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The Mishnah in N’darim (9:10) records Rabbi Yishmael as declaring, “All daughters of Israel are beautiful. Unfortunately, however, sometimes poverty robs them of their beauty.” That mishnah ends by noting that when Rabbi Yishmael died, the daughters of Israel held a special eulogy for him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.