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From Moses to Memphis, the work of liberation remains unfinished
(JTA) — Rereading Exodus this month in synagogue reminds me of when I first learned about Moses’ role in freeing the Children of Israel who had been enslaved to Pharaoh. I grew up in Monsey, New York. My mother was Black and my father was white; my family identified with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. I discovered the Passover story through ultra-Orthodox coloring books that depicted the liberation of the ancient Israelites from bondage in Egypt.
One illustration depicted Moses as an 18th-century Hasidic Jew clad in a shtreimel (fur hat) and long kapote (robe), with abundant sidelocks flowing down to his shoulders. I brought home my masterpiece, fully crayoned in purple, and showed it proudly to my mother. She gave me a puzzled look and said, “You know, Moses didn’t look like this. He had brown skin like mine.”
It was an enlightening idea that hit me like a thunderbolt. Seeing Moses as a Black person changed my whole idea of Jewish history and religion in one fell swoop — it made me feel my Black and Jewish roots even more profoundly, and that I was a descendant of great Jewish and African men and women who founded our tradition.
As time went on, though, and I went “all in” and studied to become a rabbi, I realized that Moses’ skin color mattered much less than his role as a liberator. Although many Jews do see in color, Judaism does not. The way to follow in his footsteps, I grasped, was to become an educator, a leader and a champion for freedom. I’ve devoted my career to empowering Jewish communities across the continent to become more welcoming and inclusive, to overcome racism and prejudice, and to create a more just, equitable and loving society.
The Biblical narrative of the Exodus is a call to stand for freedom and against tyranny in every generation. It says, in effect, “You are able to speak, and to be carried away on the wings of words from millennia ago, bound to no Pharaoh’s story, but liberated by your own.”
Neither my Black nor Jewish forebears could have imagined how far their descendants would come in terms of participation and even leadership in our society. As the Black visual artist Brandon Odums has reflected, “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.”
But there is, alas, still so far to go, as last month’s brutal killing of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the police in Memphis reminds us. Both Black History Month and the Book of Exodus teach that we can only fulfill our destiny if we fight for the liberation of all peoples.
Earlier this month, we celebrated Shabbat Shira, in which we read about the Children of Israel’s miraculous escape from Egypt by crossing the Red Sea. I was reminded of what the late 20th-century Slonimer Rebbe, Sholom Noach Berezovsky, said about the ancient Hebrews wading into the water because they had faith not just in their hearts and minds, but in their bodies — in their very bones, he said.
What does it mean to believe with your bones? The Prophet Jeremiah declared that the word of God was like “fire shut up in his bones” (20:9). Dr. Martin Luther King quoted Jeremiah in his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” saying, “Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around, he tell it.” King gave that speech on April 3, 1968 — in Memphis — on the night before he was assassinated.
Early in the speech, King imagined “God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across, the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the Promised Land.” He concluded with these uncannily prescient words: “I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So, I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Our commitment to creating a better world — making it to the Promised Land — must always be so much more than merely skin deep. Only when we believe in our bones that change is possible, and that we can be agents of that change, will fear melt away and we will be able to defeat the Pharaohs who seek to deprive us of our dignity, whether in Memphis or anywhere in our land.
We shall reach the Promised Land — someday. We shall recognize that we are all God’s children—someday. We shall overcome — someday.
May that day be very soon and may we all unite in joy, peace and celebration to usher it in.
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The post From Moses to Memphis, the work of liberation remains unfinished appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What It’s Like in Israel — During ‘Operation Lion’s Roar’
An Israeli air defense system intercepts a ballistic missile barrage launched from Iran to central Israel during a missile attack. Photo: Eli Basri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
I haven’t been sleeping much.
It starts with an (intentionally) obnoxious screech on your phone that overrides all your “leave me alone” settings, and harangues you that a missile alarm has gone off. The radar and satellite tech behind this disruptive howl is almost magical, but in the moment, no one cares.
Then the promised air raid sirens sound all around: you have 90 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.
Fortunately, there’s a bomb shelter in my building. Some aren’t so lucky: they run down the block to public shelters, or to Tel Aviv’s new underground subway, which was built with this exact scenario in mind.
The attacks come in waves of an hour or two.
Imagine having a baby that wakes you up all day and night, except instead of a baby it’s a homicidal Islamist regime, and instead of wanting to be changed or fed, it wants to kill you.
Emergency notifications from the Israeli Home Front Command indicating the approach of Iranian missiles. Photo: Daniel Pomerantz.
Israel has the most advanced, multi-layered missile defense system in human history, but it’s only about 88% effective — and that remaining 12% takes out entire apartment buildings. Iran already claimed its first victims in Israel and across the region.
This war is horrible, but there are many reasons Israel needed to wage it:
1. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
This isn’t some Iraq era claim of “WMDs” — we know this is true because (among other reasons) Iran essentially says so. The regime very publicly insists on enriching uranium up to levels that have no possible use other than making warheads, all while paradoxically claiming “peaceful purposes.”
And if all that weren’t enough, Iran hides its “peaceful” nuclear program hundreds of feet under a mountain. Make of that what you will.
2. Iran is also developing ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) capable of reaching the United States. We know this because (again) the regime says so. A lot. They brag about it. This is not a question mark.
3. Iran’s terror proxies have killed thousands of Americans, Israelis, Europeans, and Arabs, including the Beirut barracks bombing that took the lives of 220 US Marines, and the unimaginable October 7 Massacre in Israel. Claiming that the work of proxies isn’t “really” Iran’s doing this is like hiring a hitman and then claiming that you didn’t “personally” murder anyone.
4. Of course, the greatest victims are the Iranian people, 80% of whom want to overthrow the regime — after 47 years of unimaginable suffering. This regime murdered thousands of its own people just last month, most for protesting, some for using Star Link terminals.
We seem to forget that military might can be used appropriately and effectively.
For every nightmare of intervention, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, there are also success stories, such as Libya, Kosovo, and most recently, Venezuela. And this isn’t even “intervention,” this is self defense. The regime’s President Masoud Pezeshkian declared in December, “we are in a full-fledged war with America, Israel, and Europe,” as Iranian officials continued to scream “Death to America” in the halls of Parliament, and on the streets.
And Iran puts its money where its mouth is: backing up its homicidal rhetoric with actual homicide. Lots of it.
Iran is now spreading a distorted history, claiming that all of its problems can be traced to America. That isn’t true: it’s a psyop, designed to weaponize our democracy against us. One can debate whether America should have helped affect a coup in Iran in 1953, but the leadership America helped bring to power back then (the “Shah”) is the very same leadership whose return the Iranian people are now risking their very lives to demand. America and the Iranian people are completely aligned in this, and the death of Ayatollah Khamenei was met by cheers and celebrations.
Genocidal maniacs have a way of telling us exactly what they plan to do: we ignored Hitler in the run up to World War II, we ignored Al-Qaeda in the years before 9/11, and we now ignore Iran at our peril.
But we’re not ignoring Iran.
We must hope that the people of Iran are ready to take back their country, and institute a new, organized government. It is entirely possible that Iran, the Middle East, and the world at large are on the verge of greater peace and stability than we have seen, or even imagined, in any of our lifetimes.
But we aren’t there yet, and we need the united support of all our allies, and our entire democracy, in order to succeed.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
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Family of Former FBI Agent Robert Levinson Demands Iran Be Held ‘Accountable,’ Return His Remains
People walk near a mural featuring images of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on a street in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 17, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and is believed to have died while in Iranian custody, is calling on the Trump administration to make sure Tehran returns his remains and is held “accountable” for its actions following this weekend’s US-Israel airstrikes on the Islamic Republic.
Washington has maintained that Levinson, a retired FBI special agent, was taken by Iranian officials on March 9, 2007, while working as a private contractor for the CIA on the Iranian island of Kish, where he had traveled to meet a source. His family was never informed of what officially happened to the American citizen, but in 2020, the US government officially concluded he had died while in Iran’s custody. The details and circumstances surrounding his death remain unknown. Levinson was a father of seven children.
Levinson’s family issued a statement, shared on social media, following Saturday’s killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the US-Israel airstrikes.
“For nearly 19 years, Iran has lied, obstructed, and refused to answer for the kidnapping, detention, and death of our father, Robert Levinson,” the family said in its statement. “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led the regime responsible for these crimes. His death does not erase what Iran did to our father, and it does not end our fight for accountability. But it is a significant moment for our family and for every family that has suffered at the hands of this regime’s hostage-taking and wrongful detention.”
“Now Iran must do what it has refused to do for nearly two decades: provide full accountability for what happened to our father, return his remains to our family, and disclose the truth about his kidnapping, imprisonment, and death,” they added. “Our family will not stop demanding the truth. And we will not stop demanding justice.”
The family also expressed gratitude to US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “for using the power of the United States to confront Iran and to hold it accountable, including by recognizing and addressing Iran’s long-standing practice of wrongful detention.”
Levinson’s son, Dan Levinson, talked to “Fox & Friends” over the weekend about the need for the Trump administration to pressure Iran to take accountability.
“We’re just looking for answers. We still don’t know what exactly happened to him,” the younger Levinson said of his father. “There was no person more responsible for my father’s fate than Ayatollah Khamenei. At any time he could have waved his hand and had my dad released. He chose not to. We begged and pleaded. We sent so many letters. I went over there twice asking for a meeting and his people rebuffed us. Ignored us.”
Levinson said there is still a $25 million reward for information leading to the recovery and return of his father’s remains.
In March 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on three Iranian intelligence officers for their alleged involvement in Levinson’s disappearance.
In December 2020, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two other Iranian officials who are accused of authorizing Levinson’s 2007 abduction. The FBI released posters seeking information about them last year.
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The Jewish space lasers are real — well, kind of
Everyone made fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene when she said that Rothschild-funded space lasers had caused forest fires.
But, as it turns out, the space lasers are real. Well, sort of. They aren’t starting forest fires or causing major weather events, as Greene claimed in her post. Israel does, however, have a laser that shoots in the general direction of space. But that’s enough for some conspiracy theorists to feel vindicated.
“No longer a ‘Conspiracy Theory.’ Israel just used a Directed Energy Weapon (DEWs),” reads one viral tweet about the lasers. “During Biden’s term the media worked relentlessly to Fact Check these weapons as conspiracy theories.”
Indeed, as Israel and Iran exchanged missiles over the weekend, videos circulated online purporting to show Israel shooting down missiles using a laser. In the video, missiles launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, appear to flame out moments after taking off. (Israel has yet to officially confirm that the rockets were shot down by lasers, and the videos aren’t definitive; the missiles could have been defective and burned out on launch.)
But it is true that Israel has been working on defensive lasers for years. In 2022, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “We have successfully completed a series of tests on our new ‘Iron Beam’ laser air defense system. This may sound like science fiction, but it’s real.” The laser system was reportedly delivered and deployed across Israel in December.
“It has nothing to do with the ‘Jewish space laser’ conspiracy theory,” said Mike Rothschild, a researcher on extremism and author of Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. “Conspiracy theorists often take real or in-development technology and twist it around for their own purposes.”
The laser works by shooting a grouping of small beams toward the projectile it is attempting to destroy, explains a report on the system’s development in National Defense Magazine. When one hits its target, the beams concentrate on the target until it is incinerated.
The lasers are less effective than the existing Iron Dome system, which works by intercepting missiles with other missiles and exploding them before they hit the ground. The laser can only reach missiles within about a 10 kilometer range, and, like any beam of light, can be blocked by terrain or atmospheric conditions like haze or clouds. On the other hand, the lasers are cheap to use, since they don’t require a ballistic missile for each engagement, and, for the same reason, they cause less collateral damage from falling debris.
The existence of the laser and its first — or first public — deployment has plenty of people joking about Jewish space lasers being real, and apologizing to Greene, though the Iron Beam has little to do with Greene’s allegations of a laser used to start targeted forest fires for government profit.
Conspiracy theorists may be crowing about the supposedly huge secret they’ve uncovered. But the laser isn’t secret at all. The Iron Beam is a well-funded and well-publicized project that has been in development for years, funded by both the U.S. and Israel. The first model was unveiled in 2014 at the Singapore Air Show. Smaller versions have been used to shoot down drones at close range for the past several years.
The aura of secrecy is key to the world of conspiracy theories. If antisemites can frame anything done by Jews or Israel as an underground, hidden project, it gains an undertone of corruption and danger.
The Iron Beam, however, has its own Wikipedia page. It features 40 sources — which means there are at least 40 other articles, going back over a decade, about the laser defense device. If you think that’s a secret, you’re just not paying attention.
The post The Jewish space lasers are real — well, kind of appeared first on The Forward.