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Northwestern U is facing a new federal antisemitism investigation — and criticism of its new antisemitism task force

(JTA) – On the same day the president of Northwestern University announced the new members of a task force formed to combat antisemitism on campus, the school became a target of a federal investigation into its handling of antisemitism.

The confluence on Tuesday would seem to be good timing for the private Big Ten school in Evanston, Illinois, as it tries to restore its Jewish community’s faith in the institution. Except the committee itself has already come under fire in some circles before it has even begun its work.

Some Jewish critics of higher education — including the conservative activist who filed the Title VI complaint that triggered Northwestern’s U.S. Department of Education investigation — have attacked the committee and its members in a pattern reminiscent of recent controversies at Stanford and Harvard. The critics have taken aim at the committee’s stated desire to combat Islamophobia as well as antisemitism, and at some members’ views on Israel and critical race theory.

“​​Northwestern President’s ‘Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate’ launches with clear intent to block any recognition of antisemitism at the university,” posted Richard Goldberg, a Jewish former intelligence officer and Northwestern alum who worked in the Trump White House and, before that, for a Republican governor of Illinois. “The co-chair and membership make that clear. This is absurd.”

Goldberg cited committee co-chair Bryan Brayboy’s past work advocating for a “Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education” for Indigenous people. Goldberg also objected to another member’s work in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel; that member, Jessica Winegar, was a key voice pushing the American Anthropological Association’s vote last summer to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Other committee members include the director of the campus Hillel, student representatives and members of the board of trustees; there are no rabbis on the committee.

Undeterred by the criticism, the committee’s co-chairs have said they aren’t going anywhere, and a spokesperson for Northwestern says the school stands behind them.

“Our committee will not weigh in on geopolitics. We will not be distracted by the outside noises that suggest we cannot work for whatever reasons,” Brayboy and co-chair Effi Benmelech, an Israeli-born finance professor, wrote in an open letter announcing their work on Tuesday.

They defined their committee’s chief responsibilities: “Listen to members of our community through a lens of curiosity and empathy”; create new “pedagogical opportunities for Northwestern’s community to learn about antisemitism, hate, and Islamophobia”; and make recommendations to leadership.

The committee did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment. A Northwestern spokesperson said the committee “represents Northwestern’s diverse perspectives,” adding, “We are confident in the work of this committee.”

The debate over the committee comes amid an ongoing parade of federal investigations into college campuses, many of them linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The Department of Education also announced new Title VI investigations this week into Yale University, Arizona State University, Ann Arbor Public Schools and a for-profit online law school. These join a list of more than 50 such investigations the department has opened since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The attack, and the war it sparked, triggered a wave of campus activism and antisemitism.

At least three of the latest investigations, including Northwestern’s, concern antisemitism complaints brought by conservative activists, while Ann Arbor’s concerns a complaint about anti-Muslim sentiment that was brought by a Muslim public affairs group. Some of the complaints are based on unclear incidents.

“Frankly, we don’t even know what the facts are,” Donald Daugherty, Jr., senior counsel at the Defense of Freedom Institute, told JTA about an antisemitism complaint his own organization filed, which triggered the investigation at Yale. “So I guess we need to know what the facts are before we can really decide on an appropriate, mutually acceptable resolution.”

Daugherty said his group, which was formed in 2021 by Trump- and Bush-era education officials, got involved in Title VI because of its focus on “federal education issues.” Its first civil rights complaint, filed against the Oak Park, Illinois, K-12 district in 2022, dealt with that district’s policy of implementing race-conscious grading.

The group switched gears to antisemitism complaints after Oct. 7. Several of the schools the institute has since filed antisemitism complaints about, including Drexel and Rutgers, have also seen investigations opened, though the institute said their complaints did not trigger them.

In his Yale complaint, Daugherty wrote that his institute filed it “as an interested third-party organization that strongly advocates for a republic where freedom, opportunity, creativity, and innovation flourish in our schools.” The complaint goes on to name two specific Jewish Yale students who reported having been blocked from attending a campus event on the war in Gaza. But, Daugherty told JTA, he’s never spoken to either of them.

“We were just observing, monitoring media accounts as to what’s going on,” he said. “And we thought, well, we’ve got to get involved and help push back against it because it’s, among other things, a civil rights violation.”

JTA has reached out to representatives of the two students and to Yale, which recently appointed its first-ever Jewish chaplain, for comment.

Daugherty noted that groups like his are legally entitled to file complaints without working with any affected parties. Indeed, it’s a practice that has grown in recent weeks as Title VI antisemitism complaints have picked up steam among Jews and activist groups.

Zachary Marschall, the Jewish editor-in-chief of the conservative higher education website Campus Reform, said he’s personally responsible for filing 20 complaints, including the ones that prompted new investigations this week into Northwestern and ASU. His complaints have also been responsible for recent investigations at Brown and Temple.

Marschall told JTA he files his complaints as a concerned citizen who has less to fear than Jewish students at these schools. “Since I’m in a position to speak out, I feel morally obligated to do what I can to fight antisemitism on college campuses,” he said.

Marschall said his complaint at Northwestern involves two allegations. The first concerns reports of a pro-Palestinian rally on campus at which the colors of the Palestinian flag were projected onto a building. The second involves an Oct. 17 open letter from the university’s Asian American Studies program that described Hamas as “a political group” and described posters comparing the group to ISIS as “Islamophobic messaging” and “anti-Palestinian war propaganda.”

The program director did not reply to a JTA request for comment. A Northwestern spokesperson said the school “does not tolerate antisemitism” and added, “The complaint against Northwestern was not filed by a member of our community but instead by an outside organization.”

Marschall said he wasn’t impressed by the language Northwestern used to introduce its new antisemitism committee.

“Higher education manipulates ‘empathy’ and ‘inclusivity’ to ignore, erase, and whitewash Jewish suffering,” he wrote to JTA. “Northwestern’s rhetoric contains the same manipulative ‘empathy’ language that has enabled university administrations to ignore Jew hate and anti-Jewish discrimination.”

He said his other newly opened Title VI complaint, against ASU, cites events and rallies put on by the Tempe, Arizona, state school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine in the days after Oct. 7. In response, an ASU spokesperson took a swipe at Marschall’s organization.

“Campus Reform, which says it ‘holds itself to rigorous journalism standards and strives to present each story with accuracy, objectivity, and public accountability,’ first learned about the letter to the Department of Education – because they sent the letter to the Department of Education,” the spokesperson wrote to JTA.

The spokesperson added that the university condemns “antisemitism and other hateful rhetoric in all its forms,” but emphasized, “ASU also is responsible for upholding free speech, as granted by the U.S. Constitution. The university neither endorses nor restricts opinions voiced at campus demonstrations. People on our campuses have the right to peacefully express their opinions as long as they comply with the law and the student Code of Conduct.”

Members of the Ann Arbor Public Schools board wordsmithed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, Jan. 18, 2023. (Andrew Lapin)

Meanwhile, the federal investigation into Ann Arbor Public Schools in Michigan concerns a complaint focused on anti-Palestinian sentiment that was filed by the state’s chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. The complaint alleges that a middle school counselor told a Palestinian student, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” and that the school board did not respond properly when the incident was brought to its attention.

“CAIR-MI welcomes the Office of Civil Rights opening a formal investigation into whether Ann Arbor Public Schools adequately addressed the alleged comments made by the counselor at Tappan Middle School,” Dawud Walid, CAIR Michigan’s executive director, said in a statement.

Walid continued, “Calling a Palestinian Muslim student a ‘terrorist’ is a very offensive and hurtful comment that was compounded by the school board’s seeming lack of concern for the student when it was brought to their attention.”

A spokesperson for the school district did not return a JTA request for comment, but the former board president, who is Palestinian, previously issued a statement saying the board is “deeply concerned and dismayed” over the incident and promised to address it properly. The school board recently made headlines for becoming one of the only school districts to call for a bilateral ceasefire in Israel and Gaza.

Finally, Abraham Lincoln University, a private, for-profit online law school based in California, is also the target of a new federal shared ancestry investigation. The school did not return JTA requests for comment.


The post Northwestern U is facing a new federal antisemitism investigation — and criticism of its new antisemitism task force appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Now is The Time to Destroy the Iranian Threat

The new Chief of the General Staff, Major General Eyal Zamir, visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

JNS.orgThe Islamic Republic is actively working toward obtaining nuclear capability, Israel is planning an attack strategy, and the United States, finally, under President Donald Trump, is demonstrating it may be willing to use military force to stop the Iranian regime.

This week, the head of US Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, visited Israel for talks with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on regional security issues, the US military said in a statement on Thursday.

Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS Iran “must not be allowed to possess the weapons with which to carry out its homicidal agenda: its terrorist proxies must be degraded; its influence around the region rolled back; its nuclear facilities and ballistic missile and drone factories either shuttered or destroyed.”

To this end, the US has now taken the crucial step of placing the military option front and center to pressure Iran into folding.

The Pentagon has reportedly ordered the relocation of at least two Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile defense system from Asia to the Middle East.

There are also reports of a massive number of US military cargo flights traveling to the Middle East, with dozens of C-17s and several C-5s arriving at Isa Airbase in Bahrain as well as other bases near the Persian Gulf. Planes are also being delivered to Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar and Djibouti International Airport near Yemen.

The relocation of critical air-defenses such as THAAD and the repositioning of the USS Carl Vinson and its Carrier Strike Group to the Middle East, as well as the deployment of at least six B-2 “Spirit” Long-Range Strategic Stealth Bombers recently to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, suggest that the United States may be preparing for a major conflict soon with Iran.

However, Yossi Mansharof, an expert on Iran and Shi’ite political Islam at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, has a different view. He told JNS that ending Iran’s nuclear program through military action is “not something the Trump administration is currently aiming for.”

Trump appears to want to exhaust all diplomatic avenues before turning to the military option—or authorizing Israel to do so.

Trump wants Tehran to negotiate and, according to Mansharof, “seeks to bring Iran to a point where the regime understands that the nuclear program not only fails to advance its goals but actually endangers it and Iran’s national security.”

It would be “appropriate” for Trump to set a time limit for the negotiations “in order to give them credibility and compel the Iranian side to take him seriously,” Mansharof said.

That being said, according to Mansharof, “Trump has made it clear that if Iran does not respond to his offer to negotiate, the US itself will attack Iran.”

He added that Trump “would support an Israeli strike against Iran and might even order the US military to join the Israeli attack and carry it out jointly—if he concludes that Tehran is unwilling to make sufficient concessions or is not showing seriousness in the negotiations.”

Mansharof also told JNS he believes Trump wants to make Iran understand that “continuing the current course—progress in the nuclear program, regional entrenchment, sponsoring Iran’s proxy network and developing the missile program—will harm the regime,” and therefore, it would be “in Iran’s own interest to reach an agreement with the US in these three areas.”

According to Misztal, however, the Trump administration “has not explicitly expressed its willingness to back an Israeli strike.”

“However,” he added, “the president’s general support for Israel and recent, increasingly bellicose warnings to Iran suggest that he is far more likely than any of his predecessors to not stop the Jewish state from doing whatever it feels is necessary to defend itself against the threat of a nuclear Iran.”

The threat is clear: Iran is aggressively advancing its belligerent agenda, disrupting the region as it pursues nuclear capabilities.

The IAEA report confirms what we already know

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) recently analyzed the International Atomic Energy Agency’s quarterly report, dated Feb. 26 and titled “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” including Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In what should be highly concerning, the findings show that Iran “can convert its current stock of 60 percent enriched uranium into 174 kg [384 pounds] of weapon-grade uranium (WGU) in three weeks at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), enough for 7 nuclear weapons, taken as 25 kg [55 pounds] of WGU per weapon.”

Perhaps more worrying is that Iran “could produce its first quantity of 25 kg of WGU in Fordow in less than one week,” according to the findings.

Shockingly, the ISIS analysis notes that Iran’s “total stocks of enriched uranium and its centrifuge capacity at Fordow and the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) combined are sufficient to make enough WGU for over ten nuclear weapons in one month and 12-13 in two months.”

In addition, as in several past Iran Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards reports, the IAEA has been unable to obtain clear answers from Iran regarding the presence of “undeclared nuclear material and/or activities at four sites—Lavisan-Shian, Varamin, Marivan, and Turquzabad.”

The ISIS analysis highlights the IAEA’s “significantly reduced ability to monitor Iran’s complex and growing nuclear program.”

In short, the IAEA report confirms what we already know: Iran is on the march toward nuclearization and the IAEA lacks a clear picture of Iran’s activities.

Iran is developing its ballistic missile program

One could argue that Iran might be enriching uranium but has yet to further develop its nuclear payload delivery system.

But a March 16, 2025, report in The Maritime Executive magazine noted that MV Jairan, owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and the second of two Iranian cargo vessels that are believed to have loaded sodium perchlorate in China, was recently documented passing through the Straits of Malacca en route to Bandar Abbas.

“Sodium perchlorate is the primary feedstock for making ammonium perchlorate, used by Iranian solid-fueled ballistic missiles,” according to the report.

The ship is believed to have been carrying enough sodium perchlorate to refine sufficient ammonium perchlorate to fuel approximately 250 medium-range missiles of the types used by Iran to attack Israel in Operations True Promise-1 and 2—on April 13 and Oct. 1, 2024, respectively.

Current Iranian ballistic projectiles that use ammonium perchlorate include medium-range Kheibar Shekan and Fattah-1 missiles, and the shorter-range Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles.

Regional concerns over striking Iran

If the US and/or Israel do ultimately strike Iran, Mansharof believes the Sunni states in the region “will respond with concern, fearing they might become targets of an Iranian retaliatory strike.”

Iran’s proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen—now severely weakened—“will limit Iran’s ability to respond to an attack, but it still has the potential to be dangerous,” Mansharof said.

In his view, “guarantees from the Trump administration are necessary” to ensure that the US will safeguard the security of regional Sunni states.

According to Misztal, “the regional response will almost certainly be determined by the effectiveness of any strike on Iran and the forcefulness of the United States in deterring an Iranian retaliation.”

He suggested that “it is possible to imagine another situation like we saw on April 13, 2024: the United States together with international and regional forces acting in concert to warn and defend Israel from Iranian retaliation.”

Now is the time to destroy the Iranian nuclear threat

According to Mansharof, “now is the time to address the Iranian issue at its root. Israel and the U.S. should jointly develop a comprehensive strategy against the Iranian threat in its various components.”

If Tehran is weakened, according to Mansharof, “in both Iraq and Lebanon, voices calling for reconciliation with Israel—currently suppressed by Iran’s proxy network—would gain strength. Without Iran, Saudi Arabia would have no barrier preventing it from joining the Abraham Accords, and the circle of peace in the region would expand significantly.”

Neutralizing the Iranian threat “would also benefit European national security, according to Mansharof. “The same applies to Africa, where Iran promotes ‘Shi’itization,’ particularly in Nigeria, where it supports the local Islamic movement.”

Mansharof told JNS that weakening Iran “would significantly advance global stability, as there is no continent today where Iran does not operate in some form.”

Misztal told JNS that “after decades of both the United States and Israel vowing to prevent a nuclear Iran, actually doing so would have dramatically beneficial repercussions around the world.”

He seemed to agree with Mansharof, saying that “in the Middle East, it would usher in the potential for a new, peaceful and cooperative region by lifting the Iranian threat that has held the region hostage for at least the last decade, reestablishing Israel as a regional superpower not to be trifled with, and re-opening the path to normalization with Saudi Arabia and others.”

The post Now is The Time to Destroy the Iranian Threat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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New York Times Stokes New Fear About Israeli ‘Occupation’ — of Syria

An Israeli tank crosses the ceasefire line between Syria and the Israeli Golan Heights, Dec. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Avi Ohayon

The New York Times recently published an elaborate “interactive” article critical of Israel for becoming involved in Syria.

“Israel has built a growing network of outposts and fortifications in Syria and Lebanon, deepening concerns about a protracted occupation in parts of the two countries,” the article said, without specifying whose “concerns,” other than the Times’ editors, were being deepened.

“There are signs that Israel appears prepared to remain indefinitely, a visual analysis by the New York Times has found,” the article reported, under the headline, “Israel Digs in Beyond Its Northern Border.”

An analysis by me has found that this is a fine example of one of the long-running issues in New York Times coverage of the Middle East — a double standard, holding Israel up to criticism for activities that are ignored or not criticized when they are conducted by other regional or global powers.

The Times attacked Israeli involvement in Syria and Lebanon while making no mention of Turkish, Russian, or US presence in those places. An evenhanded look at the scramble for power and influence in post-Bashar al-Assad Syria would be a newsworthy story. But the global left-wing audience the Times is trying to serve seems less interested in nonpartisan Syria coverage than it does in Israel-bashing that portrays the Jewish state as an occupying power.

Of the three Times reporters credited on the story, two — Samuel Granados and Sanjana Varghese — are European. Granados is a graduate of the University of Málaga in Spain and is based in Spain, according to his LinkedIn profile and a Nov. 21, 2024, Times announcement of his hiring. Varghese “was raised in Bahrain, and she has been based in London for nine years. She is a graduate of King’s College London,” according to a June 2024 Times announcement of her hiring. The Times noted that she “worked as a freelance journalist for a range of outlets, including … Al Jazeera.” Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has called the Qatar-controlled Al Jazeera a “terror channel.”

As the Times attempts to grow by catering to a global anti-Israel audience and by staffing its newsroom with non-Americans, it risks further alienating longtime readers in its hometown of New York.

I’m not suggesting that the Times should entirely avoid hiring non-Americans; some of the great Times journalists in history have been immigrants to America who proudly, patriotically appreciate their adopted home. But today’s Times sneers at that. The Times obituary for its former executive editor, Max Frankel, a Jewish immigrant to America from Nazi Germany, dripped with a kind of contempt:

He fell into a pattern of Cold War reporting that made no pretense of objectivity. Like a combat correspondent touting his side’s war, he wrote unashamedly of “the free world,” of Polish and Hungarian “patriots” yearning for liberation but “crushed” by Soviet tanks.

Today’s Times unashamedly implies Frankel should have been ashamed for siding with the free world against the Soviet communists.

But the New York Times appears to be approaching the war in Syria with the same editorial strategy with which it approached the war in Gaza: instead of aiming for balanced and complete coverage in every article, it has instead published articles that seem designed to be shared and read by partisans on either side. Perhaps that means the Times has elaborate graphics in the works depicting Turkish, Russian, and American incursions in Syria.

There’s plenty of material to work with there. The Alma Research and Education Center reported on March 25 that “Turkey plans to establish multiple bases to serve the Turkish Air Force, utilizing the infrastructure of Syrian airports in the Palmyra region (Palmyra Airport and T4).” It added that “in recent days there were reports indicating that Turkey has transported troops and military equipment to the Minaq military airport in northern Syria, now operating in Turkish-Syrian collaboration.”

The Pentagon announced on Dec. 19, 2024, that there are 2,000 US troops in Syria.

And Russia is trying to keep its Latakia naval base and Khmeimim air base in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported in early March 2025.

Until and unless elaborate New York Times graphics are devoted to those, too, it sure looks as if the newspaper is holding the Jewish state to a standard it doesn’t apply to other countries, singling out Israel for special negative treatment,

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.

The post New York Times Stokes New Fear About Israeli ‘Occupation’ — of Syria first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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How a Hebrew Letter Can Teach Us the Lasting Power of Humility

Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. Photo: public domain.

The great Hasidic master, Rav Nachman of Breslov, famously said, “If you believe you can break something, believe you can fix it.” A Hasidic wag later added, “But whatever you do, don’t believe you’re the one who invented the glue.”

There’s something deliciously Jewish about that second line. Yes, you matter and can improve things once you’ve messed up. But no, you didn’t invent the universe — or even the duct tape that holds it together. And in a world full of self-made people loudly proclaiming how fantastic they are, that kind of perspective is rare and precious.

Which brings me to Bern, Switzerland, in the year 1905 — and a young patent clerk who published four scientific papers that would change the world. One of them introduced what he called “the special theory of relativity.” Another explained the photoelectric effect, a physics phenomenon that would eventually win him the Nobel Prize.

Remarkably, the author of these revolutionary ideas was not a prestigious university professor or a celebrated scientific superstar. He was, quite literally, a nobody.

Albert Einstein was painfully aware of his limitations. Famously, he struggled with higher mathematics and had to engage a brilliant mathematician, Marcel Grossmann, to help him navigate the complex geometry needed for his theory of general relativity.

He was also completely uninterested in showmanship. He is purported to have once remarked, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

That line wasn’t false modesty. It reflected something real: Einstein’s capacity to listen to criticism, to seek help from others, to keep asking questions others thought were too naïve or too basic, and to admit when he was wrong — all of which allowed him to see what others missed.

Einstein wasn’t trying to be the smartest guy in the room. He was simply trying his hardest to understand how the universe worked. And as it turned out, it was that humility — genuine, grounded humility — that was the key to him unlocking the scientific secrets of the universe.

History is full of leaders and thinkers who were intellectually brilliant and enormously talented, but who sabotaged themselves through arrogance. Napoleon — an extraordinarily gifted human being — thought he was invincible. It didn’t end well.

More recently, genius tech entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Holmes believed they could outsmart investors, regulators, and even the laws of science — and they watched their empires crumble.

The thing is, humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself. It means thinking of yourself less. Which will mean you can grow, change, and learn — because you’re not busy defending or projecting your ego.

The greatest people aren’t necessarily flashy. But in the long run, they’re the ones who build greatness that lasts.

Tucked away in the opening verse of Vayikra is a minor detail offering a massive lesson in humility. Vayikra begins with the pasuk: וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר – “He called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying…”

Curiously, in the very first word — Vayikra — there’s a little anomaly. The final letter, the aleph, is written in miniature. Scribes are trained to make it noticeably tiny, almost like it’s embarrassed to be there — too shy to show its face.

The sages of the Talmud explain that this shrunken letter was Moshe’s doing. The word Vayikra denotes affection — it shows that God was calling Moshe with love in a way that indicated He was closer to Moshe than to anyone else.

But Moshe didn’t feel comfortable with that level of attention, even if it came from Heaven itself. So he shrunk the aleph, as if to say, “Yes, I was called — but I’m not interested in the spotlight.”

Here’s where it gets fascinating. The late Rosh Yeshiva of Ponevezh, Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, raised a powerful question. The Gemara in Menachot (29b) tells us that Rabbi Akiva could derive “mounds upon mounds of laws” from the tagin — the tiny decorative crowns that sit atop certain letters in the Torah.

And if Rabbi Akiva could expound deep halachic insights from something as small as a crown, then surely he could also extract meaning from the letters themselves — from their shape, their appearance, their subtle peculiarities. So how could Moshe shrink the aleph? Wouldn’t that deprive Rabbi Akiva — and, by extension, all of us — of the laws one can learn from a full-sized aleph?

Rav Shach’s answer is simply breathtaking. Sometimes, teaching a human attribute is more important than teaching a law. Sometimes, the example a leader sets through character leaves a deeper and more enduring imprint than any legal lesson.

The lesson of the small aleph isn’t encoded in halacha — it’s etched into the soul. Moshe Rabbeinu was the greatest prophet who ever lived. But he’s remembered not just for what he did, but for who he was, as the Torah tells us: “And the man Moshe was exceedingly humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3).

And if that message had to come at the “cost” of a few halachic insights, so be it. Because a Torah without humility might be intellectually dazzling — but it wouldn’t be divine.

Humility isn’t merely a footnote in the story of greatness. It is the story. A few years ago, at a private event for young tech innovators, the keynote speaker was Tim Cook, Apple’s quiet and reserved CEO.

During the Q&A after his talk, someone asked him how he managed to step into Steve Jobs’ shoes without trying to be Steve Jobs. Cook smiled and said, “I learned early on that if you try to emulate someone else’s greatness, you’ll miss your own.” Brilliant.

Then he shared how he asked Apple’s top team to be brutally honest with him when he first took over. “Tell me what you think I’m doing wrong,” he said. “I can’t learn if I’m only hearing what I want to hear.”

That attitude of humility and openness didn’t just preserve Apple’s legacy. It strengthened it. Because Tim Cook wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was trying to do the job as best he could, which meant being honest about what he didn’t know.

This is precisely what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks meant when he wrote: “Those who have humility are open to things greater than themselves while those who lack it are not. That is why those who lack it make you feel small, while those who have it make you feel enlarged. Their humility inspires greatness in others.”

Moshe’s small aleph may have taken away a few halachot — but it gave us something even greater: a model of leadership that doesn’t shrink others in order to feel tall. A model of behavior that lifts people up precisely because it doesn’t need the spotlight.

And in a world obsessed with being constantly seen and heard, that might just be the most powerful kind of greatness there is.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.

The post How a Hebrew Letter Can Teach Us the Lasting Power of Humility first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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