It is indeed correct that the Torah has preserved the Jewish People over history. But Amsalem’s mistake is presuming that the Torah which did that is identical to the Torah of the charedi community today. Not only is it not identical, it’s not even remotely similar. In fact, it is pretty much the exact opposite.

While Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, there are two very different Torahs being celebrated this week. Some will be celebrating the festival of the giving of this one:

• A Torah which encompasses both our obligations to God and our obligations to man, in order to create a just society;

• A Torah whose study is described by the Sages and the Rishonim as being for the purpose of knowing and fulfilling the mitzvos;

• A Torah which Rabbi Akiva encapsulates with “love your neighbor as yourself” - do for him that which you yourself would want;

• A celebration which takes place on the day of the harvest, the culmination of our work to provide for ourselves, undertaken with full effort along with God’s help;

• A festival which is marked with the reading of Megillat Rut, about a young woman who forgoes the opportunity for safety and security and puts herself out with selfless commitment to the Jewish People;

• A festival which follows a parasha that talks at length about the tribes being drafted into the army, which is appreciated as something of great value, the ultimate expression of chessed;

• A celebration of a Torah which is epitomized in our heroic young (and older) people who, both despite and because of their love for studying Torah, understand that putting Torah into practice means making sacrifices with their learning, careers, family life and potentially their health and (God forbid) even their lives, in order to enable the Jewish People to survive, as we have seen so powerfully in the last three years.

(Above: Zecharia Haber, the epitome of a Torah scholar, who also authored a special zemer to sing on Shavuot. He gave his life in Gaza on behalf of the Jewish People.)

Others, however, are celebrating the giving of a very different Torah:

• A Torah which is to be studied all day long for many decades by all young men in the community, primarily for the purpose of (allegedly) increasing their personal knowledge of Torah, as per the innovative redefinition of Torah lishmah created by R. Chaim of Volozhin;

• The above Torah study being in place of their having any serious responsibilities to supporting their families or to helping the Jewish People, no matter what crises are happening (except for political campaigns, in which case they have to leave the Beis HaMidrash and engage in full hishtadlus);

• A Torah which despite all its stress on honesty and Chazal’s stress on raising one’s children to be self-supportive, tells them that they should create a society that relies on others to support them instead and which engages in deception to get money from everyone else;

• A Torah which despite supposedly making them grow intellectually, produces “Gedolim” with absolutely no plan for their community to survive economically, no matter how much hardship this is causing for them, and certainly without any thought for the long-term consequences;

• A Torah which despite supposedly making them grow spiritually, produces “Gedolim” who declare that religious Zionist soldiers are killed in Gaza because they were taught “warped Torah”;

• A Torah which despite supposedly making them grow ethically, produces “Gedolim” who tell their followers that they shouldn’t help relieve the ever-growing crushing burden on those who are making endless sacrifices for us all, no matter how many broken lives and suicides this causes, and that they shouldn’t even do chessed for them, or even show any concern or gratitude for them.

It’s two different Torahs. One of them is something beautiful, an elixir of life that preserved us from Biblical times through to today. The other is a poison, a modern aberration which threatens to end us.

Those who are celebrating the former are part of the thousands of years of sacrifice and tradition that makes up the Jewish People and kept us going. May they receive all the blessings of Torah. And I wish them a chag sameach.

I suspect that outside of Israel, people only think about that cost in terms of the casualties and devastation caused by ballistic missiles. Here in Beit Shemesh we are particularly sensitive to that, with nine people having been killed by one missile that was not intercepted, along with two other missiles that hit in our area without casualties but causing considerable damage. (Unnervingly, I triangulated the center of the three points of impact, and got my home address.) But there are other types of suffering which, while less serious than being hit by a ballistic missile, are far more widespread.

There are the people working in the tourism industry - guides, hotels, other businesses - who suffer enormous loss of business, again. There are the children who suffer the trauma of war and who missed school for even more weeks in six years of craziness. There are the parents of these children who have to juggle their jobs alongside having the kids at home all day. In an example of the black humor that is prevalent in Israel, when it was reported about how the IRGC started accepting 12-year-olds for military training, one Israeli mother commented לפחות יש להם מסגרת - “At least they’re in a framework!”

In the weeks since the war abated, it’s been heartwarming to see the schools returning to visiting my museum, the Biblical Museum of Natural History. The museum’s hands-on, experiential tours allow children to step into a world where Torah, nature, and the Land of Israel come alive. Holding a bearded dragon is a magical experience for them. For many students, these visits are not only educational—they are uplifting and therapeutic after a difficult period.

At the same time, this year has brought significant challenges to the museum. The war lost us vital income during what is usually one of our busiest seasons. And while the demand from schools is now high, such visits need to be heavily subsidized in order to ensure accessibility. Most schools, especially chareidi schools, simply don’t have the budget.

If you believe, as we do, in helping these children reconnect to learning, nature and their national identity in a joyful way, please help to make these visits possible.

A gift of:

• $20 sponsors a visit for one child

• $100 sponsors visits for 5 children

• $500 supports a class of 25 students

• $1000 supports an entire bus of 50 students

Thank you! Here is a photo of a group enjoying learning about hippos and crocodiles from one of our wonderful guides. (There is a very interesting story about this particular crocodile, which arrived at the museum last year, but it’s I cannot post it here because it’s a sensitive matter and these posts appear publicly on the internet. If you’re a paid subscriber, then you’re able to read it in the paywall-locked section below that does not appear online.)

Please donate here to give children the chance to get out, learn, explore, and reconnect with their heritage in a meaningful and memorable way!

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The Kiddush Times is a wonderful new weekly publication. It’s printed in English and distributed to about 400 Anglo communities in Israel, and available online for others. The magazine represents the more open side of the Dati-Leumi spectrum (which is still very different from Modern Orthodoxy in the United States). It features articles by such figures as Rav David Stav, Rav Tamir Granot, Rav Yaakov Meidan, and Rav Sacks ztz”l, along with female Torah educators such as Rabbanit Michal Tikochinsky, and an eclectic range of columns including political commentary by Ben Shapiro, insights into the Arab world by Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a dating column, perspectives on aliyah, a monthly column by yours truly, and more.

Anyway, this past week’s issue discussed a topic that was prominent in parashat Bamidbar. It’s something in the Torah that is remarkably shocking and unthinkable for the community which calls itself “the Torah community”: that the entire nation is counted for military service (except for the Levites, who were not included in the fighting for the conquest of the land, but were certainly involved in other ways and fought in wars of survival). The magazine included a fascinating essay by Rav Stav, but it’s the cover art that I want to discuss. I don’t know to what extent it was AI-generated, but it’s fascinating!

The picture portrays four lines at the “BaKuM,” which stands for Basis Klita u’Miyun, the IDF military base where new recruits are processed. Sadly, but reflecting reality, the charedi line has only one person it. But let’s focus on the graphics used to symbolize the four streams of Israeli society.

We’ll start with “Secular,” represented by the blank outline of a person. I presume that this meant that secular people are the “basic level” of person without additional identity. But I’m not thrilled about this, because this image is not about random people, it’s about Zionist Israelis who are enlisting in the IDF. So I would have liked to see something which illustrates that - perhaps a Star of David.

Then we get to “Masoratim” - traditional Jews. The image is of a person wearing a kippah. This is interesting, because such Jews often do not wear a kippah, as indeed you see with the people standing in line! Still, I think it’s effective, because it conveys the idea that the person has a strong connection to religious identity, which is true of mesoratim.

Then we get to Dati-Leumi (national-religious) and charedi. And here’s where it gets really interesting.

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In the 17th century, Charles Morton hypothesized that the birds were leaving every year and traveling somewhere. His specific theory was that they were spending winter on the moon. Confirmation of the travel hypothesis, albeit with a different destination, came in 1822. A stork was found in Germany with an African spear through its neck - which hadn’t stopped it from flying to Germany! It was shot, stuffed and sent to a museum, where it can still be seen today.

But thousands of years earlier in Tanach, people knew that birds were traveling every year (which might be because Eretz Yisrael was the place of a twice-annually migration route, rather than the home for birds for half the year). Possibly the earliest reference in recorded history to bird migration was made by the prophet Jeremiah. This was when he contrasts the reliability of birds with the disloyalty of the Jewish people that led to the destruction of the First Temple and Jerusalem:

“The stork in the heavens also knows her appointed time, and the turtledove and the swift and the crane have observed the time of their arrival...” (Jeremiah 8:7)

One bird mentioned by Jeremiah in this verse is the swift—a fast-flying bird similar to a swallow, with long narrow wings and a forked tail. Their speed and agility in the air as they catch insects is astonishing. And they never stop flying, even to sleep, other than to nest.

In Israel, the annual swift migration is prominently visible at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where there are about eighty nests in the upper section of the wall. A chick ready to leave the nest drops itself from a height, gathers momentum, and takes flight. The nest accordingly needs to be high up, making the great Western Wall an ideal location. Another advantage is the large number of worshipers, who create a rising current of hot air that helps the swifts fly.

I find all this absolutely extraordinary. Jeremiah mentioned this in Biblical times. And here we are, descendants of Jeremiah’s people, in the very same land, seeing the descendants of Jeremiah’s swifts in the same migration!

A few years ago, the Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Mayor of Jerusalem, along with the Society for the Protection of Nature and representatives of youth movements, initiated a ceremony to welcome the birds. Their annual return to Jerusalem, observed by the descendants of Jeremiah nearly three thousand years after he referenced it in the context of the fall of Jerusalem, is celebrated as a reminder of the yearning that Jews felt over the millennia to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it. It is a dream that, miraculously, finally came true.

(Adapted from my new book, The Lions of Zion: Biblical Natural History and the Significance of Israel, which you can purchase from Amazon but preferably and more cheaply from the museum website.)

(Meanwhile, on the topic of interacting with amazing animals, there are Sherut Leumi opportunities available at the Biblical Museum of Natural History next year. For details, write to office@biblicalnaturalhistory.org.)

In the course of the conversation, I pointed out that one of the challenges of training birds of prey is that they are only motivated by food. Accordingly, falconers use scales to measure exactly how much the bird weighs, because it will only perform when it is sufficiently hungry. I offhandedly mentioned that the English term “fed up” comes from falconry; it refers to a bird that has had enough to eat and is therefore uncooperative.

At this point, my youngest daughter interrupted. “Aba, that sounds totally made up! What proof do you have that that’s where ‘fed up’ comes from?”

Well, I didn’t remember where I read it, and I didn’t actually have any proof. But, as I explained to her, it’s a plausible historical explanation for a term that is otherwise difficult to explain, so why not believe it? Plus, it’s not as though there is any drawback to accepting it as the explanation.

The correct approach to evaluating claims is of particular significance with another animal-related matter - the accusation by Nick Kristoff in the New York Times that Israel’s prison officers used dogs to rape male Palestinian prisoners. It fills me with disgust to write about it. But there are unfortunately dangerous falsehoods that need to be straightened out.

The story was met with widespread derision. Kristoff responded by citing references in scientific literature to dogs having intercourse with humans, including one that was trained by a specialist dog trainer to sexually assault women under Pinochet’s regime in Chile. But, without getting into gruesome detail, suffice it to say that the stories were not comparable. There are physical differences between male and female humans, and physical and behavioral differences between male humans and male dogs, alongside other differences in circumstances and in the descriptions of what happened in each case. And the general view of experts in canine behavior (as a simple AI query will tell you) is that dogs cannot be trained to rape men.

Now, here’s where some people go wrong. Pro-Israel and anti-Israel people get into arguments about whether it is categorically impossible that Kristoff’s account is true. But that’s not the correct argument to be had.

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Thirty years ago I was very confident that the anti-Torah evolutionists were wrong. After all, I had read an essay by an Orthodox Jewish scientist documenting the Piltdown Man hoax. This “discovery” of the skull of a primitive caveman was presented in 1912 as clear evidence of the evolutionary link between apes and humans. Although there were immediately reasons to be suspicious, it was widely accepted as authentic for decades, until it was conclusively demonstrated to be fabricated from a combination of skull parts of a human, an orangutan, and a chimpanzee. With a scam like this, and other fraudulent claims that I read about, what more evidence was needed that evolutionists were a bunch of frauds, and there was no reason to believe in evolution?

A few years later, when I discovered that there was actually no theological reason to object to evolution, that God (according to the rationalist approach) prefers to work through nature, and that the idea of man evolving from animals actually has strong conceptual support in traditional Torah sources, I realized that I had been looking at things the wrong way. Yes, there were cases of fraud and overstated claims. But this did not mean that there was not also a wealth of evidence in favor of common ancestry. I had been misled by my inclination to divide people into two categories, anti-Torah and pro-Torah, and to see everything through this lens. (I describe the evidence for evolution, and the theological issues, in my famously banned book The Challenge Of Creation, available on Amazon but better and more cheaply purchased at the museum website.)

There were tribes of primitive cavemen. But while we have evolved since then, we still have primitive tribal instincts. We have powerful inclinations to classify everyone as friend or enemy, and then to assess everything in that light. And this means that if someone makes a false and harmful claim, we rate them as “enemy,” and then discount absolutely everything they say, rather than accepting Rambam’s maxim that one should accept the truth from wherever it comes.

There have been some particularly powerful examples of this relating to Israel - some with us, some with our opponents.

After October 7th, some people from prominent Jewish organizations spread stories about Hamas having beheaded 40 babies, and this was subsequently widely repeated. But it turned out to be fabricated. As a result, other people declared that all reports of Hamas atrocities were likewise false. Needless to say, this is not the case. A particularly horrific study of Hamas atrocities was just released today.

Switching to the other side, there have been wild exaggerations, fabrications and context-missing accusations about “settler violence” for years. Many Jews therefore claim that there is little or no truth to it at all. But, as with Piltdown Man, the lies and exaggerations from our enemies do not mean that there is not also a genuine phenomenon. Seeking clarity, I decided to join a WhatsApp group of the people said to engage in such violence. I saw for myself that they are not at all shy to talk about it and even post photos.

A similar case just occurred yesterday. The New York Times, which is always eager to focus on Israeli rather than Palestinian wrongdoings, and has a history of egregious reporting on Israel, published a story about shocking abuse of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. The author relied on utterly unreliable haters of Israel for stories that lack evidence and even basic credibility. (UPDATE: And it seems that the agenda may was to distract from the new report about Hamas’ sexual violence on Oct 7.) Many Jews are therefore saying that the entire claim about prisoner abuse is false.

Yet none other than the Public Defender’s Office of Israel’s Justice Ministry released reports showing that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons have suffered from severe and systematic violence from prison guards, deprivation of food, and medical neglect. This was published in The Times of Israel, which is not exactly an anti-Israel outlet. Other reliable pro-Israel sources, while pointing out the unreliability of the NYT’s extreme claims, likewise acknowledge that there is a genuine problem of prisoner abuse.

And it’s hardly surprising. Itamar Ben Gvir, who has been given authority over the Israel Prison Service, has repeatedly boasted of the harsh conditions he has imposed on Palestinian detainees and prisoners. In part, he may have been rectifying too much leniency that was formerly granted, but it would hardly surprising if someone like him has gone much too far in the other direction.

Is it upsetting to think that Israel has problems? Of course. But let’s be realistic. Why would Israel be immune from problems? Is any country immune from problems? Abuse of security detainees happens all over the world, even worse in non-democracies, but also including in Western nations such as France, the UK and the US; this is not to excuse it, but there is no reason to think that Israel would be immune. And especially when undertrained reservists are called up to guard prisoners, after having seen Hamas’ terrible atrocities, we can only expect that abuse will happen (again, this is not to say that it should not be punished). There are all kinds of problems all over the world, and it is only to be expected that not only will Israel have its own share, but it will also have its own share of problems that are more serious than in some other countries, as every country does.

People are subconsciously afraid that if they acknowledge problems in their home team, it means that we are the “bad guys” or that we have “lost.” But this is simplistic. No nation is perfect. Problems exist with every nation, some of which will be particularly prominent with certain nations. It doesn’t mean that we have no legitimacy, or that we are not overall pursuing a just cause under very difficult circumstances and the most horrific genocidal threats, or that we have not often excelled ethically. And it’s obvious that much of the world engages in delegitimization, demonization, and double standards with regard to Israel (note that the Palestinian Authority has never prosecuted anyone for attacks on Jews, and has instead even paid the families of those convicted by Israel for doing so). But it’s simultaneously true that we should be striving for the highest standards, which is not the case with many people who currently wield power.

And so this is the repeating pattern. One side makes exaggerated and false claims. The other side responds by denying the phenomenon entirely. Everyone takes the most extreme positions, supporting their “home team” fully and rejecting the claims of the enemy team entirely.

We need to avoid primitive tribalism. And we need to be honest rather than reactive and acknowledge problems in our own camps. And it’s not just because that gives us more credibility; it’s also because it’s the right thing to do.

Last week some of the belongings of my youngest daughter, together with her friend’s cellphone, were burned to ashes. This happened after they left them in a box that wasn’t far enough from a Lag B’Omer bonfire made by another group of kids that subsequently blazed further than expected. Of course, it’s annoying. But, notwithstanding that I am a Lag B’Omer Grinch, I was immensely happy that my daughter was there - because she was there with her friend in their role as counselors for a bunch of kids in the Ariel youth movement.

Social scientist Jonathan Haidt, who lately has been writing about the challenges facing children in modern society, recently published a guest post by Seth Kaplan about the importance of youth movements. Kaplan notes that youth movements have a “proven ability to cultivate independence, belonging, leadership, and joy.” He says that they should be rated “not as optional enrichment, but as essential infrastructure for growing up.” Kaplan explains that youth movements “give children meaningful roles (not just symbolic ones): organizing younger kids, managing equipment, resolving conflicts, planning activities, running meetings, and so on. Responsibility and competence are learned by doing, and kids quickly learn that they matter to the functioning of the group.”

Kaplan laments that in America, youth groups such as the Boy Scouts have seen sharp decline in enrollment. And he notes that there is one country in which youth movements are particularly prominent: Israel. He notes that research has shown that that such youth groups function “not only as sites of frequent peer interaction and independence, but also as training grounds for cooperation, leadership, and resilience long before formal adulthood begins.”

Kaplan is not the only one to note Israel’s outstanding success in this area. Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s wonderful book, The Genius of Israel, is all about solving the riddle of how Israelis manage to lead lives of great fulfillment and resilience despite being subject to significant stresses and burdens. One of the chapters discusses the prominence of youth movements in Israel. Senor and Singer observe that they play a tremendous role in forging social connections, teamwork, and responsibility.

All five of my children have participated in youth movements, most of them also as counselors, and they have grown tremendously from it. These movements include Ariel, Ezra, HaShomer HaChadash, and the Sabavta movement that my eldest daughter co-founded and which is now up to twenty branches. Other prominent Israeli youth movements include Tzofim (scouts), HaShomer HaTzair, and of course Bnei Akiva. Some of these movements are specifically for the national-religious community, others are geared towards secular Israelis but have religious branches. All of them are wonderful.

Then there are the charedi youth movements.

I know of one small new excellent such movement, unsurprisingly coming from the wonderful Netzach network which is at the forefront of creating a new charedi societal model. It could be that there are others that also fulfill the important and valuable social and psychological functions described above. But many and perhaps most charedi youth movements, according to the latest reports, can only be described as evil. And that harsh description has nothing to do with the messaging that they teach.

It’s because they don’t actually exist.

To clarify: They exist on paper. They have an enormous number of children registered in them - more than 75% of all youth organization members in the entire country! And they receive many tens of millions of shekels in taxpayer funding annually from the government and other sources. But they don’t actually exist in real life. There are barely any activities or meetings - often none at all. Just signatures on forms, and instructions to counselors on how to fool inspectors.

This shocking revelation came to light a few months ago and is now the subject of an appeal made to the High Court against the Education and Finance ministries. Journalist Yoeli Brim further published a letter he received from a mother of a Beis Yaakov student who was asked to sign a form that her daughter attends activities in the Pirchei HaDegel youth group, even though there were no such activities.

To be honest, it’s shocking but not surprising. After all, charedi MKs recently openly boasted that they were able to trick their parliamentary opponents into transferring funds for something that they did not actually intend to support. (On another occasion, I’ll elaborate more upon the endless ways in which the charedi community has figured out how to obtain extensive funding from the rest of society, ethically or otherwise, and the reasons why they don’t care about this being against the Torah.)

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to my son coming home tomorrow for a two-day break from Lebanon, along with a friend whose parents transferred their children from the charedi education system to the dati-leumi system - and who couldn’t be prouder of their choice, even with their worries for their son’s safety.

My late father grew up watching his natural history documentaries. I grew up watching them. My youngest son grew up watching them. Three generations, all educated and inspired about the natural world by the same person!

What is the magic of Sir David? It’s something that I try to do myself, and which I teach all the guides at the Biblical Museum of Natural History is the most important part of their role as guide. Sir David imparts passion and enthusiasm.

But his main goal is to encourage people to have concern for the natural world. In this, I think, he is reminiscent of his namesake. The original David was a shepherd, and the Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 2:2) states that it was precisely for this reason that he was chosen by God to be leader, just as with Moses. As the Midrash says: “The Holy One said: You have compassion in leading sheep in this way – By your life! You shall shepherd My flock, Israel.”

Caring about the natural world is unfortunately not so fashionable in most of Orthodox Jewish society today. The reasons for this are obvious. One is that many Jews, especially if they live in Israel, have much more pressing concerns. The other is that people at the forefront of the animal welfare and environmental movements are often very hostile to Jews; Britain’s “Green Party,” which was originally all about the environment, is now primarily all about being anti-Israel.

Yet of course there are many statements in the Torah and Jewish tradition about both compassion to animals, and about the importance of respecting and caring for the natural world. At the Biblical Museum of Natural History we have signs explaining the 18 mitzvot that related to compassion and senstivity to animal life, along with posters displaying statements from Chazal about this.

It’s perhaps fitting that Sir David is such a prominent advocate on behalf of endangered species, since he’s somewhat of an endangered species himself: a good Englishman who isn’t antisemitic or Israelopathic. (And this despite working for the BBC!) His family took in two Jewish children from the Kindertransport and fostered them for seven years - Sir David refers to them as his “sisters” - and he has never joined the vogue of bashing Israel. Indeed, when he met Naftali Bennett a few years ago, his esteem for Israel was clear:

Happy 100th birthday, Sir David. And thank you.

Through all my many years of learning in charedi yeshivos, it was made very clear that physical strength is goyish. “Hakol kol Yaakov, vehayadayim yedei Eisav” - “The voice is the voice of Yaakov, the hands are the hands of Eisav.” Jewish strength is found in Torah and prayer, not in physical might. “These by the chariot and horse, but we mention the Name of God!” “Muscular Judaism” was invented by the post-Orthodox Zionist Max Nordau in order to reform traditional Judaism. Jews don’t fight!

That, of course, is the very clear message being sent out by the charedi world today in Israel. They believe, or at least profess to believe, that it’s Torah (specifically, the Torah of tens of thousands of charedim aged 18-26) which is actually protecting Israel against its enemies, via supernatural means. As the Gedolim of Agudas Yisrael declared, “Every Blatt Gemara is a missile, every Tosafos is a rocket, every Kapitel Tehillim is a bomb.” You even see imagery like this:

But what about all the seemingly physical wars in Tanach? The general charedi perspective is that those were actually being conducted via mystical powers. There were only thirteen Maccabees, and they conquered the Greeks by wielding supernatural abilities. Real heroes are those who are powerful in Torah. When Gedolei Torah die, the posters declare איך נפלו גיבורים, “how the mighty have fallen” - a phrase that we shall return to later.

But in the course of my studies of Biblical natural history, I discovered something that clearly refutes this perspective - and simultaneously shows how it developed.

Av HaRachamim, “Father of Mercy,” is a memorial prayer recited during the Shabbat morning prayers. It was composed around eight hundred years ago after the destruction of German Jewish communities during the First Crusade, and the first part reads as follows:

אַב הָרַחֲמִים שׁוכֵן מְרומִים, בְּרַחֲמָיו הָעֲצוּמִים הוּא יִפְקד בְּרַחֲמִים הַחֲסִידִים וְהַיְשָׁרִים וְהַתְּמִימִים, קְהִלּות הַקּדֶשׁ שֶׁמָּסְרוּ נַפְשָׁם עַל קְדֻשַּׁת הַשֵּׁם, הַנֶּאֱהָבִים וְהַנְּעִימִים בְּחַיֵּיהֶם וּבְמותָם לא נִפְרָדוּ, מִנְּשָׁרִים קַלּוּ מֵאֲרָיות גָּבֵרוּ לַעֲשות רְצון קונָם וְחֵפֶץ צוּרָם.

“The merciful Father who dwells on high will compassionately take note of the pious, the upright, and the pure, the holy congregations who sacrificed their lives in the sanctification of God, who were beloved and cherished in their lives, and who are not parted in their deaths; they were lighter than griffon vultures and mightier than lions in performing the will of their Creator and the desire of their Maker.”

Now, when a prayer uses a verse from Scripture, many siddurim provide a reference to show the source. But in most (but not all) siddurim that I have seen, there is no reference provided in the above text. Yet it does include a verse, albeit very slightly modified. The verse is “who were beloved and cherished in their lives, and who are not parted in their deaths; they were lighter than griffon vultures and mightier than lions.”

Do you recognized where it comes from? It’s from David’s stirring eulogy for Saul and his son Jonathan:

“Saul and Jonathan, who were beloved and cherished in their lives, and who are not parted in their deaths; they were lighter than griffon vultures, stronger than lions!” (II Samuel 1:23)

It’s fascinating to contrast, however, the usage of the phrase about lions and griffon vultures in this prayer with the original meaning of the phrase in David’s eulogy.

David was praising the physical agility and power of Saul and Jonathan. This is something elaborated upon by Malbim and which I discussed in an earlier post titled Torah vs. Daas Torah, but it’s also clear from the full context:

“From the blood of slain, from the fat of warriors—the bow of Jonathan never turned back; the sword of Saul never withdrew empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and cherished, never parted in life or in death! They were lighter than griffon vultures, stronger than lions… How the mighty have fallen, in the thick of battle.” (II Samuel 1:22-25)

Yet the author of the Av HaRachamim prayer employed this reference to the lion and griffon vulture as referring to spiritual rather than physical attributes. This is in line with the famous Mishnah in Avot, the subject of a spectacular synagogue art exhibit at the Biblical Museum of Natural History:

“Yehuda ben Tema said: Be as brazen as a leopard, as light as a griffon vulture, as swift as a gazelle, and as powerful as a lion, to do the will of your Father in heaven.”

The reason for this is clear. Unlike Saul and Jonathan, the Jews who were killed in medieval Europe did not die as warriors. They were simply helpless people that were slaughtered. However, the author of the memorial prayer wanted to eulogize them as righteous people and martyrs, and it’s traditional to draw on Biblical verses to create texts. Accordingly, he used David’s eulogy, and added some words in order to adapt its meaning as per Yehudah ben Teima – “they were lighter than griffon vultures and mightier than lions in performing the will of their Creator.”

This is greatly representative of the larger transformation of the Jewish People that took place after the fall of Judea. During Biblical times, when the Jewish People took on and held sovereignty over the land, it required physical strength to defend it. Accordingly, the Jewish People had soldiers and armies. In this context, military abilities were something to be praised. True, the Jewish People always looked to God for Divine assistance, that would enable them to triumph even if the odds were stacked against them. But physical prowess was still something important and praiseworthy.

But when Rome took over Judea, military power was no longer an option. Worse – those Jews that attempted to use it to overthrow Roman rule ended up with catastrophic failure. The Rabbis of that era, fearful of Roman power and of the potential consequences of further Jewish rebellion, downplayed the value of physical power in Judaism. No longer were Jews to emulate the physical strength of the lion, as used by Biblical heroes; instead, the strength of the lion was to be metaphorically emulated in terms of the spirit. Heroes were rabbis and righteous people rather than warriors.

Yet two thousand years later, things changed again. Fleeing the horrors of Europe, inspired by the spirit of nationalism that arose in the 19^th century, Jews ended up making it back to the Land of Israel and seeking to reconstitute themselves as a nation. They trained fighters to protect themselves, first against marauding Arabs, then against British colonial powers, and finally against Arab national armies. Physical power and military prowess returned to being relevant and valuable.

Once again it was apt to use David’s reference to the lion and griffon vulture with the original meaning. Books and monuments dedicated to Jews who fell in the heroic physical defense of their nation employed David’s phraseology. These men were lighter than griffon vultures and mightier than lions not just in performing the will of their Creator, but also in their physical agility and strength, just as David described. History had come full circle.

I will be including the above in the next edition of The Lions of Zion. It will also appear in the Hebrew translation of this book, which is nearly ready for publication. We already have some sponsors who are eager to participate in bringing this work to an Israeli audience, but we are looking for a few more - if you’d like to be involved, please be in touch!

Meanwhile, I have some more to say about this, but it’s too sensitive to be out in public and thus it’s limited for paid subscribers.

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Many people find it difficult to get excited about Lag B’Omer. It’s sometimes described as the day on which the person who didn’t write the Zohar didn’t die, celebrated at the place where he isn’t buried.

What about the cessation of the plague that killed Rabbi Akiva’s students? There is a medieval tradition that this plague ended on Lag B’Omer. But it is difficult to present this as being a reason for celebration; the plague ended because they had all died!

The fact is that traditionally, Lag B’Omer was never anything other than a very minor festival, the ultimate reasons for which have been lost to history. Only in the last few decades was it inflated to a major celebration of spirituality, mysticism and pyromania.

Does that really matter? Should the inaccuracies and ignorance prevent a spiritual celebration? No, not necessarily. If Lag B’Omer were to be a valuable spiritual celebration, and with there being no other considerations, I for one would not nitpick about its historical origins.

But is this the case?

Rav Eliezer Melamed, while presenting the standard reasons for celebrating Lag B’omer with bonfires and visiting Meron, notes that many great Torah scholars disregard such customs. And in a lecture delivered some time ago, he criticized the phrase “aliyah to Meron”; aliyah is something that we do to Har HaBayit. He also stated that the celebrations which take place at Meron are not simcha shel mitzvah.

Still, there is no doubt that mysticism is something to find a day to celebrate, especially if you’re mystically inclined. And singing and dancing around a bonfire can create an ecstatic high. For rationalists in the path of Rambam, and especially if they are grumpy Englishmen like me, this is generally not their kind of spiritual high. But I suppose that for others, it is beneficial in that way.

Nevertheless, I think it’s difficult to detach Lag B’Omer from the Meron disaster of 2021; the worst civilian tragedy in the history of Israel. And this is especially because the tragedy, to a certain degree, happened precisely as a result of mystical thinking.

It was mystical thinking which led Aryeh Deri to claim that those who opposed him opening up the site for tens of thousands of people during Covid didn’t understand the protective merit created by Rav Shimon bar Yochai. It was a lack of appreciation for the reality of the laws of nature and scientific expertise which meant that religious askanim didn’t care about the science of hosting very large crowds at venues that do not conform to safety protocols. People who are focused on mysticism and miracles tend not to have very high regard for the laws of science and the natural way of the world.

(Indeed, a similar phenomenon is taking place this year. Due to rocket and missile fire from Hezbollah, the authorities decided to close Meron for this year’s celebrations. This has not prevented many thousands from trying to sneak in.)

And there’s a further reason to give more consideration to the Meron tragedy: it was a microcosm of the disaster that faces the entire country. When Meron hosted just a few thousand people, there was little need to think about engineering and the science of crowd control. But scaling up to tens or hundreds of thousands requires a whole different way of thinking. By the same token, it didn’t matter so much that charedim didn’t serve in the IDF or have a high rate of professional employment when they were just a tiny minority. But when they become a sizeable proportion of the population (one-third of first graders are charedi), it becomes a major threat not just to their own community, but to the economy and security of the entire country. Mysticism blinds people from thinking about these things (as does keeping the government in power).

We don’t know of any actual historical reason to celebrate Lag B’Omer. Mysticism has enriched the Jewish People. But it has also been the cause of Lag B’Omer tragedy, and threatens far worse to come. Perhaps we should instead treat Lag B’Omer as a day of mourning and teshuvah.

(Meanwhile, this grinch is under orders from his wife to take our youngest child to a bonfire, to be careful about undermining what they are taught at school, and to try to be more cheerful!)

For an index of my posts about the Meron tragedy, see this link.

My book Rationalism vs. Mysticism can be purchased on Amazon or preferably (and more cheaply!) on the museum website, where you can also purchase an audio version of the first part of the book. Paid subscribers to this blog can download it for free; instructions are below.

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Recently a sweet charedi gentleman in his fifties came to my door to collect money to marry off his daughter (which presumably meant to buy her an apartment). I suggested to him that his children, and their future children, would be much better off if they get an education and then jobs that pay a decent wage. How else are they going to survive - are they all going to rely on knocking on people’s doors? (And I didn’t even get on to what that would mean for the country as a whole.)

He told me that he trusts his rebbe, who has set his path in life.

Okay, I replied, and what is your rebbe’s plan? It doesn’t seem to be working out for you - how is this going to work out for everyone in the community as it grows?

He told me that he doesn’t know what his rebbe’s plan is, but he’s sure that his rebbe has one.

I urged him to ask his rebbe what the plan is. He was horrified at the very suggestion, and he left.

(Of course the truth is that the rebbe does not have a plan. The Gedolim do not have a plan and don’t even think about such things.)

One of the great attractions of living in a Daas Torah community is that you don’t have to take any responsibility in life. You don’t have to think about what’s written in your kesubah, about your obligations to support your family. You don’t have to think about the rather obvious problem that your children are likely destined for destitution. You don’t even have to think about all the statements of the Sages in the Talmud about the importance of work and of raising children to be independent. After all, you have The Gedolim™!

And The Gedolim™ know all the statements of the Sages, and indeed they know all about everything in life. You’ve asked them everything - where to live, who to marry, who to vote for, what to name your children. And so if they say to learn in kollel and not to work, and to raise your children without any education to help them earn a living, or even any desire to do so, that’s obviously the right thing to do!

And if it doesn’t work out, and you are desperately struggling, then that is some sort of test from Hashem. But it doesn’t mean that The Gedolim™ were wrong. And it likewise doesn’t mean that you were wrong to place your trust in them. That would be unthinkable. After all, they’ve guided you in everything you’ve done in life!

It’s very comforting to never have to make decisions or take any responsibility for your path in life and its consequences. It must be unimaginably difficult to start having to do so. But the longer it takes charedi society to wake up to this, the greater the eventual catastrophe will be.

No less than the Prime Minister himself, Bibi Netanyahu, put out a silly AI-generated image showing Bennett and Lapid as children in the back seat of a car being driven by Mansour Abbas, head of the Arab Ra’am party. The message is being pounded out again and again: Bennett and Lapid ran their previous government with the support of Abbas, Abbas is an Arab connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, and it’s inconceivable to vote for people who are relying on Arabs for their coalition.

This is a very powerful message. I’ve seen countless people whole-heartedly agree with. It’s simply inconceivable to do such a thing!

There’s just one problem with this argument.

Bibi Netanyahu himself tried to bring Ra’am into his coalition!

Of course he denies it now, because it would undermine his entire case against Bennett-Lapid. But it’s not some speculative theory; it’s absolutely true, attested to by many people, and beyond any doubt whatsoever. In fact, it’s so undeniably true that Rav Amichai Gordon of Yeshivat Har Etzion once wrote a furious article for Arutz Sheva titled “Do You Think We Are Stupid?” in which he railed against Bibi for not merely lying about this, but for having the audacity to issue a lie which is so clearly false.

All this was after the March 2021 election. Bibi and the Likud, as the largest party, was given the first chance to build a coalition. But even with the support of the non-Zionist charedim, they still couldn’t do it. And so they sought to recruit Mansour Abbas and Ra’am.

Bibi knew that this would be a challenge for his right-wing partners in the coalition. One path was simply to bribe them. A video was recently unearthed of Ben-Gvir talking about how Bibi offered him virtually any ministry of his choice if he would agree to Raam being part of the coalition.

But it was also necessary for Bibi to obtain senior rabbinic approval, which he set out to do. He got approval from R. Shmuel Eliyahu and R. Tau. A Likud MK brought Mansour Abbas himself for a meeting with Rav Druckman, the most significant figure in the Dati-Leumi community, and then eight rabbis were brought for an emergency meeting at Rav Druckman’s house to discuss how to make it happen.

Meanwhile, none other than Yinon Magel of Channel 14, Bibi’s most dedicated acolyte, was announcing publicly that the Right is very much in favor of cooperation with Arabs, and that he personally would like to see Mansour Abbas as a minister! (You can listen to the recording here.)

So why didn’t it happen? Because Smotrich was absolutely against it and blocked it. Smotrich himself, incidentally, is also on record as attesting that this is what Bibi and the Likud wanted to do.

One point to take from all this is the sheer audacious dishonesty of Bibi and the Likud campaign. Many politicians break promises, but this is active dishonesty taking place constantly. But there’s something much more important to think about.

If Bibi and the Likud and Yinon Magel were so supportive of the idea of bringing Ra’am into the coalition, then clearly it is not traitorous or unthinkable, as they would have you believe. This is surely not like when Bibi warmly greeted Yasser Arafat, which was presumably due to external political pressure. (The picture below, unlike the one shared by the prime minister above, is not AI.)

There must be a palatable justification, convincing enough for the rabbinic leaders of the dati-leumi community, for the inclusion of an Arab party in the coalition. What would that be? I will discuss it in a future post.

It’s an important public service to alert people to which problems in society need addressing, especially since so many English-speaking Jews are so misinformed about life in Israel and about what Torah actually demands of us. But there comes a point at which it feels just too much, just too awful. So should I instead write about beautiful things?

I’m tormented over this. So I’m going to post a little of both, and I would welcome feedback.

First, the horror. Unless you’re in an extreme charedi bubble, you probably hear about soldiers who fall in battle, such as Idan Fuchs, just 19 years old, who was killed in Lebanon the other day. But did you hear about the charedi soldier in Chashmonaim who was injured? Probably not, because his injuries were inflicted by other charedi Jews in his Beit Shemesh community who beat him up when he returned home.

And did you hear about the Ethiopian 21-year-old Yemanu Binyamin Zelka? He was working at a pizza store, and was beaten and stabbed to death by a gang - of kids aged 12-15! And most of them were wearing tzitzit! (They were not charedi, but they were from families aligned with a particular political demographic that is not difficult to guess, especially when you learn that government MKs have shown more interest in bashing Bennett than talking about this horrific murder, and the police are not exactly being zealous about bringing justice to the murderers and their families who tried to protect them.)

And you almost certainly didn’t hear about the three reservists who died since Yom HaAtzmaut, after taking their own lives due to PTSD - or the many, many more reservists who are still suffering from it. Because people don’t want to talk about just how damaging the IDF manpower shortage is. For some of us, that’s because it’s too close to home and too painful; for others, it’s because they don’t want to acknowledge how much harm is caused by the charedi wholesale refusal to enlist and the government’s desire to support this and even pay them billions of shekels for it in exchange for votes.

It’s all just too awful to think about. So maybe I should share some beauty. Here are photos from a shul that I just spoke at in London, the New West End Synagogue, which was built nearly 150 years ago and is one of the most beautiful in the world:

A close-up of the Aron HaKodesh:

This shul had some famous members. Here’s a plaque on one seat:

Here’s an amazing shofar which must be at least a century old and is engraved:

And here’s a very unusual kiddush cup. My index finger is touching the bottom of the inside! It was made to appear large and magnificent, but to hold much, much less wine than its external size would indicate. Can you guess why?

The answer is that it was made during the war (I’m not sure whether WWI or WWII) when there was a great shortage of wine, and so cups were designed to look full with a tiny amount.

Jewish history is filled with beauty and horror. So is Jewish life today. The difference is that whereas the horrors of our history were usually caused by non-Jews, so much of today’s horror is caused by Jews professing to act in the name of Judaism.

Many years ago I gave a series of talks at a shul in Ramat Beit Shemesh. The day that it was due to begin, posters appeared around the neighborhood warning against anyone attending and hearing my “heresy”:

For a moment this week, I had a sense of deja vu. I just arrived in England, and while this Shabbos I’m speaking at Alei Tziyon in Hendon, on Monday I’m speaking at a different shul in a different neighborhood. I sent them my standard flyer for my current top topic, with space for them to fill in the details of the shul name and address. They did it as follows:

But it turns out that this has nothing to do with any problems with me in particular (or at least, that’s what they told me). Rather, England is a place where five firebombs attacks were directed against Jewish institutions in the past week, and this shul is very nervous about advertising events.

At this point you might be expecting me to talk about how everyone should move to Israel because it’s safer to be Jewish in Israel. But I won’t, because it’s not.

Things in England (and other countries) are bad, and will probably get worse. But there will not be mass slaughter of Jews. It’s just not going to happen. Yes, there could be terrorist attacks, but those can happen in Israel too. And Israel also has much greater threats, in terms of ballistic missiles that might one day carry nuclear warheads. Plus, if you’re a loyal citizen and sending your children to the army, there are certainly much greater dangers in Israel.

However, there are three counterarguments to be made.

First is that we’re not talking about statistically high levels of danger. I mean, you’re statistically much more likely to die of heart disease if you move to the US, but I don’t think that anyone has ever not moved to the US for that reason. If people wanted to absolutely minimize their chances of being killed, then they would move to Alaska or New Zealand.

The second is that for many people, being safe is about feeling safe rather than objectively being safe. Planes are safer than cars, but many people feel safer in cars. And Israel is a place where, for many if not all, it feels safer. You can proudly, openly express your Judaism in much of the country, albeit not in certain Arab and Charedi neighborhoods.

The third point to be made is that life is about more than maximizing lifespan and minimizing risk. Life has to have meaning. Now, that may be different things for different people. But certainly, many people find much more meaning in living in Israel. (For more on this, see my posts Why Israel and Who Has Another Land?).

Just to be clear, I’m not saying where anyone should live. I think it’s good to have dispersed satellite Jewish communities. I’m just explaining that the “safety” topic is more complicated than it may initially appear.

Looking forward to seeing my London friends! (And if anyone is available to drive me on a museum mission tomorrow or Monday, please be in touch!)

A few years ago, I wrote a post titled “Guns, Girls and Gemaras,” about how our eldest daughter surprised my wife and I by declaring that she wanted to enlist to the IDF rather than do sherut leumi (national service). It wasn’t as though we had any say in the matter, and she went ahead and did it. A year into her service, in September 2023, she wrote a guest post titled “Commander Slifkin Reflects” about her experiences, including the considerable challenges facing religious girls in IDF service. A year later, she completed her service. Following her, our oldest son is in hesder, currently serving in combat in Lebanon.

Despite our initial hesitations, we were ultimately very proud of our oldest daughter’s service. Still, when it came to our second daughter, who has a very different personality, we figured that her path would be national service. I duly accompanied her about two years ago to the Religious Affairs ministry so that she could claim an exemption from army service on religious grounds.

Last night, she took a train and bus home from her Midrasha (seminary) in Akko that she has been attending since graduating high school. Today she went to Jerusalem to cancel her religious exemption. She will be enlisting in a few months.

What changed? Well, part of it is that she went on a trip to Poland, which affected her profoundly. But the other part is, of course, October 7th, which changed everything. Both for her, and for me.

It used to be very rare for religious girls to serve in the IDF. But in past years, it’s been steadily increasing. This is nothing to do with feminism. It’s because they want to be more actively involved in helping protect the nation. Many rabbis are still behind the curve; only a few forward-thinking ones have established frameworks for religious girls in the IDF. But this is a phenomenon that is rapidly growing, especially since October 7th.

From my own perspective, I think that not serving is a luxury that is no longer available. במלחמת מצוה, הכל יוצאין, אפילו חתן מחדרו וכלה מחופתה - “In an obligatory war, everyone must go out, even a groom and bride from their chuppah.” I’m not presenting Rambam’s statement in order to make a statement about halacha, but rather about basic common sense. We are at war, and the IDF is suffering a severe manpower shortage. Everyone who can help needs to help. And the more religious girls that enlist, the easier it is for other religious girls who enlist to have support.

(Of course, in an ideal world, the 80,000 young charedi men would be helping, and girls wouldn’t be needed. I recall reading about how in the 1950s, there was even a prominent charedi rav who wanted to make an arrangement with the government by which charedi boys would serve in place of non-charedi girls, because he felt that it was more important to release the girls from army service. But charedim today, for the most part, do not care about relieving the military burden on others.)

The great miracle of Israel, with all the wonders that it brings us, is only possible via the commitment and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young (and sometimes not so young) men and women. Tonight and tomorrow is Yom HaZikaron, Remembrance Day, for the 25,644 of them who made the ultimate sacrifice. We are all indebted to them.

(If you don’t recognize the flower (which is not a poppy) in the above picture or understand its significance, then I suggest that you read my new book The Lions of Zion: Biblical Natural History and the Significance of Israel.)

It’s Yom HaZikaron next week. Since last year’s Yom HaZikaron, another 170 heroes have given their lives to make it possible for us to live here, and another 54 veterans died due to complications from injuries sustained during their service. There are currently 59,583 bereaved family members in Israel.

And of course we are still at war. There are hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists in uniform, in Israel and Gaza and Lebanon. Many of them have been away from their jobs and families for most of the past two and half years. Sometimes they get home for a few days; my own son, currently serving in Lebanon, hopes to be able to get two days off next week.

And meanwhile, here is what just popped up in the local Beit Shemesh News group, regarding 1200 local young men. These are young men who never have to leave their lives and families - they just sit in a comfortable and safe Beis HaMidrash, economically subsidized by taxpayers and militarily defended by everyone else, and go home every evening. On top of that, they just had an entire month of vacation. And on top of that, they just experienced this:

“Beit Shemesh News • Among Unforgettable Times: Over 1200 Beit Shemesh students enjoyed a day of refreshment and experience… 46 groups went out daily throughout the week, to two recreation complexes that included a pool, jacuzzi, a pampering barbecue and an unforgettable experience ahead of summer!”

What pampering and refreshment do they need?! (And who is paying for this?!) Refreshment from their month of refreshment from their regular daily comfortable routine?! The back-breaking toil of sitting in an air-conditioned Beis HaMidrash? Do these people have any idea what physical and mental condition many soldiers are in when they finally get home for a few days?!

I don’t even have words to describe how upsetting and nauseating this is. I can’t think of anything that better fits Rambam’s description of Jews who separate themselves from the tribulations facing the community:

A person who separates himself from the community, even though he has not transgressed any sins, but separates himself from the congregation of Israel and does not fulfill mitzvot together with them, does not take part in their hardships, or join in their fasts, but rather goes on his own individual path as if he is from another nation and not ours, does not have a portion in the World to Come. (Hilchot Teshuva 3:11)

And to cap it all, the name of the project under which this operates?

“Magna u’Matzla” - as in “Torah protects and saves.”

They like to pretend that their Torah, learned in utterly selfish absence of any sense of helping relieve the crushing burden upon others, is a merit! Moreover, one that is so powerful that it protects and saves the nation from military attack! (Not to mention that military protection is not even what the phrase magna u’matzla is talking about anyway; this is just one of many distortions of what the Sages say about what Torah does and does not do, as explained in R. Moshe Klausner’s freely-downloadable book here).

But their Torah, enabled by the current government, certainly does protect and save them from all responsibility, and enables them to enjoy jacuzzis at the expense of everyone else’s sacrifice.

Is Yom HaShoah observed on an inappropriate day?

There are a number of possible days to commemorate the Holocaust, which fall into several categories. One could choose a day which denotes the beginning of the Holocaust. This itself is open to a range of possibilities. Historians dispute the date that should be said to begin the Holocaust - the rise of the Nazi Party in 1920, the German elections in July 1932, the election of Hitler as chancellor in January 1933, the passing of the Nuremberg laws in 1935, Kristallnacht and the accompanying race laws in November 1938, the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the launch of the Final Solution in 1941, or the Wannsee Conference of 1942.

Another option is to choose a date of religious significance. The first Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel was on Asarah B’Tevet 1949, following a decision by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel that it should be observed on a traditional day of mourning in the Jewish calendar. Others commemorate it on Tisha B’Av, when they add extra Kinnot.

When the Knesset decided in 1951 to establish a day to commemorate the Holocaust, however, they decided to choose a very different type of day: One relating to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This began on the 14th of Nissan, but this date was rejected since it would be impractical to observe Yom HaShoah on erev Pesach. So instead, they picked the date of the end of the uprising, the 27th of Nissan.

Why did the Knesset choose a day relating to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? This relates to the full name of Yom HaShoah: Yom Hazikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah, “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.” It is a day of commemorating not only the tragedy of those who died, but also the heroism of those who fought back. The incredible events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the few drove out the many, were a psychological victory, demonstrating that Jews could be fighters and heroes. And this was the more important element, to be used as the basis for selecting a date.

Herein lies the problem, as articulated by several charedi authors in A Path Through the Ashes: Penetrating Analyses and Inspiring Stories of the Holocaust from a Torah Perspective, Collected from the Pages of the Jewish Observer (ArtScroll 1986). Defining the day in terms of the heroes, and designating the heroes as those who physically fought back, fits well with the Zionist ethos. However, it can also be seen as deeply offensive. Those who went to their deaths “like sheep to the slaughter” should not be criticized in any way. As Auschwitz survivor Joseph Friedenson wrote,

My late father, Reb Eliezer Gershon Friedenson, who gave away his last morsel of bread to the weeping children of the ghetto, was no less a hero for not having ever shot a gun... And what of the thousands of young men and women who did not part with their elderly fathers or mothers, although they could have saved themselves, and accompanied them right into the gas-chambers? And those who sacrificed themselves in order that others should live? They were all heroes. Yes, we find this new segregation of heroism at the commemoration reprehensible to our whole hashkafah, philosophy, on the Holocaust.

In my opinion, this objection to the date chosen for Yom HaShoah has much merit. The Holocaust is about horror, not heroism. And furthermore, heroism is not only found in those who physically fight.

So why do I believe in observing Yom HaShoah on the 27th of Nissan? Because if you define yourself as part of a group, then you should be open to compromise for the sake of achdus.

Consider the response of one of the leading halachic authorities of the 18th century, R. Yaakov Reischer, when he was asked about a move to reject the kosher status of meat that was slaughtered in outlying villages by Jews that were insufficiently learned or pious. R. Reischer strongly condemned this approach (Shevut Yaakov II:58). He argued that the Jewish community must be united and not splinter into groups with different standards. And this was for a halachic matter! All the more so with something that is a national memorial.

The Government of Israel, and the majority of the population of Israel, selected the 27th of Nissan. And so whatever inappropriate subtle messages are contained in the selection of that date (and to be honest, the “VeHaGevurah” part of Yom HaShoah is rarely even mentioned, let alone dwelt upon), the fact is that this is the date which the nation has picked.

But this, of course, is also precisely the reason why the charedi community would not observe Israel’s Yom HaShoah even if it was during the month of Teves on the yahrzeit of Rav Elchanan Wasserman. As we have noted previously, the entire raison d’etre of modern charedi society is to be set aside from the rest of society. That’s the fundamental reason why they don’t care to join in with national defense.

In this vein, note that in the continuation of the article by Friedenson quoted above, he himself observes that in 1975, he requested of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah to create a proper way of commemorating the Holocaust, and that while they agreed that this must be done, it never happened. Why did it not happen? I think that it wasn’t just negligence, but rather there was a reason.

I was educated in the finest British Orthodox Jewish schools. But I almost never learned about the Holocaust. In my extensive Torah classes, they barely ever spoke about it. Ironically, it was only in my English literature class, taught by a non-Jew, that we had studied a Holocaust novel. When I was about 15, I visited Yad Vashem, and I was shaken. I came back to Manchester and asked the school principal if we could make a Holocaust exhibition. He replied that “in principle” it was a good idea, but in practice it would be complicated to make sure that it was the right messaging. (And, of course, it never happened.)

It seems to me that because there was so much Zionist messaging relating to the Holocaust, it became perceived by many as a “Zionist” cause. That’s not to say that charedim never talk about it; they talk about it a lot. But creating any kind of institutionalized commemoration was too problematic.

There are those calling for change. The amazing Rav Dovid Leibel, echoing many of the points that I made here, announced that it’s time for the charedi community to join in the day of national mourning, and explained that there are ways to commemorate it that would still retain charedi uniqueness. But Rav Leibel, who is also at the forefront of the charedi hesder yeshiva movement, is a minority voice in charedi society, and comes under harsh attack from its supporters.

One final note: the charedi argument discussed here against promoting the Warsaw Ghetto fighters as “the” heroes of the Holocaust, while having merit, relates to a larger issue of the nature of heroism, on which the charedi approach is not just mistaken, but also clearly anti-traditional. I will be discussing this in a future post.


אֵל מָלֵא רַחֲמִים שׁוֹכֵן בַּמְּרוֹמִים, הַמְצֵא מְנוּחָה נְכוֹנָה עַל כַּנְפֵי הַשְּׁכִינָה, בְּמַעֲלוֹת קְדוֹשִׁים וטְהוֹרִים כְּזוֹהַר הָרָקִיע מַזְהִירִים אֶת כָּל הַנְּשָׁמוֹת שֶׁל שֵׁשֶׁת מִילְיוֹנֵי הַיְּהוּדִים, חַלְלֵי הַשּׁוֹאָה בְּאֵירוֹפָּה, שֶׁנֶּהֶרְגוּ, שֶׁנִּשְׁחֲטוּ, שֶׁנִּשְׂרְפוּ וְשֶׁנִּסְפּוּ עַל קִדּוּשׁ הַשֵׁם, בִּידֵי הַמְרַצְּחִים הַגֶּרְמָנִים הָנַאצִים וְעוֹזְרֵיהֶם מִשְּׁאָר הֶעַמִּים. לָכֵן בַּעַל הָרַחֲמִים יַסְתִּירֵם בְּסֵתֶר כְּנָפָיו לְעוֹלָמִים, וְיִצְרוֹר בִּצְרוֹר הַחַיִּים אֶת נִשְׁמוֹתֵיהֶם, ה’ הוּא נַחֲלָתָם, בְּגַן עֵדֶן תְּהֵא מְנוּחָתָם, וְיַעֶמְדוּ לְגוֹרָלָם לְקֵץ הַיָּמִין, וְנֹאמַר אָמֵן.

There’s lots of amazing things about Judaism, but something that really frustrates me is that due to the way that the calendar works out, nobody has any time to think about this week’s parashah, Shemini. And yet it features far more animals than any other! There’s the laws of kashrut, including locusts. There’s the eight “creeping creatures” that transmit impurity. But actually I just had an insight about how it connects to Pesach itself.

On Pesach, one of my children asked me an excellent question. She understood the idea behind matza. But why does the Torah care so much about not having any chametz around?

I didn’t want to give an answer that involved mysticism. And I managed to come up with an explanation, borrowed from the idea of kashrut.

Why are some animals kosher and others not? There is not one single explanation that covers every type. But there is certainly a general idea of cultural distinction. The Torah (Vayikra 11:45-47) says explicitly that it is about God’s People being required to practice kedusha, sanctity. Sanctity is about separating out things to be special. Shabbat is sanctified by being separated out from the rest of the week, with kiddush at the beginning and havdalah at the end. With kashrut, we separate themselves from certain foods, and thereby also separate our nation culturally from other nations, so that we survive.

Some take this to the next level of the particular non-kosher types, with regard to the land animals at least. The reason why the laws create camels, hares, hyraxes and pigs to be non-kosher is that these were animals favored in the cuisine of the neighboring tribes in antiquity.

Now, let’s turn to chametz and matza. As discussed in my book The Lions of Zion, bread had enormous cultural significance in Egypt. Matza, on the other hand - the original type of soft matza, baked on a metal plate over a fire - was the food of nomads who wander freely.

It occurred to me that today we live in world when the cultural specifity of particular foods has lost much of its significance. Everyone eats Italian food, Chinese food, Japanese food, British food. But before the modern globalist era, certain foods were much, much more culture-specific. Making the full break from Egypt required a total detachment from the quintessential Egyptian food, in favor of the food that represents freedom.

If you’d like to learn more about the details of all the kosher and non-kosher mammals, birds, fish and insects, we produced an hour-long in-depth video presentation of the Hall of Kosher Classification at the Biblical Museum of Natural History. It’s available for purchase on the museum website, but here’s a coupon code for paid subscribers to get it for free:

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Why is it called Shaldag? Shaldag is Hebrew for kingfisher, a bird that dives down with incredible speed to extract fish from under the water - the opposite of a bird’s natural home environment. As such, it is a perfect symbol for this unit.

Now, at the Biblical Museum of Natural History, I recently designed and put up a sign showing how the animal symbolism of Tanach and Jewish history has been revived in the modern State of Israel in all kinds of ways. And one of our guides told me an extraordinary story which happened with a visiting charedi school. It’s not a story that I can put in the public domain, for various reasons, so it’s restricted for paid subscribers, and I ask that it not be spread further.

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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.