News

This is too rich. The party of the donkey makes a donkey out of itself in the immediate days following the reading of the story of Bilaam’s talking donkey. In last week’s column (“The Pierced Ear”), I referred to Bilaam to depict how his disciples talk the same language as Avraham Avinu but whose meanings are totally opposite. Their talk of peace means our destruction. Their condemnation of racism means hatred of Whites and Jews. Their talk of liberty is suppression of all other thinking.

Like most of you, I came home from shul on Motza’ei Shabbos to learn the insane news that Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania. It turns out that he missed taking a bullet directly to the head by a “silly millimeter.” The bullet went straight through his outer ear. His bloodied face with fist pumped in the air as the American Flag loomed behind him is already an iconic picture.

The Israeli Supreme Court decision last week declaring that yeshivah students may no longer be exempt from serving in the IDF predictably caused a major uproar in the chareidi world. It is interesting that suddenly the chareidim are correctly outspoken about the Israeli Supreme Court being inherently corrupt as it self-appoints its colleagues of the same political persuasion. The Supreme Court also asserts itself into areas that should be totally out of their purview, such as security decisions and religion. I don’t recall chareidim joining the fight against Judicial Reform last year.

It was a remarkable display of basic inhumanity on every level. An Israeli El Al passenger plane en route to Israel from Warsaw needed to make an emergency landing due to a sick passenger on board. The closest airport available to land under these conditions was in Istanbul, Turkey. This airport had been a regular stop for many Jewish passengers looking for a usually cheaper and more elegant way to fly to Israel. The airport itself is said to be a sprawling, beautiful mecca of (non-kosher) fine dining and shopping. Many people that I know, including friends and family, would fly with Turkish Air despite its stopover in Istanbul, due to its cheaper rates and stunning airport.

I was recently sent an Instagram under the name Carlasesenco, in which a young Jewish woman with watery red eyes pitifully expresses how abandoned she feels as a Progressive Jew, which had been her world. As she states. “It is an incredibly sad and confusing time” for Progressive Jews.

I would often half-jokingly tell my children that it’s good that Hashem made me a Jew, or I would have been the worst anti-Semite around. I also told them it’s good Hashem made me a rabbi, or I would have been a horrible rabbi critic.