News

A couple of Benjamins have been making the news lately. We all know that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar made her infamous statement referring to Jewish influence in Congress that “It’s the Benjamins baby!” – meaning that Jews are into money as represented by Benjamin Franklin, who is depicted on the $100 bill.

My uncle, British Chief Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits zt”l (died 1999), was a man who thought and spoke the truth as he saw it. That was his greatness, which earned him the admiration and friendship of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It also earned him the enmity of some British Jews, especially those who refused to allow him to explain his stand on controversial issues.

What would Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), have said had he lived to see Israel today? What would he have said about the left-leaning secular Israelis, whose cause he championed at the creation of the State?

I could really title this article as “Ditto.” What I would really like to write about is the great schism in Israel, supposedly about Judicial Reform but really about reforming Judaism. I also felt it important to point to the fact that the silence coming from our Orthodox organizations, as they watch Orthodox Judaism under attack in Israel, is more than deafening. It’s pathetic. All the non-Orthodox in this country speak loud and clear while we are afraid to whisper.

Anybody who reads my articles with any regularity knows that a regular, perhaps too frequent, theme of mine has been the drifting of Modern Orthodoxy. By drifting, I mean that as time goes on, this community finds it harder to pass on a meaningful, religiously inspired message to the next generation. None of the iconic MO teachings such as Religious Zionism, Yom HaShoah, or Torah Umada (as an idealistic pursuit) are practiced by young Orthodox Jews. Respect for Shabbos and its dress codes has also dwindled in today’s generation.

You may have seen a clip of a young Orthodox lady named Chaya Raichik confronting ultra-liberal Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) in Congress. Raichik is the founder of the Twitter account “Libs of Tik Tok,” which monitors leftist lies and insanity on social media.