You may have seen a clip of a young Orthodox lady named Chaya Raichik confronting ultra-liberal Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) in Congress. Raichik is the founder of the Twitter account “Libs of Tik Tok,” which monitors leftist lies and insanity on social media.
It seems that back in 2022, AOC accused Ms. Raichik of defaming a hospital in Massachusetts by saying that they perform hysterectomies on children as young as two or three years old during their gender-changing surgical procedures. The claim was made on the floor of Congress.
Ms. Raichik wanted to serve AOC with an ethical breach for having knowingly lied about her. She tried reaching AOC in her office but was told the congresswoman was not in.
By a stroke of luck, Ms. Raichik met AOC somewhere in the Capitol building. Not knowing who she was, AOC posed with Ms. Raichik for a picture. The moment Chaya identified herself, AOC shouted, “You are super transphobic. I don’t want to share space with you!”
A phobia is when one has an extreme or irrational fear of a thing or group. In other words, for the thousands of years that civilization has existed, it was considered bizarre and practically unheard of for someone to undergo a gender change. Certainly, to allow young children to make such a radical decision without parental involvement was considered unimaginable. To express shock at this brand-new, life-altering transformation, as it becomes increasingly acceptable as the norm, is considered phobic.
Last week, a professor lecturing at the University of Pittsburgh, when asked, declared that there is no way to distinguish between male and female skeletal structures. Even the liberal students could not help but laugh at this nonsense. (See the New York Post of April 2.)
Out goes paleontology. Out goes archeology. Out goes the common sense of a five-year-old. The devil with science. Unfortunately, I am sure science will be forced to conform to this irrational way of thinking as it has with so many issues of today. We are living in the theater of the absurd.
We Jews need to be smart and use that woke word “phobic.” We need to call the illogical hatred of Jews “Jewphobic.” We need to call the practitioners of irrational anti-Israel rhetoric (such as AOC) “Israelphobic.” It works for Islamophobia (which hardly exists). It works for homophobia. Now it works for transphobia.
So, stop with the term anti-Semitism. It’s so yesterday. It doesn’t even convey what it’s supposed to mean: the hatred of Jews. Use Jewphobic. Stop saying anti-Zionist, anti-Israel or pro-BDS. Just use Israelphobic.
AOC, the “Squad,” Bernie Sanders, Thomas Friedman, Peter Beinart, and George Soros are Israelphobic, as is most of the left in college and elsewhere. The Times is Israelphobic and Orthophobic. Farrakhan and Fuentes are Jewphobic, etc. Sounds cooler than anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, the list grows every day.
Let us hope that we live to see the Ultimate Redemption during this month of redemption, and we will not have to be concerned with any of this naarishkeit.
Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld is the Rabbi Emeritus of the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, former President of the Vaad Harabonim of Queens, and the Rabbinic Consultant for the Queens Jewish Link.
