Dear Bintel,

My work colleagues and I need your help. Does Jewish tradition have anything to say about how not to lose your mind when all your bosses are idiots?

Signed,
Losing It

Dear Losing It,

Proverbs 29:2 sums up the impact of bad leadership on morale better than I can: “When a wicked man rules, the people groan.” Believe me, I can hear you and your colleagues groaning in response to every ridiculous email and edict from your inept employers.

The Bible is also full of stories about individuals saddled with work they neither want nor enjoy. Jeremiah is a reluctant prophet ordered to deliver messages nobody wants to hear. Jonah also pointed out the futility of his assignment, saying, essentially, “Why should I tell everyone they’re evil when they won’t listen?” Meanwhile, Moses tries to talk God out of giving him the task of leading the Jews out of Egypt.

And what does the Talmud have to say about all this? The sages portray pushback not as insubordination, but as part of the fundamental relationship between Jews and God: We have a responsibility to demand justice and challenge authority.

But how do you do it without getting fired? Speaking truth to power is an art. Nathan the prophet did it with panache: He got King David to see the error of his ways by relating a parable. When David noticed that the man in Nathan’s tale had transgressed, Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”

Now, I’m not saying your work life will improve if you tell your terrible bosses a story in which the villains are thinly veiled versions of themselves. Nor am I suggesting that you must endure 20 years of servitude, like Jacob did, in order to get some sheep and the woman of your dreams, or that you should argue about every single thing you’re asked to do, as did Moses.

But here’s an oft-quoted Talmudic saying that expresses one of Judaism’s guiding principles, and I think it’s relevant to your work-life quandary: “It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to avoid it.”

In other words, you aren’t responsible for fixing everything that’s wrong with your job. But you are required to make an effort.

What might that look like? How about cheerfully encouraging adherence to best practices by offering evidence-based recommendations? Or matter-of-factly questioning a pointless policy — without pointing fingers — by simply showing that it’s hurting the bottom line or creating delays?

Now I wouldn’t want you to get on the bosses’ bad side or put yourself in the firing line in the course of offering criticism veiled as new ideas. To help your cause, enlist trusted colleagues to backread that email before you send it, or ask others to jointly request a meeting to propose a new approach to something you’re aching to improve.

What if your suggestions and complaints go unheeded? The Talmud tells of a rabbi who predicts that those on the receiving end of his protests “will not accept the rebuke from me.”

Do it anyway, is the response: “Even though they will not accept it, the Master should rebuke them.”

Consider, too, this beautiful precept from the great philosopher Maimonides: “Each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world.” Meaning that every small choice you make as you carry out your duties — rendering a compliment to an overwhelmed work friend, making a correction without judgment, sharing a shortcut with the team or listening to a colleague’s frustration — matters.

I truly believe that part of how we maintain our sanity in the face of incompetence or evil is by standing up for our own values, even when it seems pointless. If you subscribe to the notion that every righteous act we perform, no matter how small, contributes to repairing our broken world, and if you can truly believe in the power of individual good deeds, it will go a long way toward restoring your peace of mind.

Peace of mind can also come from the time-honored Jewish tradition of kibbitzing. If you don’t already have an online group on WhatsApp or Discord where you and your coworkers can kvetch as well as support each other away from the bosses’ gaze, start one. If your work is in-person, in the office, rather than remote, invite a couple of colleagues out for a beer or coffee or a meetup in the park.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also serve up this oft-quoted Talmudic nugget: “A person should love work and not hate it.” The ancient rabbis believed work not only supports one’s material needs, but also provides dignity and self-worth — or so it should. If it’s impossible for you to love your work given your current situation; if you can’t bear the thought of sticking it out the way Jacob did; and if you don’t feel motivated enough to push back one small act at a time, as Maimonides advised, well then, you could always go all out and confront those idiotic bosses head on.

Of course, if you do that, they might hand you your walking papers. Then again, maybe being forced to look for a new job isn’t the worst thing that could happen given your disdain for your situation. Maybe you’re thinking of quitting anyway — and maybe that’s not a bad idea. As a more contemporary Jewish sage, Bob Dylan, once said, “All you can do is do what you must.”

Signed,
Bintel

What do you think? Send your comments to bintel@forward.com or send in a question of your own. 

This is Beth Harpaz’s final column for Bintel Brief. She managed and wrote for the column from 2022 to 2025.

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The head of an anti-Hamas faction, Hussam Alastal, fires a weapon in the air as he is surrounded by masked gunmen, in an Israeli-held area in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in this screenshot taken from a video released Nov. 21, 2025. Photo: Hussam Alastal/via REUTERS

Anti-Hamas groups in Gaza have vowed to continue fighting the ruling Palestinian terrorist group despite the recent killing of their most prominent commander, reporting new recruits as Hamas continues to resist mounting international pressure to disarm.

Ghassan al-Dahini, successor to Yasser Abu Shabaab in Gaza’s Popular Forces, pledged to continue Abu Shabaab’s project and resist Hamas by establishing an alternative to the group’s rule, after his predecessor and confidant died last week while mediating an internal dispute within the group.

Dahini described Abu Shabab’s death as a “grave loss,” saying his followers would “continue on this path and move with the same strength and even more strength.”

“I assure all who support the goals of the Popular Forces that our position is strong and that, God willing, we will become the most powerful force,” he told Israel’s Channel 14.

Abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in Israeli-held Rafah in southern Gaza, had led one of the most prominent of several small anti-Hamas groups that emerged in the enclave during the war that began more than two years ago.

Following his death, Hamas said in a statement that the fate of anyone who “betrayed their people and homeland and agreed to be an instrument in the hands of the occupation [Israel]” was inevitable, accusing Abu Shabab of “criminal acts” that amounted to a “flagrant deviation from national and social consensus.”

In an attempt to exploit the situation, the terrorist group gave militants a 10-day ultimatum to surrender in exchange for promises of amnesty, according to Israel’s Channel 12 and reports on social media.

Abu Shabab’s death would appear to be a boost for Hamas, which had branded him a collaborator and ordered its fighters to kill or capture him.

Shortly after the US-backed ceasefire to halt fighting in Gaza took effect in October, Hamas moved to reassert control over the war-torn enclave and consolidate its weakened position by targeting Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel.”

Since then, Hamas’s brutal crackdown has escalated dramatically, sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.

Social media videos widely circulated online show Hamas members brutally beating Palestinians and carrying out public executions of alleged collaborators and rival militia members.

Following Abu Shabab’s death, Hossam al-Astal, commander of the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, another anti-Hamas faction in Khan Younis, said his group would join forces with the Popular Forces, adding that both leaders had “agreed the war on terror will continue.”

“Our project, new Gaza … will move ahead,” al-Astal told Reuters.

The militia commander had previously told The Algemeiner in late October that his group and three allied militias, including Abu Shaba’s group, had coordinated in recent weeks to secure areas vacated by Hamas. He explained that the four Israel-backed militias fighting Hamas were moving to fill the power vacuum, pledging to cooperate with most international forces involved in rebuilding the enclave but vowing to resist any presence from Qatar, Turkey, or Iran, all of which have supported Hamas for years.

For its part, Hamas vowed to keep pursuing collaborators “until this phenomenon is eradicated.”

They “are protected by the occupation army in the areas where these forces are present, which makes it difficult for the security apparatuses,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told Reuters.

Meanwhile, as Hamas tries to avoid disarmament and rejects international calls to surrender its weapons, Israel continues to maintain a firm stance, vowing that the Islamist group “will be disarmed” under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

Senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashal said the group is open to a temporary weapons “freeze” but rejects the demand for full disarmament outlined in the US-backed ceasefire deal.

“The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance,” the terrorist leader said in an interview with Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera on Wednesday. 

“What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage [of weapons] … to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,” he continued.

Instead of immediately surrendering its weapons, as stipulated in the ceasefire deal, Hamas is proposing a long-term ceasefire of up to ten years and a freeze on its arsenal, provided that Israel fully withdraws from Gaza “and ends its campaign of extermination.”

According to a Hamas official cited by Palestinian media, the group will prevent any attacks on Israel during the proposed extended truce, which also calls for significant reconstruction efforts and expanded humanitarian aid in the war-torn enclave.

However, Israel has upheld its hardline position, rejecting Hamas’s proposals and declaring that “there will be no future for Hamas” under Trump’s 20-point peace plan.

“The terror group will be disarmed, and Gaza will be demilitarized,” an Israeli government official told AFP on Thursday. 

Under phase one of Trump’s peace plan, Hamas was required to release all remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. 

In exchange, Israel freed thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences, and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza to a newly drawn “Yellow Line,” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west. The Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gazan territory, while Hamas is cracking down on the remaining 47 percent, where the vast majority of the population is located.

The second stage of the peace plan is supposed to establish an interim administrative authority, a so-called “technocratic government,” deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to oversee security in Gaza, and begin the demilitarization of Hamas.

As the international community moves to implement phase two of the ceasefire deal, Turkey has continued to push to join the multinational task force and play a role in postwar Gaza, as Ankara seeks to expand its influence in the region — a move experts warn could potentially bolster Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.

However, Israel has consistently opposed any role for Turkish security forces in postwar Gaza, reportedly creating a point of tension with Washington, which appears receptive to Ankara’s request.

(JTA) — A nanny from Algeria went on trial Tuesday in a suburb of Paris for allegedly poisoning the Jewish family she was employed by because of their religion.

The defendant, identified as Leïla Y., 42, had been living in France illegally when she was first hired by the Jewish family in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, in November 2023, according to the French outlet Le Parisien.

Two months later, the mother of the family, who has three children aged 2, 5 and 7, went to a local police station after she tasted cleaning products in her family’s food and wine and experienced a burning sensation in her eyes when using her makeup remover. Her 5-year-old daughter then said she had seen the nanny putting a soapy product into a bottle labeled “Jerusalem,” a brand of kosher alcohol, according to Le Parisien.

Following an investigation, toxicology reports found high levels of polyethylene glycol and other chemicals in the home’s wine, whisky, fig brandy, grape juice and pasta, which were “harmful, even corrosive, and can cause serious injuries to the digestive tract,” according to a committal order from the criminal court obtained by Le Parisien.

During her arrest and a subsequent search of the home on Feb. 5, 2024, Leïla Y. told police, “Because they have money and power, I should never have worked for a Jewish woman; she only brought me trouble.”

While in custody, she also told officers, “I was angry, they were disrespecting me,” adding, “I knew it might cause them pain, but not enough to kill them.”

The trial comes as antisemitic incidents and attacks in France have surged since Oct. 7, with the first six months of 2025 seeing 646 antisemitic acts, according to the French Interior Ministry.

“This is a particularly well-documented and illuminating case concerning the reality of everyday or pervasive antisemitism,” said Sacha Ghozlan, a lawyer for the family, in a statement to Le Parisien.

In recent years, other trials concerning antisemitism in France have also roiled the local Jewish community. In 2021, French Jews demonstrated after a court ruled against that a man accused of killing his Jewish neighbor, Sarah Halimi, was too high on marijuana to be criminally responsible for his actions. In June 2024, the trial and conviction of two teenage boys for the antisemitic gang rape of a 12-year-old girl also sparked protests by local Jewish groups.

Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, was called as a witness in the trial of Leïla Y., telling Le Parisien that the case, “reveals a structural violence, the singular gravity of which must neither be minimized nor concealed.”

The Union of French Jewish Students and International League Against Racism and Antisemitism both joined the family’s civil case.

“Since October 7th, France has seen an unprecedented explosion of antisemitic acts: threats, violence, intimidation, vandalism,” wrote the UEJF in a post on Instagram. “We call on the justice system to establish the whole truth and to fully recognize the antisemitic dimension of these acts. We express our entire solidarity with the targeted family, which has been betrayed in its most essential intimacy: that of the protection of its children.”

In a post on X, the American Jewish Committee also wrote that it was “horrified and outraged” by the alleged poisoning, citing a 2024 survey of antisemitism in France conducted by the organization which found that “one in four French Jews say they have been the victim of an antisemitic act since October 7, 2023.”

Leïla Y. is being tried on numerous charges, including falsifying documents and “administering a harmful substance resulting in incapacity exceeding eight days, committed on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.”

Her lawyer, Solange Marle, argued that Leïla Y.’s statements were “focused on a class issue and financial resentment,” according to Le Parisien.

But according to the outlet, the children told police that she had “regularly asked them questions about religion” and that the younger child saw her “repeatedly knock on mezuzots.” The defendant also reportedly googled “Berber Jewish women” and “religious practices of Judaism” in December 2023, and told a security guard at the family’s school, “But they have money, they can give it to me.”

The mother of the Jewish family, who has requested anonymity, told Le Parisien that the alleged poisoning had left them with “indelible scars.”

“We live in constant fear; we no longer trust anyone,” the mother said. “Even though I’m not responsible for what happened, I live with the guilt of having let someone into our home who endangered what we hold most dear in the world: our children.”

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