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Jewish Journal

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April 22, 2026

The $90 Billion Blind Spot: The Diaspora’s Costliest Contradiction

Commentary, Opinion /

Since Oct. 7, 2023, American Jews have pulled off one of the most extraordinary displays of communal generosity in living memory. Billions for hospitals, evacuees, bereaved families, frontline responders. Every federation campaign, every synagogue appeal, every “friends of” gala has carried the same urgent message: Israel is in crisis, and we will not look away.

Beautiful. Also, by itself, not enough.

Here is the part nobody says out loud at the gala: U.S. Jewish organizations sit on roughly $90 billion in endowments and donor-advised funds. How much is consciously invested in Israel? A rounding error. A handful of federations maintain a real Israel allocation. Most treat Israel the way a global index fund treats Uzbekistan — whatever fractional weight the algorithm assigns.

Jewish communities write emergency checks with one hand and keep their investment portfolios as far from Israel as politely possible with the other. We are, to put it plainly, the world’s most generous absentee investors.

The “Divest Israel” crowd has figured out something we haven’t. They understand that where capital flows is a statement of legitimacy. Every campus resolution, every city council divestment vote, every pension fund debate frames the same question: is Israel a place where serious money belongs?

When our own multi-billion-dollar communal portfolios answer that question with a shrug and a zero-percent allocation, we hand BDS its best talking point for free. We tell the world that Israel may be worthy of our compassion but not our capital — a charity case, not an investment destination. That is the most expensive unforced error in Jewish communal life, and no amount of op-eds or campus counter-programming can undo what our balance sheets quietly say.

Think about it from the other side. BDS activists do not need to win every divestment vote — they just need to shift the presumption. Their strategy works when “investing in Israel” sounds like something that requires a defense rather than a rationale. And every time a Jewish institution publishes a glossy report about its Israel philanthropy while its investment committee treats the Israeli capital market and regional investments as if they were radioactive, that presumption deepens. We are losing the legitimacy argument not because our adversaries are brilliant — though some are — but because we refuse to deploy the single most credible rebuttal available: our own capital. Putting money where our mouth is would do more to normalize Israel in global finance than a thousand conferences on antisemitism. It confirms the courage of our convictions confirming Rav Kook’s famous saying about resilience and hope that found its way to be a bumper sticker in Israel: “the eternal people are not afraid.”

Forget sentiment for a moment. The investment case is sitting there in plain sight, practically waving its arms.

Israel invests 6.35% of GDP in civilian R&D — more than double the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average and the highest ratio on earth. Tech accounts for a fifth of GDP and over half of all exports, and those exports are overwhelmingly services: software, cybersecurity, AI, cloud platforms. You cannot blockade a SaaS (Software as a Service) contract. You cannot checkpoint a cloud deployment.

During the 2023–24 war, the domestic economy contracted sharply. Technology exports kept growing. Cybersecurity investment doubled. Defense-tech startups nearly doubled. By early 2026, both S&P and Moody’s had reversed their wartime downgrades, the shekel had strengthened 15% against the dollar, and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange posted the best equity market performance in the world—up over 50%, outpacing every major U.S. benchmark and has continued to rise during this current war.

The pattern is the most predictable thing about Israel’s economy: sharp contraction, then a V-shaped, tech-led recovery. After COVID, GDP fell 1.5% and surged 9.9%. After the war, same shape. Investors who sold on the evening news and ignored the recovery have been wrong every single time. The geopolitical risk premium is real — but it is episodic, not structural, and it has historically overcompensated patient investors. That is exactly the kind of mispricing endowments are supposed to understand.

For decades, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange was a lovely institution with one small problem: it traded Sunday through Thursday. That is like opening a restaurant that’s closed on weekends and wondering why nobody shows up.

In January 2026, Israel shifted to Monday–Friday trading, aligning with every major global market. This is not a footnote. It is the difference between being included in indices that control trillions in passive capital and being politely ignored. Beyond the calendar fix, regulators are rolling out reforms that would have been unthinkable a decade ago: lighter disclosure for growth-stage tech firms, dual Tel Aviv–NASDAQ listings, green and sustainable bond standards, securitization rules, digital securities infrastructure. A new Yozma 2.0 program—$450 million in government co-investment—is drawing Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, and StepStone into Israeli venture capital.

Israel is not just producing innovative companies. It is building the capital market to finance, list, trade, and govern them at global standards. Innovation economy meets innovation capital market. That convergence is the real story—and it has barely been told.

Closing the generosity-investment gap does not require abandoning diversification or fiduciary discipline. It requires acknowledging that a sober look at risk and return supports a larger, not smaller, Israel allocation. Three shifts would change the landscape:

• Set modest but real Israel sleeves — 5% to 10% — in communal portfolios, across equities, fixed income, blended finance and private funds, calibrated to each institution’s risk profile and focus on impact.

• Make Israel options standard in donor-advised fund lineups, so donors can choose new kinds of themed Israel Bonds, Israel-focused equity and venture vehicles without needing a treasure map.

• Report annually on Israel allocation with the same transparency we bring to our fundraising campaigns. If we publish how much we give, we should publish how much we invest.

None of this is radical. All of it is overdue. And the collective signal would be unmistakable: the people who know Israel best, who give to Israel most generously, who sit on some of the most sophisticated investment committees in the nonprofit world, have looked at the numbers and concluded that Israel belongs in their portfolios. That is a counternarrative no BDS resolution can touch. By our estimates, there’s more than $2 billion in portfolio flows that might be corrected if we were listed in comparable indexes and active asset manager that prove that geography is not destiny.

Emergency checks will always matter — hospitals cannot be financed by capital markets and trauma services cannot be securitized – but then again, we can aggregate them through pooled securities and sustainable impact investments by mobilizing catalytic capital to finance social infrastructure. But philanthropy without investment is a strategy with one arm tied behind its back. Giving sustains Israel through the crisis. Investing builds the infrastructure, the companies and the capital markets that make the next crisis shorter, shallower and less damaging. Both are acts of solidarity. Only one compounds interest by leveraging new and more capital.

We are so very fortunate that the Diaspora shows up when Israel is under rocket fire and we are in shelters. The harder question is whether they will show up when Israel is underpriced.

That question is not for governments or rating agencies. It is for us — and it is still open.

Glenn Yago is Senior Director of the Milken Innovation Center at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute on the faculty of Hebrew University Business School and University of California-Berkeley. He is also Senior Fellow/Founder Financial Innovations Lab at the Milken Institute. This essay draws on the policy brief “Why Now? Re-Invest in Israel: The Case for Institutional Capital Allocation to Israel’s Capital Markets” (March 2026).

The $90 Billion Blind Spot: The Diaspora’s Costliest Contradiction Read More »

Teddy’s Bear and the Birth of Israel

Israel /

“President Called After the Beast Had Been Lassoed, But He Refused To Make An Unsportsmanlike Shot”

So read the Nov. 15, 1902 headline of The Washington Post. On what perhaps was a slow news day, the paper reported that on a hunting trip, President Theodore Roosevelt had refused to shoot a 235-pound black bear tied to a tree. The incident took place on the last day of a hunt Roosevelt had scheduled while surveying land that the states of Mississippi and Louisiana were each claiming as their own.

But the anecdote had legs. It would lead to the birth of a wildly popular toy and the project to revive the Jewish national homeland.

The renowned political cartoonist for The Washington Star, Clifford Berryman, who had been along for the hunt, picked up on the President’s refusal to shoot the bear, and used it as a metaphor for Roosevelt’s indecision over a Mississippi boundary dispute. Berryman’s subsequent cartoon depicted the Commander in Chief dressed in full Rough Rider regalia, turning his back to the frightened bear. It was captioned “Drawing the Line in Mississippi.”

Political cartoon (based on the original by Clifford Berryman) depicts American President Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919), as he declines to shoot a small bear restrained by a rope, 1902. The original cartoon ran in the Washington Post on November 16, 1902 and, as Roosevelt’s nickname was Teddy, became the basis for the name ‘Teddy Bear.’ (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)

The story soon became well known throughout the United States and inspired Brooklyn candy store owners Rose (née Rachel) and Morris Michtom (né Moshe Michael Charmatz) who had hung the cartoon on their shop’s window. Marveling in admiration at TR’s behavior, Morris remarked “The Tsar was never that humanitarian.” The couple decided to make the first stuffed bear toy – that is, in America. Edmund Morris notes in his “Theodore Rex,” that “in one of the mysterious coincidences that yoke inventions, stuffed plush bear cubs with button eyes and movable joints began to issue from Margarete Steiff’s toy factory in Giengen, Germany.” New York City’s FAO Schwarz ordered 3,000.

“The competing bears soon fused,” “Theodore Rex” documents, “along with Berryman’s cub, into a single cuddly entity that attached to itself the nickname of the President of the United States. For decades, perhaps centuries to come, uncounted millions of children across the world would hug their Teddy Bears, even as the identities of Steiff, Michtom, Berryman and Roosevelt himself rubbed away like lost plush.”

As the bear burst in popularity, family lore had it that before making additional copies, Morris Michtom had sent the original to the White House, along with a request to Roosevelt to allow for the new toy to be called “Teddy’s Bear.” His son, Benjamin Michtom, has said that although Roosevelt agreed to lend his name to the new invention he doubted it would be a hit.

But Morris, who had arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 1889 with 50 cents in his pocket, thought he was on to something. By 1903, he founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company of 23-10 43rd Avenue, Long Island City, which he built into one of the largest toy companies in the country. Five years later, the bear had become so popular nationally that a Michigan minister warned that replacing dolls with toy bears would destroy the maternal instincts of young girls.

As Michael Feldberg recounts in his “Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History”: “Because of the doll’s popularity, Roosevelt and the Republican Party adopted it as their symbol in the election of 1904, and Michtom bears were placed on display at every public White House function.”

Decades into the Teddy Bear’s runaway success and the Michtoms’ company’s flourishing, Benjamin, now president of Ideal Toy, reached out to Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, President Roosevelt’s daughter, and asked her if she might pose for a photo with one of the original bears. Mrs. Longworth reportedly responded, “I don’t want it … What does a 79-year-old doll want with a 60-year-old bear?”

Like his father, not one to be easily discouraged, Benjamin contacted Mr. Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy’s grandson. He asked if Kermit’s children would pose with it. They agreed, with the mutual understanding that the bear would then be gifted to the Smithsonian.

After the photo shoot, however, the kids, Mark and Anne Roosevelt, hid the bear from their parents. A letter from Mrs. Roosevelt to Benjamin said, “I was about to get in touch with the Smithsonian about presenting them with the original bear when the children decided they didn’t want to part with it yet.”

Eventually, however, the children relinquished the toy, and the bear arrived in the Smithsonian in January of 1964.

Morris Michtom, meanwhile, had passed away in 1938. The longest of the five paragraphs of his obituary in The New York Times documented his charity work. It read: “Active in Jewish philanthropic work, Mr. Michtom was a member of the board of directors of HIAS, the New York Council of the Jewish National Fund, the National Labor Campaign for Palestine and Beth-el Hospital in Brooklyn. He belonged to the Workmen’s Circle, the Brooklyn Jewish Center, the Jewish Teachers Seminary, the People’s University and the Jewish Workers National Alliance. He had been active in the Zionist movement.”

A president’s mercy had helped give the Michtom family the means of substantively supporting the eventual rebirth of the State of Israel. 

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include the newly released “Jewish Roots of American Liberty,” “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”

Teddy’s Bear and the Birth of Israel Read More »

For Rachel Goldberg-Polin and the Rest of Us

Commentary /

Driving to the dentist this morning was difficult. Not only was I dealing with a sore tooth and struggling to find a parking spot, I’d been listening to Rachel Goldberg-Polin on 60 Minutes, speaking about losing her only son, Hersh, to Hamas terrorists.

It’s hard to find parking when your eyes are shedding tears on busy Wilshire Boulevard. It’s hard to be in the world when you’re listening to a woman who, with unearthly grace, indescribable dignity, and bottomless sorrow, is on national television attempting to express the inexpressible. Her composure feels like someone lifting the back of a pickup truck, without wincing, without a single complaint.

How lucky we are to have her in our midst. She with her grief, she with her strength, she with her head held high, despite all odds.

A dear friend, with whom I’d been speaking today, wondered about the nature of Israelis. And I gently reminded him that this was, in some sense, simply the nature of Jews. He wondered if there weren’t a significant number of them who wished to kill all the Arabs.

“What do you mean by significant?” I asked, with a tinge of venom. “Like what—fifteen, twenty percent?”

I don’t recall exactly what he said, but I think he might have answered, “Yes, something like that.”

Before you read on, you should know: I’m not a historian, I’m not a journalist, and as someone who never went to college, I’m surely no scholar. I am simply a person who feels things deeply. Perhaps no more than most. And perhaps more than some.

There, on the phone, I just about flew into a rage. But since I love and admire the person I was speaking with, I grabbed hold of myself.

No, no, no… people in Israel don’t want to kill anyone! They just want to live. They just want not to die—to be left alone to live their lives.

Sometimes, I think it’s no use. Why waste so much breath, so much time, so much—

And my friend, wise and a good listener, said only: “This is hard for you, I know. This subject touches you in a very deep place. The place where you live. Where your spirit exists.”

Exactly. Exactly right.

For reasons only God knows, I was a young boy who fell easily in love with a people, with a place, just as other boys my age on the other side of a great divide, did the very same.

No—Israelis want to live. Just like everyone else.

Are there good reasons for war? Ultimately, I think not. Are there reasons for spilling blood, for causing pain, for wreaking havoc, for breaking and destroying? Ultimately, I think not.

And I also know—very painfully, very acutely—that we have yet to arrive at any ultimates. We have yet to cross any finish lines, to occupy safe places where there is no longer any need for the instruments of war-making.

Just as it is impossible to finish a marathon when you’re running a fever of 104°, just as it’s impossible to swim across an ocean—it is impossible to lay down arms when your sworn enemy has not laid down his own.

Today is Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Remembrance Day. Like our Memorial Day—although there, in Israel, people can be heard weeping. In every home, there is loss. On every street. On every bus and train. Every inch of the land has known the tread of death.

We, safe in America, are cocooned in a place and time that—for now—has spared us from truly considering such things.

And yet, we are bidden to remember. Bidden to smash the wineglass at every wedding, at the peak of joy. Commanded to remember that we have not yet reached the “ultimate.”

Rachel is a gifted woman who has been chosen to carry a burden. And in turn, she has chosen, by her own telling, to write and to speak about that burden. In some way, inconceivable to most of us, she says it helps her. She marks her time, as you would expect, between the kidnapping of her son, his torture, the notice of his death—and this moment.

In doing so, she holds for each of us the kind of nobility we wish for. She embodies the sort of wisdom we long for, but would never want to have learned.

When I hear her speak, now, as in times past when the fate of her son and the other hostages was uncertain, I feel an expansion of my essence—and with it, a negation of self, a diminution of my smallness, and a revitalization of my purposes among the living.

If you listen carefully, you too will cry. Cry for Rachel. Cry for those tortured. Cry for those never to return home alive.

And you will also cry for the whole of God’s creation—for every man, woman, and child struggling to come to grips with…

Sorry, I have no name for that.

There is no balm, no remedy. There is only walking ahead—with love for your life, and for the life of all things.

May these days soon become “those” days. Days of the past that, compared to a glorious, peace-filled future, will seem distant and dreamlike.

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author.

For Rachel Goldberg-Polin and the Rest of Us Read More »

What is Meant by Israel’s Right to Exist as a Jewish Nation

Commentary, Opinion /

In recent weeks, a chorus of podcasters and political candidates has affected confusion about what it means for Israel to exist as a Jewish state. The question is posed as though it were profound, even disqualifying. It is neither. The answer rests on principles the international community has spent a century embedding into law: indigenous rights and national self-determination. In honor of Israel’s Independence Day, let me explain what those principles actually say.

Self-determination is the collective expression of the same liberty we recognize in individuals. If a person has the right to shape his own life, a people bound by shared history, culture, language, religion and memory has a parallel right to shape its common life. A civilization is not a random collection of individuals. It has a legitimate interest in preserving and governing itself where it is rooted.

That claim is stronger still when the people in question seeks self-rule not in some arbitrary territory, but in the land bound up with its origins, sacred texts and national development over millennia. And it becomes urgent when the alternative is permanent dependence on others who do not share, and may not protect, that people’s interests, .i.e. when it is a safeguard against erasure.

The Jewish people fits this framework exactly: an ancient and continuous civilization with a distinct language, religion and culture, tied to a homeland that has remained central in law, liturgy, and collective memory for thousands of years. This is not a claim of Jewish exceptionalism. It is a claim of Jewish equality. The same principle has been recognized for dozens of peoples in the modern world. It is black-letter international law.

Article 1(2) of the U.N. Charter identifies among the organization’s central purposes respect for “the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states plainly: “All peoples have the right of self-determination.” In fact the International Court of Justice, in East Timor, called self-determination “one of the essential principles of contemporary international law.”

The U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes the point even more directly. Article 3 affirms that indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. Article 26(1) ties that right explicitly to the land: “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.”

The Jewish people have maintained continuous presence in the Land of Israel since antiquity. The Hebrew language, now spoken again as a living tongue, originated there. The entire structure of Jewish religious life is organized around that geography: the holidays track its agricultural calendar, the prayers face its holy city, the texts are saturated with its landscape. When the modern Zionist movement sought to reconstitute Jewish national life in the late-19th century, it was not a foreign power planting a flag in someone else’s soil. It was a people, displaced repeatedly by empire, from Babylon to Rome to the Ottomans, exercising the same indigenous right to return to traditional lands that the international community recognizes for peoples everywhere.

When the modern Zionist movement sought to reconstitute Jewish national life in the late-19th century, it was not a foreign power planting a flag in someone else’s soil.

The League of Nations confirmed this explicitly in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, which acknowledged “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and called for securing the establishment of the Jewish national home there. That was not the invention of a new right. It was formal recognition of an ancient and legally cognizable one. As Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colonies, explained, “When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine … but the further development of the existing Jewish community … [I]n order that this community should have the best prospect of free development … it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance.”

A Jewish state is simply a state in which the Jewish people exercises self-determination: where the national language, calendar, symbols, and public culture reflect Jewish civilization, and where Jews everywhere have a guaranteed refuge. It does not mean a state without minorities, without civil rights, or without obligations to all its citizens. Israel’s Declaration of Independence promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

Of course, self-determination must be balanced against minority rights and other legal obligations. No serious defender of Israel disputes that. But the need for balance does not erase the underlying right. It merely defines its lawful exercise.

That is why the supposed confusion is not really confusion at all. The question is asked not to clarify but to delegitimize, to suggest that Jewish nationhood is uniquely suspect and must clear a moral hurdle no other nation is asked to face. No one demands that France justify its French character, or Japan its Japanese one, or the many states whose constitutions privilege a national religion explain their basic legitimacy. Only the Jewish state is routinely required to defend the very idea of its existence. The demand for a special accounting is itself the obvious tell.

So the answer is the same as it has always been: A Jewish state means what international law has long recognized, what the moral logic of self-determination requires, and what the law of indigenous rights confirms. The two-thousand-year-old hope of a free people, indigenous to its land, governing itself there. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Mark Goldfeder is CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and a law professor at Touro Law School. Follow him on X @markgoldfeder

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Judging by Appearances in Panama

Columnists /

While on a Passover program in Panama, I learned a vital lesson about not judging people by appearances.

The program took place in a five-star beachfront resort in Playa Bonita, Panama. The hotel offered live entertainment in the lobby every evening.

One night, my husband and I stopped to listen. Across from us sat a couple. The woman was obviously decked out for a special evening – long dress, fancy hairdo, high-heeled sandals. Beside her sat her companion, dressed in dark, casual clothes.

As the singer’s voice soared, the man stared unwaveringly at his phone. No matter how beautiful the song was, his attention did not stir. He was glued to the phone.  The woman frequently glanced at him, smiled, made small comments, and generally tried to get his attention. He was impervious.

Immediately, my judgment machine flew into gear. “How rude!” I thought. Here’s this woman wanting her companion to share the evening with her, and all he can do is stare at his phone. I turned to my husband and whispered, “Do you think I should say anything to him?” Thank heaven, my husband replied with a firm “No.”

We struck up a conversation with the woman, who told us that the man was her husband, and they were celebrating their 20th anniversary. This was enlightening: Obviously, this was not a first date. I wondered if they’d been together so long that he no longer wanted to talk to her. I wondered a bunch of things about their relationship, all ending with the idea that he was a rude, insensitive fellow who deserved a talking-to.

I could barely restrain myself from being the person who delivered the rebuke about the rudeness of staring stubbornly at one’s phone in the middle of a special occasion.

When the music ended, he finally put down the phone and looked at us.

“I’m hard of hearing,” he said, “and I forgot to put in my hearing aids. When music plays, it sounds like a loud shriek in my brain. I try to ignore it by getting into my own space until it’s over.” In other words, he was partly deaf, and the phone was his only way to reduce the pain in his head.  Woops!

I asked him how he had damaged his hearing. “I was in the military, and the earplugs they gave me didn’t work.” This was getting worse. Not only had I misjudged his reason for burying himself in the phone, I also learned that he lost his hearing in service to our country!

He became chatty once the room was quiet and told us that after his military service, he became an inspector for the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agency, ensuring that bars followed the rules about serving alcohol. “I was not a popular guy,” he said. He had to stand strong against unscrupulous bar owners, organized crime, and large corporations such as Heineken.

After leaving the ATF, he became a juvenile probation officer. He said he quit when he kept seeing the same kids returning to his office after repeatedly breaking the law. He had to deal with snarling adolescents who refused to play by the rules.

In short, he was a tough dude, able to hold the line against intense resistance.

And I had come within a hair’s breadth of insulting him about using his phone.

It’s easy to judge others based on appearances. We observe people and jump to conclusions about them, their characters, their relationships, and countless other factors – all of which we know nothing about. The truth is that, while we can observe others’ behavior, we cannot interpret it without understanding the situation from that person’s perspective.

Maybe that woman’s outfit in shul seems inappropriate to you; it might be the most modest thing she owns, and she is doing her best to fit in.

Maybe someone is talking in a tone we consider too loud. Perhaps they  have a hearing problem and do not know how they sound.

When it comes to judging other people, we cannot believe all we see. Accept this reality humbly. The next time you’re tempted to jump to a snap conclusion, remind yourself, “Maybe I don’t know what’s really going on.”

I changed as a result of my mistake in Panama. I committed myself to focusing on just what I can observe and refraining from making judgments or conclusions about situations iof which I am entirely ignorant.

I don’t know whether “reducing judgmentalness” or “not drawing conclusions from appearances” is included in the middot, or character traits, we are supposed to work on during this period of Sefirat HaOmer, which counts 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot, but they are sure to be on my list.

Elizabeth Danziger is the author of four books, including “Get to the Point,” 2nd edition, which was originally published by Random House. She lives in Venice, California.

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Ban Antisemites from World Cup Soccer

Commentary, Opinion /

U.S. officials say they are planning to bar antisemitic agitators from attending the World Cup soccer matches that will take place in the United States, Canada and Mexico this summer.

Those facing a ban could include the participants in the antisemitic soccer riots in Amsterdam in November 2024, and those who blocked Israelis from attending a soccer match in England in September 2025.

Another name that should be high on the banned list is the president of the Palestinian Football [Soccer] Association, Jibril Rajoub. He is a convicted terrorist who spent 15 years in prison but clearly never changed his hateful ways, because in 2018, FIFA (the International Federation of Association Football—which is in charge of the World Cup) suspended Rajoub for a year for inciting hatred and violence against an Argentinian soccer player who interacted with Israelis.

Rajoub has continued his incitement and support for violence in recent years. He publicly praised the Hamas mass murders and gang-rapes of Oct. 7, 2023, as “acts of heroism” and “our war of defense against the occupation.”

Not only that, but Rajoub says openly that he considers sports to be a vehicle for waging war against Israel. He has pledged that “Palestinian sports will continue to be a means of struggle and a platform to sound the Palestinian people’s voice and expose the occupation’s crimes,” the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported on July 7, 2025.

(Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)

Keeping out haters such as Rajoub is important. Foreign antisemites and champions of violence need to know they are not welcome in the United States. But what about foreign governments that promote antisemitism? Why should they be treated any differently from individual haters?

The U.S. State Department’s most recent report on human rights around the world identifies several regimes that actively spread antisemitism as a matter of policy.

Regarding the Palestinian Authority, the State Department found that “Antisemitism, including expressions of longing for a world without Israel and glorification of terror attacks on both Israelis and Jews, [were] regularly featured in public discourse, [and] was repeatedly broadcast on official media. … Some Palestinian and Muslim religious leaders used antisemitic rhetoric, including Holocaust denial.”

The report also noted that according to experts who have analyzed the PA’s school books, “there was problematic content in PA textbooks … such as antisemitic content, incitement to violence directed against Israel, and the glorification of terrorism.”

Jordan’s promotion of antisemitism is also a severe problem, the State Department found. “Antisemitic rhetoric and tropes were prevalent in local [Jordanian government-controlled] media throughout the year,” according to the report. “The national school curriculum, including materials on tolerance education, did not mention the Holocaust and used antisemitic tropes,” and “Antisemitic hate speech proliferated in the country on social media, in public and private schools.”

As for Qatar, “Cartoons, opinion articles and certain news coverage in local [government-controlled] newspapers and other regional media outlets periodically carried antisemitic content,” the State Department reported.

Over the years, a number of countries have been banned from participating in the World Cup games for various reasons. South Africa was barred from 1970 to 1990 because of its apartheid policies. Yugoslavia was kept out in 1994 due to its aggression and human rights atrocities against Bosnia and Croatia. Russia has been banned since 2022 because of its invasion of Ukraine.

Regimes that promote anti-Jewish incitement should be considered in the same light. Such hate-mongering has consequences. The antisemitism and glorification of violence in the Palestinian Authority’s media and school books have helped inspired anti-Israel violence.

All Oct. 7 terrorists who were in their 20s — which was the vast majority of them — were educated in Gaza schools run by the PA. That’s where they were taught to hate Jews and idolize mass murderers.

Our nation’s leaders should exclude those whose behavior violates America’s fundamental moral values. That will send a message to athletes and aspiring athletes around the world that the United States rejects bigotry.

But closing America’s doors to individual antisemitic soccer fans and officials such as Jibril Rajoub is not enough. Entire regimes that promote antisemitic hatred are even more dangerous. Indeed, Rajoub himself is a minister in the PA cabinet, and the PA fully supports his vicious agenda. It devotes its manpower and financial resources to raising generations of young people to hate and kill.

Barring regimes that incite anti-Jewish violence, just like barring regimes that practice racism, military aggression, or ethnic cleansing, simply is the right thing to do.

Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books. His latest is “The Road to October 7: Hamas, the Holocaust, and the Eternal War Against the Jews.”

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Islam and Jesus: Evaluating Tucker Carlson’s Claim

Commentary, Opinion /

 

There are claims that sound conciliatory but do something else entirely. They borrow shared language to imply shared belief — and in the process replace clarity with confusion.

Lately, a version of that claim has been making the rounds from figures like Tucker Carlson, Mohammed Hijab, Linda Sarsour, Cenk Uygur, and others: “Islam loves Jesus.”

It is not a theological statement. It is a rhetorical construction. And it is almost always deployed in a very specific context – alongside attacks on Israel and exaggerated or invented claims about the persecution of Israeli Christians, while those same people remain conspicuously silent about the conditions facing Christians under authoritarian Islamist regimes across the Middle East and Africa.

Given the sensitivity of the subject, some basic clarity is in order.

Yes, Islam speaks of Jesus – Isa ibn Maryam in the Quran. But the issue is not whether the name appears. The issue is whether the identity is the same.

It is not.

The Jesus of the New Testament is the Son of God – crucified and resurrected – the foundation of Christian theology. The Jesus described in the Quran is explicitly not divine, not the Son of God, and was not crucified. The central claims of Christianity about who Jesus is are not merely absent in Islamic theology – they are directly rejected.

The Gospels are explicit about Jesus’ identity. He is called “King of the Jews” (Mark 15:26). In John 4:22, Jesus himself states plainly: “Salvation is from the Jews.” His life, ministry, and death are rooted in Judea, within the Jewish world of the Roman-occupied Second Temple period.

Under Islamic doctrine, that identity is reinterpreted and reframed entirely. Jesus is not only stripped of divinity – he is also recast as a prophet within an Islamic framework, understood as having preached submission to Allah. In other words, he is retroactively recast as a Muslim.

And when these same political commentators, like Cenk Uygur, point out that Jesus plays a role in Islamic eschatology, they tend to omit the rest: that in the traditional Islamic narrative, Jesus returns not to affirm Christianity, but to expressly reject it – to literally break the cross, correct Christian doctrine, and establish Islamic monotheism.

That is not a minor theological difference. It is a dividing line.

So, when commentators like Tucker Carlson and Cenk Uygur tell Christian audiences that Islam “loves Jesus,” without qualification, they are not building understanding. They are substituting a shared word for a shared meaning that does not exist.

On its own, that might be dismissed as a well-meaning oversimplification. But in context, it becomes something more deliberate and more designed to mislead.

Because this claim rarely appears alone. It is almost always paired with two additional materially false claims: first, that Israel persecutes Christians; and second, that Islamic societies – particularly authoritarian ones aligned against the West or Israel – are more respectful of Christians.

That pairing is not accidental. It is narrative construction.

And it depends heavily on what gets left out.

For example, in Iran, converting from Islam to Christianity carries severe legal consequences. In parts of Iraq and Syria, ancient Christian communities have been devastated over the past two decades by sectarian violence and Islamist movements. In Nigeria, Christian populations face sustained attacks from jihadist groups.

These are not obscure claims. They are documented realities.

And the pattern is broader than any one country. Over the past century, the Christian population across much of the Middle East and North Africa has collapsed – dropping from roughly 25% of the region to a small fraction of that today. In country after country – Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – Christian communities have faced discrimination, violence, legal inequality, and, in many cases, mass emigration.

Under traditional Islamic legal frameworks, Christians (like Jews) were often treated as dhimmis – second-class subjects, required to pay special taxes and restricted in legal standing. In some contemporary systems, religious courts or laws still place limits on conversion, testimony, and public religious expression.

None of this unfortunate reality appears in the rhetoric of those claiming that Islam “loves Jesus.”

Even Carlson’s oft-cited example of Qatar follows the same pattern under scrutiny. Yes, a few churches exist in Qatar – but only within designated compounds, under state-imposed restrictions. Public proselytizing is prohibited. Conversion from Islam is illegal. Religious life operates within clearly defined limits.

And the Christian population there? Almost entirely foreign labor – people who cannot become citizens, no matter how long they stay.

That is not equality. It is permission – granted, managed, and very revocable.

Now compare that to Israel.

In Israel, the Christian population is not disappearing – it is growing. Christians worship openly, run institutions freely, and participate fully in public life. There are literally hundreds of churches. Conversion to and from any faith is legal and protected. Public expression of Christian faith is unrestricted.

Christians in Israel have among the highest levels of educational attainment and income in the country. They have served in senior roles across society – including the judiciary and major financial institutions.

That does not mean Israel is perfect. No country is.

But the attempt to portray it as uniquely hostile to Christians – while casting authoritarian Islamist countries as models of respect – requires a sustained inversion of reality.

Which brings us back to the original claim.

“Islam loves Jesus” is not being offered by advocates like Tucker Carlson as neutral theology. And it is certainly not part of a genuine effort at interfaith respect or understanding.

It is message framing.

It’s a framing that dishonestly softens the image of authoritarian regimes and movements where Christians often live under persecution and pressure, while sharpening criticism of Israel – on terms that rely on confusion, omission, outright lies combined with the hope that their audiences won’t look too closely.

Real respect – between religions, and toward audiences – requires far more than that.

It requires acknowledging that Christianity and Islam make fundamentally different claims about Jesus. It requires confronting the lived reality of Christian communities across different societies. And it requires resisting the urge to compress those realities into slogans that serve a political purpose.

Christians in the West do not need to be told comforting half-truths.

They need clarity about what is believed – and honesty about how those beliefs are lived.

Anything less isn’t respect – it’s misinformation and misdirection.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us and the FIDF, and is a national board member of Herut North America.

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The Golden Rule: What Does It Mean in Practice?

Judaism /

According to Rabbi Akiva, it is the fundamental rule of the Torah.  For many today — Jews and non-Jews alike — it’s the universal moral commandment.  It shows up in this week’s parshat Kedoshim.  In Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, it reads, “V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha” — “You shall love your fellow/neighbor as yourself.”  Yet, it is perhaps the most misunderstood commandment in the Torah.

On its face, its meaning seems straightforward.  Treat everyone the way you would like to be treated.  After all, everyone is made in the image of God.  The Art Scroll Interlinear commentary has a few suggestions — treat others with respect, greet them with friendliness, give them the benefit of the doubt, etc.

The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote extensively on the subject.  In his book “Difficult Freedom,” he asked, “What does the voice of Israel say, and how can it be translated into a few propositions?”  He answered, “One must follow the Most High God and be faithful to Him alone. One follows the Most High God above all by drawing near to one’s fellow man. My uniqueness lies in the responsibility I display for the Other.”

Some, however, prefer a more expansive meaning of the verse — to not just treat your neighbor with respect, but to love your neighbor — and to love not just your neighbor, but to love everyone, including even those who may hurt you.

Judaism has a different view — a view that seems more realistic. According to the story in the Talmud, Hillel, when asked by a non-Jew to convert him, responded, “Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you. The rest is commentary.  Now go study.” Hillel was suggesting the inverse of “V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha” — in effect espousing a lower bar for our central moral commandment.

Actually, there’s another verse in parshat Kedoshim that suggests an even lower bar.  In chapter 19, verse 17, it says that “you shall not hate your brother in your heart.”  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his commentary, has an interesting take on this.  He says, “The inner logic of the two verses — ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ … and ‘Do not hate your brother’ — is this:  Love your neighbor as yourself, but not all neighbors are lovable … God does not command you to be angels without any of the emotions natural to human beings.  He does, however, forbid you to hate.”

What about reacha? Are we commanded to love our neighbors, our fellow Jews, everyone? The word reacha does show up elsewhere in Torah. For example, in Exodus, in parshat Shemot, when Moses confronted the two Hebrews who were fighting, Moses asked the guilty one, “Why are you striking your own neighbor?” – using the word reacha.  The word appears to be limited in its connotation.

Actually, there’s another verse in our parshah, chapter 19, verse 34, that says “The ger — the stranger — who dwells with you shall be like a native among you and you shall love him like yourself.”  By singling out the ger in this verse, the Torah is perhaps implying that the ger is not included in “V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha,” again limiting our notion of reacha.

Incidentally, lest one think that we are commanded to love the stranger even if he follows other laws, the ger needs to follow the commandments just like the native Jew does.  In chapter 19, verse 26, it says, “You shall safeguard My decrees and My judgments, and not commit any of these abominations – the native or the ger who lives among you.”

And what about our enemies? Having enemies is, of course, Biblical — and God often did not show much mercy. In Exodus, in parshat Mishpatim, when God sent an angel ahead of the Israelites to watch over them, God said, “I will be an enemy to your enemies, a foe to your foes.” In Numbers, in parshat Beha’alotecha, when the Ark would journey forth, Moses said, “Arise, Hashem, may your enemies be scattered, may your foes be put to flight” — which is what we say today (in Hebrew) when we open the ark for the Torah service. It appears that we are not being asked to love our enemies. Quite the contrary.

While consideration of the Other is a moral commandment, we are not being asked to preoccupy ourselves with the Other to the detriment of ourselves, particularly when the Other does not share our values or, worse, when the Other is our enemy. After all, our verse does say “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Norman Podhoretz, for many years the renowned editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, talked about this in a speech he gave in 1995. “Like so many of us, I was educated to believe that the last thing one ought to be defending was one’s own, that it was more honorable and nobler to turn one’s back on one’s own and fight for others. This has been a very hard lesson to unlearn, and I am proud to have unlearned it.”

We are being commanded to be kind to others, but we are not being asked to be angels, especially when dealing with those who do not share our values, including those who are our enemies. “V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha” is an important commandment, but, as our tradition teaches, we need to be realistic.

Curt Biren, an investment advisor in LA, has written for First Things, Religion & Liberty, The American Mind, and the Journal of Markets and Morality.

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Israel and America

Cover Story, Rosner's Domain /

Many of the challenges facing Israel have not changed much in its nearly 80 years of existence. Names have been swapped, local and international players have come and gone and the global map has shifted more than once, but most of what troubles Israel’s captains today troubled them, in one way or another, in previous decades as well. A striking example is the insoluble tension between Israel’s need to lean on a great power and its desire to be as independent as possible.

Independence

In this 78th year of Independence, it seems that only a few Israelis feel the state possesses full political and security liberty. They identify the American thumbprint on every act or omission of their government. When Trump says “open fire,” they do. When he says “hold fire,” they do it again. Airplanes up, airplanes down, now Iran, now Lebanon. Perhaps they imagine this is a new state of affairs – that there was never a dependency or a dictate quite like this. But this is not a new situation; it is merely a new player, Donald Trump, in whose time the dependency and especially the dictate is particularly conspicuous because, for him, policy is primarily about public performance. The situation itself is quite old: Israel has been shackled by a superpower since the day of its founding and has not broken free of it to this day.

The situation itself is quite old: Israel has been shackled by a superpower since the day of its founding and has not broken free of it to this day.

Hold your breath: it will not break free of it in the near future, either. “If you are not a superpower, you must be part of an alliance to truly survive in this world.” These are the words of Prof. Eviatar Matania, former founder of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate in a conversation regarding Israel’s security doctrine. Israel is not part of a stable and reliable formal alliance, and therefore “we need the reliance on the superpower.” And what of our independence? It is certainly an important thing. Israel is independent to decide that it no longer wishes to lean on the U.S. It would pay a heavy price for such a decision, but its independence to decide as much exists. Obeying Trump’s dictates is a choice. A choice Israel keeps making. A choice Israel’s leaders keep making amid – sometimes – public frustration and protest. Because that’s often the wise choice.

Obeying Trump’s dictates is a choice. A choice Israel keeps making. A choice Israel’s leaders keep making amid – sometimes – public frustration and protest. Because that’s often the wise choice.

In fact, history teaches us that Israel has never decided to ignore a strongly worded and insistent U.S. dictate. Logic suggests that, at least for the foreseeable future, it will not decide to do so either. History also teaches that even in the past, Israeli independence was limited. Israelis remember bombastic declarations by bombastic prime ministers along the lines of “we will not be a banana republic.” They forget that at every juncture in which the Americans decided to assert authority with sufficient determination, Israel retreated.

Examples? In late 1948, David Ben-Gurion told an American State Department representative: “We will not bow to America or Russia – we will go our own way.” Eight years later, he received a resolute message from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, stating that Israel must immediately withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had captured in the 1956 Sinai Campaign (Operation Kadesh). Ben-Gurion, who just a day earlier had proclaimed the “Third Kingdom of Israel,” accepted the dictate without much hesitation.

This, of course, does not mean one must accept every dictate as written, or that one should respond to every demand in the same manner. Unlike Ben-Gurion after the Sinai Campaign, Golda Meir waged a struggle – a stubborn trench war – nearly 20 years later, when Israel received instructions from the U.S. to halt the war after encircling the Egyptian Third Army in Sinai. The confident 1956 Israel – following a short, surprising victory – could afford to withdraw without fear. The battered Israel in 1973 – following a murderous surprise attack – was more stubborn, more recalcitrant. Golda refused to withdraw.

But she also understood that she could not keep the war going, and that she had to restrain the IDF, which was not strictly adhering to the ceasefire orders. On Oct. 24, 1973, she summoned the minister of defense and the chief of staff. “There is a limit. The government cannot say it accepted a ceasefire while simultaneously forces are moving and firing,” she said. Hagai Tsoref’s research on Israel’s struggle against American pressure in those days describes the atmosphere in the prime minister’s room as one of “exhilaration.” The speakers in the room, Tsoref wrote, “allowed themselves to express arrogance toward the Americans.” This is a familiar ailment that has afflicted senior Israeli officials in closed rooms in recent weeks as well, in light of the U.S. forces’ performance in the Middle East.

This arrogance reflects a lack of understanding: the Americans can afford less-than-stellar performance. They can afford less-skilled, mostly less experienced, combat pilots. They can afford less precision, less lethality in the mission, and less effectiveness in every action. They are a great power that has enough reserves to err and correct, to absorb and retaliate. They are a superpower that can agree to a ceasefire and then return to the fighting. Because there is no one who can tell them not to return to the fighting. But Israel does have someone who sometimes says enough is enough: the Americans.

Ben-Gurion deliberated back and forth until he decided to tilt Israel sharply toward the West. He preferred neutrality but understood that in a polarized world, it was impossible. He needed economic aid and identified where it could come from. He had fellow Israeli leaders, some of whom were deep in the political left, but he knew the Soviet Union was not a worthy ally for Israel.

So he wisely chose to rely on the U.S., fully understanding the risks involved. “A nation must trust itself,” he told an American diplomat in 1951. “One cannot predict what the world is going to look like after the next war. … The U.S. might no longer be interested in the Middle East, it might decide to exit this region, but we [Israel] will remain here and the Arabs will remain here.” Benjamin Netanyahu would not dare saying similar words to an American diplomat today, but had he said them, his position would be as correct today as Ben-Gurion’s was 75 years ago.

Dependency

A trickle that turned into a downpour of depressing news regarding Israel’s image in the U.S. has birthed, as is common in such times, a wide array of umbrellas whose primary purpose is not to stop the rain, but to prevent it from soaking the one holding the umbrella. The many umbrellas are meant to guards their bearers from being blamed for the downward spiral of goodwill.

In right-wing circles, the umbrella is the “it’s not us, it’s them” umbrella. That is to say, it is not Israel, its policy, its government or its actions that lead the Americans to demonstrate impatience and sometimes hostility to Israel. What is the cause of the negative trend? It is them – the Americans. They have gone mad, they have changed, they do not understand what is good for them or for the world.

Rotem Sella, one of the wiser minds in Israel’s right-wing circles, wrote something quite strange this week: “Democrats under 50 loathe Israel more than Iran. This is bad news for Israel, and worse news for America.” If it continues this way, he determined, the U.S. “will lose its greatness.” In other words: it’s not us, it’s them. And one must hope they – Americans – realize their wicked ways and repent; otherwise, they will suffer even more than we will. So the implied solution to Israel’s image problem is an educational move: to maintain Israel’s dependency on the U.S., Israel needs to “reeducate the U.S. public and put it back on the right path. For the U.S.’ own good, of course – just as any parent explains to any child.

In other circles, pundits and analysts hold different umbrellas that tilt the rain in another direction. Nadav Eyal, one of the wiser minds in these other circles, wrote recently that “the problem is not ‘Hasbara’ [PR] but policy. Actions.” By policy, he means Jewish terror attacks in the territories, the expansion of settler farms, the humiliation of monks in the Old City of Jerusalem, or the irresponsible declarations of ministers that preach to commit what amounts to war crimes in Gaza.

Eyal is correct, of course, in everything he writes about the unnecessary and ugly actions he describes. To those, one could add a few more – like the IDF soldier smashing a religious symbol sacred to most Americans just a few days ago (the PM vowed that the soldier will be severely punished). But like the assumption that America will be the main casulty if its citizens keep having their views on Israel – the assumption that Israel can change policy and thereby fix the historical trend of eroding American sympathy is also a case of “begging the question.” In this case: the assumption that if the policy were more similar to the policy advocated by the writer, Israel’s image in America would necessarily improve.

Let us recall the numbers: According to the latest Pew survey, only about a third of Americans (37%) have a positive view of Israel. And this is not a sudden change; it is a continuation of a steady decline lasting several years. It has some connection to Israel’s conduct, but also a tight connection to processes occurring in America that have no relation to whether Israeli ministers do or do not declare intentions to commit war crimes.

Israel’s status among Democrats, according to Gallup polls, has been in a nearly continuous decline since 2014, and among Republicans, since around 2020. Among Independents, since roughly 2013. That is to say, in all cases, it began long before Minister Amichai Eliyahu spoke nonsense, long before the proliferation of unrestrained violent actions by Jewish rioters in Samaria and long before the ugly spitting at monks in Jerusalem hit the headlines.

So let us close the umbrellas to try and understand the true situation. A fundamental rule we will declare as a given that cannot be nullified: Israel is dependent on the relationship with the U.S. and will continue to be. Therefore, it must invest effort in preserving it and decipher what erodes its image. This, of course, does not mean Israel cannot try to reduce the dependency on the U.S. – for instance, by strengthening its ability to produce ammunition quickly so as not to be dependent on American supply during an emergency. It does mean it is better for Israel to quickly sober up from dangerous illusions of an Israel without dependency or without an alliance. It means it is better to sober up from delusions of grandeur in the vein of “it doesn’t matter what the Gentiles say, what matters is what the Jews do” (words by Ben-Gurion – we will soon revisit his speech). Such delusions do not lead to independence, but to destruction.

So the dependency will continue, and the challenge is clear: American public opinion is turning against us. For this, one can suggest two types of solutions. One is the solution of “improvement”: the Americans changed their minds about Israel for the worse, and we will change their views back for the better. How? The proposals are varied and usually politically colored: reeducating Americans, reeducating Israelis, vigorous social media activity or appointing eloquent ambassadors. Of course, there is also the possibility that the Americans will change their minds regardless of Israel’s efforts and actions. Just as they favored Israel for many years and then began to change, they might return to favoring Israel for reasons we may not necessarily understand.

This solution is based on a widespread assumption that there is only one possible format for state reliance on the U.S. Except that is not the case: Saudi Arabia has leaned on the U.S. for years, and its image among Americans is nearly never positive. In the group of countries supported by the Americans, one can identify many types of reliance tactics. Some countries build on public sympathy. Others build on economic influence, strategic vitality, security cooperation. It is possible – though not the desired situation – that Israel too will need to identify new ways to strengthen its ties with the U.S. that are not dependent on the affection of the masses.

This will be less pleasant, because Israelis love to be loved in America. But – as Ben-Gurion said in that above mentioned famous speech – “The real concern that should fill our hearts … is not declarations and statements of foreign statesmen … but the defects, the flaws, the corruptions and the weaknesses within. Our fate and our future will be decided not on the international political front, but on the internal front – on the front of security, immigration, settlement and the unification of the people in Israel.”

Avoid weaknesses within. Unify the people. This is what he meant when declaring that the most vital ingredient for success is what “we” – Israelis – will do.

Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.

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Why You Should Host a Pesach Sheni Seder This Year

Judaism /

There’s a Jewish holiday coming up that you may have never heard of. It also happens to be one of the most fascinating, radical, and transformative dates in the Jewish calendar.

First, a bit of background:

In the Book of Numbers, as the Israelites wander through the wilderness towards the promised land, a group of men approach Moses with a Halachic problem, which is to say, a problem of Jewish law. The time has come to offer the Pesach — Passover — sacrifice, but they are in a state of impurity and thus cannot do so.

“Why should we be diminished?” they ask.

Impurity is not a sin — just a fact of life. Nevertheless, they must undergo a multi-day purification ritual before they can offer a sacrifice.

Moreover, the stakes here are incredibly high. The punishment for not offering the sacrifice is Karet — being cut off from the people.

According to the letter of the Law, the matter is clear. And Moses, the Lawgiver, knows this better than anyone. Still, he takes the matter to God to see if there’s anything that can be done.

God decrees that a Second Passover, or Pesach Sheni, is to be instituted a month to the day after the first on the 14th of the month of Iyar. This way, anyone who was unable to offer the first Pesach offering, either due to impurity or because they were traveling, will have a second chance. No one will be left behind.

This story is part of a collection of similar narratives found in the Book of Numbers — stories in which the letter of the Law is softened or amended to make space for the needs of individuals.

In another such story, a group of sisters petitions Moses for the right to inherit property, so that they too may inherit a piece of the Holy Land. Again, the Law is clear—women cannot legally own property. Nonetheless, Moses takes the matter to God, who sees the justice of their plea and amends the Law, allowing women to inherit and hold property. According to the midrash, the sisters saw something in the Torah that Moses could not.

We must remember how brave it is to approach Moses like this. In other stories in the Torah, when people go against the Law and come before Moses, they are punished severely. For example, go read about what happened to the man who gathered sticks on Shabbat, or those who participated in Korach’s rebellion. Things don’t work out well for them. So why, in these instances, are the people listened to? Why does the Law accommodate them?

The nuance here is important. These are not stories about people rejecting the Torah. Rather, they are pointing out that the strict letter of the Law is actually preventing them from participating fully in a life of Torah. They want to observe Pesach. They want to take hold of the Promised Land. And so a way is found for them.

These stories reveal that a dynamic, inclusive approach to Jewish law is not a modern innovation, but rather an essential part of the Jewish ethos dating back to the days of Moses.

It’s therefore not surprising that Pesach Sheni has found special resonance among LGBTQ Jews in recent decades. We have been told for decades that according to the strict letter of the law, nothing can be done for us. Any Judaism that makes space for us is castigated for having abandoned the Torah.

But the story of Pesach Sheni reminds us that this is not actually how Jewish law works — not in the Torah, and not now. The strict letter of the Law must respond to the unique situation of each generation and each person. The Law received at Sinai must change and grow with the people as we wander through the wilderness.

Today, thank God, in many Jewish spaces, LGBTQ Jews are welcomed with open arms. Were this not the case, I would not be able to be a rabbi. But there is still a stab of pain each year when the verses that seem to condemn our community as an abomination are read aloud in synagogue. Centuries of shame and discrimination don’t disappear just because someone hung a Pride flag on the bulletin board.

This is why I wrote the Pesach Sheni Haggadah — as a reminder to LGBTQ Jews that our Judaism is authentic. Our community does not diminish the Torah, but rather enriches it and expands it in the ancient tradition of the Book of Numbers.

Modeled on a traditional Passover Seder, it is an opportunity to come together for a night of communal feasting, singing and learning. But instead of recalling the Exodus, it tells the story of Pesach Sheni. Through poetry and song, it reminds us that the work of liberation is ongoing.

Sometimes, we must stand up to Pharaoh and demand to be set free. Other times, we must stand before our own people and demand to be seen.

None of this work is easy — which is all the more reason to come together on the 14th of Iyar (April 30), to draw strength from one another and find inspiration in our Torah, which teaches that in the long, weary march through the wilderness of life and history, none who seek to draw close should be turned away, and no Jew who wishes to take part should be diminished.

To host your own Pesach Sheni Seder, download the Pesach Sheni Haggadah here.  

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem. 

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