Opinion

The midterm elections historically have been a “lifesaver” for America. The year 2022 is shaping up to be just that. The United States is being thrown a major flotation device in order to survive. After the recent election in Georgia, which saw a victory by Glenn Youngkin for Governor over heavily favored Terry McAuliffe, and other Republican upsets, 2022 is coming into sharper focus.

Ever since November 4, 1979, when Iran took 52 US diplomats and citizens hostage, the Iranians have used hostage-taking as a means of extracting huge sums of money and political capital from the United States. President Jimmy Carter lost his election to President Ronald Reagan because of the hostage crisis and Carter’s failed attempt to free them; eight American servicemen were killed. It wasn’t coincidental that the hostages were released on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

It has been a full year since President Biden declared victory over Donald Trump. To say the honeymoon is over is an understatement. The proof is in the Republican surge in the November 2 election just held, especially in Virginia, and in Biden’s approval ratings, sitting around 42% and dropping. Even President Biden’s trustworthy supporter and echo chamber, The New York Times, wrote, “Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have declined on nearly every issue, and among nearly every demographic group in national surveys over the last two months as the promise of a return to normalcy has given way to rising inflation, a simmering pandemic, gridlock in Washington, and chaos on the border and in Afghanistan.”

With the recent disclosure that the Mossad carried out a courageous mission to discover what happened to Lieutenant Colonel Ron Arad, whose plane went down over Lebanon in October of 1986, it is appropriate to highlight how vital it is to do everything possible to recover all soldiers, dead or alive.

With the recent passing of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, it is important to turn back a few pages and go down memory lane. The age of Colin Powell was, for the most part, America at its strongest and most decisive. It was an America that the America of today could truly learn from and aspire to become again.

To say that Rabbi Dr. Moshe David Tendler zt”l, who passed away on Sh’mini Atzeres, was a giant and a luminary in the synthesis of Torah and science is an understatement. He excelled and was a gaon in both. As the son-in-law of the greatest poseik of the latter half of the last century, Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l, he was the perfect person to bridge the old and the new worlds into a harmonious whole.