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Destiny in Disaster?
A 1539 representation of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
JNS.org – Have you ever met a professor of comparative religion? I’ve often wondered whether these academics have really studied all religions and if they believe in any of them.
In this week’s Torah reading, Yitro, we are introduced to the world’s first professor of comparative religion. His name was Jethro (Yitro in Hebrew), and he had investigated every faith of ancient times until he came to embrace Judaism. He did so not because Moses was his son-in-law but because he had studied every faith in depth and came to an educated conclusion.
The reading begins with, “And Jethro heard all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, His people; that He had taken Israel out of Egypt.” Yitro was the high priest of Midian, and after familiarizing himself with every religion, cult and creed of his day, he said, “Now I know that Hashem is greater than all other deities.” Seeing how the Israelites were miraculously redeemed from slavery in Egypt put the Jewish God in another league entirely, so he came to join the Jewish people.
The Torah scholar Rashi, quoting the Talmud, adds other events that influenced Jethro to leave Midian and meet the Israelites in the desert. What were they? “The splitting of the sea and the war against Amalek.”
The splitting of the sea is arguably the biggest miracle in all of history. In fact, when the Talmud mentions something particularly difficult, it uses the expression, “As difficult as splitting the sea.” Also, that an untrained, ill-equipped slave nation defeated the fierce warrior nation of Amalek in battle was surely divine intervention.
But why did Rashi need to look for any other reasons at all? The Torah explicitly states that Jethro heard about the Exodus from Egypt. It doesn’t say he heard about the sea or Amalek.
Perhaps Yitro was not just looking for a God to believe in but a nation to be part of. In the splitting of the sea and the war of Amalek, Jethro found a special destiny embedded in Jewish peoplehood, and that was what attracted him.
The splitting of the sea was heard around the world. The guiding hand of God protecting the Jews, who were trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, was a miracle second to none. With the Egyptian chariots bearing down on them and nowhere to run, only the Almighty could come to their rescue. Jethro saw a special destiny there—the destiny of deliverance.
But that wasn’t all Jethro heard. He also heard of the attack by Amalek. Here was a nation that had no logical reason to be troubled by the Israelites. They were not coming their way. They weren’t looking to conquer their territory. It was complete chutzpah on the Amalekites’ part. The Jews were minding their own business. Why should Amalek launch an unprovoked all-out war?
Yitro saw something more than just a military confrontation. This was not a case of neighboring countries fighting over land or an imperialistic despot ambitious to conquer the continent. It was a case of senseless hatred. It was an unnatural opposition to the Jews and everything the nation of Israel stands for. Yitro correctly perceived that this was not a typical war. Amalek’s malicious, unwarranted, wanton attack put him in the category of not just an enemy but an arch-enemy. Indeed, we have described our most vicious enemies throughout history as Amalekites. Though they were not genealogically related, the Nazis personified Amalek. And so do Hamas and company.
When Yitro saw that Israel was the subject of such unwarranted hate, he realized that the Jewish people were different from all other nations. This simply does not happen to other nations. War is, unfortunately, all too common. But a senseless war, an irrational animosity, is not at all common. It is, in fact, unique. If the Jewish people can stir such hatred and hostility in people with whom we have no business, then, clearly, we are a people with a purpose and fate that transcend logic. Yitro saw the Jewish destiny in disaster, too.
We, too, have experienced sea-splitting miracles in the survival of modern Israel over seven decades. Surrounded by neighbors whose dominant dream is to drive us into the sea, we are still here to tell the tale. We have witnessed with our own eyes how “The Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” We experienced the miraculous, lightning victory of the Six-Day War, how He carried us “on the wings of eagles” to and from Entebbe, how the “clouds of glory” protected us from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s deadly Scud missiles during the Persian Gulf War and from Iran’s massive missile barrages on Israel within the past year. To not see and feel the miracle of Jewish survival is to be blind, deaf and dumb. We have seen our destiny in deliverance.
But we have also seen the irrational hatred of Amalek again today. Gaza could have been a peaceful and prosperous haven of tranquillity and success. With the infrastructure left behind by Israel in 2005 and the billions poured into the region by the West, the Palestinians could have built a strong and prosperous economy and society. Instead, their hate fueled them to pour all their energy into tunnels of terror while their people remained impoverished. The bloody massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, established Hamas as Amalek personified today, and I’m afraid we have also seen our destiny in disaster.
The Holocaust remains unique in all of history. It was not only genocide but an attempt at a Final Solution, which would have utterly annihilated an entire nation. Had Hamas not been stopped in its tracks, they would have been only too pleased to finish the job Adolf Hitler began.
Holocausts don’t happen to other nations. Yes, there have been terrible genocides in different countries, but a Final Solution? Never. I wish we could not claim this dubious distinction, but it is a historical fact. The sheer number of dead from the Holocaust is so catastrophic—so unearthly and absurd—that it demonstrates that we are not a people like any other, not just in our deliverances, but sadly, also in our tragedies. Yes, we have experienced our destiny in disaster, too.
In the Torah reading this week, we also learn about the great Revelation at Sinai and the Ten Commandments. This is our special providential mission—to be a “Kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Israel and the Jewish people are called upon to live by God’s Torah and our ancient but eternal traditions. May we live up to our unique purpose as messengers of God, and may we merit to see our extraordinary destiny in the Almighty’s deliverance and redemption.
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New York Times Reader Comments Shows a Global Readership Shifting Against Israel
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In March 2022, the New York Times unveiled a global strategy that spoke of targeting “every curious, English-speaking person” and playing “an even bigger role in the lives of tens of millions of people around the world.” It didn’t speak of being a New York or American newspaper.
The paper was following through on an effort it announced in 2016 as “an ambitious plan to expand its international digital audience and increase revenue outside the United States.”
The Times reported then, “Just as The Times pushed beyond its local boundaries to become a national newspaper in the 1990s, the executives said in the memo that they now saw the “opportunity to become an indispensable leader in global news and opinion’ by expanding its presence outside the country’s borders.”
How far has the Times gotten toward achieving its objective of shifting its prototypical customer from a housewife in the Westchester County, New York, suburb of Scarsdale to some college professor in Berlin or bureaucrat in Brussels?
An indication is available in the reader comments on a Times news article headlined “Autopsies of Gaza Medics Killed by Israeli Troops Show Some Were Shot in the Head.”
Many of the Israel-bashing comments on the article come from readers based outside of the United States.
“There appears to be no law at all when it comes to Israel’s prosecution of war. No constraints. No real international pressure to try and contain these all too frequent violations,” writes a Times commenter identified as Richard Smith from Edinburgh, U.K. He called Israel’s behavior “sickening.”
Another Times commenter, Hélène Volat of Paris, writes, “each time I thought of having seen the worst, Israel surprises me.”
Another commenter, “Melan” from Berlin, writes to call for sanctions on Israel similar to those on Russia: “Freeze assets, ban travel, and block arms deals for officials behind the killings.”
A Times commenter Michelle from Montreal writes, “I will never buy anything made in Israel ever again.”
Times commenter “Steve” from Toronto writes, “I really wish the USA would stop supporting this country. Have you no morals?”
Another Times commenter, Denis Coakley from Ireland, contends, “Israel has descended to the level of Hamas… Sadly this is a result of the blank-cheque given to Netanyahu by his fellow tyrant in the White House.”
The Times staff is becoming increasingly international just as its readership is. The bylines on this story include those of Christoph Koettl, a graduate of the University of Vienna, according to his LinkedIn profile, who spent eight years as an employee of or consultant to the anti-Israel advocacy group Amnesty International and its affiliates; and of Bilal Shbair, who previously worked in Gaza as an English teacher for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Reporting was also contributed by “Abubakr Abdelbagi and Naziha Baassiri,” who don’t have biographies available on the New York Times website.
The Times article says the autopsies “were performed by Dr. Ahmad Dhair, the head of the Gazan health ministry’s forensic medicine unit,” without telling readers that the health ministry is controlled by the Hamas terrorist organization, or that Hamas restricts what reporters inside Gaza can report.
Having maxed out of anti-Israel readers on university campuses that provide enterprise-wide Times access to students, faculty, and staff, the Times is now trying to increase its revenues by chasing anti-Israel readers all the way to Europe and Canada. As a business growth strategy it may make some sense. The tradeoff, though, is turning the newspaper’s comments section into an anti-Israel sewer, and also allowing the news section of the paper to be used as a platform for stories that seem calculated to fuel anti-Israel animus. That comes at some cost to whatever is left of the Times’s fading credibility with whatever readers remain from the days when the Times was a New York newspaper, or a proudly American one.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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Not Just Hamas: PA Religious Leaders Agree That Islam Prohibits Israel’s Existence
Palestinians walk at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City May 21, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
One mistake made by world leaders and even many Israeli leaders, is to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a secular Muslim leadership that rejects religious war for Allah — as opposed to Hamas. But this is a fundamental misreading of Palestinians and the conflict.
Fundamentally, the Palestinian Authority’s political leaders, like Hamas’ leaders, and like most of the Palestinian population, are religious Muslims first and Palestinians second.
The message of all PA religious leaders — some appointed by Mahmoud Abbas himself — is to deny Israel’s right to exist on religious Islamic grounds.
According to PA belief, Islamic law states that land that was once under Muslim rule must be liberated from the infidels as a mandatory religious obligation. Since the land of Israel was under Muslim Ottoman rule for four centuries, the PA is prohibited from making a permanent treaty with Israel that it intends to keep.
PA Shari’ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem explained this “fact” to worshippers at a mosque in Ramallah during a Friday sermon that was broadcast by official PA TV:
PA Shari’ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem: “The Shari’ah legal law of this land, for anyone who doesn’t know, is that it is a waqf land … from its [Mediterranean] Sea to its [Jordan] River, this is its Shari’ah law, from its sea to its river.
The laws of this waqf determine that its status cannot be changed, not by sale and not by purchase, not by collateral and not by exchange… not by addition and not by subtraction… As for the [end] date of this waqf: It is forever and ever, and for all eternity, until Allah inherits the earth and those on it.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Feb. 14, 2025]
Following other PA religious leaders, Al-Qirem taught listeners that “Palestine” — including all of the State of Israel — is a waqf. A waqf is an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law.
Palestinians define all of Israel as waqf, and thereby Israel exists on Islamic holy land. Palestinian leaders have explained that under Islamic law Muslims are commanded to free the waqf from non-Muslims.
Similarly, PA Supreme Shari’ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who is also PA leader Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, has taught that the Western Wall is exclusively Islamic — according to Allah -– and that Muslims are obligated to fight anyone who challenges this right:
Al-Habbash: “Islam is truth that is indivisible… The rights are indivisible – Give me 60% or 70% of my rights, and tell me: ‘That’s it, that’s yours, take it.’ Perhaps temporarily, yes. [But] strategically, no! … Our rights are non-negotiable. They want to negotiate over Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque – then by Allah, it is better [to be dead] in the belly of the earth than to be on its surface…
There is no negotiation on one millimeter of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the Al-Buraq Wall [i.e., the Western Wall of the Temple Mount[, which is an exclusive permanent Islamic waqf according to Allah’s decree… This is our right, and whoever fights us over our right is an oppressor, and it is a duty to resist the oppressors.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Jan. 20, 2023]
Repeating that Jews have no rights on Temple Mount, Al-Habbash encouraged the “Islamic nation” to “liberate Al-Aqsa with all means,” saying it was their “duty” because it is a waqf:
Al-Habbash: “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is a pure Islamic right. It is an exclusive Islamic waqf for Muslims (i.e., an inalienable religious endowment), and it is an exclusive right of the Muslims… At the UN podium, [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas spoke explicitly about the Muslims’ legal claim to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and [said] that non-Muslims have no right to it… [Israel] knows that it has no right to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that the Jews have no right to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. But they are only fanning the fire of hostility and the fire of religious war…
The duty lies on the Islamic nation and the Arabs in general, with the governments, regimes, states, bodies, religious and popular sources of authority and [all] the peoples, to participate in defending the noble Al-Aqsa Mosque, starting with coming to it… and ending with liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque by all possible means (i.e., including terror).” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Oct. 1, 2024]
Already a decade ago, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that Al-Habbash considers all of Israel a waqf:
Al-Habbash: “The entire land of Palestine is [Islamic] waqf and is blessed land … It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 22, 2014]
The author is the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch.
The post Not Just Hamas: PA Religious Leaders Agree That Islam Prohibits Israel’s Existence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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This Jewish Rapper Should Be Praised for His Passover Pride
Rapper Kosha Dillz, dressed as Moses, leading a Passover seder at Coachella in 2022. Photo: @chrism_arts.
Antisemites in America — and especially in New York — are trying to make Jews feel fearful of going about their regular activities. One infamous video that went viral had anti-Israel protestors screaming that Zionists should get off the subway.
Jewish rapper Rami Matan Even-Esh — known as Kosha Dillz — decided to have a Subway Seder despite some negative comments he got last year when he did it. Dillz has visited Israel and performed for released hostages and families of hostages, as well as wounded soldiers.
“I love doing the Subway Seder because it was a breath of fresh air and some people joined in who weren’t having their own Seders,” Dillz told me in an interview.
He said his group did it on the Q train at Union Square in Manhattan at about 6 o’clock on Friday.
“People are glued to the Internet waiting for bad news, so it was nice to do something like this,” he said, adding that he dressed as Moses. “There were Black and Hispanic community members who asked what we were doing and they were receptive that we were taking pride.”
Dillz showed the Jewish pride that we all should, and he was unbowed by the threats he faced. He said showing Jewish pride and fearlessness is important in the wake of rising antisemitism.
“Last year, someone gave me the middle finger,” he said. “This year, we had no problems. Though, of course, online people will do their thing, and someone commented that we were colonizing the train. You have to laugh at them.”
Despite the Passover seder being mentioned prominently in the Christian Bible, Dillz said that many people asked him what Passover was and were unfamiliar with the holiday. He also rapped as part of the event.
“We gave the people dinner and a show,” he said, adding that there was both matzah and gefilte fish. “I think there were some worried about safety but we didn’t have one negative comment at all.”
Dillz, who will soon be releasing a documentary called Bring The Family Home about his trips to Israel since October 7 said the Israeli hostages often get forgotten in discussions, and he hopes they will somehow be returned.
Dillz, who has been a cast member of Wild ‘N Out and performs both music and comedy, said whenever possible, people should look at the bright side of things.
“I think as Jews, when we embrace our culture, we show that we are united and we’re not gonna run away in fear as our enemies might like,” he said.
Dillz, who made a music video against Kanye West when he went on an antisemitic rant, said that there should have been more outrage over the arson attack against Jewish Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence on Passover.
The rapper has taken to the streets recently not only to rap, but also to ask questions of people at anti-Israel rallies, where he calmly asks their opinions, often revealing that they have little knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dillz said that he is genuinely curious to know what they think, but at times people responded by showing ignorance and at other times, they would simply respond with chants designed to intimidate.
As for his Subway Seder, covered by Fox 5 New York, he said it was a success.
“It was really great we could do this,” he said. “When we show our positivity and joy, it’s something that I think is really powerful.”
The author is a writer based in New York.
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