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What It Really Means to Be the ‘People of the Book’
The room full of Torah scrolls in Miami. Photo: Pini Dunner.
This week, Jewish communities worldwide will read Parshat Yitro, which recounts one of the most defining moments in Jewish history — God’s giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. These directives weren’t just words; they were the first written texts of Jewish tradition, forming the foundation of the Five Books of Moses, known as the Torah — the cornerstone of the Jewish faith. It was this moment that earned the Jews the title “People of the Book.”
But what does being “the People of the Book” really mean? It’s a title we’ve embraced for centuries, and it carries more than one meaning. We’re the people who received the book — the Torah, a divine blueprint for life. We’re also the people whose story is told in the book — the Bible is our collective narrative.
And perhaps most importantly, we’re the ones who’ve placed books at the center of our culture and identity — studying them, teaching from them, and passing their wisdom down through generations. Books aren’t just tools for us — they’re at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.
Clearly, books have always been at the core of Jewish life, tools to uplift and guide. But this week, books hit the headlines for a very different reason. In East Jerusalem, two booksellers, Mahmoud Muna and Munir Muna, were arrested at their widely known bookselling establishment, Educational Bookshop.
Israeli police claim the shop was selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism, and the two owners are being held on charges of disrupting public order. Cue the predictable global outrage: protests, op-eds, and online campaigns demanding the release of these “innocent booksellers.” The shop, after all, is described by its supporters as a “place of coexistence” and “a cultural hub.” But, as it turns out, that is not quite the whole story.
A post by my friend Saul Sadka on X (formerly Twitter) really made me stop and think. Saul met Mahmoud Muna five years ago when he joined a delegation from a center-left American Jewish group visiting the bookstore. The goal of the visit was dialogue, to create an atmosphere of understanding by “hearing the other side.”
But what Saul experienced was something else entirely. Instead of a pleasant bridge-building conversation, he and the group got an hour-long lecture dripping with thinly veiled antisemitism. Mahmoud sneered at the group’s efforts at coexistence and peppered his talk with tropes about Jewish power and “oblique references to their lack of connection to the land.”
Most of the delegation nodded along, possibly because they didn’t detect the malice in the subtext. But Saul and a few others left feeling sick to their stomachs.
“It wasn’t just antisemitic,” Saul wrote. “It reeked of genuine animus. He really enjoyed watching the Jews nodding along, completely unaware they were being mocked.” What struck me most was not only that this wasn’t dialogue but that it was derision disguised as intellectualism — because it took place in a bookshop and was delivered by a supposedly well-educated bookshop proprietor.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter. For Jews, books are sacred not simply because they exist, but because of what they contain and how they’re used. From the moment we received the Torah at Mount Sinai, books have been tools to build a better world — guiding us to live with purpose and integrity.
Contrast that with people like the Munas, who use books to spread hate, justify violence, and incite division. In their hands, books become weapons. That’s what the police claim was happening at the Educational Bookshop, and Saul’s experience suggests those claims are far from baseless. It makes you wonder — not just about the books they were selling but also about the books they chose not to sell.
Of course, the world’s reaction has been as predictable as ever. Mahmoud and Munir Muna have been cast as martyrs of free speech, celebrated as cultural icons targeted by an oppressive regime. No one seems to care about the content of the books they’re accused of selling. No one considers the harm such incitement can cause. The narrative is already fixed: Israel is the villain, and the booksellers are the victims.
But here’s the thing: not all books are created equal. And not everyone who champions books is a true “person of the book.” Being “people of the book” isn’t about celebrating any book just because it has words on a page. Like anything good, books can also be misused for bad.
The Torah, given at Sinai, is the original good book. It’s not just a collection of opinions or ideas — it’s a guide for living, a set of timeless truths meant to ground us and elevate us. That’s why Jews have spent millennia studying it, debating it, and teaching it — not to tear others down, but to build ourselves and the world up.
But when books are turned into tools of destruction — when they’re filled with hate and used to justify violence — even the staunchest advocates of free speech have the right to stand up and say, “Not on our watch.” And that’s exactly what’s happening here.
The Educational Bookshop, far from being a “center of coexistence,” appears to have been a hub for something far more sinister. Mahmoud and Munir Muna are not champions of free speech; they seem to be peddlers of incitement, hiding in plain sight behind the veneer of intellectualism.
The story of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai reminds us that being “people of the book” is a mission, not merely a title. It’s about holding the written word to the highest standard — using it to enlighten, not to inflame.
Each year, as we read the Ten Commandments in synagogues around the world, we are reminded of our sacred duty to recommit to that mission. We must stand against those who twist the power of books, making it clear that the book is not a prop for the basest human instincts. Books are tools — and how we choose to use them defines who we are.
Mahmoud and Munir Muna may run a bookstore, but that doesn’t make them “people of the book.” For them, books appear to have become weapons — tools to ensnare others in pseudo-intellectual justifications for hatred and violence.
We can never accept such a betrayal of the written word. For us Jews, books are sacred tools to enhance life, uplift society, and bring light to the world. And that’ s a difference worth standing up for — and fighting for.
The post What It Really Means to Be the ‘People of the Book’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Harvard Plans to Borrow $750 Million After Federal Funding Threats Over Campus Antisemitism Response
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University plans to borrow $750 million from Wall Street as part of contingency preparations, it said on Monday, days after President Donald Trump’s administration announced a review of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to the Ivy League school in a crackdown on antisemitism on campuses.
In a letter to Harvard last week, the government listed conditions that Harvard must meet to receive federal money, including a ban on protesters wearing masks to hide their identities and other restrictions.
Harvard acknowledged receiving the letter but did not comment further.
“As part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances, Harvard is evaluating resources needed to advance its academic and research priorities,” Harvard University said in Monday’s statement.
Harvard‘s plans come less than a week after Princeton University said in a notice dated April 1 that it was also considering the sale of about $320 million of taxable bonds later this month. Princeton said last week the US government froze several dozen research grants to the school.
Harvard intends to issue up to $750 million of taxable bonds for “general corporate purposes,” a spokesperson said. The university had $7.1 billion of debt outstanding at the end of fiscal year 2024 and anticipated about $8.2 billion after the proposed bond issuance.
The university most recently issued $434 million in tax-exempt bonds in March 2025 and $735 million in tax-exempt bonds in spring 2024, its spokesperson said, adding it also issued bonds in 2022.
Harvard has a $53 billion endowment, the largest of any US university. Advocates, students, and several faculty members have called on university leadership to resist the demands from the Trump administration.
Trump has threatened to slash federal funding for US universities that his administration says have tolerated antisemitism on their campuses.
Such allegations have grown out of a wave of raucous, unsanctioned, and sometimes violent anti-Israel protests at Harvard and other schools against Israel’s military campaign targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli campaign followed an October 2023 attack inside Israel by Hamas, which took over 250 hostages. The attack killed 1,200 people.
Protesters say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas.
But many Jewish students on campuses have said they have felt threatened by protesters, and that some academic courses are biased against Israel.
Rights advocates have also raised concerns about Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias during the Israel-Gaza war. The Trump administration has not announced steps in response.
Last month, the government warned 60 universities that it could bring enforcement actions if a review determined the schools had failed to stop antisemitism.
Harvard‘s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, recently reported that two leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Director Cemal Kafadar and Associate Director Rosie Bsheer, were dismissed from their positions.
TRUMP CRACKDOWN
The Trump administration also planned to freeze grants to Brown University.
Last month, it canceled $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University, the epicenter of last year’s campus protests.
Columbia agreed to some significant changes that Trump’s administration demanded as a precondition for talks about restoring the funding.
Federal agents have detained some foreign student protesters in recent weeks from different campuses and are working to deport them. The government has revoked the visas of many foreign students.
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Russian Lower House of Parliament Ratifies 20-Year Pact Between Russia and Iran
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attend a documents signing ceremony in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool
Russia‘s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on Tuesday ratified a 20–year strategic partnership between Russia and Iran.
The strategic partnership document was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Jan. 17 and represented a deepening of military ties between the countries.
The agreement said Russia and Iran would consult and cooperate to deal with military and security threats, and take part in joint military drills on both their territories and beyond.
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Almost a Vice President — New Joe Lieberman Documentary Is Heartwarming and a Must-See
The official Senate portrait of Joe Lieberman.
In a world where politicians are not often trusted to do what they believe is right, Joe Lieberman was an exception.I once interviewed his mother and when I spoke with him in 2010 and asked about nearly becoming vice president, he said it was “all in God’s hands.”
The new documentary Centered: Joe Lieberman, includes the chaos of the 2000 election in which Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ran against Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Lieberman. The film includes that Gore called Bush to concede and retracted it. Ultimately, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop a recount of an election in which some Jewish voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, said they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan while trying to vote for Gore. The Gore/Lieberman ticket won the popular vote, but with Florida going to Bush, he won the presidency.
The film traces Lieberman’s political beginnings – losing a bid for Congress in 1980, but then becoming Connecticut state attorney general and upsetting Republican Lowell Weicker to take a Senate seat in 1988.
Lieberman, who observed Shabbat, was critical of Democratic President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which Clinton first claimed he did not have relations with the White House intern – then admitted he lied. In the documentary, Lieberman explains why he stood true to his values and spoke out.
A strong supporter of Israel, the film includes Lieberman criticizing Democratic New York Senator Chuck Schumer for giving a speech which called for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lieberman was primaried and lambasted for supporting the Iraq war. In the documentary, Lieberman says that if he knew beforehand all the lives that would have been lost, he would have been against it.
“The fact that he acknowledged [that] was a pretty big deal for people who know Lieberman and his stance on the Iraq war” director Jonathan Gruber told me in an interview for this article in The Algemeiner. “When we watched a rough cut of it with him, he looked around the table and said, ‘I’ve never said that in public.’ Then he paused and said, ‘But I’m glad I said it.’”
The film also shows the backlash Lieberman faced for supporting Republican senator John McCain for president rather than Barack Obama.
Gruber said one of the challenges in making the documentary was getting Democrats to agree to be in it, because there was a lot of resentment.
“People were and still are upset at him,” Gruber said. “They feel betrayed.”
There are emotional moments of Lieberman’s funeral shown. He died at the age of 82 in March 2024, after complications from a fall.
“He did what he felt he had to do from a moral and ethical standpoint,” Gruber said. “There are a lot of politicians these days who know what they should do and they don’t.”
What was the main lesson Gruber learned from interviewing Lieberman and making the documentary?
“You should figure out how to disagree without being disagreeable,” Gruber said. “Discourse over discord, and that a person you don’t agree with is not your blood enemy. People on the extremes sticking to their beliefs, saying if you’re not with me 100 percent, forget it, is really simplistic and now we have extremes on both sides. Joe was one of the early cancel culture victims … because of his vote of the Iraq war. I didn’t agree with that vote. But he was excoriated for it.”
Lieberman lost in the 2006 Democratic primary for Senate but won as an independent. The film shows that one of the reasons Lieberman married his second wife Hadassah was they were at a similar religious level, and that the Secret Service would accompany him to the synagogue during the presidential campaign.
Centered also includes the fear of some Jews in 2000 who worried that if Gore/Lieberman won in 2000 and something terrible took place, Jews would be blamed.
Gruber said Lieberman told him that President Obama told Lieberman that his decision to run as an Orthodox Jewish vice-presidential candidate opened the door for him as an African-American presidential candidate.
Gruber, who directed the impressive Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story does great work again here, telling the story of a noble man who seemed at times too kind for politics, but was quite effective. Also touched upon was the No Labels Party, for which Lieberman was criticized, but ultimately, it did not put forth any presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
Centered: Joe Lieberman is a well-crafted documentary that shows Lieberman’s humor, his guts, and his humility, and should be shown in Jewish schools where many students may not be familiar with the man who nearly became the first Jewish vice president.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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