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Covering the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and its aftermath tested me as a Jewish journalist
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — I couldn’t walk easily, much less drive, but I knew I needed to be in Pittsburgh the moment I saw a CNN news alert that a shooting had taken place in a synagogue there.
It was Oct. 27, 2018, and I still wasn’t healed after breaking my ankle hiking that summer in Ein Gedi. An old friend was living with us, helping to care for me. Abe Opincar, a former journalist himself, understood what I needed: He agreed to drive me right then from suburban Washington to Pittsburgh.
By the time we got in the car, we understood that 11 people had been killed inside their synagogue. But we knew little more than that. I called Pittsburgh folks on the way, people I knew who had roots in the city, asking where to find sources, what I should know about Squirrel Hill and the Tree of Life synagogue, which was on its way to being known as the site of the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
We parked just off of Murray Avenue on Saturday night just as a havdalah vigil, pegged to the ceremony that ends Shabbat, was getting underway at the junction of Forbes and Murray avenues, catty corner from the JCC. I hobbled into the crowd, seeking out the Jewish teens who had organized the gathering and speaking to the people — Jews and non-Jews alike — who had been drawn to the event.
Attendees huddle at a vigil after the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Oct. 27, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
Abe seemed increasingly agitated, grimacing at me whenever we exchanged glances. When the crowd started singing hopeful songs — such as “How Good and Pleasant it is for a Tribe of Brothers to Live Together in Harmony,” a verse from Psalms that is a Christian hymn — he rolled his eyes.
When the vigil was done, we got seats at a local restaurant. As we bolted down plates of warmed-over meatloaf, I read aloud a couple of quotes from my notebook. Abe scoffed at the pledges of hope and renewal and strength. Communities just don’t recover from a shooting like this, he said.
I had my own doubts. But I also had a responsibility to tell the day’s story. You’re probably right, I told Abe, but I can only go on what the people I interview tell me. If they’re lying to themselves, so be it.
And then I filed and I waited for edits and it was done and we headed to the car and just as we got there I got a call. I didn’t say much out loud — it might have just been “Oh my,” or just “Oh,” and it might have been the way I said it, but Abe asked what I had learned. I hesitated and he said, as I twisted into the passenger seat, pulling in my cursed ankle, “You have to tell me.”
That was a source, I said. The shomrim, the men and women who keep company with Jewish dead until they are buried, are waiting outside the synagogue. The feds won’t let them remove the bodies for care until they finish combing the crime scene.
Abe started wailing. He was banging his palm on top of the rental car, letting out the despair that I, too, felt, knowing that the Pittsburgh Jewish dead were alone and uncared for, in contravention of the deepest and oldest rituals of our shattered people.
I did not need his tsunami of grief. I just needed him to drive to our dump of a motel on Pittsburgh’s outskirts, the only thing available because there was a big football game in a football crazy town the next day, the day after a gunman killed 11 Jewish worshippers. I looked around at the turn-of-the-last century houses behind the trees and prayed that a window would not light up.
I had to think. Should I try to publish a story from my car about what I had just learned? Was my source solid enough, or did I need to confirm it? I did not need grief clouding the logistics that bring stories to readers.
In the end, I confirmed the news and included the interview in the next day’s story. But in that moment, I was furious with Abe and furious with myself, at whatever there was in my expression that, even through the dark of night across the distance of a car, made Abe able to tell that the call had delivered a punch to my gut.
Dor Hadash congregants meet at East Liberty Presbyterian Church the day after a gunman massacred 11 worshipers at the synagogue where they usually congregated, in Pittsburgh, Oct. 28, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
The next day, Abe’s anxious, skeptical outlook was vindicated, to an extent. The victims, the residents of Pittsburgh, seemed less sure of the strength they had projected the evening before. The folks peddling bromides about standing together, including Israel’s Diaspora minister, Naftali Bennett, came across as clumsy. There was less certainty that Pittsburgh would ever overcome the massacre of innocents at prayer.
“What do you do to make sure that fear doesn’t prevail?” the city’s Chabad rabbi, Yisroel Rosenfeld, asked me.
“I couldn’t see the city anymore,” said Wasiullah Mohamed, the executive director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, which had allied with the city’s Jewish community on multiple occasions. “I could just see its dark corners.”
I tried to talk to congregants of the three congregations housed in Tree of Life, Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, New Light and Dor Hadash — but they had undergone the transformation I have seen at other scenes of horror, from verbose within hours of the attack to unwilling to engage within a day or so.
Leaving Pittsburgh, Oct. 29, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
Two years later, covering the 2020 election in Pittsburgh, I found a community as cloistered as it had been when I left after the massacre, an insularity codified in a new counseling service called the 10.27 Healing Partnership. I got fantastic insights from Maggie Feinstein, the service’s founder, but it was clear I was not going to speak to the traumatized folks she was counseling. They were off-limits.
Voters line up outside a voting place in a synagogue Shaare Torah, on Election Day in Pittsburgh, Nov. 3, 2020. (Ron Kampeas)
In April, when the trial was ready to go ahead after four and a half years of waiting, it was even more formalized. The 10.27 Healing Partnership had hired a PR agency to clear all interviews, and even those who did speak, mostly lay leaders of the congregations, seemed to be working from a script, with bromides about doubling down on commitment to Jewish values.
I returned to Pittsburgh for the first day of the trial on my own — with my ankle long healed, I didn’t need Abe or anyone else to accompany me. Pittsburgh’s charms made it easy: The rich Italian-influenced cuisine, the parks, the cityscape set against three rivers and a mountain range. But the coverage was trying. I got a hotel room just a seven-minute walk from the austere mid-20th century federal courthouse, and I was walking distance from Market Square, which was buzzing throughout the summer with buskers and diners and drinkers, but I preferred the sterile comforts of my room, falling asleep to comfort TV, sitcoms and ancient movies.
A portrait of the writer by sketch artist Emily Goff. (©Emily N Goff, 2023, all rights reserved.)
I did most of my reporting from a media overflow room: There were only 10 slots in the courtroom for media, and the reporters agreed at the outset that seven should go to local media — one to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle — and three to national media. We watched large flat-screen TVs streaming in the proceedings from the courtroom four floors above us. We were not allowed to take pictures or use recording devices, not our phones, not our laptops, even in the overflow room. We could only type into our laptops, and if we were in court, write onto notepads.
The skills I acquired decades ago as an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem, taking dictation from two or three sources (a radio, a TV, a spokesman on the phone) at once unrusted themselves after years of one-on-one interviews and more recently AI transcription. I typed as fast as I could.
Whatever pretense of competition the journalists thought they brought into the media room soon slipped away as we shared information with each other, both about details we missed in the trial itself and about what the reactions were in the courtroom. Did the defendant look at the witness? Which lawyer objected?
I relied on locals for Pittsburgh information and I became one of the designated Jews in the room, at one point explaining to a TV producer what a tallit was — the prayer shawl that Bernice Simon used to stanch her husband Sylvan’s wound, before the gunman shot her.
The radio guy who assiduously tracked down every scriptural reference looked up at me quizzically when Dan Leger, one of two shooting victims who survived, said, “There is no way to understand the tranquility of those who do wrong, and the suffering of those who do good.”
I explained Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, which functions as a go-to source for an apt Jewish quote.
That spirit of cooperation was exemplified by the alliance forged by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, and the striking journalists from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, who had launched an online alternative news source, the Pittsburgh Union Progress. They collaborated to share color, context and expertise not to just with each other but with the others covering the trial.
Comfort food consumed at the Union Grill in Pittsburgh, Oct. 28, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
It was when the trial was fully underway that the local Jewish community’s filters were removed. On the witness stand, the survivors, the families of the dead, unleashed their accumulated grief and described in vivid detail the horrors they encountered, under the gentle solication of the prosecutors.
The second day of the trial, I listened, rapt, to the testimony of Carol Black, who survived by hiding during the shooting and whose brother, Richard Gottfried, was one of the fatalities. More than her recounting of the grim details of the day, how she came to be in the New Light sanctuary riveted me.
I had that epiphany every reporter longs for, of a story bigger than the sum of its already major elements. Black’s testimony and the testimony of others told the story not just of a single horrific day, but of American Jews, and how they worship and gather and stay together.
She and her brother were leaders at the New Light congregation, and she loved calling congregants up to read the Torah. Richard became more religious after their father died 30 years ago; Carol joined him in the middle of the last decade after a hip injury cut short her favored Saturday morning activity, running. She became bat mitzvah as an adult because the family’s congregation when she was growing up in nearby Uniontown did not mark the coming of age of girls. When she heard the gunfire, she was unzipping her tallit bag.
Leger explained the origins of Reconstructionism, perhaps the most American of Jewish denominations founded in the last century by Mordecai Kaplan, who sought to reconcile the American ethos of personal freedom with Jewish worship. Witness after witness, especially those from Leger’s Dor Hadash congregation, explained the Jewish imperative of welcoming the stranger.
When the gunman blew out the glass doors of the synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, two American Jewish stories collided: One of open, proud practice and one of terror of what lurks among one’s neighbors.
The gunman’s trajectory was also an American Jewish story, and the malign role Jews have played in this country’s white supremacist imagination, from Henry Ford through David Duke through Charlottesville. He read about Dor Hadash’s partnership with HIAS, the Jewish immigration advocacy group, and he embraced the antisemitic trope that Jews were funding an influx of people of color to kill and replace whites.
He found the antisemitic “great replacement theory” online drawing from sources that placed it in the context of the American immigration debate, peddled by, among other, the president at the time, Donald Trump. He found succor on the Gab social media site, founded in Pennsylvania to counter the censorship the far right was running up against on normative social media sites after Trump’s election. On Gab, he engaged 400 times with posts featuring the word “kike,” considered by some historians to be a uniquely American slur.
The defense’s argument, that the gunman’s very antisemitism proved that he was delusional, was itself delusional, in a very American sense: How could the land of the free, of opportunity, accommodate a narrative about Jews as spawn of Satan?
The story was getting under my skin, under the skin of other reporters in the room. During a break, I flew to Wisconsin for parents day at my son’s Jewish summer camp. My wife and I drove down long roads skirting 18 wheelers like the one the gunman drove, past small family bakeries like the one where he lived and worked for 14 years, and I wondered about his American story, and how welcome I would be in the homes and businesses around me.
I caught myself: How unprofessional. You’re a journalist, professionally bound to maintain distance. Not everything is personal.
And yet when Andrea Wedner, who was shot and who saw her mother, Rose Mallinger, 97, die, described how she left as a first responder led her away — “I kissed my fingers and I touched my fingers to her skin. “I cried out, ‘Mommy’” — I looked away to control myself. I saw another reporter across from me, weeping.
Years ago, in far-flung bars and cafes, after days spent covering revolution, wars and riots, I’d heard foreign correspondents claim to have mastered the art of not getting caught up in the emotions that swirled around a conflict. I understood the value of keeping oneself apart from one’s subjects. A good reporter does not cut off his emotions, but he does not indulge them either. He keeps them at a reserve like oils on a palette, to be applied judiciously.
Pittsburgh Jewish Federation CEO Jeff Finkelstein speaks to the press after a jury find the gunman who shot 11 Jewish worshipers guilty of federal crimes. The writer kneels at lower left=, in Pittsburgh, June 16, 2023. (Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Union Progress via Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle)
There were three verdicts delivered during the trial: one determining the gunman’s guilt, one determining whether the crimes were eligible for the death penalty and one determining whether the gunman deserved the death penalty.
The sides delivered closing arguments two weeks ago. The lead prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Eric Olshan, finished his presentation with a slide show of the corpses of the 11 in place at the synagogue.
“Joyce Fienberg, her loss alone is sufficient to justify a sentence of death,” Olshan said, and he proceeded, attaching the same assessment to the other 10 names: Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.
With each name, a slide appeared: a ruined body cradled by the cold white light generated by a flash. Outside, I thought, the shomrim waited for hours outside in the October chill, until the FBI told them to go home, that they would call when it was time.
“He turned an ordinary Jewish Sabbath into the worst antisemitic mass shooting in U.S. history and he is proud of it,” Olshan said.
The jury asked a couple of questions, and the next day, after seven hours of deliberation, they delivered their verdict: Death.
The victims and their families were ready to talk. They gathered for the media at the Jewish community center. Their message echoed that of the vigil on the evening of Oct. 27, 2018: Resilience. Hope. An American Jewish story.
“This fair judicial process is a reminder that we belong here,” said Howard Fienberg, whose brother Anthony dedicated a Torah in their mother’s memory just three days earlier. “This is where we are. This is where we’ve been. And this country is where we belong. And we remain a part of it. We always will.”
The JCC shut down at 7 p.m. Outside, on Forbes street, a single TV reporter caught the last light of day for one more standup.
An hour or so later, I was at the Murray Avenue Grill, just a block away from where I’d dined with Abe. It was packed. No one was talking about the trial, not even the local city council member I’d interviewed earlier in the day. A couple of tables were bursting with pink and with giddy anticipation of “Barbie,” playing across the street.
The next day, Judge Robert Colville convened the court one last time to formally deliver the death sentence, first asking the families to deliver impact statements. Twenty-three people spoke, raining fury down on the gunman, often expressed as a determination to outlive him, for generations.
Michele Rosenthal, whose brothers, Cecil and David, were among the fatalities, said her family had never thought much about immigration. The gunman changed that.
“We are resolved from here, on every Oct. 27, our family will make a donation to an immigrant organization such as HIAS,” she said. “We will mail the receipt to [the gunman’s] new home wherever that may be.”
Dan Leger who was shot in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, gives a victim impact statement in the Joseph Weis bFederal Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Aug. 3, 2023. (©Emily N Goff, 2023, all rights reserved.)
Survivors described a grief that was at once wild with motion and immutable. “The past four and a half years have disrupted relationships, wasted millions of dollars and left empty places in our hearts and homes,” said Dan Leger. “It has moved some to become vengeful and experience hate themselves. It has moved people to form friendships …. To appreciate the fragility and beauty of life on earth.”
Colville thanked the witnesses, the defense and prosecution and the jurors. When it came to the victims, he borrowed a Jewish expression..
“May their memory be a blessing,” he said before finalizing the death sentence.
I said goodbye to the reporters, to the courthouse staff, to Emily Goff, the courtroom artist who filled her breaks by sketching us in the media room. By 2 p.m., the courthouse was empty. I had a room for a night in Pittsburgh, but I couldn’t take another hour, much as I had come to love the city and its bridges and its clusters of homes and buildings set against the Allegheny Mountains.
I wanted to see Baldwin, where the gunman grew up, the setting for the Christmastime photos the defense threw up on screens to humanize him. I had driven close by every time I’d come and gone to Pittsburgh but had never made the detour.
On the way, I drove through Whitehall, a suburb where utility poles are festooned with flags saluting the town’s veterans, many of them young men who had set out after 1941 to defend the world from fascism.
There was nothing in Baldwin’s duplexes and flat brown apartment buildings, its Italian eateries, its strip malls that explained anything.
Waze took me onto Route 40, which was as empty as the starless sky. I stopped to buy almond bark for my wife from Gene and Boots, a candy store that stood alone on the highway and that sells a milk chocolate pistol with two chocolate bullets. I gassed up at a sporting goods store.
I pulled up to my house close to midnight Thursday. I looked at my phone. No alerts, no Slacks from editors. There was a single text message from my son’s counselor at his camp, deep inside Wisconsin’s north country. My son had won the camp’s Derech Eretz award because he was “compassionate and kind.”
I had no idea the camp had a Derech Eretz award. So I wept, finally.
—
The post Covering the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and its aftermath tested me as a Jewish journalist appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire Deal ‘Tantamount to a Hezbollah Defeat,’ Says Leading War Studies Think Tank
Israeli tanks are being moved, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in the Golan Heights, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
The terms of the newly minted ceasefire agreement to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah amounts to a defeat for the Lebanese terrorist group, although the deal may be difficult to implement, according to two leading US think tanks.
The deal requires Israeli forces to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon, where they have been operating since early October, over the next 60 days. Meanwhile, the Lebanese army will enter these areas and ensure that Hezbollah retreats north of the Litani River, located some 18 miles north of the border with Israel. The United States and France, who brokered the agreement, will oversee compliance with its terms.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in conjunction with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (CTP), explained the implications of the deal on Tuesday in their daily Iran Update, “which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests.” Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, is the chief proxy force of the Iranian regime.
In its analysis, ISW and CTP explained that the deal amounts to a Hezbollah defeat for two main reasons.
First, “Hezbollah has abandoned several previously-held ceasefire negotiation positions, reflecting the degree to which IDF [Israel Defense Forces] military operations have forced Hezbollah to abandon its war aims.”
Specifically, Hezbollah agreeing to a deal was previously contingent on a ceasefire in Gaza, but that changed after the past two months of Israeli military operations, during which the IDF has decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and weapons stockpiles through airstrikes while attempting to push the terrorist army away from its border with a ground offensive.
Additionally, the think tanks noted, “current Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem has also previously expressed opposition to any stipulations giving Israel freedom of action inside Lebanon,” but the deal reportedly allows Israel an ability to respond to Hezbollah if it violates the deal.
Second, the think tanks argued that the agreement was a defeat for Hezbollah because it allowed Israel to achieve its war aim of making it safe for its citizens to return to their homes in northern Israel.
“IDF operations in Lebanese border towns have eliminated the threat of an Oct. 7-style offensive attack by Hezbollah into northern Israel, and the Israeli air campaign has killed many commanders and destroyed much of Hezbollah’s munition stockpiles,” according to ISW and CTP.
Some 70,000 Israelis living in northern Israel have been forced to flee their homes over the past 14 months, amid unrelenting barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones fired by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah began its attacks last Oct. 8, one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The Jewish state had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah but intensified its military response over the past two months.
Northern Israelis told The Algemeiner this week that they were concerned the new ceasefire deal could open the door to future Hezbollah attacks, but at the same time the ceasefire will allow many of them the first opportunity to return home in a year.
ISW and CTP also noted in their analysis that Israel’s military operations have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure. According to estimates, at least 1,730 Hezbollah terrorists and upwards of 4,000 have been killed over the past year of fighting.
While the deal suggested a defeat of sorts for Hezbollah and the effectiveness of Israel’s military operations, ISW and CTP also argued that several aspects of the ceasefire will be difficult to implement.
“The decision to rely on the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and UN observers in Lebanon to respectively secure southern Lebanon and monitor compliance with the ceasefire agreement makes no serious changes to the same system outlined by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war,” they wrote.
Resolution 1701 called for the complete demilitarization of Hezbollah south of the Litani River and prohibited the presence of armed groups in Lebanon except for the official Lebanese army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
This may be an issue because “neither the LAF nor the UN proved willing or able to prevent Hezbollah from reoccupying southern Lebanon and building new infrastructure. Some LAF sources, for example, have expressed a lack of will to enforce this ceasefire because they believe that any fighting with Hezbollah would risk triggering ‘civil war,’” the think tanks assessed.
Nevertheless, the LAF is going to deploy 5,000 troops to the country’s south in order to assume control of their own territory from Hezbollah.
However, the think tanks added, “LAF units have been in southern Lebanon since 2006, but have failed to prevent Hezbollah from using the area to attack Israel.”
The post Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire Deal ‘Tantamount to a Hezbollah Defeat,’ Says Leading War Studies Think Tank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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What Nutmeg and the Torah Teach Us About Securing a Long-Term Future
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
Here’s a fact from history you may not know. In 1667, the Dutch and the British struck a trade deal that, in retrospect, seems so bizarre that it defies belief.
As part of the Treaty of Breda — a pact that ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War and aimed to solidify territorial claims between the two powers — the Dutch ceded control of Manhattan to the British.
Yes, that Manhattan — the self-proclaimed center of the universe (at least according to New Yorkers), home to Wall Street, Times Square, and those famously overpriced bagels.
And what did the Dutch get in return? Another island — tiny Run, part of the Banda Islands in Indonesia.
To put things in perspective, Run is minuscule compared to Manhattan — barely 3 square kilometers, or roughly half the size of Central Park. Today, it’s a forgotten dot on the map, with a population of less than 2,000 people and no significant industry beyond subsistence farming. But in the 17th century, Run was a prized gem worth its weight in gold — or rather, nutmeg gold.
Nutmeg was the Bitcoin of its day, an exotic spice that Europeans coveted so desperately they were willing to risk life and limb. Just by way of example, during the early spice wars, the Dutch massacred and enslaved the native Bandanese people to seize control of the lucrative nutmeg trade.
From our modern perspective, the deal seems ridiculous — Manhattan for a pinch of nutmeg? But in the context of the 17th century, it made perfect sense. Nutmeg was the crown jewel of global trade, and controlling its supply meant immense wealth and influence. For the Dutch, securing Run was a strategic move, giving them dominance in the spice trade, and, let’s be honest, plenty of bragging rights at fancy Dutch banquets.
But history has a funny way of reshaping perspectives. What seemed like a brilliant play in its time now looks like a colossal miscalculation — and the annals of history are filled with similar trades that, in hindsight, make us scratch our heads and wonder, what were they thinking?
Another contender for history’s Hall of Fame in ludicrous trades is the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was strapped for cash and eager to fund his military campaigns, sold a vast swath of North America to the nascent United States for a mere $15 million. The sale included 828,000 square miles — that’s about four cents an acre — that would become 15 states, including the fertile Midwest and the resource-rich Rocky Mountains.
But to Napoleon, this was a strategic no-brainer. He even called the sale “a magnificent bargain,” boasting that it would “forever disarm” Britain by strengthening its rival across the Atlantic. At the time, the Louisiana Territory was seen as a vast, undeveloped expanse that was difficult to govern and defend. Napoleon viewed it as a logistical burden, especially with the looming threat of British naval power. By selling the territory, he aimed to bolster France’s finances and focus on European conflicts.
Napoleon wasn’t shy about mocking his enemies for their mistakes, once quipping, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” But in this case, it’s tempting to imagine him swallowing those words as the United States grew into a global superpower thanks, in no small part, to his so-called bargain.
While he may have considered Louisiana to be a logistical headache — too far away and too vulnerable to British attacks — the long-term implications of the deal were staggering. What Napoleon dismissed as a far-off backwater turned out to be the world’s breadbasket, not to mention the backbone of America’s westward expansion.
Like the Dutch and their nutmeg gamble, Napoleon made a trade that no doubt seemed brilliant at the time — but, with hindsight, turned into a world-class blunder. It’s the kind of decision that reminds us just how hard it is to see past the urgency of the moment and anticipate the full scope of consequences.
Which brings me to Esav. You’d think Esav, the firstborn son of Yitzchak and Rivka, would have his priorities straight. He was the guy — heir to a distinguished dynasty that stretched back to his grandfather Abraham, who single-handedly changed the course of human history.
But one fateful day, as recalled at the beginning of Parshat Toldot, Esav stumbles home from a hunting trip, exhausted and ravenous. The aroma of Yaakov’s lentil stew hits him like a truck. “Pour me some of that red stuff!” he demands, as if he’s never seen food before.
Yaakov, never one to pass up an opportunity, doesn’t miss a beat.
“Sure, but only in exchange for your birthright,” he counters casually, as if such transactions are as common as trading baseball cards. And just like that, Esav trades his birthright for a bowl of soup. No lawyers, no witnesses, not even a handshake — just an impulsive decision fueled by hunger and a staggering lack of foresight.
The Torah captures the absurdity of the moment: Esav claims to be “on the verge of death” and dismisses the birthright as worthless. Any future value — material or spiritual — is meaningless to him in that moment. All that matters is satisfying his immediate needs.
So, was it really such a terrible deal? Psychologists have a term for Esav’s behavior: hyperbolic discounting — a fancy term for our tendency to prioritize immediate rewards over bigger, long-term benefits.
It’s the same mental quirk that makes splurging on a gadget feel better than saving for retirement, or binge-watching a series more appealing than preparing for an exam. For Esav, the stew wasn’t just a meal — it was the instant solution to his discomfort, a quick fix that blinded him to the larger, long-term value of his birthright.
It’s the classic trade-off between now and later: the craving for immediate gratification often comes at the expense of something far more significant. Esav’s impulsive decision wasn’t just about hunger — it was about losing sight of the future in the heat of the moment.
Truthfully, it’s easy to criticize Esav for his shortsightedness, but how often do we fall into the same trap? We skip meaningful opportunities because they feel inconvenient or uncomfortable in the moment, opting for the metaphorical lentil stew instead of holding out for the birthright.
But the Torah doesn’t include this story just to make Esav look bad. It’s there to highlight the contrast between Esav and Yaakov — the choices that define them and, by extension, us.
Esav represents the immediate, the expedient, the here-and-now. Yaakov, our spiritual forebear, is the embodiment of foresight and patience. He sees the long game and keeps his eye on what truly matters: Abraham and Yitzchak’s legacy and the Jewish people’s spiritual destiny.
The message of Toldot is clear: the choices we make in moments of weakness have the power to shape our future — and the future of all who come after us. Esav’s impulsiveness relegated him to a footnote in history, like the nutmeg island of Run or France’s control over a vast portion of North America.
Meanwhile, Yaakov’s ability to think beyond the moment secured him a legacy that continues to inspire and guide us to this day — a timeless reminder that true greatness is not built in a moment of indulgence, but in the patience to see beyond it.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
The post What Nutmeg and the Torah Teach Us About Securing a Long-Term Future first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Violating US Law, Palestinian Authority Brags That It’s Responsible for ICC Arrest Warrants
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
US law prohibits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from receiving aid from the Economic Support Fund if it works with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Israel.
Nevertheless, the PA, which has been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid in recent years through multiple channels, played a leading role in the ICC’s case against Israel, and is now bragging about it:
International law researcher Jihad Al-Harazin: “We are beginning to see the fruits of the political, legal, and diplomatic efforts that the Palestinian leadership has undertaken over many years.
Since Palestine joined the ICC, it has been submitting daily requests to the ICC Prosecutor … about everything happening on Palestinian soil … We had to join this court, and our membership did not come out of a vacuum rather from extensive diplomatic efforts, led particularly by President Mahmoud Abbas …
From this, a brilliant political vision emerged that would force the occupation’s leaders to be brought before the most important international body for justice, the ICC, so they would be held accountable for their crimes. This leads us to appreciate the foresight and wisdom of President Mahmoud Abbas’ vision when he decided to join the ICC. [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, From the Capitals, November 25, 2024]
Al-Harazin’s lauding of Mahmoud Abbas’ wisdom follows a PA official announcement that it welcomes the ICC decision, and will continue to work to help the ICC in the case:
The State of Palestine Thursday welcomed the ICC decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former ‘Defense’ Minister Yoav Gallant …
It affirmed that it would continue to engage with international justice institutions and courts until all criminals who committed and are still committing crimes against the Palestinian people are held accountable to ensure justice and fairness to Palestinians. [emphasis added]
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Nov. 21, 2024]
Both the official statement and Al-Harazin’s bragging follow an admission by another official that the PA is actively participating in the ICC case against Israel:
Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadura Fares: “We in the [PLO] Commission of Prisoners’ [Affairs] and the [PA-funded] Prisoners’ Club, are documenting all the crimes.
We are cooperating with the committee that was established by decision of [PA] President [Abbas], a professional committee led by [PA] Attorney General Akram Al-Khatib. It is documenting the appropriate testimonies according to the required criteria so that these testimonies will be accepted before the ICC … [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Nov. 14, 2024]
American law is very clear about prohibiting the PA from receiving anything from the Economic Support Fund if it helps the ICC.
The 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act states:
None of the funds appropriated under the heading “Economic Support Fund” in this Act may be made available for assistance for the Palestinian Authority, if after the date of enactment of this Act … the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”
Palestinian Media Watch already exposed in May 2021 how Jamil Sajadiyeh, the director of the PA Attorney’s Office for International Legal Cooperation, described the intensive PA-ICC cooperation:
Head of the PA Attorney’s Office for International Legal Cooperation Jamil Sajadiyeh: “There are efforts that have been made with or planned through joint meetings with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Around 80 meetings have been held between Palestine and the ICC, of course with the office of ICC General Prosecutor [Fatou Bensouda]. There are nearly 60 cases and letters that have been submitted, all of them telling about the Israeli violations. Monthly reports are being submitted to the ICC via the general prosecutor through the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs. .. Palestine has submitted all it can in order to carry out these investigations … according to the instructions of His Honor President [Abbas] and all the relevant parties.” [emphasis added]
[Official Palestinian Authority TV, May 25, 2021]
The PA has been gloating over its achievements at the ICC and taking credit throughout the process. In May, when the ICC prosecutor submitted the requests for the arrest warrants, a Fatah official declared:
Fatah Jenin Branch member Nasri Hamamreh: “The political and diplomatic efforts … reached their height upon the achievement of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision. We as the Palestinian people view this as an achievement that can be added to a series of accumulated achievements
… It is an achievement for the wise leader of the Palestinian people [Mahmoud Abbas] who thinks of every way possible to bolster the Palestinian people’s resilience and to push the Israeli occupation into a corner, and to expose it, to expose its true ugly face to all the nations of the world.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, May 21, 2024]
Tayseer Nasrallah, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council who also said earlier this year that the ICC decision was a fruit of PA labor, now exclaimed that Palestinians were “living in a state of euphoria and joy” over the decision:
Fatah Revolutionary Council member Tayseer Nasrallah: “A courageous decision was made by the International Criminal Court, and we welcome their taking this position. We also welcome the countries that immediately acceded [to the warrant], especially the member states of the International Criminal Court.
Indeed, we are now living in a state of euphoria and joy that the world has begun to see this entity as a terrorist, criminal, and spurned entity that is in a state of isolation, with everyone acting against it. Netanyahu, Gallant, and the entire criminal gang who are still committing genocide and starvation against our people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Lebanon cannot leave [the country].”
[Official PA TV, November 24, 2024]
The PA is in good company, as Hamas also welcomed the decision:
Hamas Movement Political Bureau member Izzat Al-Rishq said that regardless of whether there is a possibility of implementing the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision, the truth that was revealed is that international justice is on our side and is against the Zionist entity. In a press release, Al-Rishq said: ‘This growing awareness and the exposure of the true terrorist face of the occupying entity (i.e., Israel) serves the Palestinian interest, the future of our cause, and our goal – liberation that will necessarily come, Allah willing.’ [emphasis added]
[Palestinian Information Center website (Hamas), Nov. 21, 2024]
Since the PA has indeed been actively and vigorously supporting the ICC’s case against Israel, it has been making a mockery of American wishes and legislation. It will only have itself to blame if and when the US government abides by the letter and intent of American law, and cuts off funding.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article was originally published by PMW.
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