Uncategorized
In making a Christian case for Shabbat, Charlie Kirk stripped off its Judaism
Charlie Kirk isn’t wrong about Shabbat — he just has some funny ideas about what it should be.
In the conservative influencer’s new book, Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life, released following his assassination in September 2025 and instantly sold out on Amazon, the outspokenly devout Christian describes the day of rest adoringly. It’s a “gift,” a taste of redemption, a break from the incessant noise of the newscycle and workday. It’s a time to connect with family and the single most important sign of God’s covenant with humanity.
These are all ideas straight out of Jewish thought. And, indeed, Kirk quotes from The Sabbath, by Jewish luminary Abraham Joshua Heschel, in nearly every chapter, often multiple times, while sprinkling in and other thinkers like Jonathan Sacks and Viktor Frankl.
But for many Christians — Kirk was a devout evangelical, and he was clearly writing for a similar audience — whether to observe a strict Sabbath is the subject of a lively debate. Foundational to Christianity is the idea that the coming of Jesus as messiah rendered God’s ceremonial laws — rules around food, behavior and temple sacrifice — obsolete and created a new order in which the Sabbath resides “in the heart,” rather than existing as a literal day of rest where you turn your phone off and cease work of any kind.
“Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day – things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ,” said Paul in Colossians. This idea has been understood by most Christians to mean that Jesus erased the need for Shabbat; instead, every day should be like Shabbat. (“Christ has set us free for something better: namely, the pursuit of holiness and fellowship with the living God as a daily lifestyle,” writes Focus on the Family in an article on the topic.)
Kirk, however, disagreed; he began observing Shabbat four years before his death — specifically as a Saturday Shabbat, not the Sunday rest more common in Christianity. Stop in the Name of God is both an explanation of why he did so and an argument for why everyone else should do the same.
And yet the book is less a simple paean to a core Jewish ritual and more a tortured argument for how Christians can reconcile a deep suspicion of Judaism while reaping the benefits of marking Shabbat — mixed in alongside the political grievances that Kirk is best known for: opposition to the pandemic lockdown and vaccines, exhortations to traditional gender roles and, most importantly, advocacy for a Christian nationalist vision of the U.S.
Just how Jewish is Shabbat?
Kirk clearly did his research. As he makes his case for Shabbat, he leans heavily into commentaries from Heschel, Frankl and Sacks along with Christian theologians including Martin Luther and John Wesley.
While Kirk makes a case for taking a day off each week on its practical merits (better sleep, better focus, lower blood pressure), most of his argument is rooted in religion; in addition to commentaries from Jewish thinkers like Heschel, Frankl and Sacks he cites Christian theologians including Martin Luther and John Wesley, along with the Bible itself, to argue that a day of rest is a Christian requirement. He digs into the deeper theological implications of Shabbat framing it as a mirror of God’s own rest in Genesis. Noting that, biblically, Shabbat applies not only to the Israelites, but also to their animals and their workers — an element of Jewish law many readers are likely unaware of — he reads the day as a symbol of freedom. He even proposes that the fact that Shabbat applies equally to all makes it the foundation of all morality, a surprising point from someone who was outspoken about his negative views of a wide array of minority groups.
This vision of Shabbat is deeply Jewish, as are many of the interpretations Kirk borrows, and he clearly has an appreciation for the Jewish rituals. The Shabbat meal “is not dinner. It is liturgy,” he writes. “Eating becomes an act of worship.” Though he says he knows readers might view prohibitions against electricity or cooking on Shabbat as “burdens,” he argues instead that they are “scaffolding for sacred life” that “create space for joy to flourish undisturbed.”
Kirk comes across as almost envious of Orthodox Judaism.
But he can’t stay in this mode of admiration, because he isn’t speaking to Jews; his main audience is conservative Christians. And for them, Kirk has to address a specific controversy rife with antisemitic undertones: Christians believe that Jesus, as the messiah, fulfilled all of God’s ceremonial laws and rendered them irrelevant, forming a new covenant that requires only having faith in Jesus and living a broadly moral life. That means anyone — especially Jews — who still follows them is engaging in “legalism,” a term that carries a pejorative tone in Christianity.
“Observance of a weekly day of worship, whether it be Sunday, Saturday, or any other day, should never be allowed to become a matter of religious legalism,” is how Focus on the Family put it; the emphasis is theirs.
The gist of this argument is that anyone adhering to the biblical laws fulfilled by Jesus is following a false religion, nit-picking specifics instead of leaning into devotion. Kirk’s attempt to reconcile this contradiction — respecting Shabbat without falling into dreaded “legalism” — characterizes the book.
Kirk writes in his opening chapter that the Christian God is his “ultimate authority” but he recognizes “not everyone who reads this book shares this belief and I deeply respect that.” In the very next paragraph, however, he writes that “the Bible has built the West and it is the Bible that will ultimately guide and restore it.”
This tendency to proclaim respect only to immediately undermine himself is repeated throughout the book, particularly when he discusses Judaism. Despite his clear love of the Jewish Shabbat, he cannot help but reject it because it’s not Christian. And this is key to his argument: At its roots, Kirk’s praise of Shabbat is more concerned with convincing his readers to embrace Christianity than it is with learning from Judaism. It is only Christianity, he writes, “that can heal the divisions of our age and restore meaning to a world desperately in need of it.”
Kirk can only endorse Shabbat — for himself and for his audience — if he can prove it’s Christian, and he devotes two entire chapters to making this case, taking pains to prove that his understanding of Shabbat is free of the sin of “Judaizing.” Jesus, he writes, is “the Lord of the Sabbath” who “invites us not to legalism or laziness — but to life.” He promises that, though “the Pharisees had turned it into a crushing yoke,” Jesus’ Sabbath is not “legalism — it is liberation.”
In doing so, he reinforces the idea that Judaism is, in some way, evil, immoral and a false religion. For all his admiration toward Jewish practices, he agrees with his more skeptical co-religionists that Judaism must be exorcised from Shabbat if Christians are to observe the practice.
This discomfort with Judaism is perhaps best summarized in one, strange choice.
Though the book quotes generously from Heschel’s The Sabbath, Kirk’s prime example of the benefits of Shabbat observance comes not from Orthodox Jews, but from Seventh-Day Adventists — a small Christian movement that strictly abstain from work on the Saturday Sabbath. He waxes poetic about their “unique behavior patterns” that include “device-free” prayer and meals in the home. “Their weekly withdrawal from the world’s pace is not escapism — it is resistance,” he writes. “It is prophetic.”
Of course, they’re not the only group to do observe a Sabbath in this way — but Kirk seems more comfortable making his case for Shabbat’s benefits using a Christian group than he does praising Jews.
The point of a Christian Shabbat
It’s no great shock that Kirk spends much of the book arguing for the primacy of Christianity.
For all his proclamations that Shabbat is for everyone — and that his argument is neither religious nor political — Kirk was famous for participating in contentious debates on exactly those topics, and can’t help but turn to them even in a book about the day of rest. He spends time not just on Judaism, but on a multitude of what he considers to be liberal enemies of Christianity.
In the introduction, Kirk includes a rant about Joe Biden, a tirade against the pandemic lockdowns and a series of boastful descriptions of his own success. He notes that he is a busy man running three different companies with 300 people on payroll, emphasizes his essential ability to fundraise millions of dollars and touts his close relationship with President Trump. The chapters go on to offer a questionably scientific defense of creationism, a rant against materialism (and selfies), and several critiques of what Kirk believes are “false religions.” This last point, which crops up in multiple chapters, serves as an opportunity to bash Greta Thunberg, who Kirk accuses of leading an idolatrous cult of nature worship; Anthony Fauci, who is the figurehead of what Kirk calls “scientism”; and a meandering rant against Herbert Marcuse, one of the figures of the Frankfurt School, a fairly esoteric school of philosophy that Kirk blames for “woke” ideology.
None of these things have any obvious connection to Shabbat, and Kirk doesn’t attempt to make much of one. Still, their inclusion in a book ostensibly tied to a Jewish practice is revealing. An increasing number of Christians are adopting Jewish practices — not only Shabbat, but Passover Seders, wearing tallits and blowing shofars.
Yet however philosemitic these practices may appear, Stop in the Name of God demonstrates how comfortably they coexist with an antisemitic worldview that places Christianity above all else. Kirk’s argument for Shabbat is less about an appreciation for Jewish practice than a final entry in his life’s work advocating for a United States ruled by biblical values. The book is less about Shabbat than it is about Christianity. Ultimately, Kirk argues that all other religions are evil, morality cannot exist without God and that Western civilization will fall if it does not obey the Bible.
That’s not to say there isn’t real appreciation for Jewish practice woven into the book. But Kirk bends the meaning of Shabbat to his real mission: Christian nationalism.
The post In making a Christian case for Shabbat, Charlie Kirk stripped off its Judaism appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Canadian Senate Report on Antisemitism Calls for Hate Crime Units Nationwide, Guarding Synagogues From Protesters
People attend Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, in December 2023. Photo: Shawn Goldberg via Reuters Connect
Canada’s Senate on Tuesday released a report which offered a comprehensive roadmap for countering rising Jew-hatred across the country, urging multiple reforms including an expansion of law enforcement resources to investigate hate crimes, a boost in Holocaust education, and implementation of a digital literacy program for youth.
Jews remain the top targets of religiously motivated hate crimes, with Deborah Lyons, the former special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, reporting that the Jewish community comprises one percent of the Canadian population but experiences 70 percent of all such hate crimes.
Jews are also the top targets for hate crimes overall in Canada.
Public Safety Canada documented 1,345 hate crimes targeting religious groups in 2023, a 75 percent leap from 2022, with 71 percent targeting Jews.
“Standing United Against Antisemitism: Protecting Communities and Strengthening Canadian Democracy,” the report from the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights (RIDR), cites an alarming update from the Jewish Parents of Ottawa Students Association.
“Jewish students opt to conceal their identity rather than confront the distressing realities of derogatory name-calling, character assassinations, isolation, and peer rejection,” the group says. “In more extreme circumstances, children as young as seven years old have encountered harassment, intimidation, physical assault, threats of both physical and sexual violence, and even death threats.”
Justin Hebert, a former student and a former president of the Jewish Law Students Association at the University of Windsor, discussed encountering peers who advocated for atrocities. As documented by the Senate report, he asked, “How can I be expected to have a meaningful conversation with the student who told me the murder of Israelis is always justified while Israeli students are actively enrolled at the school, or that rape is a legitimate form of resistance, or that babies can be taken hostage if their parents are colonizers?”
The report also describes antisemitic incidents in medical settings and even at rape crisis centers.
According to a written brief submitted by Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism, in one example “staff physicians at a major children’s hospital [were] being told to remove pins expressing solidarity with civilians held by Hamas in Gaza, but that pins expressing opposition to Israel were not restricted in the same way. The organization also cited examples of medical residents refusing to work with their Jewish colleagues, and of movements to boycott Israeli-produced pharmaceuticals, ‘compromis[ing] patient care and professional ethics.’”
Revi Mula, vice-president of Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, said that “rape crisis centers, shelters, and women’s organizations have” excluded Jewish women, linking their identity with Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Jewish women also face gendered antisemitism. They are subjected to slurs,” Mula said.
The report offers 22 recommendations to counter this revival of the world’s oldest hatred. Foremost among them is the reinstating of a “Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.” Other key steps the report emphasizes include establishing a Digital Safety Commission and ensuring that the Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion includes a focus on antisemitism in its mandate.
The commission also explores expanding efforts to counter hate crimes through growing law enforcement resources.
The 15th recommendation calls for the Canadian government and Royal Canadian Mounted Police to “work with provincial and territorial governments to establish and effectively resource specialized hate crime units in all major cities and regions across Canada, with a focus on education, community outreach, investigation, disaggregated data collection, information sharing, prosecution, and deradicalization efforts.”
Nearly a third of the recommendations reference education. The 10th urges the Canadian government to “develop and support digital literacy and social media education initiatives, including model materials and funding for programs, that help young Canadians recognize misinformation, disinformation, radicalization, extremist narratives, and online hate.”
Independent Senator Paulette Senior chaired the committee which drafted the 73 pages of analysis and recommendations.
“Canadians must stand united against antisemitism,” she said in a statement. “It is only by coming together to celebrate our shared values that we can thrive as a country. Antisemitism is a clear and present danger to our free and democratic society.”
Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, praised the report, noting the inclusion of the organization’s ideas.
“B’nai Brith Canada applauds RIDR for elevating our recommendations to confront hate in this country,” he said. “We will continue to work with the Senate to ensure that these recommendations result in changes on the ground that benefit everyone in our society.”
According to the group’s latest audit of antisemitism in Canada released last year, antisemitic incidents in 2024 rose 7.4 percent from 2023, with 6,219 adding up to the highest total recorded since it began tracking such data in 1982. Seventeen incidents occurred on average every day, while online antisemitism exploded a harrowing 161 percent since 2022. As standalone provinces, Quebec and Alberta saw the largest percentage increases, by 215 percent and 160 percent, respectively.
B’nai Brith Canada cited four of its recommendations appearing in the Senate report: the call for an interdepartmental task force to address antisemitism in Canada, the digital literacy program for youth, the antisemitism focus on the Advisory Council, and an increase in antisemitism education for students.
“The Senate has listened to the community and produced pertinent and tangible recommendations to confront antisemitism in this country,” Simon Wolle, the Jewish advocacy group’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Now, it falls on the government to translate these recommendations into action.”
Noah Shack, CEO of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), also urged swift implementation.
“The Senate’s report on antisemitism comes at a moment of crisis. As Jewish institutions face violent attacks and Jewish Canadians experience unparalleled levels of hate crimes, antisemitism is no longer confined to the margins — it has spread across our society and institutions,” Shack said. “In fact, the committee’s report and the hearings platform extremist voices calling for the destruction of those who support Israel.”
Shack emphasized that CIJA especially appreciated “the rooting of recommendations in agencies dedicated to law enforcement and intelligence, as this is crucial to combat antisemitism and the growth of radicalism both at our borders and inside our country.”
The 17th recommendation calls for the establishment of “narrowly tailored ‘safe access’ or ‘bubble zone’ measures where appropriate to protect access to certain religious institutions, places of worship, and community spaces.” This instruction came following years of objections by Jews attending synagogues when anti-Israel demonstrators would specifically disrupt and intimidate services.
Conservative Senator Mary Jane McCallum noted this problem, saying that “everyone in Canada deserves to feel safe. The increase in antisemitic rhetoric and attacks at places of worship and education is beyond troubling — it is a cry for action.”
The commissioners also considered the threat of antisemitism spreading on social media.
“Social media has been a conduit for antisemitic ideas, exposing young people, who may lack an understanding of history, to an unregulated and unverified source of information,” said Independent Senator Mary Robinson. “Education, by ensuring students know how to critically evaluate online content, is a powerful inoculant against the cheap pull of hatred.”
At a press conference on Tuesday morning announcing the report, Independent Saskatchewan Senator David Arnot insisted on “no dithering,” adding, “We have to have action. The time is now.”
“The plain truth is that Jewish Canadians are under attack in this country,” added Conservative Senator Leo Housakos. “They are under attack where they live, where they worship, and in their schools. And it seems that every day seems to bring in new events that might have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.”
Emphasizing the role law enforcement plays in the fight, Housakos said the report also recommends “training for police and judges to improve their ability to identify and respond to hate crimes and to better react when mobs of protesters feel entitled to march through Jewish neighborhoods chanting hateful slogans, and when synagogues and schools get shot at.”
Housakos added, “To be a Jew in Canada should not mean that you become a target. It’s time to acknowledge this and to swiftly respond, so that Jews in Canada no longer have to live in fear.”
Uncategorized
An Orthodox Jewish hooper famous for viral dunks aims to break Division-I boundaries
A yarmulke-wearing basketball prospect who gained online fans with highlight-reel dunks announced his next major leap Wednesday: He’ll try to be the first Orthodox player to play four years of Division-I college basketball.
Chaim Galbut, a 6-foot-7 wing who played high school basketball for Miami Country Day School, a nondenominational Jewish K-12 school, before graduating in 2025, announced in an Instagram post that he will attend Duquesne University in the fall.
A post from the basketball outlet DraftExpress reported that Duquesne, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, had discovered Galbut on social media.
Galbut said last year that his refusal to compete on Shabbat had meant turning down offers from other colleges.
“I’m like, I don’t play on Shabbos, they’re like, ‘Well, we don’t want you,’” Galbut told the Yeshiva League Pass Tip Off podcast in September. “It’s happened so many times, I can’t tell you. I’m like, ‘All right, that’s cool. Like, don’t worry, you’ll see me soon.’”
Galbut did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
Largely unknown outside of the Orthodox world during high school, Galbut’s moment in the spotlight did not come until after he graduated, when video of him throwing down dunks on the summer travel circuit, posted by a popular basketball channel, received more than 100,000 likes on TikTok.
He spent the next school year studying at a yeshiva in Israel.
Duquesne finished last season with 18 wins and 15 losses. The university last appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2024, when they lost in the round of 32.
At least one other Orthodox hooper has played in Division I: Tamir Goodman, who started his career at Towson University in 2000 but left the program after two years.
And other Orthodox players have played for Christian schools in Division III — Ze’ev Remer played four years at California Lutheran University, graduating this year.
The post An Orthodox Jewish hooper famous for viral dunks aims to break Division-I boundaries appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Former Columbia professor tells NYU students to learn from Hamas at off-campus event
A group called Shut it Down NYU hosted an off-campus event near New York University on Tuesday that featured a lecture by Mohamed Abdou, a former Columbia University professor at the Middle East Studies Institute. During his two-hour-long lecture, Abdou told students they had much to learn from Hamas and other armed groups, including lessons from the planning of the Oct. 7 attacks and even martyrdom.
Abdou, whose employment at Columbia drew criticism during 2024 congressional hearings about campus antisemitism, leading to a contentious split between him and the university, has taught at numerous other universities, including Cornell University and the University of Toronto. He appeared via Zoom at the Tuesday event as the sole speaker. Roughly 10 people attended the gathering in person at a park near campus, with about 30 more joining online. A meal was provided for in-person attendees.
The event was part of a campus tour series titled “Death to the Akademy.” In March, Abdou lectured a student group at the Union Theological Seminary, a Columbia affiliate, where he encouraged students to engage in jihad.
Shut it Down NYU describes itself as being made up of NYU “students, faculty, staff, and organizers who are a community in but not of NYU.” The group is not formally affiliated with the university.
During his lecture, Abdou offered advice on campus organizing and said the Mujahideen, Muslim guerrilla fighters who engage in jihad, had referred to pro-Palestinian student groups as a “branch of the resistance.” Abdou described the Mujahideen as “the greatest people on the face of the earth,” telling participants that this designation is “a great honor,” but added that students could be doing more to live up to that role.
At several points, Abdou appeared to urge students toward violence. He criticized the 2024 student-run encampments for marginalizing radical voices who sought to use violence. “We need to understand that violence is a tactic and not a strategy,” he said. “The question of violence, there wasn’t even consensus about that! Students within the encampment fetishizing non‑violence,” he said, adding, “We don’t understand that there are revolutionary forms of violence, that there’s a need for sacrifice.”
The event included a question-and-answer session in which one attendee asked in the Zoom chat about balancing “the longevity of our movement with the violent urgency that our conditions require.”
Abdou said that if student activists see themselves as part of the axis of resistance, they should see themselves as coming from a group of people who believe in martyrdom. “If we are to meet Muhammad, then our blood serves as a testimony,” he said. “We do not fear death.”
An NYU official said that the university contacted Shut it Down NYU organizers to make clear that they did not have permission to hold the event on NYU grounds or to use university resources, Wiley Norvell, NYU’s senior vice president for university relations and public affairs, told the Forward.
“This event was not sanctioned by NYU, nor did we allow it to take place on campus,” Norvell said. “It was not affiliated with any university group and was attended by fewer than 10 people in a city park. NYU strongly condemns the brazen use of threatening language used in promoting the event and the encouragement of violence expressed by speakers. We are investigating several potential University policy violations associated with it.”
The flyer for the event was widely circulated on social media, featuring drawings of what appear to be armed Hamas militants. At the bottom of the flyer, a message reads, “want us to come to your campus? DM for details.”
During the Q&A, a participant who identified herself as a student asked Abdou about the lessons student organizers can take from foreign resistance movements.
Abdou responded that students can learn from the Oct. 7 attacks, stating, “There’s much that one can learn, again from the cunningness of our Mujahideen, particularly Sinwar.” He additionally described at length the way Hamas methodically “studied the Zionist entity and how to break through the barrier siege.”
In remarks about the United States, Abdou said, “If you think somehow you’re going to free Palestine and keep America, forget it…You need to actively work to destroy.”
“Be proud of your hate for America,” he said. “You love Islam, and you should be loving Islam more than this barbarous colony. It’s a plague upon the earth. And yeah, in that sense, you need to be a threat. We all need to be a threat.”
Shut it Down NYU did not immediately respond to comment.
The post Former Columbia professor tells NYU students to learn from Hamas at off-campus event appeared first on The Forward.