Orthodox Jewish reactions to the Dreamworks movie "The Prince of Egypt" were generally negative. Moses was portrayed as being too young, and not holy enough; Aharon was portrayed in a poor light; Tzipporah was not particular tzanua; etc., etc. To be sure, there is what to criticize, including some inaccuracies that probably don't even occur to people; for example, the Torah does not describe Yocheved as dangerously floating Moshe down the river (although it makes for a terrific song in the movie), but rather as placing him in the reeds.

But there is one major theme in the movie which, while it probably grates on the sensitivities of some Orthodox Jews, is an important part of the story.

We're all brought up being taught that Moshe was the greatest tzaddik ever, and the Egyptians were the worst resha'im. And so when The Prince of Egypt depicts Moses as having a close relationship with Rameses, and being emotionally torn up when assisting in the plagues inflicted upon him, this makes some of us uncomfortable. But I think that this is an extremely valuable point in Moshe growing up in Pharaoh's palace to begin with.

Ibn Ezra says that the leader of the Jewish People could only be someone who grew up in such circumstances. Had Moshe grown up as a slave, with the lowly mentality of a slave, he wouldn’t have had the confidence and character traits to be a leader. Attacking the Egyptian who was hitting the Jew, and saving the Bnos Midyan – Moshe was only capable of these things because he had grown up as royalty. But perhaps growing up as the prince of Egypt was also important as it placed him in a test that was crucial for his future as leader of the Jewish people:

“And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brothers, and looked on their burdens; and he spied an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brothers. And he looked this way and that way, and he saw that there was no man; and he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand". (Exodus 2:11-12)

Many years ago, I heard a terrific drush on this from Rabbi Dr. Natan Lopez-Cardozo, quoting Rav Shlomo Kluger: that we are being told here about the identity crisis of the prince of Egypt. When Moshe saw the Egyptian beating the Jew, “He looked this way and that way” – he looked at his royal Egyptian upbringing, and at his Jewish ancestral roots. “And he saw that there was no man” – he saw that he lacked a true identity. “And he slew the Egyptian” – within himself. “And hid him in the sand” – he totally detached himself from the Egyptian mindset, and aligned himself fully with the fate of the Jews.

This was the trial of identity for Moshe. Would he give up all the luxuries and familiarity of Egyptian culture, as well as the relationships from his life so far, to go over to “the other side” and reunite with the slave nation? Moshe passed the test. But I don't think that this trial of identity was only about his slaughter of the Egyptian. I think that, even if Moshe aligned himself fully with the Jews, it could not have been easy for him to leave Pharaoh's house, and to be involved with inflicting the plagues that harmed Pharaoh's home.

Consider this: as Rav Chaim Friedlander in Sifsei Chaim notes, a major theme of the entire Exodus is hakaras hatov (gratitude) - with two notable examples being Moshe not being able to smite the river and the dust, both of which saved him. Even though this was not a conscious act on the part of the river and the dust, Moshe nevertheless felt hakaros hatov towards them. Now, hakaros hatov is not an intellectual position; it is an emotional sentiment. If Moshe had this emotional connection, this feeling of gratitude, to the river and the dust, imagine how much of an emotional connection and feelings of gratitude he would have had to the home that raised him!

If we perceive Moshe as being Moshe Rabbeinu from day one, like all Gedolim are portrayed as being malachim from birth, then it's hard for us to imagine that he could have had these feelings towards Pharaoh's home. But if we realize that Moshe grew up as the Prince of Egypt, then we can certainly understand that his gratitude towards Pharaoh's home must surely have exceeded his gratitude towards the Nile and the dust. This is something that the movie does a good job of illustrating, and especially the pain that Moshe would have felt in his role with inflicting the plagues upon Egypt.

Feeling this distress, yet not letting it stand in the way of his vital job on behalf of his fellow Jews, was Moshe's akeidah. To be a leader requires tremendous dedication to the people. Moshe had to bring that dedication to light - by painfully giving up on his upbringing as the Prince of Egypt.

1. The idea that a kezayis of matzah is an enormous quantity, rather than the size of an olive;

2. The idea that person A can pay person B to do a mitzvah, and the reward for that mitzvah goes to person A (which I explain the problems with in my book Rationalism vs. Mysticism);

3. The desperation for unemployed and unemployable people to get money?

The answer is that you get this advertisement:

Loosely translated, it means that if you’re having a hard time eating a giant portion of matzah, no worries! You can pay a kollel guy to eat it for you! (I was going to write that it’s unbelieveable, but actually I’m not even sure that it is; I once actually saw a flyer from a kollel guy offering to take people’s portion of Gehinnom in exchange for a donation.)

Chag Sameach! And Chag HaMatzos Sameach. Before I sign off, here’s a video clip which I cannot publicly post online and so it’s restricted to paid subscribers.

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It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. On the one hand, our arch-enemy, the Iranian regime, is getting hammered by the combined might of Israel and the US, with their weapons manufacturing ability being destroyed, while their offensive missiles are being spread out over a range of countries rather than being fired solely at Israel. Whatever the shortcomings and drawbacks of the war, this is something amazingly beneficial that people do not adequately appreciate.

On the other hand, the missiles are relentless, there are soldiers dying in Lebanon, and the government of Israel is setting the country squarely on a path of collapse. The budget was just passed, granting billions to ensure that the rapidly growing charedi sector will be continue to be unable and unmotivated to be economically self-sufficient, will continue to drastically weaken the economy, and will continue to refuse to serve in the IDF. One secular Likud MK proudly declared that it’s entirely unnecessary for children to learn math and general studies.

The goverment’s transfer of many billions to the charedi sector included pulling a devious trick to fool the opposition into a last-minute vote for an item that, unbeknownst to them, added a further $255 million for charedi schools. Charedi representatives boasted about tricking the opposition into voting for something that they did not support. Ah, what ehrlechkeit! What a Kiddush Hashem!

The pictures of MKs from Likud, Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit celebrating are just mind-boggling. It is simply astonishing that so many people are so infatuated with having a few months of extra power that they do not grasp how devastatingly harmful this will end up being to all of us in the long run. Even the IDF Chief of Staff, appointed by Bibi himself, warns that the IDF is headed for disaster due to the manpower shortage alone - you can’t keep the reservists away from their jobs and lives forever.

And the economic problem is even worse. The transfer of billions to schools that do not teach general studies and yeshivos will bring economic collapse. And this in turn will be followed by military collapse, as you can’t fund a powerful army with a third-world economy.

It’s all so depressing that I don’t even know what to say. People want to be inspired, but I don’t have anything inspiring to offer. I’m desperate for some inspiration myself! All I can do is point out that things could rapidly turn around if the government changes in the next election, and urge everyone to campaign towards that result.

Meanwhile, for paid subscribers, here’s a special gift for Pesach!

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Discussing pedophilia in the Orthodox Jewish community used to be unthinkable. (In some sectors of the community, it still is.) When people started to call attention to it, they were condemned as creating a chillul Hashem and giving fodder to antisemites. Eventually, at least in more enlightened sectors of the community, it was recognized that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Refusing to discuss the problem enabled it to fester and worsen; calling attention to it helped it be dealt with. As for the antisemites, there are those that you can never win with, but for more reasonable people, showing that Orthodox Jewry recognizes the problem and deals with it is far more effective.

The same is true for the violence inflicted by a small but far from insignificant number of Jews against Palestinian Arabs. Many people are adamantly against discussing it, for two reasons. First is that they are unaware of the extent to which it is a serious problem (and they do not even realize that they should not be opining on things while lacking knowledge about them). Second is that they think that discussing it empowers opposition to Israel.

Of course, added to this is that the problem is indeed very much exaggerated and wrongly used to delegitimize Israel. There are plenty of haters of Israel (including Jews) who use falsified stories, exaggerate the number of people involved, tarnish all residents of Judea and Samaria with the same brush, and ignore or deny the wider context of how the whole situation came to exist (i.e. because the West Bank of the Jordan was used to attack Israel in 1967) and why it’s so difficult to resolve (i.e. because of the 3 “no’s” of Khartoum and Palestinian rejectionism).

(For my own part, I regret using the term “settler violence,” because it feeds into the narrative that all or most settlers are involved, even though I always take pains to stress that this is not the case. I’m not sure what the best term is - perhaps extremist settler violence. As for the term “settler” itself, while some people object to it, many residents of Judea and Samaria refer to themselves this way. And we must keep in mind that the State has not annexed the land, for good reasons.)

In response to my last post on this topic, a prominent hasbara influencer with a large following declared me to be a “self-hating Jew,” a “traitor” and a “Kapo.” It’s shocking that someone could use such terms, and many people feel that someone who does so is not fit to be in a public position (and I am not the only person that he has wrongfully attacked). But putting the vile insults aside, where did this person’s heated opposition come from? The answer is that it’s both of the above factors mentioned. The person has no idea of the extent of the problem - he claimed that it’s just 50 people - and he believes that discussing it empowers opposition to Israel.

With regard to the extent of the problem, if only people would look into it before giving opinions. It’s not 50 people - it’s in the hundreds and possibly thousands. They describe the government - the most right-wing in Israel’s history - as “the evil regime” (shilton harasha) and they attack IDF soldiers. They boast of their violence and random property destruction on WhatsApp channels that you can see for yourself.

And it’s enormously consequential. I’ve heard soldiers and police officers bemoan how much precious resources need to be spent dealing with Jewish violence. An entire IDF battalion just had to be diverted to it. And, of course, it causes massive international damage, with consequences for our economy and military.

Does discussing it empower anti-Israel hatred? First of all, even if it does, that wouldn’t necessarily be sufficient counter the very valuable reasons to discuss it and place pressure on the government to deal with it. But in any case, one could counter-argue that it actually decreases anti-Israel sentiment. Because people who innately hate Israel will always do so anyway, whereas people who are on the fence and persuadable are likely to be more swayed by seeing that Jews acknowledge and denounce problems rather than deny them. And it also gives us more credibility when we explain that while the problem does indeed exist and is serious, it is not as huge as portrayed by Israel haters, many cases are distorted, the police are in the middle of multiple serious investigations which are under gag order so as to be successful, and it does not change anything in the bigger picture of why the overall situation exists and is so difficult to solve.

But for many people, these arguments fall on deaf ears. I just did a radio interview on the Zev Brenner show in which I presented all this, and someone called in and called me a rodef, a halachic category which means that I am a pursuer of Jews that people should kill.

We have to bear in mind that there are different types of people - on both sides. There are the tribalists, for whom everything about the home team is good, everything about the enemy team is bad, one must only ever cheer the home team, and nothing will change their minds. And then there are the more thoughtful people, who are able to recognize that even the overall good team can have problems, and will respect that team more if it recognizes those problems and tries to deal with them.

It’s time to join with those rabbis and community leaders who are taking this problem seriously. In the Hebrew-speaking world, while many people are unfortunately supportive of it and others are in denial, more and more people are waking up to the extent of the problem. The latest issue of Mekor Rishon had several articles denouncing it, and prominent (and pro-Bibi) journalist Amit Segal just described it as “Jewish terrorism.” Ambassador Rabbi Yechiel Leiter, a resident of Eli, just spoke out against it. The IDF is already suffering from a terrible manpower shortage due to the charedi refusal to enlist - it’s a tragedy that IDF soldiers also have to be dealing with Jewish violence.

In response to an earlier post, several people predictably still denied that extremist settler violence is a real phenomenon. And so I would like to share some very clear testimonials, from the very people who do it, who are not shy about it. They have a WhatsApp group dedicated to documenting and bragging about their acts of indiscriminate violence against Arabs. They even have celebratory monthly tallies of their attacks. Here’s the report from last month:

*סיכום חודש במאבק באוייב הערבי בארץ הקודש בחודש אדר:*

רשימת כפרים שהותקפו ומספר התקיפות:

מוכמוס (5), מאספר יטא (3), רמון (2), ג’אלוד (2) ,אבו פאלח (2), חמאמת אל מליחמ(2), קוצרא(2) , ביתא (2), יתמא, עין כרם, תל, סוסיא, אל מועייר, חאן אל אחמר, ג’בע, תיאסיר, ג’מעין, דומא, רשיידה, ואדי רחים, טמון, בורין, קרוואת בני חסן, עקבת חסנה, חלחול, מרדא, חברון.

*מספר רכבים שנשרפו:* 19

*מספר בתים שהוצתו:* 16

*מספר ערבים שנפצעו:* 37

*מספר תגי מחיר:* 6

*2 מסגדים הוצתו*

*בנוסף נופצו מאות שמשות וחלונות*

*נכרתו מאות עצי זית*

*ופונצ׳רו עשרות צמיגים*

Want to join the group and see for yourself? Here’s the links:

> *לקבוצה https://chat.whatsapp.com/EVbh2kntVab6WsxRErqBlJ?mode=hqrc*

> *לערוץ https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VapnPR6002T0bjzvm42Q*

Again, it’s still true that haters of Israel inflate it beyond its actual extent, tarnish all of the hundreds of thousands of residents of Judea and Samaria with this, fabricate stories, ignore the reason why the entire situation exists in the first place, and propose “solutions” that would cause even more suffering. But we need to acknowledge that the phenomenon does exist, and we need to denounce it and fight it.

Meanwhile, I would like to report some good news: a friend of mine who is involved at high level with the IDF told me that the IDF takes these things very seriously. There certainly seems to be a question as to why there are so few arrests and convictions. But it was reported yesterday that an entire IDF battalion has been relocated from Lebanon to the West Bank in order to deal with the problem of settler violence. Of course this also demonstrates how these people are immensely harmful to the state, forcing it to relocate forces from fighting Hezbollah terrorists to restoring law and order in the Shomron.

On this topic, I have a story to share, that I heard from my son who just came back from Lebanon. It contains sensitive elements, so I am restricting it to paid subscribers.

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Public outdoor attractions like zoos, which cannot provide shelter within reach, are closed. The Biblical Museum of Natural History, like all indoor institutions, is allowed to be open, but is restricted to hosting no more visitors than we can fit at one time in our shelter, as in the photo below. This enormously limits the number of visitors that we can receive every day. (And if you would like to visit the museum, such as during Chol HaMoed, please note that due to these limitations you must book in advance.)

Still, the visitors who are coming have been deeply grateful. Again and again, we hear how meaningful it is to step into a place that offers not just inspiration and education, but a sense of calm, joy, and even healing.

When a siren sounds, the staff moves everyone into the safe room, but the experience doesn’t stop. Our guides continue teaching. Children find comfort in cuddling with our unusual stuffed creatures that we keep in the safe room for this purpose. (By “stuffed” I mean plush, not the taxidermy specimens in our exhibit halls!) These include a particularly loveable narwhal, the creature that contributed to the unicorn legend. This turns what can be a moment of stress, with booms overhead, into one of connection and discovery.

In times like these, the museum is more than just a place to visit. It becomes a refuge, a classroom, and a source of resilience. But of course, the steep limits on our ability to welcome visitors for so many weeks means an enormous loss of income. It’s a very challenging time.

If you feel inspired to help us continue to provide this unique and meaningful experience, your support will make a real difference. You can donate at this link. Thank you!

You’ve doubtless heard about the appalling arson of Hatzolah ambulances in London, presumably by Islamists. But I was struck at the juxtaposition in the news to another story, about another attack on medical services. Settlers attempted to set fire to a Palestinian clinic in one village in the West Bank, along with various cars and property in another village.

Discussing settler violence is something that upsets or even enrages many in our community. People claim that it’s blown out of all proportion, that it’s just a few dozen teenagers from broken homes (as Bibi falsely claimed), that all the stories are made up or distorted by haters of Israel, that giving any acknowledgement to it is playing into the hands of haters of Israel, that it’s actually the settlers who are defending themselves from Arab violence.

I used to believe all that myself. But recently, like many others, I’ve been forced to realize that it’s just not the case. To be sure, not every accusation of settler violence is true, and there are indeed situations where in the “Wild West” of the West Bank matters are more complicated. In my critique of the film “No Other Land,” I wrote about the problems with many of those pushing the “settler violence” narrative.

Nevertheless there are clearly hundreds (and possibly thousands) of adults who believe in breaking the law to cause physical harm to Arabs and their property, even to those who are not involved in anti-Jewish violence. Indeed, some of them are not shy to declare it openly. During the funeral of IDF soldier Shoval Ben-Natan, his brother Uriah eulogized him by declaring that “You entered Gaza to take revenge — as much as possible. [Against] women, children — everyone you saw. As much as possible. That’s what you wanted.”

The numerous reasons why such violence is wrong is apparently not self-evident, so I’ll briefly spell it out. It’s wrong to deliberately inflict violence on the innocent, it severely corrodes character, it’s wrong to act outside of the law and it corrodes society, and it causes great harm to Israel internationally.

But why do so many people deny that settler violence exists? The psychological drives to deny such things is obvious. But there’s also the fact that many people - including many settlers - are genuinely unaware of the extent to which this phenomenon exists. And today’s stories demonstrate why.

Immediately after the attack on the Hatzola ambulances, a very right-wing person I know commented on how the BBC was not headlining this local event and was instead reporting on settler violence in the West Bank, thousands of miles away. (In fact, it quickly became a headline on the BBC.) But, once again, there was a mirror to be found in Arutz Sheva, which headlined the attack on the Hatzola ambulances in London, but did not mention anything about the settler attack! With some notable exceptions such as the Rosh Yeshiva of Maale Gilboa, religious and right-wing Israeli society simply does not talk or report about settler violence, and thus many people have no idea that it is a genuine and serious phenomenon.

Now, to the question: Is the phenomenon of lawless settler violence against innocent Palestinians in Israel actually a mirror image of lawless Islamist violence against innocent Jews in London?

To my mind it seems that there is one similarity, one difference, and one aspect that used to be a clear mark in our favor but is currently not so.

The similarity is the innate nature of it: lawless violence against the innocent, on the grounds that they are seen as being part of a larger enemy group.

The difference is the enormous difference in scale. Arabs do not have to worry about anything from Jews remotely approaching what Jews have to worry about from Arabs (and imagine if the Arabs held the overall power!).

The aspect that used to be a mark in our favor was that such behavior was illegal and punished and rejected by the leadership. That was true in Israel until Bibi, desperate to retain power, broke Likud opposition to Kahanism by legitimizing Itamar Ben Gvir, a man who believes in violence and lawlessness, and even made him Minister of National Security. Since then, there has been a clear message projected that Jewish violence against Arabs will not be taken particularly seriously.

There’s still a huge difference between Britain and Israel. To quote Shany Mor, “Britain didn’t become unsafe for Jews because of a rabble of semi-literates with violent tendencies. It became unsafe because the cultural and academic elite nurtured for years a comprehensive worldview organized around the idea of Jewish malevolence abroad and conspiracy at home.”

But on the other hand, the British government is making the right noises, the security forces will investigate, and if the culprits are found, they will be punished. The same unfortunately cannot be said for how the Israeli government and security forces will respond to those who set fire to the Arab clinic. This is yet another reason to hope for the extremist and anti-Zionist aberrations of the current government to be corrected in the next election.

UPDATE: A friend told me that the IDF takes these things very seriously. See this report that the IDF has transferred a battalion from Lebanon to deal with the problem of settler violence. But how sad that we need to divert IDF forces for such a thing at such a time.

First, please note that once again the Biblical Museum of Natural History is selling kosher locusts to liven up your Seder table! In Israel, they can be collected from the museum (and we might arrange collection points elsewhere due to the travel challenges caused by the war). In the US, you can order them online; DHL is due to get them to our US distribution office in time for them to get to you by Pesach, but please note that this cannot be guaranteed. While you’re ordering your locusts, note that you can also order my books at a discount.

Now let’s turn to the fourth plague, arov. “Everyone knows” that this plague was wild animals. If you’re more into supernatural extremes, it was polar bears arriving on ice from the North Pole, along with giant octopuses coming out of the ocean and using their tentacles to unlock the Egyptian homes from the inside (as presented in one illustrated haggadah below, based on the Gra and various midrashic lore). If you’re more into naturalistic miracles, it was the wild animals of Egypt - lions and leopards and hyenas (not tigers or bears, which did not live in Egypt).

Except that there is very good reason to believe that it wasn’t any of these. And I’ve come up with a new idea about what it may well have been.

The word used in the Torah, arov, simply means “mixture” or “swarm.” The Sages disputed whether this was a swarm of wild beasts, or of birds and flying insects, or of both:

“I will let loose swarms against you” (Ex. 8:17). From where did they come? Some say, from above (i.e. birds and flying insects), some say from below (i.e. animals), and R. Akiva says from above and below. (Midrash Shemot Rabba 11:2)

Another view is that it was a mixture of specific types of insects alone:

R. Nechemiah says, They were types of wasps and mosquitoes. (Midrash Shemot Rabba 11:2)

The notion of a plague of birds or insects is far less exciting than a plague with wild animals, and these views became largely forgotten. It became popularly accepted that the plague involved wild animals. While one view is that it was only wolves (see my book The Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom), others are of the view that it was a mixture of different animals:

“R. Shimon b. Lakish said: The Holy One said [to the Egyptians], You massed yourselves against My children, I shall also mass the birds of the skies and the beasts of the land against you, as it says, “I will let loose a mixture against you” – beasts and birds mixed together. (Midrash Shemot Rabba 11:2)”

But if there’s one thing that’s clear from all these differing views of Chazal, it’s that there is no clear mesorah as to what the plague actually was. This is why different Sages came up with different ideas. And, as per their usual style, the purpose of their explanations was to present ideas about divine justice, quid pro quo in action, rather than focus on pshat.

I’d like to present my own idea, based on what seems to me to be the most reasonable pshat explanation, and on thinking about what people so often fail to think about - what the text doesn’t say.

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Iran, Iran, Iran. That’s the war that most people are hearing about non-stop. And it does affect us all, especially here in Israel. Just the other day, exactly when I was in the middle of having serious and very painful surgery to remove a vestige of my ancestors’ evolutionary path, frantically trying to draw as much Novocaine into my lungs as possible, the siren sounded. They had to take off the Novocaine mask and half-carry me down the steps to the safe room! Thank God that’s over and I’ve managed to get back to work.

Iran is certainly the biggest threat, and thank God (and the IDF and USA) we are making tremendous progress on that front. But there’s another serious war going on which I suspect most people outside of Israel don’t know much about. And that’s the war for the north.

Hezbollah has been firing hundreds of missiles and rockets over the last few weeks, and was preparing to send fighters to try to infiltrate Israel. My oldest son managed to call me the other day from Lebanon. He was in a recently-abandoned house which looked like a perfectly normal family home, until he entered the bedroom and found all kinds of Hezbollah weaponry and paraphernalia. The house next door had UN uniforms.

The State of Israel is now preparing for a significant escalation in defending the north of the country with a massive ground invasion of Lebanon to root out Hezbollah. According to a report by Kan 11 News, in the coming days the government will be approving raising the maximum reserve mobilization quota to 450,000 soldiers, to add to the standing IDF forces of around 50,000 soldiers. With such a massive operation, it’s expected that there will be casualties.

Half a million Jewish heroes. The truth is, the number is actually much larger. There are many more Jewish heroes here than just the men and women actually in the IDF. There’s the spouses who have to hold themselves and the family together. There’s the parents who send off their sons. There’s the children who have to say goodbye to their fathers - and in some cases, their mothers. Did you know that Israel has a human milk bank that is sending gallons of breast milk for all the babies whose mothers have been called up to reserve duty?

Meanwhile, this very same government that will approve calling up half a million men and women to reserve duty, with all the consequences to their careers and marriages and families and lives, was not interested in calling up the hundred thousand or so charedim that could have been in regular service and spared countless reservists. In fact, it plans to formally exempt them and even pay them for the privilege.

There are 7.5 million Jews in Israel. There are about 6 million who are part of communities that believe in defending and supporting everyone else. And there are about 1.5 million who are part of a community that believes in benefiting from the sacrifices of everyone else, extracting resources from everyone else, and not contributing.

Things need to change. The Iran threat will hopefully be neutralized for many years. But there will be other threats - there are millions of Arabs between the river and the sea, many of whom are hostile. We need a unified, strong nation.

Recently I received an email from someone who wanted help with responding to a kid (not his) with problematic theological views. The kid had told him that his back pain was because of his evolutionary origins. The person asked the kid if he thinks that we came from monkeys and the kid said yes. Yet the Torah, this person pointed out, says that God created man, not monkeys!

I think that the person was a little dismayed when I responded by saying that the kid was correct.

When we say a bracha on bread, we say Hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz, that “Hashem took the bread out of the ground.” That doesn’t mean that Hashem plucked a loaf of bread out of the ground. It means that He made a world that could produce bread. The same goes for the description of the creation of man.

Furthermore, note how in the Torah, man is created on the same day as animals. Why can’t we get our own day? The Rishonim explain that the point is that man began as an animal, with the potential to rise above that status.

But it’s not just that the Torah can be reconciled with man having evolved from an ancestor in the monkey family. It’s that evolution actually solves a serious theological difficulty.

Back pain is not just a medical problem, it’s a theological problem. Lower back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Over 80% of people experience it during their lifetime. It causes more people to leave the workforce than any other chronic condition.

Now, if you believe that God designed man from scratch with Infinite Wisdom and a perfect design, how do you account for this very widespread defect? It’s a problem.

But if God used a different system for creating life, then it’s not a defect; it’s merely an inherent limitation of an extraordinary system of “creative wisdom,” as Rav Hirsch refers to evolution. It would be just like Lego models have little bumps all over them and can break - this does not detract from them, but rather is an inherent limitation of the wonder of creating things from Lego.

So, too, when you have extraordinary laws of nature that can transform energy into matter and into life and into the incredible diversity of species on this planet, the inherent limitation is that creatures are bound by the forms from which they developed. A land mammal can evolve into a whale, but it will have to come back to the surface to breathe. And a quadruped can evolve into a biped, but there will eventually be strain on the lower back.

Over the last few days I’ve been suffering from terrible toothache. Today I’m off to have an impacted wisdom tooth removed, which my dentist suspects to be the cause of my pain. When I told my 89-year-old mother, bless her, she asked me why God made us with wisdom teeth, which have no benefit and cause so much pain. I replied, “Because we evolved from ape-men with much larger jaws, for whom wisdom teeth were functional.”

“Oh,“ she replied.

She wasn’t happy with my answer. I remember when at the launch of my book on this topic, The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution, my mother was absolutely horrified to discover that the book was about accepting evolution. Eventually, she decided that she would have to find a way to not let it get in the way of her love for her son:

“Natan,” she said, “If you want to believe that you are descended from monkeys, fine. But don’t tell me that I am.”

My book The Challenge Of Creation is currently on sale from the museum website - click here for US/international shipping and here for Israel shipping.

I’ve watched lots of foxes, but I’ve never watched Fox TV. I’ve enjoyed many piers, but I’ve never enjoyed Piers Morgan. I’ve met Ben Shapiro, both on his frequent visits to my museum and when I gave a shiur at his home, but I’ve never listened to his podcast. I’ve seen lots of Islamist, antisemitic and anti-Western propaganda, but I’ve never watched the Tucker Carlson show.

Still, from dipping my toes into Twitter/X, I’ve gotten the lay of the land. And there’s a fascinating phenomenon taking place, which sheds light on antisemitism and Israelopathy. You can see, in real time, how and why they develop.

It all started after Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA was murdered. Candace Owens, who long ago degenerated into conspiracy theorist lunacy, started positing that it was an inside job by TP-USA, and indicating that none other than his widow Erica was involved. Ben Shapiro, like all normal people, was appalled. And it was also frustrating that other people in the same media space, notably Megyn Kelly, refused to criticize Candace for this. Ben said as much to Megyn in a show.

Megyn first denied that Candace was doing this. Then she attempted to broker peace between Candace and Erica Kirk. Candace responded by becoming ever more vicious and unhinged, stirring up her one million viewers to harass Erica as Charlie’s murderer, and even Erica’s unwell mother as being involved.

Throughout all this, Megyn, who has plenty of criticism for people she disapproves of, refused to ever call out Candace. Naturally, many people were horrified by Megyn’s refusal to stand up for Erica. Ben called her out for her cowardice. And Megyn responded by claiming that Ben was attacking her for criticizing Israel!

A similar phenomenon happend with Piers Morgan. He hosts a panel which has become a shouting-match that platforms the most horrible and deranged anti-Western and antisemitic activists, as well as complete ignoramuses who are spouting their views about geopolitics and the morality of war. Piers invited Ben, a former guest, to return to his show, and Ben refused, explaining that he doesn’t want to appear on a show that has degenerated into a “clown car of stupidity.” Piers responded by claiming that Ben is trying to cancel him for being critical of Israel!

As far as I can tell, unlike Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, neither Megyn Kelly nor Piers Morgan are antisemites. They are merely happy to platform antisemites in order to boost their audience ratings. But what they are now doing is utilizing a very basic aspect of antisemitism and Israelopathy that has been a feature of history. In order to avoid responsibility for their obvious shortcomings, they are trying to deflect blame onto the Jews and Israel. Got problems? The Jews and Israel make for great scapegoats.

This aspect of antisemitism is also being demonstrated by the New York Times, in its astonishing presentation of the terror attack in Michigan:

So, the attack on a synagogue/ daycare is not to be blamed on radical Islam, nor on the demonization of Israel and Jews that has been normalized in the US by the NYT’s heroes. It’s the synagogue’s fault, because it was founded 85 years ago during the Holocaust to support Israel.

Of course, there will likewise be many people blaming Israel and the Jews for whatever negative consequences occur as a result of the US-Israeli war against the Iranian Regime. Some Jews think that this is reason for Israel not to have done it. Personally, I’d rather have an outbreak of antisemitism than a crazed genocidal regime pursuing nuclear weapons and working on building an arsenal of ballistic missiles so large that they would become untouchable. Of course, the stakes are a lot higher for me, since I’m in Israel and Iran is an existential threat. But even if you live outside of Israel, hopefully you can see the importance and value of this war. I’ve leave you with a quote from Ben Shapiro to his American audience:

“It is in America’s interest for Iran to pose no threat to its neighbors, the region, or the world. It’s in our interest to dramatically weaken the China-Russia-Iran axis, and it’s in our interest to act when we can at the point of highest possible success and the point of lowest possible risk.”

Shabbat Shalom! I must go and prepare our emergency room for Shabbat.

There used to be two types of looting. There was that done by armies during a war, from the people that they conquered. And there was that done by civilians from their co-citizens during a war or other chaotic situation, taking advantage of the distractions and lack of enforcement during such periods. In this war, we have a new type of looting in Israel: the government is taking advantage of the distractions and lack of public attention during this period to transfer gigantic sums to the charedi community.

The budget was just approved without the Draft Exemption Law going through yet. Without this law that Bibi still wants to pass as soon as the war is over, the charedim have no legal exemption from army service and consequently all kinds of funds are held up. So why did the charedi parties consent to approving the budget?

Because they get the next best thing. The government does virtually no enforcement of the draft anyway for charedim, and the government also agreed to transfer literally billions of shekels to them under the designation “Coalition Funds.”

This is particularly egregious for two reasons. First is that, as you may have noticed, Israel has been at war for nearly three years. Wars are really, really, really expensive for the economy. There’s all the munitions and equipment. There’s all the payments to the hundreds of thousands of reservists. There’s all the costs for compensating and taking care of victims and evacuees and others. There’s all the costs of rebuilding buildings damaged by rockets and missiles. There’s all the compensation that needs to be paid for business and other enterprises that suffer.

The wars of the last few years have been so expensive that instead of a normal budget increase, there’s been a 3% budget cut for everything aside the military. Education, medical care, welfare services, everything. People suffering economically from the war are not being compensated properly. Towns such as Kiryat Shmona and those bordering Gaza, totally ravaged by the war, are in a terrible state.

And yet while 150 million shekels were removed from the rehabilitation budget for battered towns, the government sends billions of shekels to yeshivos and supporting deliberately underemployed charedim! This includes millions to yeshivos for “kids at risk,” which are designed to ensure that they stay in the charedi framework even if they are not learning, so that they don’t enlist. It’s perverse. Community leaders in the battered north have commented that while Hezbollah and Iran have caused them financial catastrophe, it’s the actions of the current Israeli government which have crushed their spirit.

But it’s even worse than that. This is not just a matter of transferring desperately-needed funds to unimportant causes and the undeserving. It’s actively creating an even bigger economic problem down the line. Propping up the charedi lifestyle of dependency only makes things worse as that society rapidly grows.

The High Court, pointing out that the government has made no real attempt to actually deal with the IDF manpower crisis by enforcing the draft in the charedi community, has put a block on some of the funding. The Likud and the charedim will probably find some way to transfer it anyway, as they illegally did with the funding for charedi schools which are supposed to teach a core curriculum that helps the students but do not actually do so.

We can only hope that in the next elections, a government will be formed that does not rely on support from anti-Zionists who go against traditional Torah values by proudly draining the nation’s material resources and harming its morale.

When the war started, this caused all kinds of hardships. A hundred thousand reservists were called up in addition to the fifty thousand already called up. Many were sent to join my son and others in Lebanon, with all the hardship that this causes for them and their families. But there were also other kinds of hardships.

The airport shut down promptly at the beginning of the war, leaving countless Israelis stranded abroad, and countless non-Israelis stranded in Israel. There are a very, very small number of rescue flights, which are in turn only allowed to have a small number of people on them. There are many people desperate to return to their jobs and lives. Here’s a post which is typical of the sort of thing going around social media:

Amidst all these hardships - 150,000 men in reserve duty, people desperate to travel - an astonishing story appeared in the news. A video showed a rosh yeshiva by the name of R. Dovid Schaeffer drinking a l’chaim in the airport, as he escorted ninety of his students to Poland, in order to visit the grave of R. Elimelech of Lizhensk.

How on earth did they manage that?! It’s reported that one of the partners in El Al arranged it as a show of appreciation to Torah students.

People are furious. Media advisor Dvir Luzon, who is serving in the reserves, wrote, “They have called me up to the reserves. I left a woman at home who is still recovering from childbirth and a one-month-old baby, and I have no idea when I will see them again. But Rabbi Dovid Schaeffer flew 90 guys to vacation abroad… It’s spitting in the face of every reservist. Simply disgraceful.” Another person, comedian Matan Tzur, commented: “I don’t know how we will fix this rift, which parts of the charedi sector are literally creating with their own hands.”

But perhaps the most heartbreaking response came from Lalai Deri. She is a religious woman whose son Saadia hy”d was a yeshiva avreich who was called up for reserve duty to Gaza and killed. Lalai has been campaigning for the burden of army service to be shared by charedim. She quoted the famous prayer of the very R. Elimelech of Lizhensk whose grave they flew to visit, known by the extracted word Aderabba that Avraham Fried made into a song (presented in a recording below with a wonderful accompaniment by the Great Synagogue Choir and the Prague Symphony Orchestra). The part that Lalai Deri quoted was, “And let no hatred from one to another arise,” to which she added, “vehamayvin yavin (and the one who understands, understands).” Perhaps she was talking about people not feeling negativity towards the 90 guys who flew, but in light of her tragedy and her activism, I think perhaps she was making a different point - about being concerned for the feelings and well-being of others.

Personally, I would like to call attention to the words of R. Elimelech immediately proceeding the word Aderabba. He writes, “Let jealousy not enter our hearts, and let others not be jealous of us.” I suppose one way to stop people being jealous of you is to ask God to interfere with their emotions. But it’s presumably more basic - and I’m sure R. Elimelech would agree - to not do anything inappropriate that would understandably stir up jealousy and resentment. Such as dismissing all responsibility to share a difficult burden of national defense, and demonstrating a total lack of concern for the suffering of others by taking a much sought-after flight to leave the country for a spiritual vacation.

Meanwhile, while my son is actively involved in defending the country, I have a more modest role. Security regulations do not allow the full opening of the museum, but we have staff in anyway (the animals need care), and we are able to host very small numbers of people. Those who are able to come are deeply appreciative of the opportunity to have respite from the sirens and the craziness (aside from the tragedy in Beit Shemesh last week, yesterday there was another traumatic event next to Beit Shemesh which is still under military censorship).

Of course, keeping a museum alive while only servicing a small number of people is financially challenging. We are losing income from visitors every day that this continues. We need support so that we can continue our mission, ready to provide our unique brand of education, inspiration and connection. If you’d like to help, please donate at this link. Thank you! We look forward to a successful conclusion to the war and returning to full operations, hopefully in time for Pesach.

It’s remarkable. In Israel, where people are being killed and injured and economically harmed as a result of this war, there is broad support for it, across all party lines. In Iran, where innocent people are getting harmed in all kinds of ways by the Israel and US attacks, there is nevertheless overwhelming support from the people for these attacks by Israel and the US. Yet in the US and other countries, on the other hand, while this war is seen by some as obviously just and important and successful, it is seen by others as equally obviously unjust and unnecessary and disastrous. I think that there are a few reasons for this disparity.

One obvious reason is partisanship. The USA has become so partisan that for many people, the involvement of Trump consciously or subconsciously predetermines their views. If you’re devoted to him, he can do no wrong; if you hate him, he can do no right.

A second reason is a lack of understanding of the nature of war, born from lives that have only known comfort, and with little study of armed conflict. There were two striking examples of this.

One is the hit on the girls’ school on Iran. It’s not entirely clear how this happened; there’s lots of propaganda put out by both sides. But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it was a US missile. For some, this is clear evidence that the US is wrong in prosecuting this war. Innocent children were killed. It’s a war crime!

The reality of large scale conflict, however, is that such things inevitably happen. There are always mistakes. There are even always crimes. Among the Allied Forces, plenty of war crimes were committed in WWII. But it’s certainly not a goal of the US to massacre civilians! And thus a mistake, or even a crime, by the US does not remotely affect the legitimacy of the war. The focus should instead be on the Iranian regime, which actually does have the goal of killing innocent civilians; today they are firing cluster missiles all over Israel, as part of their genodical goal of destroying the country.

Another example is with the Iranian warship Dena, which was sunk by a US submarine on its way back from a joint international exercise in India. For some, this is proof of the illegitimacy of the Trump administration’s war. Destroying an unarmed ship participating in an exercise?! Leaving the sailors to drown?!

The reality, however, is otherwise. First, the ship was most certainly armed; the exercise required the weapons to be kept inactive, but after the exercise, the ship was armed and combat-ready with anti‑ship missiles, surface‑to‑air missiles, a 76 mm naval gun, and torpedo launchers. Second, even if it wouldn’t have been armed, it was a warship sailing under the Iranian flag into a zone of combat between the US and Iran! They had the option to claim themselves as a non-combatant and sail to a neutral port, and they chose not to do so. The ship was absolutely a legitimate target.

A third reason for the divergence of views on the war is that some people are focused on evaluating the perfection, or rather the lack thereof, of the war. A war should be fought with a clear strategy for permanent satisfactory accomplishments. And it’s far from clear that this war can achieve all the desired goals. Given the lack of organized and armed opposition in Iran, it’s unlikely that regime change will take place. And there will be numerous negative effects of this war, from rising oil prices to an increase in hatred towards Jews, who are presented by the Vice-President’s BFF as behind the war and will be blamed for it.

But the perfect is the enemy of the good. The fact is that we’re already in a conflict with a regime that is hell-bent on harming Israel and the US and the West in every way possible, in cooperation with Russia and China, and is steadily enhancing its ability to do that, and is almost at the point where it will be too costly to do anything to stop it (as described in my post Why The War Needed To Happen Now). We were nearly at the point of reaching another country as untouchable as North Korea, but far more aggressive, harmful and dangerous.

And so even if a permanent solution cannot be achieved, even if there are significant negative consequences to this war, it is absolutely right and sensible and crucial to seize the opportunity to at least deliver a crippling blow. Which is certainly being achieved, thanks to the combined forces of Israel and the US.

Israelis, who are more attuned to the nature of the Iranian regime and to the harsh realities of war, are therefore broadly supportive of this war. The same goes for the Iranians who have suffered from the regime. And while the Secretary-General of NATO is applauding Trump’s decision, most leaders would be too weak to take such a step, too eager to appease progressives/ Islamists, or too isolationist. (If the 2028 election is between Newsom and Vance, God help us.) We are very, very fortunate to at least currently have a US adminstration that is fighting alongside Israel in this war, notwithstanding all its shortcomings.

This week my son’s unit went into Lebanon, to protect us from the Hezbollah terrorists who want to kill us. Meanwhile, one of my nephews, who has five children under the age of ten and has been repeatedly called up for reserve duty due to the manpower shortage, this time was not (yet) called up - but his wife was called up, to the Home Front.

Yet we have to remember that it’s not only the men and women of the IDF who are making sacrifices that keep us all safe. It’s also the men and women of the US armed forces, which tragically suffered six losses this week.

I am therefore posting a modified version of the prayer for the IDF, shared by my former teacher Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Woolf. I encourage you to print it and have it recited in your shul this Shabbos.

מִי שֶׁבֵּרַךְ אֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ אַבְרָהָם יִצְחָק וְיַעֲקֹב, הוּא יְבָרֵךְ אֶת חַיָּלֵי צְבָא הַהֲגַנָּה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל ואֶת ידידינו האמיצים חַיָּלֵי צְבָא ארצות הברית. הָעוֹמְדִים עַל מִשְׁמַר אַרְצֵֽנוּ וְעָרֵי אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ, מִגְּבוּל הַלְּבָנוֹן וְעַד מִדְבַּר מִצְרַֽיִם, וּמִן הַיָּם הַגָּדוֹל עַד לְבוֹא הָעֲרָבָה וּבְכׇל מָקוֹם שֶׁהֵם, בַּיַּבָּשָׁה, בָּאֲוִיר וּבַיָּם. יִתֵּן ה׳ אֶת אוֹיְבֵֽינוּ הַקָּמִים עָלֵֽינוּ נִגָּפִים לִפְנֵיהֶם. הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא יִשְׁמְרֵם וְיַצִּילֵם מִכׇּל צָרָה וְצוּקָה, וּמִכׇּל נֶֽגַע וּמַחֲלָה, וְיִשְׁלַח בְּרָכָה וְהַצְלָחָה בְּכׇל מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵיהֶם. יַדְבֵּר שׂוֹנְאֵֽינוּ תַּחְתֵּיהֶם, וִיעַטְּרֵם בְּכֶֽתֶר יְשׁוּעָה וּבַעֲטֶֽרֶת נִצָּחוֹן. וִיקֻיַּם בָּהֶם הַכָּתוּב כִּי ה׳ אלוהיכם הַהֹלֵךְ עִמָּכֶם לְהִלָּחֵם לָכֶם עִם אֹיְבֵיכֶם לְהוֹשִֽׁיעַ אֶתְכֶם. וְנֹאמַר: אָמֵן

He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, may He bless the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, and our brave friends the soldiers of the United States Armed Forces, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God, from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea to the approach of the Aravah, and wherever they are, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.
May God cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighting men from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor. May He lead our enemies under their sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is Hashem, your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you. Now let us respond: Amen.

As I type these words, I am hearing massive booms, which are hopefully missiles being intercepted rather than hitting. We are so indebted to all the people who work in countless ways to keep us safe. May Hashem keep them safe.

I’ve never been a fan of Trump, but I (along with pretty much everyone in Israel) am extremely glad that he was in power to do this. Here are two pictures which, in conjunction, should explain why it was important to start a war, regardless of whether Congress would approve, and why it was important to happen as quickly as possible.

The first picture, from three days ago, is of an area that includes what used to be a synagogue atop a bomb shelter in my home city of Beit Shemesh:

That’s what happens when a ballistic missile is not intercepted. Even a bomb shelter doesn’t protect against the impact. Nine people died and many more were injured.

Why wasn’t the missile intercepted? It’s not clear, but what is clear is that Israel very much limits the firing of intercepters. The reason is that there simply aren’t enough.

The second picture is a chart which shows the rate of production of ballistic missiles, compared with the rate of production of missile interceptors, taken from an excellent article on the topic:

As can be seen, the rate of missile accumulation was sharply increasing, while the rate of interceptor production could not keep up. Pretty soon, any war with Iran would result in massive, unstoppable devastation to Israel and to US bases and other countries. And that’s even before they get nuclear warheads, which they were steadily working towards.

This was why it was essential to start this war (or rather, to fight back strongly against Iran’s 47-year war against Israel and America), and to do so as soon as possible. It’s not a certainty that it will result in regime change. But it is a certainty that it takes advantage of a fast-dwindling opportunity to massively degrade Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, along with a movement in Iran for regime change. And it is likely to create a situation where they will either be dissuaded from rebuilding the ballistic missile stockpile or prevented from doing so (via destroying the manufacturing plants, disrupting the supplies from China, etc.). And it’s certainly infinitely better than the previous situation, in which they were rapidly advancing to becoming untouchable and unstoppable.

That is why NATO chief Mark Rutte says there is broad backing among US European allies for Trump’s military campaign against Iran. The entire world, and especially Israel, is extremely fortunate to have a US president who (no matter what his reasons) was willing to join forces with Israel on this.

To quote Secretary of State Marco Rubio, from a speech that was widely distorted by having snippets quoted out of context:

“Was the US forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?”
Rubio: “No... No matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen — that's the question of 'why now?' But this operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage. Look at the damage they're doing now — and this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. So, that had to happen. Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it — but this had to happen no matter what.”

Since so many people do not grasp this point, please share this post with others.

We listened to Parashas Zachor, remembering how the tribe of Amalek tried to massacre us in the very first war of our national history, and we fought back. Amalek has become the symbolic epitome of the enemies of the Jewish People.

We used to be pretty unanimous about who those ultimate enemies are, but in recent years, different views have sprung up. A decade ago I reported about how R. Nissan Kaplan, a rebbe at the Mir who is popular with Americans (even those who profess to be supporters of the State of Israel), declared that Rav Steinman classified government ministers as Amalek and deserving to be killed. And this was merely one example of frequent labelling of politicians or court justices who seek to limit the charedi freeloading off the rest of Israel as being “Amalek.”

The baal kore punctiliously repeated the reading, in order to cover different views as to the precise pronunciation. And then, immediately after he finished, my older son got the call. He was being mobilized, along with his friends from his hesder yeshiva, to defend the northern border against any potential Hezbollah invasion. Had we been davening in our regular shul, where there are over 80 young men in IDF service, there would have been a swarm of departures, as happened on October 7th. But in this shul, there weren’t many other young men in the IDF; most of them would be staying in shul to continue their day and their lives as normal.

I left shul with my son to help him pack his bag and send him off. I was a lot more composed than I thought I would be, but my wife was weeping. My son hugged us and said, “Don’t worry, this is what I’ve been trained for.” We gave him berachos and off he went.

Afterwards, I was struck at how the first war in our national history is commemorated by different groups of Jews today.

There are people like the many dozens of young men in our shul who are truly walking in the footsteps of their ancestors, fighting as the Bnei Yisrael did to protect us from those who, like Amalek, are trying to kill us. They are not just reciting the Torah; they are living the Torah.

And then there are those for whom that’s just an abstract concept, with fighting against Amalek being merely something to punctiliously recite accurately, with no bearing on reality.

And then there are even those who rate the state and its supporters who are trying to fight Amalek as themselves being Amalek!

May God help protect our pilots, who have been placing themselves in great danger all day, along with my son and all our armed forces who work so hard and sacrifice so much to protect us from our enemies. And may all the Jewish People attain clarity on who those enemies are, and how we need to fight them.

Following “The Eagle Has Landed” and “The Elefant In The Room,” it’s time for another post with an animal aphorism in the title. But this time, the post is genuinely about the animal!

On Tuesday morning, a very rare event occurred in Israel. On the Zikim beach near Ashkelon, a dead whale washed up! I found out about it via my friends in the Nature Authority and zoomed over there.

They say that you should be prepared for whatever life may throw at you. But when I went to work that morning, I was not prepared for the possibility that I would end up in the ocean with a sperm whale. And so I was fully clothed instead of wearing a bathing suit. Lesson learned.

This was actually not the first time that I had encountered a beached whale. Five years ago, almost to the day, and also near Ashkelon, I had gone to inspect a fifty-foot fin whale. At the time, I said that having an encounter with a beached whale was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Apparently I was wrong (though I guess it was still a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the whale, to beach itself and have an encounter with me).

Still, this was a very different type of whale - a sperm whale. (And it was also still in the water, which made the entire experience very different.) Sperm whales are the blocky-headed carnivorous whales, the largest toothed predators on Earth, famous from Moby Dick and Pinnochio. At about thirty-five feet in length, this was half of the full size that this species of leviathan can reach.

Next week I will be posting a video in which I explain how, according to some, sperm whales are actually connected to next week’s parasha! But for today, here’s a video and some insights about whales in Tehillim, some photos and discussion about what happened with this whale, and a fascinating and revealing whale-charedim interaction that I observed:

Read more

Previously, I’ve previously written about “the elephant in the room” and I was being literal. This time, I’m writing both literally and metaphorically, depending on the spelling. (I cannot resist wordplay.)

Several people sent me the video of the Agudah Yerushalayim Yarchei Kallah, specifically the section about army service, featuring R. Yosef Elefant of the Mir Yeshiva. I’ll be honest, I could not bring myself to watch it. But then someone sent me a transcript, and I took a look.

There is, of course, a lot that can be said about it, and there will be other people doing so. I just want to focus on one thing. Before I do so, I will point out that R. Elefant, in his presentation, claimed that nobody, including himself, is actually allowed to have an opinion on this. Only the Charedi Gedolim™ are allowed to have opinions, because it’s “the ultimate Klal Yisroel issue… it’s about the clash of right and wrong and good and evil” (which, ironically, I think we all agree on), and only the Charedi Gedolim™ have pure Daas Torah views.

But he himself was nevertheless very open about his opinions! As is everyone else in the charedi world. And I’m going to also be open with mine. I happen to be of the school of thought, taught to me by an old-school charedi Rav, that everyone is entitled to have an opinion. (And I’m also of the school of thought, based on actual Jewish tradition, that wisdom involves a combination of innate characteristics, personal qualities, and is enhanced with diverse forms of knowledge, as opposed to the modern charedi innovation that it’s solely a result of zero diversity of knowledge.)

Of all R. Elefant’s nonsense and distortions and insincere claims, there is one particular line which stood out. It occurred in the middle of his central claim, that the entire controversy is about a Secular Zionist War Against Torah. In passing, he said as follows:

“This has nothing to do with a shortage of soldiers. It could be there is, it could be there isn’t, I have no idea.”

Are you kidding me???!!!

The shortage of soldiers is absolutely the central issue! Sure, there are some secularists who seize at any opportunity to create conflict with charedim. But for the majority of the country, the issue is the very real issue of the IDF manpower shortage!

(And the evidence is obvious. Before the current situation, many people, including myself, believed that as wrong and unfair as the charedi avoidance of army service is, it is nevertheless more important to get them into the workforce rather than drain the economy. Now, everything has changed, since Oct 7 revealed that the notion of a small, smart army was a mistake.)

How can he possibly downplay this?! This is the cause of hundreds of thousands of reservists having to go back to reserve duty again and again, at tremendous cost. This is why our sons will have to do a minimum of two and half months reserve duty every year until they are 45. This is why there is a huge Jewish majority against the Draft Exemption Law. Not because we want to make a war on Torah!

Perhaps even more revealing than R. Elefant downplaying the significance of the manpower shortage is his lack of knowledge as to whether it even exists! How can he not realize that the endless call-ups (which he references and professes sympathy for) with all their resultant suffering are precisely because of this reason?!

And even more outrageous is that not only does he downplay it, not only is he ignorant of it, but he didn’t even care to take the very simple step of finding out the facts about this crucial point before giving a presentation on the topic!

Of course, we know the reason why he downplays it, why he professes ignorance, why he doesn’t even care to find out. It’s because the very real and very consequential IDF manpower shortage totally demolishes everything that he has to say. When there is a tremendous cost that needs to be paid by the nation, you don’t get to opt out and thereby increase the burden tremendously for everyone else merely because it’s challenging for your particular religious approach (and kal v’chomer not to demand payment for this!).

This is not the wise leadership of Daas Torah. This is stupidity born of wilful ignorance and societal selfishness.

It’s stamped by the “Palestinian Authority” (and will apparently soon be changed to “State of Palestine”) and features its emblematic eagle. This might strike you as odd, given Bibi’s insistence that the PA will not be involved with Gaza.

And then there’s the official logo for the new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG):

Does it look familiar? It should, because the main part of is identical to this:

That’s the official emblem of both the PLO and the PA.

Meanwhile, the eagle featured in this emblem is a heraldic eagle that also serves as the coat of arms in other Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. It is known as “The Eagle of Saladin,” after a carving on an Egyptian citadel built during his 12th century reign and believed to have been his emblem.

Saladin was the Kurdish Sultan of Egypt who was obsessed with jihad and led the Muslim fight against the Crusaders in Palestine. The Eagle of Saladin later became re-popularized in the Arab world following the Egyptian revolution against the British and its attacks on Israel. Arab leaders drew direct parallels between their own battle and that of Saladin in Palestine. It’s an important symbol for Arab victory, whether over Crusaders, British colonalists or Zionists. Israel protested the use of Saladin’s eagle in the NCAG’s emblem, but it’s still there.

None of this is particularly surprising. After all, Qatar is heavily involved. Trump praised the Qataris at the opening “Board of Peace” session for the NCAG as people who do “so much good” and just need better PR, but the truth is that they are Islamic fundamentalists who finance everything from Al Jazeera to Hamas. Consequently, as Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib pointed out, the NCAG is “filled by Hamas sycophants who literally cheered on the terror group's field executions and violent thuggery during the war and after the ceasefire. The Board of Peace continues to head in a troubling direction that'll ensure Hamas's continued rule and governance over Gaza, with zero prospects for disarmament, deradicalization, or demilitarization.”

Whatever happened to Bibi’s promises of “absolute victory” and no Hamas or Palestinian Authority involvement in Gaza?!

Well, all of that was clearly just another case of a politician making false promises. And it’s not difficult to see why it happened. Bibi was incapable of creating or even articulating a “day after” plan for Gaza (due to his coalition relying on people with delusional objectives), and so Trump and the Qataris stepped in. The hostages were only released because Trump imposed a “deal,” and Hamas went along with it because they realized that Trump would deliver their survival.

Clearly, Bibi is neither capable of delivering on his promises, nor the person who is as amazing for Israel’s security as he claims to be. (You’d think that people would realize that after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but apparently not everyone does.)

Meanwhile, on Bibi’s political right is a party called Otzma Yehudit, claiming to stand for Jewish Strength. One of its MKs just posted a photo of herself breaking the law and entering Gaza to plant a tree as an initial act of “settlement”:

This was met with a furious backlash from IDF soldiers who had to endanger themselves in order to extract her.

An MK endangering soldiers’ lives in a crime against the State of Israel is not an example of either “Jewish Strength” or even Zionism. But it is a perfect example of the anti-Zionism, anarchy, and reckless dangerous folly that is embodied by her party.

The idea that the current government is “good for Israel’s security” is delusional, even aside from it empowering the rapidly growing anti-Zionist charedi sector to collapse the economy and military.