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The 21st-Century’s Great Flood
Noah and the Ark. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Believe it or not, the hero of this week’s Torah portion, Noah, needed a not-so-gentle push to get him into the Ark that he himself had built!
“And Noah, his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark because of the flood waters,” (Genesis 7:7).
Interpreting this verse, the great commentator Rashi says that Noah only went into the ark because the floodwaters pushed him inside. He himself wasn’t quite sure this flood thing was really going to happen, but eventually, when he was getting rather wet, he decided to seek refuge in the ark.
There’s a very serious and sobering message here for our times. There’s a flood out there, no question about it. A deluge of disinformation and degeneracy, and it’s leading to the ruination of society as we have always known it. I can handle and even admire “disrupters,” but what we are witnessing now is destruction, a sea of moral sickness and chaos amid the collapse of our traditional values. To even use the term “traditional family values” these days is to incur the wrath of every alternative movement on earth. “How dare you!”
All around us, we see a flood of family breakdowns, a deluge of drugs, crime, and the havoc and devastation it wreaks. Never before have we experienced a tidal wave of mass shootings in schools, shopping malls and theaters. I’m not getting into the gun-control issue; this is a mind-control issue. What possesses the minds of these lonely, troubled young men who go out and shoot up the town? And what insanity warps the minds of young Westerners who become influenced by radical terrorist groups to go and join the Jihadi revolutionaries?
This is clearly a societal problem. The Hebrew word for the great flood in Noah’s time is mabul. Indeed, this a mabul of madness!
But if we enter the ark, we discover a new reality. The holy ark inside every synagogue is a symbol of sanctity, refuge and moral clarity. It is a sanctuary that protects us from the ravaging, raging waters outside. Herein lies the sacred treasure of our people, the holy Torah, the eternal wisdom of our Jewish history and heritage. Here, we find a Godly manual for living, one that is far removed from our contemporary craziness. And, yes, it is a repository of traditional values, our faith in God, our commitment to family, to elders and to respect and decency in all our relationships.
We have a choice. Do we pick the torrents of turbulence outside or the haven of tranquility and the anchor of the ark inside?
There have always been religious and non-religious Jews. And we have always argued. And many religious Jews have debated passionately with their non-religious brothers and sisters to embrace a more traditional Jewish way of life. But today, I would humbly suggest that the flood waters of a society out of control should force any objective, reasonable, upstanding person into the arms of the holy ark.
Even if it is not out of religious conviction, and even if it is not from our faithful childhood memories, the wild waters of a world gone berserk should be pushing us to explore the values represented by the holy ark. We should be doing it for our own family’s safety, security and sanity. We need to save our skin, never mind our soul.
Once upon a time, society and people were “normal” and honorable, more or less. Some were religious, others not. But today, with all the insane ideologies out there, we should be lining up to get into the ark. To ignore the calming refuge of the Almighty’s Ark in our current situation is like Noah standing up to his knees in the floodwaters and whistling in the rain while the ark takes off without him.
Our Jewish way of life offers us a lifeboat of survival in these wild floodwaters. Do we want to be swamped by the woke ideologists who seem completely disengaged from reality? If you can be anything you want, well, with that naturally comes an “anything goes” philosophy of life. And what nachas will we have when we discover that our son or daughter at an Ivy League campus has become a flag-waving member of Jews for Palestine?
My dear friends, as a rabbi, I invite you, nay, I appeal to you to take advantage of the great, trusted, traditional Jewish lifeboat. You’ll find it at the synagogue of your choice. Call a rabbi. Send your kids to a good Jewish day school. Enroll in a Jewish adult-education course. Study some Torah online. Volunteer for Israel or help kids with special needs in your community. Visit a senior center. Do a mitzvah. Do something to save yourself and your family from this disastrous deluge.
In the ark of your people, you will find security, serenity, wisdom and knowledge to help you chart your own way in a world that has become a labyrinth masking morality, honor and plain common sense.
The post The 21st-Century’s Great Flood first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election
US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
Both Democratic and Republican parties are scrambling to galvanize Jewish support on the eve of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.
In what is projected to potentially be the closest presidential election in over 20 years, both parties believe that Jewish voters could play a major role in determining the election’s outcome. As the race for the White House enters the final hours, Democrats and Republicans have deployed some of their most vocal pro-Israel allies in a last-minute pitch to the Jewish community.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to court Jewish voters who feel alienated by Rep. Summer Lee’s (D-PA) unrelenting anti-Israel rhetoric. Torres sought to assuage fears that Vice President Kamala Harris harbors similar views on Israel as Lee.
In addition, Torres defended the Biden administration’s record on Israel, arguing that a potential Harris administration would continue to strengthen ties with the Jewish state and mitigate any threats from Iran.
“I joined the Harris campaign in showing solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community, which has been profoundly shaken by both the Tree of Life mass shooting and the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism,” Torres told Jewish Insider.
“I did my best to reassure the Jewish community that the Democratic Party — despite the background noise on Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok — has been and will remain fundamentally pro-Israel and that the Vice President herself falls squarely within the pro-Israel consensus that has historically governed American politics, rejecting both the [a]nti-Zionism of the far left and the America-[F]irst isolationism of the far right,” Torres continued.
On the conservative side of the aisle, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filmed a video with the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in support of former President Donald Trump.
“This is the most important election cycle in our lifetime, and as we have seen on college campuses, the rot of antisemitism is real in the Democratic Party.
She accused the Biden White House of betraying Israel and the Jewish people. She lambasted the Biden administration for their failure “to combat antisemitism”
“It is Republicans who have always – and will always – stand strongly with Israel, and stand up and clearly condemn antisemitism,” Stefanik said.
While serving on the Education and the Workforce Committee, Stefanik has lambasted administrators of elite universities for their mealy-mouthed condemnations of antisemitism and tolerance of anti-Jewish violence on campus. Last December, Stefanik engaged in a fiery back-and-forth with the presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over a purported antisemitic campus atmospheres.
Early indicators suggest that Harris is expected to win a smaller share of the Jewish vote than previous Democratic candidates. Jewish voters, highly-concentrated in important areas such as the suburbs of Detroit and Philadelphia, could prove critical in Harris’s bid to win the White House.
Liberal CNN commentator Van Jones cautioned Monday that Harris has suffered an erosion of Jewish support in the Philadelphia metro.
Jones said that he’s “worried” that the “Jewish vote in the suburban areas” of Philadelphia have dramatically soured on Harris.
“Biden won the Jewish vote [in suburban Philadephia] by 70%” Jones said, referencing the 2020 election.
“Some polls show Kamala at 50-50” among Jewish voters in suburban Philadelphia, Jones lamented.
The post Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’
In a gentrifying West Toronto neighbourhood full of signs advocating for Black lives, transgender youth and the unhoused, the clerk’s refusal to hang up a sign of my own design […]
The post Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large
Illustrative: An ambulance used by Hatzalah in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Orthodox Jews in New York City are again frustrated with a lack of law and order in the Five Boroughs following another attack against a member of their community, this time a child.
According to multiple accounts, an African American male on Monday morning smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The incident was the second known assault on an Orthodox Jew in the area in less than a week.
“He was riding his bike between Winthrop and Clarkson, near the hospital, when a man slapped him. He arrived at school shaken, and the school contacted his parents and Crown Heights Shomrim [a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group],” Yaacov Behrman, a local Jewish leader, posted on X/Twitter.
Behrman — a liaison for Chabad Headquarters, the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — added that the boy was filing a police report.
A teacher of the young man, Yisrael Eliashiv, added that the assailant, who remains at large, “smacked [the boy] across the face for no reason other than hate. Thankfully, he got away before anything else happened.” The teacher then noted that his student did not initially think to notify the police because he doubted the attacker would receive any punishment.
“I’m fuming to the point I’ve got a migraine … You have kids who are 13 or 14 and have grown up with the attitude of ‘if you get assaulted in the street, just take it because nothing is gonna be done.’ Those are the symptoms not of a sick but of a dead and decaying society,” Eliashiv wrote.
Crown Heights, home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, has seen numerous antisemitic hate crimes in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face.
Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
Monday’s assault came just days after an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking through downtown Brooklyn last week.
These latest attacks on the Orthodox Jewish community continue a trend.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.
Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large first appeared on Algemeiner.com.