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Fighting society’s disintegration is a group effort. Just ask Moses.

This story was originally published on My Jewish Learning.
(JTA) — This summer, in the middle of a 15-hour drive from Michigan to New Jersey, I stopped to buy two old wooden doors from a salvage shop in Cleveland. I found the seller, a kind, middle-aged dad whom I’ll call Jim, on Facebook. Jim renovates properties and has amassed a collection of old doors rescued from various job sites. His “shop” was a covered section of his suburban yard.
Jim had exactly what I was looking for: two matching solid-wood five panels, unpainted, 24 inches wide. When we pulled them out into the sunlight to look them over, Jim struck up a conversation.
“So, what do you guys do?”
“My wife and I are clergy,” I told him. “She works at a congregation and I work in education.”
“Oh nice,” Jim said. “What kind of congregation?”
“Well, a synagogue. We’re both rabbis.”
I shot my kids a look to see if they were monitoring the conversation.
“Oh, you’re Jewish. My favorite person is Jewish!”
“Really?” I said, with false curiosity and a hunch about what was coming next.
“Yeah, Jesus Christ! You know, there’s a Jewish cemetery across the way from our house. Sometimes I do some tree work over there. I tell my friends that Jewish cemetery is proof the Bible is true.”
He paused for a second to make sure I was listening. I nodded for him to continue.
“You see, the Bible says that if God’s chosen people don’t follow God’s ways, they would be kicked out of their land and scattered all over the earth,” Jim said. “The fact that there are Jews buried in a cemetery in Cleveland, so far away from their homeland, means that the Jews weren’t following God’s ways.”
At this point, I was strapping the doors to the rack on my car and all I could manage in response was, “That’s one way to look at it.”
The theology Jim espoused isn’t only, or even primarily, a Christian belief. Jews throughout history have believed that being scattered around the world was punishment from God for not following in God’s ways. We say it in the liturgy, and it appears in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo: “If you fail to observe faithfully all the terms of this teaching in this book … the Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other.”
When I was a young rabbi, I completely dismissed the idea that Jews would be punished because of our lackluster compliance with Jewish tradition. But the more I thought about this idea — or more accurately, this threat — that bad things will happen if we don’t behave properly, the more empathy I felt for what Moses and God were trying to teach. Moses and God were concerned about what would happen to the Israelites if they behaved poorly as a collective. If enough people engage in selfish behavior, society will disintegrate. To avoid this, Moses and God browbeat the people with two long lists: threats if they don’t behave, and blessings if they do.
Today, we face the same problem Moses faced — how to shape the collective behavior of a society — only the stakes are much higher. Put simply, there are many more humans using many more technologies that have much greater impact. Our collective behavior is having enormous consequences for the planet, leading geologists to label our era the anthropocene, the human epoch.
And yet, despite the incredible human accomplishments over the last two millennia, we don’t have many more tools than Moses had to shape collective behavior. We have democratic governance, but the track record of democracies is lackluster in this regard, with some so-called eco-authoritarians now arguing that democracy ought to be set aside to address climate change. We have mass social movements, but anyone who has spent time working within them (I count myself in this category) knows how difficult it is to actually galvanize a collective movement that shapes behavior at the societal level.
My father used to say, “People will never change their behavior unless they are forced to.” By people, he meant society. And by forced to, he meant that the negative consequences are so drastic there is no choice but to change. Was he right? Is humanity incapable of anticipating a societal-level threat and changing our behavior to avoid the abyss?
This is a great spiritual challenge of our generation. We live in an era in which we are likely, just by going about our lives, to cause planetary damage. Will we develop new ways to shape collective behavior for the better before it is too late?
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The post Fighting society’s disintegration is a group effort. Just ask Moses. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
The post Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip

Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
The post Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, the New York Times reported on Saturday citing unnamed Iranian officials. It is understood the Ayatollah fears he could be assassinated in the coming days.
Khamenei reportedly mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications.
Khamenei has designated three senior religious figures as candidates to replace him as well as choosing successors in the military chain of command in the likely event that additional senior officials be eliminated.
Earlier on Saturday Israel confirmed the elimination of Saeed Izadi and Bhanam Shahriari.
Shahriari, head of Iran’s Quds Force Weapons Transfer Unit, responsible for arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, was killed in an Israeli airstrike over 1,000 km from Israel in western Iran.
The post Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors first appeared on Algemeiner.com.