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A Lesson From Joseph and His Brothers: Don’t Dismiss the Visionary in Your Midst
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
In a letter dated November 1861, General George B. McClellan — newly appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as commander of the Union Army — wrote to his wife Mary Ellen that “Mr. Lincoln is nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.”
McClellan’s undisguised disdain echoed a broader sentiment among the political and military elite, who badly misjudged Lincoln’s capacity to lead the United States in a moment of national crisis. In the years that followed, history would vindicate Lincoln as America’s greatest commander-in-chief — while McClellan’s own legacy was overshadowed by the very man he had once so casually disparaged.
McClellan was hardly the first person to look down on someone far greater than himself, and he certainly wasn’t the last. Take Ignaz Semmelweis, for example, the brilliant Hungarian physician whose simple, lifesaving idea should have made him a medical hero.
In the 1840s, Semmelweiss researched the high incidence of women dying after childbirth in hospitals and concluded that it was caused by doctors moving straight from autopsies to maternity wards, thereby infecting mothers. A staggering one in every six mothers died due to this practice.
There was a simple solution, Semmelweis said: doctors needed to wash their hands so that ‘cadaverous particles’ — the term germs had not yet been invented — would be removed. But the response to his suggestion was not gratitude but outrage. One senior Viennese physician dismissed Semmelweis’s handwashing solution as “the outpourings of a disturbed mind.”
The hostility to Semmelweis grew, and it essentially ended his career, the man poised to save countless lives was literally ridiculed into obscurity. He was eventually committed to an insane asylum, where he died at the age of 47. Only decades later did the medical world finally admit that the “disturbed mind” had been right all along.
Semmelweis was not the only doctor ridiculed for seeing the truth too clearly. During the 1854 cholera outbreak in London, Dr. John Snow proposed an idea that all his colleagues considered utterly laughable: he argued that cholera wasn’t caused by “bad air” or mysterious atmospheric vapors, but by contaminated water. Today we don’t question this fact — but in mid-19th-century London, it was considered scientific heresy.
Snow wasn’t put off easily. He painstakingly mapped cholera cases, eventually traced the outbreak to the Broad Street water pump, and persuaded local officials to remove its handle so no one could pump water there. The deaths plummeted almost immediately, but the medical establishment still refused to take him seriously.
The president of the General Board of Health dismissed Snow’s work as “mere hypothesis,” and another critic sneered that his theory “cannot be entertained in any scientific discussion.” Snow, like Semmelweis, was treated as an irritant rather than a visionary. Only years later, long after his early death at 45, did the world recognize that the man they had waved away as a crank had actually solved one of the great medical mysteries of all time.
This pattern of condescension was not limited to the medical world. In the 1840s, Ada Lovelace — daughter of the poet Lord Byron and one of the most extraordinary minds of her generation — became fascinated by Charles Babbage’s proposed “analytical engine,” a mechanical device most people viewed as little more than an elaborate calculator.
But Lovelace saw something far more revolutionary. In a set of notes that she appended to her translation of an Italian science paper, she suggested that this machine, if built according to her specifications, would be able to manipulate symbols, compose music, and even generate original ideas — concepts that today form the backbone of modern computing and, more recently, AI.
But her vision was far too radical for her contemporaries. One prominent engineer dismissed her ideas as “the wild fancies of a young woman,” and others insisted Lovelace simply did not understand the limits of machinery. Lovelace, like Semmelweis and Snow, was written off as someone who thought too strangely, too imaginatively, too far beyond the accepted boundaries.
A century later, computer scientists rediscovered her work and suddenly realized that her “wild fancies” were, in fact, the earliest blueprint for the digital age. The woman whose insights were rudely dismissed in her lifetime became known as the world’s first computer programmer.
The dismissal of great people by their peers was not a phenomenon limited to the 19th century. History is replete with such examples, going all the way back to the Bible itself, with the most famous case appearing in Parshat Vayeishev.
Long before Lincoln was dismissed by McClellan, long before Semmelweis was mocked as delusional, long before John Snow was waved away as a crank, and long before Ada Lovelace was written off as an over-imaginative dreamer, Joseph’s brothers concluded that he was an overblown egotist punching way above his weight. They saw his confidence and heard his dreams, and immediately decided he was an arrogant narcissist obsessed with visions of grandeur.
What they never paused to consider was that perhaps these dreams were not fantasies at all, but glimpses of a destiny that he alone could perceive. Their prejudices and preconceived notions of their little brother blinded them to the remarkable qualities standing right in front of them: Joseph’s intuition, his emotional intelligence, his spiritual imagination, his innate leadership — all of which would emerge in the concluding chapters of Genesis.
Convinced they were dealing with an insufferable younger sibling who needed to be put in his place, they misread the situation entirely. In their rush to dismiss him, they failed to recognize that he was, in fact, the person who would one day save them all.
Malbim offers a psychologically astute insight that applies equally to all the examples throughout history: people interpret ambiguous information through the filter of their existing emotions. Because the brothers already viewed Joseph with suspicion, they didn’t read his dreams as neutral messages but as hostile declarations.
Their own jealousy and insecurity shaped what they thought the dreams meant — and, by extension, who they believed Joseph was. Malbim points out that had they not been so entangled in their biases, they might have seen the dreams in an entirely different light.
Which brings us to the most unsettling question of all. If Lincoln could be written off as a “well-meaning baboon,” if Semmelweis could be mocked into madness, if John Snow could be dismissed as a crank, and if Ada Lovelace could be waved away as a fanciful young woman, how many other potential Josephs has history quietly buried?
How many brilliant minds, original thinkers, and visionary spirits were crushed before their gifts could ever see daylight, not because they lacked greatness, but because those around them lacked the imagination to recognize it?
Joseph survived his brothers’ attempts to dismiss him and ultimately rose to fulfill his destiny. But his story stands as a warning: when we assume we already know someone’s limits, we may be blinding ourselves to the greatness standing right in front of us. And the tragedy is not only what we fail to see — it’s what the world loses when a future savior is silenced before he ever has a chance to begin.
So here’s a challenge for us all: This week, champion a quiet contrarian in your own circle. Seek out someone with unconventional ideas, and nurture them. Who knows, you might just uncover the next great thinker whose insights can change the world. Let us learn from the past and ensure that no potential Joseph is buried under the weight of our doubts.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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European Countries Join France in Demanding Anti-Israel UN Special Rapporteur Albanese’s Resignation
Francesa Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, speaks at a conference, “A Cartography of Genocide” Israel’s Conduct in Gaza,” at the Roma Tre University, in Rome, Italy, Oct. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Top diplomats from Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic have joined France in calling for the resignation of the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the terrorist group Hamas’s attacks against the Jewish state.
Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot accused Albanese of being “a political activist who stirs up hate” after she delivered yet another inflammatory tirade against Israel, this time at an Al Jazeera forum in Doha, prompting renewed calls for her resignation.
He described Albanese’s “outrageous and reprehensible remarks” as targeting “not the Israeli government, whose policies may be criticized, but Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable.”
The top French diplomat announced that France will demand Albanese’s resignation “with firmness” at this month’s United Nations Human Rights Council session.
Despite her history of antisemitic statements, the United Nations has consistently refused to fire Albanese, citing her status as one of its “independent experts.”
Now, officials in Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic have aligned with France in demanding Albanese’s removal, warning that she continues to spread hatred under the cover of her official role.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Albanese’s “conduct, statements, and initiatives are not appropriate for the position she holds within an organization dedicated to peace and security.”
Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger accused Albanese of “spreading incitement” in a way that “undermines the impartiality and highest standards that the role of a UN representative requires.”
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called her “untenable in her position,” noting that she “has made numerous inappropriate remarks in the past.”
Albanese sparked fresh outrage after seemingly calling Israel a “common enemy of humanity,” drawing sharp condemnation from diplomats and human rights advocates worldwide.
Speaking at the Al Jazeera forum in Qatar last weekend, she accused Israel of “planning and carrying out a genocide” during the country’s defensive war against Hamas.
“It’s also true that never before has the global community seen the challenges that we all face, we who do not control large amounts of financial, algorithms, and weapons,” Albanese said, appearing to invoke a long-standing antisemitic conspiracy that Jews control wealth and technology.
She also accused Western nations of being complicit in the so-called “genocide” by supplying arms and financing Israel, while claiming that Western media helps defend the Jewish state by “amplifying the pro-apartheid, genocidal narrative.”
Facing mounting backlash and renewed calls for her resignation, Albanese defended herself, insisting that her comments targeted a “system” that allowed a “genocide” to unfold in Gaza.
In an interview with France 24, Albanese rejected the allegations against her as “completely false accusations” and “manipulation.”
“I have never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity,’” she said.
On Thursday, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, acknowledged disagreement with Albanese’s statements, emphasizing that her language does not reflect the tone or approach of the United Nations.
“If member states are not happy with what one or more of the special rapporteurs are saying, it is their responsibility to get involved in the work of the Human Rights Council … and push for the direction they wish to push for,” Dujarric said in a statement.
On the contrary, UN human rights spokesperson Marta Hurtado defended Albanese, stressing concerns over personal attacks and misinformation targeting UN officials.
“We are very worried. We are concerned that UN officials, independent experts and judicial officials, are increasingly subjected to personal attacks, threats and misinformation that distracts from the serious human rights issues,” Hurtado said in a statement.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
Last year, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) faced intense pressure to block Albanese’s reappointment for another three-year term, with several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose the move due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Despite significant pressure and opposition, her mandate was confirmed to extend until 2028.
In her long history of antisemitic remarks, Albanese has referred to a “Jewish lobby” controlling the US and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the United Nations launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
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France Marks 20th Anniversary of Ilan Halimi’s Death as Macron Condemns Rising Antisemitism
France’s President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew who was tortured and murdered in 2006, at The Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, France, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: BERTRAND GUAY/Pool via REUTERS
France on Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi — the young Jewish man who was brutally tortured to death in 2006 — as Jewish leaders and government officials sounded the alarm over a relentless wave of antisemitism that continues to shadow the nation.
Local communities across France planted olive trees in Halimi’s memory as part of a nationwide initiative responding to the recent surge in antisemitic incidents.
“Twenty years after Ilan Halimi’s death, the situation has only worsened,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, said during a commemorative ceremony at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
“Antisemitic prejudice is spreading, even among the youngest generations,” he continued. “Schools, once safe havens, can no longer shield children from this hatred.”
French President Emmanuel Macron also attended the ceremony, condemning what he called an “antisemitic hydra” that has spread into “every corner” of French society over the past two decades.
During the tribute, Macron called for elected officials convicted of “antisemitic, racist, or discriminatory acts and statements” to face mandatory disqualification from public office, insisting that politicians must act as “guardians of the Republic.”
“Far too often, those who commit antisemitic crimes face sentences that are shockingly light,” Macron said. “We must ensure transparency and accountability by closely monitoring every ruling and sanction.”
“The government and Parliament will take decisive action to strengthen laws against antisemitic and racist acts,” he continued, vowing a tougher, more consistent approach to combating hatred.
Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Three weeks later, he was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.
In 2011, an olive tree was planted in Halimi’s memory. In August, the memorial was found felled — probably with a chainsaw — in Epinay-sur-Seine.
Halimi’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne.
On the 20th anniversary of his death, IFOP — France’s leading pollster — released a report showing that antisemitic stereotypes about Jews, their wealth, and perceived communal solidarity remain widespread, revealing how deeply such prejudices persist in French society.
“The case of Ilan Halimi shows the deadly consequences of antisemitic prejudice,” Yossef Murciano, president of the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), which commissioned the study, said in a statement.
“Twenty years later, remembering him means rejecting the idea that a Jew could be attacked or killed simply for being Jewish,” he continued.
Regards sur les préjugés antisémites 20 ans après la mort d’Ilan Halimi : étude @IfopOpinion pour @uejf
20 ans après l’assassinat d’Ilan Halimi, l’Union des Étudiants Juifs de France (@uejf) publie une étude intitulée « Regards sur les préjugés antisémites 20 ans après la mort… pic.twitter.com/eHIP7B84Ti
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) February 13, 2026
According to the newly released report, one in four French people still believe Jews are wealthier than others, while 69 percent perceive them as a closely united community.
The poll also found that 44 percent of the overall population are unaware of Halimi’s case, with 73 percent of 18–24-year-olds having never heard of it.
Even though 25 percent of young adults believe that Jews “make too much of” antisemitism, 76 percent of French citizens say a tragedy like Halimi’s could happen again today.
“The change is undeniable: antisemitism is not fading, but evolving. It shows less as overt biological hatred and more as suspicion, expressed through narratives of power, influence, and money. It is becoming diffuse, normalized, sometimes even politically justified — and now, more than ever, it often takes the shape of anti-Zionism,” Murciano said.
According to the latest statistics, 47 percent of young adults believe the existence of the State of Israel is unjustified.
The report also found that half of respondents view Zionism as a racist ideology, while 35 percent see it as an international organization aiming to influence the world for the benefit of Jews — reflecting long-standing conspiratorial stereotypes.
The data followed the French Interior Ministry’s releasing its annual report on anti-religious acts on Thursday. The report revealed a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate despite heightened security measures, according to the published data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Over the past 25 years, antisemitic acts “have never been as numerous as in the past three years,” the report said, noting a dramatic spike following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled, leaving the Jewish community more exposed than ever.
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Princeton University Anti-Zionist Group Cancels Norman Finkelstein Lecture, School Says He’s ‘Welcome’ to Come Back
Norman Finkelstein participating in pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City in April 2024. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Princeton University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter has canceled this year’s annual lecture by Norman Finkelstein, a stridently anti-Israel activist and political scientist who for years has been one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Jewish state.
“We regret having to inform you on such short notice, but due to unforeseen circumstances involving new university policy, this event has been canceled. There are no confirmed plans at this stage for a rescheduled date,” SJP said in a statement. “Please help share this to all who were planning to attend.”
Finkelstein, who has been criticized for reprising antisemitic conspiracies of Jewish influence and power, has remained a regular on Princeton University’s speaking circuit thanks to SJP. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, SJP chapters across the US have been involved in assaulting Jewish students, stalking Jewish and Israeli faculty, and destroying university property during illegal occupations of school grounds.
Princeton University, which at one time had notoriously imposed disciplinary sanctions on conservatives and Zionists that are generally reserved for alleged sexual predators, has not stopped Finkelstein, who was born to Jewish Holocaust survivors, from coming to campus.
Writing in 2000 that the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime, has become an “industry” for Jews and Israelis to exploit, Finkelstein charged that a “handful of American Jews have effectively hijacked the Nazi Holocaust to blackmail Europe” and “divert attention from what is being done to the Palestinians,” whom he describes as unwilling subjects of an “apartheid” country. Meanwhile, he derided advocates of Holocaust commemoration as a “repellant gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters.”
Finkelstein, according to The Princeton Tory, is also on record calling a Princeton student who served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) a “concentration camp guard” during a campus event, an allusion to false accusations that Israel is committing a genocide against a Palestinian people whose population, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics has “doubled about ten times since” Israel’s founding in 1948.
In other Princeton events, Finkelstein has said it is acceptable to “shoot them dead,” referring to Israelis,” and said that Israeli Jews are “drinking the blood of those children.”
Writing to The Algemeiner on Friday, Princeton University noted that the institution did not disinvite Finkelstein and that SJP is “welcome” to have him back.
“Princeton University did not disinvite Norman Finkelstein,” a university spokesperson said. “The event could not take place as scheduled because the student organizers did not register it with the required advance notice. We require advance notice for logistical planning, a requirement that is unrelated to the content of this or any event.”
Princeton University has long been a hub of antisemitism on campus, often propagated by anti-Zionist activists who present their call for the destruction of Israel as being consistent with progressive values.
In 2023, week before Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel, Princeton appeared to defend a professor’s assigning his students a book which accuses the Israel Defense Forces of “maiming” Palestinians and harvesting their organs. The book, Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar’s The Right to Maim, is widely denounced as “pseudo-scholarship” for trafficking in antisemitic blood libels rooted in medieval conspiracies charging that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood during the holiday of Passover.
Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber addressed the issue at a faculty meeting at the time, defending the work’s inclusion in Princeton’s curriculum as a routine of academic freedom.
“It has unfortunately become common for university faculty members here and elsewhere to become the target of viral social media storms focused on controversial materials that they assign or teach,” Eisgruber said during a faculty meeting. “That has sometimes extended to demands that the university should ban or condemn a book, cancel a course, or discipline a professor.”
He continued, “We, of course, will not do that. Academic freedom protects your right to decide what to teach and how to teach it. That right, like the right to free speech on campus, is very broad indeed, and we will protect it.”
One year later, students marked the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre by vandalizing the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), splattering red paint on the entrance door and graffitiing the perimeter of the building with the slogan “$4genocide.”
Since March 2025, Princeton remains under federal investigation for allegedly ignoring campus antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.