Category: Published

Originally published in Newsweek

At its root, the recent critique of Hasidic schools in The New York Times is not about education, much less “substantial equivalency.” Rather, during a time of increasing antisemitism, with violent incidents centered specifically in Hasidic neighborhoods in the New York area, a pair of Jewish writers decided to engage in deliberate incitement, using stereotypes, exaggerations, and generalizations to portray Hasidic Jews as foreign, money-grubbing, incapable of independent decision-making, and worthy of the hatred directed against them.

Some would say that one cannot accuse a pair of journalists with obviously Jewish surnames of antisemitic bias. But the Talmud teaches that an ignorant Jew hates Jewish scholars even more than antisemites hate Jews; and throughout history, individual Jews have made a name for themselves characterizing old antisemitic canards as present-day truth. The Times writers took aim at Hasidic Jews in a way that the Times itself would loudly denounce as bigoted if done against any other minority community. They not only used the sensationalism, lies, and exaggeration characteristic of yellow journalism but did so while applying ancient tropes to their current targets.

The first belief of the antisemite, per an essay from Rabbi Naftali Berlin, dean of the leading rabbinic seminary at the end of the 19th century, is that all Jewish property is somehow ill-gotten gain. What is correct and just for all others is deemed stolen property if it ends up in Jewish hands.

Thus, the Times announced that Jewish parochial schools received $1 billion over four years, rendering them “flush with public money.” Note that this amount is more accurately described as $250 million per year. Then do the math: given the annual per-child cost to operate New York’s public schools and the total number of students sent instead to Jewish schools, the costly decision of parents to send their children to these schools saves the public system over $3 billion per year, meaning the funds invested by government programs in those children is a pittance by comparison.

Still worse, the funding described was overwhelmingly not for educational expenses. A large chunk was one-time COVID relief, given to businesses and nonprofits of all kinds. Another was for busing, given to all schools to reduce accidents and fatalities on city streets. And a third was for the federal universal school lunch program, which is astounding: a program for the benefit of every American child was portrayed in the Times as the pilfering of public funds when the recipient children were Hasidic Jews. This is undeniably the antisemitic trope outlined by Rabbi Berlin over a century ago.

Corporal punishment is still permitted in 19 states and was far more common until recent decades. Yet the Times reporters reached back into time, describing incidents that happened in all schools as if they were transpiring today—and uniquely in Hasidic ones. As with its specious claim regarding funding, NYPD statistics and testimonies of recent graduates demonstrate that the Times has it squarely backwards: Hasidic schools are much safer environments, where a child is vastly less likely to be the victim of any sort of violence than a peer in the public schools.

To claim that graduates are unprepared, the Times looks not at average income, the relevant metric, but at the poverty line, because that bar is higher with each added family member. Unbelievably, the Times used family size to assert inadequate education.

An obvious implication from the Times is that Hasidic parents are monolithic and incapable of independent thought, their children corralled into these schools. Despite the writers’ obvious awareness that Hasidic schools are either completely independent or tied to one Hasidic leader, they paint with a broad brush, declaring that “the Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York’s largest private schools,” as if all were the same, and jointly responsible for the standards of one school. This sort of stereotyping is considered repugnant when used against any other community. Why is it acceptable here?

It is also preposterous, as each couple chooses a particular community and invests many thousands of dollars per child per year in the schools they select. The Times interviewed a single, non-custodial malcontent while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of satisfied parents who wrote letters demanding that they and not government choose the curricula for their children. This is not legitimate journalism.

Yet the foregoing is merely a sampling of the illogical and classically biased formulations used by the Times writers to target Hasidic schools. What is most appalling, though, is that these very schools are, by neutral standards, setting a standard of excellence that other New York schools would do well to try to emulate. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. all said that the primary goal of education is not to memorize the state capitals or even multiplication tables, but intellectual and moral development.

Hasidic school alumni are not found in bars, on street corners, or participating in smash-and-grab robberies. They are homeowners and taxpayers, who build stable families and work to provide for them. Even the Times admitted, in a backhanded fashion, that drug or alcohol addiction, a recurrent aftereffect of leaving the community, is practically unheard of among the great majority who remain. They remain committed to education throughout their lifetimes; their homes are filled with books rather than flat-screen TVs. One would have to do tremendous harm to these schools for their preparation of students for productive adulthood to be “substantially equivalent” to that of the New York City public school system.

This past weekend, yet another incident of antisemitic violence was caught on camera on the streets of New York. The perpetrator, a white woman who knocked the Hasidic shtreimel off a stranger’s head, demonstrated that antisemitism is fostered in diverse populations in many, diverse ways. But the notion that antisemitic incitement leads to antisemitic violence is beyond dispute—as is the fact that the Times article, riddled with demonization, distortion, and double standards, contributed to the noxious environment of hate that made such a crime imaginable.

Photo Credit: Wally Gobetz on Flickr

Originally published in Newsweek

The “Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice” is set to take place today in Washington, D.C. Led by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), the list of rally sponsors includes the ADL, Hadassah, Hillel and several Jewish Community Centers and Jewish Community Relations Council chapters. Rabbinic, cantorial and synagogue associations of all major Jewish-American denominations will be represented, with one glaring exception: those of the Orthodox.

The stated goal of the rally is to proclaim that “Abortion access is a Jewish value, plain and simple.” Its real goal, however, is to gaslight broad swaths of the country, and to provide cover for secularist elites. The rally’s organizers, sponsors and supporters wish to render the killing of a fetus a religious liberty “right” and, at the same time, promote the dangerous fiction that a rational pro-life position violates the “separation of church and state.”

In situations where termination of pregnancy is necessary to save the mother’s life, it would be offensive to claim that such a basic humanitarian concern is uniquely tied to a particular religion. Is chemotherapy a “Jewish value?” What about access to X-rays or organ transplants? The panoply of sponsors, then, are not addressing the actual underlying debate. They are rallying to demand, in the name of religion, elective feticide until the moment of birth.

According to a didactic tale, a well-meaning person once asked a rabbi, “If you were to bless a pig, would that make the animal kosher?” “No,” the rabbi replied, “but it would make me trayf (not kosher)!” Jewish values are not determined by an alphabet soup of Jewish organizations, but by an immutable and transcendent code of Jewish spirituality, ethics and law. And that Jewish code is clear that life and the soul precede birth. In Genesis, for example, Rebecca is told that her unborn twins have distinct natures (25:23). In the Prophets, G-d informs Jeremiah, “Before I placed you in the womb I knew you, before you left the uterus I sanctified you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (1:5).

Moreover, Jewish tradition insists upon adherence to the Oral Law, in which the Mishnah provides moral instruction that a mother must be saved even at the expense of her child, if necessary, “because her life precedes his life” (Ohalos 7:6). Read that again, because the NCJW, the lead sponsor of the rally, refers to this Mishnah without quoting its explicit reference to the “life” of the fetus. Inexplicably, in the same paragraph, NCJW claims that, under Jewish law, a fetus is “not yet having [a] life of its own.”

This is shocking, and shameful. Still worse, other major Jewish organizations and even “rabbinic” groups signed on as rally sponsors, despite the NCJW’s perversion of an obvious statement in Jewish law.

Every citizen has a democratic right to advocate a public policy position, but it is wrong to misuse or mistakenly invoke the First Amendment. Unfortunately, many American Jews have so utterly lost sight of that which Judaism holds dear that they have elevated their own progressive agenda to the level of faith, likely to fill a resulting spiritual void. This rally, led by those who cherry-pick, decontextualize and distort Jewish law to support their position, will draw from those ranks. As mentioned earlier, no Orthodox organization will be at the rally.

This dichotomy between authentic Judaism and idolization of the progressive platform manifests itself in other ways, as well. In several weeks, the Jewish world will celebrate the 3,334th anniversary of G-d’s giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. Jews who faithfully adhere to the Mishnah’s teachings will pray in synagogues around the world, celebrating what we believe to be G-d’s greatest gift. Yet, even conceding that I have no special talent for predicting the future, it is quite certain that not 5% of the attendees at the “Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice” will fully observe this annual festival of Shavuot.

Even holding faith aside for a moment, common sense should also have its say. Visit a neonatal ICU, and you will meet babies who cannot yet breathe on their own or ingest nutrients. Yet they are learning to recognize and find comfort in familiar voices, music and their own thumbs. Doctors and nurses work around the clock to ensure that these babies go on to live normal lives. It is utterly nonsensical to argue that a fetus, in precisely the same situation during a routine pregnancy, is not alive.

The transparent and patently dishonest message of the “Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice” is that valuing life is neither a matter of common sense nor an American principle, but rather a parochially Christian tenet—and, further, a tenet that constitutes a violation of the much-ballyhooed “separation of church and state.” Balderdash. In fact, the sanctity of life and the importance of traditional morality both come directly from the Hebrew Bible. Thus, all Americans, especially of the Abrahamic religions, should reject the progressives’ position, predicated as it is upon the absurd notion that it is somehow unconstitutional for the moral values of the citizenry to be reflected in the laws that govern our society.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that represents over 2,000 rabbis in issues of American public policy. Follow him on Twitter: @ymenken.
Photo Credit: Aditya Romansa at Unsplash.com.

Originally published in Mid-Atlantic Media’s Baltimore Jewish Times, Washington Jewish Times, and Philadelphia Jewish Exponent

A great deal of misinformation has been shared regarding abortion, much of it coming, of course, in the wake of a leaked draft from the Supreme Court suggesting it may soon overturn Roe v. Wade. But everything we have heard about supposed wholesale bans, or lack of concern for the life of the mother, pales in comparison to both the quantity and severity of obviously wrong pronouncements from those claiming a Jewish perspective. One notable organization summed up a common position by stating, “Judaism permits abortion. Full stop.” Few things have been said about Judaism by purported adherents that are more clearly untrue.

The Jewish Bible’s position on life is unambiguous — and emphatically “pro-life.” The Torah identifies human life as a soul placed (breathed) within a body by G-d Himself [Gen. 2:7]. Throughout history, Judaism has opposed murder, child sacrifice and, with only modest exceptions, abortion. It is due to the Torah’s influence that civilized Western society does not accept infanticide as a method of family planning, or regard throwing dissidents to the lions as entertainment.

One who claims that fetal life is not precious to Judaism must not have read the Torah or Prophets, or studied our Oral Law. Rebecca is told not only that she is carrying twins, but that they have distinct natures and characters that explain their behavior in utero [Gen. 25:23]. Jeremiah is told that “Before I placed you in the womb I knew you, before you left the uterus I sanctified you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations” [Jer. 1:5].

And in the Mishnah [Ohalos 7:6] we are taught that the reason one must save a mother even at the expense of her child is “because her life precedes his life.” Some flagrantly misrepresent this as saying that the fetus is not yet considered alive, but the text itself explicitly says otherwise.

Jewish law also demands that the Sabbath be violated in order to save a fetal life. Given that lifesaving activity is the only situation in which Sabbath restrictions are set aside, were a fetus not considered alive this would be prohibited, not required.

Advocates must confront the truth: According to Judaism, abortion, entailing a loss of human life, is an unmitigated tragedy. Even the most permissive opinions reserve abortion for extreme situations that no woman should ever experience. The idea that abortion should be regarded as simply a “choice,” or a routine health care decision when the mother’s health is not abnormally threatened by carrying the child to term, is anathema to our beliefs.

This also, interestingly enough, coincides with all that the medical community has learned about fetal life since 1973. Today we know, for example, that newborn babies respond not only to their mothers’ heartbeats, but to the sound of their parents’ voices. While in utero, babies suck their thumbs for comfort, and even learn music. It is simply nonsensical to argue that a thinking, listening baby is not alive.

Those Jews who ignore our ritual laws, eating pork and treating Saturday like a normal day, rarely insist that the relevant laws were misread or misunderstood. They simply admit they do not follow these laws. But recognizing the Torah’s authority over moral judgments, those wishing to behave in contravention of its ethical precepts often devise tendentious readings to turn prohibited acts into “Jewish values.” Much as we can sympathize with the psychological need behind such efforts, we cannot minimize the inestimable value the Torah places upon all human life, including that of those as yet unborn.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values. Follow him @ymenken.
Photo Credit: Marcel Fagin at Unsplash.com.

Originally published in Times of Israel

Last week, serial entrepreneur and Provocateur-in-Chief Elon Musk tweeted a meme suggesting that the left in this country has veered so far from center that those formerly considered centrists and even moderate leftists are perceived, today, as on the political right. The meme, which went viral, earning more than 1.5 million likes, is essentially the 21^st-century version of the statement, “I didn’t leave the left. The left left me.”

That same left was, of course, outraged by Musk’s critique, with Washington Post journalists, NBC media critics, and many others arguing that it is actually the right that has been radicalized. But for all their efforts, incensed pundits and keyboard warriors could not counter the meme’s final, compelling proof: “progressives” now condemn as “bigots” those who maintain a set of values shared not long ago by the overwhelming majority of Americans, and still shared even by many in the center.

As Jews, we can look back at history and find this sadly familiar. We have never conformed to the popular whim, and we don’t today. For example, this past Saturday’s Torah portion contained a passage that is a leading trigger for progressives: “With a man, you shall not lie in the manner that one lies with a woman, it is an abomination” [Lev. 18:22]. Needless to say, this wasn’t a political statement; Acharei Mot was read in every traditional synagogue immediately following the Passover holiday this year, as part of the annual cycle of Torah readings.

For observant Jews, these Five Books of Moses—Genesis through Deuteronomy—constitute the core of what we take to be Divine Law. And because this Law was given from G-d, and, thus, is perfect, we have no standing to second guess what is contained therein. One cannot claim to follow the Torah or Jewish Law, and omit even a single letter. We have survived according to this understanding, and because of this understanding, for millennia.

This dedication to revealed scripture is, further, not unique to Jews. There are literally billions of Christians and Muslims who, today, regard our same Holy Books as arbiters of moral conduct.

Yet according to progressives, it is discriminatory and repugnant to believe the aforementioned verse from Leviticus to be the Divine Writ. According to them, every traditional Jew, Christian, and Muslim is hateful or “homophobic.” Some call for the verse to be “re-interpreted,” while others demand we not “hide behind ancient texts” to justify our purported malice. Where they agree is that our millennia-old beliefs are not merely wrong, but immoral.

No, Jews and others who look to our Bible for guidance are not phobic, but faithful. The bigots are those who condemn us for our beliefs. It is important to state this clearly, to repudiate the gaslighting to which we are being subjected.

What is most notable about this is that only their particular target is new—the notion that “good” people are those who despise our beliefs and practices is ancient. The Bible itself records that Pharoah suspected Jews of disloyalty at a time when nationalism was of the highest value, and that, hundreds of years later, Haman (of the Book of Esther) advocated genocide because the Jews clung to their own beliefs and did not follow those of the King of Persia.

This continued throughout the centuries: temples and synagogues were destroyed and entire Jewish communities were massacred, always because parts of our religious values were deemed to conflict with whatever was au courant in that era. The Third Reich was no exception; Hitler loathed the idea of a conscience, and blamed Jews for “inflicting” such a concept upon Germans.

Thanks to the left, a new definition of hatred has popped up practically overnight. Progressives cannot identify a national leader who, thirty years ago, was not hateful and “transphobic” according to their new standards. Clinton, Obama, and Biden all once opposed gay marriage and other elements of the progressive agenda. Even Bernie Sanders didn’t publicly support gay marriage until 2009. Accusing everyone of hate is neither a tolerant nor a particularly civilized position—it is projection. If you are looking for haters everywhere, the best place to start is in the mirror.

It is important to note that, through 2,000 years of dispersion, Jews have never regarded it as appropriate to impose our beliefs upon any nation or people. This same principle was adopted by America’s founders as a foundational value and, moreover, enshrined in the First Amendment. True tolerance—to not be castigated as deviants, disloyal, malicious, or as phobic “bigots” simply for remaining true to one’s faith and practices—is woven into the fabric of the American ethos.

Sadly, as Musk pointed out, that simple tolerance currently seems too much to ask of those who have claimed the “progressive” mantle. Yet, that tolerance is the genuine, progressive value that, perhaps more than any other, has enabled Americans of diverse beliefs to develop the prosperous nation that has and continues to lead the free world. It is critical that we embrace it once again.

Photo Credit: Tim Pierce, under Creative Commons license

Originally published in Inside Sources

The Washington Post doxxing of LibsofTikTok is viler than it seems on the surface. That is because reporter Taylor Lorenz also thought it acceptable to highlight her victim’s Orthodox Jewish identity, during an ongoing wave of antisemitic hate crimes specifically targeting visibly Orthodox Jews. The writer not only deliberately traumatized her victim but placed her at elevated risk for physical harm. Yet, stunningly, the newspaper defended the practice saying her methods “comport entirely with The Washington Post’s professional standards.”

For those unaware, on Tuesday, in the middle of Passover, Lorenz produced an “exposé” regarding the LibsofTikTok Twitter account. That account, administered anonymously, re-posts videos from Tik Tok users. Whatever one thinks of these videos, they were posted to be shared publicly, mostly by teachers who brag about exposing young children to material their parents might find objectionable. LibsofTikTok merely aggregates them into a central Twitter feed. That is almost all it does.

But according to Lorenz, that is enough for the account to be “impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions.” The Washington Post, though its motto is “Democracy dies in darkness,” was apparently troubled by LibsofTikTok bringing its collected videos to light.

Per Oxford Languages, “doxxing” means to “search for and publish private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent.” Lorenz herself has decried the practice as detestable and dangerous. While writing for The New York Times, she shot a TikTok video objecting to an outlet doxxing an individual by publishing his full name.

Just weeks ago, Lorenz cried her way through an MSNBC interview after she was herself doxxed. “I had severe PTSD,” she said, “I contemplated suicide, it got really bad. You feel like any piece of information that gets out on you will be used by the worst people imaginable to destroy your life.” On Twitter, she wrote simply that “doxxing… [is] not ok in any situation.”

So it is fair to say that as Taylor Lorenz researched and wrote her article, she fully understood the evil of what she was doing.

In her piece, Lorenz did at least three reprehensible things. First, she revealed the account holder’s full name, the very doxxing she decried. She then magnified that hypocrisy by linking to her target’s private real estate license, exposing her work address, and contact information, later removed by The Post as online criticism began to build.

And finally, Lorenz dug through discarded Twitter handles associated with the same account and proudly reported that its holder is an Orthodox Jew.

Of course, the user’s religious identity was no more relevant to curating LibsofTikTok than it was to her work as a realtor. But perhaps it was relevant to Lorenz’s objective.

Consider that Lorenz recently alerted her followers that a woman on Instagram with the same name as her victim is not, in fact, the same person. Fully informed by her own recent experience and the Instagram user’s pleas, she knew the harassers had pounced, yet did not condemn them. She improved their aim.

As a reporter, she also must know that physical violence could well result. According to FBI statistics from 2020, though Jews make up less than 2% of the population, they suffered 55 percent of religiously motivated attacks, more than all other religious groups combined. Those figures precede the further sharp spike in antisemitic hate crimes, particularly against visibly Orthodox Jews. Thanks to Lorenz and The Washington Post, LibsofTikTok spent her Passover holiday “holed up in a safe location.”

And after placing a woman in the crosshairs of certain online harassment and possible physical harm, the newspaper then brazenly and falsely claimed it “did not publish or link to any details about her personal life.” If these actions “comport entirely with The Washington Post’s professional standards,” these standards need an immediate upgrade from someone with a working moral compass.

The Washington Post is an influential newspaper with a venerable past, yet the practices employed to unmask LibsofTikTok violate nearly every one of the elements in the “Minimize Harm” section of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. It is no wonder Americans’ trust in media is at a near all-time low. If they want to dig themselves out of this ditch, outlets such as The Post must begin acting like they deserve our trust.

This op-ed was also published at The Times of Israel.

Originally published in Washington Examiner

By Rabbi Yaakov Menken and Jonathan Bronitsky

Despite what conspiracy theorists would have you believe, “the Jews” don’t control Hollywood.

Jews might be disproportionately represented in entertainment, but many of them are really just devotees of progressivism, which is hostile to the very principle of national sovereignty (including a Jewish homeland) and all that revealed religion entails.

Orthodox Judaism specifically stands for everything progressives despise. That’s why it has become an additional prime target of the entertainment industry’s unique form of vitriol.

Hollywood has long portrayed Orthodox Jews as hopelessly backward, at best. For instance, a 2005  episode of Grey’s Anatomy featured an “Orthodox” woman who preferred death to a porcine heart valve. (There is no rabbinical issue with such a procedure, by the way. Moreover, the tenet of pikuach nefesh, the preservation of human life, takes precedence over all other commandments in Judaism.)

This plot was echoed years later in an  episode  of the Canadian show Nurses, which had a “Hasidic” family refuse a bone graft for their son because the donor was “an Arab, a woman.” (The episode was later  pulled  due to complaints.) It appears that no one on either production team bothered to do the necessary research or fact-checking in advance, resulting in these entirely unrealistic and not-so-subtly bigoted scenarios.

The American entertainment industry’s most common narrative when it comes to observant Judaism is evident: A life lived in accordance with the Torah is repressive and undesirable, and, accordingly, escaping the despotic clutches of the ancient religion, whether temporarily or permanently, is the path to liberated bliss. Just a few examples:  A Stranger Among Us,  Disobedience,  Arranged,  Unorthodox, and  One of Us .

In Israel, not all portrayals of observant Judaism are so biased. The writer and lead actor of the acclaimed film Ushpizin  earned secular fame and later became observant. The drama series  Shtisel  consults with Orthodox Jews. As a result, Ushpizin and Shtisel offer renderings of Orthodox Judaism that are described by Orthodox Jews as believable. By comparison, the renderings of Orthodox Judaism manufactured by Hollywood are universally regarded by the Orthodox community as slanderous caricatures.

A recent and revealing example of the entertainment industry’s malice is the Netflix television miniseries My Unorthodox Life. Former classmates and others quickly rejected Julia Haart’s dystopian description of her Orthodox upbringing as bogus. In the wake of the sudden collapse of Haart’s stint as the CEO of Elite World Group and her marriage to its owner, it seems that the illustration of her post-Orthodox, secular life was no better. A happy, stable person does not  throw tantrums  when a skinny vanilla latte cannot be obtained at 3 a.m. in Johannesburg. A well-adjusted, blissful person does not  regularly bring staffers to tears.

Yet Netflix acquired My Unorthodox Life and even signed Haart for a second season before the backdrop of her made-for-TV story disintegrated. The streaming service was apparently so besotted with Haart’s representation of Orthodox Judaism as oppressive, and her post-Orthodox life as glorious and empowered, that it was willing, perhaps eager, to overlook many red flags.

Conspicuously absent from American popular culture are positive portrayals of Orthodox Jewish life — specifically stories, whether real or fictional, of people either born into observant homes or secular people who have found their way to faith.

This is no accident. Entertainment studios are the gatekeepers, the formidable arbiters of our national conversation. They choose what gets greenlit and what does not. At a time when Hollywood studios seek to support virtually every minority group, the consistently negative treatment of Orthodox Jews is disturbing, especially during a time of heightened antisemitic violence.

Understand that Orthodox Judaism earns leftist scorn not only because it is traditional in the time-honored sense, but also because it’s a purveyor of traditional approaches to life, marriage, and freedom of conscience. This inexorably places it on what elites pretentiously term “the wrong side of history.” And because Orthodox beliefs and customs are foreign to most people, the average viewer cannot easily differentiate between authenticity and untruth.

Hollywood’s secularist aggression is, of course, not directed exclusively toward Jews. These pernicious depictions are merely one part of a systematic effort by the Left to portray people of faith writ large as primitive and brutish and, therefore, worthy of castigation. The entertainment industry has long attacked Protestant Evangelicals and devout Catholics, labeling them, among other things, “yahoos” and “papists.”

For several reasons, Jews (even observant Jews) once upon a time enjoyed some degree of safe harbor because they weren’t viewed as threatening by those behind the camera. But the wicked abstractions of intersectionality and critical race theory have altered the left-wing calculus, putting the Orthodox increasingly in the crosshairs. Orthodox Jews are now being used as a cudgel to bash all revealed religion, and, by extension, to undermine Western civilization.

What’s to be done? The nonprofit  Jew in the City  is  forming  a “Hollywood bureau” to provide training and media monitoring for producers, directors, and writers wishing to portray Orthodox Jews. Beyond that, but short of launching our own aligned studios, those of us frustrated and concerned must continue to contest Hollywood’s representations of people of faith through both principled argument and virtuous example, exposing these representations in real-time to be what they truly are: malicious fiction.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values . Dr. Jonathan Bronitsky is the co-founder of  ATHOS.

This op-ed was also published at The Jewish Voice.

Originally published in RealClearReligion

When we “spring forward” and “gain” an hour of daylight each March, many of us – maybe most – say to ourselves, “we should have this all year round!” This widespread sentiment was reflected in the Senate’s recent passing of a bill that, if enacted, would permanently place all federal clocks on daylight saving time (DST). As much as it would be nice to get a bit more Vitamin D, especially after being long cooped up because of the pandemic, permanent DST would obstruct many Jewish practices and endanger children and others who must travel to school or work in the early morning hours.

At present, DST is in effect for roughly two-thirds of the calendar year. First put into place over 50 years ago, its goal was to maximize the hours of sunlight during the long days of summer, rather than having the sun rise well before most people do. In the winter, reverting to Standard Time ensured additional light in the morning. With permanent DST, the sun would rise after 8 a.m. for three months or more in dozens of major American cities, and, at its latest, nearly or after 9 a.m. in northern cities like Detroit, South Bend, and Seattle.

America tried permanent DST before, in the 1970s during an energy crisis. Many children across the country were forced to leave for school well before sunrise. I remember, as a third-grader in New Jersey, going out with a flashlight to catch the bus. My mother remembers being petrified, because I insisted that she not come with me to the stop.

Her concerns were hardly unfounded. A number of children were struck by cars while walking or waiting for the bus in the pre-dawn blackness that year. Senator Marco Rubio, who proposed the current bill, may be unaware that eight were killed in his home state of Florida alone. That is why Congress ditched the idea, reverting to Standard Time eight months later.

Even if the safety issues could be resolved, permanent DST would have a significant, detrimental effect on the millions of Americans whose religious practices are tied to the rising and setting of the sun, including Orthodox Jews, who constitute the fastest growing part of the American Jewish community.

Judaism requires being extraordinarily mindful of the clock in a host of areas. One cannot, for example, be a minute late to start observing the Sabbath. Because driving is not permitted during the day of rest, it’s not unheard of for observant Jews to pull over and park on Friday afternoon as the sun sets and walk the rest of the way home.

For Jewish men, the daily morning service, Shacharis, is a time-bound obligation – ideally observed in a synagogue and in the company of at least nine others – during the first quarter of the day after sunrise. That is why permanent DST would prove such an impediment: during the winter months, it would be impossible for those in northern parts of the country to both pray in this fashion and get to work by 9 a.m. Those with early shifts would need to abruptly interrupt their work every morning in order to fulfill their religious obligations in rushed and abbreviated fashion. In turn, they would lose out on much of what is meant to be a spiritual and uplifting beginning to the day.

Doubtless, the move to permanent DST was proposed, as it was in the 1970s, with the best of intentions – to eliminate the disruption of “springing forward” and “falling back,” as well as to save energy. Its implementation, however, would prove especially dangerous to children and severely disrupt religious practices for millions of Americans. It’s now up to the House of Representatives to squash this bill and protect our sacred practices. We must learn from mistakes. As it says in Proverbs 22:3, “The thoughtful saw danger and hid from it, but fools went on and paid the price.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values. Follow: @ymenken.
Photo Credit: Levi Meir Clancy at Unsplash.com.

Originally published in Newsweek

A recent report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), “Islamophobia in the Mainstream,” is a case study in projection—the psychological process of attributing one’s own defects to others. In this case, the defect is hate, and the target is an all-too familiar one: the Jewish people and their allies.

It is not difficult here to discern the hater from the hated: Just days after CAIR issued its report, Malik Faisal Akram pursued CAIR’s antisemitic agenda by entering a Texas synagogue with a gun. In a speechdelivered to a Muslim audience in November, the executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, Zahra Billoo, identified “Zionist synagogues” like Congregation Beth Israel and all “polite Zionists”—essentially all Jews—as “your enemies,” both Islamophobic and opposed to “human rights.” Billoo further advised those listening and watching to “fight back.”

Rather than disavow her hateful and antisemitic remarks, CAIR claimed that Billoo was “misquoted” and the victim of an “online smear campaign.” Sadly for CAIR, the video is available for all to see.

In just the past two months, CAIR also organized a series of rallies in Texas for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, just as Akram demanded. The connection between CAIR’s statements and Malik Akram’s beliefs is undeniable—and this is true regardless of whether Akram watched Billoo’s speech or was aware of the rallies. This is because CAIR is part of a global network that promotes a hateful agenda that has targeted both Jews and democratic institutions for decades.

CAIR’s report is an exercise in disinformation, dishing out terms like “hate group,” “misinformation” and “propaganda” without, in most cases, even a single purported example of “Islamophobia.” It is just a projection of CAIR’s own bigotry, which frequently takes aim at a list of prominent pro-Israel advocates, the Israel Defense Forces and the international Jewish community at-large.

Undoubtedly, before long, the Coalition for Jewish Values, where I serve as managing director, will be part of the assembly that CAIR attacks. When informed by a reporter that our organization had called the report “both pro-terror and antisemitic,” CAIR responded by branding us an “extremist voice.” And in calling our assessment of the antisemitic nature of the Texas attack “bizarre and unfounded,” CAIR professes to know more about Jew-hatred than do 2,000 observant rabbis. Good luck with that.

In its report, CAIR accused the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) of “Islamophobia” because CAMERA once published a report on The Islamic Society of North America that “accuses multiple American-Muslim organizations and individuals to be front groups for terrorism.”

The problem for CAIR is that CAMERA’s assertions are true.

CAIR was incorporated by Omar Ahmad, Rafiq Jaber and Nihad Awad in 1994. To become its founding director, Awad left his position as public relations director for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which has been described by the FBI counterterrorism chief as “a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants,” and by the U.S. government itself as a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee.” Ahmad was the IAP president at that time, while Jaber became IAP president in 1996.

Within a month after its formation, CAIR, which was soon listed as a “working organization” by the Palestine Committee, received a $5,000 check—followed weeks later by a $5,000 wire transfer—from the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).

The HLF was convicted in 2008 of providing over $12 million to Hamas, a U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization. The FBI called this “the largest victory against terrorist financing in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks.” HLF’s founders received life sentences, and CAIR was listed by the FBI as an unindicted co-conspirator, serving as the public relations arm of a web of terrorist-affiliated groups.

When CAIR was first accused in U.S. Senate testimony of receiving seed money from the HLF, Ahmad denied it, while Awad called it an “outright lie.” Presented with a copy of the check, Awad revised his testimony, describing a $5,000 check less than three weeks after incorporation as “a donation like any other.”

With its recent report accusing mainstream Jewish organizations as well as allies of the Jewish people of “Islamophobia,” CAIR both inverts hater and hated and advances the extremist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood: to make Jews less welcome, and to make terrorism against Jews more palatable. This is, in fact, what CAIR has done from effectively day one of its existence.

Now that CAIR has targeted Jews in such an open and egregious manner, it has lost any right to the benefit of the doubt—though, in fact, it never had any such right at the outset. CAIR has unmasked itself as the virulent hate group that it has always been. Americans must oppose CAIR and the antisemitism that it foments and disseminates.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

Originally published in The Epoch Times

The Biden State Department is seeking to create a consulate in Jerusalem that would serve only “Palestinians.” There are two possible explanations. One, the Biden Administration has forgotten several thousand years of history. Two, they are aware of that history, but aim to sever the connection of the Jewish people to their ancient capital today. It increasingly seems both explanations are plausible.

The Christian world recently celebrated the birth of Jesus in the small town of Bethlehem, or Bet-Le?em, meaning “House of Bread” in Hebrew. Joseph and Mary were there because the Roman colonialist governor had ordered a census of the Jews in Judea. Jesus was raised in Nazareth, Natzeret in Hebrew, meaning “offspring” or “sprout.”

Archaeologists recently announced the discovery of a second ancient Jewish synagogue in Migdal, meaning “tower,” a town close to Nazareth. Migdal was the place of origin of a woman famous in Christian scripture: Mary Magdalene. Both she and Jesus went to Jerusalem because it was the site of Solomon’s Temple, and, thus, the center of Jewish worship.

In other words, Jesus was born a Jew. He grew up in a Jewish family. He kept company with other Jews. He practiced Judaism. He went to the Jewish Temple. All in Jewish territory that is now the Jewish State of Israel. And all this is found in exclusively Christian sources.

The idea of opening the Palestinian consulate was first floated in in a memo written by Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration. This is the same Hady Amr who called the Jewish homeland “occupied Palestine.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claims that the State of Israel was formed as “a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism.” He’s ignoring not just archeology and the historical record, but Judaism, Christianity, and even Islam. By calling Israel a “colonial project,” Abbas and others willfully ignore the fact that indigenous Jews never left Judea except at the point of a sword. They were scattered across Europe and Arab lands by the same Roman Empire that persecuted Jesus and his early followers.

It is the colonialists, and not the indigenous documented in the Bible, that stamped the name “Palestine” upon the Holy Land.

Still, even after repeated expulsions, Jews always returned to Israel, heeding the many exhortations ensconced in the Bible, Jewish law and prayer. Every chapter of the Torah and page of Talmud reminds Jews that they have but one homeland, to which the Jewish faith binds them for all time.

This is why the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides migrated from Spain to the Holy Land, and why Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Code of Jewish Law, followed in his footsteps centuries later. It is why Rabbi Isaac Luria, father of modern Kabbalah, moved from Egypt, and why followers of the father of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, and those of his leading opponent, Rabbi Eliyahu Cramer, the Vilna Gaon, made the arduous journey from Slavic countries to Jerusalem.

They were not “colonialists” or “occupiers”—they were indigenous Jews returning home. Yet Jews in Israel today, including those who can trace their family trees back centuries, are ridiculously called both.

It is long overdue that such false and malicious narratives be put to rest.

In particular, it would be a significant setback for indigenous rights and civil liberties were the U.S. to create a Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem. The current U.S. Embassy, opened by President Trump in 2018, serves all who need its services. If a separate office were actually needed, its correct location would be in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority.

President Biden must recognize history as well as his religious education, rather than listen to the dogmatic revisionist voices that would deprive the indigenous of Israel the God-given right to live and worship freely in their Holy City.

Originally published in Newsweek

The U.S. Congress proposed an American day of thanks to the new and first president, George Washington, in September of 1789. And with Washington’s proclamation, the first Thanksgiving Day was held on Thursday, November 26 of that same year. Congress and the president had far more in mind than a turkey dinner, watching football and dashing out for savings on big-screen TVs.

America was forged by religious people, many seeking to escape persecution. The New England colonies were founded by Puritan separatists fleeing the Church of England, and Pennsylvania offered a haven for the Amish. Similar examples abounded. All were genuinely grateful for the opportunity to live in freedom in a country where no one mistreated them for their beliefs, and where they governed themselves.

It was faith that drove that gratitude. In his declaration of the first Thanksgiving Day, Washington began from the premise that it was “the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” And thus the holiday was made with our Creator in mind: “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer…devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks.”

The Founders also knew that respecting the right of others to practice their faith was the best way to ensure the same right for themselves. As Washington wrote, in a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, the United States, “which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

There is a parallel between the Founding Fathers and the religious survivors of the Holocaust who came far more recently to these shores. I have known many of them, though most are sadly no longer with us. Despite having seen the bloodiest and most depraved form of religious oppression in the history of mankind, I do not remember them as sad or vengeful people, despite seeing their parents and entire families wiped out. They were too busy caring for their own children and grandchildren, and grateful to have been given the opportunity to rebuild their lives in freedom.

It turns out that for both the Founding Fathers and these Holocaust survivors, faith and gratitude may have played a decisive role in their contentment.

A recent study in Israel found that religiosity was one of the biggest determinants of happiness. Sixty-two percent of fervently religious Israeli respondents described themselves as “very satisfied” with their lives, in contrast to only 26 percent of secular Jewish citizens of Israel.

Among several factors that explain the gap, researchers cited the high level of gratitude that is integral to the Jewish religion. Every morning, religious teachings instruct Jews to thank G-d for another day of life, and every type of food has its own blessing of gratitude. In the Sabbath morning prayers, we find the following passage:
If our mouths were filled with song like the sea, and our tongues joyous lyrics like the multitude of its waves, and our lips with praises like the breadth of the Heavens… we would still not suffice to praise You, L-rd our G-d and the G-d of our forebears, and to bless Your Name for even one of the thousands, thousands upon thousands, hundreds of millions of times, the favors that You have bestowed upon our forebears and upon us.
It is obvious that prayers like these are utterly inconsistent with a feeling of entitlement, like that which has swept across America in recent years. When people imagine that they are unfairly held back, are not getting their fair share and that others are ruining their future, they inevitably feel angry, resentful and, ultimately, sad.

The Founding Fathers demonstrated that gratitude, generosity and unity all travel together, and are closely tied to happiness and satisfaction. Those traits helped make Americans both ambitious and industrious, and transformed the United States into a global superpower able to make the world a better place. This Thanksgiving, let’s pray that all of us will take to heart the value of old lessons, and America will recapture the culture that made productivity, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness achievable in this blessed nation.