Uncategorized
Why God Is Offering Us an Olive Branch Today
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
In “Anthem,” a song from his 1992 album The Future, Leonard Cohen sang: “There is a crack, a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in.” Beautiful words, if somewhat haunting.
They echo the words uttered decades earlier by another Cohen — the first Chief Rabbi of modern Eretz Yisrael, Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook: “Out of the wreckage of destruction, the light of redemption will shine forth.” Never in recent history has this sentiment felt more piercingly true.
Rom Breslavski, who was on duty as a security guard at the Nova music festival on October 7th and was kidnapped into Gaza by terrorists, spent two years in solitary confinement under Islamic Jihad. He never saw daylight. He was starved, beaten, and terrorized. The guards forced him to sleep beside the bodies of murdered hostages. They tried to force him to convert to Islam. They taunted him with lies — that Israel had been destroyed, that his family was dead, that the war with Iran had wiped out everything he loved.
They tried to break him, body and soul, and came close to succeeding. Now Rom is home. He stands for hours every day by the window, just looking at the sky. His sad eyes betray the broken spirit of someone who has been to hell and back. He doesn’t say much.
His freedom is real, yes – but it doesn’t yet feel like freedom. For now, there is a crack — and we can only hope that through it, the light is beginning to get in. That out of this wreckage of destruction, the light of redemption will, at last, shine forth.
The look in Rom’s eyes is the same exact look you see in those haunting photographs of Holocaust survivors taken in early 1945 – men and women stepping through the gates of Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen, technically free but hollow-eyed and gaunt, their spirits shattered.
They are alive, but not yet living. One nightmare has ended, but another is only beginning – the long, slow struggle to feel human again.
Liberation is never a single moment. It’s a process – slow, uneven, and often painfully drawn out. The first breath of freedom is always jagged and uncertain. Trauma doesn’t evaporate when the door opens – it lingers in the air for a long time after, and truthfully, it never entirely disappears. As Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor, later wrote, liberation was not the euphoric experience he and his fellow prisoners imagined it would be.
When the camp gates finally opened, many felt strangely numb, unable to rejoice. They walked out, Frankl said, “like sleepwalkers,” their souls lagging behind their bodies.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes how the sudden transition from horror to safety left survivors bewildered, and even depressed. Their horrific experiences under the Nazis had stripped them of their ability to feel. They were conditioned to expect pain or betrayal at every turn. Which meant that freedom was not the end of their suffering — it was the beginning of their healing.
And it’s in exactly this fragile space — the uneasy aftermath of catastrophe — that the Torah offers one of its most poignant symbols. Towards the end of the story of Noah’s flood, after months sealed inside the ark while the world drowned beneath torrential waters, the storms finally subsided. Hoping their ordeal was over, Noah sent out a dove to see whether the earth had begun to dry. The bird returned with something small and unexpected — “an olive leaf torn off in her mouth” (Gen. 8:11).
It was the first sign that the world outside the ark was beginning to heal, that life after the flood might once again be possible. But, as the commentaries note, the olive leaf was hardly a symbol of complete restoration.
The Ramban sees the olive leaf as proof that the world was only beginning to heal, but was not yet fully ready. Some land had reemerged, and hardy trees like the olive had started to sprout leaves – but the earth was still soggy and unstable, not yet ready for cultivation. The message was not “It’s over,” but rather, “It’s time to begin again.”
The Kli Yakar makes a striking observation: Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves after their sin – symbols of shame. But the dove brought Noah an olive leaf, a symbol of light and atonement; olive oil would one day fuel the pure flame of the sacred Menorah. Here was the light shining through the crack – a hopeful beginning, even if the world wasn’t quite ready to be whole.
The Zohar, sourcebook of Jewish mysticism, adds another layer: an olive yields its oil only when it is crushed. So it is with humanity, which often produces its greatest illumination only after being broken. The olive leaf was not meant to be a token of comfort or triumph, but a reminder that most often, it is from brokenness that light will emerge.
Noah’s emergence from the ark wasn’t the end of the story — it was the start of a long, difficult climb. The flood may have symbolically washed the world clean, but it hadn’t cured the human heart. Within the next few chapters, we encounter the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, jealousies and betrayals within families, and eventually Egypt’s enslavement of Jacob’s descendants. The story of humanity after the flood was a catalogue of all kinds of failure and failings, one generation after another.
The olive leaf that the dove carried to Noah as the trauma of the flood drew to a close was not a declaration of victory. It was a divine whisper: the worst of the nightmare is over, but don’t celebrate just yet — there’s still a long way to go. It reminded Noah, and every generation after him, that rebuilding the world is never a single act of survival, but a lifelong process of reconstruction. Every step along the way must be seen for what it is — a platform for growth, a chance to reach higher, and an opportunity to shape a better future.
Rom Breslavski, like those Holocaust survivors before him, knows this truth instinctively. Freedom isn’t a doorway you walk through into sunshine — it’s a staircase you ascend, one painful, uncertain step at a time. The dove’s olive leaf wasn’t telling Noah that the storm was over — Noah already knew that. It was reminding him that the healing had only just begun.
That’s how God redeems the world: not in an instant, but through slow, deliberate rebirth. The cracks remain, but through them — as Leonard Cohen says it — the light gets in.
That’s what the dove offered Noah. It’s what God offered the survivors of the Shoah. And it’s what He is offering us today, after two years of trauma following October 7th — a tiny olive leaf, a call to rebuild, and the promise that even through the cracks, His light still finds a way in.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
Uncategorized
StopAntisemitism names Tucker Carlson ‘Antisemite of the Year’ as 2024 winner Candace Owens ramps up anti-Jewish rhetoric
(JTA) — The activist group StopAntisemitism has awarded the conservative personality Tucker Carlson its ignominious honor of “Antisemite of the Year,” citing his frequent invocation of classic antisemitic stereotypes.
The announcement comes as Carlson sits at the center of controversy on the American right about whether extremists should be welcomed in the Republican Party. It also marks the second year in a row that StopAntisemitism has selected a right-wing figure for its accolade, after years of awarding the mantle to mostly left-wing figures.
“Carlson mainstreams antisemitism by platforming and praising Holocaust revisionists and Nazi apologists, while hiding behind irony and plausible deniability,” the group said in a statement. “By legitimizing extremist voices and weaponizing conspiratorial imagery at massive scale, he has helped drag antisemitic ideas back into the mainstream.”
A watchdog presence with more than 300,000 followers on X, StopAntisemitism regularly mobilizes against activists and social media posts. The group has faced criticism for what some perceive as an inordinate focus on Muslim personalities, pro-Palestinian actions and non-prominent individuals. Its defenders deny that, pointing out that StopAntisemitism also regularly spotlights neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers on the right.
Its finalists for Antisemite of the Year included pro-Palestinian celebrities Ms. Rachel, Cynthia Nixon and Marcia Cross; mixed-martial-arts athlete and Holocaust denier Bryce Mitchell; two personalities associated with left-wing network The Young Turks; and social media personalities on both the far left (Guy Christensen) and far right (Stew Peters).
Carlson received the accolade on Sunday night, at the end of a weekend in which he was a keynote speaker at the convention of Turning Point USA, the young-conservatives group founded by Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated this fall. In its announcement, StopAntisemitism noted Carlson’s speech at Kirk’s memorial service, in which he described the murder of Jesus in a way that both his critics and fans interpreted as implying that Jews or Israelis had been behind Kirk’s assassination.
At the convention, the Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro continued his campaign against Carlson and Carlson declared himself to free of the anti-Jewish animus that he has long been criticized as propagating.
“Let me just affirm one final time. Not only am I not an antisemite — and I would say so if I was — I’m not an antisemite for a very specific reason,” Carlson said in his speech. “Not because it’s unpopular or my donors don’t like it. I don’t have any donors. I’m not an antisemite because anti-semitism is immoral in my religion. It is immoral to hate people for how they were born.”
It was the same explanation that Vice President JD Vance offered earlier this month when he said in an NBC News interview that he believed antisemitism is wrong.
In his own speech to Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, Vance again refrained from criticizing extremists in the Republican Party, saying that he opposes “purity tests” for inclusion in the conservative movement. He also said he believed that antisemitism in the United States was being fueled by “a real backlash” against U.S. aid to Israel..
As the convention was underway, last year’s “Antisemite of the Year,” the right-wing streamer Candace Owens, embarked on a four-hour broadcast eviscerating Shapiro; amplifying antisemitic theories, including that Jews controlled the slave trade; and promoting a classic work of antisemitism by August Rohling, a German Catholic who believed in the blood libel and argued that the Talmud is a secret guide used by Jews for nefarious purposes. Rohling died in 1931.
The post StopAntisemitism names Tucker Carlson ‘Antisemite of the Year’ as 2024 winner Candace Owens ramps up anti-Jewish rhetoric appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Senior Hamas Official Vows Terror Group Will Never Disarm, Rejects Foreign Pressure
Hamas official Osama Hamdan speaks during a press conference, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Beirut, Lebanon, June 4, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Hamas has once again rejected calls to disarm, warning against “foreign interference in Palestinian affairs” as the terrorist group’s senior officials met with Turkish leaders to discuss the next phase of the US-backed peace plan for Gaza.
In an interview with the Yemeni news outlet Al-Masirah on Tuesday, Hamas Political Bureau member Osama Hamdan reiterated that the Islamist group will never hand over its weapons to foreign powers.
“The resistance rejects any foreign attempt to disarm us or seize the weapons the occupation failed to take,” the terrorist leader said. “The idea of surrendering our arms is one the resistance will never accept.”
“In the second phase of the Gaza agreement, the guarantees must be clearer, and the commitments more detailed,” Hamdan continued. “The Zionist enemy does not abide by the agreement. Israel’s failure to open the [humanitarian] crossings signals its intention to resume aggression against the Gaza Strip.”
On Wednesday, senior Hamas officials met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara to discuss the ongoing ceasefire and coordinate the next steps in advancing the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan to end the two-year conflict.
“The Americans want to impose hegemony on the region, with the Zionist entity [Israel] as its foundation,” Hamdan said during the interview. “Disarming the resistance would give Israel absolute control over the entire region.”
“The resistance is capable of continuing the fight, and I am confident the outcome of this conflict will be the demise of this entity,” he continued.
According to media reports, Hamas officials told Turkish counterparts they had fulfilled their ceasefire commitments, but accused Israel of violating the deal while blocking progress to the next phase of the agreement.
Since the start of the ceasefire in October, both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violations. Israel has carried out several operations targeting terrorist operatives as the Palestinian group ramps up efforts to reassert control over the war-torn enclave.
According to the US-backed peace plan, the second phase is expected to establish an interim administrative authority — a so-called “technocratic government” — deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to take over security in Gaza, and begin the demilitarization of Hamas.
However, efforts to advance the ceasefire deal have stalled, with no agreement on crucial next steps, including the start of reconstruction in the enclave and the deployment of the ISF.
Turkey, a longtime backer of Hamas, has been trying to expand its role in Gaza’s post-war reconstruction efforts, which experts warn could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
While Turkey insists on participating in the ISF, Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any Turkish involvement in post-war Gaza.
Turkey has even sought to shield Hamas from disarmament by pushing for the terrorist group to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority or place them in secure international storage, rather than requiring it to disarm.
Israeli officials have rejected these options as unacceptable, arguing they would allow the terrorist group to maintain its influence in Gaza, which Hamas has ruled for nearly two decades.
Under phase one of Trump’s peace plan, Hamas was required to release all remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In exchange, Israel freed thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences for terrorism, and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza to a newly drawn “Yellow Line,” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west.
According to the ceasefire plan, the Israeli army is required to withdraw further as the disarmament process unfolds. However, Israel has made clear that it will not pull back until Hamas disarms and other conditions are met.
Currently, the Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, and Hamas has moved to reestablish control over the other 47 percent. However, the vast majority of the Gazan population is located in the Hamas-controlled half, where the Islamist group has been imposing a brutal crackdown.
Since the ceasefire took effect two months ago, Hamas has targeted Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel,” sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
Uncategorized
US Considers Sanctions on Spain for Barring Ships Bringing Arms to Israel
Containers are seen in the Port of Vigo, Spain, March 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nacho Doce
The US is weighing potential penalties against Spanish-linked shipping after Spain denied port entry to cargo vessels transporting US weapons to Israel, escalating a rare maritime and diplomatic dispute between two NATO allies.
The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), an independent agency of the US government, opened an investigation late last year into Spain for refusing to allow at least three cargo vessels — two of which were US-flagged — into its ports.
Two of the three incidents from 2024 noted by the commission involved vessels run by the Danish shipping giant Maersk in November. The other occurred in May, when Spanish officials said they refused permission for the Danish Marianne Danica ship because it was “carrying weapons to Israel” and added they will not allow ships carrying arms for Israel to stop at its ports moving forward.
Last Friday, the FMC released a brief update on the “restrictive port practices of the government of Spain,” noting that “the policy behind those refusals remains in place.” The update went on to explain that the agency will continue its investigation, which could result in the US fining Spain up to $2.3 million per voyage if the probe concludes that the country has interfered with commerce.
“Based on the information obtained up to this point, it appears that the laws or regulations adopted, followed, or enforced by Spain are likely creating general or special conditions unfavorable to shipping in US foreign trade,” the FMC update stated. “Accordingly, the commission must also examine, and now seeks public input on, what remedial actions may be appropriate to meet or adjust those apparent conditions. The commission may weigh a range of potential remedies, including limitations on cargo, refusing entry to vessels operating under Spain’s flag, or imposing fines up to the current inflation-adjusted limit of $2,304,629 per voyage on Spanish-flagged vessels.”
The FMC also posted a more detailed notice, which was published in the Federal Register this week, explaining its concerns with Spain.
In September, Madrid announced “a multi-faceted policy aimed at halting the flow of certain cargo
bound for or coming from Israel through air or marine transport,” the agency explained. “Measures it announced include banning ships and aircraft carrying weapons bound for Israel or tankers carrying fuel for use by the Israeli military from using Spanish ports and airspace.”
The agency went on to outline some of the actions it can take to combat actions it described as creating “unfavorable” conditions for US shipping.
“Remedies the commission can implement to adjust or meet unfavorable conditions to shipping in the foreign trade of the United States include adopting regulations restricting voyages to or from US ports, imposing per voyage fees, limiting amounts or types of cargo, or taking ‘any other action the commission finds necessary and appropriate to adjust or meet any condition unfavorable to shipping the foreign trade of the United States,’” the FMC said.
Spain has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across south Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In one of its recent attempts to curb Israel’s defensive campaign against Hamas, Madrid decided to block US military planes and ships from using Spanish bases to transport weapons and equipment to Jerusalem.
Spain also unveiled an arms embargo and a ban on certain Israeli goods earlier this year. The Spanish government announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.
Spain has additionally canceled a €700 million ($825 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers, as the government conducts a broader review to systematically phase out Israeli weapons and technology from its armed forces.
“It is deeply concerning that Spain, a NATO member, has chosen to potentially limit US operations and to turn its back on Israel on the same day six individuals were killed in Jerusalem. These measures embolden terrorists,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters in September, on the same day as a Palestinian terrorist attack targeting Israelis.
Last December, FMC commissioner Louis Sola argued that Spain’s actions have a negative effect on the global system of trade, not just Israel.
“Disruptions to international trade systems not only threaten global shipping networks, but also compromise the consumer markets they support. As a member of the international maritime community, Spain is obligated to adhere to international maritime norms,” Sola said. “Reports that the government of Spain has denied access to certain US-flagged vessels raise serious concerns. Section 19 of the Merchant Marine Act, 1920, 46 U.S.C. § 42101, authorizes the commission to identify and offset unfavorable shipping conditions in US foreign trade that result from the laws or regulations of a foreign government.”