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Iran’s Rulers Seek to Die for God as Jews Aspire to Live for Him
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Iran’s increasingly reckless attacks across the Middle East have reached a new level. This week, debris from an Iranian missile struck the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City, just yards from the Al-Aqsa Mosque — Islam’s third holiest site.
The assumption was that this proximity would protect Christianity’s holiest site. Instead, the incident highlights a disturbing shift: Iran’s hostility toward Israel now seems to include a disregard for the holy sites of other faiths, and even Islamic holy sites.
The same disregard is evident elsewhere. In the Arab town of Beit Awwa near Hebron, a makeshift beauty parlor — a converted caravan — was filled with women preparing to celebrate the end of Ramadan. It was reduced to rubble by an Iranian missile, and three women were killed. So much for solidarity with the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, missiles continue to streak across the Gulf, slamming into energy infrastructure in Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Gas fields are burning, refineries are ablaze, and the Strait of Hormuz is effectively impassable.
Oil prices are surging, sending shockwaves through the global economy. And behind it all, the Iranian regime — now increasingly opaque, guided by shadowy figures claiming to act in the name of both nation and God — promises “zero restraint.”
This, despite the fact that Iran itself is already teetering on the brink. Its economy is shattered, its infrastructure is battered, and its leadership has been irreparably weakened by targeted assassinations and sustained military pressure from the United States and Israel.
And yet, they fight on. At a certain point, this all stops looking like strategy and looks like something else entirely. Wars are usually fought for territory, security, economic gains, or – pointedly – for survival.
Even brutal wars tend to follow a basic logic: Preserve what you have, weaken your enemy, and live to fight another day. Even when nations act ruthlessly, they are still, at some level, trying to ensure that there is a tomorrow. But what we are witnessing now feels different.
When a government targets global energy infrastructure, knowing it could cripple entire economies — including its own — when it risks sacred sites and civilian lives while claiming religious legitimacy, you have to ask: What is the endgame? What if survival is no longer the primary goal? What if the objective is something else entirely — something closer to sacrifice than strategy?
Not all Iranians share this trajectory. Voices like Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi — along with many Iranians inside and outside the country — have long argued for a future defined by stability and openness, the very opposite of the path the current regime seems determined to pursue.
There is a dangerous idea that surfaces from time to time in human history — often cloaked in religious language — that elevates destruction, even self-destruction, into an act of devotion. Not everywhere, and not in every interpretation.
But in certain ideological strands, including within the worldview of Iran’s ruling elite, conflict and chaos are more than political tools. They are seen as redemptive — even apocalyptic. And once you start thinking that way, the line between serving God and sacrificing everything — your people, your future — begins to blur.
We’ve seen this before. Such movements stop trying to build anything lasting; instead, they become intoxicated by their own vision: an idealized world that must either be realized in full or swept away entirely. The present moment becomes everything. The aftermath is an afterthought.
All this makes the third book of the Torah, Sefer Vayikra, all the more striking. On the surface, Vayikra reads like a manual of ritual sacrifice. Animals and birds are brought to the altar, slaughtered, their blood sprinkled, their lives offered back to God.
It is easy — almost instinctive — to see it as a theology of death. But that is a profound misunderstanding. The sacrificial system was never meant to glorify death. Quite the opposite. As Maimonides explains, its purpose was to transform the living.
A sacrifice is not about annihilation — it is about encounter. The Torah’s word for it is korban, from the root meaning to “draw close.” It is about proximity — kirvah — about narrowing the distance between human beings and God.
The ritual sacrifice experience was meant to be unsettling — to shake a person out of complacency and force a confrontation with the fragility of life and the weight of existence. After that, a person would walk away changed. The animal remains behind, but the human being surges ahead.
Yes, there are moments in Jewish history when one is called to give up life for Kiddush Hashem. Those moments are real and sacred. But Judaism never built its identity around dying for God — or destroying in His name. Instead, the Jewish people built a civilization around living for Him.
Dying for God is a single, dramatic act. Living for God is relentless. It means waking up every day and choosing discipline over impulse, responsibility over instinct, and purpose over comfort. It means biting your tongue instead of lashing out, acting with integrity when no one is watching, and showing up — again and again — long after inspiration fades.
It means sustaining a relationship not through intensity but through the quiet consistency of daily life. And that, as anyone who has tried it knows, is far harder. Grand gestures are easy. Consistency is exhausting.
That is why Vayikra is not just a book about sacrifices. It is the Torah’s handbook for sustained holiness. As it tells us, clearly (Lev. 19:2): “You shall be holy.” Not just once, for show, or to make a point. Not only in a moment of crisis. And certainly not in a surge of religious passion.
Holiness, in the Torah’s vision, is continuous. Like the Shema, recited quietly every morning and every night, it is about keeping the connection alive. Like acts of charity, given not as a one-off gesture but whenever they are needed.
Relationships — real ones — are not built on intensity or bursts of devotion that fade quickly. They are built on constancy. Anyone can make a grand gesture. Maintaining a relationship — with another person or with God — demands something far more difficult: presence, patience, and persistence.
That is what makes the current moment so unsettling. When a regime that claims to represent God’s will begins to romanticize destruction — even self-destruction — and escalation becomes an end in itself, chaos is embraced rather than avoided. It reveals a worldview in which dying for God has eclipsed living for Him.
Judaism rejects that idea at its core. God does not ask us to destroy the world in His name. He asks us to build it, and to build within it. In particular, He asks us to build in a way that will endure beyond us. To create families and nurture them. To form communities and care for them. To pursue justice, even for those with whom we disagree. Above all, He asks us to take a flawed, imperfect world and elevate it — not to burn it down, but to engage with it.
The altar in Vayikra was never meant to be a destination. It is a starting point. It is a place where a person confronts what could be lost — and then recommits to what must be lived. It reminds us that what God truly wants is not the life that ends in sacrifice, but the life that continues — day after day — in relationship, in responsibility, and in quiet, stubborn faithfulness.
The real test of faith is not whether you are willing to die for God. It is whether you are willing to live for Him.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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Jewish Student Leader Targeted in Two Antisemitic Incidents in Berlin
Graffiti reading “Kill all Jews” was discovered on a residential building in Berlin-Pankow on April 26, 2026, part of a wave of antisemitic vandalism reported across the German capital over the past week, including swastikas and other hate-filled slogans scrawled on multiple sites. Photo: Screenshot
Amid a relentless wave of hostility toward Jews across Germany, the president of the Union of Jewish Students revealed he was targeted in two antisemitic incidents in Berlin within a single week, intensifying alarm within an increasingly embattled community.
In an interview with the German Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, Ron Dekel described a string of confrontations that began last Thursday after he left a discussion on antisemitism at the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, marking the start of a troubling sequence of incidents.
While walking near Berlin’s government district, he and another union member were allegedly followed by a car blasting loud music. Inside the vehicle, the driver and two female passengers reportedly shouted “Free Palestine” and “To hell with Israel,” while also making obscene gestures.
After Dekel shared a video he recorded of the incident online, it quickly drew hundreds of thousands of views before being taken down, with him also facing a barrage of insults and threats demanding its removal.
At the time, Dekel said one of his friends filed a police complaint in connection with the incident, but authorities have yet to identify any suspects.
A few days later, Dekel recounted encountering the same group of people again outside a synagogue following an event at a Jewish community center, where they approached him and demanded he delete the video.
According to his testimony, the group remained in a car outside the synagogue, while one of the women sat at a nearby café appearing to monitor those entering and leaving the building.
Dekel said the woman even attempted to enter the synagogue, trying to persuade security guards to let her inside before a rabbi intervened and asked her to leave.
“I still do not know how she knew where I was,” Dekel told Jüdische Allgemeine. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
Even after reporting the second incident to police, Dekel said he no longer feels safe, describing what he sees as a broader pattern of harassment since he began openly wearing a kippah earlier this year.
Despite the intimidation, Dekel said he would continue visibly wearing Jewish symbols, underscoring the growing sense of unease surrounding Jewish life in Germany.
“It has religious meaning for me,” he said. “But it also hurts my sense of justice that Jews in Germany in 2026 are being advised not to appear visibly Jewish. I do not want to hide, and more young Jews today feel the same way.”
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to recently released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in Berlin reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
In one of the latest antisemitic incidents in the country, a synagogue in Cottbus, a city in eastern Germany, was defaced on Monday with a swastika painted on its facade, marking the second time in just four days that the Jewish house of worship had been vandalized.
Separately, authorities also discovered antisemitic graffiti on Sunday across several apartment buildings in Berlin-Pankow, including messages reading “Kill all Jews,” a swastika, and the statement “Only a dead Jew is a good Jew,” in a series of disturbing incidents over the week.
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Duke University Lifts Suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine Despite Acknowledging Group’s Antisemitic Post
April 22, 2026: The entrance to Duke University campus, located in Durham, North Carolina. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect.
Duke University’s Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) has reversed an earlier decision to suspend Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for sharing an antisemitic political cartoon on Instagram, arguing that the action fell short of violating the school’s code of conduct despite acknowledging that it “alludes to antisemitic tropes.”
The puzzling move was first reported on Monday by The Duke Chronicle, the official campus newspaper. In correspondence between the office and SJP shared by the outlet, OIE official Sharon Gooding told the group that “the post, while offensive, in that it alludes to antisemitic tropes, does not violate the Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment, and Related Misconduct because there was insufficient evidence to support the existence of a hostile educational environment.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the illustration depicts a pig labeled “Zionism” hoisting a Star of David as its arm interlocks with another pig, labeled “US Imperialism,” hoisting the Torch of Liberty. It is the work of political cartoonist Emory Douglas, a Black Panther party official who harbored hostility toward the US and Israel.
Word of the social media post spread across the Duke Jewish community, the Chronicle said, prompting no fewer than 10 Jewish students to file formal complaints with the university on the grounds that its evocation of anti-Jewish hatred is obvious. Historically, depicting Jews as pigs has been done to reduce them to the status of animals and mock the fact that dietary restrictions forbid Jews to eat pork. The Nazis notoriously did so, but the practice reaches back further back into time, when medieval Germans proliferated the Judensau drawings which portrayed Jews drinking pig’s milk and excrement.
However, despite the context of the image, as well as SJP’s history of harassing and intimidating Jews on campuses across the US, Duke University has told the group it is closing its investigation into the matter and returning the organization to “full status.” The decision unfreezes thousands of dollars in funding and allows SJP to operate unfettered for the remainder of the academic year.
Speaking to the Chronicle, SJP argued that the group is a victim of censorship and expressed doubt that the university even has the authority to sanction it for breaking the rules.
“It took over a month of written correspondence, legal counsel, and public advocacy for our organization to access the basic procedural rights Duke’s own policies guarantee to every student organization,” the group said. “The fact that we had to fight at all is the problem.”
Meanwhile, Jewish advocacy groups and students told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that Duke University has missed an opportunity to send a clear anti-hate message.
“Since ancient times, Jews have been compared in derogatory terms to barnyard and wild animals,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said in a statement. “Such disturbing discourse has long been markers for antisemitism and there should be no tolerance for it at Duke. It is essential that university administrators, faculty, and students on campus understand the types of tropes that characterize antisemitic discourse.”
Said Shira Shasha, a third year Duke University student and co-president of the school’s Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter, “They [SJP] used imagery rooted in Nazi-dehumanization. Regardless of the purpose behind it, it causes real harm and unequivocal hostility to Jewish students on this campus. And that harm does not disappear because an intent was disclaimed.”
Carly Gammill of StandWithUs Saidoff Law, a legal nonprofit based in California, told The Algemeiner, “Universities must be clear-eyed about contemporary attacks against Jewish peoplehood, which merely repackage historic forms of antisemitism, and how this misinformation fuels anti-Jewish bigotry.”
While Duke University has not seen the most extreme examples of campus antisemitism that became a near daily occurrence in higher education after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, it has been accused of selectively practicing its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion before. In May 2021, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict of that year, the Duke Student Government (DSG) refused to grant recognition to Students Supporting Israel, a status which qualifies student clubs for funding and reserving space in which to hold events.
DSG had originally voted to confer recognition to SSI, however, but then-DSG president Christina Wang vetoed the decision after an SSI member responded publicly to criticism that its presence on campus represented “settler-colonialism.” No hateful statements were uttered by SSI, but Wang cited the exchange as cause for preventing the establishment of a pro-Israel club on campus. Throughout the conflict, the university refused to intervene even as Jewish advocacy groups maintained that Wang had confected a false pretext to justify discriminating against a Jewish group.
Five years later, Duke Jewish students are seeing that same double standard again, SSI National president Ilan Sinelnikov told The Algemeiner.
“It just shows the reality we’re in,” he explained. “They’re just going to get a little tap on wrist.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iran Has Executed At Least 21 People, Arrested Over 4,000 Since Start of War With US and Israel, UN Reports
A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier
The Islamic regime in Iran has intensified efforts to oppress the civilian population through arrests and executions since the beginning of the conflict with the US and Israel, according to the United Nations.
On Wednesday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) revealed that Iran had executed at least 21 people and arrested more than 4,000 over the last two months, following the launch of joint US-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28.
Allegations which resulted in death sentences included espionage (two), opposition group membership (10), and involvement with protests (nine).
“In times of war, threats to human rights increase exponentially,” said Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Türk called for regime officials to “halt all further executions, establish a moratorium on the use of capital punishment, fully ensure due process and fair trial guarantees, and immediately release those arbitrarily detained.”
Iranian courts have reportedly fast-tracked convictions and sentencing in recent months, citing the war as justification.
According to the OHCHR, those detained face brutal conditions, overcrowding, and even torture to coerce confessions. The bodies of some detainees who have died in custody appear to show possible torture. Those detained also experience weaponized medical neglect, a human rights violation which has reportedly led to the deteriorating health of imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi.
In addition to forced confessions, Iranian judges can also resort to the principle of elm‑e‑qazi, a concept in Iran’s Islamic Penal Code which allows a guilty sentence based solely on circumstantial evidence.
Last week, Maryam Rajavi, president‑elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), spoke about the regime’s executions at the European Parliament in Brussels.
“The mullahs are exploiting wartime conditions to resort to relentless executions to block the path of popular uprisings. Today, political prisoners face the threat of mass killing,” Rajavi said. “The silence of European Union leaders and member states is unjustifiable. And today, I wish to once again raise my voice in protest against this silence in the face of these executions.”
Rajavi added that “a number of young people have been arrested in recent weeks on charges of alleged contact with or support for the Mojahedin Organization,” referring to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), an Iranian opposition group.
“The names of a group of them have been submitted to and communicated to international bodies,” she said. “By order of the regime’s judiciary chief, pressure and torture on political prisoners have intensified, and their sham trials and the issuance of criminal sentences have been expedited.”
Stating that 11 political prisoners alleged to be members of the MEK face execution, Rajavi implored that “urgent action must be taken to save their lives. Our position is that a halt to executions in Iran, as a demand of the entire Iranian people, must be included in any international agreement.”
Last month, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent group monitoring, released a report documenting that from March 2025 to March 2026, police had arrested 78,907 people on ideological or political grounds.
Executions in the last Iranian year (covering much of calendar year 2025) reached at least 2,488, according to HRANA, with 63 of them women and two children. Drug offenses accounted for 955 executions, approximately three killings per day on average.
The Islamic regime chose to conduct 13 of the executions in public.
Earlier this month, the European groups Iran Human Rights (IHR) in Norway and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) in France released a separate joint report finding that Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, a 68 percent leap from the 975 killed in 2024 and the highest seen since tracking began in 2008. All known executions were reportedly conducted by hanging.
Differences in methodology partially explain the discrepancy in tallies. IHR warned in its report that the full body count is likely much higher, as the group requires two sources to confirm an execution.
Iran’s penal code offers a variety of options for killing a human being, including hanging, firing squads, and even crucifixion or stoning. Hanging was the only method used from 2008 until the firing squad execution of Kurdish political prisoner Hedayat Abdullahpour on May 11, 2020.
In executions for murder under a sentence known as qisas, the Islamic regime encourages the family members of the victim to carry out the killing themselves. IHR has received reports of family members taking advantage of what is regarded as a “right” to do so.
In cases of public executions, prison officials use cranes. This brutal method leaves the condemned suffocating and strangling, lifted above the crowds for as much as 20 minutes before their suffering can conclude.
Photographs have documented children in attendance at public executions in Iran to watch the violence and cruelty. A 2006 study found that 52 percent of 200 children who witnessed public executions in Iran later showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with “88 suffering re-experiences, 24 avoidance and 62 hyperarousal.”
IHR has not found any executions by stoning since 2010, following the international outcry of the sentencing of Sakineh Ashtiani whose sentence was commuted, allowing her 2014 release.
Given the historical impact of the global community’s condemnations, Iranian officials have sought to hide human rights abuses from the world, imposing an internet blackout for 61 days since the war with the US and Israel began.
“This is denying people across the country access to vital information, silencing independent voices, and inflicting enormous social and economic harm,” Türk said. “It is exacerbating an already precarious humanitarian and economic situation and must be lifted immediately.”
Concluding her address to the European congress in Brussels, Rajavi called on the gathered representatives to implement a new policy toward Iran.
Rajavi advocated an approach that “provides the necessary technical means to ensure the Iranian people’s access to a free internet. Conditions relations with the clerical regime on an end to the execution of political prisoners and the killing of protesters. Brings the regime’s leaders to justice for crimes against humanity and genocide.”