יום חמישי, כ״א אלול תשפ״וThursday, September 3, 2026
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The idea of hundreds, if not thousands, of people gathering together in preparation for the Yamim Noraim – not as a shul program, but as a much larger convocation – reminded me of Yishay Ribo's huge performances at Madison Square Garden in 2023 and 2024. There were, of course, some differences.
The mayor’s glowing sympathy for a violent sociopath – and his chilling silence regarding the innocent victim – is not just a political gaffe. It is a defining feature of an ideological worldview that consistently elevates the welfare of criminals above the safety of law-abiding citizens.
The minister explicitly contextualized these harsh standards by drawing a parallel to Israeli hostages who hardly enjoyed any basic rights.
when the targets are Jewish, the rules routinely shift. By introducing “context” about the attacker’s grievances immediately following the assault, El-Sayed explicitly connected the actions of a foreign government to a local community of American Jews.
There are years when something opens. Davening feels different. A shofar blast catches us off guard. We become more reflective, more aware of the gap between who we are and who we want to be.
The only way to ensure that tedium does not prevail is to be able to see the positives outweighing the negatives.
Erdogan’s Turkey is an authoritarian Islamist power pursuing regional dominance under a neo-Ottoman banner, using NATO membership as armor while working against the interests the alliance exists to protect.
In retrospect, it is hard to understand why anyone would think that Israel would not act to derail Turkey’s plans by any means necessary, given that they are so inimical to Israel’s security interests and so provocative.
The city is a creation of the state, and the state holds the ultimate leverage. But Mayor Mamdani seems to be operating under the delusion that he has a mandate to run an independent city-state, prioritizing a post-colonial foreign policy over real city issues.
In fact, the mayor’s statement was not only a robotic recitation of political talking points, which it most certainly was, but it also contributed to the problem.
The most glaring flaw in Washington’s new strategy is the sheer financial asymmetry of the battlefield.
By Jessica Russak-Hoffman and Menachem Wecker - JNS
Muslims are estimated to make up about 1% of Americans, suggesting that in 2025, a Jewish American was about 190% likelier than a Muslim American to be the target of a hate crime.
Somehow, American consumer culture, combined with the suburban lifestyle and affordances, has led to a culture of accumulation.
I expect to use this column to illuminate some of the more exciting cultural, religious, and national phenomena that are taking place in Israel, but also to do so from my personal (and American) perspective.
The regime’s leadership in Tehran has survived the wreckage of the 2026 conflict and concluded that their ultimate weapon of survival is no longer just their nuclear stockpile – it is their absolute, extortionary grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
It does not reject galus. It recognizes that this particular galus is a constitutional democracy that gives religious minorities lawful tools to protect themselves.
Offensively, Israel’s grand strategy for the post-war Middle East relied heavily on getting Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.
The administration’s aggressive approach goes beyond mere recruitment; it includes active ideological gatekeeping.
The Gulf states and others similarly threatened by Iranian oil blackmail are demonstrating that the best defense is not merely a naval response but infrastructural independence.
Because New York City seems destined to have a mayor with an obsessive ideological focus on Israel, a restraining offset in the state house in Albany is essential. Sadly, Governor Hochul has shown that she is not up to the task. In fact, she has emerged as an enabler of the mayor and his excesses.
Israel – a Jewish state standing alone in a sea of nations that would erase it – is not the crime you make it out to be. It is what a people builds when it refuses to disappear.
Each new breakdown reinforces the same conclusion: making agreements with the Palestinian Authority or Hamas has too often proven to be a fool's errand, as commitments give way to renewed conflict and broken promises.
The most immediate damage came from Vance’s rhetoric regarding the recent U.S.-Iran ceasefire. Rather than simply defending the administration’s diplomatic efforts, Vance chose to portray Israel as a malicious actor actively trying to subvert American foreign policy.
Mamdani’s antics have moved things from the realm of political theater into dangerous legal fiction.
By Marc Gronich
New Measures to Address Gun Violence in N.Y. The past several weeks have been particularly busy in government and politics. Two examples: June saw the celebration of Dairy Month and Gun Violence Awareness Month, even though state residents are well aware that gun violence is on the rise in the state. Dairy Month was celebrated […]
The current crisis was enabled by the structural failures of the Islamabad Memorandum itself. The United States committed the cardinal sin of international negotiation: we surrendered our leverage before the adversary surrendered their weapons.
This structure shapes the incentives of the Torah heirs. If they accept the distribution outlined in the civil will, the obligation is waived and the estate is divided accordingly.
The much-touted Gaza governance transition is not a roadmap for peace; it is a calculated diplomatic smoke screen to mask an indefinite, occupation-by-proxy and defer the political realities of the conflict.
These days the show regularly traffics in the genocide-hoax. Not by Lehrer himself, who hastens to add that proponents of Israel disagree with that labeling, but by very many of his guests.
When parents seek an intensive Jewish education for their children, we hand them a tuition bill that can exceed the cost of college. Something is wrong with this picture.
By Chaim Saiman
I was initially perplexed as to why the specific location loomed so large; surely Humboldt has many suitable lecture halls. But the significance of Humboldt’s elegant nineteenth-century Senate House became clear as I was being introduced at the event.
From the land mines and border infiltrations of the 1950s, to the suicide bombings of the 2000s, to the slaughter of October 7, 2023, Palestinian Arab terrorism has made a deliberate science of murdering civilians.
It is impossible to look honestly at such sacrifice and claim that military service and greatness in Torah are incompatible.
It is an endless cycle of self-righteous grievance. And while Republicans are busy writing angry tweets about the Marxist takeover of American cities, the progressive left is busy doing the one thing that actually matters: banking votes.
Political extremism rarely emerges in a vacuum. People turn to radical solutions after years of watching institutions disappoint them and their economic opportunities grow increasingly out of reach.
In a staggering display of political hubris, Mamdani hijacked what should have been a moment of transcendent national unity to deliver a deeply divisive, progressive grievance lecture.
Israel already existed when that vote was taken. Not yet as a sovereign state – that would come the following May – but as the living substance of a nation: its land, its cities, its farms, its schools, its university, its courts, and its militia and underground armies.
A central halachic and emotional theme of the day is to avoid diverting our minds from this national mourning.
There is a unique grief that belongs to an in-law child. It sits quietly in the back seat, in the shadows; it knows its place.
It is not widely known that Netanyahu was a hero long before he commanded the Entebbe operation. He played a key role in many crucial Israeli security operations, exhibiting courage and valor in the most dangerous of circumstances.
Our sense of responsibility toward fellow Jews is deepened because Torah commands us to care for one another.
By openly stating that nuclear weapons are a fundamental necessity for Iranian national defense, the IRGC has dropped the decades-old charade of a “peaceful civilian program.”
By Max Wisotsky
America had been looked on by Jews as a "goldene medina," but that sentiment is now wavering.
By artificially freezing the revenue of private property owners while the costs of operating those properties skyrocket, Mamdani has initiated a slow-motion collapse of the rental market.
By Jonah Halper
Many fundraisers struggle to build lasting donor relationships and feel as though they are constantly chasing donors. Often, what separates them from those who succeed is the ability to reveal the emotional truth of the mission in a way the donor can feel.
Aliyah is not only about leaving. It is also about carrying. And there are gifts from chutz la’aretz that I very much hope to bring with me.
While we certainly think that the Trump policy hardly makes for the best of times for Israel, this is also the same President Trump who has been Israel’s best friend in the White House – ever.
This factor also has special resonance for those of us who have particular concern for Israel, inasmuch as newly empowered Democrats are likely to seek to dilute – if not reverse – the Trump tilt toward Israel.
The progressive left will inevitably frame the demise of disparate impact as a rollback of civil rights. It’s exactly the opposite.
Vance has publicly condemned antisemitism and rejected anti-Jewish hatred... Yet he has often appeared remarkably tolerant of antisemitic and anti-Israel voices when they emerge from the populist right.
By Alan Zeitlin
In Mamdani’s mind, AIPAC is a group of monsters, and someone who protested against Israel the day after October 7 is a person of conviction. Yes, it is madness, but it is working.
The protests have also made her optimistic for the future. “The courage and bravery of the Iranian protesters this past year has filled me with enormous hope,” she said.
To understand the absurdity of this proposed framework, one simply has to look at the list of the respective concessions of the U.S. and Iran.
Stripped of slogans and emotion, his statement invites a serious historical question. If Palestine was a country, when exactly did it exist? This is no mere rhetorical trick. Countries leave records, they have governments, capitals, rulers, borders, laws, armies, currencies, and diplomatic relations.
The deal’s apparent long ceasefire also only plays into the Iranian regime’s delaying tactics. We’ve repeatedly seen that “ceasefires” with the Iranian regime and its proxies mean “we cease and they fire.”
When Washington telegraphs that it is desperately trying to pivot away from the Middle East, it completely compromises the currency of normalization.
The damage that Israel and the United States did to the Islamist terror regime was undone by an agreement that rewards Tehran and vindicates former President Barack Obama.
Russia had its own reasons for opposing a complete Iranian collapse. Moscow values Iran as both a partner and a counterweight to American influence.
Israel is not an idea I support from a safe distance. It is part of my life and my family’s story.
When struck with a crisis, I turn to the writings of America's greatest crisis manager, Abraham Lincoln.
We need to cut the red tape that makes it overly costly and time-consuming to build new housing (or just to fix up your house) or to open a new business. We need to provide training for young people who wish to enter careers that are well-paying and that our community needs more of.
I was surprised that the most often cited reason to interact with non-Jews was civic, political, and legal issues affecting the community.
When a sovereign government fails to govern, neutralize hostile actors within its borders, and protect its neighbors from domestic threats, it forfeits its monopoly on defensive authority.
Dan Bilzerian, who has 30 million Instagram followers, is on the ballot as a Republican in Florida’s 6th Congressional District. While he has little chance of winning, as an extremist, vulgar antisemite, his mere presence on the ballot combined with whatever percentage of the votes he will get, is jarring.
Iran’s entire asymmetric military strategy relies on its ability to inflict intolerable economic pain on the West by disrupting global energy markets.
Israel has consistently maintained that the blockade exists to prevent the importation of weapons and military materiel into Hamas-controlled territory, a claim that is strongly supported by the historical evidence.
When it comes to the technologies, medical breakthroughs, surgical innovations, and companies that have most shaped modern life since the 1990s, two countries stand out above all others: the United States and Israel.
Say what you will about a demagogic politician dedicated to reviving Marxism – one of history’s bloodiest and costliest failures – as if the catastrophic events and slaughter brought on by it never happened. But on this issue, at least he wasn’t a hypocrite.
He was among the first rabbis to embrace the internet as a platform for Torah, publishing responsa as early as the 1990s. But these were not ordinary responsa. Every ruling stood behind an idea.
In attempting to justify his unprecedented absence, Mayor Mamdani said that he has made his “views on the Israeli government abundantly clear.” Yet the Israel Day Parade is not a political rally for the Knesset, nor is it a blanket endorsement of every specific policy enacted by the government in Jerusalem.
In the wake of the Jewish people’s collective wedding anniversary on Shavuos, I offer five dating mindsets that I’ve gleaned from those summers – for those of us still on the journey toward our chuppah, and those genuinely offering support along the way.
By Brian Romick
The United States should absolutely use its leverage to advance peace. But that leverage should not be focused solely on Israel.
After winning a decisive military victory in Operation Epic Fury, the United States cannot afford to sign a flawed document just to secure a fleeting public relations win.
Ever since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the use of Holocaust inversion by enemies of Israel has gone from being used only by pariahs to becoming chic.
With most of its primary source of revenue cut off, the question remains: How did the PLO-P.A. continue financing terror payments?
It is incredibly easy to sit in a television studio thousands of miles away from the front lines of civilization and lecture a traumatized nation on the finer points of morality.
The question now is, at what point does the spread of the disease become so bad that the only solution is to flee.
Imagine what another decade of inaction would have produced.
In fact, it is an agency whose very mandate is structurally designed to prevent the resolution of the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Does Gere really object to the idea of Jewish families living in areas where ancient Jewish history is everywhere to be found?
Torah speaks differently to different souls. Every Jew has a unique relationship with Torah, a unique derech in serving Hashem, and a unique contribution to make to the Jewish people.
The primary source underpinning the claims is the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an organization with documented ties to Hamas and a history of laundering incendiary, unverified claims against Israel.
If our personal foundation isn’t all it can be at that time, regardless of how strong our spouse’s foundation is, our future together will be shaky; our weaker qualities will ultimately reveal themselves more clearly rather than improve.
September 4, 2026 
