יום שבת, י״ב תמוז תשפ״וSaturday, June 27, 2026
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Richard Kronenfeld, a Brooklyn native now living in Phoenix, holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford and has taught mathematics and physics at the secondary and college level. He self-identifies as a Religious Zionist.
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They are so frustrated by our ability to defend ourselves that they have made it their mission to destroy Israel and return to the good old days of Jewish helplessness.
This isn’t the time or place to debate the merits of the New Deal, but there is one true threat to our democracy looming in the form of the Leftist-Islamist takeover of the nation’s schools.
For what it’s worth, there are people who are honest about the use of AI.
The big change, however, has been the increasing inclusion of free gifts presumably aimed at guilting the recipient into contributing.
Even more concerning is that Vice-President J.D. Vance, who is a friend of Carlson, appears at least to tolerate the woke right, as evidenced by an interview on the website UnHerd.
While it’s difficult to argue with the successes the rabbi has had in winning over antisemites, I do have several caveats. First, Rabbi Indig’s successes have been with politicians who are fellow Americans in ideology; winning over immigrant Islamist-socialists promises to be more difficult.
Naturally, matters aren’t quite so simple. Questions arise, such as: What do we do about the 20% of Israel’s population that isn’t Jewish? What if the Muslims demand that they be judged under sharia law? And how do we deal with the multiplicity of criminal offenses that didn’t even exist in the Talmudic era?
Qatar funds American think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, invests in American businesses, and has many journalists around the world on its payroll, enabling them to influence reporting about events in the Middle East.
What is different today is that the expulsions will be not by government edicts, which could be appealed in court, but, with government and public cooperation, through violence, termination of employment, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, bans on attending public events, and so on – in other words, social pressure.
The announcement of Rivkah’s birth at the end of the previous parsha, preceding the Akeidah, doesn’t necessarily mean that the two events were simultaneous.
It seems preposterous to me that an ark containing many thousands of animals – and a year’s supply of food for them – could possibly be seaworthy if it were made from reeds.
We can argue that Yaakov was destined to replace Eisav as having the right of the firstborn, and thus that Rivka’s deceiving Yitzchak, which brought about that result, had Divine sanction.
An inflection point in this process was reached during the Covid school lockdowns of 2020-22, when many parents were shocked, even outraged, to discover what their children were being taught.
Ironically, it’s minority schoolchildren, whom teachers claim to care about, who have been the biggest losers.
Whatever our personal ability, we should be grateful that G-d has given us the gift of song, especially since research has found that hearing music can stimulate the brain of dementia patients, bringing back memories and at least temporarily improving cognitive function.
So where do we go from here? Don’t ask me. I have difficulty making decisions that affect my own life, let alone those of millions.
In short, American taxpayers, especially in California, are unwittingly funding activists seeking to overthrow the traditional American order.
More broadly, the criminal justice system has become weaponized.
The Mishna (1:2) for Maseches Rosh Hashana states that there are four periods when Hashem sits in judgment: Pesach for grain, Shavuos for the fruit of trees, Sukkos for water, and Rosh Hashana for humanity.
Legal scholars have compared the situation to the U.S. Supreme Court asserting the authority to accept or reject amendments to the American Constitution. Having a written constitution, however, is no guarantee against juristocracy here in America.
Our history is rewritten in distorted fashion; our statues are torn down; the centrality of Judeo-Christian ethics in our society is denied; victimizers are recast as victims and victims as oppressors.
Speaking of war, the next major offense against free expression occurred early in the Civil War (which ironically happened because the American political system, unlike that of Britain and France, failed to end the enslavement of Black Americans, a deprival of liberty not fully corrected until the 1960s-era civil rights laws).
Today, besides Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ayatollah Khamenei, we are hated by U.N. officials and innumerable college faculty, students, commentators, journalists, and government officials around the world.
As amazing as all these connections were, they pale in comparison with my father’s actual participation (at a distance) in an event of truly global significance.
It is a matter of debate whether the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 represents the beginning of the Final Redemption, the ingathering of the exiles.
Rabbi Shimon’s original position was by no means a majority opinion. By comparison, Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Judah HaNasi, said: Torah study is good together with an occupation, for the exertion of them both makes sin forgotten. All Torah study that is not joined with work will cease in the end, and leads to sin (Pirkei Avos 2:2).
Although Rabbi Jacobs’ article alludes to numerous other examples of scientific knowledge, let me conclude by examining a broader area which might be termed practical or applied astronomy.
Since CAIR, one of 200 unindicted co-conspirators in the Holyland Foundation trial which established that nearly every Muslim institution in America raises funds for terrorism, is estimated to control 90% of American mosques, we can conclude that those mosques serve as incubators for terrorism, and learn the approach they use from the pronouncements of their clergy, the imams.
No United Nations resolutions are passed condemning Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Islamic State, and other such groups. Pope Leftist, who accuses Israel of cruelty to Palestinian Arab children in the name of self-defense, remains silent regarding the African Holocaust.
When we think of the great Sages of the Talmudic (and later) eras, mathematical sophistication isn’t the first quality that comes to mind. Yet they were far ahead of their time in that regard, especially since they lived centuries before the invention of algebra.
We see a diminution of individuals’ civil rights, as exemplified by government attempts to curtail parents from expressing opposition to woke educational policies at school board meetings.
As we know, the Torah is valid for all time, but societal attitudes toward matrimony have changed dramatically over the past three millennia. Herein lies the tragedy of our times: Marriage is going out of style.
Our story begins with a seemingly chance encounter on a Jerusalem street on Shabbos afternoon as Rabbi Wein was walking home from shul, when he met a man who seemed oddly out of place.
What if it isn’t entirely true that we can’t expect a great miracle?
Besides the rigors of the Depression, life in New York was complicated by Zeydie’s delicate constitution. He could only digest white bread, for example, not rye or pumpernickel. Then he lost an eye in an industrial accident and was unable to work steadily.
Nevertheless, we must face the facts. It has been said that the measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.
There have always been men who exploited their power over women (or children, or other men). But this is not characteristic of all men, and saying so is a terrible slur.
The teacher who relayed this example to me told me that at the end of about a few months of this training, they could have turned any academic material that you can possibly imagine into an excuse to have these political conversations.
Is it defending democracy to bring criminal charges against people who never entered the Capitol on January 6 and to invoke farfetched extensions to charge conspiracy and justify multi-year jail sentences to the point where one defendant committed suicide?
Granted, the U.N. mainly represents governments – the great majority of which are dictatorships – rather than people. Nevertheless, to the extent that the U.N. speaks for the world, its overwhelming hostility toward Israel, and increasingly, the desire to extinguish the Jewish state, are undeniable.
Here in America in 2024, the danger is approaching the level of Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. Now, as then, the antisemitic wave originated in the universities.
Everywhere we look, America is in disarray. From transgenderism to diversity, equity, and inclusion, to the concept of toxic masculinity, to extreme environmentalism, to the growing abandonment of Judeo-Christian religious values, to moves to break up the traditional nuclear family, our entire culture is being turned upside-down.
Keen observers such as Alan Dershowitz assert that these protests are being organized from the outside, with Iran, Qatar, and George Soros among the suspects.
The more obvious interpretation is that these were events in which the laws of nature were suspended, as exemplified by the parted waters standing on end on either side like a wall. On the other hand, we could also say that the events were miraculous not because the laws of nature were suspended, but because these were natural occurrences happening exactly at the time they were needed.
In the past three years, during the Biden administration, Palestinian privilege has been elevated to new heights. The U.S. State Department, staffed with anti-Zionist activists at the upper levels, has appropriated funds for investigating supposed Israeli misconduct in Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank).
Jewish community relations councils often avoid challenging the anti-Zionist and antisemitic ethnic studies curricula that are increasingly being adopted around the nation.
World War II and the Holocaust dampened Harvard’s enthusiasm for Nazism, and after the war, meritocracy was restored and Jewish enrollment began rising again.
No one can deny that the tragic, brutal, genocidal massacre of innocent Jews on Shabbat Simchat Torah brought about at least a temporary ceasefire in the multi-level conflict in Israel – left vs. right, secular vs. religious, Ashkenazim vs. Sephardim.
June 26, 2026 
