness all mixed together. My father, zichrono livrocha, was a very organized person, so everything was stored in an organized fashion. It was just amazing to see how he kept everything stored systematically. If you wanted to find the warranty for the Sunbeam blender that he bought in 1964, you could easily find it. Everything had a system.

To the…Dumpster!

Being an academic, my father had a massive library of both sifrei kodesh and, lehavdil, secular academic books. What would we do with all those books and seforim? Most of the seforim were not wanted by the children and grandchildren. They were all old print. Today’s seforim are so much easier to learn from, and other than children and grandchildren taking sentimental keepsakes, the rest were given to shaimos for a fee. (No, you can’t even give them away for free.)

Aside from sentimental and rare books, most of the books ended up in a dumpster, together with all the warranties, mortgage bills, utility bills, and everything else that had been meticulously preserved. As we were going through the house, a sobering thought hit me: This is what happens after 120. A person doesn’t take anything with him, and so much of what he has painstakingly amassed just ends up in a dumpster. A person only takes with him the kinyanei netzach. Everything else is very temporary.

We Were Mainly Left With…Memories

What we did take with us from the house were the memories. Memories of the Seder nights conducted by my father, memories that have since been translated into action as we continue to do things the way he taught us. Memories of Shabbos seudos, zemiros, and the lessons that he and my mother taught us. Even memories of the geshmake baseball games in the yard or hockey games in the driveway. Those things are indelibly etched into our hearts. That is what one takes. The house has long been sold and gutted, and only the memories and the spiritual legacy that our father bequeathed to us remain.

It was a great house. The upstairs had four bedrooms and my father’s large study. The main floor had a living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, and guest bedroom. There was a basement where we played and where the large freezer was, and a cellar where my father’s homemade wine was kept.

All of it was gutted.

It is gone.

And now?

It only exists in our memories.

That is why I stopped archiving the Yateds. I wondered, “For what reason am I giving all this extra work to my children? One day, after 120 years, they will just have to shlep those totes and toss them into the dumpster.”

The “Sukkah Mindset” = Stop and Think

I was thinking about these ideas as we go into our sukkos. The whole idea of Sukkos is to stop for a second and get out of our diras keva mindset. In this world, we are so busy amassing possessions. (How many times a day do Amazon, UPS, FedEx, Walmart, and Instacart come to your house? Just asking.)

We are so busy with our houses that we sometimes don’t realize what really lasts. The atmosphere of simcha in your sukkah as the family sings together will last long after anything else. Believe me.

On Sukkos, it is time to realize that all the stuff that we “want,” the big toys and little toys—the big toys, such as a house or car, and our little toys, our devices, any fun stuff that we buy—is just a diversion. It doesn’t last, we won’t remember it one day, and, at best, it will all end up in a dumpster somewhere.

The “Large Dirah with High Ceilings and Wide Windows”

Let me share with you a story that I recently saw about Rav Nesanel Reisman, the father of Rav Yisroel Yitzchok Reisman, who was a well-known dayan on the Badatz of the Eidah Hachareidis.

Rav Nesanel was a talmid of the Chiddushei Harim and one of the prominent Chassidim of the Sefas Emes who left Poland to move to Eretz Yisroel in the late 1800s.

In Poland, Rav Nesanel had a close friend named Reb Shaya Previs. Before leaving for Eretz Yisroel, Rav Nesanel made a deal with Reb Shaya that they would keep in touch and that Rav Nesanel would report back to him about what life was like in Eretz Yisroel.

Not long after he arrived, Rav Nesanel wrote a letter to Reb Shaya: “I have a very large dirah with high ceilings, rooms, and wide, beautiful windows.”

Reb Shaya was very surprised. Until then, he had been under the impression that the Yidden in Yerushalayim lived in great poverty, but from Reb Nesanel’s report, it seemed that he was living on a relatively high standard.

A few years later, Reb Shaya went to Yerushalayim. The first thing he did was ask people where his close friend, Rav Nesanel Reisman, lived. They pointed to a hovel. It was so small and so farkvetched that the only way to reach it was by going down a deep flight of stairs underground. It looked like a dank, dreary, damp basement.

Reb Shaya couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw what the “house” looked like. Either way, he didn’t even bother going down the stairs to visit, because he was certain that Rav Nesanel was in the bais medrash, not in his house.

He therefore set out to find the bais medrash where his friend would be learning and he found him. After greeting each other warmly, the two old friends, who were so thrilled to see each other, began to shmooze. One of the first things Reb Shaya brought up was the puzzling letter.

“Rav Nesanel,” he asked in wonder, “why, in your letter, did you paint an untruthful picture for me? You said that you have such a nice dirah with big windows and a high ceiling. But I see that you live in a damp, underground cellar that is barely habitable!”

“Stop,” Rav Nesanel held up his hand and replied. “Reb Shaya, look around. Don’t you see my dirah? It is right here. Look at this bais medrash. It has a high ceiling, beautiful wide windows, and even a chotzer right in front. This is where I live. I barely visit that tiny hovel. My main house is here.”

On Sukkos, we leave our houses and show that our spiritual home, the sukkah, is our real home.

Rav Nesanel lived with this concept all year round. It was “ah gantz yohr Sukkos.”

His real dirah was the bais medrash.

Think: What Is Your Reality?

Perhaps this Sukkos, we should sit down for a second and contemplate. What is our dirah? What is real to us? What will we really take with us? What real kinyonei netzach, eternal lessons, will we bequeath to our children and grandchildren long after we are gone?

This Sukkos, let us think about the words of Chazal that teach us, “Tzei midiras keva v’shev b’diras arai.” Let us remember that Chazal are not telling us to dump our permanent houses in the garbage and go out camping without even the most basic amenities. They are not telling us to become depressed because we have to live without gashmiyus.

If we stop to think about what Chazal are telling us, we might actually feel liberated. Yes, it can be very liberating to take the time to recalibrate and think about what is really important. Just that knowledge is the key to true simcha during this year’s Zeman Simchaseinu.

If we think this way, we can live our lives with the true simcha of ah gantz yohr Sukkos.

Gut Yom Tov. Ah freilichen Zeman Simchaseinu.

I have a question that I have been asking myself at Hakafos for the better part of fifty years. However, this time, I’ll take the leap and ask it out loud. The question might sound strange at first, which is probably why I have waited so long to ask it.

The question is this: Why is there a Yom Tov for learning Torah?

I do not mean it the way it sounds. I am not building toward an article that ends with some cute switcheroo where it turns out that Simchas Torah is really about something else entirely. I mean it for real. I assume we celebrate the learning of Torah. Not receiving the Torah. That’s Shavuos. But why one for learning Torah or for completing the cycle of krias haTorah? After all, there are so many fundamental mitzvos. We have no Yom Tov for tefillah. We have no Yom Tov for chesed (except perhaps Bike4Chai), no Yom Tov for emunah, and no one has ever proposed a night of dancing in honor of shemiras halashon (though it might well do more good than harm).

And here is what makes it stranger. We already have one. Shavuos is Zeman Matan Toraseinu, and as integral as Matan Torah is, its Yom Tov, save the concept of kulo lochem, is just like any other Yom Tov.

But bottom line, Shavuos, like every other Yom Tov, corresponds to a date and an event. Pesach has Yetzias Mitzrayim, Sukkos has the Ananei Hakavod, and Shavuos has a story of Kabbolas HaTorah powerful enough to shake the world.

Simchas Torah, by contrast, is not celebrating an event. It commemorates the fact that we reached the end of the parshiyos, which, though a major achievement, is not a historical event by any stretch. Vezos Habrocha arrives every year, on schedule, whether we learned anything that year or not. And we celebrate it as well, whether we learned anything that year or not.

Moreover, we celebrate Torah constantly. I say this as someone who has spent a good part of his life at Torah celebrations and would attend more of them if my schedule allowed. We have mega-siyumim that fill stadiums. We have Chumash parties, Mishnayos plays, conventions, Adirei HaTorah, and dinners at which grown men dance like teenagers over a masechta they completed. A community that can put ninety thousand people in a football arena over the completion of Shas, and another twenty thousand in a basketball arena to celebrate Torah lishmah, does not seem to require an annual reminder that it is fond of learning.

So what exactly are we dancing about?

Let me start with the original tefillah question, because I think it holds the key and because it puts the whole issue in a different light. Why don’t we celebrate tefillah?

The celebration of limud haTorah is very different. Nobody has a cheilek in your Shemoneh Esrei. Not your rebbi, not your chavrusa, not your father. Whatever you davened this morning between Yishtabach and Aleinu was yours alone, and it will remain yours alone. Tefillah is the one avodah that cannot be shared, subdivided, or assigned, which is precisely why it can never be made into a Yom Tov. You cannot make a public celebration out of something that no two people can hold at the same time.

Torah is different. It is the only mitzvah that the Torah itself describes as a joint partnership. Torah tzivah lonu Moshe morasha kehillas Yaakov. It is a heritage, an inheritance, and not of an individual, but of a kehillah, and the Gemara in Sukkah teaches that this is the very first posuk that a father says to a child who has learned to speak. Think about that for a moment. Before a Yiddishe kind can tell you what a mitzvah is, before he knows a single Rashi, he has been handed a deed of partnership in Torah.

Nevertheless, a joint shutfus, as some people unfortunately may know, can be where the trouble begins.

Look at what the global view actually looks like. There is a four-year-old somewhere this morning doing “kometz aleph ah.” There is a fourth-grader on his fourth perek of Mishnayos Brachos. There is a bochur in eighth grade learning Gemara without meforshim and quite pleased about it, a mesivta bochur across the street glowing over his first Rashba, and down the hall, a bais medrash bochur who has been on the same Ketzos for eleven days and considers all of them rookies. There is a yungerman in Bais Medrash Govoah moving through a sugya at a pace that would shock an outsider, and he is doing it right. There is a Yid smiling with Reb Eli, a Yid plugging with Reb Sruly. Through all of it, there is an accountant from Flatbush who has been going to the same six-thirty Daf for thirty-one years and has never once heard of either of them. There is Dirshu with its tests and Oraysa with its chazarah, a yungerman with a shteller, and a yungerman without one who, quite frankly, learns better than the man who has one, and both of them know it. We all know all of these Yidden, programs, and paths of learning, and I myself have been part of many of them.

Kinas sofrim tarbeh chochmah, says the Gemara in Bava Basra. It is the engine of the whole enterprise. But let us be honest with each other. Kinas sofrim tarbeh chochmah, and sometimes, when it is not handled properly, it can unfortunately also be marbeh more than chochmah. It can be marbeh kinah. The competition that drives a man to learn is the same competition that lets him glance across the bais medrash and subconsciously look askance at someone learning differently than him.

Which brings me to the strangest fact about this Yom Tov and the one I think explains all of it.

Shemini Atzeres (and Simchas Torah in chutz la’aretz) is designated as a personal time with Hashem. Nothing else, just us and Hashem. An eighth day, added with untold love from Hakadosh Boruch Hu—kasheh alai preidaschem, because the parting is hard for Him—and then left empty. And Klal Yisroel chose to celebrate that one day with His greatest gift, His greatest joy, the glue that holds His nation together—the Torah Hakedosha.

But it doesn’t stop there. Look at what takes place on this auspicious day. Every man gets an aliyah. Every single one, and we repeat the parsha as many times as it takes, which makes it the only day of the year when the laining is geared to the tzibbur instead of the tzibbur being geared to the laining. There is Kol Hane’arim, children called up under a tallis who cannot be counted for anything anywhere else in Yiddishkeit. And then, for the entire length of Hakafos, the Sefer Torah is closed. Nobody reads a syllable. The rosh kollel and the Alef-Bais kid are holding the identical rolled scroll, and there is no way on earth to tell from the outside which one of them knows what is written inside it.

Every shul has its own minhagim, all geared to being mechabeid the Torah and the ones who toil over it. In my shul, there is nothing I enjoy more than seeing the myriad bochurim, in yeshivos of every level, coming together to form the most energetic circles around unfamiliar men in shul, singing and shouting, “Vechayei olam nota besocheinu,” as if they have been sitting in kollel for twenty years. Fifty-one weeks a year, the Torah is open, an open sefer for anyone to come and claim their dominance in their respective cheilek. But on Simchas Torah, during Hakafos, it is closed. The sefer accepts anyone who holds it, each in his own individual mehalech.

This is also, I am convinced, why we find that so many Yidden, including distinguished roshei yeshiva, don’t hold back from taking an extra l’chaim on Simchas Torah. Purim breaks the barrier between arur Haman and boruch Mordechai. Perhaps Simchas Torah also breaks a barrier. It breaks the barrier between one man’s Rav Chaim and another man’s Mishnayos. Because for at least one day a year, we strive to recognize that every man’s learning is, in fact, his cheilek of the Torah.

Between the bochur who spent the year k’nocking over Rav Boruch Ber’s Torah and the baal habayis who does not miss the Daf for anything. Between the yungerman who sat two weeks on one Pnei Yehoshua and the young man who pays a former kollel chavrusa to learn with him after a long day at work. Between the lawyer who learns at sixty-five miles an hour on the Belt Parkway and the Yid learning in Bais Hatalmud who has not learned anywhere but the same shtender since Elul of 5741. Between the melamed who has been teaching the same alef with the same drop of honey for forty-two years, whose entire Torah seems to be contained in a single letter, and the rosh yeshiva whose Torah fills a celebrated sefer, ask yourself: Could one have reached their potential without the other?

The barrier breaks. That is what we are dancing about. Not that we have Torah. We knew that in Sivan. On Simchas Torah, we are celebrating that all of us have it, at once, in the only configuration where nobody can measure anybody.

At Har Sinai, one nation was mekabel one Torah. On Simchas Torah, one Torah is mekabel a thousand kinds of Yidden.

And somewhere in the middle of the fourth Hakafah, a bochur who spent the entire year killing himself on the lomdus, assured that a daf a day is not the real learning, will find himself clutching one end of a closed Sefer Torah with the fellow who learns that very same daf, each holding the other, both of them out of breath, neither of them able to say whose Torah it is.

It is not that they cannot tell. It is that on that night, there is nothing to tell.

The Tur (Orach Chaim, Hilchos Rosh Hashanah 417) famously quotes from his brother, Rav Yehudah, how each of the avos hakedoshim represent one of the three major Yomim Tovim. His source for Yaakov Avinu being the connection to Sukkos is the posuk (Bereishis 33:17) which states that after he manages to divest himself from Eisav, “Yaakov journeyed to Sukkos and built himself a house and for his livestock he made sukkos; he therefore called the name of the place Sukkos.” Although many aspects of this juxtaposition are shrouded in mystery — e.g., what do animals have to do with our sukkah? — the connection between Yaakov and Sukkos is quite apparent.

However, another statement of Chazal (Bereishis Rabbah 48:10) seems to give Avrohom Avinu credit for this wonderful Yom Tov: “Hashem said to Avrohom, ‘You said [to the visiting angels], ‘Recline beneath the tree.’ By your life I will pay back your children [as it says], ‘He spread out a cloud for shelter’ (Tehillim 105:39).” This source is not as straightforward at all. First of all, what does Avrohom Avinu’s act of chesed have to with Klal Yisroel being protected in the desert by the Clouds of Glory? Secondly, it would seem from the actual story at the beginning of Parshas Vayeira that the least exertion that Avrohom did was offering them some shelter under the tree. He personally served the visitors a sumptuous meal, running through the heat of an intensely hot day while he was still in great pain from his bris milah, while pointing out a shady tree doesn’t seem to be in the same mesirus nefesh league as the rest of his hachnosas orchim. Yet, it is this deed that was the seed for Klal Yisroel’s protection and our own Yom Tov for eternity.

To make matters a bit more complicated, we should take note of the fact that the joy of our Zeman Simchoseinu seems to be rooted in Yitzchok Avinu, who is usually considered to be the fount of yirah, pachad and gevurah (see Zohar Hakadosh, Ki Sisa 44b). In the Siddur HaGra (introduction to Tefillas Shacharis), Rav Naftoli Hertz writes that “Avrohom is the source of our chesed and Yitzchok of our simcha.” So, although we understand that Yaakov Avinu is inexorably entwined in the Yom Tov of Sukkos, its joy flows from Yitzchok. This is puzzling on two accounts. First of all, why is there a dichotomy between the matrix of the Yom Tov itself and its definition in time as being Zeman Simchoseinu? Secondly, how can Yitzchok be the source of simcha when he is so often associated with the harsher emotions and middos of yirah, pachad and gevurah?

To answer this latter question, we can turn to Rav Dovid Cohen, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Chevron (Zeman Simchoseinu, page 183). He quotes from the rest of Rav Hertz’s essay (Imrei Shefer, ibid.), which explains that “simcha comes from hamtokas hadinim, roughly translated as “the sweetening of the bitter statutes.” To understand this further, let us turn to the foundational study of the Yomim Tovim, their order and interaction provided by my rebbi, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, in many places (Pachad Yitzchok, Rosh Hashanah 10:8; Yom Kippur 8:8; Maamorei Pachad Yitzchok, Sukkos 7, 98:15, 106). He demonstrates, based upon the commentary of the Vilna Gaon (to Shir Hashirim 1:4; Aderes Eliyohu, Ki Sisa 34:10), that Sukkos does not commemorate the beginning of the Ananei Hakavod, but their return after we sinned by making the Eigel. For this reason, Sukkos arrives after Yom Kippur, not after Pesach, when the Clouds of Glory began. Thus, the joy of Sukkos is that of having our teshuvah accepted by Hashem and being reinstated as His nation and beloved children.

Now we can understand more deeply Rav Naftoli Hertz’s words, according to Rav Dovid Cohen. Yes, Yitzchok Avinu is our guide and role model for yirah, pachad and gevurah. But that is also the essence of Sukkos. We sinned as a nation and are still paying the price for the Eigel (see Rashi, Shemos 32:34). Yet, when we were forgiven and the Ananei Hakavod returned, it is not only that we were once again protected from the elements and our enemies. As the Ramchal (Derech Hashem) defines Sukkos, we were no longer exposed physically, but, even more importantly, we were isolated from the nations and protected spiritually as well. We showed Hashem that we want to be better, so Hashem responded by the ultimate favor: I will keep you close to Me and be isolated with you under the Clouds.

We can now see that all three of the avos contributed a unique element of our own Sukkos experience. Yaakov Avinu set up the sukkah, which was originally a basic barn for his animals, as the prototype of a people who would limit their materialistic needs. The sukkah represents downsizing and reducing our gashmiyus — corporeal expectations — on behalf of increasing our spirituality or ruchniyus. Avrohom Avinu had already set this up when he indicated to posterity that even chesed doesn’t necessarily require expenditures and purchases. Sukkos begins with pointing out a shady spot under a tree. But Yitzchok, who is the embodiment of the human sacrifice, is also the one who teaches us that the ultimate joy is renouncing our sins and embracing Hashem and His Torah.

Rav Yonasan David, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Pachad Yitzchok in Yerushalayim (Kuntrus Sukkos 18:5, page 67) adds an important perspective to this study. He asks an interesting question. We know that the rule in kedusha is maalin bakodesh. We are always trying to rise from one level to another in our avodas Hashem. So where do we go after Yom Kippur? How is Sukkos an improvement and spiritual advance? He points out that after Dovid Hamelelech did teshuvah for his own sin, he requested a sign from Hashem that he had been forgiven. Hashem showed him this sign after he passed away, when the doors of the Bais Hamikdosh would only open upon the mention of his name (Tehillim 132:10, with Shabbos 30a).

The Vilna Gaon (ibid., Aderes Eliyohu) added that when Klal Yisroel originally received the Clouds of Gory, only the nevi’im were able to see them. However, when they returned after they were forgiven for the Eigel, all were able to perceive them. This was the sign from Hashem that we were fully forgiven. Rav Yonasan adds that this is also the source of the special joy of Sukkos of which the Rambam (Hilchos Lulav 8:12) speaks. It is the joy Rabbeinu Yonah speaks of when he highlights the great joy of the baal teshuvah when he knows that he has been accepted once again into Hashem’s good graces.

Sukkos does not come to us in a vacuum. It is the natural continuation of our teshuvah and all the efforts of our Elul and the Yomim Noraim. It took the contribution of each of the avos, in some cases going against their usual grain, as Rav Eliyohu Eliezer Dessler always points out, especially Yitzchok becoming the source of our sublime joy on Sukkos. Yaakov teaches us that we don’t need luxuries, only a simple hut, and Avrohom makes clear that even our mitzvos can be as simple and basic as pointing out a shady tree. The totality of this partnership of our forefathers makes for the happiest time of the year, but one where we have absolutely no need for the baubles of this world, only the ethereal pleasures of being in the presence of the Shechinah for a glorious week of elevation.

Entering the Boundless Torah and Towering Spiritual World of the Vilna Gaon

Upon the 229th anniversary of the histalkus of rabbon shel Yisroel, Rav Eliyohu of Vilna, whose yahrtzeit falls on the 19th of Tishrei, in the midst of the days of Chag HaSukkos, we have been privileged to present to the tzibbur of bnei Torah with a special, wide-ranging essay devoted to the exalted and extraordinary world of the Gra, one of the singular figures in the history of mesoras haTorah throughout the generations.

The stature of the Gra cannot be confined within the bounds of any particular era, sefer, or individual field of Torah. His light extends across Shas and poskim, mikra and Medrash, nigleh and nistar, halacha and dikduk, and his imprint was left upon the very form of Torah learning and upon the character of the bais medrash for generations to come.

For this special issue, Rav Michoel Sorotzkin graciously undertook to place before us a comprehensive maamar, the fruit of extensive iyun in the sources and in the teachings of the Gra and his talmidim. His purpose is not merely to recount the greatness of the Gra, but to open for the learner a window into the Gra’s unique derech hamachshovah.

In his distinctive style, by now well known to the readers of the Yated, broad-ranging bekius is woven together with penetrating lomdus, sensitivity to the precise language of the pesukim, and a constant search for the inner structure through which seemingly distant details are revealed as parts of a single, unified sugya. Through his study of the Gra’s Torah concerning Chag HaSukkos, an entire world unfolds before the reader, a world in which a single letter, a subtle change of wording, the calculation of the korbanos, or a halachic shiur can become a gateway to understanding an entire mehalech in Torah.

This is not merely a biographical essay, nor is it simply a collection of facts and chiddushim. Rather, it is an attempt to draw closer to the tzuras haTorah of the Gra, to his capacity to perceive the entirety of the Torah as one seamless whole, and to that wondrous greatness regarding which his talmidim and the gedolei hadoros who followed him testified in terms that we are scarcely accustomed to finding in reference to others.

Between the lines emerges the towering figure of the Gra: the sheer intensity of his hasmodah, the purity of his ameilus, the vast breadth of his knowledge, the incisiveness of his conclusions, and the profound depth of his kedusha. And it becomes apparent how, specifically on Chag HaSukkos, when shiur and sod, halacha and penimiyus, number and meaning all converge, one can gain some small taste of the unique world of one for whom the entirety of Torah stood as a single edifice.

There are gedolim whose greatness can be described through the seforim they authored, the talmidim they raised, the kehillos they led, or the mark they left upon a particular generation. The Vilna Gaon belongs to a far rarer order. Even the familiar descriptions of his hasmodah, his almost limitless bekius, his command of Bavli and Yerushalmi, Medrash, Tosefta, Rishonim, dikduk, Kabbolah and every chamber of Torah, true as they are, remain insufficient, because they describe what he possessed rather than what he was. On 19 Tishrei, during Chol Hamoed Sukkos, Klal Yisroel marks the 229th yahrtzeit of Rabbeinu Eliyohu of Vilna, yet the real task is not to reconstruct a biography. It is to approach, however inadequately, a mind and a neshomah in which the entire Torah seemed to exist as one indivisible reality. A variant spelling in Chumash, a halacha in Menochos, a line of Zohar, a posuk in Tehillim and a din in Rambam did not occupy separate compartments. They illuminated one another. What appears to an ordinary learner as a collection of distant mareh mekomos could, to the Gra, be one sugya whose parts had simply been scattered across Shas, poskim, Tanach and nistar.

This is perhaps the most essential key to understanding both the majesty and the difficulty of the Gra. His brevity can deceive. A few words in Biur HaGra may stand upon an enormous, invisible foundation of sources weighed against one another until only the conclusion remains visible. Rav Chaim Volozhiner repeatedly depicts a rebbi whose knowledge was not merely encyclopedic but structured, ordered, and tested against the totality of Torah. He also records the Gra’s refusal to receive Torah through supernatural revelation when such knowledge could come only as a gift without toil. The Gra wanted Torah through ameilus, through the chochmah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu grants a person who labors until the sugya yields. That fact is indispensable. His greatness was not a miracle that spared him effort. His greatness revealed itself precisely in the intensity of the effort, in the demand that every word be accounted for and every conclusion rest upon the deepest possible foundation.

Sukkos offers an unusually fitting window into this world. Few Yomim Tovim contain such an extraordinary union of the exact and the exalted. A sukkah is measured in tefochim and amos, yet it is also the tzeila dimeheimnusa. The four minim are governed by exact physical dinim, yet they become instruments of avodah through which the forces of din are sweetened. The korbanos of the Chag can be counted mathematically, yet Chazal connect their 70 porim to the 70 nations. The water poured upon the mizbei’ach is measured in a kli, yet its purpose is the brocha of the year’s rain. Within Sukkos, number and symbol, halacha and sod, measure and mystery constantly meet. It is therefore striking how naturally the Torah of the Gra on Sukkos reveals the qualities that defined him: breadth without vagueness, precision without narrowness, and a power to uncover unity where everyone else sees fragments.

To Know A Masechta

The introduction known as Aliyos Eliyohu, printed with Peas HaShulchan, records a scene that deserves to be read not merely as a story of memory but as a definition of the Gra’s conception of Torah knowledge. Shortly before Sukkos, the Gra told those standing before him that a talmid chochom should know at least one masechta by heart so that even while traveling, or while sitting in darkness without access to a sefer, he would never be severed from the mitzvah of v’hogisa bo yomam v’laylah. One of the talmidim accepted the charge with extraordinary seriousness and reviewed Maseches Sukkah again and again until he could recite it fluently. During Chol Hamoed he came before the Gra and proudly announced that he now knew the masechta baal peh. The Gra did not ask him to recite a daf. He asked instead how many machlokos appear between Rabi Meir and Rabi Yehudah, how many between Rabi Akiva and Rabi Tarfon, how many between Abaye and Rava, and how many among the other pairs of Tanna’im and Amora’im who shape the masechta. The talmid could not answer. The Gra then began to enumerate them, arranging the masechta by its sugyos, shittos, and recurring patterns, incorporating the Tosefta and Yerushalmi, and showing that what seemed to the talmid like a sequence of dapim was in fact a single constructed whole.

The distinction is profound. The talmid had achieved memory. The Gra possessed architecture. To know a masechta meant not simply to carry its words but to perceive its inner arrangement, to know which din belongs with which shittah, where one machlokes echoes another, and how a later sugya redefines an earlier one. In the course of that same demonstration, the Gra calculated that the number of invalid sukkos discussed through the sources corresponds to the gematria of the deficient spelling of sukkah, while the number of valid sukkos corresponds to the fuller spelling. Even here, the counting is not a parlor display of astonishing memory. It reflects a mind in which the entire masechta could be reorganized at will because every individual sugya had found its precise place within a total structure. This quality will return repeatedly in the chiddushim that follow. Again and again, the Gra sees a word or a letter only after seeing the entire system to which it belongs.

Minchosam V’niskeihem

The most elaborate of these cheshbonos begins with a seemingly insignificant letter. On the first three days of Sukkos, the Torah introduces the accompanying flour offerings and nesochim with the expression u’minchosam v’niskeihem. On the fourth day, in Bamidbar 29:24, the opening vav disappears, and the Torah writes simply minchosam v’niskeihem. The Gra explains this change through a combination of two mishnayos and a gemara in Menochos. The mishnah in Menochos 9:4 teaches that the nesochim of porim may be combined with those of eilim. The mishnah in Menochos 12:4 establishes that a voluntary mincha of 60 esronim may be placed in one kli, while 61 must be divided. The gemara in Menochos 15b teaches that a person may bring his korban on one day and its nesochim later. These dinim allow the first three days of Sukkos to be calculated as a single unit.

On the first day there are 13 porim. At three esronim for each par, they produce 39, and the two eilim add another four, yielding 43. On the second day, 12 porim produce 36, and the eilim again add four, giving 40. On the third day, 11 porim produce 33, plus four from the eilim, giving 37. Forty-three, 40, and 37 total exactly one 120 esronim. The first three days therefore fill two keilim of 60 with mathematical precision. The connecting vav remains appropriate throughout that unit. Once the third day is complete, however, both keilim are filled. The fourth day cannot join backward into them and begins a new cheshbon. The Torah therefore writes minchosam without the vav. The omitted letter marks the boundary between two halachic units. This, in essence, is the Gra’s cheshbon.

Building on the Gra’s explanation, it would appear to reveal something about the nature of the Mishnah’s statement that the nesochim of porim and eilim may be mixed. One might have understood this simply as a permissive rule, a heter to combine two materials when convenient. But the Gra’s cheshbon treats them as belonging naturally to one calculation. The din of me’arvin niskei eilim b’niskei porim is therefore not merely procedural. It reveals a common halachic identity in their mixture. Their compatibility is sufficiently essential that the Torah can build a textual vav around it. The missing vav on day four thus becomes a window not merely into arithmetic but into the very definition of the menochos themselves.

One may perhaps carry the cheshbon further. Across all seven days of Sukkos, 70 porim were brought. At three esronim per par, their menochos amount to 210. Fourteen eilim were brought, two each day, and at two esronim each, they contribute another 28. Because the menochos of porim and eilim belong to the same class of thicker mixture and may be combined, the total is 238 esronim. That number is the gematria of Rochel. On its own, such a gematria might be no more than striking, but it may be placed within a broader structure by drawing upon the Gra’s own words elsewhere.

It may be added in this connection that, in his peirush to Shir Hashirim 1:2, the Gra asks why the Torah changes its language regarding the se’ir of the Sukkos Mussofim. On the first, second, and fourth days it speaks of se’ir izim, while on the third, fifth, sixth, and seventh days it omits izim and speaks simply of a se’ir chatas. The Gemara in Sukkah 55b states that the 70 porim correspond to the 70 nations. The Gra explains, based upon the Zohar, that those nations are fundamentally rooted in Yishmoel and Eisov. The arithmetic of the porim divides exactly into two groups of 35. The first day contributes 13 to Yishmoel, the second adds 12 and brings the total to 25, and the fourth day’s ten completes 35 — precisely on those days the Torah uses se’ir izim. The remaining days contain eleven, nine, eight, and seven porim, again totalling 35, and these correspond to Eisov, the ish so’ir. There the word izim disappears.

Building on this division, Hoshana Rabbah takes on a particular significance. Rabbeinu Bachya, in Kad HaKemach under Aravah, calls Hoshana Rabbah “Yom Hachosam Hagadol” and connects its completion to the conclusion of the 70 porim. According to the Gra’s arrangement, the final day belongs to the portion corresponding to Eisov. At that point, the gemara in Bava Basra 123b becomes especially luminous. Chazal explain that Yaakov waited for the birth of Yosef because the seed of Eisov is ultimately delivered into the hand of the seed of Yosef, as the posuk declares, “V’hayoh Bais Yaakov eish, u’Bais Yosef lehovah, u’Bais Eisov l’kash.” Rashi on Bereishis 30:25 calls Yosef the sitno shel Eisov, the adversary of Eisov. Medrash Tadshe records that Yosef was born on the 21 of Tishrei, Hoshana Rabbah. Thus the very day that completes the 70 porim and concludes the segment associated with Eisov is the day upon which the force destined to oppose Eisov entered the world.

This line of thought leads from Yosef directly to Rochel. Yirmiyohu 31 gives us the eternal image of Rochel weeping for her children, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu responds, “Mini koleich mibechi v’einayich mi’dimoh,” with the promise that the children will return to their border. Rashi on Bereishis 48:7 explains that Yaakov buried Rochel on the road by Divine instruction so that when Nevuzaradan would lead her descendants into exile, she would emerge and cry on their behalf. A Medrash cited in the material places that exile on the 21st of Tishrei, Hoshana Rabbah. The gemara in Eruvin 19a speaks of tears descending like the waters of the shisin, and the Maharsha explains that those tears rise before Hakadosh Boruch Hu in place of nesochim. The 238 esronim of the combined par and ayil menochos now acquire an extraordinary resonance: they equal Rochel precisely at the point where the nesochim of Sukkos, the completion of the 70 porim, the birth of Yosef, and the tears of Rochel meet.

One may suggest one final remez. The word dimoh has the numerical value 119. The posuk speaks of Rochel’s eyes and her tears, einayich mi’dimoh. Two eyes, two tears, two times 119, again produce 238. What began with the missing vav of minchosam has opened into a structure that reaches from Menochos to Shir Hashirim, from the 70 nations to Yosef, from Hoshana Rabbah to Rochel’s tears. The power of the approach lies precisely in the order in which it develops. The edifice begins with exact halachic measurement, not symbolism. Only after the din has been established does the broader pattern emerge. That sequence is crucial to understanding the intellectual world of the Gra.

Achalkah Shechem

The posuk in Tehillim 108:8 states, “Elokim dibber b’kodsho e’elozoh, achalkah Shechem, v’Emek Sukkos amadeid.” A remarkable explanation is cited in the name of the Gra. The word Shechem has the numerical value 360, but the posuk says achalkah Shechem, I shall divide Shechem. If the value of the shin, 300, is divided in two, one receives 150. The chaf, 20, divided in two yields ten. The mem, 40, divided in two yields 20. These numbers correspond to the central shiurim of a sukkah. A minimum sukkah is seven tefochim wide and ten high. A wall seven by ten contains 70 square tefochim; two complete walls therefore contain 140, and a third wall one tefach wide and ten high adds ten, bringing the total to 150. The minimum height is ten tefochim, while the maximum height is 20 amos. Thus the three divided letters of Shechem yield 150, 10 and 20. This, in essence, is the remarkable explanation cited in the name of the Gra. One may add that the posuk’s next words, v’Emek Sukkos amadeid, continue the same language of measurement.

One may add that the minimum floor of the sukkah, seven by seven, contains 49 square tefochim, while amadeid itself has the gematria of 49. Yet there is an even more lomdishe possibility. The Rambam in Hilchos Sukkos 4:2 rules that where two complete adjacent walls stand, the third dofen may consist of slightly more than a tefach placed within three tefochim of the wall, allowing lavud to produce a halachic width of four tefochim. The Rambam in Hilchos Shabbos 16:2 establishes four tefochim as the minimum significant width of a mechitzah. If one calculates not merely the physical board but the halachic wall created through lavud, the two full walls contribute 140, and the third contributes forty, producing 180. The value of Shechem, 360, divided in half, is exactly 180.

The remez therefore raises a genuine conceptual question. Is lavud merely a rule that permits us to ignore a gap, or does it create a halachic reality in which the empty space itself is treated as part of the mechitzah? If the latter, then achalkah Shechem may be alluding not to the physical material of the sukkah but to the legal surface of its dofonos. In this way, a gematria becomes a doorway into the cheftza of a mechitzah. That transition from textual hint to halachic definition is precisely what makes the vort more than cleverness.

One may further suggest that the posuk contains still another dimension. Bereishis 35 describes Yaakov’s arrival at Beis El after leaving Shechem and repeatedly says that Elokim dibber ito, spoke with him there. The Torah records that Yaakov erected a matzeivah and poured a nesach upon it. Targum Yonasan explains that Yaakov poured both wine and water, corresponding to the wine and water that Yisroel would later pour on Sukkos. The opening words of the posuk in Tehillim can now be read anew. “Elokim dibber b’kodsho e’elozoh” evokes the repeated dibbur of Elokim at Beis El and points toward the future avodah of wine and water in the Bais Hamikdosh, an avodah accompanied by the extraordinary simcha described by the Rambam in Hilchos Lulav. Then comes achalkah Shechem: Yaakov separated from Shechem and ascended to Beis El. The conclusion, v’Emek Sukkos amadeid, returns to Sukkos and to the nesochim that Yaakov’s act foreshadowed. The inner letters of Sukkos carry the value 26, and half of Shechem is 180; together they equal 206, the gematria of dibber. The entire posuk can therefore be read as one unified structure linking Divine speech, Yaakov’s departure from Shechem, his pouring of wine and water, and the future simcha of Sukkos in the Mikdosh.

V’shofach Lo Kiton Al Ponov

The Mishnah in Sukkah 28b teaches that when rain falls and forces a person to leave the sukkah, the situation resembles an eved who comes limzog kos l’rabbo, to mix a cup for his master, and the master pours the kiton into his face. The Gra, in Yahel Or on Parashas Pinchas, explains the moshol through the transition from din to rachamim that characterizes Tishrei. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are days dominated by din, while Sukkos brings the avodah of hamtokas hadinim through the mitzvos that surround the Jew during the chag. The language of mezeg is therefore exact. Wine represents din and gevurah, while water represents chesed. Mixing water into wine softens its sharpness. The eved who comes to mix the cup represents the Jew entering the sukkah to sweeten din through chassodim. If rain drives him from the sukkah, the very water that was meant to affect the mezeg is cast back. The moshol is therefore not merely one of rejection. Every detail describes the inner avodah of the day. This, in essence, is the Gra’s explanation of the moshol.

Building on this, one may note that the word “kos” itself deepens the structure. The numerical value of kos, with the relevant reckoning, corresponds to Elokim, the Sheim associated with din. The Jew who enters the sukkah comes, in the language of the Gra, to mix that kos with chassodim. This enables us to return to the extraordinary calculation in Aliyos Eliyohu concerning the number of valid and invalid sukkos discussed throughout the sources. The Gra counted 85 sukkos pesulos, corresponding to sukkah in its deficient spelling, and 91 sukkos kesheiros, corresponding to the fuller spelling sukkah. These numbers are not merely another demonstration of memory. Placed beside the Gra’s explanation of the kos, they may be seen as part of the same conceptual structure.

The word sukkah choseir has the value 85; with the kollel it reaches 86, the value of Elokim, representing din standing by itself. Sukkah malei has the value 91. In his Likkutim, based upon the Zohar, the Gra explains that 91 is the joining of the Sheim Havoyoh, whose value is 26, with Adnus, whose value is 65. The Gemara in Sukkah 9a teaches that Sheim Shomayim rests upon the sukkah, deriving from Chag HaSukkos shivas yomim laShem, that just as the Chagigah belongs to Hashem, so too the sukkah possesses kedusha. The letters themselves may be read in this light. The outer letters, samech and hei, equal 65, corresponding to Adnus. The inner letters, vav and chaf, equal 26, corresponding to Havoyoh. The Sheim of rachamim rests within the Sheim associated with din. The valid sukkah, 91, is therefore the joining of the two sheimos, while the deficient sukkah remains at the level in which the full union has not taken place.

The Cheshek Shlomo, in his notes at the end of Maseches Sukkah, takes the matter still further. He notes that throughout Tanach the word sukkah is ordinarily written without the vav, and initially questions the mekubolim who build upon the full spelling whose gematria is 91. Where, he asks, does such a malei spelling actually appear? After searching, he records that he found the exceptional form in Tehillim 76:3, “Vayehi v’Sholeim sukko, u’Me’onoso b’Tzion.” Precisely where the posuk speaks of Sholeim, completeness, sukkah itself is written malei. He explains that in Olam Hazeh, while the Divine Name and throne are not yet revealed in their complete form, sukkah appears deficient. Le’osid lovo, when the Sheim is revealed in sheleimus, “vayehi v’Sholeim sukkah,” the sukkah too becomes malei.

Taken together, one may suggest that the entire sequence forms one coherent structure. The Gemara in Kiddushin 71a teaches “lo k’she’Ani nichtov Ani nikra,” that the Divine Name is written one way but pronounced through Adnus. The Maharsha explains the relationship of the Sheimos to din and rachamim and the future revelation in which the concealment will be removed. The kos as explained by the Gra, the water and wine, the 85 Sukkos pesulos, the 91 kesheiros, Havoyoh within Adnus, and the exceptional malei spelling in vayehi v’Sholeim sukkah are not separate vertlach arranged beside one another. They express one yesod from different directions. Sukkos is the movement from unmixed din toward the joining of din and rachamim, and the very spelling of the mitzvah records that movement.

Titzpeneim B’sukkah Me’riv Leshonos

In Tehillim 31:21-23 Dovid Hamelech says: “Tastireim b’seiser Ponecho me’ruchsei ish, titzpeneim b’sukkah me’riv leshonos. Boruch Hashem ki hifli chasdo li b’ir motzor. Va’ani omarti b’chofzi nigrazti mineged Einecha, ochein shomato kol tachanunai b’shavi Eilecha.”

The Gra, as cited in Nachalas Dovid, explains the words “titzpeneim b’sukkah me’riv leshonos” in a remarkable manner. The sukkah possesses a special segulah to protect from the destructive force of speech, for it is essentially a sukkas shalom. This is reflected in the very letters of sukkah. Its four letters emerge from four of the five motzo’os hapeh: samech from the teeth, vav from the lips, chaf from the palate, and hei from the throat. Only the letters whose motzo is the loshon itself are absent. Thus the word sukkah is formed through the organs of speech while conspicuously excluding the tongue, alluding to its power to shelter a person from riv leshonos. This, in essence, is the Gra’s explanation as cited in Nacholas Dovid.

From this point, the depth of this yesod may be further illuminated in light of Chazal concerning the Churban. In Gittin 57b, on the posuk “b’shot loshon teichovei,” Rashi explains that the destruction of the Bais Hamikdosh and the death of multitudes came through loshon hara. The Maharal in Chiddushei Aggados broadens this further and writes that the roots of all the great destructions are bound to cheit haloshon, beginning with the meraglim. Likewise, the Medrash cited in Otzar Hamidrashim traces the division of Malchus Yisroel and ultimately the Churban to the loshon hara of Tziva concerning Mefivoshes. The Gra’s description of the sukkah as protection from riv leshonos therefore acquires an entirely different dimension: the sukkah protects from the very force that destroys the place of the Shechinah. Sukkas shalom stands in direct opposition to the sin that produces pirud and Churban.

A further remez may perhaps illuminate the continuation of the pesukim. The Gemara in Gittin 88a expounds the posuk, “Vayishkod Hashem al hora’oh v’yevi’eha oleinu, ki tzaddik Hashem Elokeinu,” and explains that the apparent haste of the Churban was itself an act of tzedokah. According to Ulla, Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought the golus two years before the completion of the period indicated by “v’noshantem.” Rashi explains that “v’noshantem” has the gematria of 852. Had Klal Yisroel remained until that full measure was reached, the decree of “ki oveid toveidun” would have been realized in its full severity. The Churban therefore came after 850 years, and what appeared to be the hastening of punishment was in truth the preservation of Klal Yisroel.

With this, the language of Tehillim becomes extraordinarily precise. If one takes the concealed inner letters within the words “titzpeneim b’sukkah me’riv leshonos,” the letters tzadi, pei, nun, samech, chaf, reish, shin, nun, their total gematria is exactly 850. It is as though the posuk itself encodes the period during which Klal Yisroel remained titzpeneim b’sukkah me’riv leshonos. So long as the shelter from cheit haloshon remained, the Bais Hamikdosh endured. When that protection was breached, Churban followed.

Yet the posuk immediately continues: “Boruch Hashem ki hifli chasdo li b’ir motzor.” Even within the siege there was hidden chesed. The following words, “Va’ani omarti b’chofzi nigrazti mineged Einecha,” may now be read in light of the Gemara: the very chipazon, the hastening of the severance, was the chesed. Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought the Churban before the full 852 years of v’noshantem, and precisely through that haste prevented “ki oveid toveidun.” Thus what appeared to be hester Ponim was itself an answer to tefillah, and the posuk can conclude: “Ochein shomato kol tachanunai b’shavi Eilecha.”

On this suggested reading, the pesukim form one continuous structure. The Gra reveals that the sukkah protects from riv leshonos. Chazal teach that loshon hara lies at the root of Churban. The hidden letters of those very words equal 850, the precise number of years at which the Churban was mercifully hastened. And the continuation of the mizmor defines that haste itself as “hifli chasdo li.” The sukkah is therefore not merely a refuge from harmful speech. It represents the Divine shelter of shalom, and even when that shelter is breached, the chesed of Hakadosh Boruch Hu remains concealed within the Churban itself.

The Esrog That Was Worth A House

There is a remarkable family mesorah concerning Rav Avrohom, brother of the Gra and author of Maalos HaTorah, which was transmitted among his descendants. More than a moving story of mesirus nefesh, it opens a window into the spiritual world that surrounded the Gra; a world in which Torah and mitzvos were not merely precious ideals, but the very definition of reality, and in which the boundaries between Olam Hazeh and Olam Haba were perceived in a manner almost beyond our comprehension.

Rav Avrohom lived in Rogola, some distance from Vilna. At one point he received a letter from his brother, the Vilna Gaon, inviting him to relocate to Vilna so that the two brothers could learn Seder Zera’im together as chavrusos. It is difficult to measure the magnitude of such an invitation. To sit regularly with the Gra, to learn with one whose entire being was immersed in Kol HaTorah, was an opportunity beyond ordinary reckoning. Rav Avrohom wished to accept, yet his wife was unwilling to leave Rogola. The reason she gave reached back to an earlier Sukkos.

Esrogim did not grow in Lithuania and had to be transported from distant regions. Even in ordinary years they were costly and difficult to obtain. One year, severe weather rendered the roads nearly impassable, and as Sukkos approached there was not a single esrog in town. Finally, shortly before Yom Tov, a merchant arrived carrying one esrog, but the price he demanded was enormous. Even the wealthy baalei batim withdrew, and the gabbaim of the kehillah gathered to decide whether communal funds should be used. They concluded that the price was simply beyond what the tzibbur could reasonably pay, almost as though the matter entered the realm of “ein podin es hashvuyim yoser mikedei demeihen.” The painful conclusion seemed unavoidable: that Sukkos the entire town would be without an esrog.

Rav Avrohom returned home deeply distressed and told his wife what had happened. Her response was immediate. How could there be Sukkos without an esrog? Their home was spacious and comfortable, a valuable property that had come from her family, and she proposed that they sell it, move into a simple dwelling, and use the money to acquire the esrog. They borrowed the necessary funds at once, Rav Avrohom purchased the esrog, and the entire kehillah was able to fulfil the mitzvah. After Yom Tov they carried out the plan: the house was sold, they moved into modest quarters, and the debt was repaid. A comfortable home had been exchanged so that a mitzvah could be performed by an entire tzibbur.

Years later, when the Gra’s invitation arrived, Rav Avrohom’s wife explained why she could not bring herself to leave Rogola. Every day she passed the house that had once been theirs, and each time she saw it she remembered that it had been sold for an esrog. The sight filled her with an indescribable simcha. To others it was merely a house now belonging to someone else; to her it was the visible reminder of a moment when she had been privileged to place a mitzvah above comfort. She said that there was no pleasure in the world equal to passing that house, and she could not bear to leave the town and lose that daily experience.

The story is magnificent, but it also gives rise to a powerful question. An adam gadol was once asked how the two sides could be reconciled. For one esrog, for one mitzvah in one year, she had willingly surrendered her home and accepted a life of poverty. Yet for the opportunity that her husband should move to Vilna and learn constantly with the Gra himself, she would not relinquish the pleasure of seeing that former house. For an esrog she gave up the house; for Torah with the Vilna Gaon she would not give up the memory of having done so. How could this be understood?

The gadol responded with another mesorah, this one concerning the Gra and the Shaagas Aryeh. During a period of self-imposed golus, the Shaagas Aryeh came anonymously to Vilna. The Gra recognized him, and the two began to speak in Torah. The Gra invited him to join his Friday night seudah. The Shaagas Aryeh explained that during his golus he had accepted upon himself not to eat at a table where a woman was present, and that he could therefore attend only if that condition could be met. The Gra replied that Friday night was the one time during the week when he sat at the table with his wife, and that he could not decide the matter without asking her.

That response itself reveals something extraordinary. Before the Gra stood the possibility of spending a long Leil Shabbos with the Shaagas Aryeh, two of the greatest Torah minds of the generation, engaged together in Torah, yet he would not seize that opportunity at the expense of his wife without her consent. He asked her, and she did not agree. Throughout the week, the Gra was secluded in Torah, and the Friday night seudah was her one opportunity to sit with him. She would not relinquish it.

The original question now became even stronger. How could such a righteous woman allow the Gra to lose a night of Torah with the Shaagas Aryeh? The gadol answered that we are not capable of measuring noshim tzidkaniyos of such stature by ordinary standards. Yet one thing, he said, may be understood. To sit at the Shabbos table with the Gra was not an Olam Hazeh pleasure. It was Olam Haba in this world. And for Rav Avrohom’s wife, walking past the house that had been sold for an esrog was not nostalgia or sentiment. That too was Olam Haba in this world.

This is perhaps the key to the entire mesorah. We describe Rav Avrohom’s wife as having sacrificed her house for an esrog. She may have understood the matter in exactly the opposite way. We see the house as the substantial possession and the mitzvah as the spiritual gain; she saw the mitzvah as the enduring possession and the house as temporary. We ask how a person can give up a home for one mitzvah. In her world, the question may have been how one could give up a mitzvah in order to preserve a home. We see what she lost; she saw what she had acquired forever.

For this reason, the story belongs so naturally in any study of the Gra. Its central act was performed by his brother and sister-in-law, yet it reveals the spiritual atmosphere in which the Gra stood. Torah and mitzvos were not additions to life. They determined what life itself was. Material possessions were temporary instruments; spiritual acquisitions were permanent realities. A house could be surrendered because an esrog was, in the deepest sense, more lasting than a house.

And perhaps no Yom Tov could express this truth more perfectly than Sukkos. A Yid leaves his fixed home and enters a diras arai, teaching himself that permanence cannot be measured by walls, ownership, or physical security. Rav Avrohom’s wife sold what appeared permanent for an esrog that would be held for only a few days. To the ordinary eye, she exchanged the lasting for the fleeting. In her eyes, it was precisely the reverse. The house eventually passed into other hands. The mitzvah remained hers forever.

One Of The Rishonim

Two hundred and twenty-nine years after the Gra’s histalkus, it is possible to list the many fields in which his influence remains overwhelming: halacha, girsa, pshat in Tanach, dikduk, Kabbolah, the restoration of Yerushalmi and Tosefta to the center of serious learning, and the entire world of Volozhin that flowed through Rav Chaim. Yet even that catalogue fails to convey the reverence with which later gedolim regarded him. Rav Chaim Volozhiner, who knew the Gra not as a distant legend but as a rebbi, wrote that even were all of his rebbi’s writings to be revealed, they would constitute only a drop against the great sea of his actual chochmah. The published Torah was not the measure of the man. It was the portion of an ocean that happened to reach the shore.

Rav Aharon Kotler later referred to the Gra as Rabban shel kol Yisroel b’doro uvechol hadoros haba’im acharov, the rebbi of all Yisroel in his own generation and in the generations that followed. The formulation is revealing because it does not merely praise his scholarship. It assigns him a permanent place within the transmission of Torah. The Chazon Ish spoke in even more startling terms. In Kovetz Igros he placed the Gra within the sequence of those towering figures through whom Torah was newly illuminated in different epochs and described him as standing in the category of the Rishonim. The statement is obviously not chronological. It is qualitative. The Gra appeared centuries after the period conventionally called the Rishonim, yet his authority in Torah, the purity of his access to the sources, and the scale upon which he could weigh Shas and poskim placed him, in the eyes of the Chazon Ish, in an entirely different order from that of an ordinary Acharon.

This helps explain a quality that might otherwise be misunderstood. The Gra was capable of disagreeing with accepted rulings and correcting long-established girsa’os with extraordinary boldness, yet there was nothing rebellious in his character. His originality was born from submission, not independence. Rav Chaim records his insistence shelo lisa ponim b’horo’ah, that in determining halacha one may not show favor even to an accepted authority when the sources themselves point elsewhere. Such courage was possible precisely because the Gra did not place himself above the text. He placed himself beneath it completely. Personal loyalty, habit and inherited convention could not be allowed to intrude where the Torah itself demanded another conclusion.

That is perhaps why the Gra remains so difficult to classify. He was at once the supreme baal mesorah and one of the most original minds in the history of Torah. He was uncompromisingly attached to the Rishonim, yet willing to reopen a sugya from its foundations. He possessed astonishing bekius, yet used that bekius to sharpen iyun rather than replace it. He entered the highest realms of Kabbolah, yet demanded grammatical precision in every posuk. He was a man of hidden kedusha whose name became synonymous with intellectual exactness. These are not contradictions. They are the very essence of his greatness. For the Gra, truth in Torah was one, and every genuine path into that truth had to converge.

His yahrtzeit on 19 Tishrei therefore falls at a moment uniquely suited to remembering him. During Sukkos, the Jew inhabits a world in which measure and mystery are inseparable. The sukkah must be ten tefochim high, yet Sheim Shomayim rests upon it. The nesochim are counted by lugin and esronim, yet they become the vessel through which the year’s rain is blessed. The 70 porim are precise korbanos, yet Chazal see within them the nations of the world. The letters of minchosam determine the arrangement of two keilim of 60, yet the same cheshbon ultimately opens toward Rochel, Yosef, and Hoshana Rabbah. The word Shechem contains the dimensions of the dofonos, while the difference between sukkah choseir and sukkah malei becomes a language for the joining of din and rachamim. In no other Yom Tov is it easier to sense the kind of Torah world in which the Gra lived.

Perhaps this is the deepest impression left by all these chiddushim. The Gra did not make Torah larger by adding novelty from outside. He made the learner realize how much had always been present inside the words themselves. A vav had been there all along. A missing yud had been there all along. The numbers of the porim, the quantities of the menochos, the unusual spelling in Tehillim, the formulation of the Mishnah about the kos and the kiton, all had been read countless times. The greatness lay in seeing that they were not isolated facts. They were parts of one design waiting for a mind sufficiently vast and sufficiently disciplined to perceive it.

On 19 Tishrei 5558, that mind left this world. Yet 229 years later, its light has not diminished. Every generation that enters the writings of the Gra discovers anew how frighteningly high the standard of Torah can be: to know broadly without becoming superficial, to analyze deeply without losing the whole, to search for originality without severing oneself from mesorah, and to approach every letter with the conviction that nothing in Torah is incidental. The more deeply one enters his world, the more the ordinary language of genius begins to feel inadequate. One is no longer speaking merely of a brilliant man or even of an extraordinary talmid chochom, but of one of those rare giants through whom Klal Yisroel is shown, for a moment, what the human mind and neshomah can become when both are given entirely to Torah.

And that may be the most humbling truth of all. After generations of talmidei chachomim have filled libraries explaining the Gra, after entire botei medrash have been shaped by his derech and after virtually every realm of Torah has felt his hand, we still approach his writings with the sense that we are standing not at the end of his thought, but only at its entrance. The ocean remains larger than the shore. The light remains greater than the vessel that carries it. On his 229th yahrtzeit, the Gra still compels us not merely to admire him, but to raise our conception of what Torah itself can demand from a person.

Across Europe Awakens Ghosts of the Holocaust, Escape of the “Burning Brigade”

The controversy surrounding Lithuania’s plans to build a cultural center on the site of Vilna’s ancient Jewish cemetery, amid fierce protests from Jewish organizations and international figures, has opened a trapdoor into one of the most harrowing chapters of the Holocaust.

Beneath the headlines about transforming the historic beis hachaim into an entertainment center with restaurants and bars, lies the buried history of a Jewish community that was systematically annihilated under the Nazi occupation.

“Any attempt to continue desecrating this cemetery is a disgrace to the Lithuanian government and will be met with opposition,” U.S. Special Envoy Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun warned Lithuania’s culture minister in a recent letter. “The blood of an entire people demands nothing less.”

“‘Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the earth,’” the letter continued, invoking a posuk from Bereishis. “Now, the blood of every Lithuanian Jew denied a proper burial during the Holocaust cries out to us as well.”

Lithuanian collaborators played a major role in the murder of approximately 100,000 Jews of Vilna and the surrounding region after the Nazis occupied the country. Some survivors testified that the vicious rifle units that carried out the slaughter in the death pits of Ponary were composed almost exclusively of Lithuanians.

The destruction did not end with the killings. In a macabre effort to erase the evidence, Jewish prisoners were forced to exhume the bodies of those who had been murdered and burn them.

But amid this nightmare of mass murder and the attempt to expunge the evidence, emerged an almost unbelievable story of survival.

A Story No One Believed

Members of the so-called Burning Brigade — Jewish prisoners forced to participate in the grisly task of destroying the evidence — knew they were doomed and desperately plotted an escape.

With their bare hands and improvised tools, they dug a tunnel beneath the cemetery, inching their way toward freedom while knowing that discovery meant certain death.

In contrast to the escape of hundreds of Jews from the Novaradok ghetto detailed in these pages last week, the majority of the Burning Brigade prisoners were tragically cut down in a hail of gunfire as they left the tunnel.

But fifteen men survived the hair-raising flight through the suffocating tunnel and the frantic race to the shelter of the forests, and lived to tell the tale. Their escape was so audacious and improbable that almost no one believed them.

Survivors recounted the miracle to their children, but the story was too fantastic to believe. Locals whispered about the death pits where the Jews were slaughtered, and an extraordinary tunnel that carried some of the victims to safety. But no one knew where it was. Or if indeed it existed.

A handful of Ponary survivors even shared their testimony in a series of interviews for a 1980s Holocaust documentary by filmmaker Claude Lanzmann. Yet, the tale of shackled and handcuffed prisoners stealthily digging a 110 ft. tunnel 9 feet underground, night after night, with their bare hands, and finally dashing for freedom under a hail of Nazi bullets, was so incredible it remained the stuff of legend.

For almost 70 years, the fabled tunnel in the heart of Lithuania lay in that misty region between rumor and reality.

Compounding the skepticism was the fact that no physical evidence of the tunnel entrance or exit could be found after the war. Returning many years after the Holocaust to the extermination site — now covered by bushes and dense foliage — various survivors were unable to locate the passageway through which they had cheated certain death.

“Of course I believed my father,” Chana Amir, the daughter of survivor Mottel Zeidel who escaped through the tunnel, told an interviewer many decades later. “But when I asked him, ‘How did it happen, Papa?’ he spoke in half-sentences, not able to give me more than a bare outline of how they did it. It wasn’t until the series of interviews with Claude Lanzmann that I finally heard the whole story.”

For many years, survivor accounts of tens of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children gunned down at close range and buried or burned in giant death pits in Ponary were also treated with skepticism.

How was it possible that over 100,000 people could have been butchered here without a trace left behind of these horrific crimes? Were the remains of tens of thousands of bodies truly lying beneath the serene surface of the Ponary forest?

Then, 65 years later, the grim truth finally surfaced as a team of Jewish archeologists, using the most advanced radar technology available, pierced the ground beneath the cemetery and revealed the legendary escape tunnel.

What had seemed too extraordinary to be true was there all along — a hidden monument to the courage and endurance of men who, in the face of an unstoppable killing machine that mowed down their families and community, carved a path from a Nazi death pit to freedom.

The Crown Jewel That Was Vilna

The handful of men who crawled through the tunnel survived the destruction of one of the greatest Jewish centers in Europe. Only by looking back at the world that existed in Vilna before it was demolished can one begin to grasp the enormity of what was lost.

At its peak, Vilna, the “Yerushalayim of Lita” as it was known, was a religious epicenter of Jewish scholarship, learning, and spiritual ferment. It was here that the revered Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski led his generation in the turbulent pre-war era until his death in 1940.

In the pre-war era, Vilna boasted a Jewish population of 80,000, over a hundred shuls, scores of rabbonim, dayonim, lamdonim, shochtim, and the world’s largest Jewish libraries.

The city’s tragic decline began in 1940, when the Soviet Union absorbed Lithuania, brutally shut down religious and cultural institutions, and enforced the teaching of communism and atheism in the schools.

After German armies attacked Russia in 1941, quickly conquering Lithuania, they turned their savagery on the Jews, eagerly assisted by the Lithuanians.

As documented by eyewitness testimony, photographs, and Nazi records, the Christian population in Lithuania welcomed the Germans as liberators [from Soviet occupation] in 1941. Almost immediately, Lithuanian citizens from all strata of society began persecuting and butchering their Jewish neighbors before German rule had even been firmly established.

Over the next three years, 96 percent of Lithuania’s 250,000 Jews were massacred — a near-complete extermination, greater than in almost any other part of Nazi-occupied Europe. The country has never recognized the magnitude of Lithuanian collaboration in these mass murders.

Lithuanian Rifle Brigades

At this early stage of the war, the Nazis had not yet developed the industrialized system of mass murder that would later be carried out through gas chambers and crematoria.

Instead, the Jews in cities and towns across Lithuania were dragged from their homes and marched on foot or driven in trucks to mass killing sites such as Ponary, the Seventh and Ninth Forts of Kovno, and other locations throughout Lithuania.

There they were methodically gunned down at close range.

Some historians view these massacres, later termed the “Holocaust by bullets,” as a crucial turning point: the staggering scale of the killings demonstrated to Hitler that the systematic annihilation of an entire population was possible. The lessons learned in Lithuania would help pave the way for the machinery of genocide that followed in the Final Solution.

At Ponary, the bodies were buried in huge pits originally excavated by the Soviets for the purpose of storing fuel tanks and ammunition. But the Nazis overran Lithuania before the tanks could be installed. They found the deep pits ideal as a mass execution site, where they could bury the victims’ bodies by the tens of thousands.

The barbaric killings continued methodically until late 1943. According to survivor accounts, a Lithuanian rifle brigade of 150 men murdered the majority of the prisoners — usually in groups of about 10 at a time. The massacres went on for full days at a time. The victims were first blindfolded and then forced to the edge of a pit where they were shot in the back and flung over the pit’s edge.

According to post-Holocaust research, one pit alone held 20,000 to 25,000 corpses.

The few victims who survived their execution wounds and managed to escape staggered back to the Vilna Ghetto, bringing with them horrifying accounts of what they had witnessed. Terror and despair gripped the surviving Jews.

Until then, many had clung to the belief that the roundups that had carried tens of thousands of Vilna Jews away in trucks and trains were intended to transport them to labor camps. For a time, even the Vilna Judenrat helped sustain that desperate illusion.

Even as people began suspecting they were being lied to, the truth was too horrific to absorb.

Eyewitness Account

Shlomo Gol was seventeen at the time of the Nazi occupation in Vilna and his forced labor in the Burning Brigade. His young son, Abe, learned about his father’s horrific ordeal by listening in on his conversation with fellow survivors during their annual reunion, which they always held on the last day of Pesach.

Later, as an adult, Abe translated his father’s Yiddish memoirs into English. An excerpt from that memoir cites the scope of the atrocities committed at Ponary by Nazi barbarians and their Lithuanian collaborators:

“We dug up altogether 68,000 corpses,” Gol wrote. “I know this because the Germans ordered two of the Jews in the pit with us to keep count of the bodies — that was their sole job. Among those that I dug up I found my own brother. I found his identification papers on him. He had been dead for two years when I found him, because I know that he was in a batch of 10,000 Jews from the Vilna ghetto who were shot in September 1941.”

Shlomo Gol’s group remained shackled above the legs and around their wrists as they worked, which greatly slowed them down. They were constantly beaten and threatened with execution. They realized they were living on borrowed time.

“Once the job was finished, they would kill us so no one could tell the world what they had done here. In desperation, we began to plan an escape. We had nothing to lose,” recalled Mottel Zeidel and Isaac Dugin in the Claude Lanzmann interviews.

Pesach Miracle

It was Dugin, an electrician, who first proposed tunneling out of the pit as the only possible means of escape. Shlomo Gol and a few others immediately offered their support; they took the lead in formulating a plan to build a tunnel from their cramped living quarters, which were about nine feet below ground.

About 25 of the 80 prisoners were eventually in on the tunnel scheme, including Yudi Farber, a trained civil engineer. Farber and Dugin mapped out the tunnel’s route. Dugin stealthily strung up a cable to the Nazi’s generator, wiring it to an electric bulb deep inside the tunnel so the prisoners could dig at night.

To bypass the barbed wire and the explosive mines the Nazis had planted around the execution site, the tunnel had to extend about 110 feet. After a full day of backbreaking work, shackled and handcuffed for the night, the “tunnelers” would feverishly claw and dig, using their bare hands, spoons, and whatever tools they could find to extend the tunnel’s path.

In a little less than three months, they had scooped out 32 tons of sand and dirt and had excavated past the barbed wire and mines to the forest outside the pits. By now, the entire Burning Brigade knew of the tunnel escape plan.

In his own interview with documentary maker Claude Lanzmann, Shlomo Gol spoke of a rabbi who had been with them in Ponary who advised them to coordinate the escape with the last day of Pesach. He said it would be totally dark then, with no moonlight to give them away.

The rabbi said he was unable to attempt the escape with them but encouraged the prisoners and blessed them fervently that they should merit Divine protection and success.

“…I hugged my father, I hugged my brothers-in-law,” recalled Dugin about the tension-fraught moment of departure. No one knew if anyone would survive.”

“We were still far from the end of our nightmare. As soon as we emerged from the tunnel, we’d still had to cover some distance to get to the fence and beyond. And we had to evade the SS machine guns and their dogs,” he added.

It was mid-April when they finally broke out of the tunnel. Tragically, the noise of dry leaves crackling underfoot alerted the guards. They shone lights on the prisoners as they raced through the forest and began firing at them with machine guns.

“Fire burst from everywhere,” recalled Zeidel. “From a group of fifteen to twenty people around me, suddenly there were no more than five.”

In the end, only fifteen men managed to flee to safety. They spent several months hiding in the forest, living on berries and whatever small animals they could catch, trying to link up with the partisans.

In early July, the Red Army encircled Vilna in a new offensive against the Germans. Zeidel joined with other partisans to fight alongside the Soviets to liberate the city, and by mid-July the Germans were driven out.

New Life In Israel

With the war over, Zeidel, the sole survivor of his family, smuggled himself into Palestine-Israel and fought in the War of Independence. In 1948, he married a fellow survivor of the Vilna Ghetto. At the time of the Claude Lanzmann interview, Seidel and his wife had two married children, an adult son and a granddaughter.

Once a year, on the last day of Pesach, the anniversary of the escape, Zeidel would meet with Isaac Dogin and David Kantorovich, another member of the Burning Brigade. Over l’chaims, his daughter Chana Amir recounts, they would catch up with each other’s lives and reminisce about their experiences, the horrors, the grief and the miracles.

“The Jews are the strongest people on earth,” Amir recalled her father saying again and again. “Look at what they tried to do to us! And still, with G-d’s help, we survived.”

“My father made several pilgrimages back to Ponary,” Chana Amir reminisced. “He was determined to locate the passageway that carried him to freedom. But he never found it. He’d come back looking defeated.”

In his final trip to Ponary, in 2002, Zeidel traveled with his daughter Chana, son Shraga, and three of his grandchildren. The family clustered together near a burial pit. Cursing in Yiddish, Zeidel shook his fist at invisible demons of the past.

“Can you see me, filthy barbarians?” Zeidel cried out to the ghosts of the Nazi degenerates who had been his captors at Ponary. “I am here with my children, and my children have children of their own, and they are here, too! Can you see us from the pits of Gehinnom? Burn forever, scum of the earth!”

***

Legend Becomes Fact

Over the years, Lithuanian archaeologists had repeatedly investigated reports of an escape tunnel at Ponary, but their searches yielded nothing. Then, in 2014, Jon Seligman, a leading researcher with the Israel Antiquities Authority, began collaborating on the Ponary investigation with Dr. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford.

Their goal was to determine whether an underground passage really existed beneath the Nazi execution pits at Ponary.

Freund brought extensive experience to the search. He had previously directed archaeological investigations at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, as well as at ancient sites in Israel. Both researchers traced their ancestry to Jews of Vilna, which gave the project a deeply personal dimension.

Seligman and Freund ruled out using the traditional method of digging into an archaeological site with spades and machines, as that would desecrate the site, “victimizing the dead a second time,” Freund told JTA.

Instead, the teams used noninvasive techniques such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), which uses radar pulses to record images of objects found beneath the earth’s surface. They also used Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ETR), with which scientists investigate subsurface materials through their electrical properties, similar to MRI imaging of the human body.

In addition, the two archeologists met in Israel with the children of the survivors and used their shared recollections of their fathers’ accounts of the tunnel to guide the researchers in their explorations. Their probes spanned two years.

A little more than ten years ago, the team finally located the extraordinary Ponary escape tunnel.

The story, a profound tribute to astonishing human courage, ingenuity, and the clinging to life under monstrous conditions, created an international sensation.

At the time the discovery was made, the escapees were no longer alive. Zeidel, the last living member of the Burning Brigade, had died in 2007. One day, his daughter Chana returned home to find her phone ringing. “Everyone wanted to know if I’d heard about the amazing news,” she recalled.

Quickly booting up her computer, she found a rash of headlines about the tunnel’s discovery. “I started to tremble; tears came to my eyes,” she told a correspondent. “If only Papa were here with me right now!” I wept. “It would have made him so happy!”

The gift of speech is the crown of a person, a treasure Hashem bestowed to elevate us and help us connect with Him and the world around us. What happens when this gift is flawed, disfluent, and uncomfortable? Reb Yanky Kaufman stuttered heavily for twenty-six years. In this exclusive interview, he shares his miraculous story.

A Childhood Challenge

Yanky wandered up and down the aisles of the grocery store, intent on finding the sliced pickles on his mother’s shopping list. Although a worker stood nearby, Yanky walked past him, preferring a circuitous route to asking for help. “It’s easier said than done” rings true for non-stutterers. For stutterers, however, “It’s easier done than said.”

From his earliest memories, Reb Yanky Kaufman struggled with fluency. It was challenging to pick up the phone, introduce himself, and ask a question. The expressions on people’s faces when he communicated reinforced his realization that his speech was different. Speaking was taxing, and getting words out was a struggle. Naturally, he tried to switch what he wanted to say for easier words, but then he wound up saying things that didn’t express what he meant, causing him to hold back more. Why should he put himself in a difficult situation if it wasn’t necessary? Milestones and opportunities became obstacles, scenes of nightmares. His pshetel at his bar mitzvah became an expected disaster, and even getting a job at Camp Agudah didn’t come easily.

“I couldn’t be a junior counselor- how would I assert myself? Maintenance wasn’t an option because I wasn’t handy. Finally, I landed a job as a lifeguard, but I was only equipped to handle shallow-water situations. To augment that, I hauled the boats in and out at the lake. I was very strong, so that was a good job for me. But finding my niche took time and patience- it didn’t come easily or naturally.”

Stuttering is an unspoken-about challenge, but it deserves to be discussed. The ability to speak is one of the basics of humanity; without it, a person lacks one of those basics. Millions around the world stutter, and no one is exempt. They say money talks, but the wealthiest, most famous, intellectual, and accomplished people can stutter.

Speech therapists do not offer a solid solution for stuttering. In fact, part of the challenge is going from therapy to therapy without seeing results. A prime example: Reb Yanky sought professional help for fifteen years without success! Unfortunately, the current trend is that professionals accept stuttering. In fact, they are trying to take away the term “stuttering” and call it a different form of communication.

“It’s hard to find people who can give appropriate chizuk in this area because someone who has never experienced it cannot really understand. The challenge of stuttering is its chronic and pervasive nature. Thankfully, Hashem gave me many mentors who tried to support me. I was fortunate to live across the street from Rav Yitzchok Berkowitz, and with his gentle manner and keen perception, he was mechazeik me.”

Quite often, there is a dichotomy between what parents and children describe. Parents may say their child has a “slight stutter” that doesn’t really require therapy, while the child explains, “This is really important, and I need help.” Only the child knows how much he substitutes words to make it easier for him to articulate.

For three to four years, Reb Yanky’s parents took him to therapy at a local facility that accepted their insurance and had convenient hours and location. This continued without noticeable improvement.

“Let’s wait until you’re more ready, more aware,” his parents suggested.

After the debacle at his bar mitzvah, Yanky was determined to try again. He went to specialists and tried different therapies, some for six months and some for a year. To his frustration, nothing worked.

“Why didn’t it work?” Reb Yanky asks and proceeds to explain.

“Without exception, the methods the professionals use are unnatural, not clearly defined, and not effective enough. Therefore, even when people are very motivated, these methods don’t work.”

For example, clients are told to take a deep breath before they speak. How much of a deep breath? What are the parameters? Does that mean two times in one sentence or ten times in thirty seconds?

“It’s unnatural,” Reb Yanky deplores. “No one does that.”

Even a method as simple as “Speak slowly” is against the nature of a stutterer. He just wants to get the words out. And how slow is slow?

Usually, therapists say, “Okay, if this method doesn’t work, we’ll try another method.”

The stutterer keeps trying until he eventually gives up.

“That’s exactly what happened to me,” Reb Yanky says.

Except Reb Yanky never gave up hope. Throughout the years, he continued davening and asking Hashem to help him overcome his problem. And he believed that one day, it could happen.

After speaking to researchers in stuttering, Reb Yanky says there are no new methods in technique for fluency. They say they may discover something different about a stutterer’s genes or brain, and then find a medicine that can help. But they haven’t been able to put anything on the table as a solution.

“In fact,” he adds, “There’s not much hope that they’ll get there because they rally behind a belief system that says there’s no cure.”

Reb Yanky recently surveyed 67 licensed speech therapists to gauge their confidence after becoming licensed in helping stutterers gain fluency on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest. There were no 5s. There were no 4s. Some replied 3, but most answered 2 or 1.

Perhaps therapists need to find a solution rather than keep going down a path that doesn’t work. And stutterers need to know, “There is nothing wrong with you! This is what you can expect.” Most people who come to Reb Yanky for help have previously seen a therapist.

“Some therapists are turning to AI.” Reb Yanky shakes his head dismissively. “AI is not the answer. To succeed, you need good methods and a strong therapeutic model. AI uses the same methods that aren’t working. When it comes to speech, you need the techniques to be natural, not flashy marketing.”

The Turning Point

After fifteen years of unsuccessful therapy, how did Reb Yanky continue to hope that he would overcome his stutter?

“I knew that when I spoke in private, there was no stutter- even on my hardest words. And I didn’t always stutter when I was with people. So, I always davened.”

At twenty-six, Reb Yanky was happily married, learned in a kollel in Yerushalayim, and even gave a shiur in the Mir.

“Saying shiur was a challenge, but I did it anyway because I thought it was the right thing for me to do. I stuttered less when I learned, maybe because I was more confident in that area. But I still stuttered.”

One day, someone called him and posed the following question.

“Can you help a bochur who stutters?”

“Why are you calling me?” Reb Yanky wondered. “I can teach him how to stutter; I can’t teach him how not to stutter.”

“This bochur has tried many therapists in Israel, and he’s at a low point,” the caller replied. “Maybe you can give him some chizuk– just be his friend?”

“Okay,” Reb Yanky agreed. “I can be any Yid’s friend.”

They scheduled a meeting for the following day. That night, Reb Yanky realized he didn’t have much to tell this bochur. Turning to Hashem, he asked for help in giving over the right message. Then he began to jot down some ideas that came to mind, ideas he hoped had a chance of working. When they met the next day, Reb Yanky said, “I thought of an idea last night that may help the stuttering. Why don’t we experiment?”

After the meeting, Reb Yanky didn’t think much about what had happened but felt gratified that the bochur wanted to meet again on the following day. They met again, Reb Yanky offered more chizuk, and they practiced his ideas some more. After one more meeting, something shifted, and Reb Yanky felt a level of control over his speech that he had never felt in his life. It was a Thursday night that he would never forget. Turning to his wife, with whom he did not stutter, he said, “I know I’m not going to stutter anymore, not just based on how comfortable I feel with the person I’m speaking to.”

That Friday, while waiting in line to speak to his rebbi, Reb Yanky did something he had never done before. Turning to the person beside him, he said, “Shalom aleichem. What’s your name?” Every other time while waiting in line, he always buried his head in his Gemara and never initiated conversation. That was the beginning.

On Shabbos, the clincher came in a moment that could have become his most embarrassing. Reb Yanky and his friend went to a new shul, and the rov was in the middle of speaking. Suddenly, in the middle of his speech, the rov turned to Reb Yanky and gave him a warm, “Shalom Aleichem! What’s your name?”

Reb Yanky was stunned. Why was the rov interrupting his drosha to welcome him? Regardless, he knew he had to answer. He hesitated- his name was the hardest thing for him to say. He toyed with making up a name but quickly rejected the idea. And then, he asked himself: Why don’t you do what has worked for you the last few days? Miraculously, the words Yanky Kaufman emerged with 100 percent fluency. Reb Yanky felt like he had won a marathon.

But the rov wasn’t finished.

“Where are you from?” he continued.

“Sanhedria Murchevet.”

“No,” the rov persisted. “Where are you originally from?”

A herd of imaginary elephants stomped inside Reb Yanky. Monsey, New York had always been a challenge for him to say. But another miracle transpired, and the words came out without a stutter.

When Reb Yanky got home from shul, he was flying, his mind awhirl with ways that he could help fellow stutterers. After Shabbos, he began calling rabbonim and rabbeim from every neighborhood, asking if they knew people who stuttered. He was on a mission to see if he could help them, and he shared his method with the first 20 people who came to him pro bono with tremendous success.

After a few weeks of not stuttering and helping people, Reb Yanky approached Rav Yitzchok Berkowitz. His whole life had changed. He had discovered his wings but wasn’t sure how to use them.

“Rebbi, what is my life without stuttering?”

“Yanky,” Rav Berkowitz replied, “Your life is not over. Your life is about to begin. You can help other people who stutter.”

As if emerging from underwater, Reb Yanky took a deep breath and continued to build and branch out. In time, he helped five hundred people, marveling at the new direction his life had taken. Initially, he thought his system was an upgraded version of what was available until he realized that his understanding of stuttering surpassed that of professionals. Soon, he had a six-month waiting list and realized he needed to train therapists to work under his tutelage. Moving forward, Reb Yanky hand-selected quality therapists to work in his program.

Smooth Speech Solution

Currently, Reb Yanky’s Smooth Speech Solution program has thirteen branches and is the largest stuttering program in the world. For the first time, it offers a method with ingredients for success, empowering people to take control of their speech through an effective, natural combination of speech and behavioral therapy. Another important aspect of the program is not just teaching skills, but customizing them to clients’ social scene and unique challenges, with an awareness of their capabilities. After they learn to integrate the skill, clients are matched with program graduates for maintenance. The graduates are men and women from all walks of life. They may be maggidei shiur, therapists, or lawyers hailing from Litvish, Chassidish, and Sefardi backgrounds. This is a wonderful perk of the program, as clients feel most comfortable speaking with graduates who have achieved success.

The more people Reb Yanky helped, the more people contacted him, even from outside the country. By the time he helped 750 people, a wealthy man in London contacted him, hoping to bring him in to help his son. Reb Yanky explained that he was busy in America but would fly to London to work with a group. Determined to help his son, this man contacted prestigious therapy organizations to put together a group. Reb Yanky recently returned from his fifth trip to London, and his sixth trip to Eretz Yisroel is approaching.

“I don’t necessarily like to travel,” Reb Yanky explains, “but I do it to help people who stutter. When I meet someone from across the world, I often think that although we never met, you were on my mind- because I used to daven for fellow stutterers as well as myself. When a new client comes to my office, especially from across the world, I think “al hana’ar hazeh– al hamegamgem hazeh hispallalti.”

After helping over a thousand people, one mother requested a session for her son during bein hazemanim, one of Reb Yanky’s busiest times. Although his time was at a premium, it was impossible for Reb Yanky to resist a Yiddishe Mama’s pleas. He agreed to see her son with one stipulation.

“People who follow what I say consistently and accurately do amazing work. So, you must give me your word that your son will follow the program consistently and accurately.”

With her agreement procured, Reb Yanky trusted that her son would make quick progress, but he didn’t realize how quickly it would happen. He squeezed a few sessions into one and called the mother to pick up her son. She said she needed another 45 minutes before she could come, so Reb Yanky continued working with him. At that point, Reb Yanky called the mother back and said that in another 45 minutes, her son would master the skill. The mother happily agreed to give them additional time.

During the session, Reb Yanky tried an exercise and asked this boy to call his father. He always stuttered when conversing with his father. When the boy called, his father was shocked by his fluency.

“What’s going on?” he wondered. “This isn’t supposed to happen so fast!”

After that client, Reb Yanky didn’t tell his next one that he had come up with a faster method in case it didn’t work for him. Amazingly, that person achieved success in an hour and a half!

The program kept evolving, becoming faster and more efficient. When Reb Yanky saw how quickly it could be mastered, he began the overriding skills can be learned in one session. Step two is a follow-up session with Reb Yanky, followed by three months of maintenance with a coach.

At this point, when it became apparent that people could be helped so quickly in an unparalleled way, Reb Yanky felt Rav Yitzchok Berkowitz’s words come to life. The words echoed in his mind, resounding in his heart.

“Yanky,” his rebbi said, “Your life is not over. Your life is about to begin. You can help other people who stutter.”

It was a dream come true, and Reb Yanky soldiered on. He conducted a detailed survey with the most compelling questions to show real success in a therapy program. The results showed that over 98% were on track after one session! Outside professionals documented and reviewed these surveys. Within a short time after that, Reb Yanky was offered a teaching position at a graduate school for communication disorders. The ripples continue to spread.

Smooth Speech Solution, Reb Yanky’s main organization, offers more than skill-building; an extracurricular skills group is also included. In this group, a platform helps people who stutter conquer their “Nevers.” What are nevers? They are the declarations of many stutterers who said: “I’ll never speak again in public. I’ll never get an aliyah. I’ll never introduce myself to people in public.” These clients are joined by a small group of people who stuttered and now have newfound skills that let them do tasks they once said they would never do. By participating in this group, stutterers gain skills and fluency and learn to make their speech work. Reb Yanky recently facilitated his 92nd group and was overjoyed to see how many times this system has worked for people and changed their lives.

“This is not a business,” Reb Yanky concludes. “It’s my mission. My tefillos for myself and others have made me a conduit to help people. Throughout my years of struggle, I never gave up and never stopped believing that Hashem could affect a yeshuah. Every Yom Kippur, I would daven for a new gezeirah. On Purim, I asked for v’nahafoch hu. And on Chanukah, the time of nissim, I felt renewed hope. All those tefillos added up and culminated in something that I never would have dreamt possible.”

Speech is the crown of humanity, a gift of self-expression that helps us define our essence. Tapping into his passion and creativity, Reb Yanky is working to restore that gift to so many who are shackled within walls of pain and insecurity-one medaber at a time.

Elections 5787

As we enter the year 5787, it is time to make a reckoning of the year 5786. Even if we don’t make a full accounting of our actions and derive lessons for the future, we should at least remind ourselves of everything that we experienced over the past year. Many miracles have been performed for us; we need only remember the times we spent in our bomb shelters and safe rooms, listening to the wailing sirens and hearing the sounds of impacts and explosions. The Israeli offensives against Iran resulted in no fatalities, which the experts asserted was completely miraculous. And there is more: President Trump defied many of his advisers and public relations strategists to help Israel in its battle against Iran’s nuclear program. There was certainly nothing natural about that. Looking further back into the past, the success of Israel’s beeper operation against Hezbollah could never have been predicted or explained by rational means. This was an extremely sophisticated ploy that entailed significant risk, but it succeeded. And the Israeli army has also succeeded in taking out many mass murderers.

We all know that the Ramban teaches us that we must recognize the miracles within nature. But let us not forget to recognize the miracles that are openly miraculous as well.

With so many enemies facing this country across its borders, and with many of them actively scheming to cause harm to us, one would have to be blind to fail to recognize that we are constantly being Divinely spared from tragedy. The parsha of bikkurim illustrates the degree to which a person must show gratitude to the Master of the Universe. And I am not referring to the kindnesses that Hashem performs for every person on an individual basis; I am referring instead to the things that occur on a national level.

Here is one example: Just before Rosh Hashanah, the Shin Bet reported on a serious security threat that it was investigating together with the division of the police force in Yehuda and Shomron. According to the reports, about 12 suspects had been arrested on suspicion of working to establish terror infrastructures and to plan massive terror attacks in several places around the country. In addition to the arrests, substantial quantities of weapons and other destructive materials were seized. It is believed that the suspects were planning to carry out broad-scale terror attacks in several locations and that the security forces managed to prevent a major slaughter. The investigation is still in its early stages, and a gag order has been imposed on most of the details, although the media reported that additional arrests are expected.

Let’s just emphasize the most salient part of that report: It appears that a huge massacre was averted. It is no secret that terrorists often plot to carry out their attacks specifically during or before Jewish holidays, but Hashem saves us from their schemes.

The year 5787 will begin with an election, and we hope that the outcome will be good. It is only natural that elections lead to division and strife, and this comes specifically at a time when we are in need of unity and cohesion. The arba minim, as we know, symbolize the unity of Klal Yisroel. Let us hope that our people will absorb the blessings and kedusha of the sukkah and the accompanying Yom Tov. In fact, the Yom Tov of Sukkos often leads to a display of the hidden virtues of Klal Yisroel, as it demonstrates the degree to which the people thirst for Yiddishkeit. Sukkos appear on porches and in yards throughout the country even in areas that aren’t known for their religious character, attesting to the latent yearning for mitzvos that resides even within our estranged brethren. Let us keep in mind our plea during davening for Hashem to spread His “sukkah of peace” over us and envelop us in His blessings.

5786: A Year of Judicial Persecution

The year 5786 will be remembered as the year when the judicial system declared war on Torah learners. What I find both incredible and tragic is the fact that a man who wears a yarmulke such as Noam Sohlberg added his signature to the court’s deplorable decisions, and sometimes even led the initiatives while others joined him, perpetually tightening the noose around the collective neck of the country’s lomdei Torah. The judges took aim specifically at kollel families, those in which the wife works hard for a living while the husband spends his days toiling in the bais medrash.

To be honest, Sohlberg isn’t the first of his kind. That tragic precedent was already set by Elyokim Rubinstein, who likewise wore a yarmulke. Sometimes, it seems that these people are eager to prove that they are on the “right” side of the hegemony; they forget that at the end of the day (a phrase that seems to be especially popular with judges), the “enlightened” public and its “reasonable” individuals will reject them just as they reject anyone else who wears a yarmulke of any kind.

The chareidi community’s suffering this year at the hands of the Supreme Court judges far exceeded anything that anyone might ever have imagined; however, it seems that there is no limit to their cruelty and callousness. I once encountered Sohlberg in an elevator and I remarked to him, “Did you know that our community considers you an enemy?”

“It saddens me to hear that,” he replied.

In recent days, I have had many more opportunities to see Sohlberg and speak with him. As the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, which operates in the Knesset building, Sohlberg is often present in the building and regularly davens Mincha and Maariv with us in the Knesset shul. At a recent toast to the Central Elections Committee workers in honor of Rosh Hashanah, Sohlberg delivered a speech that would have suited any rov or mashgiach. It is hard for me to understand how a person who can be so compassionate, pleasant, and modest can become like a bulldozer and brutally oppress an entire sector of society without the slightest compassion.

Another major factor in this conflict is the attorney general and her staff, whose function is to serve as the government’s legal advisors but who seem to have no qualms about acting as an opposition within the government. It might have been possible to defend their behavior in certain cases on the grounds that they feel bound by their legal interpretation of the truth. However, their actions become utterly indefensible when 100 percent of their decisions are against the government. That cannot possibly be the product of impartial reasoning; it reeks of bias and hostility. And then there is their unfathomable persecution of lomdei Torah. At the very end of the year 5786, the attorney general and her staff came up with yet another edict directed against the Torah world—a requirement for yeshivos and kollelim to report to the state if there are any “draft evaders” in their institutions. This is utterly insane! And at the very end of the year, they added yet another decree: Even if a chareidi man and his wife are both employed (i.e., the husband does not learn in kollel), they must be denied subsidized day care if the father has the status of a draft evader. Who told the legal department that they should be even crueler than the judges and expand the economic sanctions more and more? There is no question that they are driven by the ancient hatred that came into the world when the Torah was given to Bnei Yisroel at Har Sinai.

Netanyahu Fills Reserved Slots; Eisenkot Compiles a Drab List

Then there is the latest election news: As I told you last week, at 10:00 on Tuesday night, all doubts were removed and all lingering questions were resolved. We now know exactly which parties will be vying for the public’s trust in the election for the 26th Knesset, which will be held on 16 Cheshvan/October 27, 2026. This election, incidentally, is being held on its intended date, unlike the previous elections, which took place early due to the early dissolution of the Knesset.

Let’s begin with a simple statistic: As of now, there are 38 parties competing in the upcoming election. Only about one third of those parties (13 or 14) will pass the electoral threshold, and it is highly likely that some of the parties will withdraw from the race before we go to the polls. At this time, we also know the identity of every candidate in every spot on each party’s list. The electoral threshold stands today at 3.25 percent of the total vote, which works out to about four mandates; there was a time when it was much lower, but then Avigdor Lieberman led the initiative to raise the threshold, hoping that the ploy would succeed in knocking the Arab parties out of the running. Contrary to his expectations, though, the higher threshold turned out to benefit the Arabs, since it forced them to unite and thus to earn more seats in the Knesset.

Let’s move on to some more statistics. There isn’t much that has changed in the Likud party; after their primaries, we already knew exactly which party members would be chosen for realistic spots on the slate. The latest changes primarily involved the reserved spots that were given to Netanyahu, who revealed his choices for those spots at the last possible minute. This, in fact, is typical of Netanyahu, who tends to do everything at the last minute. The first reserved slot was given to Talik Gvili, the mother of Ran Gvili, the slain police officer who was the last deceased hostage to be retrained from Gaza. (You may recall that I informed you a while ago that Netanyahu planned to pick her for one of his spots on the Likud list.) The next reserved slot went to Yaakov Berdugo, the journalist who is closest to the prime minister. Another interesting piece of news from the Likud party is that MK Tally Gottliv transferred to Otzma Yehudit, Itamar Ben-Gvir’s party, with Netanyahu’s encouragement. Many believe that everyone will benefit from this switch: The Likud has been relieved of the presence of Gottliv, a staunch right-wing activist, and her absence might enable the party to earn an additional two or three mandates by attracting more moderate right-wing voters. Meanwhile, her presence in Ben-Gvir’s party might boost his performance in the polls and earn him another mandate or two that might otherwise have been won by Lieberman or Bennett. And those mandates might be the critical ones that tip the scale between a left-wing or right-wing government.

Meanwhile, Gadi Eizenkot’s party, Yashar, surprised everyone with the simple fact that it included no surprises. His list is drab and unexciting; the candidates in realistic positions on the list are Orit Farkash Hakohen, Matan Kahna, Chili Tropper, and Elazar Stern, all of them politicians with fairly mediocre records. Eizenkot has also recruited Yoram Cohen, a former head of the Shin Bet, and Shaul Meridor, who was once a senior figure in the Treasury. Everyone agrees that it isn’t exactly an attractive list, but it is also the only party in the race that seems to pose a threat to the Likud.

Naftoli Bennett’s party, B’Yachad, is even less impressive: It is a union of Bennett, Lapid, and their respective running mates, although most of Yesh Atid’s former members have already jumped ship. There is nothing noteworthy to write about it, except perhaps the fact that Noam Tivon, formerly of Yesh Atid, and Eitan Ginzburg, formerly of Blue and White, have joined the list. Bennett also included a 23-year-old young man on the list who “happens” to be the son of his business partner.

Lieberman, on the other hand, managed to surprise by placing two people from the Moroccan community directly below himself on his party’s list, while he has previously been courting the Russian vote. Another interesting candidate running with Yisroel Beiteinu is Sharon Sharabi, a man who wears a yarmulke and is the brother of former hostage Eli Sharabi, whose wife and two daughters were murdered by Hamas, and Yossi Sharabi, who was murdered in captivity. The tenth spot on the party’s list is occupied by Dan Illouz, the Knesset member who fought against the draft law while in the Likud party and then defected to Lieberman’s party. Let us hope that he will not be elected and we will be rid of him.

There is also nothing to report about the Democrats, which is a band of leftists (Labor and Meretz party members and Kaplan protestors), most of whom are hostile to Torah and troublemakers for the Jewish people. At first, Yair Golan, the chairman of the Democrats party, promised to include Einav Zangkauer on his list. Zangkauer is the mother of Matan Zangkauer, a hostage in Gaza who returned from captivity alive and well. Golan ultimately reneged on his promise, which cost him a good deal of public approval. For the chareidi community, however, this might be a good thing, since Zangkauer occasionally spoke with great animosity toward religion.

I will not report much about the Arab parties, since their internal affairs are not of much interest to our community. I will mention only that there has been an unprecedented development: Yoav Segalowitz, a former official in the police force who investigated Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu, defected from Yesh Atid and joined the Arab party Raam, where he now occupies the spot directly below party chairman Mansour Abbas on the party’s list.

There are two other parties that bear mentioning, although it is doubtful if they will cross the electoral threshold. One is the Reservists party, which is headed by Yoaz Handel and economist Yaron Zelicha. Chili Tropper was on their slate until the last minute, when he suddenly switched to Eizenkot’s party. The other party that bears mentioning is Blue and White, which is headed by Benny Gantz. The other top positions on the party’s list are occupied by MK Penina Tamano-Shata, who appeals to the Ethiopian community, and former Beit Shemesh mayor Aliza Bloch.

Eichler Exits; New Blood in Degel HaTorah

Let us now turn our attention to the right. Of course, we will begin with United Torah Judaism (UTJ), the union of two chareidi factions: Degel HaTorah, representing the Litvish community, and Agudas Yisroel, which represents the chassidim. The candidates on the UTJ list, in order, are Yaakov Asher, Yitzchok Goldknopf, Yitzchok Pindrus, Meir Porush, Moshe Rosenthal, Elyokim Stark (representing Belz), Yehuda Weisfish, Yaakov Tessler (of Vizhnitz), Dovid Zaltz, Dovid Ochana, Moishe Roth (of Sanz), and Eliyohu Bruchi. You may have noticed that the spots alternate between Agudah and Degel, with the exception of Zaltz and Ochana, both of whom are from Degel HaTorah. Yaakov Asher occupies the top spot on the list on account of a longstanding rotation agreement: Agudas Yisroel gets the first spot on the list while Degel HaTorah gets first pick of a government position after an election, and then the arrangement is reversed for the following election.

Moshe Gafni and Uri Maklev, the two longstanding party veterans, will not be running this time. The newcomers on the Degel list are Rosenthal, Weisfish, and Zaltz (a former aide to Yaakov Asher). Yisroel Eichler is exiting the Knesset to make way for Elyokim Stark. Within Agudas Yisroel, Shlomei Emunim (led by Meir Porush) and Belz (represented by Stark) announced that they had decided to form a separate faction within Agudas Yisroel. Regardless of its composition, we must hope that the party list will be successful.

In the Shas party, there have been no major changes or shocks. The party is expected to receive 10 or 11 mandates, and the candidates of interest are therefore those in the first 11 places on the party’s list. Then again, if and when a right-wing government is established and the Norwegian Law is implemented, the occupants of the next five spots will likewise be able to enter the Knesset. At this point, two of Shas’s previous Knesset members have already announced their departure (Moshe Arbel and Yaakov Margi), which has made it possible for two new names to be placed on the list. The sixth spot is now held by Dror Amos, chairman of the Haifa religious council and an officer in the IDF reserves. There is clearly a reason for this choice: The Shas party fears that its militant battle to defend the rights of Torah learners will cost it votes in the traditional sector. The party’s election propaganda has also stressed the point that there is no contradiction between fighting on behalf of Torah learners and showing appreciation for soldiers in the army. Meanwhile, Yinon Azulai, who did excellent work on the Knesset Finance Committee, has been catapulted into the second spot on the party’s list, directly below Aryeh Deri. Below him are the party’s well-known Knesset members and ministers: Malchieli, Ben-Tzur, Bitton, Amos (whom I’ve already mentioned), Abutbul, Bosso, Taieb, and Mashriki. The next spot on the list is occupied by another new figure: Yosef Elnatov, a member of the Bucharian community, who is followed by current MK Erez Malul, the party’s representative on the Central Elections Committee.

Smotrich-Feiglin Merger Impacts the Polls

In other news on the right, Betzalel Smotrich’s party, Religious Zionism, merged with Moshe Feiglin’s party, Zehut. According to the polls, this union seems to be proving itself. Although Religious Zionism was hovering in the area of the electoral threshold at first, it now seems to be poised to cross the threshold. The joint party is headed by Smotrich, followed by Feiglin in the second spot. The next two spots are occupied by two current members of the Knesset, Orit Strook and Simcha Rothman, who are followed by Tzvika Mor (father of former hostage Eitan Mor and chairman of the Tikva Forum), then a highly regarded religious IDF officer named Itamar Eitam (who was photographed in Gaza in a pose reminiscent of Herzl on the balcony in Vienna) and then MK Tzvi Sukkot. If the joint party receives eight seats in the Knesset, the next seat will be occupied by Yitzchok Zaga of Zehut.

The right-wing party, Otzma Yehudit, is expecting to perform very well in the election. It boasts a diverse slate headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is followed by Tally Gottliv. (As I mentioned, Gottliv transferred to Otzma Yehudit from the Likud party and is believed to be worth much more than one mandate to the party.) Next on the list are the currently serving ministers Wasserlauf and Eliyahu (the latter being the son of former Rishon Letzion Rav Mordechai Eliyahu) and current MKs Limor Son Har-Melech (who lost her husband in a terror attack years ago) and Yitzchok Kreuzer. They are followed by some new names: Chanamel Dorfman and Tzachi Eliyahu, both members of Ben-Gvir’s inner circle, and then Yossi Goldberger, a Lubavitcher chosid. It is unlikely that Otzma Yehudit will receive nine seats in the Knesset and thus earn places for all these candidates, but it would certainly be a welcome development if they did, especially since it would likely be at the expense of Lieberman’s party.

I should also mention Amcha Yisroel, the party led by Ofer Winter. The polls are currently predicting that the party will cross the electoral threshold. If that happens, it will likely be a significant boost to Netanyahu’s bloc, since Winter would receive votes that would otherwise have gone to Lieberman and Bennett. If Winter fails to cross the threshold, it would be a disaster because many thousands of right wing votes would be wasted and that might cause the entire right-wing bloc to lose power. The names on his list are not especially familiar to anyone.

There are other parties on the right as well, such as Avi Maoz’s party, although their likelihood of passing the threshold is nil. The best possible scenario is that these parties will bow out before the election.

In truth, the most logical move for Avi Maoz is ostensibly to join the Religious Zionism list. As a representative of the talmidim of Rav Tzvi Tau, Maoz can probably win more than enough votes for one mandate. However, some believe that Smotrich consulted with Netanyahu and the prime minister nixed the idea of including Maoz on his list. There is some speculation that Netanyahu has a personal score to settle with Maoz, who behaved like the opposition during the previous Knesset term. While you may recall that I wrote in the past about the special bond between Netanyahu and Maoz, it appears that politics trumps every friendship.

It is unfortunate that Maoz will not be part of the Knesset, since he has always been a powerful voice defending the values of Judaism. On the other hand, since he does not stand a chance of crossing the electoral threshold on his own, we can only hope that he will be wise enough to drop out of the race before he is defeated. In the meantime, Maoz has announced that his campaign will focus on issues of Jewish identity, reinforcing family values, fighting the progressive influences of the state and the educational system, and bolstering the Jewish character of the State of Israel.

Yair Golan’s Hypocrisy

Elections seem to bring out the worst in some people. When political rivalries are let loose, all red lines seem to vanish, and the boundaries of decency are regularly crossed. For instance, take Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats party, who has been spouting so much vile hatred that the right-wing members of the anti-Netanyahu bloc begged him to keep his mouth shut at least until the election. Before they intervened, Golan announced that if he is in the next government, he will close the Eli premilitary academy. This statement ignited a wave of outrage; the academy in Eli produces numerous soldiers and officers in the IDF, and dozens of its former students have lost their lives in the military over the past two years. Golan’s interviewer asked him the reason for his antipathy toward the school, and he withdrew a list from his pocket containing a litany of “extremist” statements made by rabbonim affiliated with the right.

The entire political right was furious with Golan for their own reasons, but I had a different reason to be indignant: If there is a single politician in Israel who is guilty of making crass and intolerable statements, it is Yair Golan. Golan once commented about the war in Gaza that “a sane state does not kill babies as a hobby.” As deputy chief of staff of the IDF, he once announced on Yom Hashoah, the day of commemoration for the Holocaust, “If there is one thing that frightens me when I remember the Holocaust, it is the fact that I can identify the same appalling processes that took place in Europe and Germany occurring in our midst today.” As a member of the Knesset on behalf of the Meretz party, he referred to Israeli settlers as “subhuman.” How could he, of all people, dare to announce that he would prefer to close the Eli academy on account of statements made by right-wing rabbonim, when nothing rivals the vitriol produced by his own tongue? In any event, the left always trumpets the causes of democracy and freedom of expression, until those values would benefit others rather than themselves.

There was another recent incident prompted by the election: Before Yom Tov, Haaretz published a headline in large print asserting that Netanyahu was warned ten days in advance of the events of October 7, 2023. That is, they claimed that the prime minister was warned about the impending massacre and chose to ignore the warning, which was unimaginably negligent on his part. According to Haaretz, the warning came from Mohammed bin Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates, who still refuses to confirm that the conversation took place. The claims are vehemently denied by Netanyahu and his staff. (Another rumor has it that certain close confidants of Trump warned other Israeli officials about the imminent calamity; these claims are likewise denied by the individuals who were supposedly warned.) Before long, it was revealed that Haaretz received its information from Mohammed Dahlan, a well-known terrorist whose goal was to harm Netanyahu’s public standing.

On that note, even Abu Mazen does not hide the fact that the Palestinians will rejoice if Netanyahu loses the election.

The Media Singles Out Netanyahu for Scorn

It has become in vogue to bash Netanyahu. Lapid recently said to an interviewer, “How did I know before October 7 that something terrible was going to happen? From Netanyahu!” On another occasion, he said, “I have often been asked how I knew about it in advance, and the answer is that I knew from Netanyahu. About a month before the massacre, I was present for a security briefing as leader of the opposition. They showed me some materials, and I was aghast.” Let’s put aside the fact that I do not believe a single word spoken by this man, who has built his career on demeaning others and inciting conflict. If he is telling the truth, I would have a very compelling question for him: Why did he remain silent? Why didn’t he move heaven and earth in an effort to avert the impending catastrophe? What did he do after the meeting that supposedly left him terrified?

There is something sickening about the obsessive persecution and vilification of Prime Minister Netanyahu, which includes his wife as well. In the very same newspaper on the same day, an entire page was dedicated to the expenditures on cosmetics and haircuts in the households of every prime minister. Of course, the focus was on the Netanyahus, whose spending in these areas was contrasted with the seemingly more modest expenditures of Bennett and Lapid. But let me make a couple of pertinent observations. For one thing, I would humbly submit that it would not be correct to contrast Netanyahu’s spending on haircuts with that of Naftoli Bennett, given the former’s bountiful hair and the latter’s smooth head. Second, I cannot imagine why the state should be required to pay for a prime minister’s haircuts and cosmetic expenses. And finally, if we read the report carefully, it becomes clear that Netanyahu did not spend more in this area than his two colleagues.

According to the report, in 2021, when Netanyahu was prime minister from January through June and Bennett held the office from June through December, the total expenditure in this area amounted to 111,469 shekels. In 2022, when Bennett was prime minister from January through June and Lapid was prime minister from July through December, the cosmetic and haircut budget of the prime minister’s residence reached the sum of 84,337 shekels. The difference between these two figures is very small. Why, then, does the media choose to label Netanyahu a hedonist and spendthrift on account of these expenditures?

The only answer, as Yitzchok Shamir once put it, is: “Why? Because!”

The Netanyahu Trial: When the Police Broke the Law

The trial of Prime Minister Netanyahu is continuing to take place as if it was the most normal thing in the world. The country sometimes seems to forget that it is actually one of the most odious offenses of the leftist elite in the State of Israel. Almost every hearing in the trial leads to yet another revelation of horrific misconduct and corruption on the part of the police and prosecution. It sometimes seems as if we have become inured to it. In any normal country, these revelations would shake the foundations of society. The individuals who crossed every red line and used the most unlawful and immoral acts to achieve their ends would be shunned, shamed, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But even if there is nothing that the average citizen can do about it, no one should allow themselves to become accustomed to this.

In the last court session before Rosh Hashanah, the court heard testimony from Shmuel Sharvit, the former deputy commander of the National Fraud Investigations Unit. Sharvit was asked about the secret wiretaps used to eavesdrop on Natan Eshel, who formerly served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff. Netanyahu’s lawyer presented a document to the court that claimed that the purpose of the wiretaps, according to a police memo, was “to gather evidence against the main suspect.” Of course, that “main suspect” was Netanyahu himself. Amit Chadad, Netanyahu’s attorney, then presented to Sharvit the official pretext that the police had given to a judge to secure a warrant for the wiretaps: “The chance of gathering evidence is substantial and significant, and there are more indications of the fact that Eshel is in contact with the main suspect.” Or, to put it plainly, the police eavesdropped on Eshel, who had many conversations with his boss, for the purpose of digging up something that would incriminate Netanyahu. Sharvit confirmed that the wiretaps took place. This may be fine (or perhaps not; after all, there is a limit to how far one may go and how many resources may be invested in the hunt for evidence against anyone), but the problem is that according to the law, in order to conduct wiretaps for the purpose of investigating the prime minister, it is necessary to secure permission from the attorney general. In fact, this is the case whenever the target is a member of the Knesset.

Did the police receive the attorney general’s permission to use wiretaps to gather evidence against Netanyahu? As it turns out, they did not. The police simply broke the law by conducting unauthorized wiretapping. Sharvit admitted on the stand that it was possible that conversations between Eshel and Netanyahu had been recorded, and he confirmed that the wiretapping station was removed after one month, when he realized that the attorney general hadn’t authorized it. Chadad asked how long the secret wiretapping had taken place and why it was suddenly halted, and Sharvit revealed that he had received a direct order from his superior at the time, Koresh Barnur, commander of the National Fraud Investigations Unit. “Koresh told me after a month to take down the wiretapping station since there were some problems with it,” he said. When he was asked about the nature of those problems, Sharvit said, “I understood that the attorney general hadn’t approved it.”

This was exactly what Netanyahu’s defense team was looking for. They had proven that the police and prosecution had acted without authorization and in violation of the law, which shows that the investigation was one-sided and biased. Moreover, it disqualifies some of the “evidence” gathered against the prime minister.

But this leads to another compelling observation. Any ordinary citizen of the state would be punished for breaking the law. No one can get away with claiming that he violated the law only for a month and therefore should evade prosecution. Why, then, is no one prosecuting the officials who arrogantly ignored the provisions of the law to satisfy their desire for incriminating evidence against the prime minister?

It’s Official: The Majority of Israel Is Religious or Traditional

The Central Bureau of Statistics has released the results of its annual study once again: On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 5787, the institute found that the Israeli population is approximately 10.305 million, of which 7.828 million (78.3 percent) are Jewish or “other” (i.e., people with one Jewish parent or people of uncertain Jewish status). There are about 2.173 million Arabs in the country (21.7 percent of the total Israeli population) and about 304,000 foreigners. Since last Rosh Hashanah, the Israeli population has increased by about 124,000, with a growth rate of 1.2 percent. Over the past year, about 182,000 babies have been born in Israel and about 50,000 people have died. The immigration balance has been negative, and the Israeli population has suffered a net loss of about 8000 people due to migration. About 24,000 new immigrants came to the country, as well as about 4000 people who entered the country under family reunification programs. About 21,000 Israelis who had previously emigrated returned to the country, and about 57,000 Israelis left for other countries. These figures, which were cited by the bureau, were quoted by many media outlets.

However, I chose to examine the full report and to learn more about the details, and I discovered that the statistics show something that the media did not choose to highlight: that the country is leaning heavily toward religion and away from secularism. The Jewish respondents aged 20 and above were asked to identify their respective religious affiliations, with the following results: “Irreligious or secular—39.6 percent. Traditional but not very religious—21.8 percent. Traditional-religious—14.0 percent. Religious—12.4 percent. Chareidi—11.5 percent.” Add the two categories of traditional Israelis to the religious and chareidi respondents, and you will find that 59.7 percent of the Jewish population falls somewhere within that range. That is a solid majority, and I can personally tell you that the actual number is really much higher. But even according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the majority of the State of Israel is on the right side of the Jewish map!

And that wasn’t the only interesting finding. Reviewing the report on “public position and sentiment,” I discovered that 92.2 percent of Israelis are happy with their lives (92.6 percent of Jews and 90.6 percent of Arabs) and that 70.2 percent are satisfied with their economic situation, while 29.4 percent are dissatisfied and 7.8 percent are not satisfied at all. I also learned that 53.8 percent of Israelis predict that their economic situation will improve in the coming years, 29.2 percent estimate that it will not improve, and 9.8 percent believe that it will worsen. This is reasonable, but then the institute questioned the respondents about the sense that financial restrictions had forced them to give up certain things in recent years: 5.7 percent felt that they were poor over the past year (3.9 percent of Jews and 12.8 percent of Arab respondents), and 23.4 percent of the population (or about 1.5 million people) struggled to cover their monthly household expenses, while 4.8 percent were completely unable to cover all their monthly expenses. The poll also found that 6.8 percent of the populace was forced to go without food at times over the past year due to economic hardship (11 percent of the Arabs and 9.5 percent of chareidim) and 4.8 percent of the population had to manage without a hot meal at least once every two days. And it gets worse: 10 percent of the people in need of medical treatments were forced to forgo them, 6.7 precent of the people were forced to go without necessary prescription medications, and 24 percent had to skip necessary dental treatments. Let us daven that the coming year will be a good year even for the poor among us. I wish you all a gut Yom Tov and a gut kvittel.

We wish that every day could be sun­ny and that every lifetime could be bathed exclusively in light. But, as someone once put it, “Into each life some rain must fall.” It’s just the way things are.

How do we react to those rainy days? Both the brief, mild drizzles, and those long bouts of pounding rain and damaging winds when sun­shine and calm weather are only a distant mem­ory?

In other words, how do we deal with suffering, both our own and others’?

Let’s start by taking a look at how we cope with our own problems. First, it’s not a given that we’ll even cope at all. Depending on the nature of the trouble, we may feel sapped of the will to go on. While some people are energized by trouble, there are some troubles that are seemingly simply too great to bear. Tragedy has a way of robbing a per­son of the ability to act, even if only temporarily.

If it’s a more practical problem, the function­al thing to do is to roll up our sleeves to meet it head on. And that’s what many people do. Oth­ers, however, simply close their eyes and hope the problem will go away. Admitting that there’s a need for action means admitting that there’s a problem. One we may not want to see. Even when we finally acknowledge its existence, insecurity, despair and fear of failure can steal away our con­fidence, leaving us feeling too weak and ineffec­tive to tackle it.

Suffering is very insistent. Like an uninvited guest, it’s there, whether we want it or not. It refuses to slink politely into the background so that we can focus on other, happier things. When we’re mired in a serious problem, whether in the short or long term, we can’t ask the problem to go away for a while so we can enjoy life. It’s easy to sink into a state of near-constant brooding, be­cause suffering demands the spotlight. And usu­ally gets it.

Some of us routinely share our troubles with others because, though it may not help the trou­ble vanish, it does help to ease the ache in our hearts. And some lock up their pain tighter than Fort Knox, never affording others even a glimpse of the anguish inside.

But whether we’re sharing our pain or suffer­ing in silence, we definitely spend a great deal of time focusing on what we’re going through. Be­cause emotional pain has a habit of taking center stage and, like a spoiled prima donna, refusing to step aside.

The Trajectory of Tzaros

As much as we can’t help brooding about our own troubles, we sometimes shy away from thinking about some-thing a friend of mine recently dubbed

O.P.T. That is, Other People’s Tzaros. Here’s how it works.

When someone we know experiences a tragic or painful event in their lives, our natural compassion wells up. We want to help. We want to ease their pain. And, for a while, we do. We cook those meals and make those calls and offer to run their errands.

The beginning of anything consumes a tremendous amount of energy. A new-born baby demands far more attention than an older kid. A new job grabs an inordinate portion of our focus. Ditto for a new marriage and, to a lesser degree, any new relationship.

A tragedy, too, creates whirlwinds of energy, pity, and action. Everyone wants to demonstrate their caring, because they do care. Sometimes very deeply. So, they’ll rally around and give that painful beginning its full share of attention.

Then, gradually, the beginning stage is over. The socially intense week of shi-vah moves into the past. The difficult diagnosis turns from an excruciating shock into sad old news. And as the news grows older, so does our first eager re-sponse. The clear-cut paths for express-ing our compassion become blurred.

Even worse, all at once the lines of de-marcation spring up. Someone who was just like you is now in a different place. How do you react to that?

When that different place is a better place, we can feel happy for them, or en-vious, or a combination of the two. But when the difference is markedly bleaker and more painful, we may not know how to respond. Our sense of comfort drifts away and a new awkwardness sets in.

I’m talking about people who cross the street to avoid having to greet someone who’s recently suffered a loss. I’m talk-ing about putting off making a call to see how an old friend is managing. I’m talk-ing about tiptoeing around a topic that’s uppermost in another person’s mind,

because it makes us feel uncomfortable to talk about it. Yes, we don’t know ex-actly how to bring true comfort to the sufferer. Yes, we hate feeling helpless to make a real difference in their lives. Yes, we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing and making them feel even worse. But is saying nothing any better?

When I wrote From Djerba to Jerusalem, the biography of Rebbetzin Shulamis Bitton, there was much to marvel at in her unusual life. But I remember being especially struck by one tidbit of infor-mation about that remarkable woman. After a young woman whom she knew lost her husband, Rebbetzin Bitton un-dertook to call her. Not just in the begin-ning. And not just once in a while. The rebbetzin called up that almanah consis-tently_, every single day_ over the course of many years!

She knew that it’s not only at the

harsh onset of tragedy that people need a kind word and some friendly concern. A person doesn’t stop suffering just be-cause others don’t want to think about her problem anymore. To believe other-wise is just wishful thinking.

Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky gave her enormous heart to the myriads of women who lined up to see her each day. She listened to their troubles and poured out the balm of her wisdom, compassion and bitachon. She swam against the cur-rent, which dictates that we immerse ourselves fully in our own problems, but less so in that of other people. Day after day, person after person, asked for and received her blessing and her caring.

A beautiful example of true devotion, not only to those she knew, but to every and any stranger who decided to stop by to drop her bundle of tzaros into the reb-betzin’s lap.

Just a Little More

Most of us are not on the level of a Rebbetzin Bitton or a Rebbetzin Kanievsky. Most of us have fairly full plates of our own. All of us prefer a com-fortable, light-filled life to one tossed by storms. And we hope that the people we know will enjoy sunny lives, too.

But the rain comes. When it comes for us, we need all our strength, our wits and our deep-rooted emunah to maintain the right demeanor in the face of suffering. And when it comes for others, we need to push ourselves just a little more thanwe may feel comfortable doing.

To make that extra phone call even though we have no idea what to say. To carry that person’s suffering in our hearts even though it makes our spirits heavier than we’d like. To reach out to someone who may not be able to show that how needy they feel, or to acknowl-edge that we’re even helping.

Rain falls into every life at times. And when it does, the only thing that can chase away the gloom of a sudden downpour is a beam of heart-to-heart sunlight.

There are times when we become so focused on doing the right thing that we fail to notice the opportunity to do something even greater.

On the Rosh Hashanah before her passing, Rebbetzin Shayna Chana Elyashiv was not well and was unable to go to shul to hear the shofar. My friend, Rav Gedalya Sheinen, told me that after davening, he would blow shofar for Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv according to all the different shitos.

That year, when he finished, he asked Rav Elyashiv if he should go to the rebbetzin and blow shofar for her so that she could fulfill the mitzvah.

To his surprise, Rav Elyashiv told him not to.

It was the second day of Rosh Hashanah, he explained, and the obligation to hear shofar on the second day is only miderabbonon. Additionally, women are not obligated to perform the mitzvah, but have accepted it upon themselves. Since blowing for the rebbetzin would involve extra tircha—a burden for Rav Sheinen—it was not necessary and he should go home.

Rav Sheinen left and began walking home.

Then he heard Rav Elyashiv calling after him.

“Kumt tzurik. Come back.”

Rav Elyashiv told him that after telling him to go home, he had thought about it and reconsidered. He said that it was true that the mitzvah of shofar on the second day is only miderabbonon and returning to blow more kolos would be a tircha.

“However, my wife will be so happy to hear the kol shofar,” Rav Elyashiv said. “By blowing for her, you will be doing a chesed and chesed is a mitzvah mide’Oraisa. I can be matriach you for a de’Oraisa.”

What an extraordinary way to look at life.

Rav Elyashiv had initially viewed the situation through the pure lens of halacha and concluded that there was no reason to impose upon Rav Sheinen. But then he thought about his wife. He thought about the happiness those sounds would bring her. Suddenly, what had appeared to be an unnecessary tircha became an opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah de’Oraisa.

The story reminds us that, sometimes, we can become so preoccupied with the mitzvah we are trying to perform that we fail to see the mitzvah standing right in front of us.

We look for lofty opportunities to serve Hashem while overlooking the person beside us who needs a little of our patience, a kind word, a smile, a favor, or simply the knowledge that someone cares about him. We get involved in performing the “big” mitzvos and let mitzvos that we consider minor fall by the wayside.

There is something especially powerful about this message as Rosh Hashanah is upon us. We spent the past weeks of Elul examining ourselves and thinking about what we need to improve. We thought about our davening, our learning, our mitzvos, and our bein adam laMakom.

But the Rambam (Hilchos Teshuvah 7:3) teaches us that doing teshuvah involves more than repenting for improper actions. It also includes doing teshuvah for bad ideas, as well as anger, hatred, jealousy, chasing after money and honor, gluttony, and the like.

When we do teshuvah, we should also be examining ourselves by considering how the people around us feel because we are in their lives.

“Do I make life easier for them or more difficult? Do I notice when someone needs something from me or do I see only the inconvenience it will cause me? Do I recognize the opportunities for chesed that Hashem provides me with every day?”

Rav Elyashiv’s greatness was not merely that he knew the halacha. It was that he understood that beyond the halacha was a person, and beyond the person was an opportunity to do the will of Hashem.

Sometimes, the greatest avodah is hidden in the smallest act of consideration.

And sometimes, before we go rushing down the stairs, we need to stop, turn around, and listen for the voice calling, “Kumt tzurik. Come back.”

Rav Sheinen was already walking down the stairs. The decision had been made. The matter was settled. But Rav Elyashiv stopped him and said, “Kumt tzurik. Come back.” He had reconsidered. He had looked at the situation differently. What a moment earlier had seemed to be an unnecessary tircha had suddenly revealed itself as an opportunity for a greater mitzvah.

There is something almost prophetic about that scene as we stand at the threshold of a new year.

At the time of the technological revolution, during the beginning of the twentieth century, when the world suddenly began exploding with innovative inventions, the Chofetz Chaim wrote in his sefer Sheim Olam that these new inventions serve to strengthen our emunah. Regarding the camera, he noted that it demonstrates that the Mishnah’s admonition that we should always be cognizant of Hashem’s “ayin ro’eh,” an eye that sees, is not merely an allegory. The development of the telephone similarly reinforces the reality of “ozen shoma’as,” an ear that hears.

The Chofetz Chaim taught us to look at the inventions of man and discover in them reminders of the wisdom and truth of the Torah.

If there is a technological invention that seems to symbolize our situation this week, perhaps it is the reset button.

The remarkable thing about a reset button is that it tells us that what happened until now does not necessarily determine what happens next. You can be working on a computer when it freezes, something goes wrong, everything stops working or a process becomes corrupted, and then, with the press of a button, the computer can be shut down and started again, and the problem is gone.

Rosh Hashanah is our Divine reset button.

We look back at the past year and see mistakes, failures, disappointments, and habits that we wish we could undo. We wonder how we can break patterns that have become deeply ingrained. We may feel that because we have been the same person for so long, we are destined to remain that way.

Rosh Hashanah comes and tells us that this is not true.

“Zeh hayom techilas ma’asecha.”

On this day, everything starts over again.

Rosh Hashanah is not merely the commemoration of the first day of creation thousands of years ago. It is an opportunity to experience creation anew, to recognize that Hashem is recreating the world today, and that He is giving each of us the opportunity to renew our own personal circumstances as well.

Rav Yisroel Salanter famously asked why Rosh Hashanah precedes Yom Kippur. Would it not make more sense, he reasoned, for us first to cleanse ourselves through teshuvah and then afterward be judged and celebrate Hashem’s dominion over the universe? Would it not bring greater glory to the King if His subjects, who gather to proclaim His sovereignty, were already purified of their sins and fully devoted to His will?

Perhaps the answer lies in understanding the essence of Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah tells us that there is no status quo.

Nothing is guaranteed to continue into the coming year simply because it existed during the previous one. There are no chazakos. We cannot assume that what was will necessarily be.

And that is both frightening and comforting.

It is frightening because we realize that we have no lease on the blessings we enjoyed during the past year. We cannot assume that good health, parnossah, nachas, simcha, peace, or any of the other gifts Hashem granted us will simply continue because they were ours yesterday.

But it is also enormously comforting.

Because if there are no chazakos for the good, there are also no chazakos for the bad.

The person who struggled this past year is not condemned to continue struggling. The person who failed does not have to remain a failure. The person who was distant can become close. The person who was weak can become strong. The person who made the same mistake again and again can choose, with Hashem’s help, to make a different choice this time.

We pour out our hearts on Rosh Hashanah precisely because we believe that nothing has to be the way it was. We daven for a good new year because the future has not yet been written.

“Hayom haras olam.”

Today is the day of creation.

Not only then, when the world was first created, but today. Now. At this very moment.

“Hayom yaamid bamishpot kol yetzurei olamim.”

Today, the forces of creation are once again present, as Hashem judges every one of His creations and determines the course of the coming year.

Rosh Hashanah marks a new beginning for every person.

And that new beginning is itself a source of comfort. It tells us that we are not locked into our present spiritual state. We are not prisoners of our past. We can press the reset button. We can choose a different path. We can become different people.

We can say that Rosh Hashanah comes before Yom Kippur because, before we can undertake the difficult work of teshuvah, we need to know that teshuvah is possible.

Before we can confront our shortcomings, we need to believe that they do not define us, and before we can begin the journey toward becoming whole again, we need to know that we can have a new start.

Remember when we were kids and we would have a race, and if we didn’t get off to a good start, we’d call for a do-over? Rosh Hashanah is that new start. It’s the do-over.

The person we were yesterday does not have to be the person we are tomorrow. What happened last year doesn’t have to happen next year.

When we hear the sounds of the shofar, we hear echoes of the sounds that were sounded at Har Sinai, when Klal Yisroel stood together and was transformed into the nation of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The shofar at Har Sinai heralded a new beginning. The world had reached the moment toward which it had been moving since creation. Klal Yisroel was about to receive the Torah and enter into its eternal covenant with Hashem.

At that moment, there was only hope and promise.

The shofar was also sounded at Yovel, the year of freedom and renewal. When we hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, we can hear within its sound an echo of Yovel, the great declaration of freedom that accompanied the return of the eved to his family and his home, and the return of each person to his ancestral property.

The sounds of the shofar sounded at Yovel proclaimed that the past does not have to imprison the future.

A person who had spent years as a slave could go home and begin again. A family that had lost its ancestral field could reclaim it. The world could be restored to its original order.

We, too, can begin again.

We can receive a fresh start, a new lease on life. We can return to the place where we belong.

This helps us understand the remarkable fusion of simcha and awe that characterizes Rosh Hashanah. It is the Yom Hadin, the awesome Day of Judgment, when every person stands before Hashem, and at the same time, we are commanded to celebrate the day as a Yom Tov.

Why the simcha? How can we be expected to be joyous when the judgment is upon us?

The answer is that the simcha is not despite the judgment. We are joyous because we think about what the judgment makes possible.

We are not simply being judged on the person we were. We are being given the opportunity to become the person we can be.

As far removed from Hashem as we may feel, as much as we may regret what has happened during the past year, and as dark as our situation may sometimes appear, the shofar comes to remind us that the story is not over. It’s just starting. There is a new beginning.

And there is teshuvah, the bridge between the person we have been and the person we can become. Rachmana litzlan, the plane crashed and we were thrown into a stormy sea. Teshuvah is the life vest provided to us, enabling us to hang on to life and return safely to shore.

The shofar calls us to reach for it.

We slip. We make mistakes. We commit aveiros. We fail to perform mitzvos as we should. When the shofar sounds, we look back and see the places where we fell short, the opportunities we missed, and the things we could have done better.

But one of the greatest chassodim that Hakadosh Boruch Hu does for us is that He gives us a way out of the rut.

He gives us Rosh Hashanah.

He gives us the ability to make a new beginning, to start from scratch, to press the reset button on our lives.

To be happy, even if we were sad.

To be upbeat, even if we were down.

To learn well, even if we didn’t last year.

To daven with kavanah, even if our tefillos have become rote.

To become better people, even if we have been disappointed in ourselves.

To scrub ourselves clean from aveiros, from the dirt and silliness in which we allowed ourselves to become entangled.

Rosh Hashanah gives us the ability to press reset on all the components that make up our lives and begin anew.

When we were children, we would sometimes search for the colon—the famous “two dots”—in a Gemara. We would be struggling through a difficult sugya, confronted by a question we could not understand, an argument that seemed beyond us, or a line of Gemara that had left us hopelessly confused. So, we looked ahead to find those two dots, which meant a new sugya and a chance for a new beginning.

Whatever had gone wrong in the previous sugya, we knew that here we could start fresh. Perhaps this sugya would be easier. Perhaps we would follow it better. Perhaps this time we would finally understand.

Rosh Hashanah is the two dots in the shvere sugya of life.

We pick ourselves up, we turn the page, and we begin again.

We are arriving at the end of another year, and some of us are staggering toward the finish line. The past year had its share of difficulties. When we express the annual hope of “tichleh shanah vekileloseha,” there is no shortage of tzaros and challenges to which we refer.

Yet, the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah (16b) teaches that a year that is “rosh,” impoverished, at its beginning will be rich at its close. Rashi explains that this means that Klal Yisroel approaches Rosh Hashanah like poor people, with our hands outstretched, recognizing that we have nothing of our own and that everything depends upon the generosity of Hashem.

Our tefillos are like the pleas of a poor person before a wealthy benefactor. We say in Selichos every morning, “Kedalim ucheroshim dofaknu delosecha.” We say to Hashem, “We stand here as poor people, as paupers, and we knock on Your door and have faith that You will open it and grant us a good year.”

Rav Yitzchok Blazer would say in the name of his rebbi, Rav Yisroel Salanter, that the yesod of Rosh Hashanah is to recognize that we have no guarantees and no chazakos, but we recognize that we are standing before the Source of all blessing.

We are like a poor man who was given an appointment with the most generous baal tzedakah in the world, and we are filled with hope that he will give us what we ask of him.

Rav Eizik Sher expands on this idea.

On Rosh Hashanah, everything in creation and every creature is judged individually. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah (1:2) teaches, “Kol bo’ei ha’olam ovrin lefonov kivnei maron.”

Think about what that means. The entire world is standing in judgment. Billions of human beings. Nations and countries. Kingdoms and governments. Each one is being judged. Who will have hunger and who will have plenty. Who will have drought and who will be flooded. Who will experience war and who will experience peace. Who will prosper and who will suffer.

And in the midst of this enormous gathering, there is only one nation that knows the secret, only a tiny percentage of the billions who stand before the Borei Olam who understand what it means to be zoche badin.

Only Am Yisroel knows the secret of standing before the King like an “oni bapesach,” like an impoverished person who knows that he has nothing to rely upon except the rachamim of the One who holds everything in His hands.

Our sense of frailty is our strength. We know that on our own, we are nothing and have nothing. We have no guarantees and no chazakos. But we know that we have Hashem, and when a person comes before the Source of all blessing with that recognition, anything is possible.

Thus, on Rosh Hashanah, the first two days of the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, we do not recite vidui or al cheit. The teshuvah of Rosh Hashanah begins somewhere deeper. It begins with how we think.

Because before we develop a new course of action, we need to develop a new perspective. Before we can change what we do, we have to change how we see ourselves, how we see our lives, and how we see our relationship with Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

The kol shofar awakens us to the realization that we are beginning again. On this day, we don’t look back. We look ahead. We look at everything that we can do right. We do teshuvah on our thought process. We hear the shofar call out to us, saying, “Kumt tzurik. You can do it. You can be great. You can do all the mitzvos properly. You can be a baal middos. You can be a kind and gentle tzaddik who performs the mitzvos perfectly. And you can have a great year.”

On Rosh Hashanah, the person who struggled with his davening can begin to approach tefillah differently. The person whose learning was inconsistent can open a Gemara with renewed determination. The person who has been carrying anger or disappointment can choose to let go, and the person who has become discouraged with himself can lift his head and remember that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has not become discouraged with him.

The call of the shofar is simple, without an elaborate melody or complicated words, because teshuvah begins with a call that comes from somewhere deep within a person and says, “I want to come back. I want to be better. I want to begin again.”

And we are not starting the journey alone. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is right there with us, holding our hand and helping us. We make the first move, but Hashem promises to help us complete the journey, to strengthen us when the road is difficult, and to enable us to accomplish what we could not accomplish on our own.

As we stand at the beginning of another year, whatever our situation is, we should not be intimidated. The shofar calls out to us, “Uru yesheinim mishinaschem.” Don’t fear the future. Awaken from your sleep, from your nightmares and fears. New opportunities, new accomplishments, new nachas, and new growth await you.

We know Who holds the year in His hands, and that knowledge allows us to approach the Yom Hadin not only with awe and trepidation, but also with the simcha that comes from knowing that we are being given another chance.

We will hear Hashem calling each one of us and saying, “Kumt tzurik. Come back. Begin again. It’s a do-over. You can do this. You can win. You can have a winning year.”

May we all be zoche to a great year, filled with yeshuos, refuos, hatzlocha, brocha, and geulah.

Kesivah vachasimah tovah.

For a time, I had the zechus of becoming close to Rav. Dr. A. Y. Twersky. He was a genuine talmid chochom and, of course, founder of the Gateways Rehabilitation Center, where he treated alcoholics and drug addicts. In the early years of my rabbinate, when I had little world experience and none with these matters, he gave me guidance and sage advice. One of these shimush sessions showed me how the Torah is so truly relevant in every generation. Pesach was looming ahead and I had to deal with an area in Rabbi Twersky’s field of expertise. He showed me how Pesach was not only the time when the enslaved Jewish people became free, but in every generation people who were chained to their addictions and evil ways could become liberated from their shackles. I tried the juxtaposition and it worked beautifully.

The following Elul, I was in a similar position, only it didn’t involved Rabbi Twersky’s professional guidance. Nevertheless, he revealed to me that the Yomim Noraim, especially Rosh Hashanah, is a time when people could make a major change in their lives most easily. He shared with me an ancient question about the honey of Rosh Hashanah. Our custom is to use the honey of bees. However, many poskim point out that this doesn’t seem ideal. Bees are not kosher and, generally, that which emerges from something unkosher is treif as well. The meforshim go to great lengths to prove that bee honey is even kosher, let alone that it should be used on the holiest of days. On the other hand, date honey is not only kosher to begin with, but it is even one of the Seven Species by which Eretz Yisroel is praised. If we need something that will symbolize a sweet new year, wouldn’t something that is derived from the kosher world have been best?

However, Rabbi Twersky explained to me that according to Chazal, the heter — allowance — for bee honey is that it doesn’t actually come from the body of the bee at all. It is extraneous to the bee, which just acts as a venue or conduit for the honey. We, too, say to Hashem, “We may have sinned, but it was not something that came from our essence. We picked it up in the street, our yeitzer hroa seduced us, the outside world pulled us down.” Yes, it sounds like rationalization and excuses. But if we truly mean that after we have sinned and we feel sullied and contaminated, if we instantly regretted what we did, even if we failed again, we know that our innermost self remains the pure and holy person Hashem created. We dip both the apple and the challah in bee honey and say to ourselves, “I can change and be sweet again because what I did was not generic to me. I will change completely this Rosh Hashanah.”

Over the years, I have reviewed this teaching numerous times, always adding layers from Chazal and the seforim hakedoshim. But the gist was always the same. If we maintain our self-esteem — Rabbi Twersky’s famous theme — we can pull ourselves out of anything. The Ramchal (Derech Hashem 4:4), in his brief synopsis about Rosh Hashanah, quotes the statement we often recite that Hashem is constantly renewing the universe. However, he adds, using the key word ach to differentiate Rosh Hashanah from all the other Yomim Tovim. In fact, this distinction makes clear why the Ramchal saved his discussion of Rosh Hashanah for last. All the other Yomim Tovim commemorate a certain event. Of course, as Rav Chaim Friedlander says (commentary Derech Lechaim to page 340), all the Yomim Tovim carry their unique quality annually, as we mentioned. But on Rosh Hashanah, we are judged just as Adam Harishon was judged. We are recreated on Rosh Hashanah and we, hopefully, emerge chastened but absolved and redeemed like Adam as well.

It is this re-creation that allows us to change more easily than any other time of the year. Rav Menachem Stein points out that when Sarah Imeinu was remembered and conceived on Rosh Hashanah, a full body change took place. Chazal tell us that even her wrinkles were smoothed out and she became completely young again. That is the kind of rejuvenation of which we will become capable on this amazing day. The same happened to Chanah, who soon gave birth to Shmuel Hanovi, who became, in a certain way, the equal of both Moshe Rabbeinu and Aharon Hakohein.

We can now understand Rabbi Twersky’s distinction between the emancipating power of Pesach and that of Rosh Hashanah. Of course, the “lights” and sparks of the exodus from Egypt return, allowing us to free ourselves annually from whatever binds us improperly. But since we are undergoing the same process as Adam did over five thousand years ago, we are not just accessing some event, but experiencing it anew and as freshly as the first time in Gan Eden.

Rav Stein relates the moving story of a woman who was a bas bayis of him and his rebbetzin, now married and childless for eight years. She called and asked if she could stay over with them for Rosh Hashanah with her husband. She explained that she had become accustomed to a yeshivishe davening and couldn’t concentrate properly in a regular shul atmosphere. Rav Stein welcomed her to the yeshiva and their home, where she spoke only of Torah and Yom Tov matters at each meal. During the laining about Sarah Imeinu, who had been an akarah and was miraculously given a child, the lady began to weep silently. When the haftorah was read aloud about how Chana, too, was remembered and granted a child, she began to wail loudly. There was not a dry eye in the house of 400 talmidei chachomim and yungeleit.

The baal koreh could not continue for seven long minutes, but all understood that something precious was happening before their eyes and ears. The following Tammuz, this lady celebrated the bris of her newborn son, whom she had helped to be born — kama yiborei’un — and created out of her pain, bitachon and genuine tefillos to Hashem. She became, like Sarah and Chana, a different person, and so, subject to new evaluation and even miracles. She is today the mother of 8, who were brought into the world by the power of Rosh Hashanah and the intense tefillos of a holy bas Yisrael.

That lady knew how to take advantage of Rosh Hashanah, but not through tricks or machinations. She didn’t hold back any feelings or emotions, but cried out to Hashem without shame or embarrassment.

Perhaps we don’t do exactly the same, but we have to be real. Rosh Hashanah is not the time to be polite or whisper. It is a time to call out to our Creator, “Please forgive me and Your world. We need that new world now as much as, if not more than, ever.”

Let us renew ourselves so that Hashem will be mechadeish His entire world as well. It is better than Pesach and the honey is sweeter than that of dates. Let’s taste it and beg Hashem to sweeten every aspect of our lives in 5787.

Every year, on Rosh Hashanah, right after laining, somewhere in the long stretch before the drosha and when the baal tokeia gets up, like most people, I turn to the page before tekias shofar.

On this page, printed in a small non-descript way, are Rav Sadia Gaon’s ten reasons why we blow the shofar. Nearly every machzor in the world has them. From the Yiddish Kol Bo, to ArtScroll, to the specialized ones with the peirush of a variety of Rishonim and Acharonim, they all seem to have those ten reasons, placed like instructions right before tekias shofar.

I have never seen anything remotely like this anywhere else in the siddur. We do many things over the course of a year without being handed an explanation on the facing page. We light a menorah for eight nights, we take a lulav and shake it in six directions, we eat matzah and drink four kosos and sit in a sukkah, and not one of those mitzvos has any shortage of reasons. Some simple, others Kabbalistic. But they are not placed in the machzor. You can look them up yourself. The Gemara offers them, the Gaonim offer them, the Rishonim and Acharonim offer them by the dozen. You can go for months learning up the reasons of any particular mitzvah. Yet, no siddur prints up a list for us to contemplate before performing the mitzvah. Only for tekias shofar, for some reason, are we offered a numbered list to review even before we have heard so much as a single tekiah. It’s always something that floats through my mind as I peruse the machzor before (and sometimes during) during the rov’s pre-tekios drosha.

There is a second question that is perhaps one of the most famous questions in the olam hayeshivos, and it concerns one of the most famous paragraphs the Rambam ever wrote about Elul. At the beginning of Hilchos Teshuvah (3:4), he writes, “Af al pi shetekias shofar b’Rosh Hashanah gezeiras hakosuv, remez yeish bo, k’lomar: Uru yesheinim mishinaschem v’nirdamim hakitzu mitardemaschem v’chapsu b’maaseichem v’chizru b’teshuvah v’zichru bora’achem.” Although the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a decree of the posuk, there is a hint contained in it, as if to say: Wake up, you sleepers, from your sleep, and you who slumber, rouse yourselves from your slumber, and search your deeds and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator.

It is quoted hundreds of times during Elul by every rov, maggid shiur, and mashpia. I’ve heard this Rambam quoted from the halls of elite-level yeshivos to the sanctuaries of the Young Israel in which I davened in my early youth. But there is a word sitting in the middle of it that most of us read straight past. K’lomar. As if to say. It sounds like a posuk, but it isn’t. The Rambam, in his poetic mastery, made it up. The Rambam is supplying the message himself, in his own words, which is quite fascinating. After all, the novi has already supplied one and put it far more beautifully than anybody has managed since. “Im yitoka shofar b’ir, v’am lo yecheradu? Can a shofar sound in a city and the people not tremble?” (Amos 3:6). There is a perfectly good remez sitting in Trei Asar, fully sourced and waiting to be quoted, yet the Rambam chose to write his own.

And then there is a third question, which I raise knowing full well that there are shiurim worth of lomdus built on top of it, and which I would like to ask while leaving all of the lomdus politely to one side. The mitzvah is not to blow the shofar. The mitzvah is to hear it, lishmoa kol shofar, which is what we say in the brocha and what the halacha means. Unlike Megillah, in which the brocha is “al mikra Megillah,” to read the Megillah, the brocha on shofar is not to blow, but lishmoa kol shofar, to hear the sound of the shofar. The baal tokeia himself, blowing 100 kolos, is not doing anything different than everyone else. He may blow, but the mitzvah is to hear.

There is one other thing that bothers me, albeit slightly. The halacha is that kol hakolos kesheirim b’shofar. All sounds are kosher for shofar. One dot on an esrog can ruin it all. One split of a lulav can render it posul. Dough lingers for 19 minutes? Chometz. But shofar? Everything goes.

Years ago**,** I heard a beautiful p’shat from my shver, Rav Yacov Lipschutz zt”l, to answer the question on the Rambam. Perhaps his idea is really the answer to all three questions at once.

The Rambam did not compose his own remez because he had forgotten about the posuk. He composed his own because that is the essence of tekias shofar.

Shofar has many sounds and we have many feelings. It talks to each and every individual in a different manner. To some, it may be the announcement of a king. To others, the coming of Moshiach. To a third, a call to teshuvah. Yes, every sound is kosher, because each sound can speak a different language that each of us hears through our own life experience and teshukos.

Which is precisely why the mitzvah is in the hearing. A single sound leaves a shofar, arrives at three hundred ears, and becomes three hundred different messages, no two of them alike.

Friday is September 11th. It marks twenty-five years since the attacks of 9/11, and along with everything else that has been written and said about that morning, I keep returning lately to the near misses. People in our community were late getting downtown because they had stayed behind to help their wives get the children out the door to school. Yidden from Flatbush were saved because they were still standing in a minyan that ran longer than usual. Some were already high up in the building and somehow found a stairwell and reached the street in the last minutes before the Towers came down. Twenty-five years later, they are still unable to explain to anybody, themselves included, why they turned left instead of right.

The same morning, the same attack, the same Yad Hashem moving over the same city at the same hour, and yet ask any two of those men what happened to them that day and you will not get the same answer twice, because what was said to each of them was not the same thing. One of them learned that his family is not an obstacle standing between him and his office. One of them learned something about a minyan he had almost given up. One of them heard something that he has probably never spoken out loud to a living soul. To America as a whole, the attack was collective, but to each individual, the story and lessons were different.

So go back to that page in the machzor. We asked why the machzor prints ten reasons, but, in essence, I think ten is just the start. If the machzor knew what your specific message from the shofar would be, it would have printed one big reason in bold on top. That’s the yesod of the kol. It is one kol, with a thousand different sounds. For one person, it can awake him to something completely different than the man standing right beside him in shul. The machzor is showing us the power of shofar. It is not limited to just what it sounds like on the surface. Rather, it has power to resonate differently with every single person. And that is the message conveyed by listing many different reasons. Because, specifically here, listing only one reason would defeat the purpose.

Next Sunday, the baal tokeia will rise, and the room will go quiet in the way it goes quiet only then, and he will blow one single sound, and every one of us will hear something that will speak to him or her in a special way. The shofar is talking directly to you. You know what it is saying. Make sure that you listen.

Just saying.

A personal conversation with Rav Yitzchok Hutner zt”l, forty-six years ago, before Rosh Hashanah

**The Liberated Slave Who Wore a Crown
**The Gemara in Rosh Hashanah (8b) describes the extraordinary ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of the Yovel year. The Jewish slave had already ceased to be a slave, for the Yovel year had arrived. Yet he had not yet been released to his home, because the shofar of Yovel would not be sounded until Yom Kippur. For those ten days, he occupied a remarkable place between two worlds.

What did these newly liberated men do during those extraordinary days of transition? The Gemara tells us, “They would eat, drink, rejoice, and wear crowns upon their heads.”

The picture is striking. A slave has just been freed, yet he remains physically in the same place, in his master’s home. He no longer works, yet he has not returned to his own home. He stands suspended between his old existence and his new one. And during those days of limbo, Chazal do not merely tell us that he celebrated his freedom. They tell us that he wore a crown.

Why? What is the connection between Yovel, freedom, and a crown?

**A Worldview From Rav Yitzchok Hutner
**Years ago, during the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah, as a young bochur learning in Eretz Yisrael under Rav Yitzchok Hutner, I asked the rosh yeshiva about this enigmatic Gemara. What does it mean that these former slaves were suddenly wearing crowns? And what’s its significance in particular to Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, those ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

His response transformed a familiar aspect of Rosh Hashanah into something far more profound. It opened an entirely new world of understanding about Rosh Hashanah, tefillah, malchus, freedom, and ultimately, the very purpose of human life.

The Crowns Of Olam Haba

His answer began with a famous Gemara in Brachos (17a) which describes Olam Haba as a world without eating or drinking, without physical pleasures or material pursuits. Rather, “the righteous sit “atroseihem b’rosheihem — with their crowns upon their heads and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah.” Again, there are crowns. What are these crowns, where do they come from, and perhaps most significantly, how did they become theirs?

The rosh yeshiva continued with the Gemara in Chagigah (13b), which describes the Malach Sandalfon as standing behind the Kisei Hakavod and weaving crowns for the Creator. Tosafos explains that these crowns are fashioned from the tefillos of the tzaddikim. Rabbeinu Chananel connects this to the words we say in Kedusha: “Kesser yitnu lecha — we give You a crown.” We proclaim Your kingship. We acknowledge that You are the Melech.

Rav Hutner explained that the crowns the righteous wear in Olam Haba are the very crowns fashioned from the tefillos with which they crowned Hashem during their lives. They were made for Hashem. And ultimately, they themselves wear that crown. But Rav Hutner asked: How can the same crown belong first to Hashem, the King, and then to His servant?

His answer reveals one of the most profound principles about the meaning of our lives.

The Crown We Give Becomes The Crown We Wear

In Parshas Ki Savo (26:17–19), Moshe Rabbeinu describes a remarkable reciprocal relationship between Hashem and Klal Yisroel. We declare, “Hashem is our G-d,” and Hashem declares, “We are His treasured nation.” He promises to elevate us “lis’hilah ul’sheim ul’siferes — for praise, for a name, and for glory.” The Baal HaTurim points to the reciprocal nature of this relationship. “Mah sh’Yisroel  meshabchim u’mehallelim l’Shem, hu lahem l’siferes.” The praise and glory that Klal Yisroel gives to Hashem ultimately become part of Klal Yisroel itself.

This, explains the Baal HaTurim, is the meaning of Chazal’s teaching that in the future Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself will be an atorah, a crown upon the head of every tzaddik. The crown we crowned Hashem with through our tefillos is ultimately returned to us.

The message is enormous: The crown we give to Hashem becomes the identity we carry forever.

We Are All Creating Ourselves

Every person spends his life creating something. One builds wealth. Another builds a reputation, a career, a home, an institution, or a legacy. We invest enormous energy in creating things that we hope will outlast us. But ultimately, all of those things remain outside of us. And all of them in one way or another are temporary.

There is, however, something far more enduring that every person is creating, whether he realizes it or not.

He is creating himself.

Through his tefillah, his choices, and his relationship with Hashem, a person shapes the individual he will ultimately become.

That is the secret of kesser.

The tzaddikim sit in Olam Haba with their crowns upon their heads because they are wearing what they themselves spent a lifetime creating.

The crown with which they crowned Hashem became the person they became.

Tefillah Is Not Merely Communication; It Is Construction

And that transforms our entire understanding of tefillah.

We generally think of tefillah as communication. We speak to Hashem. We praise Him, thank Him, ask Him for our needs, and place our lives in His hands. All of that is true. But tefillah is much more than communication.

Tefillah is construction. Every day, word by word, brocha by brocha, we are building a crown.

Every expression of praise is another strand. Every moment of gratitude is another jewel. Every recognition of Hashem’s greatness adds beauty to the crown. Every acceptance of His Malchus strengthens it. Every moment of genuine kavanah adds another dimension to something that will endure forever.

The siddur gives us the material. But we determine what the crown becomes.

The words are fixed. The brachos are the same. The pesukim have been said by generations before us. Yet no two people create the same crown, because no two people stand before Hashem with the same heart. Each person brings his own struggles, his own gratitude, his own pain, his own hopes, his own understanding, and his own relationship with the Ribbono shel Olam.

One person’s “Modim” is woven from years of gratitude. Another person’s tefillah contains the tears of a nisayon. One person davens with the joy of having learned Torah. Another is struggling to accept a painful decree. One is fighting to trust Hashem. Another is pleading for the strength to overcome a weakness. The words may be identical, but the crowns are not.

There Is No Generic Crown In Shomayim

That is why the quality of our tefillah matters so profoundly. It is not merely a question of whether we fulfilled the obligation to daven. It is a question of what we created while we were davening. What kind of kesser did those moments produce?

The deeper the recognition, the more magnificent the crown. The greater the awareness of Whom we are addressing, the more glorious the creation.

And the opposite is equally true.

A rushed, distracted, mechanical tefillah leaves the crown incomplete. When a person allows the words to pass his lips while his heart and mind are elsewhere, something is missing from what he could have created. It creates gaps in the very kesser that we were sent into this world to fashion.

“Briyosecha Anachnu”: The Purpose Of Man

The Ramban, at the end of Parshas Bo, explains that the purpose of our existence is “sh’yeida ha’adam v’yodeh l’Elokav sh’bera’o,” that a person recognize and acknowledge that everything and everyone comes from Hashem.

The Ramban continues to explain that the purpose of raising our voices in tefillah, of establishing batei knesses, and of gathering together for tefillah b’tzibbur is that people should have a place to assemble and acknowledge the One Who created them and brought them into existence.

In the words of the Ramban, we stand before Him and publicly proclaim: “Briyosecha anachnu — We are Your creations.

Man was created to recognize his Creator.

If that is the purpose of our existence, then tefillah is not an interruption in our day.

Tefillah Is The Work Of Our Lives; We Were Created To Recognize The King

And every time we daven, we are given another opportunity to do exactly that.

Another opportunity to add a strand. Another opportunity to place another jewel. Another opportunity to deepen our recognition of the One before Whom we stand.

The crown is being fashioned right now. And one day, that very crown will be placed upon our own heads.

Rosh Hashanah: The Coronation

Rosh Hashanah is the day that Adam Harishon was created. And true to the very purpose for which man was brought into existence, Adam Harishon proclaimed: “Hashem Melech!” “Briyosecha anachnu!”

Rosh Hashanah is the day on which we, Klal Yisroel, renew that proclamation, and we too are mamlich Hashem and publicly proclaim, “Briyosecha anachnu!”

It is the day when we declare that Hashem is King. We do not come to Rosh Hashanah merely to ask for another year. We proclaim that the year belongs to Him. Our lives belong to Him. Our families belong to Him. Our successes belong to Him. The entire world belongs to Him.

The central question of Rosh Hashanah is not only, “What do I need?” It is, “Who is in charge?”

And our answer to both is: Hashem Melech!

That is why the imagery of the crown is so central to Rosh Hashanah. “V’yitnu lecha kesser melucha.” We are not merely acknowledging the fact that Hashem is King. We are participating, as it were, in His coronation. We are placing the Kesser, so to speak, upon His head.

The Continuation

Although the act of coronation ends on Rosh Hashanah, the crafting and placement of Hashem’s crown continues all year long. Rosh Hashanah does not establish Malchus for one day; rather, Rosh Hashanah establishes the reality that the rest of the year is meant to express.

Every Shemoneh Esrei is another act of crowning Hashem. Every time we stand before Him and say Ata Chonen, Refa’einu, Bareich Aleinu, Shema Koleinu, or Modim Anachnu Lach, we continue the crowning of the Malchus that we established on Rosh Hashanah.

The entire year is a continuation of that coronation. Rosh Hashanah is the opening declaration. The daily tefillos are the ongoing weaving.

This gives an entirely new perspective to davening on an ordinary weekday morning. It is easy to imagine that the great moments of Malchus belong to the Yomim Nora’im, while weekday tefillos are simply part of the routine of Jewish life.

But the truth is very different. Throughout the year, we are given opportunity after opportunity to live the reality we proclaimed on Rosh Hashanah.

We are building the same crown. Day after day. Tefillah after tefillah. Brocha after brocha.

“Oteir Yisroel B’siforah”

This brings us back to Yovel. The Meiri (Rosh Hashanah), citing the Yerushalmi, explains that a slave would walk bareheaded, while a free person covered his head. When Yovel arrived, the liberated slaves could begin wearing the symbol of freedom and recite the brocha “Oteir Yisroel b’siforah — Who crowns Israel with glory_._”

The crown upon their heads announced that they no longer belonged to another human being.

But the rosh yeshiva, Rav Hutner, revealed that the crown represented something even deeper. It represented true freedom.

The Maharal (Derech Chaim 3:16) explains that the crown of Olam Haba represents independence from every external force. The tzaddik is no longer subject to the powers that dominate the physical world. Not malachim. Not mazalos. Not the forces of nature.

Only Hashem rules. Ein od milvado. That is true freedom.

Freedom is not the absence of authority. Freedom is liberation from every false authority. It is the realization that there is only one Master, only one King, only one Being to Whom we belong.

The Yovel slave, though still physically standing in his master’s house, was already free. For those ten days, corresponding to the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, he experienced something of the essence of Olam Haba. He didn’t work. He rejoiced while wearing a crown. He no longer was owned by another human being. He had been released from human mastery. He was beholden to no power but Hashem. That is true freedom.

The Crown Of A King

The rosh yeshiva then explained that this is precisely why a king wears a crown. A king wears a crown because nothing in the human realm stands above him. He is not subject to another sovereign. He is not controlled by another king. The crown is the symbol of sovereignty, independence, and freedom from every authority beneath the One above all authorities.

The Hat That Is A Crown

And it was at that moment that the conversation with the rosh yeshiva suddenly became intensely personal.

Rav Hutner looked directly at me with those piercing, fiery eyes and explained that this was the deeper meaning behind the insistence that one wear a proper hat during davening.

“A hat is not an external form of dress,” he said. It is a deeper identity of nobility, of one who belongs to the One true King and is free from every lesser master. “It is a crown!”

“Be melachim yimlochu!” As we stand before Hashem and weave His crown, Kesser yitnu lecha, we ourselves stand crowned. Upon our heads rests the crown of Malchus and the crown of freedom.

The Crown Upon The Head Of The Ben Torah

The rosh yeshiva then gave new meaning to the dignity with which talmidei chachomim and bnei yeshiva carry themselves.

Chazal tell us, “Ein lecha ben chorin ela mi she’osek baTorah — There is no truly free person except one who occupies himself with Torah.” The person who immerses himself in Torah has liberated himself from every lesser master.

He lives in this world, but he is not owned by it. He is not ultimately controlled by fashion, public opinion, wealth, honor, desire, or the constantly changing standards of society.

He is a true ben chorin.

This is also the meaning of Chazal’s expression, “Man malchei? Rabbonan  — Who are the kings? The talmidei chachomim.”

Through Torah, a person attaches himself to something higher than the world and therefore becomes free from being dominated by the world.

The Talmid Chochom Dominates And Is Not Dominated

And so the talmid chochom and the ben yeshiva carry upon their heads the symbol of both a ben chorin and a king.

A crown. A hat.

It is the visible expression of Ein lecha ben chorin ela mi she’osek baTorah. It embodies the dignity of Man malchei? Rabbonan. It is the meeting of Kesser Torah and Kesser Malchus, joined together upon the head of the one who has chosen to live as an eved Hashem and is therefore truly free.

And so the ben Torah wears his hat with pride, not only during davening, but throughout his life.

It is not merely what he wears. It is who he is.

A crown upon his head. A declaration of identity. A ben Torah. An eved Hashem. A true ben chorin.

The Most Sobering Thought

But if our tefillos build the crown, then a sobering question follows.

What happens when we fail to daven properly? What happens when, instead of adding another jewel, we leave an empty space? What happens when, instead of weaving something magnificent, we damage the very thing we were sent into this world to create?

The same Baal HaTurim who describes the glory of the crown reveals a frightening opposite. “Aval mi sh’sach sichas chulin b’veis haknesses, one who speaks idle words in the beis haknesses,” instead of participating in the creation of a crown, creates something altogether different.

“Makifin lo kol gufo b’kotzim.” Thorns surround him. His destiny is a body bag of thorns.

Do Not Trade Eternity For A Conversation

The contrast is devastating. The very place where a person could have been creating a crown of glory becomes a place where he creates something that will ultimately wound him for eternity.

This is why talking during davening is not merely a minor breach of decorum.

It is destructive on several levels. Ben adam laMakom, ben adam lachaveiro, and ben adam le’atzmo.

The severity with which halacha treats talking during davening should therefore not surprise us.

The Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim (124-7) uses extraordinarily strong language regarding one who speaks during Chazoras Hasha”tz: “Lo yasi’ach sichas chullin b’sha’ah sh’shaliach tzibbur chozeir hatefillah, v’im sach, hu chotei, v’gadol avono minso, v’go’arim bo.”

“One should not engage in idle conversation while the shaliach tzibbur repeats the tefillah. If he speaks, he is a sinner, his sin is exceedingly great, and he should be strongly rebuked.”

The Pri Megodim, in his Eshel Avrohom, writes with even greater anguish: “Oy lahem shemesichim b’eis hatefillah, ki ra’inu kamah batei haknesses necharevu bishvil avon zeh.”

“Woe to those who speak during the time of tefillah, for we have seen how many batei knesses were destroyed because of this sin.”

His words are chilling.

The place where a person is meant to create a crown can become, through carelessness, the very place where something destructive is created instead.

Perhaps this is why guarding one’s speech during davening is far more than a matter of silence.

It is a declaration. I am not willing to exchange a moment of Malchus for a moment of conversation. I am building my crown.

A Most Powerful Kabbolah For Acceptance Of Our Tefillos

A person may make kabbolos on Rosh Hashanah. He may resolve to improve in Torah, mitzvos, middos, learning, patience, or any one of countless other areas. Every such commitment can be meaningful. Every sincere resolution can change a life.

But there is something particularly powerful about a kabbolah to guard one’s tefillah and to protect the sanctity of davening from unnecessary speech.

Because this commitment reaches directly into the heart of Rosh Hashanah itself.

It declares: I am serious about Malchus. I am serious about the fact that I stand before a King. I am serious about the crown I am creating.

And so perhaps one of the most meaningful kabbolos a person can make on Rosh Hashanah is deceptively simple:

I will not talk during davening

Not because someone is watching. Not because the gabbai will be upset. Not merely because the shul has a policy.

But because I am building Hashem’s and my crown.

I will not trade a strand of eternity for a moment of conversation.

I will not allow the crown of Malchus to become distorted.

I will not damage the very thing that will one day become my eternal identity.

For every moment of tefillah is another opportunity to weave the crown we will carry forever.

The Crown We Carry Forever

The image of the Yovel slave, rejoicing with a crown upon his head, is a mirror of our own lives.

From Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur, the Yovel slave was not yet “home,” yet he was already crowned in freedom. His condition embodied something far deeper than the physical liberation of returning to his family. He represented the ultimate destiny of man. To become free of every force except Malchus Hashem.

So too, during the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, we stand between two worlds. The old year has ended, but the new year has not yet fully unfolded. The verdict has not yet been sealed. We have not yet reached Yom Kippur. We are standing between what we were and what we can still become. And Hashem gives us a crown. He gives us these days to weave something new.

We are not condemned to wear the identity of the person we were last year. We can weave again. We can begin to create a different relationship with Hashem and, in doing so, become a different person. Our tefillos during these days weave the kesser that will return to us in eternity.

If we live as people who recognize Hashem as King, we become people shaped by His Kingship. We become the tzelem, the reflection of the Malchus. If we spend our lives crowning Him, we become the people who wear that crown forever.