יום ראשון, כ״ד אלול תשפ״וSunday, September 6, 2026
Follow Us
The central engine behind this effort is Iran, the only UN member whose leaders declare openly that another member state must be wiped out.
Then there is the potential for enhancing Israeli security, which continues to be a key objective for U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Our isolation stems from the unique responsibility we have been given in this world.
By Aaron Oppenheim and Yosef Baker
In your pocket or purse, you may be carrying the modern descendant of that ancient Jewish coin, still copper-colored, still the smallest denomination, still somehow essential despite all logic.
By Shlomo Greenwald with Ziona Greenwald
My first and foremost priority as an elected official is to deliver for my Constituents, which means fighting against Mamdani’s radical policies – but it also means working with him on a wide variety of local non-partisan issues, such as quality of life.
I always feel sorry for Jews I know and like when I see them trying to disprove or convince people on social media that Israel did not commit genocide in Gaza or starve Palestinian babies. This is a fruitless exercise. There is simply no point at all in trying to offer rational arguments to an irrational mind.
It is still not clear where exactly the Saudi deal fits in but it plainly needs some oversight.
Every map needs margins. The halachic imagination admits this with elegant honesty. It names the unknown – safek, doubt – and gives it rules of its own.
Kazakhstan’s joining the Accords has real benefits for Israel. And it is the same for the U.S. which reportedly anticipates that current bilateral trade and other cooperation amongst the three nations will be substantially enhanced.
The idea that religion is a personal choice that can be separated from every other identity marker in your life is a fundamentally non-Jewish way of seeing the world.
Requiring an end to all city contracts with companies doing business with Israel and to institute other BDS (Boycott, Divestment Sanction) policies would likely make the city’s investment climate highly uncertain.
By Alan Zeitlin
They were sure Trump’s political career was done after 2020, and his improbable return to the White House felt like an impossible betrayal by voters. With Mamdani positioning himself as an anti-Trump candidate, they felt that a vote for Mamdani was a vote against Trump and this could be a beginning of a reversal.
He is an unabashed anti-capitalist who will be the chief executive of the city that is the center of the nation’s financial industry – and for generations has symbolized Jewish success and civic influence.
To be sure, Hamas and Hezbollah justify their political power and arsenals as necessary for defending against Israel. But as we all know, their weapons and desire for “a state within a state” have generally been the triggers of the violent confrontations with Israel.
Any doubt about the direction of Democratic Party discourse has been removed by the current New York City mayoral campaign in which Mamdani has been largely embraced by the Democratic establishment, despite his vocal antisemitic stands, not to mention his Marxist economic program.
Repeating a falsehood again and again doesn’t make it true.
Mamdani will have to face reality even before the get-go. Hopefully Mamdani will abandon ideology and embrace things as they actually exist and not how he would wish them to be.
For a nation its size, Israel’s medical innovation is breathtaking – and deeply moral in its reach, extending humanitarian aid and expertise to developing countries, disaster zones, and conflict areas worldwide.
In fact, Vance’s performance even drew the ire of Jewish conservatives who, increasingly of late, have been warning of rising antisemitism on the right.
In the U.S., both the Orthodox Union and the Agudath Israel of America put out statements that sounded defiant, even somewhat hopeful notes.
Mamdani has never managed a business, run a municipal or state agency, or held a position that demanded accountability for budgets, payrolls, or public safety. His resume reads more like that of a campus activist than a leader.
By Alan Zeitlin
People test the waters to see what they can get away with in the world of public opinion. Be sure there are bots praising both Carlson and Fuentes. But there are real people also, posting antisemitic things.
Nichum aveilim is indeed a mitzvah, but it is not like eating matzah or shaking a lulav, where the mitzvah is fulfilled through contact with an object.
Issues like antisemitism, contempt for law enforcement and disrespect for the rule of law, promotion of racial politics and delegitimizing American traditions, history and achievement thus undermining the glue that keeps us together as a country.
By Rabbi Shlomo Brody and Rabbi Aaron Glatt
The National Council on Disability published a study that detailed the dangers of assisted suicide laws to people with disabilities. It found that safeguards in these laws are ineffective and often fail to protect patients.
As The Wall Street Journal reported, as Israeli troops pulled back to facilitate the deal’s freeing the living hostages still held in Gaza, Hamas surged security forces in behind them – a public assertion of authority intended to make clear the group remains the enclave’s governing power.
New York City will be facing enormous governmental, fiscal and social challenges in the next four years and we believe that the former governor, who to be sure, brings a lot of baggage to his candidacy, is without question still the best suited among the three major candidates to get his arms around them.
What stood out for my mother, as relayed to me, was how difficult it was for Gretel to heal from the assault on her integrity and character by a Nazi regime that discriminated against her because of their unbridled hatred for Jews.
Before you study, clarify your question. As you study, speak the words. After you study, note one connection to something you've learned before.
By Jeff Cohen
Rabbi Hauer epitomized loving every Jew and making everyone feel like the most important person in the world when he spoke with you.
He gave perspective without minimizing pain – seeing the larger story when the rest of us saw only fragments. That was his essence: he saw the good, spoke the good, and brought out the good in others.
Before his national acclaim as a leader within the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Hauer built something enduring here in Baltimore – a model of what a synagogue rabbi could and should be.
We were all still in euphoria from Hoshana Rabbah, and the return of the hostages, so we went into the holiday in a very happy frame of mind.
An important figure on the postcolonial left for decades, Mahmood Mamdani has called Israel an apartheid state, championed the BDS movement, and portrayed America as the fountainhead of global evil.
This, even though in the course of her campaign for Attorney General, Ms. James – who was a leader in the legal assault on Trump – herself declared that she was running in order to bring Donald Trump down.
We coronate Hakadosh Baruch Hu and ask for His forgiveness together, not as individuals. Hashem is truly king only when we coronate Him together.
The reason that the Left needs to promote the lie of Israeli genocide is that it absolves Hamas of the guilt of their actual genocide and it justifies their pledge of repeating it.
The revenues that Hamas controlled were large enough to transform Gaza into a thriving Mediterranean enclave – a model for Palestinian society. But the Islamist group chose a different path. Prioritizing terrorism and military spending, it invested staggering sums in tunnels and weapons, including rockets and rocket factories.
While we can appreciate their dilemma, it is nonetheless dismaying that they have failed to distance themselves from some of his beyond the pale positions.
One widely made anti-Israel argument is that its alleged withholding or conditioning aid to Gaza as part of its war against Hamas amounts to collective punishment because it impacts negatively on the innocent as well as the guilty. But the thing is, the same collective punishment argument has not been directed at Hamas where it actually does apply.
Throughout history, Torah has at times stood as a Divine, untouchable document, and at other times woven into the currents of Jewish experience, carried and shaped by the people of Israel. Its dual nature – both Divine and national – has been reflected in every generation’s approach to learning, observance, and communal life.
Both the letter and resolution stipulate a demilitarized state with Hamas playing no role, but as noted, that is a pipe-dream and essentially just a wave to political correctness.
By Zvi S. Rosen
One would have to be a moral idiot to think the death of 60,000, many of them fighters, is worth comparing or mentioning in the same breath as the industrial murder of 6,000,000 based on ethnicity.
It was especially haunting to see this image: Rabbi Daniel Walker, who valiantly protected his synagogue and tended to his congregants amidst the horrific violence, wearing his traditional white kittel, stained by blood at the bottom. And yet, in the face of this terrible destruction, we see another model of holiness. Sometimes, when the evil cannot be banished, the High Priest must deal with it directly, even if he gets bloodied in the process.
For decades, Britain opened its doors to mass migration from Muslim-majority countries. Many of these immigrants have become part of the national fabric, however, successive governments refused to build an integration strategy. Instead, they embraced a shallow multiculturalism, encouraging communities to live side by side, rather than together.
To be sure, we continue to believe Hamas perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre primarily to derail the Abraham Accords.
The late Rabbi Dr. Lord Jonathan Sacks, during Germany’s attempted ban on brit milah in 2012, pointed out the root of the problem. He deemed the move to be an attack on the Jewish people.
Like the other peace initiatives, the Palestinians have been offered over the past decades, the problem is that it’s by no means clear that they regard a chance to end their long war against the Jewish presence in the land of Israel or even the latest chapter of it that began two years ago as a desirable outcome.
While there may have been some apparent or technical irregularities on Trump’s part, they never rose to the level of violations about which anyone makes into a federal case.
That history is worth remembering now. It is what happens when leaders handcuff the police and abandon law-abiding citizens. And it will happen again if Mamdani wins the mayoralty. The cycle will repeat, and more brutally than before.
To the extent that the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority can be trusted – not an easy notion to accept – it is the implacable Hamas enemy that will soon resume being in charge of compliance, whatever it is that will be required of the Palestinians and there is no doubt about their untrustworthiness.
Some will argue that silence is cowardice, that in critical times rabbis must declare who to vote for. That is nonsense.
Mamdani’s primary win has alarmed many in part because it was also unexpected, with nearly every major poll predicting a Cuomo victory in the weeks leading up to the primary.
His anti-Israel outrages including sympathy for Hamas are in a special category and a special concern for our community. It’s time we all wake up to what would be coming with a Mamdani victory.
Most kids tell you what they need, even if they don’t have the words. If we hover over their homework and they can’t say ‘stop pressuring me’ or ‘trust me to do it,’ they might say something disrespectful. But they always try to tell us what they need.
Teshuvah is a dark and harrowing descent into the self, a journey through the hidden recesses of personality. It demands that we confront our failures and flaws without disguise.
College campuses once served as places for open dialogue, where students could freely explore diverse ideas. But for Jewish students today, these spaces often feel hostile. From verbal assaults on Israel to an environment where their Jewish identity is marginalized or attacked, it’s clear that something profound has shifted.
Every single time I get into the ice bath I don’t want to. But I do it anyway and when I do, I am rewiring and changing my brain, not metaphorically or symbolically, but literally.
In true cavalry to the rescue American tradition, U.S. ambassador to Israel said the other day that if Israel decided to apply sovereignty in parts of the West Bank the U.S. would respect that decision and would not dictate terms to Jerusalem.
It seems that the New York State legislatures, with its extreme leftist Assembly and Senate leadership, have no intention of forcing Mamdani into moderation should he be elected New York’s Mayor. Yet Mamdani can only do what he says he wants to do if the legislature lets him do it.
The inevitable result will be emigration – an exodus of Jewish New Yorkers comparable to or greater than that of the 1960s and ‘70s when rising crime rates, collapsing public schools and a weakening economy drove families away.
The attack of October 7 and the unleashing of antisemitism have had a paradoxical effect: while they brought violence and tragedy, they also drew many hearts closer to Hashem, to religion, and to tradition.
In the eyes of many on the Left, particularly the young, he is as big a hero to them as Princip is to the Serbs. There are virtual statues and shrines being “erected” to him across the internet.
Young conservatives are disillusioned with politics, hostile to institutions, and suspicious of anything that sounds prepackaged. If you try to silence dissent, they tune you out.
We mourn the moment that it became fatally dangerous in the United States of America to express an opinion.
We can readily understand the dilemma the three top democratic elected officials faced. Undoubtedly, he is not their preferred candidate and as noted, a particularly fraught one at that.
We realize, too, when we are davening on Rosh Hashana that we have no idea how to articulate our wants and needs. What if you need a car? How does one phrase such a mundane request to Hashem? Like Elkanah, we can’t say nothing, but if we do say something, what should it be?
What seems to rankle all of them is that the targets were ostensibly gathered to work on a cease fire and hostage release deal and the attack was therefore counterproductive.
I wrote this book because I lived at the paradox at the heart of so many modern lives: the pursuit of material success while at the same time yearning for meaning.
The larger Jewish community he’d spent his career serving helped him in his time of need. It wasn’t easy for him to let someone else take the helm, but it meant so much to be taken care of.
We don’t know whether Smotrich reflected the views of Prime Minister Netanyahu and or the Israeli government when he spoke. And it is certainly not for us to choose for Israel.
The fight has also been distorted by the actions of left-wing and left-leaning media outlets that applied a magnifying glass to Israel’s every move while blindly accepting casualty figures from the Hamas health ministry, relying on the claims of so-called journalists who were in reality Hamas operatives and agents of influence.
The New York Sun has reported that Mamdani plans to spend $65million on gender affirming care and has promised to investigate New York hospitals that stop providing the services and create an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs at City Hall. Would this really address a pressing need for the city? He should be asked to tell us how.
By Sara Lehmann
According to Sliwa, the dangers of a mayor Mamdani would be irreparable. Unlike previous decades, when NYC rotted and was then resuscitated, Sliwa does not believe NYC would recoup this time.
Although protesters feel justified blocking highways and disturbing the families and neighbors of elected officials, many Israelis find the practice abhorrent.
By Baruch Lytle
The Jewish community has to organize itself. The gentile community has a history of promising the Jews they are going to be there when you need them, and then suddenly the Jews find themselves helped by no one.
Of course, the media is typically playing fast and loose with the facts. Even under the Biden administration, American defense officials were reporting that Israel was taking measures to spare enemy civilians from avoidable harm that were unprecedented in modern warfare.
According to the DSA, terrorists have legitimate grievances, and the root cause of terrorism is – you guessed it – America’s “imperialist” foreign policy. In the eyes of Mamdani’s comrades – DSA members actually call each other that – the nation’s power, prestige, global reach and influence is a menace.
According to The New York Times, the party’s divisions over Israel and the war in Gaza were on “messy display” at the meeting as members debated dueling resolutions about how to respond to Israel’s Gaza policy.
Elul is a deep dive into ourselves, into the hidden recesses of who we are. Without this introspection, we cannot grow into better people. Even as the national situation rightly demands our attention, we must not forget this personal journey into the inner worlds that shape us.
Although the court, by invalidating the fine, literally gutted the lawsuit and neutralized it, there was not a majority who were prepared to formally throw out the case altogether.
To equate Munich and Yalta isn’t just sloppy history. It erases the essential difference between surrender and solidarity in the face of total war.
By Jason Ciment
Elul has started. It’s the time of year when we find ourselves reflecting on the past, hoping we didn’t mess up too badly, and wondering if we’ll make it through the U’netaneh Tokef of Rosh Hashana with a clean slate. The end of the year is a great catalyst to thinking about goals – […]
Of course, an enormously important part of the mix is the apparent full support of President Trump which sends a powerful message to Israel’s enemies.
Why a recent rabbis’ letter is not what the Jewish State needs right now.
By Alan Zeitlin
The idea that the entire country of Israel is immoral is a fantasy of Jew-haters.
September 4, 2026 
