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I Come From the Haredi World — But It Must Change to Help Israel and Ensure Its Own Survival

An attendee at Kosherpalooza 2024 hugging an IDF soldier as part of the “Hug a Chayil” interactive part of the kosher food and beverage festival on May 30, 2024. Photo: Provided

“Go to the ant, idler; consider her ways and be wise” (Prov. 6:6).

This vivid call to action from Hebrew Scripture elevates a tiny, industrious insect as a timeless model of diligence and foresight. But what is it about ants that the Bible considers so critical for us to emulate? Across rabbinic literature, numerous interpretations and insights shed light on the deeper meaning of this ancient directive.

What makes ants genuinely remarkable, as Proverbs reminds us in the very next verse, is that they don’t have bosses, managers, or rulers telling them what to do. They simply get on with it — tirelessly, effectively, and without hesitation — doing what is best for themselves and their colonies.

Ants’ success lies in their adaptability, collective organization, and ability to balance individual roles with the greater good of the colony — qualities that Edward O. Wilson, a leading biologist and expert on ants, described as making them “arguably the most successful life forms on Earth.”

The Talmud asserts that the real brilliance of ants lies in their adaptability — a quality as crucial for humans as it is for ants. Proverbs describes the ant as a model of provident industry: it prepares its food in summer to ensure survival through the winter.

Ralbag highlights both the ant’s resourcefulness and humility. Despite its small size, it accomplishes great things by never allowing a challenge to stand in its way.

Rabbi Isaac Arama, in Akeidat Yitzchak, goes a step further by explaining that no creature can rely on divine providence alone. While God ultimately determines everything, diligent effort — like that of the ant — is essential. Adaptation and planning are not signs of weakness or lack of faith, but acts of partnership with God in shaping our destiny.

During my recent visit to Israel, I reflected on these lessons, particularly in the context of the never-ending debate over the contentious issue of Haredi enlistment in the IDF. Just last month, a Knesset bill — ostensibly about daycare but in reality aimed at addressing social welfare support for Haredi families whose members don’t serve — was derailed at the last minute.

Likud MK Dan Illouz, a freshman lawmaker who is fully Orthodox and observant, publicly opposed the bill. Speaking afterward, Illouz made it clear that he opposed the bill because it undermined efforts to expand the conscription base in Israel, a goal he considers vital to the country’s future.

“Reality dictates that there must be a ‘tectonic’ shift in the Haredi draft to the IDF,” he said.

I met with Illouz in his Knesset office, where he explained that although he was the only one to speak out before the vote, many of his Likud colleagues felt the same way. “The need for Haredi involvement in the broader national effort, particularly in the IDF, is too important for it to be sidelined just to preserve the coalition,” he told me emphatically.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric from Haredi leadership remains as strident as ever.

Already short by over $100 million in social welfare handouts for 2024 — and facing the looming threat of a $400 million shortfall in 2025 — one might have expected a push for meaningful solutions. Instead, their responses seem anything but constructive.

The ant, “which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler, provides her bread in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest,” sets a clear example. Unfortunately, the chiefs, overseers, and rulers of Israel’s Haredi community have struggled to meet the ant’s example — showing no humility, no adaptability, and offering no meaningful solutions for the challenges their community faces.

But there is a solution — the path set for us by our forebear Jacob, which has shaped Jewish survival throughout history.

Jacob’s journey in Parshat Vayeitzei marks a turning point. He transforms from the “simple man, dwelling in tents” of Parshat Toldot into a resourceful and adaptable personality who succeeds at every turn.

Arriving in Haran penniless, without resources or allies, Jacob could have relied solely on God’s promise to protect him. But he understood that Divine promises are no substitute for personal effort.

Like the ants, Jacob didn’t wait for external guidance to act. He took the initiative, balancing faith in God’s promises with his own resourcefulness and determination. Far from home and the support of his parents, Jacob recognized that something had to change — and change it did.

Without compromising an iota of his principles — Rashi famously teaches that Jacob never abandoned any of the 613 commandments — he became a skilled and successful animal farmer, outshining even his wily father-in-law, Laban, who had been in the business his entire life.

This narrative of Jacob’s transformation has echoed throughout Jewish history. Each era has brought new challenges to our spiritual identity as Jews of faith, demanding steadfast devotion to heritage alongside a dynamic flexibility that allowed us to adapt to new circumstances.

While IDF exemptions for yeshiva students were a necessary strategy to rebuild Torah scholarship after the Holocaust, the thriving Torah world today, coupled with the explosive growth of the Haredi demographic, has created a new reality that requires a reassessment.

Today, there is more Torah study and knowledge than at any time in Jewish history, and this flourishing has expanded well beyond the Haredi world. The Religious Zionist community boasts scholars and scholarship that rival their Haredi counterparts, ensuring that Torah remains vibrant and central to Jewish life in ways unimaginable during the dark days of the 1940s.

More significantly, even the most learned scholars of the Religious Zionist world are part of Israel’s national effort, with many of them serving in IDF combat units.

For much of recent history, the Haredi world has viewed itself as under siege, building walls — both literal and metaphorical — to protect its values. This strategy allowed the community to survive and even thrive against overwhelming odds. But today, the greatest threat to the Haredi world isn’t secular society — it’s internal resistance to change.

I proudly come from that world, and would not be who I am without it, but I have watched this phenomenon develop over my lifetime with great sadness — and, more recently, with deep concern. In the past, refusing to adapt may have been necessary. Today, it poses the most significant risk to Haredim in Israel and is severely straining the relationship between Haredim in Israel and Haredim in the Diaspora.

Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta’s experiment with ants, recounted in the Talmud (Chullin 57b), offers a profound lesson. Observing an anthill, he tested whether ants truly function without a ruler, as described in Proverbs. During the heat of summer, he shaded an ant hole with his cloak, knowing that ants avoid intense sunlight.

One ant emerged and noticed the shade. It returned to the colony, and appeared to communicate the news, prompting the others to emerge and begin working. Then, Rabbi Shimon removed the cloak, allowing the sun to shine directly on the ants.

The colony immediately turned on the marked ant, attacking it until it died. Reflecting on this, Rabbi Shimon concluded that ants have no king, for “if they had a king, would they not need the king’s edict to execute their fellow ant?”

The Israeli Haredi world, like those ants, cannot rely solely on the existing leadership to solve its challenges. Instead, individuals must draw on their instincts and take initiative — just as Jacob did in Parshat Vayeitzei.

By embracing their shared purpose and actively contributing to Israeli society and the wider Jewish world — without compromising core ideals — Haredim in Israel can show that tradition and modernity are not opposites but partners, ensuring the survival of what matters most — not just for their community, but for all of Klal Yisrael.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California. 

The post I Come From the Haredi World — But It Must Change to Help Israel and Ensure Its Own Survival first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘Fine Scholar’: UC Berkeley Chancellor Praises Professor Who Expressed Solidarity With Oct. 7 Attacks

University of California, Berkeley chancellor Dr. Rich Lyons, testifies at a Congressional hearing on antisemitism, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on July 15, 2025. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect.

The chancellor of University of California, Berkeley described a professor who cheered the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre across southern Israel a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Richard K. Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024 issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.

Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked Lyons to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in Feb. 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7.”

“What do you think the professor meant,” McClain asked Lyons, to which the chancellor responded, “I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on October 7.” McClain proceeded to ask if Lyons discussed the tweet with Makdisi or personally reprimanded him, prompting an exchange of remarks which concluded with Lyons’s saying, “He is a fine scholar.”

Lyon’s comment came after nearly three hours in which the group of university leaders — which included Dr. Robert Groves, president of Georgetown University, and Dr. Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY) — offered gaffe-free, deliberately worded answers to the members’ questions to avoid eliciting the kind of public relations ordeal which prematurely ended the tenures of two Ivy League presidents in 2024 following an education committee held in Dec. 2023.

Rep. McClain later criticized Lyons on social media, calling his comment “totally disgraceful.” She added, “Faculty must be held accountable and Jewish students deserve better.”

CUNY chancellor Rodriguez also triggered a rebuke from the committee members in which he was also described as a “disgrace.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUNY campuses have been lambasted by critics as some of the most antisemitic institutions of higher education in the United States. Last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on CUNY campuses, one of which involved Jewish students who were pressured into saying that Jews are White people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.

During Tuesday’s hearing Rodriguez acknowledged that antisemitic incidents continue to disrupt Jewish academic life, disclosing that 84 complaints of antisemitism have been formally reported to CUNY administrators since 2024. 15 were filed in 2025 alone, but CUNY, he said, has published only 18 students for antisemitic conduct. Rodriguez went on to denounce efforts to pressure CUNY into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, saying, “I have repudiated BDS and I have said there’s no place for BDS at the City University of New York.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) remarked, however, that Rodriguez has allegedly done little to address antisemitism in the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which has passed several resolutions endorsing BDS and whose members, according to 2021 ruling rendered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), discriminated against Professor Jeffrey Lax by holding meetings on Shabbat to prevent him and other Jews from attending them.

“The PSC does not speak for the City University of New York,” Rodriquez protested. “We’ve been clear on our commitment against antisemitism and against BDS.”

Later, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), whose grilling of higher education officials who appear before the committee has created several viral moments, rejected Rodriguez’s responses as disingenuous.

“It’s all words, no action. You have failed the people of New York,” she told the chancellor. “You have failed Jewish students in New York State, and it is a disgrace.”

Following the hearing, The Lawfare Project, legal nonprofit which provides legal services free of charge to Jewish victims of civil rights violations, applauded the education committee for publicizing antisemitism at CUNY.

“I am thankful for the many members of Congress who worked with us to ensure that the deeply disturbing facts about antisemitism at CUNY were brought forward in this hearing,” Lawfare Project litigation director Zipora Reich said in a press release. “While it is deeply frustrating to hear more platitudes and vague promises from CUNY’s leadership, we are encouraged to see federal lawmakers demanding accountability.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Fine Scholar’: UC Berkeley Chancellor Praises Professor Who Expressed Solidarity With Oct. 7 Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Huckabee Calls for Israeli Investigation Into ‘Criminal and Terrorist’ Killing of Palestinian-American in West Bank

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee on Monday urged Israeli officials to swiftly investigate the killing of Saif Musallet, a 20-year-old American citizen who was allegedly beaten to death by Israeli settlers while he was visiting family in the West Bank town of Sinjil.

“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Huckabee wrote on social media, in what is one of his strongest condemnations of Israeli settler violence since he was appointed by President Donald Trump in November 2024. “Saif was just 20 yrs old.”

Musallet, a Florida native, was reportedly attacked on July 11 by a group of Israelis while accompanying relatives on family-owned farmland near Ramallah. His family says he was severely beaten and denied medical attention for nearly three hours before succumbing to his injuries. Another Palestinian man, 23-year-old Mohammad al-Shalabi, was shot and killed during the same incident, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israeli authorities said the violence followed an alleged rock-throwing incident that left two Israelis lightly wounded, a common occurrence in the West Bank which las left scores of Israelis civilians wounded and some killed. The Israel Defense Forces stated they used non-lethal crowd dispersal methods during the clash. The IDF says the incident is under investigation. Two Israeli minors were arrested following the attack, though according to Israeli media reports, neither of them is a murder suspect, and they were subsequently released to house arrest.

Musallet had traveled to the West Bank in early June to visit relatives and potentially meet a bride. Raised in Port Charlotte, Florida, he had recently co-founded an ice cream business in Tampa with his family. His death comes amid an escalation in settler-related violence across the West Bank, which has intensified since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel and the Israeli military’s ongoing campaign in Gaza.

Huckabee has historically defended Israeli settlement activity and has vowed to serve as an unwavering defender of the Jewish state.

Human rights groups and local activists say Musallet’s killing is part of a growing pattern of impunity for attacks on Palestinians, including American citizens. No Israeli suspects have been indicted in several high-profile deaths of Palestinian Americans in recent years, including journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and teenager Omar Mohammad Rabea.

U.S. lawmakers, including Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL), who represents Tampa, joined calls for an investigation. The State Department said it is aware of the incident and is providing consular support to the family but deferred further comment to Israeli authorities.

Musallet’s funeral was held Sunday in his family’s hometown of al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya. His relatives say they are demanding justice not only for Saif, but for all Americans caught in what they describe as an increasingly lawless situation in the occupied West Bank.

The post Huckabee Calls for Israeli Investigation Into ‘Criminal and Terrorist’ Killing of Palestinian-American in West Bank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Scandal-Plagued UN Commission Disbands Amid Increasing US Pressure Against Anti-Israel International Organizations

Miloon Kothari, member of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, briefs reporters on the first report of the Commission. UN Photo/Jean Marc Ferré

The Commission of Inquiry (COI), a controversial United Nations commission investigating Israel for nearly five years, has collapsed after all three of its members abruptly resigned days after the United States sanctioned a senior UN official over antisemitism.

Commission chair Navi Pillay resigned on July 8, citing health concerns and scheduling conflicts. Her fellow commissioners, Chris Sidoti and Miloon Kothari, followed suit days later. While none of the commissioners directly linked their resignations to the U.S. sanctions, the timing suggests mounting American pressure played a decisive role.

The resignations came just one day before the Trump administration announced sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. Albanese was sanctioned over what the State Department called a “pattern of antisemitic and inflammatory rhetoric.” She had previously claimed that the U.S. was controlled by a “Jewish lobby” and questioned Israel’s right to self-defense. The sanctions bar her from entering the U.S. and freeze any assets under American jurisdiction.

The resignations mark a major victory for critics who have long viewed the inquiry as biased and politically motivated.

Watchdog groups, including Geneva-based UN Watch, celebrated the swift collapse of the Commission of Inquiry (COI), which they say had long operated with an open mandate to target Israel. “This is a watershed moment of accountability,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer. “The COI was built on bias and sustained by hatred. Its fall is a victory for human rights, not a defeat.”

The COI had faced heavy criticism since its formation in 2021. In July 2022, Commissioner Miloon Kothari,  made comments about the undue influence of a so-called “Jewish lobby” on the media, said the COI would “have to look at issues of settler colonialism.”

“Apartheid itself is a very useful paradigm, so we have a slightly different approach, but we will definitely get to it,” he added.

The Commission was established in 2021 year following the 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas group in May. COI is the first UN commission to ever be granted an indefinite period of investigation, which has drawn criticism from the US State Department, members of US Congress, and Jewish leaders across the world.

Following the resignations, Council President Jürg Lauber invited member states to nominate replacements by August 31. However, it is unclear whether the commission will be reconstituted or quietly shelved. UN Watch and other groups have urged the council to disband the COI entirely, calling it irreparably biased.

The post Scandal-Plagued UN Commission Disbands Amid Increasing US Pressure Against Anti-Israel International Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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