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The Torah Requires Us to Help the Poor and Needy, But Also Take Personal Accountability
“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”
This quote from the 19th-century French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville reflects the hopeful dream of an Americophile in 1840, calling on the country he had fallen in love with to address the gnawing flaw in its system — slavery — before it was too late.
Unfortunately, that call was not heeded, and the destructive Civil War became the means by which the nation ultimately repaired itself. While de Tocqueville would undoubtedly have viewed the Civil War as a terrible and avoidable trauma, he likely would have considered it an aberration in the grander scheme. For him, the United States represented the ultimate realization of goodness in human governance and cultural advancement.
De Tocqueville remains perhaps the most insightful commentator on American life since its inception. Above all, he marveled at the American dedication to equality. Remarkably, his reflections — published in a pair of volumes titled Democracy in America — continue to resonate nearly two centuries later, not merely for their historical insight, but for their uncanny relevance to contemporary American society and civic life.
De Tocqueville dissected the American psyche with surgical precision, revealing the persistent tension between populism and elitism, prosperity and poverty, and the propensity for rugged individualism alongside communal responsibility.
As he traveled across the young nation, de Tocqueville encountered a society unlike that of his native France or indeed any other European country — defined by rigid class hierarchies. Instead, Americans were passionately committed to the idea that every person, regardless of birth or status, should have the opportunity to succeed.
This commitment to equality was not without its paradoxes and imperfections — slavery still tainted the landscape, and Indigenous peoples were mistreated and displaced — but the relentless drive toward equality was unmistakable. For de Tocqueville, this was the essence of America’s greatness and its unique spirit: a society striving toward a more just and equitable future, even if it stumbled and stuttered along the way.
But where did this American ideal come from? De Tocqueville noted that American society’s moral and ethical underpinnings were deeply rooted in religious tradition, particularly the Puritans’ engagement with Biblical teachings.
The Puritans were the original settlers, and they laid the groundwork for the fledgling colonies — heavily influenced by the Hebrew Scriptures and seeing themselves as a new Israel tasked with building a “City upon a Hill.”
As de Tocqueville observed, “Religion in America … must be regarded as the first of their political institutions.”
Indeed, many debates about justice, fairness, and equality that dominate American discourse today trace their origins back to Biblical values.
Recent studies have exposed the growing divide between rich and poor in modern America. A 2023 Pew Research Center study revealed that economic inequality has reached its most extreme point in half a century. Some argue for more robust government intervention to deal with the problem — by taxing the wealthy, expanding social welfare, and protecting workers’ rights.
Others advocate for greater economic freedom, suggesting that the best way to elevate the poor is by encouraging market forces and reducing regulation. But both sides, whether they realize it or not, are wrestling with questions that were addressed by the Torah thousands of years ago.
Consider the ongoing battle over the minimum wage. Advocates for raising the minimum wage insist that in a just society, no one who works full-time should live in poverty. Their opponents claim that raising the minimum wage will lead to job losses, stifle economic growth, and increase poverty.
This tension is not new. It reflects an ancient debate about the balance between fairness and freedom, and the rights of the individual versus the needs of the community.
In Parshat Ki Teitzei, the Torah confronts these very issues head-on, offering a blueprint for a society that balances economic opportunity with social responsibility.
In Ki Teitzei, the Torah instructs the Israelites, “Do not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or a stranger in your land” (Deut. 24:14). This law is not merely about fair wages; it is about recognizing the inherent dignity of every person. Whether an Israelite or an outsider, the worker must be treated with respect and fairness.
The Torah anticipated the modern debate over wages by making it clear that economic interactions are not just transactions governed by self-interest, but rather they are moral encounters that must reflect society’s values.
The 19th-century commentator Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch understood these laws as far more than just economic policy. He saw them as a call to build a community where everyone feels valued and respected, regardless of their economic status.
“The Torah is not satisfied with a society that only practices charity; it demands a society based on justice. It is not enough for those who have more to give to those who have less; rather, society must be built on a foundation where the rights of every individual are respected and upheld.” Bottom line: it’s not about charity; it’s about justice.
The Torah does not shy away from economic realities but always frames them within a broader ethical context. In a society governed by Torah values, every person has responsibilities: the wealthy must support the poor, employers must treat employees fairly, and judges must apply the law without prejudice.
But the Torah also insists on personal accountability. For example, the commandment to return lost property requires individuals to take active steps to ensure they honor their civic duty and strive for something more than just taking care of themselves and their families. This mirrors modern debates about personal responsibility versus societal obligations, urging a balanced approach that integrates both.
Unlike modern systems that often veer between extremes — total government control or laissez-faire capitalism — the Torah offers a middle path. It recognizes the importance of private property and economic initiative but insists on a framework that protects the vulnerable. It acknowledges human ambition while warning against exploitation.
De Tocqueville might have been surprised to learn just how deeply the American ethos of equality and justice is rooted in ancient Jewish teachings. By observing America’s unique commitment to these ideals, which he so admired and championed, he was indirectly paying homage to the Torah’s blueprint for society.
The Jewish vision of justice is not about creating a so-called utopia of absolute equality, which in practice often drags everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Instead, it seeks to build a society where each person has the opportunity to thrive, where the poor are not exploited, and where every individual, from the widow to the laborer, is treated with dignity and respect.
As we approach what is turning out to be one of the most contentious elections in modern history, living up to de Tocqueville’s hopeful ideal — that America’s greatness lies in her ability to repair her faults — will require a herculean effort.
De Tocqueville was concerned that the path to repair not descend into internecine violence or the chaos of destructive struggles that tear society apart. Tragically, that is exactly what happened in the Civil War.
We cannot and must not let it happen again. Instead, we need to draw on the wisdom of the Torah’s teachings alongside America’s foundational ideals so that we can keep the great American project on track.
By embracing these principles — justice balanced with mercy, and freedom tempered with responsibility — we can work towards a society that truly embodies justice and compassion, in which America’s promise of equality is not a hollow ideal but a lived reality.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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Florida State University Shooting Suspect Expressed Interest in Hitler, Nazis, New Research Shows
According to the ADL, this image appears on an account belonging to Phoenix Ikner, the alleged perpetrator of a shooting attack on Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee. Photo: Screenshot
Phoenix Ikner, the alleged perpetrator of Thursday’s shooting attack on Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee which left two dead and six injured, expressed an interest in the Third Reich through his choice of names in his internet accounts, according to research from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an antisemitism watchdog group.
Describing Ikner as “an avid gamer and YouTuber,” the ADL said that its investigators found that “on various gaming accounts, the shooter used white supremacist imagery, including the Patriot Front logo and images of Hitler.”
An image provided by the ADL showed a simple cartoon of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s head with a word bubble saying “Nein!” — the German word for “no.”
1/ The ADL Center on Extremism has discovered that the alleged shooter at FSU yesterday was an avid gamer and YouTuber. During his various livestreams, he shared his screen revealing his various accounts, screen names, avatars, email inboxes and search history. Read on…
pic.twitter.com/7WPK6k85Yb
— ADL (@ADL) April 18, 2025
Through analyzing Ikner’s livestream broadcasts, the ADL reported that his email inbox “included emails from the Steam gaming platform support team, which referred to him as ‘Schutzstaffel,’ ‘phoenxcool,’ and ‘itsyourboyphoenix.’ Schutzstaffel, or SS, was the Nazi paramilitary group responsible for the Final Solution during the Holocaust.”
Ikner sustained injuries during the attack which may result in significant time in the hospital.
“What we’re seeing — if in fact this individual has extremist views, and it seems at the very least he was exposed to extremism — is the continued crossover between extremism and the glorification of violence that eventually leads to violence,” said Carla Hill, a senior director of investigative research at the ADL’s Center on Extremism
FSU student Lucas Luzietti shared a 2023 class with Ikner where the two argued over the alleged shooter’s far-right ideology, racism, and conspiracism. According to USA Today, Ikner made racist statements about Black people ruining his neighborhood and believed that former US President Joe Biden won the 2020 election illegally. He also made clear to his classmates that he owned guns.
Another student who engaged in ideological exchanges with Ikner revealed that members of a political discussion group found the alleged shooter’s views so extreme they asked him to leave.
Reid Seybold, a former Tallahassee State College student, told NBC News that “basically our only rule was no Nazis — colloquially speaking — and he espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric, and far-right rhetoric as well, to the point where we had to exercise that rule.”
The ADL reported that the Patriot Front group referenced in Ikner’s online activity “distributed antisemitic propaganda on at least 431 occasions in 2023, making up 38 percent of the year’s antisemitic propaganda incidents. ”In most of these incidents, the propaganda included the phrase ‘No Zionists in government, we serve one Nation,’” the ADL explained. “Given the group’s neo-Nazi roots, there is no question that when Patriot Front mentions ‘Zionists’ in their propaganda, they mean Jews.”
Fascinations with Nazism or even an outright embrace of the ideology have shown up in previous school attacks over the last 30 years.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold — the shooters behind the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999 — selected Hitler’s birthday for the attack that left 13 dead and launched the modern school shooting phenomenon. Harris, the mass slaughter’s mastermind, wrote in his journal, “I love the Nazis … I f—king can’t get enough of the swastika, the SS, and the iron cross. Hitler and his head boys f—ked up a few times and it cost them the war, but I love their beliefs and who they were, what they did, and what they wanted.”
On March 21, 2005, 16-year-old Jeff Weise murdered nine people at Red Lake High School, in Red Lake, Minnesota before committing suicide. Weise posted on a Neo-Nazi website with the handle “NativeNazi.”
William Edward Atchison, a contributor to message boards on the Daily Stormer neo-Nazi site, attacked Aztec High School, in Aztec, New Mexico on Dec. 7, 2017, killing two before taking his own life.
Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 and injured 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14, 2018. He had carved a swastika onto his gun’s magazine and also made online postings expressing racism, antisemitism, and anti-immigrant bigotry.
Recent months have seen two school shooters — Natallie Rupnow and Solomon Henderson — with confirmed neo-Nazi beliefs who attacked their classmates before committing suicide.
Rupnow killed two and injured six on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. Henderson’s attack at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee on Jan. 22 left one dead and one injured.
Both teenagers left “manifestos” explaining their actions. In Henderson’s he wrote, “Candace Owens has influenced me above all each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over the Jewish question.”
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Three Arrested at Protest in Scotland Against Israeli Athlete Competing in Bowls Tournament
Palestinian supporters protesting outside a Scotland vs. Israel match at the a UEFA Women’s European Qualifiers at Hampden Park, Glasgow, Scotland on May 31, 2024. Photo: Alex Todd/Sportpix/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Three protesters were arrested and charged after participating in an anti-Israel demonstration in Scotland on Sunday that targeted an Israeli bowl player competing in the World Bowls Indoor Championship taking place in the Scottish city of Aberdeen.
The protest was co-organized by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) and was largely held outside the Aberdeen Indoor Bowling Club, where Israeli athlete Boaz Markus was competing, according to the Scottish newspaper The National. The international tournament runs from April 20-25. A flyer for Sunday’s protest described Markus as “a representative of the illegal, apartheid Israeli state currently carrying out genocide.”
Protesters outside the arena chanted against Israel while holding Palestinian flags and placards calling for an end to Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip ahead of Markus’s match at 1 pm. Video shared on social media by the pro-Palestinian group Show Israeli Genocide the Red Card, which co-organized the protest, also showed two demonstrators inside the venue chanting “Free, free Palestine,” shouting that Markus was “not welcome in Scotland,” and making further accusations about Israel committing “war crimes” and “murdering babies.” The protesters were eventually escorted out of the venue by police. The mayhem caused Markus’ match to be delayed by two hours.
On Sunday, police said two people had been arrested and that “enquiries are ongoing,” but then released an update on Monday explaining that another person had been arrested and charged in relation to the protest, The National reported.
“On Sunday, April 20, 2025, officers attended a pre-planned demonstration on Summerhill Road in Aberdeen,” said a police spokesperson. “Two women aged 57 and 63, and a 56-year-old man were arrested and charged. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal [public prosecutor].”
Maggie Chapman, Green Member of the Scottish Parliament, also participated in the anti-Israel rally on Sunday.
“Sport is meant to be for everyone, but Israel is a racist apartheid state, built on denying even the most basic human rights to people under occupation,” she said. “I was proud to join today’s protest against Israel’s systematic repression of Palestinians and the normalization of war crimes. Sporting and cultural boycotts were an important act of solidarity against the apartheid regime in South Africa and are an important act way of standing with the people of Gaza.”
Chapman criticized the police response to the demonstration, calling it “totally disproportionate.”
“Protest is not a crime, but genocide is, and we all have a responsibility to stand against it,” she stated.
Earlier this month, SPSC tried to pressure World Bowls, which is the international federation for the sport of bowls, to disinvite Markus from the World Bowls Indoor Championship. The anti-Israel group accused World Bowls and the Aberdeen Indoor Bowling Club of “sportswashing Israeli genocide.” Show Israeli Genocide the Red Card sponsored an open letter that called on the Scottish government to intervene if World Bowls failed to rescind Markus’ invitation to the tournament.
World Bowls CEO Neil Dalrymple responded, saying at the time that the federation will not rescind Markus’ invitation. He also asked protesters not to disrupt the competition. “World Bowls is very pleased to be staging the World Bowls Indoor Championship in Aberdeen,” he told the Scottish Sun.
“World Bowls has 60 member countries from across the world including Israel and all of our members continue to be welcome and eligible to participate in all World Bowls staged events,” he added. “Our view is that sport and politics should not be intertwined. We will be allowing the representative of Israel to play in this World Bowls event, and we hope that all players and officials will enjoy their visit to Aberdeen. We respect the right for people to protest whilst we hope that they will respect the right for World Bowls to stage this competition without disruption inside the venue.”
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Molotov Cocktail Thrown at Ukrainian Synagogue in Antisemitic Attack Hours After Passover
In an antisemitic attack, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a synagogue in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. Photo: Screenshot
A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a synagogue in Kryvyi Rih, a city in central Ukraine, on Saturday night, as the local Jewish community continues to experience an increasing wave of antisemitic incidents.
Just hours after the Jewish holiday of Passover ended, Chabad emissary and city Rabbi Liron Edri was alerted by the synagogue’s security system — funded by Chabad World Assistance (CWA) and supported by the Jewish Agency’s Security Fund — that several Molotov cocktails had been thrown at the building.
Edri explained that the security system — which includes shatter-resistant windows, surveillance cameras, and a rapid-response alarm network — prevented a major disaster by stopping the Molotov cocktails from breaching the building and causing serious damage.
“Thanks to the window reinforcement installed in recent months, a large fire was prevented,” the city’s rabbi said.
He also warned that the attack followed a disturbing pattern, similar to a recent antisemitic incident in Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, where Molotov cocktails were also thrown at a local synagogue.
“We fear this is a planned trend against Jewish communities,” Edri said. “There seems to be a growing pattern of coordinated attempts to intimidate and harm Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.”
As local authorities initiated an investigation into the attack, Edri praised their swift and effective response.
“We will not let fear stop us,” the rabbi said. “Light will dispel darkness, and I thank the police and government who immediately came to the synagogue and promised to conduct an investigation and arrest the perpetrators.”
Ukraine has experienced an increasing wave of antisemitic incidents, as Russia’s ongoing war has fueled political instability, amplified nationalist rhetoric, and sparked a rise in antisemitic discourse across certain regions.
Last week, a vehicle displaying Jewish symbols was vandalized, with its tires slashed, community emblems defaced, and paint splattered across the car’s body.
Edri condemned the antisemitic act, describing it as part of a growing wave of targeted assaults against the local Jewish community intended to harm and intimidate them.
“The vandalism was clearly targeted,” he said. “There was nothing random about it. This was an act aimed at harming us as a Jewish community.”
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