You may recall that, a while ago, I declared that I could no longer bring myself to vote for Donald Trump, since he invited two anti-Semites, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, to his house in Mar-a-Lago. Unapologetically hosting these two hate-filled people was too much to bear, even for a pretty ardent Trump supporter.

This past Friday, Erev Shabbos, was also Rosh Chodesh Iyar. The Mishnah B’rurah (493:5) states clearly that even for those who practice the mourning customs of S’firah starting from the beginning of S’firah (second day of Pesach), they may nonetheless get haircuts and even get married on that day due to the confluence of Rosh Chodesh and the oncoming Shabbos.

In a few weeks’ time, we will be reading Parshas Korach, which of course relates the story of the rebellion of Korach and his followers against the leadership of Moshe Rabbeinu. Remarkably, Korach opens his salvo of accusations with “For the entire assembly – all of them – are holy and Hashem is among them; why do you exalt yourselves over the congregation of Hashem?” (BaMidbar 16:3)