Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement. Now also a Blogger on the Times of Israel. Look for my column
Love Yehuda Lave
Walk-in all His ways and love Him" (Deuteronomy 10:12)
Parashat Eikev, which we read a few weeks ago is delivered rapid-fire from the mouth of Moshe to the ears of Israel. "And He will love you and bless you and multiply you"
(Deuteronomy 7:13) is just the beginning of the myriad blessings that Moshe assures Israel G-d will heap upon them if they but stick with G-d and follow His ways. The benefits that Israel will accrue, according to Moshe's description, are majestic, manifold, and life-giving.
Health, food on our tables, fruits in our orchard and grains in our fields: "You shall be blessed above all peoples: There will be no sterile male or barren female among you or among your livestock." (ibid 7:14) These blessings, enumerated in varying fashion, prove a recurring refrain all throughout our reading of Eikev . All that is required of Israel is to follow G-d's commandments and Moshe's instructions, and not to stray.
"And now, O Israel, what does HaShem, your G-d, demand of you? Only to fear HaShem, your G-d, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, and to worship HaShem, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of HaShem and His statutes, which I command you this day, for your good." (ibid 10:12) This is Moshe's short-hand list which he delivers to Israel toward the end of this week's reading. Succinct, if not necessarily simple.
Interspersed with the blessings that await Israel, should she adhere to G-d and Torah, Moshe presents the pitfalls that await Israel should she stray from the path set before her. With so clear cut and stark a choice set before them, between peace, prosperity, loving family and community, and endless conflict, poverty, and the breakdown of family and society, should Israel abandon G-d's way, what on earth could possibly cause Israel to go astray? Why, the good life itself:
"Beware that you do not forget HaShem, your G-d, by not keeping His commandments, His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command you this day, lest you eat and be sated, and build good houses and dwell therein, and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold increase, and all that you have increases, and your heart grows haughty, and you forget HaShem, your G-d, Who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." (ibid 8:11-14)
The blessings that G-d blesses us with can themselves become a snare if we allow our haughtiness to get the best of us. "Do not say to yourself, when HaShem, your G-d, has repelled them from before you, saying, "Because of my righteousness, HaShem has brought me to possess this land." (ibid 9:4)
Humility and constant awareness of G-d presence and benevolence are the antidotes to the all too human pride which has the uncanny ability to turn a blessing into a curse.
"And it will be, because you will heed these ordinances and keep them and perform, that Hashem, your G-d, will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers." (ibid 7:12) The Hebrew word ekev , which is translated above as "because" literally means "heel." (Think of Jacob - Yaakov - who earned his name because he grasped his brother's heel .) Our sages understand this curiosity in the following manner: "Treat all of G-d's commandments with equal respect and gravity. What might seem to us a 'light' or 'insignificant' commandment, one that we might tend to tread underfoot, or under our heel, is every bit as weighty and significant in G-d's eyes, as is what we deem the loftiest and most important of Torah's commandments." In other words, all commandments are created equal. Each of the 613 commandments received at Sinai must be kept with equal diligence. This is truly the winning formula and recipe for avoiding the calamitous pitfall of pride and haughtiness.
But there is a flip side to this understanding of G-d's appraisal of His commandments as being all of equal stature. Our heels are the lowest part of our body. It is our heels which hit the ground first when walking. Clearly our heels, despite their "lowly" status, have an essential role to perform in the overall maintenance of our physical well-being. We can take our metaphor one significant step farther: If G-d regards every commandment as requiring equal diligence in their observance, just as every fiber of our physical being requires equal concern for its healthy maintenance, so too, every one of us, from the greatest to the smallest, the highest to the lowest, the deepest to the simplest, are equal in G-d's eyes.
While faith is beautiful, I don't believe that you can obtain immediate Divine salvation by barbequing outside the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron on Lag BaOmer, or that a neo-Kabbalist can guess your problems and offer wise, instant solutions after hearing your voice for 30 seconds over the telephone. Amulets and Kabbalistic incantations are not the mainstream routes to living a life of faith.
Religion, stems from the most sophisticated and complicated thinking. It probes the most difficult quandaries of human existence, metaphysical presence and purpose, identity, and spiritual makeup. It seeks to bridge ancient devotions with contemporary sensibilities. It seeks to embrace both the particularistic and humanistic aspects of nationality. It aims to authenticate and guide our creativity and drive for success in all fields of human endeavor. It is more relevant and needed than ever in the modern age.
Also, one must never forget that the other thing that G-d grants us is common sense. While all mitzvahs are important in G-d's eyes and we must not forget the seemingly minor mitzvahs, one must not forget the common sense G-d gives us.
This complex approach to religious thinking was also taught by Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, (19933-2015 ) who was dean of the multi-faceted and magnificent Har Etzion hesder yeshiva in Gush Etzion. Since moving to Israel from America more than forty years ago, Rabbi Lichtenstein taught the highest-level Talmud, halacha, and philosophy to his tens of thousands of students. He did so while simultaneously validating their service in the IDF as a religious obligation and their subsequent pursuits of university education as a natural outgrowth of their religious personalities. Himself a former professor of English literature, he taught that intellectual openness is a hallmark of true Orthodoxy, alongside single-minded devotion to Torah study and adherence to halachic boundaries and values.
Rabbi Lichtenstein taught that critical thinking and humanism characterize the Oved Hashem (the worshipper of G-d), not slavish and blind devotion to self-proclaimed prophets and closed-minded soothsayers. He has taught that full involvement in Israeli society and a passion for social justice are key religious obligations, not the isolationism and jingoism that characterize too much of communities today.
This is the source of G-d's high expectations from all of us, and this is the source of G-d's blessings which He bestows equally upon each and every one of us who "walk in all His ways and love Him, and worship HaShem," our G-d, with all our hearts and all our soul!
So as Rav Lichtenstein taught us, as important as each and every commandment is, don't forget to hear your daughter crying in the other room as you are studying!
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Worst Israel Economic news every because of the Lock-down
From Times of Israel : Surpassing the most dire economic forecasts on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, Israel's gross domestic product plunged by 28.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020, as compared to the first quarter, in the worst economic downturn in over 40 years, according to an official estimate Sunday.
The projections by the Central Bureau of Statistics, which will likely be slightly adjusted over time, came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the government would inject billions more into the economy to create jobs and bail out hotels.
The CBS figures also indicated that Israeli GDP slid by 7.8% compared to the second quarter of 2019. Private consumption shrunk by over 43%, due to the lockdown measures imposed throughout March and April, and imports dipped by over 41% as a result of the virus, the CBS said.
The recession marks the steepest contraction of Israel's economy since at least 1975, and possibly ever, Hebrew-language media reports said. CLICK on here to read more.
One in five self-employed workers in Israel are out of work and 65 percent suffered a loss of income due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey published Thursday by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank.
The figures also showed that, as of June, 13.5% of salaried employees — some 550,000 people — were unemployed as a direct result of the pandemic.
Overall, lower income households have been most widely affected, with over half reporting a loss of income since the onset of the economic crisis caused by the virus. CLICK on here to read more.
Were immigrant surnames really changed by Ellis Island officers?
There is an old joke about Ole Olson's Chinese Laundry. A fellow sees the sign and takes his laundry in. As he hands it over, he says to the Chinese man behind the counter, "Who is Ole Olson?" The Chinese man says, "I am Ole Olsen." He asks, "How did you get that name?" The Chinese man says, "When I came to this country, there was a big Swede standing in line in front of me. The immigration officer said, "What is your name?" and he said "Ole Olson", so the officer wrote that down. Then he asked me, "What is your name?" and I said in my broken English, "Sam Ting". So he wrote down "Ole Olson" again and that's been my name ever since
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End of an era: Jerusalem to remove all remaining public phones "The removal of public telephones is another part of the plan to improve the city's surface. Unmaintained telephones have become a nuisance that has no real need," said Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion. By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
AUGUST 5, 2020 03:23
Public Telephone
(photo credit: ELIYAHU HERSHKOVITZ)
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In the '60s, '70s and '80s, children would not move out of the house without a token tied to one of the laces of their sneaker – in case of emergency where they would have to call their parents from a pay phone. In the '90s, the kids were already progressing to a calling card, a telecard, and by the time the cellphones arrived, they tragically left all the public phones out-of-use.
Except for the people who don't have cellphones, yet.
The late Teddy Kollek, legendary mayor of Jerusalem, talks on a public phone. (Photo credit: Nati Harnik / GPO)In 2020 in Jerusalem , it seems to be the end of the era of public telephones. The municipality intends to remove the 360 public phones that still remain in the city. The removal of the public phones, which are currently considered as a nuisance in the public space, will begin in the coming days, Kol Ha'ir reported .The Jerusalem Municipality recently announced that "following a meeting together with the Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion and Bezeq CEO Dudu Mizrahi, they decided that all public phones in the city will be removed immediately. In the coming days, the municipality will begin removing them from the public space."Lion declared "The removal of public telephones is another part of the plan to improve the city's surface. Unmaintained telephones have become a nuisance that has no real need. This is the end of an era."
"Mostly Peaceful Protests," they say,
The violence is inconsistent with the media's repeated false claims that the Black Lives Matter riots have been "peaceful", "mostly peaceful", "largely peaceful" or any other weasel words and modifiers.
By Daniel Greenfield, FPM
49 Chicago police officers were injured by rocks, pipes, and fireworks while trying to defend the statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park. Despite their valiant defense of the man who discovered America, Mayor Lori Lightfoot sided with the BLM mob and had the statue removed anyway.
3 law enforcement personnel with the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service may face permanent eye injuries after having lasers shined in their eyes by Black Lives Matter rioters.
12 police officers were injured in Seattle by attackers throwing rocks, bottles, and fireworks.
These are some of the injuries suffered by large forces in a matter of days. By early June, I had tracked the cases of over 400 injured law enforcement officers in under two weeks of BLM riots. A month later, there are too many cases and too little reporting to even begin assembling any kind of complete picture.
A week after I compiled my list, over 350 NYPD officers had been listed as injured in the BLM riots. By the middle of June, 75 law enforcement officers had been injured in the Denver Black Lives Matter riots.
Rifles, explosives, lasers, power tools, and firebombs are routinely used at the mostly peaceful protests.
Law enforcement officers have come away from what the media continues to falsely describe as "mostly peaceful protests" with fractured skulls, eye and ear injuries, and broken bones. Officers have been hit with bricks, baseball bats, and broken bottles. They've been shot, stabbed, and run over by vehicles.
The full total is not in the hundreds: it's in the thousands. That's a war zone.
And that's just the law enforcement officers. No count has been kept of the civilians assaulted by the rioters. No one has assembled a list of store owners beaten and robbed by Black Lives Matter rioters.
Rough estimates place the scale of damage in the billions of dollars. Walgreens alone suffered $75 million in looting damage. Minnesota estimated damage to 1,500 businesses totaling $500 million.
This is wildly inconsistent with the media's repeated false claims that the Black Lives Matter riots have been "peaceful", "mostly peaceful", "largely peaceful" or any other weasel words and modifiers.
Protests that injure thousands of police officers and cause billions in damage are not mostly peaceful.
They are mostly violent.
Carnage on this scale is not an accident or the work of a handful of unrelated people, as the media continues to falsely insist. When riots wound thousands and cost billions, the violence is not the aberration, it defines what the protests are and what they are intended to accomplish.
When marchers at a peaceful protest bring along crowbars, fireworks, and baseball bats, it's not a peaceful protest. A genuinely peaceful protest would not allow marchers to bring weapons.
"The violence and pain and hurt that's experienced on a daily basis by black folks at the hands of a repressive system should also be visited upon, to a degree, to those who think that they can just retreat to white affluence," is not what a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest organizer sounds like.
The calls for violence and the acts of violence that define Black Lives Matter are not peaceful.
If Black Lives Matter were a peaceful organization, it would not draw its inspiration from Assata Shakur, who is wanted for murder by the FBI, and was the first woman on the Most Wanted Terrorist List.
Nationwide riots by a group that draws its inspiration from a domestic terrorist are not peaceful.
The media has covered this up by making a mockery of cause and effect and offering ridiculous euphemisms for violence that explain how mostly peaceful protests have ravaged entire cities.
"Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified," ABC News offered. According to the media, when a peaceful demonstration "intensifies", buildings start burning and police officers are assaulted.
But if violence is the result of a peaceful protest "intensifying" then it's not a peaceful protest. Intensifying a thing brings out its true nature, rather than transforming it into something it's not.
"Boston's Peaceful Protests Turn Violent at Night," a Voice of America headline claims.
Are Black Lives Matter protests werewolves who turn violent when they see the full moon? Does the night have some magical power that turns formerly peaceful protests into violent assaults?
"What changes a protest from peaceful to violent? Aggressive law enforcement," CNN falsely claims.
If a protest is inherently peaceful, aggressive law enforcement won't change that. Reopen protests by conservatives faced aggressive enforcement without resulting in rioting and looting.
Some of the worst Black Lives Matter riots have taken place in progressive cities like Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle, under the watch of lefty politicians and black police bosses. If aggressive policing led to violent riots, the worst rioting should be in the least progressive cities, while progressive cities should be experiencing the least violent protests. Instead it's the other way around.
The violence of the riots correlates with the left-wing politics of the elected officials in charge.
Cities with the most left-of-center politicians are likely to experience the worst riots. It's not aggressive law enforcement that causes violent riots, but the lack of decisive intervention against the rioters.
The media has tried to blame the police and the time of day for the riots, instead of the rioters.
A peaceful protest is not defined by the absence of violence, but by the presence of peaceful intent. The repeated false claims that the protests are peaceful completely distort the basic meaning of the word.
The media continually claims that every riot is really a peaceful protest that unexpectedly turned violent. But a peaceful protest wouldn't turn violent. Only violent protests turn violent. A peaceful protest aims at peaceful change. A violent protest begins with hateful rhetoric and ends with violence.
A Neo-Nazi rally doesn't turn violent. A Communist march doesn't turn violent. Black Lives Matter was founded by self-described Marxists. The movement is interlaced with ties to the Nation of Islam. The rhetoric of its marches is violent, punctuated with obscenities, false claims of genocide, and racist taunts aimed at white people. These are not the components of a peaceful, but of a violent racist movement.
Black Lives Matter marches are mostly peaceful in the way that KKK marches were mostly peaceful.
Violent movements are not violent all the time. Not even the most violent fanatic is always violent.
The false claim of "mostly peaceful protests" rests on that strawman. But Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer were mostly not killing people. That didn't make them mostly peaceful. A murderer can spend 99.0% of his time not killing people, only to be deemed evil for the 0.1% of the time during which he happens to be killing people. Mostly not killing people isn't peaceful.
Rioting, burning, looting and throwing explosives only at night or on the weekend is not peaceful.
Racial nationalist groups, whether it's the KKK or BLM, have a First Amendment right to protest. They have a right to threaten violence in the abstract, to brandish weapons, and to otherwise engage in posturing. But once that posturing turns into real violence, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
And they certainly don't deserve the benefit of the doubt when their hate rallies repeatedly degenerate into violence in cities across the country leading to thousands of injuries and billions of dollars in losses.
The only people who think otherwise are their political allies among Democrats and the media.
Their mostly peaceful protests have devastated cities and they mostly won't stop lying about them.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine .
Anti-Americanism: The New Anti-Semitism By Dennis Prager
What are the two most hated countries in the world?
America and Israel.
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Who hates both America and Israel?
The left (and Islamists).
And why is that? Why does the left (not liberals, the left ) hate America and Israel?
In "Why the Jews; The Reason for Antisemitism," a book I co-authored with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in 1983 (the latest edition was published in 2016), we compared hatred of America with hatred of Jews.
This is what we wrote. It precisely explains what is happening in America today.
"Perhaps the best way to understand the admiration and resentment elicited by the quality of Jewish life is to compare the reactions of the world to America's quality of life. No other country has so many people seeking to move there. At the same time, no country, with the exception of Israel, is the target of so many hateful and false attacks.
"The United States, because of its success and its ideals, challenges many people throughout the world. How did America, a nation composed largely of those rejected by other societies ('The wretched refuse of your teeming shore' declare the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty), become the most affluent, freest, most powerful, and most influential society in the world? Americans generally attribute this success to the values of America's founding generations (such as individual liberty, religious tolerance, Judeo-Christian morality, and secular government), to a work ethic, and to the subsequent waves of immigrants who embraced these values. Enemies of America attribute it to the country's natural resources, just as many people attribute Jewish success to their natural resource, alleged greater innate intelligence. Others claim that through capitalist exploitation, America cheated poorer countries, paralleling charges that Jewish success has been attained through economic 'bloodsucking.' Still others develop an imperialist version of America's past and present, similar to the anti-Jewish charge of a world Jewish conspiracy.
"But the United States is hardly the only society with great natural resources, and it has been the least imperialistic of the world's powers. America's values, not unfair resource distribution or world exploitation, have made the United States better, just as Judaism and its values, not genetic advantage or economic conspiracies, account for the quality of life led by Jews. The two people's quality of life has provoked similar reactions — many admire them, and many resent them."
Just like the Jews, America is hated because it is successful. For over a century, it has been the most successful country in the world — in virtually every way. If having had slavery was a real issue in the left's anti-Americanism, the left would hate the Arab world and Latin American countries such as Brazil more than it hates the United States. While The New York Times and other left-wing institutions are preoccupied with slavery in America, they ignore — out of ideological nonconcern or out of sheer ignorance — the vastly larger number of Africans enslaved by Muslim and South American nations.
Of the more than 12 million African slaves shipped to the Western Hemisphere, only about 3% — between 306,000 and 380,000 — were sent to the United States. The other 97% were sent to the Caribbean and Brazil. And the slaves in the U.S. South lived longer and made larger families than the slaves of Latin America. Yet, the U.S. is singled out for hatred. Why? Because the left doesn't resent Brazil. Brazil is not an object of envy.
Likewise, there is no left-wing hatred of the Arab world, which enslaved far more blacks than the North and South Americas combined did. The internationally recognized expert on African history, Senegalese anthropologist Tidiane N'Diaye, wrote: "Most people still have the so-called Transatlantic (slave) trade by Europeans into the New World in mind. But in reality the Arab-Muslim slavery was much greater. … The Arab Muslims were the most murderous of all those involved in the slave trade." Part of that murderous treatment of African slaves involved castrating the males so they could not reproduce. And the women and girls were traded as sex slaves.
Where is the leftist anger at the Arab and Muslim world? There is, of course, none. On the contrary, the left protects the Muslim and Arab world against moral criticism.
The left hates America for its success and influence on the world, just as anti-Semites hated Jews for their success and influence on the world.
The left doesn't hate America because it is bad. It hates America because it is good. If the left hated evil, it would love America and hate its enemies.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz passes away at age 83 Israel Prize laureate, known for his translation of the Talmud, dies following hospitalization.
As we grieve the loss of a giant in the Jewish world, ask you all to read his favorite Psalm 139.
Attention Shoppers Moishe and Miriam are shopping in their local grocery store. Moishe picks up a carton of fresh baked cookies and puts it in their cart.
"What do you think you're doing?" asks Miriam.
"They're on sale, only $8 for 24 cookies," Moishe replies.
"Put them back, we can't afford them," Miriam demands. Moishe complies and they carry on shopping.
A few aisles later, Miriam picks up a $16 jar of face cream and puts it in the basket.
"What do you think you're doing?" asks Moishe.
"It's my face cream. It makes me look beautiful," replies Miriam.
Moishe snorts: "'So does a carton of 24 cookies, and it's only half the price."
On the PA system: "'Cleanup on aisle 25. We have a husband down."
The Democrat Party is Getting Rid of the Jews By Daniel Greenfield
The Democrat primaries are sweeping around the nation and leaving behind fewer Jewish Democrats in public office and more antisemitic radicals sitting in the House of Representatives.
Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib both survived challenges from better qualified African-Americans because they enjoyed the backing of the Democrat establishment.
Despite her antisemitic rhetoric, a habit that Omar continued during the primary, she got the endorsement of Speaker Pelosi. The top elected Democrat official also endorsed Tlaib.
After Omar's first round of antisemitic remarks, Senator Kamala Harris defended the racist politician against her Jewish critics by warning "that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk."
Omar's antisemitism wasn't threatening Jews, but Jewish protests were threatening the bigot.
Then Harris insisted that, "there is a difference between criticism of policy… and anti-Semitism."
The California politician didn't bother to explain how Omar's antisemitic tropes were mere policy.
Senator Harris has since been picked as Biden's running mate. If Biden wins, a politician who defended Omar's antisemitism will almost certainly become the next president of this country.
While Harris has been depicted as a moderate, her chief of staff, Karine Jean-Pierre, was the national spokeswoman and senior adviser for MoveOn. The radical group has a long history of trafficking in antisemism and attacking the Jewish State. It even opposed Senator Schumer because, in its own words, "our country doesn't need another Joe Lieberman."
Jean-Pierre had accused Israel of "war crimes" and denounced AIPAC as "Islamophobic" for opposing the murder of Jews, urging Democrats to avoid the pro-Israel convention.
The myth that the radicals of the squad were insurgent "giant-slayers" who were taking on the Democrat establishment was branding. The reality is that the radicals are backed by a radical establishment which is cheerfully shedding older Dems with more traditional constituencies.
That includes Jews.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the squad leader who supported Omar's pro-BDS resolution, has a speaking slot at the Democrat convention. A letter on her site , signed by the congresswoman, accuses Israel of becoming an apartheid state and threatens to cut off aid.
Rep. Cortez's email in support of the move touted the backing of BDS groups and extremist organizations linked to terrorist groups like the PFLP and Hamas. These groups include American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman, Hatem Bazian was the architect of the harassment of Jews on college campuses as the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine.
When Israel resisted a Hamas invasion from Gaza, Rep. Cortez accused Israel of a "massacre".
Jewish Democrats can't keep on pretending that these views are marginal when they occupy a speaking role at their convention between John Kerry and Bill Clinton.
All this matters a whole lot more than the policy theater over the Democrat platform.
What's at stake for Jewish Democrats is not just policy: it's representation.
The number of Protestants and Jews has been dropping in Congress, an inevitable consequence of secularization and diversity. The DNC's parade of speeches will open with Senator Bernie Sanders, an atheist with a Brooklyn accent who isn't part of a Jewish community. And he's the prototype for the new type of "Jewish" Democrat.
Jewish House Democrats who represented Jewish constituencies are losing their seats.
The 117th Congress will have only two Jewish House Democrats from New York after Rep. Elliot Engel was defeated and Rep. Nita Lowey was replaced by minority radicals backed by Sanders and Cortez. New Jersey's lone Jewish congressman survived an assault by a Cortez/Sanders backed radical.
How is it possible that the largest Jewish population in the country has so few Jewish House members? Democrats have strategically gerrymandered New York City to deny representation to Jewish areas by rolling them into minority areas where only the radicals can win.
Jewish Democrats used to hold public office because they were elected by Jewish voters. That's no longer true in New York. It's still true in Florida and a few other states. But not for long.
The new "Jewish" Democrat is a radical activist who has no ties to the Jewish community. He or she may not even be Jewish. Rep. Cortez has claimed that she has Jewish roots because "to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of: African Moors & slaves, Taino Indians, Spanish colonizers, Jewish refugees, and likely others." Then who needs actual Jews anyway?
The radical hijackers of the Democrats have been playing this game for a while.
"I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office," Obama had insisted.
As Senator Kamala Harris hits the campaign trail, look for her to tout her Jewish husband, and to endlessly retell the same story about her mother-in-law. Politics is built on lame ethnic pandering, but these tired routines are obscuring something much more deeply disturbing.
Obama and Harris both signed off on Iran's nuclear program and the flow of money to terrorists. And they've covered that disturbing fact over with happy talk about all their Jewish friends.
Obama's policies led to the murder of Jews. He loved Jews so much he couldn't stop killing them.
Senator Cory Booker thrilled Jewish Democrats with his ability to recite a few Hebrew phrases, and then worked hard to protect black nationalist terrorists who murdered Jews in his state.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez claims to be Jewish because she's Puerto Rican while coordinating with the allies of the terrorists who are killing Jews.
Meanwhile, Jewish voters are increasingly not being represented at a communal level.
Some of the largest traditional Jewish communities in the country are being represented by radicals like Rep. Yvette Clarke, Rep. Karen Bass, or Rep. Nydia Velasquez who are overtly hostile to Israel, and uninterested in actually representing Jews in their gerrymandered districts.
The relationship between Jewish communities and elected officials is being broken. And that has implications well beyond Israel, BDS, or Iran. It means that Jews are no longer a Democrat constituency. That's a reality that is quietly sinking in for many Jewish Democrat professionals, especially after the purge of Rep. Elliot Engel by a radical backed not only by AOC, but Obama.
According to Jamaal Bowman, Obama decided to endorse him after reading his response to a liberal Jewish clergyman rejecting his call to fight BDS and bashing Israel's military.
Most Jewish Democrat voters are steadily refusing to pay attention to this phenomenon.
And yet there's only so many rants about Trump, so many furious New York Times and Washington Post op-eds to be scrolled through at the breakfast table that can keep the ugly reality of what a radicalized Democrat Party means for Jewish communities at bay.
It's not just that the Democrats are turning against Israel, they're turning against Jews.
Not Jews in the abstract sense. Democrat politicians can, like Senator Cory Booker, keep a Hebrew copy of the Bible in their office, they can, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, claim Jewish roots, or, like Barack Obama, claim to be Jewish in some vague sense of values.
None of this has anything to do with actual Jews, their interests, communities, and lives, but it does a wonderful job of flattering the insecure neurosis that makes some Jews lean leftward.
Obama had won by reducing America to a set of leftist values. He did the same thing to Jews. But when you reduce people to your own abstractions and slogans, you're appropriating them. Marxists worshiped the working class as an abstraction and terrorized the actual working class. Because they claimed to stand for "the people", they never had to pay attention to real people.
The appropriation of the Jews transforms a people into a set of leftist slogans. And then Democrats from Barack Obama to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are free to support policies that lead to the murder of actual Jews in the name of their leftist abstractions of Jewish values.
The American political system doesn't recognize constituencies as abstractions, but as people. The Democrats are building a new one-party state in which elections are irrelevant and primaries exist to broker arrangements between intersectional non-profits funded by billionaires. Actual Jewish communities are an annoying inconvenience in this Marxist political system.
Democrats with Jewish last names will still exist, they just won't represent anyone except the roster of non-profits like Bend the Arc, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice or If Not Now, that are not only actively working to get Jews killed, but that don't represent anyone except George Soros or Buffett's son. And attacking Soros for his radical extremism is the only thing that Democrats will even recognize as antisemitism anymore.
The pattern ought to be a familiar one from how leftist regimes dealt with Jewish populations.
There's not much of a future for Jewish communities in this model. The cities and suburbs where Jews live are under siege in the name of social justice. Jewish communities are simultaneously losing their representation within the Democrats in the name of social justice.
Jewish Democrats who imagine that Israel is the problem are about to learn they're the problem.
The problem, as in the USSR, is that many Jewish communities are bourgeois enclaves filled with middle class professionals, two-parent families who raise their children to succeed, go to a good college, get an even better job, get married, and raise their own children in a suburb with safe streets, challenging schools, and the rest of what used to be the American Dream.
Like most suburbanites, they aren't actually radical. They just stupidly enable the radicals. And the radicals, once they take power, are not going to tolerate them. They're going to get rid of them. It's already happening. And, unlike the 70s, there won't be any suburbs to run away to.
A decade ago there were six Jewish House Democrats out of New York. Now there are two.
What happened in the short span of a decade is that the radical future of the Democrats arrived. And there's no room in that radical new world that the Democrats are building for the Jews.
See you tomorrow bli neder
Love Yehuda Lave
