Human Rights Watch's Jihad Against Israel

by Bassam Tawil

• [T]he report fails to mention that during this period Israel has faced a massive wave of terrorism sponsored and funded by the Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
• One of the cases "investigated" by HRW is that of Mahmoud al-Sadi, 17, reportedly killed by Israeli security forces as he walked to school near the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on November 21, 2022. Notably, the HRW report does not mention why Israeli troops had entered the refugee camp.
• The Jenin Battalion terrorists, who are heavily armed, are mostly affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an extremist Islamist organization responsible for countless terrorist attacks that have killed and injured hundreds of Israelis in the past few decades. There is no mention of this militia or its activities in the HRW report. Evidently, HRW does not want to the facts to spoil its effort to slander Israelis by depicting them as child-killers.
• While HRW presents al-Sadi as an unarmed teenage boy, Palestinians posted a photo of him carrying a M-16 rifle. Apparently, for HRW such photos, where Palestinian teenagers are featured brandishing weapons and dressed in military outfits, are irrelevant because they do not serve its anti-Israeli propaganda.
• Bizarrely, HRW does admit that the remaining three "children" allegedly killed by Israel were involved in terrorist attacks. Yet, as far as HRW is concerned, Israeli soldiers or police have no right to defend themselves when they are attacked with stones, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks. Why? According to the logic of HRW, the perpetrators are "only" teenagers.
• Does HRW really expect Israeli soldiers and policemen to ask someone who shoots or throws a Molotov cocktail at them how old they are before firing back to defend themselves?
• Instead of denouncing the Palestinians for using children as combatants, HRW is condemning Israel for defending itself against terrorism.
• "Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." — The late Robert L. Bernstein, founder and longtime chairman of Human Rights Watch, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• "Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch's Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel." — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• "Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• "Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch's criticism." — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• HRW's ongoing obsession with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, serves as a reminder that the organization is on the side of the terrorists who appear as committed to killing Americans and other Westerners, as to destroying Israel and killing Jews.
• The HRW reports are no less dangerous than the non-stop incitement to violence by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Al Menar, Al Jazeera in Arabic, or the regimes of Qatar and Iran. Such reports provide ammunition to Iran and its proxies to pursue their murderous campaign against Israel and the West, and reveal that HRW is not all that different from the Palestinian terrorists and their patrons in Iran.
• Perhaps HRW might issue an apology, write accurate reports and turn its attention to actors that really do abuse human rights?

Human Rights Watch has once again exposed its unvarnished anti-Israel bias with outrageous false allegations. Its report fails to mention that Palestinian terrorist groups recruit teenagers as combatants and send them to kill Israeli civilians and soldiers. For example, Mohammad al-Saleem (pictured), a teenage member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group who was killed while attacking Israeli soldiers with incendiary devices. (Image source: NGO Monitor/Abu Ali Express)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has once again exposed its unvarnished anti-Israel bias by alleging that Israel systematically targets Palestinian children. The outrageous -- and false -- allegation was included in a new report published by HRW on August 28 under the title: "West Bank: Spike in Israeli killings of Palestinian children." The report claims that "the Israeli military and border police forces are killing Palestinian children with virtually no recourse for accountability."

Noting that HRW "investigated four fatal shootings of Palestinian children by Israeli forces between November 2022 and March 2023," the report fails to mention that during this period Israel has faced a massive wave of terrorism sponsored and funded by the Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

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ADL Joins Sharpton for Crown Heights Pogrom Anniversary

by Daniel Greenfield

In August 1991, racist mobs roamed the streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, attacking anyone they thought might be Jewish. Black rioters stabbed, stoned and beat their victims. Community members huddled in their homes watching gangs smash their windows. Al Sharpton appeared to denounce the Jews at an event that included the banner, “Hitler did not do the job.”

In August 2023, the ADL ignored the anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom and instead joined Sharpton in Washington D.C. The ADL urged its members to take part in Sharpton’s ‘March on Washington’ headlined by his National Action Network and co-chaired by the ADL.

The ADL not only failed to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom, it partnered with the hatemonger who was front and center at the pogrom. ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt issued a press release together with Al Sharpton about the recent murder of three people in Florida, while forgetting about the three people who died in Crown Heights.

They include Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting Australian student, who was surrounded and stabbed to death, Anthony Graziosi, an Italian-American salesman, dragged from his car and murdered because his hat and beard make him look like an Orthodox Jew, and Bracha Estricher, a Holocaust survivor who seeing the thugs pounding on her door committed suicide rather than fall into their hands. Not to mention a woman who suffered a miscarriage after being chased by the mob.

“Hate still exists,” Greenblatt declared in D.C. at an event headlined by the most lucrative bigot who used the Crown Heights Pogrom as a springboard to running for president, becoming a Democratic Party kingmaker, and securing a role as Obama’s envoy. He implied that critics of the ADL’s relationship with Sharpton were practicing “cancel culture”, when what we really needed to do is “embrace them” and “educate them about our history.”

Like the time that Sharpton taunted, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

The ‘March on Washington’ was not Greenblatt’s first collaboration with Sharpton. The two men have repeatedly worked together and participated in joint appearances, events and press releases on various leftist causes, often having nothing to do with either Jewish or black issues, such as condemning the Trump administration’s efforts to secure the border in 2018.

But co-chairing an event with Sharpton’s hate group on the 32nd anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom is an unforgivable expression of contempt for the victims of the violence. On another August after a mob shouting, “There’s a Jew! Get the Jew! Kill the Jew.”, chased down and killed Yankel Rosenbaum, the ADL boss is eager to dismiss this as a mere matter of “differences”.

While it’s entirely conceivable that Jonathan Greenblatt, an Obama administration veteran ignorant of Jewish issues who steered the ADL into intersectional wokeness, did not know what else Sharpton had done in August (the last time the ADL commemorated the worst antisemitic riot in America history was in 2021), this is not the first time that this has happened.

The ADL and Greenblatt had come under fire for taking part in Sharpton’s ‘March on Washington’ in 2020 some months after BLM riots had targeted Los Angeles synagogues. When the pogrom was first taking place, a rabbi had blasted the ADL for ignoring the violence and instead “issuing a press release about skinheads in Idaho”.

In 2016, Norman Rosenbaum, an Australian prosecutor who had come to America to fight for justice for his murdered brother, condemned the ADL and future New York City Mayor Eric Adams for marking the pogrom with a “community festival” offering fun for all.

After securing a federal civil rights trial for his brother’s killer, who had gotten a pass from a friendly local jury, Rosenbaum passionately held establishment groups like the ADL accountable. When Sharpton was invited to events, he would challenge those who did it, reminding them that, “it completely disregards the pivotal role that Al Sharpton played in inciting the riots which took my brother’s life.”

Norman Rosenbaum passed away in July 2020, freeing up the ADL to work on Sharpton’s March to Washington that year. With him gone, the ADL boss felt no shame in using the 32nd anniversary of the pogrom to party with Sharpton in Washington D.C.

In one of his last messages, Norman Rosenbaum wrote in 2019 that, “It was a mob of about 30 who attacked and murdered Yankel, of which 28 have never been brought to justice. And as he parades around as a supposed leader and champion of civil rights, Sharpton has never once called on his supporters to turn in to law enforcement the remaining 28 people. But that is not a priority in Al Sharpton’s world.”

Nor is it a priority for the ADL.

The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt claimed that he had come with Sharpton to Washington D.C. to stand up for justice. Sharpton has never faced justice, not for Crown Heights, for the Tawana Brawley hoax, or the Freddie’s massacre in Harlem which killed 7 people.

The last time the ADL commemorated the Crown Heights Pogrom was two years ago while refusing to use the correct term “pogrom”, instead choosing to use the media’s distorted politically term “riots” in order to evade the responsibility of the political establishment, including Mayor David Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor, in having the police stand down.

The ADL’s press release stated that “one of the enduring lessons of the Crown Heights Riots is in acknowledging the responsibility to confront antisemitism, no matter where it is and who is perpetrating it.” Two years later, the ADL is co-chairing an event with an antisemite who was at the epicenter of the worst antisemitic riot in the nation’s history.

In Washington D.C., Sharpton began his speech with, “No justice, no peace”, the same slogan that he had brought to Crown Heights three decades ago and which Charles Price, who was convicted of inciting the Rosenbaum murder had shouted, along with, “Let’s get the Jews”.

The Jews were on the ground, courtesy of Greenblatt and fading actor Sacha Baron Cohen, most famous for singing “Throw the Jew down the well” in the persona of ‘Borat’. “Many of you are probably wondering what the hell is a white Jewish comedian from England doing here,” he asked, after first opening with a tiresome joke about performing at the Rosenberg bar mitzvah.

“I promise that this is not a prank on you,” he assured the crowd. “It might be one on me.”

That was an adequate summary of Jews showing up to Sharpton’s event.

“Today was a day to show our strength,” Sharpton boasted and vowed to fight for racial preferences in corporations. “We are not going to let you take affirmative action.”

While Sharpton and his allies show their strength, the ADL and the Jewish organizational establishment show their weakness. That is as true today as it was 32 years ago.

The ADL’s actions are not only a moral disgrace, they’re also a betrayal. Why is the ADL joining an antisemite’s campaign in support of racial preferences which primarily discriminate against Asians and Jews? (The successful campaign against affirmative action was waged by Edward Blum, a Jewish conservative, and Asian-American plaintiffs.) What interests are served here?

When the Crown Heights Pogrom took place, the ADL had waited a week and a half to condemn it. Abe Foxman, the ADL’s longtime leader, explained that the group had remained silent in the face of days of antisemitic violence, assault and murder out of “a quest for social justice”. Social justice, or more accurately, leftist politics, is still the priority for the ADL.

Jewish lives don’t matter, social justice does.

Hungry for Geula?

BS”D 

Parashat KI TAVO
by HaRav Nachman Kahana

It is to my religious brothers and sisters still stuck in the galut that I dedicate the following story:

It came to pass that the Shamas in a little shtetl fell ill and the Shamas’te (his wife) fulfilled his communal obligations to the best of her ability. Among them was on the week preceding Rosh HaShana to waken the good people of the shtetl in the wee hours of the morning to gather together at the bet knesset to recite Selichot (prayers for forgiveness).

At 4 AM on day one, the Shamas’te took the little metal gavel used for the task and set off to awaken the dedicated, idealistic, religious men of the community.

In the first house adjacent to the Shamas lived a man whose name was Binyamin but was called “Binyamin Apikores” (Binyamin the Apostate), who due to the circumstances of his childhood and youth was unable to learn Torah but was very proud of his Judaism and was making strides towards the Torah.

At the knock of the gavel, Binyamin called out to ask who was at the door. The Shamas’te identified herself and called “shtay uf far slichas” – get up for Selichot”. Binyamin Apikores, despite all his shortcomings, was a compassionate man. He opened the door letting in the freezing cold wind and snow and said to the Shamas’te, “It is three o’clock in the morning, the snow is piled up and you are not in the best of health. Give me the gavel and go home; I will wake up the people for Selichot”.

The Shamas’te went home, and Binyamin Apikores proceeded to the next house.

At the sound of the gavel, the baal habayit asked who was there. Binyamin Apikores identified himself and that he had come to awaken all the ba’alei hatim to Selichot.

At that moment, there came a loud angry cry from within the house, “You have the audacity, Binyamin Apikores to waken me for your Selichot. You are nothing but an apikores while I am a God-fearing man – I will not lower myself to answer the call to your Selichot”.

The scenario repeated itself in every house in the shtetl, to such an extent that at the beginning of the davening only two people showed up – the rav who comes early to shul every day of the year and Binyamin Apikores.

Now! About 130 years ago, a man detached from Torah observance by the name of Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl picked up a big hammer and organized the Zionist Movement to arouse the Jewish people to the need of a Jewish national state and facilitate its establishment in Eretz Yisrael.

He was rejected by the main body of religious leadership who said, “Who are you, Apikores, to tell us about Eretz Yisrael? We will not come to your Eretz Yisrael”.

So, at the end of the day who came? Socialist and Communist apikorsim and a thin sliver of yiray Shamayim (God-fearing), and it was they who forged a Medina from out of a malarial swampland and barren wilderness.

How awesome the fact that the first official law passed by the new Medina in 1948 was the Law of Return, to absorb the surviving descendants of those who refused to come to the land of Binyamin Apikores.

Medinat Yisrael with all its amazing achievements and failings does not belong to Binyamin Apikores, nor to the eldest Tzaddik of the generation. The Medina belongs to all of Am Yisrael who live here and love her.

Binyamin Herzl was the great Jewish engineer. He, like other engineers whose task is to turn architectural plans into a workable blueprint, transformed the tens or hundreds of millions of heartfelt prayers of over 2000 years into a workable goal of Jewish nationhood in our ancient homeland.

As we recite at the Pesach seder:

“כָל דִכְפִין יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכֹל, כָל דִצְרִיךְ יֵיתֵי וְיִפְסַח”

All who are hungry come and eat, all who are needy come and partake in the korban Pesach.

And I say: All who are hungry for geula (redemption) come home to Eretz Yisrael; all who feel the need to be close to HaShem come and dwell in the holy land.

But when one does not come, it means that he doesn’t feel the need. And that is very tragic!

Shame and blame
There is a saying: The first time Johnny calls you “dirty Jew” – shame on Johnny; the second time – shame on You!!

Human beings without Torah are summarized in Bereishiet chap. 8:

כִּי יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע מִנְּעֻרָיו

Inclinations of the human heart are evil from birth.

In the 1930’s who could have comprehended the extent of evil in the hearts of European Christians: gas chambers, crematoria, mass murder, engineered killings? But now we know that Christianity not only did not have the moral energy to prevent the Shoah, but the contrary, the Shoah became a reality only on the platform of Christianity.

The first time the descendants of Aisav released their evil inclinations on Ya’akov, shame on the Germans, French, Italians, Russians, the British etc., from Portugal in the west to the Russian borders with Asia. But if the Jews in the galut again fall prey to the savagery of anti-Semitism – shame on the Jews.

As Rosh Hashana approaches let me state: if you have grievances or bear resentment because the situation in Eretz Yisrael is not the way you would have it, the address is not the secular members of the government, but the hundreds of thousands of our Bnei Torah and religious brothers and sisters who do not come on aliya – who by their sheer numbers could bring about the necessary changes.

Shabbat Shalom
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 5783/2023 Nachman Kahana

Denier of Good

by Rabbi Pinchas Winston

Friday Night
THE EXPRESSION IS expression is, kafui tovah, which means “denier of good.” To the extent that a person does not appreciate the good they have been given, first by God and then by anyone who may have acted as His shaliach to give it, is the extent that they are a kafui tovah. Our entire judgment on Rosh Hashanah is with respect to this, so we might as well get a better handle on it while there is time.

Rashi refers to this trait in this week’s parsha:

And you shall come to the kohen who will be [serving] in those days, and say to him, “I declare this day to God, your God, that I have come to the land which God swore to our forefathers to give us.” (Devarim 26:3)

And say to him: that you are not ungrateful [for all that God has done for you]. (Rashi)

This is the mitzvah of bikurim, the bringing up of the first fruits of a person’s crops to the kohen in the Temple. The offerer doesn’t just drop off his bikurim and leave. He has to make a whole declaration while doing it, called viduy (confessional), and it includes what Rashi has explained.

Most people would agree that good manners are essential for getting by in life, and that it is crucial to always show gratitude for any good you receive. Sometimes that can mean a sincere thank you to a benefactor, or in the case of God, giving Him praise. But the greatest way to show your appreciation for anything you receive is to use it in the way it was intended by the giver, even if they do not recognize that you are doing this.

Hakaras hatov—recognition of the good—is everything. It is the difference between being happy in life or miserable. One of the major factors in divorce is a lack of this trait by one or both spouses, and why it is rising in the religious community as well. In fact, so many divorces could have been avoided if there had been more hakaras hatov in the relationship, and sometimes they have been avoided once the couple understood this and worked on it.

Essentially, it was the reason why we were expelled from Gan Aiden, and what we’re supposed to be fixing up over history:

And the man said, “The woman whom You gave [to be] with me she gave me of the tree; so I ate.” (Bereishis 3:12)

Whom You gave [to be] with me: Here he showed his ingratitude. (Rashi)

But Adam was only reporting the truth! If anything, he was only passing the buck. What does his statement have to do with ingratitude, and why was that even an issue at such a crucial moment in human history?

Shabbos Day
WHAT IS THE basis of hakaras hatov? That’s easy. Recognizing good, right? Yes, and not exactly, or else there would be a lot less dissension in the world. It’s being able to recognize that something is good, and once a person does that it is easy to show appreciation for it.

How many times do you hear, “He had it all and blew it!” or, “she had so much and then she ruined everything!”? That basically is what Yirmiyahu said of the Jewish people when he wrote, “Eichah.” It asks just one question, “How can you, the Jewish people, reach such spiritual heights and know such success and then lose it all and be exiled?”

What’s worse is that God warned us, once in Parashas Bechukosai and again this week’s parsha. This makes the question as well, “How can we have so many explicit warnings about so many consequences of straying from God and ignore them and the later, suffer them all?” Today, many Jews don’t believe in Torah so it doesn’t shake them up. But back then, they did believe, so why weren’t they kept in line because of them?

We don’t have to search long and hard for the answer to that question because the Torah provides it:

…because you did not serve God, your God, with happiness and with gladness of heart, when [you had an] abundance of everything. (Devarim 28:47)

In other words, it’s a chain reaction. The first stage is that you stop seeing the good in the good you have, and it becomes unimportant in your eyes. Then you start to feel a sense of lack and a need to go after more in life to make you feel happy. This forces a person to spend increasing less time on spiritual matters while pursuing physical ones.

It’s not over yet. This reduced spiritual connection results in an automatic spiritual desensitization that makes it easier to sin and harder to perform mitzvos. Eventually a person pushes God and Torah from their heart, until they become so cut off that they have no idea any more of the danger they have created for themselves. And whether one is a believing Jew or not, we are no strangers to danger.

Just like the maintenance of physical health requires a person to consistently manage smaller things like sleep and diet, likewise spiritual health requires a person to maintain smaller things like maintaining an appreciation of the good we have. It’s because it is so small that we tend to overlook and forgot about it…and eventually suffer the devastating consequences that were destined to result.

That’s the way it often works in life. Small, seemingly petty acts that were or weren’t performed that resulted in frightening results. Car crashes because someone was too lazy to signal when turning a corner or changing lanes. Deaths from head-on collisions because they checked the messages for a moment while driving, and so on.

But it works both ways. Just as bad things can happen from ignoring small things, great things can happen from paying attention to them. We’re about to enter the Ten Days of Repentance. Our lives hang in the balance whether we take it seriously or not. We’re going to be evaluated based upon recognition of the good that God has given us, reflected in the way we lived out the previous year.

Now what?

Shalosh Seudot
ONE OF THE amazing things about people is how quickly they can take something, or someone, for granted. The greatest and happiest people in society are not necessarily the richest, because at the end of the day, it is not how much you have that makes you happy, but how much you appreciate what you have.

There are people who can be, and are, happier than the richest people in the world though they barely make ends meet from day to day. Last week I replaced a kitchen tile that had been chipped about 10 years ago (how it happened is another story). I recently found two spare tiles and finally had the tile replaced after being bugged by it for more than a decade.

It was a small chip, but it was gray hole against a beige tile. Most people didn’t notice it, or care about it. But I did, especially every Friday when I washed the floor for Shabbos. This Friday I found myself staring at the place where that gray hole used to be, feeling tremendous joy that I no longer saw it. I just couldn’t appreciate it enough.

When I began this dvar Torah, I did not intend for it to be an advertisement for my latest book, Half Full: A Book About Contentment In A Discontent World. Honestly. The truth is, I rarely know at the beginning what I’ll be writing about at the end, but having gotten here, I realize this is exactly what they book is about, being able to 1) find the good and, 2) appreciate the good we find.

We learn so much in school about so many things, but never about this. We learn about everything else in the pursuit of happiness, and yet leave out the one thing that can guarantee it. Hakaras hatov is not a hobby. It is a life’s work because every level we move up spiritual, the greater our capacity to see and appreciate good increases. Like teshuvah, it becomes more profound as we become more profound, and we find ourselves getting more pleasure and joy from things that, yesterday, we thought could only make us slightly happy.

“You don’t know what you have until you lose it” is an ancient saying from a problem that has become even more intense in modern times. While I had a car, I made sure to never let it get below a quarter of a tank, so that I would never be one of those guys on the side of the highway who thought they had enough gas to make it, but didn’t. Eventually I forgot that my car needed gas to run, even though I kept filling it up.

It worked the same way with eating. I used to be one of those people who made a point of never going hungry. If I felt a light feeling in that direction, I quickly quashed it with some kind of snack. Food became only something to enjoy and not part of my survival, and therefore I lost appreciation of it. Even Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av weren’t so bad because I had so many calories stored away.

That eventually led to a diet, and after a while I re-learned what hunger was like. In fact, there have many times since then when I have felt profoundly hungry, and even simple foods are like a mini-feast. I eat less food than before, but I appreciate more now than ever, which has also served to improve my intention when making brochos for the things I eat.

Now I just have to work on a master applying the same approach to the rest of my life.

Ain Od Milvado, Part 64
THE KING IS coming. Elul means that the King of Kings is going out to the countryside, so-to-speak, to connect with His citizens. And like all good citizens, we’re supposed to be excited about this and run to the place that we can see Him which, when it comes to God, means in our hearts.

When it comes to human relationships, they are either love relationships or fear relationships. It’s hard to love another human if we fear them. But somehow we’re supposed to both love and fear God, and the key to that seemingly impossible task is ain od Milvado.

Let’s work backwards. It’s called Yom Kippurim, meaning “a day like Purim.” Purim is the day that we recall that both Mordechai and Haman were products of God’s will regarding the destiny of the Jewish people. Thus, we end of Yom Kippur declaring no less than seven times that Hashem is Elokim, meaning that God is responsible for all of it, the obviously Godly parts and the seemingly Godless parts.

Rosh Hashanah begins the process of reacquainting ourselves with this idea and level of ain od Milvado, and we are being evaluated on how well we live by it. As the Gemora says (Sanhedrin 97b), the Hamans of history are there, Heaven sent, to “inspire” us to do teshuvah with the help of fear when we need it. But the Mordechais of history teach us that it is all because of God’s love for us that He even sends the Hamans in the first place.

And that’s how we “go out” to greet the King. Yes, we have fear of God and His judgment. But it is tempered with love of God because we understand that it is only out of His love that He judges at all.

Biden’s Terror Funding Killed an Israeli Preschool Teacher

by Daniel Greenfield

Batsheva Nigri, a preschool teacher, was riding in a car with her six-year-old daughter when Islamic terrorists from the Palestinian Authority’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade cut them off and riddled the car with 22 bullets. Batsheva’s six-year-old daughter watched her mother die.

The Palestinian Authority’s terror group hailed the murder of a 42-year-old preschool teacher as a “natural response to the crimes of the occupation” and as revenge for Denis Michael Rohan, a non-Jewish Australian tourist, starting a fire in the Al Aqsa occupation mosque in 1969.

Those who knew the preschool teacher described her as a woman with a “heart of gold” to whom “all the children were like her children.” Hamas and Islamic Jihad however claimed that her murder glorifies Allah.

Monday’s murder comes after an Israeli father and son were shot to death on the Sabbath. They’re among a growing list of terror victims this year ranging in age from a 6-year-old boy run down on a Jerusalem street to an 82-year-old woman who was killed while trying to get her disabled husband to safety when a rocket hit their building.

The twenty-six terror victims are a sharp increase from the only 3 deaths in 2020 when the Trump administration’s cutoff of aid to the terrorists occupying parts of Israel took effect.

The number of terror victims fell every year Trump was in office, from 15 in 2017, to 12 in 2018, 10 in 2019 and then only 3 in 2020. And the number of terror victims shot up every year Biden was in office from 17 in 2021, to 31 in 2022, and there is every sign that 2023 will top that.

Twice as many Israelis were killed in one month of Biden than in one year of Trump.

It’s only August and already 26 Israelis have been killed by Islamic terrorists. Last year at this time 18 Israelis had been killed by terrorists making for a 40% increase in 2023.

What made all the difference? As Rep. Ilhan Omar once said, “It’s all about the ‘benjamins’”.

In 2018, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, named after an Iraq War veteran who was stabbed to death by a terrorist in Jerusalem, which cut off most aid to the Palestinian Authority. In 2019, President Trump went even further with a nearly total cutoff of aid to the Palestinian Authority. Biden not only restored aid, he sharply increased the flow of cash to the terrorists.

Biden’s half a billion dollars helped fuel a massive surge in Islamic terrorism. While the money is officially listed as humanitarian aid, injecting money into terror zones funds terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority maintains a ‘pay-to-slay’ program which pays salaries to terrorists based on the lengths of their prison sentences. That means successful killers can earn $3,000 a month in a part of the world where the average salary is around $700 a month. It’s five times more profitable to be a terrorist than a teacher.

That’s the price of Batsheva’s life and that is what the Biden administration has been paying for.

The Biden administration is well aware that the Palestinian Authority funds terrorism. While Biden and Secretary of State Blinken refused to raise the issue with terror leader Mahmoud Abbas, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf claimed, “we are working to bring pay-to-slay to an end.” Instead the United States is funding pay-to-slay.

And worse.

Recent documents reveal that the State Department applied for an OFAC license which exempts it from Global Terrorist Sanctions Regulations in order to provide foreign aid.

A government sanctions exemption document warned that, “we assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza. There is less but still some risk U.S. assistance would benefit other designated groups.”

The Biden administration knows that it’s funding terrorism. It is not only aware of it but it actually applied for an exemption in order to be able to continue funding terrorists… including Hamas.

Batsheva’s murder, like that of the 74 terror victims killed under Biden, was paid for directly and indirectly through foreign aid to terrorists and sanctions relief on Iran’s terror regime. These policies were not undertaken in ignorance, the OFAC documents provide clear evidence that the Biden administration had been warned that it was funding terrorism and that people would die.

That’s why the number of Israelis continues to climb every year that Biden has been in office.

After 7 Israelis, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in a Sabbath terrorist attack outside a synagogue in January 2023, Secretary of State Blinken met with Mahmoud Abbas and promised another $50 million to UNRWA which acts as the employment agency for Hamas. Earlier that same month, the Biden administration warned Israel to turn over $39 million in tax revenues to terrorists rather than providing that money to help terror victims rebuild their lives.

In August, with 4 Israelis already murdered, the Biden administration demanded that Republicans stop blocking $75 million in “humanitarian aid” to the UN agency. Sen. Jim Risch and Rep. Michael McCaul are determined to block that aid until Secretary of State Blinken certifies that UNRWA “is not affiliated with U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations”. And yet the Biden administration can’t seem to even manage to clear that lowest of legal bars.

In Batsheva’s hometown of Efrat, which the Biden administration considers an “illegal settlement” despite being referenced numerous times in the bible, the children have lost a teacher and a friend.

The murdered preschool teacher had been on the way to “prepare the kindergarten for the start of the year.” A woman who worked with her described how “every time I entered the kindergarten, she welcomed me with a beaming smile that always accompanied her. The children were everything to her, she always hugged them and gave what she could to the children, the staff, the parents.”

Batsheva did not have to die. None of the 26 already killed this year did. The 3 dead in 2020 show what’s possible. The Biden administration is knowingly funding the murder of the innocent.

Rav Kook's Ein Ayah: Fear of Sin in a Life of Activity and The Root of Love and Fear of Hashem

Fear of Sin in a Life of Activity

(based on Ein Ayah, Berachot 2:33)

Gemara: [The tefilah that this gemara focuses on is Birkat Hachodesh]. It should be Your will … that we have … life that has in it the fear of sin …

Ein Ayah: The idea is that the fear of sin should be in the midst of the life. There are people who have fear of sin, but it is not strong within them. These people can maintain their fear of sin when they are able to distance themselves from the activity of life. However, when they come into the social elements of life and get involved in commerce in a major way or in different areas of science, the fear of sin will leave them because it is not meshed into their life. That is why the author of this prayer asked for life that has in it - in the midst of the life itself - fear of sin. This follows the concept of what Chazal say on the pasuk, “I will walk before Hashem in the lands of the living” (Tehillim 116:9). Chazal posit that the pasuk refers to the marketplaces (Yoma 71a).

The Root of Love and Fear of Hashem, Respectively

(based on Ein Ayah, Berachot 2:36)

Gemara: [We continue with the same tefilah.] It should be Your will … that we have … a life that there should be in us the love of Torah and yirat shamayim (literally, fear of Heaven) … life within which the requests of our heart will be fulfilled for good.

Ein Ayah: Love of Hashem and fear of Him each come from a different recognition. In the higher ways of Hashem, there are ways in which man can, to a certain degree, emulate Hashem. This, Chazal capture with the charge, “Just as He is merciful, so should you be merciful …” (Shabbat 133b). When a person goes about emulating Hashem, this causes him to love Hashem more and more.

Fear of Hashem comes when one contemplates His greatness and the ways in which He is beyond our comprehension and our ability to approach His ways, as they are so perfect that they are out of our grasp.

Because of this dichotomy we say that the love of Hashem is analogous to the love of Torah. That is because the foundation of Torah is to make a person one who follows in [those of] Hashem’s paths [that man is capable of following]. This is what the Torah describes about Avraham, who educated his family to “guard the path of Hashem to do charity and justice” (Bereishit 18:19).

Fear of Hashem is called fear of Heaven, in other words, the awe from His loftiness, to the extent that he is more powerful than our intellectual grasp and our capabilities. As the pasuk says, “Go high to the Heavens, what can you do?” (Iyov 11:8).

Regarding “life within which the requests of our heart will be fulfilled for good” – since the heart desires imaginary pleasures, it is not possible to fulfill all of its requests. After all, if one has 100 zuz, he will desire 200 zuz. Therefore, we ask that our requests be fulfilled to the extent that they are for the good.

Anti-Semitism

by HaRav Mordechai Greenberg
Nasi HaYeshiva, Kerem B'Yavneh

"Arami oved avi" ("An Aramean tried to destroy my forefather"). (Devarim 26:5) Based on this verse, the authors of the Passover Haggadah formulated the text: "Go and learn what Lavan, the Aramean, wanted to do to Yaakov Avinu. Pharaoh decreed only against the males, whereas Lavan sought to uproot everything, as it says, 'Arami oved avi.'"

Why, of all the anti-Semites, did Chazal see fit to single out Lavan the Aramean? The Maharal, in his explanation of the Haggadah, addresses this (Gevurot Hashem, ch. 54):

In this passage, [Chazal] revealed very many things. Israel had adversaries, unlike other adversaries who came for some reason, but Israel had haters and enemies with no cause. The ones who opposed Israel most and without reason, were Lavan and Pharaoh ... The reason of Lavan was also without cause, because Yaakov did for him only great goodness, and [Lavan] chased after him ... Not so Esav who wanted to kill Yaakov - this was for a reason, because [Yaakov] took his birthright ... When you comprehend this, you will find the reason of hatred ... which is something very hidden.

Lavan is the classic example of anti-Semites throughout the ages, who hate Israel without reason.

Nonetheless, the question remains: Why do the nations of the world hate Israel for no reason?

The issue was already addressed at length (click here), and we will be brief here. "You are My witnesses, the word of Hashem, and I am G-d." (Yeshaya 43:12) Israel testify as to G-d's existence in the world. Chazal say: "When you are My witnesses, I am G-d, and when you are not My witnesses, it is as if I am not G-d." (Yalkut Shimoni) Knesset Yisrael "cloaks the Divinity that is revealed in the world at large." (Orot p. 149) Therefore, G-d is so bound with Am Yisrael, "That if the enemies cut off our name, "Your [trouble] is greater than ours,' for if we are not here, [it is as if He] is not here." (Ramban Shemot 29:46)

The war of nations of the world is focused on the war against G-d. However, it is not possible to fight Him, and therefore they fight against the one who represents him in the world. "Why do nations gather ... against Hashem and against his anointed." (Tehillim 2:1-2) The Rambam writes in Iggeret Teiman: "Because the Creator designated us with His mitzvot and His laws ... and our worth over others became apparent ... all the heathens were greatly jealous of us because of our religion ... and they want to fight against Hashem and to do battle with him, but He is G-d and who can fight against Him?" The Ramban similarly writes in Parshat Ha'azinu: "'We were killed on Your account all the day,' and therefore on account of their hatred of G-d they do all these evils to us. They are His opponents and enemies, and it is up to Him to take vengeance from them." This is what the Torah says, "'I shall return vengeance upon My enemies and upon those that hate Me shall I bring retribution.'" (Devarim 32:41)

"Idolatry recognized in Israel, in Judaism, its greatest enemy ... and great instinctive hatred to Israel arose from all the nations." (Orot Hatechiya ch. 2)

This is the intention of the Maharal when he writes that the hatred is for no reason, i.e., no apparent reason. The hatred is internal, subconscious, which is not understood externally, but simmers subconsciously.

Verification of this we experienced, unfortunately, in recent generations, in the words of the crazy German, who said about the Jews: "The Tablets of Mt. Sinai lost their value. Conscience is merely a Jewish innovation." "Fate sent me to be the great emancipator of mankind. I free people from the bonds of spirit, but the submitting tortures of false vision, called conscience and ethics." "There cannot be peace between these two forces." "See how we will succeed through the force of was alone to turn during a short time the concepts in the entire world, but this is just he beginning. The battle over control of the world is fought just between us; the war of the Germans against the Jews. Everything else is just a false mirage."

"For they take counsel together unanimously, they strike a covenant against you." (Tehillim 83:6)

Rav Kook on Parashat Ki Tavo: Two Paths of Bikkurim

Fresh and Dried Fruits
The mitzvah of bringing the first fruits (Bikkurim) to the Beit HaMikdash, the spiritual focal point of the nation, contains an important message for our own service of God. The Bikkurim offering demonstrates how each individual is able to connect his private activities — the fruits of his labors — to the nation’s holiest aspirations.

The Mishnah explains how the first fruits were brought to the Beit HaMikdash:

“Those close to Yerushalayim would bring fresh figs and grapes, while those further away would bring dried figs and raisins.” (Bikkurim 3:3)

The Mishnah describes the Bikkurim offerings of two groups of people: those who lived near to Jerusalem and could bring fresh fruits; and those who lived further away, and had to be content with bringing an offering of dried fruit that could withstand the long journey.

Two Paths: Torah and Prophecy
These two situations — living in close proximity to Jerusalem and living some distance away ­- correspond to two spiritual paths the Jewish people have taken throughout history: the path of Torah and the path of prophecy, each with its own advantages and benefits.

The path of Torah is paved through the development of Torah SheB'al Peh, as the nation applies Halachah to all aspects of life. The fruit of these legalistic efforts, however, may seem dry and uninspiring. This is particularly true when this path is compared to that of prophecy, which deals with Divine wisdom and lofty matters, and is closely connected to meditative prayer and the Torah’s mystical teachings.

When the Jewish people lived in the Land of Israel and the Shechinah dwelled in their midst, their spiritual world centered primarily on prophetic enlightenment. We have been promised that the gift of prophecy will return to us - and on an even higher level — thus providing a lofty holiness that engages the heart and soul with knowledge of God. When we will be able to guard this gift, we will merit it once more — when we are back in our land, close to God’s Presence, and protected from the misguided beliefs of foreign nations.

However, after we were banished from our beloved homeland, it became necessary to take the second path - a path capable of retaining its special character, despite exile and dispersion. This is the path of Torah, as the Sages wrote: ‘From the day the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, HKB"H has only the four cubits of Halachah in His world’ (Berachot 8a). The legal system of Halachah may appear to be dry and barren; but like the dried fruits of the Bikkurim offering, it contains hidden reserves of spiritual life and vitality. It is this path of Torah that preserved the Jewish people throughout the difficult challenges of a long and bitter exile.

Complementary Paths
The switch between the path of prophecy and the path of Torah took place during the Second Temple period, when prophecy ceased. In preparation for the exile that would follow, those spiritual forces of the nation that had previously focused on prophecy now concentrated their talents on the discipline of Halachah, developing and refining the study of Torah. These efforts enabled the Jewish people to survive as a separate nation in foreign lands, distinguished from other nations by an all-encompassing Halachic lifestyle.

These two paths are reflected in the paradigm of the Bikkurim offerings. Those close to the spiritual center prefer the delicious fresh fruits. However, the gifts from those living far away — dried figs and raisins that may appear to be shriveled and lifeless, but have the advantage of retaining their flavor despite the long journey — are also valued and beloved. Together, the two conduits of Torah and prophecy provide endurance and vitality for the nation’s special service of God.

(Sapphire from the Land of Israel. Adapted from Ein Eyah vol. II, p. 412 by Rav Chanan Morrison)

The eternal validity of God’s covenant

by Rabbi Dov Berel Wein

In emphasizing once again the eternal validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, Moshe addresses his words to the entire nation. All classes of society are included in the covenant – the heads of the people, the judges, the wealthy and powerful, the poor, menial and manual laborers, and those that chop the wood and draw the water. No one is excluded from the terms of the covenant and no one is allowed the luxury of assuring one’s self that Jewish destiny will not apply to him or her.

Judaism does not have two sets of rules, one for the elite and the other for the masses. It is an equal opportunity faith. Its leaders, be they temporal or spiritual, are bound to the same code of behavior. There may be exceptional people in every generation but there are no exceptions to the efficacy of the covenant on all of Israel.

Unlike other faiths that have different rules and mores for their clergy than they do for the lay population, Judaism does not even recognize the existence of a clergy class. There is no separate Shulchan Aruch for rabbis. The covenant binds and governs us all equally.

We see throughout Tanach that kings and prophets were held to the same standards and requirements of the covenant that apply to the ordinary citizen as well. The power of the covenant is all encompassing and embraces all generations – those that have gone before us, those that are currently present and those that will yet come after us. This is the key to understanding the Jewish story from the time of Moshe until today.

The Torah recognizes the nature of human beings. It knows that we all procrastinate and make rational excuses for our shortcomings. Therefore, the concept of the covenant is a necessary facet of all human existence and especially so for the Jewish people.

The covenant of the rainbow exists to remind us of the wonders of the natural world in which we are temporary guests. The covenant of history, of which the Jewish people is the primary example in the human story reminds us of the Creator’s involvement in human affairs, unseen but omnipresent.

The covenant is the great net which encloses us all, even those who somehow have convinced themselves that they swim freely in the waters of life. The binding, and many times, tragic effects of the covenant are part of the Torah readings of this week’s parsha and that of last week as well. The events that befell the Jewish people over the last century amply show that the dread engendered by the force of the covenant is justified and real. But the covenant has an optimistic and hopeful side to it, in its promise of redemption and restitution to greatness and tranquility.

We are a covenantal people. And though we each possess freedom of will, the terms of the covenant control our national destiny and our personal lives as well.

Israel – a mega-billion-dollar battle-tested laboratory for the US

by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Israel’s use of the F-35 benefits the US
A recent mega-billion-dollar increase in the export of Lockheed-Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft is due to overcoming a series of pivotal glitches. This was achieved by Lockheed-Martin, as well as by Israel’s air force and aerospace industries (especially the innovative Israel Aerospace Industries – IAI), known as the cost-effective and battle-tested laboratory of the US defense and aerospace industries and armed forces.

In June 2016, Israel became the first country to use the highly-computerized F-35 operationally. Israel soon became successful in solving initial glitches, that caused concern among prospective buyers.

The battle-tested Israeli laboratory – which communicates 24/7 with Lockheed-Martin (as it does with a litany of US defense contractors) - solved most of the operational and maintenance glitches by marshalling its intrinsic features, which have been the derivatives of the uniquely challenging and threatening Middle East environment: optimism, patriotism, defiance of odds, out-of-the-box thinking, risk-taking, do-or-die state of mind, can-do and frontier-pioneering mentality.

The scores of Israeli solutions to the F-35 glitches – in the area of data gathering and processing, electronic warfare and firing control accuracy - have been shared with the US manufacturer and the US Air Force, sustaining the F-35 superiority over its global competition; sparing Lockheed-Martin mega-billions of dollars in research and development; enhancing the manufacturer’s competitive edge; increasing exports by a few additional billions; and expanding the employment base of Lockheed-Martin and its multitude of subcontractors.

The critical upgrades in the current F-35 – achieved by the manufacturer and its Israeli battle-tested laboratory - have produced a combat aircraft, which is substantially superior to the original generation.

In fact, the enhanced performance of the F-35 demonstrates Israel’s role as an important source of US’ weaponry modernization, reduction of the unit cost, and expanding job creation in the US.

Similar mega-billion-dollar benefits to the US economy and defense have been generated by the hundreds of Israeli solutions and add-on, which have upgraded the performance of the technologically less-challenging F-16 (Lockheed-Martin) and F-15 (Boeing). In fact, all US manufacturers of military systems employed by Israel have benefited in a similar manner.

Moreover, some 250 commercial US high-tech giants (e.g., John Deere, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Texas Instruments, Intel, Nvidia, General Motors, Microsoft, AT&T, IBM, Dell, Google, Facebook, Intuit, etc.) have established research and development centers in Israel, leveraging Israel’s brain power and innovative spirit, in order to sustain their global lead, yielding a consequential increase in global sales.

Similarly, the US defense and aerospace industries established their own Israeli research and development centers through the hundreds of US military systems, which are employed - and systematically improved - by the Israel Defense Forces, yielding to the US consequential benefits to its economy and defense.

US-Israel mutually-beneficial two-way-street
*In 2023, the world features an ineffective NATO (No Action Talk Only?), vacillating Europe, turbulent Arab Street, intensifying anti-US Sunni and Shite Islamic terrorism, an imperialistic Iran with a solid strategic foothold in Central and South America, and a US attempt to minimize its military presence in the Middle East.

However, the Middle East is a major junction of world trade and energy resources - between the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf - the epicenter of anti-US Islamic terrorism, global drug trafficking and proliferation of ballistic and nuclear technologies, which constitutes a clear and present threat to the US national and homeland security.

Under such circumstances, Israel is the most reliable, battle-tested and cost-effective ally, and a potential beachhead of the US in the face of mutual threats (Iran’s Shite Ayatollahs and Sunni Islamic terrorism) and in the pursuit of mutual challenges (developing game-changing commercial and defense technologies).

*As stated by the late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who was Chief of US Naval Operations, and General Alexander Haig, who was a Supreme Commander of NATO and a US Secretary of State, Israel is the largest US aircraft carrier, which does not require a single US military personnel on board, cannot be sunk, deployed in a most critical area of the world, and sparing the US the need to manufacture, deploy and maintain a few more real aircraft carriers along with a few ground divisions, which would have cost the US $15bn-$20bn annually.

*Israel shares with the US more intelligence than shared with the US by all NATO countries combined (e.g., counter-terrorism, rival and enemy advanced weapon systems). According to General George Keagan, who was Head of US Air Force intelligence, the scope of Israeli intelligence gained by the US is equal to the output of five CIAs (the annual budget of one CIA is almost $15bn).

*Israel’s battle experience has been shared with the US, saving American lives by serving as a basis for the formulation of US air force and ground force battle tactics, enhancing military medicine, as well as training US soldiers in urban warfare and facing car bombs, suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

*In view of the aforementioned data, the annual $3.8bn extended to Israel (to purchase only US military systems) does not constitute “foreign aid.” It is an annual US investment in an immensely-grateful Israel, yielding to the US an annual Return-on-Investment (R-o-I) of a few hundred percent. It is the most productive and secure US investment, underlying the mutually-beneficial US-Israel two-way-street.

Igrot Hare’aya – Letters of Rav Kook: Involvement in Choice of Turkish Chief Rabbi

#163

Date and Place: 5 Tishrei 5769 (1908), Yafo

Recipient: Rav Yitzchak Isaac Halevi, author of Dorot Rishonim, an active rabbi in broad Jewish organizations. We have seen several of his correspondences with Rav Kook.

Body: I very, very much desire that the organization you head (The General Alliance for the Preservation of Matters of Torah and Mitzvot of German Jews) will not invest too much energy on the matter of the Chief Rabbinate (chacham bashi) throughout the Turkish Empire. I am concerned that “when you strive for too much, you do not achieve [anything].” For now, efforts should be directed to ensure that this position, vis a vis the authorities, in Jerusalem, will be in the hands of a G-d fearer. It would be worthwhile, to a lesser degree, to give a look at what is happening in other places.

It would be unwise if that involvement took the place of the main task – to raise the stature of Torah [in Eretz Yisrael] through good yeshivot, up-to-date, with the spirit of the time and the sanctity of truth; this will bring on the victory in the future, with Hashem’s help.

It certainly would have been good if we could have kept the Chief Rabbinate in the hands of Torah giants, but we see that this is impossible. For the Ashkenazi community, there is almost no difference [who is chosen] except for the negative consideration – that the position not be given to a member of the group of “destroyers.” The original lowering of the post already occurred – Torah brilliance is no longer a criterion for being chacham bashi. This has enabled other deteriorations. For now there is no one [of sufficient stature] to tell the government that the basis of the Chief Rabbinate is to solve the religious problems on matters that all the great rabbis of various countries are unclear about. The government realizes that this is already a non-issue. No one will sit on the seat of the rabbinate in Constantinople who is similar to Rav Eliyahu Mizrachi or Rav Bechor, author of the Diveri Emet, some of the chacham bashis of previous generations. It is now viewed as a governmental, administrative post for the needs of the citizens of that religion. How will we fight the matter?

Therefore, we must elevate the power of Torah to its highest so that in the future there will be great Torah scholars who are able to present themselves in the halls of the king. Then Hashem will be with us; we will be able to prepare a stake for our nation in His holy place.

“Remember What G-d Did to Miriam”

by HaRav Dov Begon
Rosh HaYeshiva, Machon Meir

“Remember what G-d did to Miriam on your way out of Egypt” (Devarim 24:9). Rashi comments, “If you would like to avoid being smitten with leprosy, speak no Lashon Hara [evil gossip]. Remember what was done to Miriam, who spoke about her brother and was smitten.”

Why must we recall precisely this event, the failure of Moshe’s sister, Miriam, considered to be the most important and pedigreed woman in Israel? The Torah was teaching us that even important people unfortunately are liable to speak Lashon Hara. As we see from Miriam, importance and greatness do not immunize one from Lashon Hara and its bitter consequences.

Another key principle derived from Miriam about guarding the tongue is this: The greatest amount of Lashon Hara is spoken within the family. Parents sometimes speak it about their children; children about their parents; siblings, aunts and uncles, as well as in-laws, each about one another - precisely the same way that Aharon and Miriam, from the most prestigious family in Israel, fell prey to Lashon Hara when Miriam spoke about Moshe. Therefore, the main effort to guard the tongue, an act that purifies the soul, has to take place within the home.

Today we are in the first days of the month of Elul - the month of Selichot - days in which man seeks to rectify his relationship with G-d and with his fellow man, a time of repentance and purifying the soul. During these days, our greatest effort at rectification must take place within the home - both the private and the national home.

At this time, every Jew must increase his good thoughts, which will lead to positive speech and good deeds. As far as our national home, our national leaders must be careful not to speak evil about one another. By such means, we will emerge meritorious on Rosh Hashanah and be sealed for a life of goodness and peace.

Looking forward to complete salvation,
With the Love of Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael,
Shabbat Shalom.

Yeshivat Machon Meir: The Mitzvot of the Parsha (video)

The Yishai Fleisher Israel Podcast: The War for Land and Repentance

SEASON 2023 EPISODE 33: Yishai and Malkah talk about the war - against the enemies of Israel who murdered a kindergarten teacher this week - and the battle for repentance in this month of Elul in preparation for Rosh Hashana. Famed activist Nadia Matar joins Yishai for Batsheva Nagari's funeral procession. Then: Rabbi Shimshon Nadel on army conscription for the ultra-Orthodox and Ben Bresky on the story of the Sultan's Pool in Jerusalem. Finally, Rav Mike Feuer joins Yishai to discuss the surprising laws of the Torah portion of Ki Teitze in the Biblical book of Devarim/

We love to speak of peace

by Rav Binny Freedman

He had such a beautiful face; I had seen him on the same street corner a couple of times, and each time I caught sight of him, he challenged me anew. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, with dark curls, olive skin, and the most beautiful brown eyes, twinkling above the wisp of a smile that hovered on his face. To me, he epitomized the challenge of the war we have been engaged in for the past sixty years and more, in the State of Israel.

It was the height of the Intifada, and we were in the midst of a months’ worth of reserve duty in Hebron, back in 1990 or 1991. It is so easy to demonize the ‘enemy’, and one almost needs to imagine the terrorists we were trying to root out as men with evil in their hearts and hatred on their minds, but life isn’t always quite so simple.

Deep in the heart of Hebron, above Kikar Gross (Gross Square, named after a yeshiva student, stabbed to death years earlier on that spot) was an Israeli lookout position, meant to spot trouble on the road below and protect Israeli civilians driving through.

Every day, round about the time kids from the local village got out of school, the lookout post came under heavy bombardment from the local kids as they came home from school. Rocks, bricks, bottles and metal bars would come sailing through the air up onto the rooftop, endangering and sometimes injuring the few Israeli soldiers manning the position. Unfortunately, every time they would call local patrols in to try & catch the perpetrators, they would be long gone by the time the troops arrived. And there simply weren’t enough men to station soldiers in all the alleyways below the lookout post for any extended period of time.

So one day, we decided to try a more innovative approach, in order to send a message to the local populace, and put an end to what was becoming a dangerous phenomenon.

The village where all this rock throwing was taking place was situated on the side of a hill and the rear end of the hilltop was actually a beautiful valley full of vineyards and rocky slopes, largely uninhabited. So we decided we would hike up the valley arriving at the top of the village late in the morning, when everyone was already in school, and wait for the rock throwing to begin. The assumption was no-one would be looking in that direction for troops to arrive, so we might catch some of the perpetrators off guard, and send a message to those instigating the violence.

As it turned out, our plan worked like a charm. By 12:15pm we were in place behind the stone wall of the vineyard, and the lookout was clued in to let us know as soon as any action started. Sure enough, at 1:00pm, the bottles and rocks started flying and we came out of cover, running down the hill at the direction, via radio, of the men on top of the lookout post. Suddenly, a frantic cry over the radio alerted us to the fact that one of men from the lookout post had spotted a masked terrorist (“Ra’ul Panim”), directing the violence from down an alley, out of range.

This was a serious matter; the men who wore those masks were usually members of the death squads that terrorized Arab and Israeli civilians alike, and apprehending one of them could save many lives.

I took off down the alley following the directions of the soldier on the rooftop, who had visual contact with the terrorist. Very quickly I was running on my own, as I was in my twenties, and all the men with me on that patrol were considerably older. (Most of them hadn’t seen the color of their socks in quite some time…!)

Coming around a corner, I suddenly spotted this fellow, mask and all, waving something akin to a medieval mace above his head with one hand, and holding a Palestinian flag (then illegal) with the other. When he turned and saw me, he dropped the flag and the ball-and-chain and took off down the street.

As I was running down the side of a hill, he was a couple of levels lower than me, and I could only see the top of his body as he ran, with all the speed of an Olympic runner. After a couple of minutes, I saw that he was headed into a maze of alleyways, and, realizing I was about to lose him, stopped running and aimed my rifle at his back yelling out “Stop!” (Or “Wakef” in Arabic.)

Technically speaking, in that situation, as he was a masked terrorist, once ordering him to stop I could fire in the air, then at his legs, and finally even risk killing him to stop his escape. I guess he realized this, because when he looked back and saw me aiming at him, he threw up his hands and stopped running. To this day, I thank G-d he stopped, because when I got close enough to pull off his mask, I discovered he was an eight-year-old boy.

And yet, amidst pride that in the Israeli army we go to such lengths to avoid loss of life, even to our enemies, one wonders where that boy, schooled in the tactics of terror at such an early age, is today. While I would do the same thing again, is it so simple to assume I was right? Did I allow an enemy of the Jewish people to live on, and can I be so sure the consequences of that action are acceptable? If he is today an enemy of the Jewish people, wasn’t he already our enemy then?

After waiting half an hour with this boy, a patrol finally came to pick us up, and we took him back to base in a jeep where his father came to pick him up and pay a very severe fine for his son’s infractions. And it was then, seeing that same little boy with the beautiful face and the beautiful brown eyes talking to what was clearly his close friend, the ‘masked terrorist’, that I realized we had no idea who our enemies really were.

We love to speak of peace, and dream of a time when “Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and will learn no more of war.” And we spend much time devoted to assessing how we can create opportunities for bridge building and dialogue, negotiation and common dreams.

This week’s portion, Ki Tetzeh, however, begins on a much less positive note.

“Ki Tetzeh Le’milchama Al Oye’vechah’….”
“ When (If?) you will go out to war against your enemies….” (Devarim 21:10)

There will come a time, suggests the Torah when you will wage war. And there are specific Mitzvoth (commandments) associated with such wars. And if the Torah shares with us a series of mitzvothassociated with battle, one can assume there will be such conflicts, because the Torah would not give us mitzvoth unless they were meant to be utilized.

Why the focus on war? And why here? What life lesson are we meant to glean from this challenging reality?

It is interesting to note that the verse here does not describe “waging” war, nor fighting, or encountering war, rather it speaks of “going out” to war. Is there some significant difference between fighting a war and “going out to war”?

The conclusion of this verse is:

“… U’Netano’ Hashem Elokecha’ Be’Yadecha’, Ve’Shavita Shivyo’.”
“And Hashem your G-d will give him (your enemy) into your hands, and you will capture his captives.”

And while the most obvious understanding of this verse, referring to the mitzvoth that follow, is ‘If when you go to war, G-d will make you victorious….’

But one could also understand this verse to mean (as do many of the Chassidic masters): If you will go to war, then G-d … will make you victorious, and you will capture captives’, in the form of a promise.

Which is challenging to say the least: why does going out to battle necessarily merit, much less guarantee victory?

If anything, one would have expected the verse to be read in precisely the reverse order:

‘If you will accept that it is really G-d who gives victory into your hands, THEN by all means, go out to war!’

And lastly, why does the verse need to add the seemingly moot point that we are going out to war “against our enemies”? Isn’t that rather obvious? Who else would we be fighting against if not our enemies? One certainly does not wage war against friends, (and in the event such a sad state of affairs does indeed transpire, it is merely evidence of the fact that the two parties were never really friends in the first place.), so why the redundancy in the verse?

Perhaps this is the key to this question, and particularly the reason we always read this portion in the month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashanah.

You see, in order to wage war, two conditions need to be in evidence: One needs to have enemies, and one needs to be able to identify them. If you don’t know who your enemies are, there is no point in going out to war, and if we weren’t aware of having any enemies, we wouldn’t feel the need to go to war.

This may well be precisely the challenge we face today: there seems to be some confusion as to whom our enemies are, and whether indeed we need to wage war against them. And while this is not the forum to enter into the specifics and the politics of this issue in the Middle East, certainly, this is a crucial piece of the puzzle we need to solve in Israel, (and in the world) today.

They say you don’t make peace with your friends; you have to be willing to make peace with your enemies, which is true. But you also can only make peace with an enemy who wants to make peace. Perhaps this is why no peace has ever been achieved in the history of conflict without a war first being won. Sometimes, until you are willing to win a war, you cannot begin the process of creating peace. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that ironically, it is often, in retrospect, the hesitation to fight a war, that actually prevents and impedes the pursuit of peace.

We so admire restraint (and correctly so) as a crucial ingredient to compromise and harmony. Yet imagine if the Allies had shown a little less restraint when Adolph Hitler took over Austria (the Anschluss), instead declaring war on Germany as early as 1935. How many tens of millions of lives might have been saved if America had not waited essentially until 1942, seven critical long years later, and instead decided to join forces with England against Germany as early as 1935?

Perhaps this is the question this week’s portion introduces. Indeed, this may be why the verse speaks of “going out” to war, because going to war in a sense requires us to step a little bit outside of the box we normally occupy.

It is good, in the end, that we live in a world of tremendous desire for peace. And it may well be that the fact that our willingness to wage war is outside of our normal ‘box’ is what guarantees that it will be a war waged in the way only a Nation striving to be an ethical light unto the world can hope to achieve.

And it is only if, in the unfortunate circumstance that we must wage war, we remember in that same moment how much we long for peace, and how far outside of our desired reality war really is, that we can be assured that G-d will find us worthy of victory in the long run. And of course, victory here is not only about vanquishing the enemy; it is as much about what we become in the process. And if the battleground becomes our reality, such that we do not need to ‘go out’, but rather find that war has become a part of us, then even if we win, we will have already lost.

And even more to the point is the question of who really wins the war, and for that matter wages it in the first place. Sometimes, we have to be willing to fight. But in the end, after having created a world with us in it, Hashem wants us to be partners with Him in the entire spectrum of life, and only if we are willing to fight, is Hashem willing to give us the victory, which was never in our control in the first place.

More than any other experience, war and the battlefield are almost calculated to determine whether we really believe that Hashem runs the world. No matter how skilled the commanders, and how thick the armor, any soldier worth his salt knows there are no rules on the field of battle. Bullets don’t know about statistics, and if your number is up, it’s up. To run up a hill under enemy fire, you almost have to believe that it has nothing to do with you, because if you really thought your survival depended only on what you did, it would be madness to run up any hill under fire.

Perhaps then, war is almost an opportunity to step outside the reality we are so immersed in, and encounter a degree of truth, which often eludes us. Perhaps this is why we read this portion in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the day when we re-discover the concept of Malchut, royalty, and the idea that it is really G-d who runs the world.

All of which leads us to one last point. Because before we can begin considering the implications of the struggle between the forces of evil and terrorism, and the world of Western and Jewish values, we first have to begin with ourselves.

Every one of us, in this month preceding Rosh Hashanah, has an opportunity to go to war. Not against the forces of evil we read about in the papers, but rather against the dark challenges that often lie behind the eyes that stare back at us in the mirror.

If we really want this year to be different, if we want who we are to be different, the question is how far we are really willing to step outside of the box each of us has created for ourselves.

Do we even recognize the ‘enemies’ that so often bring us down? Are we really willing to fight and to struggle to grow and change? Do we even have the courage and determination to take the field when the odds seem so stacked up against us? After all, we just contemplated this same ‘enemy’ army last year, and we seem to have gotten nowhere!

And yet, Hashem promises us that if we are willing to fight for our selves, for the better selves we can become, then Hashem will be our silent partner in making sure that we really do succeed in achieving victory against the greatest enemy who is also our greatest friend: ourselves.

May it be G-d’s will that this year, in becoming all we are meant to be, that we finally, as one people, discover the peace we have so longed for, both as a nation, and as individuals that we may be blessed to beat our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into pruning hooks, and know no more war.

Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Ari Kahn on Parashat Ki Teitzei: Amalek and Fearing God (video)

The Washington Post's 'Good' Terrorists

by Bassam Tawil

• The attacks by the Fatah-affiliated terrorists came days after The Washington Post published a story from Balata refugee camp, near Nablus, in which its correspondents romanticized members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, even documenting them as they visit their barber for a haircut.
• The "fighters" The Washington Post is referring to are the terrorists responsible for a series of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Jewish civilians and soldiers in the Nablus area and Israel over the past few months. Notably, these terrorists do not hide their involvement in the wave of attacks. In fact, they often boast of the attacks and post videos and posters documenting their role.
• What the newspaper fails to mention is that this terrorist [who "bought his M16 for $20,000 with the money he earned working in construction in Tel Aviv"] is one of tens of thousands of Palestinians who were granted permits (by Israel) to come and work in Israel as part of an effort to boost the Palestinian economy and improve the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank.
• The terrorist did not seek work in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories because he knew he would have earned much less.... The terrorist was able to save $20,000 from his work in Israel, but instead of using the money to build a new house or improve his living condition, we are told that he chose to establish "the Balata cell of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades."
• The correspondents are apparently impressed by the fact that another terorrist, Ammar, paid 20 shekels ($6) to buy them coffee. Ammar had been shot multiple times by Israeli soldiers while attempting to murder Jews near Nablus in April. He managed to escape, but two of his fellow gunmen were killed.
• The correspondents go on to claim, falsely, that "there are no sports teams" in Balata refugee camp.
• The truth is that the camp has a soccer club that was established in 1954. It is called the Balata Youth Center and states that it "aspires to be the main supporter of all sports, cultural, social, and scouting activities... It also aspires to have a special playground for all sports, such as football [soccer], basketball, handball, volleyball, table tennis, and other individual and group games." The local soccer team has even won several championships.
• The terrorists could have joined the soccer team, but preferred to form a terror group to attack Jews.
• Instead of highlighting that many of the terrorists are involved in intimidation and extortion of the local community, The Washington Post attempts to depict them as honest law-enforcers.
• "The [Balata] Camp has been hijacked by an armed group that is terrorizing and threatening to kill residents who dare to speak out," the Fatah Office of Information and Culture itself said back in 2015. It accused the gunmen of extorting money from wealthy businessmen from Nablus and running a big market for weapons and drugs.
• "[A] recent report by the Post provided what was essentially free advertising for a U.S.-designated terrorist group. Worse still, the Post's foray is part of an ongoing trend in Western news outlets being used by terrorist organizations to promote their propaganda." — Sean Durns, senior research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
• After the recent murder of the Jewish woman near Hebron, one might wonder whether The Washington Post is planning to send its correspondents back to spend time with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorists to hear, first-hand, how proud they are that they murdered an innocent kindergarten teacher in cold blood.
• How would the newspaper's readers have reacted had it sent its correspondents to spend time with Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists to hear their pride in having committed atrocities against American citizens?
• The Post piece leaves one with the distinct impression that there is such a thing as a good terrorist: one who targets Jews.

Days before Palestinian terrorists from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades murdered a 42-year-old Jewish mother of three who taught pre-school, The Washington Post published a story in which its correspondents romanticized members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Pictured: Gunmen from a number of terrorist groups, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Izaddin al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Quds Brigades, and Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, hold what they called a "joint press conference" in Jenin refugee camp on February 25, 2023. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)


On August 21, the Palestinian terror group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder of Batsheva Nigri, a 42-year-old Jewish mother of three who taught pre-school. The woman was gunned down by two terrorists near the West Bank city of Hebron.

Shortly after the attack, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority President -- and Fatah chairman -- Mahmoud Abbas, issued a statement in which it took credit for the attack. The group said it will continue to "adhere to the option of the rifle as a strategic choice." The "option of the rifle," as is evident, refers to terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians and soldiers.

Members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were later filmed handing out sweets to passersby in the Gaza Strip to celebrate the murder of the Jewish woman.

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An attack from Amalek before a historic influx of Divine light

by Rabbi Pinchas Winston

Friday Night
This past Shabbos during a shiur I give on Shabbos afternoons, I was explaining that there will always be an attack from Amalek before a historic influx of Divine light. Amalek attacked the Jewish people in Rephidim before the giving of Torah, and Haman attacked us in Persia right before the Purim miracle and Kabbalas HaTorah, Part 2 (Shabbos 88a). Some would argue that the Holocaust before the establishment of the modern state of Israel is also an example of this.

Why is this a historical imperative? Because every light needs a vessel to be noticeable in this world, and Divine light requires a humble one. Ego may be important for self-confidence, but too often it makes a person self-focused, spiritually blemishing them as a kli—vessel. This is why the Gemora says that Torah can only flow down from Heaven to a lowly vessel, that is, to a humble person (Eiruvin 54a). It’s the only way to assure that God’s light will remain undefiled from personal abuse.

Therefore, when the Torah reports that Moshe Rabbeinu was “the humblest person on the face of the earth” (Bamidbar 12:3), it wasn’t just being complimentary. It was telling us why he was chosen for the awesome task of transmitting the word of God to mankind. It is how we can know that what he gave over was what he received, and not just his personal version of it.

This is why the mitzvah to eradicate Amalek at the end of the parsha follows the mitzvah to keep legal weights when doing business. A “balanced” person knows what is important in life and what is not, and deals with every situation accordingly. Even when they are being subjective it is for an objective reason, meaning because the halachah has told them to be that way in that particular situation. The Gemora about the two people in the desert with one canteen of water is a perfect case in point (Bava Metzia 62a).

It is Amalekian to upset that balance and develop incorrect priorities. When someone puts their own personal priorities before God’s, they have become Amalekian on some level. That is dangerous because that invites an actual attack from some form of Amalek, by something that will help restore their humility…if that is, they are worthy of it.

Shabbos Day
MY EXPLANATION PROMPTED one of the men in the shiur to tell a story about someone he had met recently. He smiled as if he just had an important insight and said, “I didn’t understand it at first, but what you just said explains everything.” Then he told us the story.

He had just met someone who was not only a known talmid chacham, but he was even a Rosh Mesivta, one of the main rabbis of a yeshivah. But when he met the rav, he was working in a local grocery story stocking the shelves and bagging produce, seemingly very inappropriate for a man of his spiritual stature. Why was he there?

“Years back,” he told my friend, “they found a large tumor in my stomach. The doctors said it was very advanced and I didn’t have much time to live. I went to Rav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l, at the time, and he told me there was nothing he could do. The Heavenly decree was sealed. I went to Rav Shteinman, zt”l, and he said pretty much the same thing. Finally, I went to Rav Abuchatzira in Nahariah, and after being made to wait about a half hour, he told me that they only thing to do was to accept upon myself humiliation. So I took this job about four years ago and here I am, still alive and doing well, thank God.”

We fear humiliation. We make great efforts to avoid it. But we also fail to understand and appreciate its spiritual value. Kabbalistically, humiliation is one of the most effective ways to become spiritually cleansed, and that is crucial for a more profound relationship with God. You don’t have to go out of your way to be humiliated, though some have gone into self-imposed exiles to be so. You just have to know how to properly deal with a humiliating situation if and when it occurs.

The verse says, “But the humble shall inherit the land, and they shall delight in much peace” (Tehillim 37:11). The arrogant may build the land, but it will be the humble who will inherit it. Just as it happened to the people who built the Tower of Bavel, and who were subsequently exiled from their land in every direction.

And lest one thinks that their disgrace means that God disdains them, they have only to recall Dovid HaMelech who complained bitterly to God about the humiliation he constantly suffered (Bava Metzia 59a). Those who embarrassed him accomplished little in life and have been forgotten by history, or remembered for bad. Dovid HaMelech was the premier king of the Jewish people and ancestor of the final one, Moshiach Ben Dovid himself.

Shalosh Seudot
EVEN THE FIRST mitzvah of the parsha is connected to this idea. It is the halachah of the yafas toar, the gentile woman taken captive by a Jewish soldier for the sake of converting and marrying her. As the Gemora says regarding this particular mitzvah, the Torah is addressing a person’s yetzer hara with this halachah (Kiddushin 21b).

Long story short, the Torah says yes, but only on condition. The soldier can’t marry her right away, but must let her mourn her situation for a month and become physically unattractive. Only then, if the soldier still wants to, can he marry her. The hope was that after his yetzer hara had time to cool off from the disruptive conditions of war, he would return to his senses and end the relationship.

Not just return to his senses, but see the extent to which he had spiritually descended and hopefully regain his personal pride once again. Everyone is capable of spiritually lapsing from time to time. It is the spiritually strong person who recognizes this and course-corrects before a sin is committed.

The Gemora makes a similar point here:

Rav Elai HaZaken said: If a person sees that their yetzer hara is overcoming them, let him go to a place where they are not known and put on black garments…and do what their heart desires, so as to not profane the Name of Heaven publicly! (Chagigah 16a)

If you only learn the Gemora it sounds as if the Torah is telling a person how to sin with a limited amount of damage. If you read Tosfos, you learn that the Gemora is actually telling you how to get around the yetzer hara and not sin. Chazal knew, as does the Torah in this week’s parsha, that saying no flat-out to the yetzer hara is a recipe for disaster. So they instead gave advice how to say “no” in a roundabout way to undermine its power and save oneself from sin.

What is that advice? De-glorify the sin. Tosfos says that Chazal are saying that, rather than just capitulate to your yetzer hara, do it in a way you won’t be proud of. If you’re a decent person who tries to live a decent life, it should wake you up and give you the courage to force your yetzer hara to stand down. You should catch yourself and say, “Am I so desperate to commit this sin that I am prepared to go to a foreign place and dress in clothes of mourning just to do it?! I sure hope not!”

Melave Malkah
WE’RE EASILY FOOLED. Dovid HaMelech complained to God about the humiliation he was suffering at the hands of his detractors, but God could have answered him by saying, “Who do you think sent them? Who do you think put it into their heads to say to you what they did? I did.”

We can assume that Dovid HaMelech knew that and never forgot it. That’s what ain od Milvado means, that everything is from God no matter how much it looks as if it isn’t. Dovid was a prophet as well as a talmid chacham, so he could never have forgotten it. So why didn’t he just cut to the chase and ask God, “Why are You allowing them to do this to me? After all, as the Gemora says, no one lifts a finger or wags a tongue if it isn’t first decreed by You.”

Perhaps this is why Dovid HaMelech wrote, and we’re saying it twice a day now until Shemini Atzeres: “One [thing] I ask of God, that I seek…that I may dwell in the house of God all the days of my life…” (Tehillim 27:4). It’s the only safe place to be when it comes to ain od Milvado.

The outside world is extremely distracting, intellectually and especially emotionally, and “Amalek” uses that to his advantage and our disadvantage. How many times do we get into a situation with someone and forget that they are just God’s messenger when it comes to what they do for or against us? It’s just so hard, in the heat of a moment, to see the hand of God behind the hand of the person impacting our lives.

Unless a person does the work and prepares themself. Being real with ain od Milvado must be a daily project. If you only remind yourself once or twice a day of it, you’re doing well. But to be super real with the idea you have to practice it, and that means stepping back from every situation you find yourself in and trying to see God behind it. It has to become second nature if you’re going to be able to do it under pressure.

Rosh Hashanah is fast approaching. For two days, and really for the entire ten days of repentance, we have a chance to “dwell in the house of God,” if not physically then at least spiritually. Consider it to be a re-ed course in ain od Milvado, and you’ll probably never need to be humiliated again to bring you to this level.

Rabbi Pinchas Winston
Thirtysix.org

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