News

Like most of you, I came home from shul on Motza’ei Shabbos to learn the insane news that Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania. It turns out that he missed taking a bullet directly to the head by a “silly millimeter.” The bullet went straight through his outer ear. His bloodied face with fist pumped in the air as the American Flag loomed behind him is already an iconic picture.

The Israeli Supreme Court decision last week declaring that yeshivah students may no longer be exempt from serving in the IDF predictably caused a major uproar in the chareidi world. It is interesting that suddenly the chareidim are correctly outspoken about the Israeli Supreme Court being inherently corrupt as it self-appoints its colleagues of the same political persuasion. The Supreme Court also asserts itself into areas that should be totally out of their purview, such as security decisions and religion. I don’t recall chareidim joining the fight against Judicial Reform last year.

It was a remarkable display of basic inhumanity on every level. An Israeli El Al passenger plane en route to Israel from Warsaw needed to make an emergency landing due to a sick passenger on board. The closest airport available to land under these conditions was in Istanbul, Turkey. This airport had been a regular stop for many Jewish passengers looking for a usually cheaper and more elegant way to fly to Israel. The airport itself is said to be a sprawling, beautiful mecca of (non-kosher) fine dining and shopping. Many people that I know, including friends and family, would fly with Turkish Air despite its stopover in Istanbul, due to its cheaper rates and stunning airport.

I was recently sent an Instagram under the name Carlasesenco, in which a young Jewish woman with watery red eyes pitifully expresses how abandoned she feels as a Progressive Jew, which had been her world. As she states. “It is an incredibly sad and confusing time” for Progressive Jews.

I would often half-jokingly tell my children that it’s good that Hashem made me a Jew, or I would have been the worst anti-Semite around. I also told them it’s good Hashem made me a rabbi, or I would have been a horrible rabbi critic.

It was June 27, 1976, around the 200th birthday of the United States, when the awful news broke that an Air France jet flying from Israel was hijacked to Entebbe, Uganda. Dozens of Israeli/Jewish passengers were held hostage by Idi Amin’s hateful army. A passenger, Dorah Block, was killed during the takeover. Things looked very bleak for the remaining passengers.