Executive Vice President, Coalition for Jewish Values & Chief Architect, Torah.org
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The heart-rending scenario now unfolding in Afghanistan, the abdication (and show of weakness) from the United States, and the lack of concern shown by people who portray themselves as concerned for all of human rights, women’s rights and Muslim rights add up to a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions — which could have been prevented.
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Although Yaakov Katz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, claims that “Bennett can liberate Israel from haredi chains on religion,” what he really means to say is that Bennett can “liberate” Israel from being a Jewish state, by breaking the deals made between Ben-Gurion and religious authorities, primarily the Chazon Ish, to build a society in which religious and secular coexist.
In the second part, I turn to Miriam Shaviv’s attempt to dismiss the blowback against the lies told by Julia Haart in “My Unorthodox Life.” I call this defending malicious mendacity—Shaviv claims the women display “underlying insecurity and anxiety” because they don’t talk about their religious accomplishments. Besides being untrue in many cases, Haart’s lies specifically focused upon secular “repression,” and thus it was simply logical for the responses to focus upon that as well. Shaviv wants you to believe that rebutting silly lies and educating people about the truth reflects “insecurity.” It is clear that this reflects Shavav’s own bigotry and animus towards the observant women she derides.
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What Netflix didn’t tell you, and the falsehoods that it told.
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Originally published in Washington Examiner
Since the Anti-Defamation League’s founding in 1913, its declared mission has been “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people.” Thus, many were concerned when Jonathan Greenblatt took over as CEO of the esteemed organization in 2015: While his resume was long on efforts for social good, including a stint in former President Barack Obama’s Office of Social Innovation, it conspicuously lacked positions combating antisemitism or serving a Jewish cause. Most of all, they worried that Greenblatt would fail to check his well-established liberal political leanings at the door of the nonpartisan organization and, in turn, inadequately address the new wave of Jew-hatred growing on the Left.
It took little time for Greenblatt to prove his skeptics correct; it took much longer for the crisis to reach the point at which his silence was no longer tenable. Writing in Newsweek earlier this month, Greenblatt finally conceded what should have been among his first priorities, saying that it’s “time to admit” that the Left has an antisemitism problem. His real admission was that he had been reluctant, and thus inexcusably tardy, to recognize what was already obvious to everyone not compromised by ideological blinders.
Under Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has grievously harmed its own image, employing a clear double standard on hate. Greenblatt, for example, recently used a gross distortion of Tucker Carlson’s remarks to demand that Fox News fire him. The attack seemed less focused upon any genuine bigotry on Carlson’s part than that he’s conservative — and popular to boot. By comparison, Greenblatt had no comment when a Michigan Democrat, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, echoing lies about Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and access to COVID-19 vaccines, called the world’s only Jewish state a “racist country.”
Greenblatt rushed to call for Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s removal from her committee assignments, repeating the false claim that she had referred to “Jewish space lasers.” Yet, he has never made any such demand regarding Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has dispensed classically antisemitic themes and tropes since at least 2012 and continues to do so in Congress. On the contrary, the ADL swiftly accepted Omar’s halfhearted apology for blatantly antisemitic remarks in 2019, and Greenblatt even lauded her “commitment to a more just world.” It is clear that party affiliation, rather than poisonous expression, has driven Greenblatt’s determination of whose rhetoric endangers Jews.
Only now, in 2021, does Greenblatt finally acknowledge that it is Omar’s bigoted speech, rather than Greene’s nonsensical meanderings, that directly feeds the “anti-Israel animus” that has led to attacks upon Jews on campus and in major cities. Let’s be clear: Omar espoused Jew-hatred in Congress from the day she was elected and has done so without consequence — and the ADL’s ideologically motivated paralysis has allowed this hate to fester, endangering Jews across America.
In his Newsweek op-ed, Greenblatt tacitly acknowledges that overlooking left-wing antisemitism has been a long-term failing. He described the tone of this year’s Chicago Dyke March, which included “queers for Palestine” flags featuring machine guns, as a sign of “dangerous” bias. Yet the same rally ejected marchers carrying Star of David flags four years ago, in 2017, and the ADL said nothing.
In his op-ed, Greenblatt condemns Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum’s current false assertion that Israel is “bombing Gaza into oblivion.” Yet he was silent when she offered up a depiction of AIPAC’s “agenda” a bit over a year ago that, as the Coalition for Jewish Values immediately averred, was “antisemitic rhetoric cloaked in ‘Palestinian rights’ advocacy.”
The ADL has even spent its energies assailing clear allies of the Jewish people, including, but not limited to, the Zionist Organization of America, ACT! for America, and Proclaiming Justice to the Nations. It is not as if our enemies need the ADL’s help.
But now, after confessing that he failed to pursue his organization’s mission for years, Greenblatt offers no road map for rectifying the problems that he overlooked and allowed to incubate. Other CEOs have tendered their resignations for far less serious shortcomings.
Without a plan, there is no indication that Greenblatt’s admission will lead to true change at the ADL. Just last week, Ben and Jerry’s, a unit of Unilever — which does business in Northern Cyprus, China, and Crimea, among other locations of occupation, dispossession, and persecution — announced that it would boycott Jews who returned after 1967 to lands from which they were ethnically cleansed at gunpoint in 1948. For this blatantly antisemitic action, every kosher supermarket in the country immediately pulled Ben and Jerry’s ice cream from its freezers, while the ADL said merely that it was “disappointed” before turning to the burning question of “gender-affirming” surgery in Arkansas. How is the ADL going to halt “defamation of the Jewish people” if it does less to combat it than a grocery store?
The ADL must begin issuing statements and making demands that are both focused upon antisemitism and devoid of political bias. For example, having already demanded that Greene be removed from her committee assignments for mostly incoherent ramblings, the ADL must join our call, now signed by more than 300 traditional, observant rabbis, that Omar face at least the same consequence for consistent demonstrations of Jew-hatred.
Left-wing antisemitism has gone unchallenged for too long and is spreading too quickly for Greenblatt not to pair his changed attitude with a change of direction at the ADL. Let us all hope he and the ADL have sufficient courage.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.
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In this podcast I discuss my recent piece in TownHall about American Exceptionalism, how the left has been trying to tear down the country for decades, and how they only care about crime when it can be blamed on the political right. That’s why they demonized police for trying to protect Federal buildings in Portland, but celebrate the tally of arrests—over 500 and counting—in the Capitol Riot, which they ridiculously call an “insurrection.”
Originally published in TownHall
As a young child, my grandfather fled Communist Russia in the back of a horse-drawn wagon, hiding underneath a pile of hay—which a Bolshevik border guard stabbed with a pitchfork to prevent such escapes from totalitarianism. Fortunately, he was unharmed, and found refuge in America.
It’s true that, once they arrived in the United States, Jews of my grandfather’s generation endured antisemitic slurs, were held back by quotas at universities, prevented from renting apartments and buying homes, and excluded from social organizations. Still, they knew with certainty that America was the land of freedom and opportunity. They grasped its fundamental goodness, which is why they were willing to endure the not-so-good. And they understood their new home’s capacity for progress was assured, rooted as it is in timeless moral principles.
Each new January 1, we take stock of our actions over the previous 365 days and make resolutions to improve as individuals. The Fourth of July should serve a similar function, but on a broader scale as a nation of citizens. This is our opportunity as a people—united by distinctive history, ideals, and culture—to evaluate where we’ve been and to consider our future, by evaluating the state of the American experiment.
A staffer at Turning Point USA once asked me how I, as a rabbi, respond to those who insist the Bible has done little for mankind. I responded, “Well, the critics do have a point, but only if you’re willing to discount cherishing human life, the brotherhood of man, peace over warfare, impartial justice, universal education, charity, and social responsibility.” In other words, whathasn’tthe Bible offered to mankind, and, to be more specific, civilization as we know it? No less important is that the values that flow from the Book of Books are precisely those the Founding Fathers wished to actualize on these shores.
In 1790, George Washington promised the Jewish congregation of Newport that America would always aim to be a place where “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”And for centuries, that dream has not only remained intact, but grown. In 1989, shortly before Ronald Reagan left the White House, he spoke about the “shining city on a hill” envisioned by John Winthrop, an early Pilgrim. He observed that America was “teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” and, despite its flaws and errors, remained, after over 200 years, a beacon of freedom to the world.
To Reagan, as to the Founding Fathers, progress was only good when it more perfectly realized America’s founding principles. This is fundamentally at odds with political progressivism, which maintains that new ideas are almost always an improvement over the old.
Now, no one questions the real progress made in understanding science, mathematics, and technology. We, for instance, benefit from medical techniques entirely unknown only several years ago. But in the realm of Big Ideas, the assumption that progress is inevitable—and, thus, the latest notion should automatically supplant everything that has come before—has only become harder to verify. In rough chronological order, the previous century gave us communism, Nazism, and terrorism. It should be obvious that what is “new” is not necessarily better.
Traditional Judaism is built upon an entirely different paradigm, that ofyeridas hadoros (“decline of the generations”). Mount Sinai was the source of knowledge, and Moses was the only prophet who could speak with G-d with full clarity, “face to face.” In other words, we cannot capture the full knowledge of generations that were closer to that revelation. Yet our most passionate efforts are directed towards clinging to that ancient wisdom.
If this conflict between far-left radicalism and Biblical values were not enough, today it seems that no more true progressives remain. The “progressive” of 2021 is more accurately a “rejectionist,” because instead of improving America, they would prefer to destroy it.
What Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, identity politics, the 1619 Project, and Black Lives Matter share in common is the belief that America is not a beacon of freedom, but rather an intrinsically evil enterprise. This is nefarious not only because it’s inaccurate, but also because of the means that it requires and justifies. Something intrinsically evil cannot be improved; it must be burnt to the ground. And what should replace it? By their count, a preferential system that doles out benefits to groups who claim victim status, no matter how tenuous their relationship to actual persecution.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) epitomizes this woke revolution. She is the daughter of a Somali Army Colonel, who himself was born to one of that country’s “noble” clans. She left the humanitarian disaster that those clans created to find a new home in the land of opportunity that is the United States. Here, she was afforded shelter, an excellent education, and virtually every opportunity—even that of becoming a U.S. Congresswoman.
Yet Rep. Omar recently claimed that Jewish colleagues in Congress, several of whom are descendants of Holocaust survivors, have “not experienced injustice” as she allegedly has. And she said this to avoid apologizing both for her antisemitic remarks, and for having likened both the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban. She, the other members of “The Squad,” and those who elected them, all see America as a sinister regime, comparable to governments of authoritarians and genocidal terrorists.
Does the Star-Spangled Banner yet wave, o’er the land of the Free and the home of the Brave? This Fourth of July, it does. But it might not for our children and grandchildren if Americans lack the courage to stand up at this moment. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is inevitable. As citizens, it is our duty to regularly rediscover our past, and recognize what the Founding Fathers so successfully set in motion. That certainly doesn’t mean ignoring the bad. It means maintaining perspective by also remembering what makes America great.
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The phenomenon of “Fake News” has been around since long before Donald Trump gave it that name. This is something he was clearly right about, and I go through a series of examples (mostly provided by Jake Turx in Ami Magazine) of Trump’s correct complaints.
But the real point is that observant Jews have faced this for a long time: left-wing progressives trying to redefine reality to either defame or dismantle Orthodoxy, in as much as the term means Torah-observant. Articles claiming that “Modern Orthodoxy” might accept same-sex marriage, that “Orthodox rabbis” are performing same-sex marriage, or that “Orthodox schools” ordain women are all cases in point. The CJV Statement on Orthodoxy sets the record straight.
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I discuss my current piece in Newsweek, with some background on the case and religious liberty issues. But most of all, in the podcast I talk about the silly reactions from supposedly-educated professors, falling over themselves to contradict basic logic, reason, and economics, to defend a bigoted policy—when the facts themselves are quite clear.
As published in Newsweek
The Supreme Court has the chance this month to protect religious freedom, religious minorities and foster families. In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the Court will determine whether Catholic Social Services (CSS) will be permitted to resume providing foster care services, as it did for more than 200 years.
The city of Philadelphia shuttered CSS because, hypothetically, a same-sex couple could approach CSS for a “home study” (an intimate, detailed family evaluation) that the agency could not complete in a way that both affirms same-sex marriage and remains consistent with its Catholic beliefs. CSS stated that it would help such couples find a different agency (there are dozens across the city) that could complete the “home study,” and noted that no same-sex couple has ever approached it. Yet the city refused all compromise.
Although the Fulton case specifically involves the Catholic Church, freedom of religious practice for all is at stake. If Philadelphia gets its way, the Court will have handed governments a legal tool to use against minority religious communities.
Some argue that, on the contrary, a decision favoring CSS is more likely to enable discrimination against religious minorities. This claim rests upon the same illogical—and profoundly dangerous—distortion activists use to claim anti-LGBT discrimination: misrepresenting freedom of association and pursuit of a religious mission as a “license to discriminate.”
Another agency, South Carolina’s Miracle Hill Ministries, has become a national focal point due to its religious limitations. Like CSS, Miracle Hill is a religious ministry, committed to serving foster children in accordance with its beliefs. But unlike CSS, Miracle Hill makes evangelism part of its mission, and requires those who wish to provide services under its auspices to sign a statement affirming its doctrine.
Two things are immediately obvious: first, the aforementioned requirement entirely precludes, for instance, a Jewish family from providing services through Miracle Hill; second, this is in no way discriminatory. Miracle Hill does not prevent Jews—or anyone else—from serving as foster parents. Nor does it impinge upon anyone else’s religious expression. The public square is big enough for everyone.
Ignoring this reality, some tarnish Miracle Hill (and separately, CSS) as engaging in “government-funded discrimination.” This is both wrong and misleading. No government funds are provided to Miracle Hill for administration, advertising, recruitment or evaluation of potential foster care families. CSS receives no payment for carrying out home studies. Private agencies and families receive partial reimbursement for the costs of caring for each individual child successfully placed, while relieving government of providing the same service at far greater taxpayer expense.
As all children requiring foster care go through state-operated social service departments, what is at stake for religious foster agencies is their very ability to participate in public life. There is no credible argument that eliminating faith-based foster and adoption agencies expands availability of loving homes for children. On the contrary, eliminating those agencies means eliminating their public outreach, and removes from the adoption pool any families that would choose to work with those agencies because of their shared religious creed. Given the severe shortage of foster care homes for needy children, closing these agencies causes clear and demonstrable harm.
For the Jewish community, foster care and adoption are deeply connected with our most basic beliefs. We regard it as a religious obligation to place Jewish children in Jewish homes, where they will receive a Jewish education and participate in our observances. Were it to be deemed “discriminatory” for Miracle Hill to limit its providers to those who share its beliefs—or for CSS to step aside and allow other agencies to perform home studies for same-sex couples—our own religious obligation to place a Jewish child with a Jewish family could likewise be infringed.
This threat to religious freedom has real implications for children. Because Philadelphia refuses to work with CSS, children in need of foster care are being kept in institutional settings, rather than being placed with loving foster parents. Both the city and LGBTQ activists claim that this flagrantly inhumane outcome is good for society.
Furthermore, we see a clear and compelling pattern of harassment. Philadelphia prohibits CSS from operating due to what the city admits is an entirely hypothetical concern. Miracle Hill’s threat comes from a woman whose own religious authorities say that she could affirm its doctrine—but who refuses to do so, simply to give lawyers at Americans United for Separation of Church and State a case to prosecute. And in other cases across the country, from small businesses to major universities, institutions which have served the public for decades if not centuries are being told to choose between abandoning religious principle, refusing funding available to all others, or closing down outright.
The idea that minority religious groups will benefit if success is granted to this tactic could hardly be more ludicrous.
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Rep. Marjorie T. Greene (R-GA) made some really inappropriate comparisons between mask mandates and Jews being sent to gas chambers; when challenged, she said any “rational” Jew would agree with her.
There was internal debate about whether or not to say anything, and criticism of our condemnation of those remarks.
But we didn’t want to be like Chuck Schumer, who is happy to condemn a Republican who does precisely what AOC did in 2019, which he greeted with silence — and vastly less serious than the openly Antisemitic statements of Reps. AOC, Bush, Omar and Tlaib within the past month, which none of the Democratic leadership have condemned at all. We have an obligation to be consistent.
At the end I point out that Facebook had to stop censoring discussion of the possible origin of COVID in the Wuhan virology lab, which means calling it the “Wuhan Virus,” which was never racist (no matter how many race-baiting idiots may say otherwise), may be entirely true.