Shabbat shalom. 

“The Horror, the horror.” These were the final words of Colonel Kurtz from Joseph Conrads book, “The Heart of Darkness”, and borrowed by Francis Ford Coppola for his same character in Apocalypse Now. Coppola based the movie on Conrad’s book and while the movie was generally considered a muddled and laborious interpretation, it effectively conveyed its major theme: the darkness potentially inherent in all human hearts.

There is only darkness in the hearts of Hamas. I force myself to watch the news and the videos and images emerging from the disaster make me sick. Horror mounts upon horror. Festivals mottled with corpses. Women dragged off to be raped and killed. And, now, perhaps the ultimate evil. It’s like watching a snuff film unfold on mass media. “This is the most difficult image we’ve posted,” ran the UK’s Daily Telegraph’s front page, reprinting a tweet from the State of Israel’s official account.“As we are writing this we are shaking. We went back and forth about posting this. But we need each and everyone of you to know. This happened.”

The images were of the charred and blackened corpses of babies. I have never felt that level of nausea. Nothing is beyond the sadism of Hamas. Nothing, now, might be beyond the response — comes the reply from Israel.

As I write this morning, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is preparing to launch a ground campaign after dropping over 6000 bombs on the densely populated spit of land known as the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians have already been killed or wounded. The IDF is working to locate some of the roughly 150 hostages and kill Hamas terrorists. 

Given current events, I am skipping the usual weekly roundup and, instead, providing some excellent writing on this horrific situation. Since the pieces are mostly behind pay walls, I have copied and pasted them for your convenience. I will try and return next week with the usual stuff, but I am too overwhelmed this week with the darkness perpetrated by these animals. 

The first piece is the latest from Jessica Yellin’s News Not Noise Letter, and provides a great summary of the current situation and the challenges ahead for the IDF as they seek to destroy Hamas. The second is a well written piece from Andrew Sullivan, who compares the Hamas raids to a pogrom, and calls out the woke morons supporting Hamas across the globe. Some of the woke shit going on at Harvard and Stanford, and other universities of “higher learning” are really disturbing, and giving liberal progressives a very bad look. 

I will close with a couple of positive notes. The first is from our Muslim friends in Sharon, my home town. We have a Facebook page for the town, and this was posted the other day along with many kind replies of the same tone:

Amar Hammoud

As a Muslim I’d like to speak on behalf of the Muslim community especially the one here in Sharon. Although we may have our differences, we don’t ever want to hurt anyone especially not our own neighbors. I personally grew up in Sharon and have plenty of wonderful Jewish friends of whom I’ve grown very close with and often compare and contrast the beauties of our cultures and religions. We Muslims and Arabs alike have no intention of harming anyone, as it goes against our cultural and religious beliefs. We will do whatever we can to keep you all safe, and out of harms way during these trying times, as I hope you would do the same for us.

And lastly, this short piece from J.D. Heyman’s The Culture Wag, reminding me of the resilient spirit of humanity:

Like it or not, we are in this messy world. Oddly, there are still people who believe that there is a foreign policy box marked Pick Up Your Toys and Go Home. Hello, we are home. Lucky stiffs in rich nations yearn to check out of messes we had a hand in making, but there is no escape hatch. We wake up every day on a troubled planet. It’s possible to face this and find pathways to a full and periodically happy life. In any case, a defensive crouch is bad for the posture.

For all the pain we inflict on ourselves, we are a resilient species. A measure of that resilience is how quickly we put catastrophes behind us. When the worst happens, the habit is to frame tragedy as a point of no return, the moment when everything changed forever. We say never forget because we can’t help but forget. Social media is giving it a go, but it is impossible to be suspended in perpetual horror. Life is endlessly punctured by trauma and leavened by renewal. Even in our bleakest moments, we are blessed with the capacity to laugh. This hardly disrespects those we have lost. It is a most exquisite tribute.

Survivors of the worst cruelties do find their way back to laughter. Humor isn’t a silly luxury, but an inspired survival mechanism. No matter what the algorithms feed you, know you will laugh again. Magically, it can’t be helped.

Be safe out there, and see you next week.

Brad out. 

Jessica Yellin’s News Not Noise Letter 

The IDF says they have undertaken the grim work of notifying 120 families of those taken hostage. Still others remain missing. This, as Israel grapples with the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust: 1300 Israelis killed. As a proportion of the population, that would be equivalent to losing 46,000 Americans to a single terror attack. 

Across the border, bombs are falling. Palestinians are fleeing in cars, trucks and even donkey carts after Israel ordered Gaza City evacuated by morning. The death toll is mounting and one UN official says “Gaza is fast becoming a hellhole.” With the electricity off for days, hospital generators are running low on fuel forcing health care workers to make impossible choices about who to treat.

We are on the brink of a war that will claim many lives and “change the Middle East”— with unknown results. What awaits Israel’s soldiers inside Gaza? Can Israel actually wipe out Hamas, will they sacrifice the hostages? How will Israel’s allies and Hamas’ sympathizers respond to a protracted battle — does this explode into a larger regional war?

My goal is to help you understand some realities of the fight with Hamas ahead, the circumstances that shape Israel’s strategic decisions, and the impossible dilemmas faced by people on all sides of this conflict. 

Before we get into it, I want to underscore that Hamas is not the Palestinian people. Hamas hasn’t allowed elections in more than 15 years, and they rule by fear and intimidation. For more on this, see Monday’s newsletter. 

Israel orders 1 million to move: 

In a surprise announcement overnight, the IDF ordered over 1 million Palestinians in the north to evacuate south – dropping leaflets on the city encouraging the move. Israel’s ambassador to the UN says the evacuation is intended to protect Palestinian civilian life, explaining “we want to eradicate Hamas and sadly there is no other way to do it.” CNN says some people are already moving on car and foot though where to is unclear — there are no available shelters. The UN condemns the order as “impossible,” saying it would lead to “devastating humanitarian consequences.”  In fact, the UN considers the forced transfer of people a crime against humanity. The US is not party to that agreement.

Why would Israel ask 1 million people to move overnight? To understand this and the war ahead, it is essential to understand how Hamas operates inside Gaza.

The Gaza below Gaza:

You’ve likely heard about the tunnels Hamas uses to move weapons and people underground, covertly, evading Israeli detection. These tunnels aren’t simply narrow holes in the dirt. Soldiers call them the “Gaza Metro.” Think of them more as a second city underground.

According to video evidence and firsthand accounts by soldiers and others, the tunnels are lined with cement and big enough to stand up and move around in. Underground warfare expert Dr. Daphné Richemond-Barak says they are “equipped with electricity, lighting and rail tracks,” and designed “for a longer, sustained presence… The leaders are hiding there, they have command-and-control centers.” Some Palestinians say the tunnels are also used to move medicine, food and fuel into and through the city. Hamas claims there are over 300 miles of tunnels under the buildings you see on Gaza’s surface. Some video here. 

When Israel and the US say that Hamas uses its civilians as human shields – that’s partly because they locate weapons depots, offices for Hamas leaders, and other crucial infrastructure underground at the location of civilian buildings, all connected by a labyrinth of tunnels. Search the word “tunnel” in this NATO document and you’ll see among the locations: residential houses, UN schools. Israelis say in the past Hamas located its command center under Gaza City’s hospital as well.

Note: when Hamas came to power in 2007, Israel imposed a blockade that included many goods — barring import of things like cement and pipes or anything that could have dual civilian-military use. They say Hamas uses the materials to build these tunnels, make weapons, and enrich its leaders. Gaza gets other construction materials, food and medical supplies both through Egypt and — prior to this attack — through Israel. Israel turned off that spigot after Hamas’ massacre. (We can cover this in more detail in a future newsletter.)  

What’s coming next?

Now the IDF’s stated goal is to “wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.” That means they will target the organization – including terrorists in the military wing and politicians (many are believed to have fled Gaza, leaving civilians to pay the price for their actions). It also means the IDF seeks to take outHamas’ physical operations centers, Hamas’ weapons factories and storage in the tunnels under Gaza. Destroying the tunnels means destroying what lies on top of them as well, pulverizing buildings. And there’s no way to protect civilians who would remain. 

Realities for the Palestinian civilians:

I want to pause to acknowledge the following. In an effort to punish Hamas and damage Hamas infrastructure before soldiers enter, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs in one week. The impact:

• The Gaza Ministry of Health reports over 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in the past week in Gaza, including 614 children and 370 women.
• 7,696 Gazans have been wounded.
• Over 423,000 Gazans have been displaced in the past week.
• And the UN says at least 12 of its workers have been killed in Gaza since Saturday.

Hamas set things up this way. They knew Israel would respond with ferocious force, putting Palestinian civilians in grave danger. This is another way Hamas uses civilians as a human shield. 

Why move 1 million people?

Destroying the tunnels means leveling parts of Gaza. It’s impossible to imagine civilians enduring the bombardment to come. Plus, when the IDF arrives, no one wants civilians caught in the crossfire. Except, apparently, Hamas, who called on Gazans not to leave.

Why did Israel give them 24 hours?

Many reasons – that could include psychological warfare against Hamas.

Also, Egypt.

As I mentioned earlier, Gaza has a land border with Egypt. It’s called the Rafah Crossing. There is intense international pressure on Egypt to open a humanitarian corridor and welcome Palestinian civilians into Egypt where they can wait out the battle free from bombings and gunfire. In this version of events, other Arab nations could also offer them sanctuary, setting up refugee camps in multiple locations. 

The Rafah crossing has been damaged by the bombing campaign, but Egypt’s foreign ministry says the crossing is still open. By making such a sweeping demand and putting a ticking clock on it – Israel is ratcheting up pressure on Egypt and its allies to relent and accept Palestinians.For Israel it is crucial to minimize civilian death. The only way that happens in a campaign to pulverize Hamas and its tunnels is if civilians leave the warzone. As a practical matter, that requires other countries to let them in.

Would Egypt and Palestinians agree?

No. Not so far. Arab states say Palestinians must stay on their land. Palestinians compare a humanitarian corridor to “a second Nakba,” displacing them from their homes again. This goes to the very root of the conflict.

Also, Egypt doesn’t want a new refugee crisis in its borders, nor do many other Arab nations. Hosting refugees is expensive, and hosting this many without time to vet them could also be destabilizing and dangerous.Hamas is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the adversary to Egypt’s sitting government. How could Egypt ensure Hamas doesn’t enter with refugees? Some analysts say Egypt “would never risk its sovereign territory being compromised in such a way.”

A no-win situation:

From the Israeli perspective, this is an impossible situation. Asking Palestinian civilians to evacuate threatens to repeat the root trauma of the conflict and further antagonize the Arab world. But, as the Israeli ambassador to the UN said, “It’s the only way to survive. And the civilized world should understand we are fighting not only for Israel but against a jihadist genocidal organization exactly like ISIS.”

Underground urban warfare:

Many of Israel’s soldiers are preparing for underground warfare. It will be brutal. With limited visibility, in tight quarters, with very little communication with the surface or access to escape routes, combatants are vulnerable to “biological and chemical hazards, smoke inhalation, blast injury, booby-traps, infectious diseases, as well as brain injury and hearing loss,” according to a recent paper by Richemond-Barakpublished in the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. Hamas is expecting them. Who knows what they have planned?

So you see everything here is contingent. 

Military analysts uniformly predict that this will not be a quick battle. There is no simple path to security. There are no easy choices.

Andrew Sullivan – The Weekly Dish

The last couple of weeks, I found myself engrossed in Band of Brothers, the newly re-released 2001 miniseries on the D-Day landings and the aftermath. In the penultimate episode, the Yanks stumble across their first Nazi death camp. Soldiers accustomed to the worst of the worst in wartime, men who’d already seen things that would traumatize anyone for life, were suddenly speechless. Nothing, even in wartime, prepared them for it. A new tear in the fabric of humanity’s moral order opened up in front of them: the sadistic capture, dehumanization and mass murder of women, men, children because they were Jews. “New” isn’t quite the word, of course. Pogroms already had a long-long lineage in Europe. But new in the sheer scale and nakedness of the barbarism.

That’s what we saw last weekend in the south of Israel. That’s the first and most important thing to say. The same ethno-fascism; the same blood-and-soil ideology, but this time blessed by the Almighty; the same fathomless hatred of Jews qua Jews; the same internalization of an entire group of human beings as subhuman, to be treated like dangerous vermin; the same hideous sadism; the same eliminationist ideology; the same glee. This time, in Israel itself, the one place on earth where Jews hoped a pogrom would never arrive.

I’ve been to many raves myself; I know the kind of young dreamers who go to them; no doubt many were still rolling on MDMA as they squinted into the distance to see hang-gliders coming down from the sky. Then the gun-shots rang out, the Einsatzgruppen descended, and the methodical, barbaric, medieval slaughter and rape began:

260 bodies have been found, so far, on the site of the rave. … “Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies.” Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs.

This is what this was: a 21st century pogrom.

One difference between the Nazis and Hamas, of course, is that the Nazis concealed their genocide for as long as they could, while Hamas instantly broadcast their atrocities to the world. Twitter — increasingly geared toward snuff footage in general — is filled with images of dead and kidnapped Israelis. One terrorist uploaded a video of a slain grandmother on her own Facebook page for her family to discover. Hamas says the 150 hostages — among them the disabled, children, and even a 9 month old — will be executed on camera. They have already murdered babies in their cribs. A Jew a few months old is still a Jew to them. And they want you to know this. We do now, if we hadn’t woken up to it before.

The second thing to note is how many in the West instantly celebrated the pogrom. This, I have to say, shocked even me, and I’ve been closely watching the “social justice” left for years. It wasn’t the usual support of Hamas, nor the familiar condemnation of Israel’s settlements. That I anticipated. What shocked me was the vivid and genuine expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers — even as their atrocities were in front of our eyes. That requires real ideological commitment, to repress every human impulse of empathy to uphold your priors.

Yet dozens of Harvard student groups did indeed cheer Hamas. Various chapters of BLM did the same. Ditto the Democratic Socialists of America. University leaders — quick to pontificate on any current topic — went conspicuously mum. The Black Caucus of Young Democrats of America declared support for Hamas because “Black folks and Palestinians both know what it feels like to be oppressed and experience white supremacy.” BLM Grassroots said the pogrom “must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense.” In Australia, demonstrators actually chanted “Gas the Jews!” In London, the Israeli Embassy was besieged. BLM Chicago, one of the biggest chapters, put out a poster showing an actual hang-glider coming to slaughter the innocent, with the slogan “I Stand With Palestine” and a brief explanation: “That is all, that is it!”

Do you see now why some of us have been calling out this “social justice” movement for years? It should not be a shock to know where BLM stands. Their founder, Patrisse Cullors, urged us “to end the imperialist project called Israel” as far back as 2015. And from the perspective of critical theory, Hamas is obviously in the right. CRT emphatically places the rights and dignity of the individual far below the right of the non-white masses to defeat “white/Jewish supremacy.” Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror.

Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”. And ideas matter. Grewal, the Yale professor quoted above, responded to this week’s bloodshed with admirable woke clarity: “There is no question who the oppressors are [and] who the oppressed are. And somehow people are confused by this. White supremacy never stops being shocking to me.” The actual victims of the Nazis are now their equivalent.

It has been gratifying to see some liberals this week wake up to what critical theory really is, and who their alleged allies actually are. This is Judith Butler, a campus goddess, and the critical gender theorist behind much of the madness of the alphabet cult, speaking at an “Anti-War Teach-In” at Berkeley in 2006:

Understanding Hamas and Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence.

A leftist can be critical of “certain dimensions” of Hamas — its brutal theocracy, its subjugation of women, its murder of gays, its Nazi-style anti-Semitism. But they’re still on our side! They’re still battling whiteness. “Extremely important” to remember that. And it is not up to us to condemn their violence, remember, just to explore “options besides violence” ourselves. And you wonder why our leading universities couldn’t quite clear their throats this week? That’s how deep the rot has gotten in academe. I’m increasingly ashamed to be a Harvard alum.

What about the broader context for this latest horror — all the way back to 1948? Yes, that’s a necessary conversation, vital even. But in judging the events of the past week, it’s utterly irrelevant. There is no historical context — none — which can excuse or mitigate what Hamas did and what Hamas is. There is no oppression that justifies the murder of infants in their beds. And from some of the videos, you can see how the act of personally murdering a Jew is cherished by these fanatics, a glorious achievement, a life goal.

But has the Israeli government been reckless, expansionist, and determined to destroy any chance for a Palestinian state for a while now? Yes, it has. Since the excruciating near-miss of 2000, Israel has treated the Palestinians as a menace to be managed and, with any luck, ignored. Has it treated the population in the West Bank appallingly in this century? Yes, it has. Has the Israel lobby supported the unconscionable and relentless establishment of settlements for decades? For all their hand-wringing, yes. Is Israel’s achievement the immiseration and dehumanization of all Palestinians in the occupied territories? I don’t think any objective observer at this point could deny it. The attempt to deny the core problem has only made it worse.

Last week, I linked to a new campaign that some Israeli settlers are currently conducting. From the NYT:

Across remote parts of the West Bank, the mountainous territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Palestinian herding communities are abandoning their homes at a rate that has no recorded precedent, according to the United Nations. Simultaneously, Israeli settlers are establishing wildcat herding outposts at close to record levels, often near Palestinian villages, according to land assessments by Kerem Navot, an independent Israeli watchdog that monitors settlement activity … 

“It’s not the nicest thing to evacuate a population,” said Ariel Danino, 26, an Israeli settler who lives on an outpost and helps lead efforts to build new ones. “But we’re talking about a war over the land, and this is what is done during times of war.”

This is ethnic cleansing, enabled by the US government and the Israel lobby. It comes after a series of Israeli triumphs under the Obama and Trump administrations: the annexation of the Golan Heights, a US Embassy in Jerusalem, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital, the collapse of the Iran deal, and no pressure whatever on restraining the relentless growth of settlements by the most fanatical Israelis.

The coup de grace was normalization of relations with some Arab states through the Abraham Accords — all of which simply ignored the fate of the Palestinians, and treated them with contempt. For four years, Middle East policy was crafted by Jared Kushner, a man who had personally funded the very settlements designed to destroy a two-state solution forever. As the Saudis edged toward some kind of deal with Jerusalem, the Palestinians were on the verge of being completely humiliated and isolated in the region. You can see why Hamas wanted to prove that it is still relevant — even if they did so by destroying what pitiful moral credibility they ever had.

And while one can sympathize with Israel’s conundrum on how to take out Hamas within the laws of warfare, since Hamas has embedded itself among civilians and hostages as human shields, that does not, cannot, justify collective punishment. As I write, Israel has cut off water and electricity to the whole of Gaza; hospitals may soon run out of power; brutal carpet-bombing has laid waste to whole neighborhoods; innocents are dying under a bombardment that must be simply terrifying. Israel has ordered the population to move out of Gaza City, Hamas’ base, to the south. Better than Hamas, but still redolent for many of the expulsions that created the state of Israel in the first place.

And I worry that the vehemence of the response will be both vulnerable morally and stupid strategically. The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, this week denied any distinction between Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas:

It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup ‘d état.

That’s perilously close to: “settlers are not civilians.” From a usually even-tempered moderate. I understand where he is coming from. But I truly, deeply do not want Israel to make the same errors in the same headspace that we did after 9/11. In fighting Hamas, it remains vital not to become them. Or to create new generations of Hamas terrorists. And in the history of the Jewish state, the moral corruption that comes with occupying and controlling another people for decades is real and cancerous. It’s a risk Israel runs. I pray she overcomes it.

The bigger picture? The more I’ve thought and read about Israel, the more it seems that its founding was both a moral necessity and a practical insanity. The moral necessity is proven by last weekend. If Jews can be subject to a medieval pogrom in their own country in 2023, what hope could they ever have without a country at all? The practical insanity lies in the simple fact that the state of Israel was created on land laden with deep religious symbolism, where much of the existing population did not give consent, and despite the early promise, no country for the Palestinians was ever constructed alongside it.

Worse still: in its subsequent wars of legitimate self-defense, Israel found itself occupying the whole region, and then took the fateful step of settling it with the most fanatical parts of its own population, deliberately preventing a two-state solution from ever taking place. For me, that’s where I draw the line. Those settlements are still growing. They are indefensible. They are essentially a form of ethnic cleansing — and they have been protected and enabled by almost every Israeli government and almost every US administration in my lifetime. And any serious American attempt to stop them — from the first President Bush to Barack Obama — has been met with implacable hostility from the Israel lobby.

Israel needs our support right now. And we should give it forthrightly. But in due course, if Hamas is destroyed, and things calm down, we need to confront the Israelis with a sobering reality. There is no future for Israel without a state for the Palestinians, however hard that may be. And the longer we postpone that day, the darker the future will become.

Shabbat shalom! I was going to begin this week with a tip of the kipah to The JNR, honoring it’s fourth year anniversary, but news events have pushed levity to the back burner, at least for the week. 

As I write this posting, Israel is at war with the Hamas. “Citizens of Israel, we are at war,” Netanyahu said in a video statement posted about 11 a.m. Israeli time (4 a.m. ET). “This morning Hamas initiated a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel and its Citizens.” The attack from Gaza came almost exactly 50 years after the Syria and Egypt invaded Israel on Oct. 6, 1973 in what became known as the Yom Kippur War. As in that war, Israel’s enemies again used the Jewish calendar against it today, striking on the holiday of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, the culmination of the weeklong harvest festival of Sukkot and a three-week holiday period. Netanyahu promised to exact “an unprecedented price” from Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning, after Israel awoke to a devastating deadly attack that included more than 2,200 rockets and ground invasions into southern Israeli communities. Officials said that at least 40 Israelis had been confirmed dead, according to Israeli news reports, and scores more hospitalized with serious injuries. The Times of Israelreported that gun battles were still raging Saturday afternoon inside Israel between soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian fighters, and that Hamas claimed to have abducted a number of Israelis. Nine hours into the deadly assault from Gaza, gunmen remain in “a number of Israeli communities.” Let’s hope the IDF can end this assault and protect Israel from any more killings. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the news back home this week has been an unrelenting series of shit shows that left my brain a whirling dervish in need of some serious settling sedatives that might also temper my abuse of literary alliteration. MAGA madness continued with the ouster of Kevin, leaving us with a Sophie’s Choice of two other MAGA flame throwers to replace him and also leaving us with a classic case of “the devil you know” syndrome. While all of this was going on we find out the orange turd was spewing secrets about our nuclear submarines to an Australian golf buddy who decided to share said secrets with about 45 of his closest friends. Good thing Melania updated her pre-nup to make sure she gets her fair share of the turd’s grossly exaggerated wealth since the a-hole will probably be spending more time in the jailhouse than the Whitehouse. Fingers crossed. 

But stay positive people! After all, it’s Fat Bear week! I promised Sandy I would not include another shot of my own bearish stomach ever again, but the temptation has gotten the better of me. I have a worse than fat chance of competing against these brawny bears but I so enjoy the opportunity! I have decided to put off another version of my PILOS diet plan in order to gear up and fatten up for the competition. For more information on Fat Bear Week, and for those of you interested in casting your vote, here is a link to the website. I am not on the ballot this year, but am throwing my heavy support to Holly.

Cast your vote for the biggest belly!

Now, what about all those other Jewy bits of journalism? Here then, finally, is your weekly buffet of baffling, beguiling, and better news for the Jews copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, Kveller, Times of Israel, The Jewish Chronicle, JTA, and other reputable sources of all things Jewish-y. 

1. Feinstein, a ‘proud member’ of her synagogue, to be buried at Jewish cemetery –Funeral services for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein were livestreamed Thursday afternoon, and featured a San Francisco rabbi, Jonathan Singer, who told the Forward that he’d remember Feinstein as “a woman of valor who showed us how to comfort San Francisco when it was in need, and how to be courageous and stand up for justice.” The funeral was originally planned as a public event at the city’s Herbst Theater but those plans were changed due to unspecified “increased security concerns.” Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to speak at the memorial. President Joe Biden did not attend but mourners heard a recording of his remarks. I just wish she hadn’t emulated RBG and decided to do a face plant at her office vs retiring gracefully.  Read the story ➤
2. 20 U.S. senators raise concerns to Biden about Saudi demands, urge two-state solution’s preservation – The letter — led by Sens. Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Peter Welch — is the most detailed elaboration from the Democratic Party on Biden’s efforts to date, showcasing the uphill climb the president faces in hopes of securing domestic support for his efforts. “There’s a version of this agreement that’s good for the United States, and there’s a version that could run contrary to our security interests in the region,” Murphy said ahead of the letter’s release. Read the story
3. Trudeau says Canada looking at making secret Nazi files public – Answering a call many Jewish Canadians have been making for decades, the prime minister said Wednesday he is looking into declassifying information from a 1980s commission that investigated and largely exonerated Ukrainian immigrants who fought for Germany in World War II and relocated to Canada. It’s the latest development in a scandal that broke out last month when the Canadian parliament honored a veteran who fought with the Nazis. Read the story ➤
4. How a Jewish high school student is fighting back against book banning in Florida – Iris Mogul, 16, founded the Banned Books Club this summer in response to the book bans sweeping across Florida’s schools and libraries. “I wanted to start it, one, just to create a community to talk about beautiful writing,” she said. “And then, two, as an act of resistance.” The kids may be all right after all!  Read the story ➤
5. This movie tells the true story of a 6-year-old Jewish boy — baptized, kidnapped and raised by the Pope: Now playing at the New York Film Festival, Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped chronicles the infamous 1858 abduction of Edgardo Mortara, whose case spurred international outrage. Conveyed with gorgeous period details, the drama has a blistering anger at its core, but also embraces the ambiguity of Mortara’s life. “Belief, it argues, is a more mysterious force than the mortal zealots who serve as its agents,” writes The Forward’s PJ Grisar. Read his review ➤
6. A nude dating show is a controversial hit. But is it actually sinful — biblically speaking? A slow reveal of six ancient penises, stirring mutely like naked mole rats dropped on a barber’s shop floor lifts  Naked Attraction to be the most-watched show on the streaming platform Max?! Can’t imagine yourself tuning in to watch host Anna Richardson turning sideface and saying: “Would you have a go on that?” or, “Which vulva draws you in?” It may sound crude, but the contestants’ lack of embarrassment (the bodies on the show cover a wide spectrum) brings us back to Adam and Eve, argues The Forward’s Mira Fox. “It’s the shame that they acquire by eating the fruit of knowledge that seems to be the source of sin — not the nudity.” Read the story ➤

On that crazy note, let’s call it a week. And don’t forget to vote for your favorite fat bear, and, as always, let’s be careful out there!

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! And just when you thought the Jewish holidays were behind us, Sukkot kind of sneaks up on us. So, if you haven’t already done so, get that sukkah erected post haste and enjoy some al fresco dining for a few weeks before the weather makes that impossible. 

Sorry my Canadian friends, but I have to recognize our Schmuck of the Month as none other than Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, who apparently didn’t vet the Ukrainian WWII veteran, Yaroslav Hunka, and instead introduced Hunka to Parliament as a “Ukrainian hero” and “Canadian hero” who fought against the Soviet Union during World War II. The whole of Parliament rose to give him a standing ovation. It later emerged that Hunka did indeed fight the Soviets—or, as Rota put it, the Russians—but alongside the Nazis. Oops. Rota has done the honorable thing and resigned, but the sordid affair added a bit more tarnish to golden boy PM Trudeau’s pitiful week which included Trudeau’s other recent catastrophe: his decision to blame India for an extrajudicial murder on Canadian soil. Yikes. Could these headlines be contributing to his slide in the polls among young Canadian voters? Inquiring JNR minds want to know. 

Sandy and I have hit a show hole, and have recently taken to bingeing Hill Street Blues on Hulu as a way of avoiding the Red Sox disastrous season and/or the darkness that is our daily news cycle. The show holds up reasonably well, the colorful characters and ensemble cast created by Steven Bochco keeps us entertained, and I can’t help but wonder how the steamy sex scenes with Veronica Hamill (Joyce Davenport) and “Pizza Man” Daniel Trivanti (Captain Frank Furillo) cleared the network censors at that time. And I also wonder what Bochco was thinking when he made Joe Spano the cerebral, sympathetic Jewish Lt. Henry Goldblume, as he is the most un-Jewish looking character on the show. While we are now well into The Hill’s Season 2, we might be saved from further binge hell by the latest edition of The Great British Bakeoff! 

Yes folks, the crazy cake-baking Brits are back at it, trying their best to demonstrate some competence in their baking abilities, and have put together a new season that is already getting praise from the critics. One such critic summarized the show thusly:

While some of the handshakes and soggy bottom shtick has been getting stale, season 14 has wisely injected the most lovable jolt of energy in the form of Alison Hammond, who replaces Matt Lucas to present alongside Noel Fielding. Hammond’s infectious cheeriness, which has melted everyone from Harrison Ford to Mariah Carey, is unparalleled.

Let’s hope they revisit last season’s babka challenge, as the last time they tried to master the fine art of babka, they clearly demonstrated they have never tasted real babka and, based on their commentary, apparently don’t have many Jewish friends. However, if you are in search of a great presentation of that gleaming pile of saturated fats braided with hazelnut, chocolate and cinnamon, I hear Bakey Babka in Boston is THE place to go for an excellent bake! Mmmmmmmm…..

Yom Kippur is now behind us. We enjoyed a sweet breaking of the fast at Dan and Ruth’s, who have now established a new family tradition: invasion for the leftovers. Ruth bakes a mean kugel, and created some kind of amazing apple noodle concoction that required an extra helping or two. Unfortunately for Israel, Yom Kippur was not as sweet, as the headlines were more about skirmishes in Tel Aviv between the orthodox and secular folks, the latter protesting the placement of physical barriers between the sexes in the public square, which was outlawed by Israel’s Supreme Court. However, on the good news front, Biden gifted Bibi with the formal approval of Visa waivers for Israelis. What the pro quo is for that quid remains to be seen, but rest assured, you will hear about it first on the JNR! 

Now what about the rest of the news for Jews you may be asking? Where are those selective segments of savory semitic stories stolen shamelessly from the likes of The Forward, Haaretz, Kveller, Jewish Boston, and other fine Jewishy journals? Ask, and ye shall receive:

1. Can the execution of a Jewish prisoner in Texas be stopped? Supporters are praying for a miracle Attorney Alan Dershowitz, known for his defense of controversial high-profile clients, has joined a last-ditch effort to stop the execution of a Jewish man on death row, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 10. Jedidiah Murphy, now 48, murdered 79-year-old Bertie Cunningham on Oct. 4, 2000. Dershowitz, a former Harvard law professor, argues that very few cases in Texas merit the death penalty, and are usually “reserved for the most heinous repeat offenders,” which, he says, Murphy is not. He also cites Murphy’s history of mental illness. Dershowitz hopes to plead his case directly to the Texas governor, and says that he spent part of Yom Kippur working on the case. “I went to shul, I fasted, but the saving of human life — pikuach nefesh — is more important than davening.”
2. The head of the Ford Foundation condemned antisemitism — here’s why that’s a huge deal: Hitler was reportedly inspired by Henry Ford’s antisemitic writings. So it was heartening to see the social justice nonprofit named after Ford take a principled stand, writes The Forward columnist Aviya Kushner. She suggests the group “take a hard look at current grant funding” to look for ways to “fund research on antisemitism in America’s cultural spaces” and “support conferences for those who are studying it.” Read her essay ➤
3. 🤦  The Dark Side of Roger Waters – The former Pink Floyd frontman known for using Nazi symbols on stage and for his anti-Israel views, sent his staff antisemitic emails and taunted a musician whose grandmother was murdered in the Holocaust, a new documentary claims. (USA Today, Ynet) 
4. One jalapeno cheddar with schmear | Inside Mexico City’s hand-rolled bagel boom – During the early days of the pandemic, a Scottish-American baker hatched an idea to make bagels for homesick foreigners and donate the proceeds to people who were out of work. Her bagel store is one of several shops that have opened in recent years as part of a bagel renaissance in Mexico City. Read the story ➤
5. 🛑  One hundred Jewish leaders are calling on Apple and Google to remove X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, from their app stores — effectively making it impossible to use on the majority of cellphones. The group, which blames Elon Musk for enabling antisemitism on the site, is also calling on companies like Disney to stop advertising on X. (XOutHate)
6. 🤝  Quid pro Quo? Israeli officials are working to convince U.S. leaders that a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia could strengthen the United States well beyond the Middle East. One of Netanyahu’s aides called it a “reverse 9/11.” (Semafor)
7. 🌊  Beach Battles In Ocean Grove, N.J. — known as “God’s Square Mile at the Jersey Shore” — Jewish and LGBTQ+ residents are fighting against the closure of a local beach on Sunday mornings, which they say is part of a “radical” Christian agenda of the church organization that owns the neighborhood. (Haaretz)

That’s all folks! And hey, as Sergeant Esterhaus from Hill Street admonishes the team every roll call – Let’s be careful out there! 

Brad out.

Yes folks, the crazy cake-baking Brits are back at it, trying their best to demonstrate some competence in their baking abilities, and have put together a new season that is already getting praise from the critics. One such critic summarized the show thusly:

While some of the handshakes and soggy bottom shtick has been getting stale, season 14 has wisely injected the most lovable jolt of energy in the form of Alison Hammond, who replaces Matt Lucas to present alongside Noel Fielding. Hammond’s infectious cheeriness, which has melted everyone from Harrison Ford to Mariah Carey, is unparalleled.

Let’s hope they revisit last season’s babka challenge, as the last time they tried to master the fine art of babka, they clearly demonstrated they have never tasted real babka and, based on their commentary, apparently don’t have many Jewish friends. However, if you are in search of a great presentation of that gleaming pile of saturated fats braided with hazelnut, chocolate and cinnamon, I hear Bakey Babka in Boston is THE place to go for an excellent bake! Mmmmmmmm…..

Yom Kippur is now behind us. We enjoyed a sweet breaking of the fast at Dan and Ruth’s, who have now established a new family tradition: invasion for the leftovers. Ruth bakes a mean kugel, and created some kind of amazing apple noodle concoction that required an extra helping or two. Unfortunately for Israel, Yom Kippur was not as sweet, as the headlines were more about skirmishes in Tel Aviv between the orthodox and secular folks, the latter protesting the placement of physical barriers between the sexes in the public square, which was outlawed by Israel’s Supreme Court. However, on the good news front, Biden gifted Bibi with the formal approval of Visa waivers for Israelis. What the pro quo is for that quid remains to be seen, but rest assured, you will hear about it first on the JNR! 

Now what about the rest of the news for Jews you may be asking? Where are those selective segments of savory semitic stories stolen shamelessly from the likes of The Forward, Haaretz, Kveller, Jewish Boston, and other fine Jewishy journals? Ask, and ye shall receive:

1. Can the execution of a Jewish prisoner in Texas be stopped? Supporters are praying for a miracle Attorney Alan Dershowitz, known for his defense of controversial high-profile clients, has joined a last-ditch effort to stop the execution of a Jewish man on death row, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 10. Jedidiah Murphy, now 48, murdered 79-year-old Bertie Cunningham on Oct. 4, 2000. Dershowitz, a former Harvard law professor, argues that very few cases in Texas merit the death penalty, and are usually “reserved for the most heinous repeat offenders,” which, he says, Murphy is not. He also cites Murphy’s history of mental illness. Dershowitz hopes to plead his case directly to the Texas governor, and says that he spent part of Yom Kippur working on the case. “I went to shul, I fasted, but the saving of human life — pikuach nefesh — is more important than davening.”
2. The head of the Ford Foundation condemned antisemitism — here’s why that’s a huge deal: Hitler was reportedly inspired by Henry Ford’s antisemitic writings. So it was heartening to see the social justice nonprofit named after Ford take a principled stand, writes The Forward columnist Aviya Kushner. She suggests the group “take a hard look at current grant funding” to look for ways to “fund research on antisemitism in America’s cultural spaces” and “support conferences for those who are studying it.” Read her essay ➤
3. 🤦  The Dark Side of Roger Waters – The former Pink Floyd frontman known for using Nazi symbols on stage and for his anti-Israel views, sent his staff antisemitic emails and taunted a musician whose grandmother was murdered in the Holocaust, a new documentary claims. (USA Today, Ynet) 
4. One jalapeno cheddar with schmear | Inside Mexico City’s hand-rolled bagel boom – During the early days of the pandemic, a Scottish-American baker hatched an idea to make bagels for homesick foreigners and donate the proceeds to people who were out of work. Her bagel store is one of several shops that have opened in recent years as part of a bagel renaissance in Mexico City. Read the story ➤
5. 🛑  One hundred Jewish leaders are calling on Apple and Google to remove X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, from their app stores — effectively making it impossible to use on the majority of cellphones. The group, which blames Elon Musk for enabling antisemitism on the site, is also calling on companies like Disney to stop advertising on X. (XOutHate)
6. 🤝  Quid pro Quo? Israeli officials are working to convince U.S. leaders that a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia could strengthen the United States well beyond the Middle East. One of Netanyahu’s aides called it a “reverse 9/11.” (Semafor)
7. 🌊  Beach Battles In Ocean Grove, N.J. — known as “God’s Square Mile at the Jersey Shore” — Jewish and LGBTQ+ residents are fighting against the closure of a local beach on Sunday mornings, which they say is part of a “radical” Christian agenda of the church organization that owns the neighborhood. (Haaretz)

That’s all folks! And hey, as Sergeant Esterhaus from Hill Street admonishes the team every roll call – Let’s be careful out there! 

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom everyone! 

Yom Kippur, considered the highest of Jewish holidays, starts this Sunday evening. The ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur are commonly known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim) or the Days of Repentance. This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the mistakes of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur – before the sealing of one’s fate in The Good Book. I have a feeling this negotiating period before the great judgment day may be one explanation for why there are so many Jewish lawyers….we have had centuries of practice!

I have been a long time fan of Leonard Cohen but confess that only recently have I discovered and appreciated his deep connection to his own Judaism and how it impacted his art. I thought I would share one of his songs that directly relates to Yom Kippur. 

“Who by fire” is Leonard Cohen’s version of the Hebrew prayer “Unetanneh Tokef“, commonly chanted on Yom Kippur. The prayer is said to have been written by a Rabbi dying from his wounds after he was put to death for his unwillingness to convert. Cohen’s version was released in his 1974 album “New Skin for the Old Ceremony.” This is one of the main songs of the album and one of Cohen’s best known songs. The prayer Cohen heard as a child in the synagogue describes God reviewing the Book of Life and deciding the fate of every soul for the year to come – who will live, who will die and how. The line: “And who shall I say is calling?” can be understood as a break from faith in God. According to Cohen that element of doubt is what made the song into a personal prayer for him. 

This live performance from London was recorded in 2013 and features a gorgeous intro guitar solo by Javier Mas. Enjoy! And for those of you fasting, may it be an easy fast with a delicious breaking.

And on a further cultural note, 🍿 the new “Golda” movie may be the best film to watch in preparation for Yom Kippur. Aside from taking place during the Yom Kippur war, it is definitely a tale of atonement, and according to critics, visually arresting. 

All for now. Next week I will return to tradition and include a full smorgasbord of Jew news. Until then, let’s be careful out there.

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom everyone! And a happy new year to you all! l’shana tova tikateyvu, which translates to: “May you be inscribed [in the Book of Life] for a good year”.

While we Jews typically celebrate the new year in a festive manner, it’s not quite the same as the countdown in Times Square kind of celebration with champagne popping and bingeing on some kind of inebriant. It’s referred to as one of the “High Holidays” for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with achieving any altered state of mind through the use or abuse of any edibles or alcoholic libations. No siree. Our new year may be festive but it also deals with some serious stuff, which is why it is also considered “Judgement” day. According to the good Jews at Chabad.org, three ledgers are opened on Rosh Hashanah: one for those who are entirely wicked, one for those who are entirely righteous, and one for those who are in the middle. The entirely righteous are immediately inscribed in the Good Book and sealed to live. That is certainly cause for celebration! The entirely wicked, however, are immediately inscribed and sealed to die. Yikes! They too, might as well celebrate since this will be their last new year! The fate of those in the middle is held in balance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Holy brisket batman! Better start repenting now and for the next 10 days, or this may be your last Rosh Bowl! Skipping shul this year? Not a good thing.

What is a good thing, and a family favorite tradition, is ringing in the new year at Dan and Ruth’s house for an amazing evening of fine food, crazy Rosh Bowl games invented by Daniel, and of course, some serious kibitzing. The host and hostess with the mostest will surely be inscribed in the Good Book, and we attendees hope we get a proximity pass along with them. This year includes a new attendee, which provides me with another shameless opportunity to share celebrating the birth of our 3rd grandchild, Cameron Sonny Worgaftik. 

Rosh Hashanah is associated with only one Biblical commandment – the blowing of the shofar. The mitzvah of shofar is so deeply connected to the essence of Rosh that the Torah refers to Rosh Hashanah as “Yom Teruah” (Day of the Blowing). The mitzvah of shofar is steeped in symbolism – for centuries, the Jewish people risked their lives to hear the call of the shofar. 

Jewish law requires that the shofar be blown 30 times on each day of Rosh Hashanah, although by custom it is blown 100 or 101 times on each day. If you Google “how many times is the Shofar blown”, you will get a slew of differing answers with Talmudic references and guidance on the proper way to blow. Of course there are many rules on the “how”, including one that says if your shofar is facing downward, the blow doesn’t count. I couldn’t resist re-posting this video demonstrating the proper form for blowing the Shofar:

Another tradition of Rosh is to perform “Tashlich”, literally “casting away” the sins of the year by throwing small pieces of bread into a nearby body of water (although some orthodox decry the use of bread). Hence, to be properly prepared, I have purchased several large loaves of challah for my personal use and will be spending a considerable amount of time at Lake Massapaug this weekend. 

Whatever your form of celebration, Sandy and I wish you all a healthy, happy, and fun new year! Good yontif!

And remember, be safe out there.

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! 

A tip of the kipah this week to Israel’s Defense Minister, who left a meeting in order to speak over the phone with a man threatening to commit suicide, who demanded to speak with the high-ranking Likud official in order to agree not to jump from a building. Police contacted Gallant, who spent several minutes speaking over the phone with the suicidal man. Shortly after the conversation, the man safely left the balcony and was transported to a local hospital for mental health treatment.

It’s been an interesting week for my own mental health. While I am feeling somewhat proud and positive about our judicial system and its ability to defend our tenuous democracy, I am also at the same time, feeling pessimistic about the rising number of morons that feel duty-bound to infest our culture with their profound stupidity. Hence, I am compelled this week to give out my second Schmuck of the Month Award, this time to the dishonorable Senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, who seems to be the next Republican poster child representing our country’s most vaunted liberty, the freedom to be ignorant.

“We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction we’re headed in our military.”

–Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama).

Yes people, our military is completely at Woke risk. Not only is our basic training camp turning out pansies who recite poetry, but apparently pronoun etiquette and the 1619 Project are undermining our military preparedness. The JNR reached out to Tuberville for details, but none were forthcoming. We are only left to speculate that perhaps the reading aloud of poetry on an aircraft carrier is just the slippery slope toward a more pernicious form of Woke treachery. Perhaps there is a secret military move to rename our famous fighting vessels? Could the USS Enterprise be renamed USS Amanda Gorman? We have to wonder, and move the alert level to DEFCON 4. 

The idea that poetry is somehow antithetical to soldiering ignores centuries of evidence. Homer’s Iliad, Shakespeare’s St Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V, 

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

and my favorite, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”, to name a few. 

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” 
Was there a man dismay’d? 
Not tho’ the soldier knew 
Some one had blunder’d: 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do and die: 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred.

Culture war idiocy seems to be the norm these days. Tuberville is just one purveyor of political nonsense that merely detracts from a focus on real issues and his ignoble entry into the pantheon of anti-woke theater makes him deserving of the JNR “Schmuck of the Month” award. As one wag put it so eloquently, “the notion that art and literature are extraneous is shortsighted if you want to have a culture worth defending with aircraft carriers.” Nuf said.

On a more serious note, the Israeli Knesset is back from the summer break, and the news regarding the proposed judicial overhaul continues to generate serious existential questions about the future of the Jewish state. Here is a link to a podcast that does an excellent job of putting into context why Diaspora Jews (that’s us!) should read up and speak up on this important topic. 

https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-matters-now/id1067953235?i=1000627075831

The really big news of the week however, was the leak of a proposal, supposedly from Nut-and-yahoo himself, on a compromise deal that consisted of 3 major concessions: 

1. A rewriting of the recently passed legislation to remove the “reasonableness clause” which was a major tool used by the Supreme Court to check the powers and rulings of the Knesset
2. A freeze in any further legislation for 1.5 years, which would probably coincide with new elections, and, 
3. A return to a balance on the selection of new judges to the court, more in line with the status quo.

Some really interesting theories are being circulated that these concessions are tied up in the broader effort to normalize relations with the Saudis and solve the Palestinian issue. Or, just more theater from Nut-and-yahoo to look like he is a reasonable person seeking compromise as he readies himself for a meeting with Biden. More to come on that front, so stay tuned. You may hear it first from the JNR, as we have a direct line to Tom Friedman on this hot and developing news story.

Now, what about the news of the Jews? I know what you must be thinking by now: What’s taking so long to get to the good stuff? Enough already with your political blathering. Ok, ok, ok. Here then, for your edification, is your weekly smorgasbord of superbly selected semitic stuff from sources such as The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Nosher, Kveller, and Jewish Boston to name a few. Enjoy!

1. Vivek Ramasmarmy – Friend of the Jews? or just an a-hole? Under fire for pledging to cut aid to Israel, Vivek Ramaswamy says he’s outspoken just like Israelis. Is he like the Israeli fruit Sabra, prickly on the outside but sweet on the inside? I don’t think so. He is just a younger MAGA nut job who knows better, but is playing the MAGA card. The 38-year-old political newcomer, a star of the first Republican presidential debate last month, went further in a Friday phone interview with The Forward, elaborating on his views on Israel’s security and defending his recent participation in a podcast whose host is known to traffic in antisemitism. Click here for more.
2. 🙄  Today in oh, great: Kanye West will be featured on a new song called “Israel.” The track by rapper Albe Black, which Black previewed on Instagram this week, includes a verse from West in which he raps about meeting the devil. (Times of Israel)
3. 📣  Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Elon Musk for “engaging online with users who are espousing antisemitism and hate” — but stayed diplomatic and complimented Musk’s business acumen in his first remarks since Musk ramped up attacks on the ADL this week. (Musk has accused the ADL of trying to decimate X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — which he owns — by encouraging an ad boycott against it, and threatened a lawsuit.) (JTA)
4. 🇲🇽  Mexico’s ruling party on Wednesday named former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who is Jewish, its candidate for next year’s presidential election, putting her in position to become the country’s first female leader. (Times of Israel)
5. Opinion | By targeting the ADL, Elon Musk has chosen Jews as his scapegoat: “Rather than confront his own failures, Musk is crafting a narrative whereby powerful, wealthy Jews are responsible for tanking the value of his company,” writes Joel Swanson, a Ph.D. student studying modern Jewish history. “Musk needs to portray himself, the richest man on earth, as an insurgent against the real elites (Jews), represented by groups like the ADL.” Read his essay ➤
6. 🎶  Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is set to be the biggest in music history. But new dates announced for 2024 have left some planning Jewish lifecycle events scrambling. One Indianapolis family changed the date of their daughter’s bat mitzvah next year because of a lack of hotel availability and their hunch that middle school girls might choose the concert over their party. (Jewish Insider)

Finally, Monday marks another anniversary of the tragic events that rocked the nation. I recall the popular phrase at the time, “We will never forget” what happened on 9/11. We certainly won’t forget that day, and the loss of our cousin, Robin Kaplan, a then 33 year old beautiful human being, on her way to California on American Flight 11, to help TJX set up a new store in the San Francisco area. She had recently spent a month in the hospital battling Crohn’s/colitis, but was working again and feeling better, and was also recently engaged to a fellow TJX employee. Her dreams, her aspirations, her life, were all incinerated as her plane became a missile in the arsenal of terrorism that struck our country that day and ruined so many lives and forever changed America. RIP Robin.

And on that sad note, a reminder to all to be careful out there. 

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! Incredible weather here in New England, I hope you are all enjoying it. And a tip of the kipah this week to my brother Bill, who hopefully will have a great birthday today!

I was struggling a bit with a topic for this week’s posting. My usual process is to find something in the news worth venting about, and while there has been no shortage of headlines to make me miserable and consider moving to a Scandinavian country, I was feeling reluctant to pile on more blather about the state of the nation. Then I listened to this week’s UnHerd Podcast which was an interview with Gad Saad on why Postmodernism is making us miserable. Saad is a Canadian Professor and “evolutionary psychologist” whose recent book, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life provides some interesting insights on the human condition. During the interview, Saad mentions the concept of “Dunbar’s Number”, a mythical optimal number of meaningful relationships the human brain is capable of managing. That number is 150, which not coincidentally, is the average number of guests invited to weddings and approximately the average number of people in a small town church congregation. Dunbar’s number was brought up in reference to one element of happiness, that being belonging to a community. Robin Dunbar, the British sociologist whose research led to the 150 number, published his theory in the 1990’s, before the advent of social media. Some have challenged the number as being too low now that we have social media, and some researchers have suggested the number might be double what Dunbar thinks. I like Dunbar’s number. It makes sense.

I have recently been considering promoting my Substack blog beyond our current group of 100. Now that I am retired for the 4th time, I was thinking the extra time I now have could be used to promote and build a much broader community of readership. But the Dunbar number has given me pause on that line of thinking, and instead, caused me to appreciate the intimacy of the current group, and for now, putting any thoughts of expansion on hold. But, I would like to get to the magic 150 mark, so please feel free to share this with your friends, family and acquaintances, and as always, hitting the “like” button and responding with your comments is definitely appreciated.

Now, what about the news for the Jews this week? Where are those gems of Jewish journalism carefully curated by yours truly? Without further ajieu, here you go:

1. An Anti-ADL campaign is erupting on Twitter and Elon Musk endorsed it – As I have said before, do not buy a Tesla. Musk is a brilliant engineer, but a human moron. More than 89,000 of #BantheADL posts flooded Twitter as part of an ongoing effort by the far right to defame the organization. The campaign against the ADL alleges that the organization is hindering free speech by demanding that social media platforms sanction neo-Nazis and other extremists who promote antisemitism, racism and other bigotry. Responding to a request from the Forward for comment, the ADL said it was “unsurprised yet undeterred that antisemites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization. This type of thing is nothing new.”The organization said the onslaught follows “a meeting with the leadership of X, formerly known as Twitter, that clearly upset these hateful groups.”
2. Why all the bagel talk at the US Open? Here’s why they use ‘bagels’ to keep score in tennis – The U.S. Open tennis championship is underway in New York, and if you’re paying even casual attention, you can’t help but notice the use of the word “bagel” in descriptions that have nothing to do with lox. “Djokovic grabs a late-night first-set bagel in 23 minutes,” tweeted the U.S. Open’s official account Monday night. The TennisCompanion.org site defines a bagel as “a set where the ending score is 6-0″ and gives this as a sample sentence: “I’m going to serve my opponent a bagel today.”  For more, click here. 
3. 🇮🇱  Terror attacks in Israel: An Israeli man was killed and five others were wounded in a truck-ramming attack at a checkpoint Thursday morning. (Times of Israel) … Four IDF soldiers were wounded while inside the occupied West Bank city of Nablus Wednesday night, after being targeted by a large explosive device detonated by Palestinian fighters. (Times of Israel) … An Israeli man was woundedin a stabbing attack Wednesday night at a light rail station in Jerusalem. The assailant was a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, who was shot and killed by police. (Haaretz)
4. 🇸🇦  In a sign that Saudi Arabia is making efforts to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, the kingdom offered to resume funding to the Palestinian Authority,which could be used to crack down on militant groups and violence in the West Bank. (WSJ)
5. 🕍  A minyan has been meeting at Touro synagogue, America’s oldest congregation, since the early 1900s. But a ruling by a Rhode Island judge may soon lead to their eviction.(JTA)
6. Libyan foreign minister is fired and flees to Turkey after meeting her Israeli counterpart – (JTA) — Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush has been fired and has fled to Turkey following a meeting last week with Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen. Libya and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, and when he first announced the meeting on Sunday, Cohen hailed it as another breakthrough in Israel’s growing ties with its neighbors. Israel normalized relations with several Arab countries in 2020 under the framework of the Abraham Accords, and is now publicly exploring an agreement with Saudi Arabia.The Israel-Libya meeting, which took place in Rome last week, seemed to fall in the same vein. Mangoush represented the internationally-recognized government of Libya that took shape — alongside a rival government — following the fall of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The countries’ chief diplomats had never met, and news of the discussion, which centered on agriculture and protecting Jewish heritage sites in the country, held out the possibility of yet another future accord.- Click here for more.
7. 👏  Best headline of the day: “Shabbos goy” of 30 years found to be Jewish. (Arutz Sheva)

That’s all this week! Enjoy the weekend everyone! And hey, as always, remember to be careful out there!

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom!

I am taking the weekend off to celebrate 39 amazing years with my partner for life. It just keeps getting better.

But, I can’t resist a quick note on a few topics this week. 

Those of you as old, or older than myself, will recognize this week’s title reference to Hawaii Five-O, a popular cop show which aired from 1968 until 1980. Personally, I was more of a Kojac and Columbo fan, but I enjoyed Five-O’s lead cop Steve McGarrett and the lush scenery of the Islands. Generally at the end of most shows, McGarrett would instruct his sidekick, Danny Williams, to take the bad guy into custody by telling him to “Book ’em, Danno.” 

Fani Willis did just that, booking the orange turd (his fourth indictment) on RICO charges related to his conspiracy to hijack the Georgia presidential election. As Charlie Sykes said so well in his latest newsletter, “It was always going to end this way, wasn’t it? If you elect a serial liar and conman, a narcissist, bully, wannabe mobster, with the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old, you can’t really be shocked at how it turned out, can you? This is what Trump wanted, because this is what he chose. He could have accepted defeat and allowed the peaceful transfer of power. He could have behaved like every other president in American history. Instead, he chose to lie about the election. He chose to orchestrate a coup.”

The fact that this monster is still leading in the polls by a large margin and that 6 of the 8 Republican candidates would still support him if he is found guilty, does not speak well about the Republican Party and our country. It is a national embarrassment that has no historical precedent. We are once again in unchartered political waters, and the seas look choppy and the weather unpredictable. I won’t torture the metaphor any further.

What is not unpredictable is my very indulgent spa treatment on Sunday: Obsidian & Sage Detoxifying Ritual, where I supposedly will surrender myself “to a warm chrysalis of safety in a gravity-defying float through a mental, spiritual, and physical cleansing ritual. Mind-clearing obsidian, aura-cleansing sage, and detoxifying mud exfoliate and nourish your body to further relax into a full-body massage.”

I really have no idea what I have signed up for, but after watching just 20 minutes of the first Republican debate, I definitely need some mind clearing detoxification. 

Enjoy the weekend everyone! And hey, don’t be getting booked for anything illegal, and stay safe out there. There appears to be another surge of Covid going around. 

Brad out.

Shabbat shalom! 

It’s a happy day here in Sharon, as we tip our kipah to the newest member of our expanding family, grandchild # 3, Cameron Sonny Worgaftik. Lauren and Ian produced some magic this week in the form of a 7.5 pound baby boy! Much to the relief of his anxious grandparents, all are happy and healthy. I have always been good with first impressions, and I can already tell, very objectively, that this kid is brilliant and handsome. Seriously.

It is at these life affirming moments that I tend to become reflective and think about life’s big questions. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Are we just “throw away survival machines”, as the world famous scientist Richard Dawkins claims, whose only purpose in life is to survive and replicate our genes? Or is there a more cosmic purpose to our consciousness? If you’ve read, and I recommend it if you haven’t, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, you would learn that the answer to “life, the universe and everything” is determined by a supercomputer to be: 42. For now, or at least until the next grand child is born, I think Adams got it wrong: the answer is 3.

While on this cosmic theme, I must point out the photo below from the James Webb telescope taken earlier this week that has gone viral and raising some interesting scientific and philosophical questions.

The telescope captured an image of a mysterious reddish-orange question mark in a distant star formation. The question mark isn’t photoshopped, nor a ChatGPT creation. Scientists believe that shape is likely formed by two to three galaxies merging, but that hasn’t stopped speculation on social media, where some people are joking that the question mark is a “glitch in the matrix.” Note just south of the question mark, there appears to be a merger of galaxies in the shape of a “3”. Scientists are still puzzling over it’s meaning. 

By now, you must all be wondering where this is heading, and when will I get to the good stuff. Or as Frank Zappa once pondered, “who you jivin with that Cosmik Debris?” Well, I haven’t fallen into a black hole and I have forgotten all the good Jewy stuff. So, without further ajieu, here is your weekly gaggle of galactic goodies, brought to you by the likes of The Forward, Kveller, Jewish Boston, Times of Israel, JTA, and other honorable sources of Jewish journalism. 

1. Netanyahu has resisted internal and external pressure to moderate. Can IDF reservists change that? Thousands of Israeli air force reservists have stopped reporting for duty in protest of the actions of Netanyahu’s far-right government. “The anger is very sincere,”  said Ephraim Sneh, a retired IDF Brigadier General. “They say we cannot serve a dictatorial regime. They say this is not the state that we fought for, and that our parents fought for.” Read the story ➤
2. 💰  Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur, Republican presidential candidate, and huge a-hole, said the U.S. should not give Israel more aid than others in the Middle East. “There’s no North Star commitment to any one country, other than the United States of America,” he said. (JTA)
3. Can we please stop talking about Bradley Cooper’s nose? Schmucks can’t seem to deal with a non-Jew playing a Jew. It’s called acting you morons! Many Jews online are upset about the prosthetic nose that Cooper wears in the just-released trailer for Netflix’s Leonard Bernstein biopic — a proxy for their broader feelings over a non-Jewish actor being cast to play a Jewish cultural icon. Not The Forward’s Editor Laura E. Adkins. “There are very real problems facing the Jewish people,” she writes.“Israel’s democracy is on the verge of collapse. Hate speech is out of control on social media. And we’re talking about a nose?” But Laura’s deputy, Nora Berman, begs to differ. Read their conversation ➤

4. Will Donald Trump finally face his personal Yom Kippur? Elul, the Jewish month of penitence and reflection, began this week. Trump’s latest indictment, enumerating 191 criminal acts of conspiracy, reads to The Forward’s contributing columnist Rabbi Jay Michaelson like the confessional Al Chet prayer, including its own repetitive refrain. “False claims of voter fraud. This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” the indictment says. “False accusations against election workers. This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.” Cue Michaelson: “Now the Book of Judgment is open, with Trump’s alleged misdeeds written out in excruciating detail.” Read the essay ➤

5. 🇦🇷  The leading vote-getter in Argentina’s national primary elections this week, Javier Milei, could become the country’s first Jewish president. First he’d have to win in October — and complete a conversion he’s working on. Milei, a far-right economist, was raised Catholic but studies with a rabbi regularly, wants to convert Argentina’s currency to the U.S. dollar and has made headlines for controversial comments on hot-button topics ranging from climate change to sex education.  He also wants to convert to Judaism. One of the obstacles getting in the way: observing Shabbat. “If I’m president and it’s Shabbat, what do I do? Am I going to disconnect from the country from Friday to Saturday? There are some issues that would make [the religion] incompatible. The rabbi who helps me study says that I should read the Torah from the point of view of economic analysis,” he said.(JTA)
6. Bomb threats and ‘swatting’ campaign hits dozens of synagogues –  At least 26 institutions have experienced incidents since late July as online trolls work together to harass Jews and other religious minorities. Oren Segal, who runs the ADL’s Center on Extremism, said the organization believes that a small group of individuals coordinating with each other on social media is responsible for the incidents. They appear to be targeting synagogues that livestream videos of services online. “These trolls are weaponizing online tools to harass the Jewish community,” Segal said. “They want to watch these services get disrupted by law enforcement.” Sick bastards. Read the story
7. On Maui, a Chabad farm gives safe harbor and a Shabbat meal: With an orchard, livestock and “enough kosher food to feed a small army,” the farm is sheltering dozens of Jews displaced by the wildfires. And tourists are volunteering to help support them. Michelle Andron and her husband and five children, who live in Los Angeles, spent Friday there washing dishes, collecting eggs from the chicken coop and baking challah. “This is not the vacation we planned,” she said. “But we’ve been given the opportunity to be on the front lines, helping.” Read the story ➤

That should do it for the week! I hope you all have a great weekend! And remember to be careful negotiating the universe and also remember these immortal words from Frank Zappa,

Look here brother
Who you jivin’ with that Cosmik Debris?
Now is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

Brad out. 

Shabbat shalom. And a tip of the kipah and happy birthday this week to the hip-hop music genre which turns 50 years young this week. Not that yours truly would have known that musical factoid without the plethora of essays all over the main stream media and various other sources of cultural enlightenment that have made me a much wiser idiot. After all, being over 60 makes me a cranky old timer stuck in the 70’s, still spinning a vinyl collection of classic rock, folk and fusion jazz. So, in honor of this musical milestone, I am ditching the usual rants on the depressing and headache inducing headlines in favor of a focus on culture and other “news that does’t suck”, as fellow blogger/journalist Jessica Yellin likes to say.

My good friend Perry and I have had a running debate about musical decades, with Perry taking the position that the 60’s was the penultimate decade for rock music while my position was leaning more in the 70’s camp, that being the decade when rock matured and spawned many new genres such as Funk, Punk, Disco, Progressive, New Wave and various offshoots. I think we are both right. During the 60’s, music mattered more, and fueled a generation of politically progressive ideas that helped inspire change in a country that desperately needed it. Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones helped drive the counter culture movement of the 60’s and along with Woodstock and the Summer of Love, helped define the decade. Then the Beatles broke up, Elvis died, and the world of rock was rocked, but in a good way. While some music legends clearly broke out in the 1960s, many of their best albums were made in the 1970s (Sticky Fingers, Blood on the Tracks, to name a few). And the 70’s was a decade that launched many legends of the music world including Springsteen, Billy Joel, Queen, Eagles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Elton John, and the list could go on and on.

And to bring this decade debate full circle, it was on August 11, 1973, at a party at an apartment building at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx, where hip-hop was born. According to many sources, the host of that party, Cindy Campbell, a black immigrant teenager from Jamaica who wanted to earn some extra cash to buy back-to-school clothes, convinced her 18-year-old brother Clive to DJ. Known as DJ Kool Herc (a shortened version of his nickname, Hercules), Clive was locally famous for his physical size and strength and for a style of DJing that involved using multiple turntables and records to stitch together short, percussive passages of R&B music called “breaks” into extended loops of sound, a technique that he called “The Merry-Go-Round”. At his sister’s party, he cued up two copies of James Brown’s Sex Machine album and went back and forth, extending the break from “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” while exclaiming street phrases over the music to encourage the dancers. And so, hip-hop was born. Fast forward to 2023, and hip-hop is ubiquitous — not just on Spotify and TikTok, but across pop culture, from television to fashion.

Full transparency here, I appreciate the Hip Hop genre but I am not a big fan. I have often said to my nieces and nephews that this genre will not have legs, and you won’t find many people years from now humming Eminem songs or radio stations offering “classic hip-hop”, which might be a good thing. However, the one thing I respect and admire most in the music is the absolute freedom of expression it represents and its resiliency vs today’s era of wacky “woke-ness” and insidious “cancel” culture. I can even see a slight analogy to the Beat generation in the 50’s whose poets and literary artists were interested in challenging main stream culture and conventional writing styles and techniques. (Notorious B.I.G. = Jack Kerouac?) 

As a cultural phenomenon, the genre certainly has cred. I just can’t get into it, but of course that could be because I am a cranky old Jewish white guy who still plays Dylan and Rolling Stones vinyl on his blue tooth enabled turntable. What makes the genre even more interesting to me (and The Jew News Review) is its Jewish lineage and the role Jews have played in it’s development, both on the artistry and business sides of the genre. Of course The Forward, a publication that can find a Jewish angle on virtually anything, had a long essay on this topic which you can link to here.

Over the last five decades, many Jewish rappers from different backgrounds and nationalities have left their mark on hip-hop culture, from Drake to Doja Cat to Mac Miller to Nissim Black, to name just a few. In the early 2000s, religiously-observant artists such as Y-Love and Matisyahu carved out a niche for rap infused with Jewish wisdom and spirituality. Today, there are a number of rappers who make Judaism a prominent part of their stage personas, from Kosha Dillz to Lil Dicky to BLP Kosher; the latter dropped an album on Aug. 4 titled “Bars Mitzvah.”There is also a vibrant, multilingual hip-hop scene in Israel.

Now, it’s time to hip-hop over to more of the Jewy journalism. Your standard smorgasbord of superbly selected semitic stuff from sources such as The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Nosher, Kveller, and Jewish Boston to name a few. Enjoy!

1. World’s Scrabble champ? A jew of course! – He can spell “Schlep” 4 different ways, and is now the first repeat winner of the World Scrabble Championship. Using words like zep and fyce, an Australian Jew named David Eldar became the world Scrabble champion last month in Las Vegas. He was also world champ in 2017 and is now only the second player in history to win the title twice. Click here for more. 
2. Forget Barbie and Oppenheimer – The new movie everyone will be talking about is Adam Sandler’s comedy, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which debuts Aug. 25 on Netflix. Based on a popular 2005 novel, the film stars Sandler’s real-life daughter Sunny as the bat mitzvah girl and was shot over six weeks last summer at Congregation Beth Tzedec in Toronto. Watch the trailer below.

3. Shiva Call: Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist for the Band, passed away this last week – In the new documentary film, “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band,” Robertson, The Band’s main songwriter and guitarist, tells the story of how he finally learned of his Jewish heritage and how his Jewish relatives in Toronto embraced him and opened a whole new world of “vision” to him.
4. A neo-Nazi is building a training compound in Maine. Bangor’s Jews are not afraid –  A prominent neo-Nazi plans to build a training camp for his followers on 10 acres of woods in Maine. More than 90% of Maine’s 1.3 million residents are white, making it the whitest state in the nation. Christopher Pohlhaus has been photographed waving swastika flags and chanting “Sieg Heil” at anti-LGBTQ+ protests. His followers have talked about destroying or vandalizing Jewish cemeteries. The state is also home to 15 Jewish congregations and several Jewish summer camps. Brian Kresge, the president of Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and a Maine National Guardsman, was defiant when asked about Pohlhaus. “I am not afraid,” he said. “With the High Holy Days looming, all of Bangor’s three congregations have great security systems and practices — and more than a few armed congregants.”
5. Kosher certified pork-flavored potato chips to be discontinued: When the Orthodox Union approved the chips earlier this summer, complete with a cartoon pig on the packaging, some consumers complained. “It’s not coming into my shul,” said Rabbi Howard Buechler. The blowback caused the OU to reconsider its decision, a rare step to remove its certification from a kosher product. In the end, the potato chip company stopped selling the product on Tuesday, saying it was always intended to be a limited-run snack. Read the story ➤ 
6. Opinion | Our parents shunned Volkswagen and Mercedes — is it time for Jews to give up their Teslas? YES! Elon Musk, who heads both Tesla and Twitter, has posted and retweeted statements that many regard as antisemitic. He’s allowed neo-Nazis back on the platform. According to an ADL analysis, only around 25% of antisemitic tweets reported to Twitter are taken down. “I’m not sure I’d buy a new Tesla today,” writes Rabbi Jay Michaelson, who has been driving one since 2017. Read the essay ➤
7. Her father documented the devastation at Nagasaki and Hiroshima — now she’s considered an honorary second-generation survivor – Leslie Sussan calls herself “a loudmouth New York Quaker Jew.” With Oppenheimer in theaters and the anniversary of the atomic bombs this week, she recalls the decades-long effort to declassify the footage her father took. “Why did he see the suffering and human pain where most of his compatriots saw only well-earned victory?” she asked. Read the story

That’s all folks! Remember to be careful out there, because as Eminem once said, “The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed”

Brad out.