Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

PODCAST Hallo fanateekelingen van Colorado Rapids! This week on Holding The High Line, Red is back. We banter about his trip to the Netherlands and Belgium and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. We do Bad Thing, Good Thing, Anything Else on the loss to Minnesota United. We spent way too much time dissecting an Ask HTHL from Mark H. Then we look ahead to Saturdays match against expansion side with a Rapids Charlotte preview.

Heres Matts articleon Cole Bassett from the Feyenoord game he attended.Heres that videoabout the Mezzala.

Holding The High Line is an independent soccer podcast focused on the Colorado Rapids of MLS and a member of the Beautiful Game Network. If you like the show, please consider subscribing to us on your preferred podcatcher, giving us a review, and tell other Rapids fans about us. It helps a ton. Visit bgn.fm for a bunch of other great podcasts covering soccer in North America.

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Follow us on Twitter @rapids96podcast. You can also email the show at rapids96podcast@gmail.com. Follow our hosts individually on Twitter @LWOSMattPollard and @soccer_rabbi. Send us questions using the hashtag #AskHTHL.

Matt Pollard is the Site Manager for Last Word on Soccer and an engineer by day. A Colorado Convert, he started covering the Colorado Rapids as a credentialed member of the press in 2016, though hes watched MLS since 96. When hes not watching or writing about soccer, hes being an outdoorsman (mostly skiing and hiking) in this beautiful state or trying a new beer. For some reason, he thought that starting a podcast with Mark was a good idea and he cant figure out how to stop this madness. He also hosts Last Word SC Radio.

Mark Goodman, the artist formally known as Rapids Rabbi, moved to Colorado in 2011. Shortly thereafter he went to Dicks Sporting Goods Park, saw Lee Nguyen dribble a ball with the silky smoothness of liquid chocolate cascading into a Bar Mitzvah fountain, and promptly fell head over heels in love with domestic soccer. When not watching soccer or coaching his sons U-8 team, hes generally studying either Talmud or medieval biblical exegesis. Which explains why he watches so much MLS, probably. Having relocated to Pittsburgh in 2019, he covers the Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL for Pittsburgh Soccer Now.

Photo Credit: Mark Shaiken, Last Word on Soccer.

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Holding The High Line: Rapids Charlotte Preview - Last Word on Soccer

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

My heart sunk when I woke up Friday morning to the news of riots on the Temple Mount. Flipping through an endless barrage of cell phone videos flooding the many WhatsApp and Telegram news groups I subscribe to, scrolling through reports on social media from those who witnessed the destruction and those who proudly posted their participation in it and speaking to the men and women on the front lines, serving in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, it was apparent to me that the situation was as bad as it could be, perhaps even worse than I could comprehend from afar.

On any given week I will make as few as four, and as many as nine aliyot, or ascensions, to The Temple Mount. It is here I walk proudly but cautiously. It is here that I attend minyan for Shacharit and Mincha, and I pray quietly but with intention.

The author on Har HaBayit | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

I discuss Torah, Talmud, Mishna and obscure Halakha with my Rebbe, or listen to the shiur given by the Rabanim from Yeshivat Har HaBayit.

The author and Rabbi Yehuda Levi on Har HaBayit | photo credit Melissa Jane Kronfeld

I engage in hisbodedus with Hashem, and in conversation with those making their first ascension, pointing out the interesting archeological, historical, and religious tidbits I have been privileged to learn during the two years I have made weekly, very early morning, trips from my home in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to participate in the process of normalizing our presence, a Jewish presence, on the Temple Mount.

The author on Har HaBayit | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

I take the time to say hello to the Israel Police Officers who regularly ensure our security, many I now consider friends, inquiring about their families and their children.

The author on Har HaBayit | photo credit Melissa Jane Kronfeld

I am surrounded by the many friends I have made here, a community of believers who regularly ascend with me. I talk with their families and play with their children. We celebrate the Bar or Bat Mitzvah ascending with his or her parents, as well as the grooms and brides preparing for their weddings later that day. We celebrate births and brit milah, we strengthen the sick and weary amongst us and far from us, we mourn the fallen those we knew and those we did not.

The author and Ayala Ben Gvir on Har HaBayit | photo credit Melissa Jane Kronfeld

But always, we bask in the bright sunshine of the mountain top, which seemingly never hesitates to peak out from behind the darkest of dawns, or most dreary of days, the moment we step onto this hallowed ground.

The author on Har HaBayit | photo credit Melissa Jane Kronfeld

What I, and the hundreds of Jews who regularly ascend to Har HaBayit, do not do is riot. We do not throw rocks and smash centuries-old marble pillars. We do not break windows, pound on doors, nor build bunkers and barriers from which to launch fireworks and other lethal projectiles.

Destruction caused on Har HaBayit during the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

We do not throw our holy books, because we are not permitted to bring any with us when we ascend. We do not hide our faces or obscure our identities under our tallit, like the Arabs rioters who obscure their identities under their keffiyeh, because we are not permitted to wear them when we ascend.

Destruction caused on Har HaBayit during the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

We do not hang Hamas flags from the intricate, ancient arches, nor do we even carry Israeli flags, because that would be reason enough for a Jew to be detained and potentially banned from ascending for days, weeks, and sometimes months, at a time.

Destruction caused on Har HaBayit during the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Beyadenu

We do not storm the Temple Mount, as our enemies will have you believe, nor do we occupy this place, as they also claim. How can we, when Jews are only permitted on Har HaBayit five days a week, five hours a day, for just an hour at a time? Hours which have been drastically reduced since the start of Ramadan, to a mere three or four at most, and which are often diminished further due to security concerns, infringing on the already limited time Jews are allotted access.

Destruction caused on Har HaBayit during the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

We do not shout or scream, nor do we declare death to anyone, let alone the Muslims worshippers with whom we share our mountain. Because this is a Holy, sacred place, consecrated for all time. It is the site where twice our Temple stood, and where it most certainly, one day, will again.

Destruction caused on Har HaBayit during the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

We need not be reminded that Passover is a time to celebrate our freedom freedom from slavery, from exile; to celebrate our freedom to build a Jewish family, a Jewish life, a Jewish state in this Jewish land. But to celebrate our freedom, when the Temple Mount is held captive by rioters, criminals, provocateurs, and terrorists aided and abetted by the Israeli government which refuses to demand from them what they demand of us feels imprudent, almost perverse.

Destruction caused on Har HaBayit during the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

On January 6, 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the most important, defining, and critical speeches in American, if not human, history. Europe was engulfed in war. Jews were engulfed by the flames of Nazi ovens. And it seemed as if the end of days was quickly encroaching. Yet despite the haze of human smoke haphazardly obscuring our vision, FDR saw clearly a vision of what the future could be, and what humanity must demand it should be.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms, Roosevelt began.

The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want

The fourth is freedom from fear

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

In the eight decades since FDRs words resonated across the world, great strides have been made to actualize this rational idealism. There have been many successes, and an equal number of failures. Nonetheless, the world is by all tangible metrics and analytical indicators a freer place then when FDR delivered his speech. But there is still much work to be done.

And perhaps no more so than here in Israel, and specifically on Har HaBayit, where the authoritarianism of the past has been preserved, seemingly consecrated for all time, having taken refuge in the place of our refuge.

Because it is here, on Har HaBayit, that Jews experience the apartheid state our enemies would have you believe exists for them in Israel (but which I assure you, does not). It is here that carrying objects of faith tefillin or Tehillim is prohibited, despite the blue tzitzit swaying by our sides as we are rushed by police across the sprawling complex. It is here that to walk too slow, sit too long, pray too loud, or bow too low is justification for a restraining order to be issued against you by the Israeli state but only if you are a Jew.

It is here, at the only gate Jews are permitted to enter the Temple Mount (from among the many that exist), that we are required to go through metal detectors, or be patted down by police dare we carry in our pocket a piece of paper with a prayer or psalm an indignity the Arabs are not subjected to. And for many of us who regularly ascend, we are often required to provide our identification cards, despite the police knowing very well who we are and why we are there.

It is also here, on Har HaBayit (supposedly Holy ground for Arabs too), that the Jordanian Waqf dumps garbage along the only route Jews are permitted to walk. The same route that teenagers leave glass shards in hopes that those who ascend barefoot might be injured. Here on the Temple Mount, Arab children play soccer near the entrance of the most Holy of Holies while sporting machine gun logos on their shirts and shorts the newest fashion craze sweeping East Jerusalem. Here on the Temple Mount, Arab women hiss and Arab men curse at Jews as they silently walk by.

Har HaBayit one week before the 2022 Ramadan Riots | photo credit Melissa Jane Kronfeld

And it is from here, from this Holy place, that a radical Imam who preached daily in the al-Aqsa Mosque, while moonlighting for Hamas, ventured into the streets of the Old City to hunt and kill Jews.

It is here that, until just a few months ago, Jews were not permitted to drink from the water fountains, which were reserved for Muslims only. Because although the authoritarian yoke of apartheid is as banal as it is belligerent, we have proven with this small victory, it can also be bent, and will eventually be broken.

But the status quo remains staunch, steadfast, as there are few of us fighting for this, for our collective Jewish freedom. And it is still us the ascending Jews who are labeled troublemakers, instigators, radicals, right-wingers fanatics and zealots. It is us, with our deep desire to pray where the Shekhina, the Divine Presence, resides, who are called careless, controversial, and corrosive. And therefore, it is us, the Jews, who must have our rights our freedoms curtailed, constrained, and callously cut off by the leaders we elected to defend them.

At our Passover Seder we ask four poignant questions. But they are not the ones we should be asking this year. Rather we must ask and demand an answer to four questions far more pressing, far more urgent, if next year in Jerusalem is to mean anything at all:

Why are Jews not permitted freedom of speech and expression on the Temple Mount?

Why are Jews not permitted the freedom to worship on the Temple Mount?

Why should Jews not be afforded freedom from want the want to access the Temple Mount at any time, on any day, from any entrance, for any reason, and with any religious objects?

Why should Jews not be afforded freedom from fear the fear of being detained or banned from the Temple Mount for simply acting Jewish, or the fear for our lives every time we ascend for simply being Jewish?

As Rabbi Yehuda Levi plainly writes, the Temple Mount is Judaisms Holiest Site, and it always has been [Its] importance to the Jewish people cannot be overestimated. It represents the hopes and dreams that have sustained them in spite of virtually insurmountable odds throughout the thousands of years of their history.

So, we will continue to hope, and dare to dream. We will continue to push back against the insurmountable odds stacked against us, and all the Jewish people, in accessing the Temple Mount whether you fight with us, against us, or not all. We will not be prevented from ascending. We will not be deterred from ascension. For this fight is not against any slavery imposed upon us, but rather a fight for the freedoms we have stolen from ourselves.

It is said that the heart and eyes of Hashem dwell in this Holy place (I Kings 9). As I walk around the Temple Mount today, and every day this week, I wonder if His heart feels as broken as mine, if His eyes cry the same tears for the destruction that I see. Because I know the terrorists, and our government, will not shed any tears over the House of G-d.

But I will also remind myself, as the Chassidic Masters teach, that every descent is for the sake of ascent, and that Hashem firmed the world, as King David wrote, so that it should not falter (Psalm 30).

The author on Har HaBayit | photo credit Yehuda Levi/Yeshivat Har HaBayit

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Ascending from slavery: Why I fight for the Temple Mount - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

Dov Moran - inventor of the disk-on-key, Managing Partner at Grove Ventures, which invests in Israeli early stage start-ups

My wife and I have been married for 40 years, and 20 years ago she became religious. We have four children, and each is a different world in terms of their closeness to religion. The eldest is the most non-religious, the second is traditional, the third is more religious, and the youngest studied for two years at a yeshiva in Netivot. The first time he came back from the yeshiva I asked him: 'What did you learn?' and he answered 'Judaism', but while he was talking about Judaism (yahadut), I heard 'Destinations'. (yaadut). He replied that there was no such word, but I was caught up in that concept."

"To me yaadut means living with a goal. Living your life with a real purpose. Not just trying to make as much money as possible, I have no such ambition. After that conversation with my son I wrote a book that has not yet come out, 'Goals, Doors (Entrepreneurship) and Music'. It was at a time that I was angry at the religious approach, and the book came out extremely anti-religious. Friends told me, 'You're cutting down Judaism in an excessive manner,' and I decided to polish up the angry parts, because in the end I believe religion can do good for its believers.

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Dov Moran (Photo: Edward Kaprov. The photo was taken using the wet plate collodion technique, an early photographic process invented in the 19th century.)

When did the children choose a direction?

"It develops organically, each child chooses their own direction, and it still develops. For me too. I am constantly changing."

Do you have a hard time with the possibility that your children will become ultra-Orthodox?

"Fortunately, none of them went that far. As far as my kids go, I have a variety, and in any case I respect each of them, because they have faith. I prefer an ultra-Orthodox person to someone who has no faith in anything, someone who has no values or morals and no vocation in life other than having fun. I think I was able to convey to them a little bit of the belief in the goals."

How does a secular high-tech man manage to fit in with religious beliefs at home?

"It does not have to fit in. I live my life and my wife lives hers."

"There is no clash which needs to arise from this area. Everyone lives their own life, on their own hours and times."

It requires sacrifice from both of you.

"Yes. But we are constantly sacrificing in life, no? You come to a meeting with investors and wear a suit - that's a certain sacrifice. I have partners in the fund, and that's the biggest compromise of them all. Do you know how much I compromise with them? And they do too. I compromise all the time, every day. You don't need to optimize pleasure, fun and happiness. Anyone who tells you they never compromise in life is cheating themselves.

What are you compromising on and what are others compromising on for you?

"On Saturday (Shabbat) I try very hard not to travel. I can travel, no one will shoot me, but I do not want to cause others to feel bad. I have been a vegetarian from the age of 10, so regarding keeping kosher I already dont have a hard problem. I do not pray, and if one of my children does go to a synagogue, they do not pressure me to come along. On Shabbat I make Kiddush. To say that I believe in the need to say the particular blessing? Dont be ridiculous. I do not think God wanted me to say that, but it is important to others. If I were alone I would not make Kiddush. I fast on Yom Kippur, but more because of tradition, and I suppose I would do that even if I were alone - but not out of fear of divine punishment. I am a person who is more compromising than others compromising for me, and I am also less of a person who thinks he is always right. I always try to understand the other side."

"In things that are not a matter of principle for me. In what is very principled and related to myself, I do not compromise. Not even with myself."

"I just know I do not know. I think with high certainty that there is no entity that expects you to do anything concrete, like pray certain prayers or not turn on electricity on Shabbat. Just last week I was at a lecture on quantum theory, and even the physics we see and experience is so full of mystery and there is a lot of uncertainty in it. The great physicists said that there are phenomena that they are far from understanding. So I know there are things I do not know."

I ask because you are a science-biased person.

"Of course. I believe in science, in technology, in progress. It does not contradict the knowledge that I do not know and do not understand many things."

Did you grow up as a secular child?

"I grew up weird. I was born in a traditional house but my father did not wear a kippah. I was a child who wore a kippah, went to a secular school but did not believe in normal religion. My father once went to a parents' meeting and the religious Talmud teacher asked him how it could be that his son wore a kippah and he did not, and from then on, he started wearing one too."

And after years of high-tech and entrepreneurship and exits, you came to music at a later age as well.

"I'm very realistic, but I have a humane side that I do not give up on. I play drums in a rock band and love music, especially the blues and Pink Floyd. I have never played Israeli music, and then, five years ago, at Yossi Vardi's Kinnernet event, someone played the percussion and she left the stage to go down to eat and I said to her, 'I will replace you,' and I went on stage. At first I hesitated, but the guys around me encouraged me and I did it. I had a lot of fun."

And it progressed from there?

"Shortly afterwards, at an investor conference, we invited the Shalva band to sing, wonderful young people with disabilities - and who among us doesn't have one? I have one too! - and I offered to play with them a bit on the percussion. The band manager agreed but asked me to come and practice. After thoroughly enjoying the experience, I bought Conga drums and I started playing with a band of wonderful guys from the area, who are also gifted musicians. Today we have a show whose theme is the connection between music and entrepreneurship."

And what is the connection?

Take the song 'Cypress' (by Ehud Manor and Ariel Zilber), for example: 'And I saw a cypress, standing in a field in front of the sun. In a heat wave, in a cold front, in front of the storm. On its side, the cypress leaned, unbroken, bending its top to the grass. Even an entrepreneur sometimes has to bow his head. There is trouble, money is gone, things are happening. A good entrepreneur is one who does not stand upright all the time. In my life I had to bend many times.

"There are failures, where you fall, crash and have to rebuild yourself. In Modu (a start-up that developed a modular mobile), for example, I crashed. And I remember in M-Systems (the maker of the disk-on-key) that customers were annoyed, and even when the fault is their fault you have to be polite to them, like towards demanding investors or powerful suppliers. Sometimes you want to do that, but the market wants something different, and sometimes you have to do what the market wants. You want to sell at 200 but the market wants at 99. Sometimes you have to fire people, it's happened to me three times in my life. These are people you liked, they trusted you, and in the end you had to fire them. So you lower your head again and bend over."

Given the risks of start-ups and venture capital, do you feel lucky about the times it worked for you?

"In the book I wrote I'm talking about doors where the chances of each one opening are slim. If the entrepreneur is lazy he will try to open only five doors. If he is diligent, he will try all 100. And yet the open door may still be 101. I work hard and I know there are others who are more successful than me, maybe because they are more talented. I do not believe in a golden touch. Its nonsense."

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"I live my life my way and my wife lives hers as a religious person. It does not have to fit in" | CTech - CTech

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

I cant count how many people have asked me a form of the question in the title. Many speculators have come equipped with all sorts of evidence associating current events with the end of days. My answer is short: I dont know, and we shouldnt try to figure it out. Indeed, Rambam highlights three reasons why this sort of conjecture is a really bad idea.

We Dont Know

The first reason is found in Hilchot Malachim (12:2) where Rambam writes, All these and similar matters [concerning the coming of mashiach] cannot be known by man until they occur, for they are undefined in the words of the prophets. Even the sages have no established tradition regarding these matters beyond what is implied by the verses; hence, there is divergence of opinion among them.

Rambam tells us that even the greatest of our sages did not know how the messianic era will unfold. All we have to work with are the words of the prophets which are obscure and offer little concrete details. Here, Rambam applies a principle he articulates elsewhere: debate reflects a lack of tradition. If the sages have many debates concerning the details of mashiachs arrival (and they do), it is an indication that we do not have a tradition regarding these matters. Since we dont know how the messianic process will unfold it doesnt make any sense to associate a particular event with that process. As Rambam says we will not know until it happens.

Of course, I am not saying that the current war has no role in the unfolding of the messianic process. Numerous sources indicate that wars such as this play a role. For example, Bereishit Rabba 42:4 states that if you see nations warring each other, hope for the coming of mashiach. However, obviously this does not mean that we should see any such war as a heralding the mashiach, since we have seen innumerable such wars over the course of our long exile. Rather, as R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto writes in Daat Tevunot (section 48), The path by which Hashem brings the world in the direction of good is very very deep, and will not be revealed until the end. We cannot know if mashiach is around the corner or a long way off. Only at the end of the saga will the role of this conflict become clear.

Speculating Is Dangerous

The second reason why such speculation is a bad idea is that if the prediction does not materialize a person is likely to lose hope. In the above halacha Rambam writes: Similarly, one should not try to calculate the appointed time [for the coming of mashiach]. Our sages declared: May the spirits of those who attempt to calculate the final time [of mashiachs arrival] expire! Rambam cites Chazal (Sanhedrin 97b) who harshly condemn those who try to predict the end of days. Why are such calculations so problematic? The Talmud there explains:

Said R. Yonatan: Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end (keitz). For they would say, Since the predetermined time has arrived, and yet he has not come, he never will come. Rather, wait for him, as it is written, Though he may tarry, wait for him.

While associating current events with points in the messianic saga may not violate the formal injunction against calculating the keitz it presumably violates the spirit of the law.

Growing up I remember how many people predicted that the first Gulf War was the ultimate war of Gog uMagog. It seemed to meet all the criteria (Christians versus Muslims, the population of Israel threatened by Scud missiles with chemical warheads, etc.). I remember how two years ago at this very time people were convinced that the unprecedented lockdowns triggered by Covid-19 was a harbinger for the coming of mashiach. (What other explanation could there be?) Truth is that such projections are not new. Throughout history people have interpreted cataclysmic events as clear omens of the mashiach.

But what happens if they dont pan out? People lose hope. Or worse, they are drawn after false messiahs. Jewish history is littered with false messiahs, and, generally speaking, these outbreaks follow extraordinary and especially tragic occurrences. Shabtai Tzvi, for example, rose to prominence shortly after the Chmielnicki massacres. Indeed, Rambam alludes to this point in his epistle to the Jews of Yemen in 1173 when following crushing persecution of a radical sect of Islam numerous Yemenite Jews were led astray by a false messiah. Worse, the harmful effects of a false messiah often linger even after his exposure when unable to deal with the cognitive dissidence people continue to follow the charlatan despite the certainty of his falsehood.

Interestingly, the injunction against predicting the keitz occasionally was ignored, even by some of the greatest rabbinic figures of our history. One such figure was R. Saadya Gaon, whose actions Rambam (in his Epistle to Yemen) attributes to extenuating circumstances:

In your letter, you have referred to the computations of the keitz and R. Saadyas opinion on the subject. First of all, you must know that no human being ever will be able to determine it precisely. Furthermore, we have a divine communication through the medium of the prophets that many people will calculate the time of the advent of mashiach but will fail to ascertain its true date.

As for R. Saadyas messianic calculations, there are extenuating circumstances for them, though he knew they were disallowed. For the Jews of his time were perplexed and misguided. The divine religion might have disappeared had he not encouraged the timid and diffused, disseminated, and propagated by word of mouth and pen a knowledge of the Torahs underlying principles. He believed, in all earnestness, that by means of the messianic calculations, he would inspire the masses with hope for the truth. Verily, all his deeds were for the sake of heaven. Consequently, in view of the probity of his motives, which we have disclosed, one must not decry him for his messianic computations

Despite Rambams warning against calculating the keitz, he seems to offer one himself by relating a family tradition that prophecy will be restored in the year 1210. How could Rambam flaunt the very prohibition that he just highlighted? R. Yitzchak Shilat, an expert on the Rambams writings, in his comments on the above letter, suggests two answers. First, Rambams calculation relates to the restoration of prophecy, not to the coming of mashiach. Second, Rambam may have felt he had a dispensation based on the exigencies of the time, just like R. Saadya Gaon. Presumably, he felt that the desperate and downtrodden situation of the Jews in Yemen justified a partial abrogation of the law.

Predicting Is a Waste of Time and Distracts Us from Our Mission

In the above halacha Rambam cites a third reason to avoid prognosticating about the messianic era:

Neither the sequence of these events [leading up to the coming of mashiach] nor their precise details are among the fundamental principles of the faith. One should not occupy himself at length with the aggadot and midrashim that deal with these and similar matters, nor should he deem them of prime importance, for they bring one to neither awe nor love [of G-d].

We should use our time studying matters that have a practical applications or that inspire us to become better people and to love and fear G-d. Messianic projections do none of that.

But if studying these matters is a waste of time, as Rambam claims, why did Chazal write about them? R. Saadya Gaon (Emunot v-Deot 8:5) suggests that if we did not know about such things as chevlei mashiach (the birth pangs of mashiach) then we might lose hope when experiencing these tumultuous and tortuous events preceding the coming of mashiach. Knowing a little about the process will help us deal with the upheaval, even if we will not really know what we are going through until after it is over.

When Rambam writes that we should not study texts discussing the coming of mashiach but focus on loving and fearing G-d, Rambam may also be alluding to an additional problem. Our job in this world is to accomplish things (both spiritual and material). It is true that in the messianic era all of problems will be solved, but if we spend too much time thinking about that we will ignore our current responsibility to solve those problems now. We cannot rely upon G-d to clean up our mess; we must get down and dirty. R. Yosef Dov Soloveitchik develops this theme:

The Halakhah is not at all concerned with a transcendent world However, the receiving of reward is not a religious act; therefore Halakhic Man prefers the real world to a transcendent existence because here, in this world, man is given the opportunity to create, act, accomplish, while there, in the World to Come, he is powerless to change anything at all. (Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan, p. 32)

While the Rav was discussing olam haba and we are discussing the messianic era, an analogy can be made. Ramban (Devarim 30:5) cites the Talmud (Shabbat 151b) that refers to the messianic era as days without desire, a time, wherein there is neither merit nor guilt, meaning, according to Ramban, they will offer opportunity neither for merit nor guilt. It will be a wonderful time, an era we long for and pray for, but it will be a time where we have a different mission. Now our task demands that we address the problems we currently face and Rambam warns us that contemplating about the end of days distracts us from that mission. (For more on this point see Sometimes Mashiach Is Not The Solution by my Rebbe, R. Aaron Lopiansky, Mishpacha, May 26, 2020.)

We Must Long for Mashiach

All this does not mean that we should not yearn for the mashiach. On the contrary, Rambam (Hilchot Malachaim 11:1) indicates that failure to long for the messianic era (even if one believes in it) constitutes heresy: Whoever does not believe in him, or does not await his coming, denies not only [the statements of] the other prophets, but also [those of] the Torah and of Moshe, our teacher. Indeed, the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) states one of the six questions we will be asked upon our death is tzipita lyeshua, did you long for redemption.

Earlier we quoted Chazal as saying that when you see nations warring each other hope for the coming of mashiach. R. Leib Shteinman suggested that Chazal meant that there are certain times that are more propitious to the coming of mashiach; one such time is when nations are warring. Accordingly, at times like that we must work on increasing our tzipiya lyeshua. Likewise, Nissan, another time associated with redemption, should be a time when we should focus on boosting our yearning for mashiach. We must pray for the coming of mashiach with all our hearts. We may certainly hope that the horrific current events we are witnessing portend the coming of mashiach. But we must avoid predicting whether that is the case. We will only know after the saga is complete.

Ultimately, the injunction against predicting his arrival must not reduce our anticipation for his coming. On the contrary it is intended to ensure our continued yearning despite the longevity of our exile. Thus, even as we desire a day in which peace will reign, in which the knowledge of G-d will fill the earth as the sea covers the seabed, in which we will all unite in the service of G-d, we must remain wary of speculating as to whether current events portend his arrival.

May we see that day soon. Chag sameach!

I would like to thank R. Yakov Haber who directed me to a number of the sources that appear in this article.

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Does Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine Portend The Coming Of Mashiach? - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

Jesus was a bastard conceived when an evil spirit slept with Mary (Kallah 1b, 18b).

Mary, who was dung, was a prostitute and committed adultery (Sanhedrin, 67a).

Jesus was a fool who practiced Egyptian magic (Sanhedrin, 67a).

Jesus committed bestiality. (Sanhedrin 105a)

Jesus was a fool who practiced enchantment, limped on one foot and was blind in one eye. (Sanhedrin l05a-105b)

Jesus was burned. He was "lowered into dung up to his armpits then a hard cloth was placed within a soft one, wound round his neck and the two loose ends pulled in opposite directions forcing him to open his mouth. A wick was then lit, and thrown into his mouth so that it descended into his body and burnt his bowels ...The death penalty of 'burning' was executed by pouring molten lead through the condemned man's mouth into his body, burning his internal organs. (Sanhedrin 52a, Yebamoth 6b)

Jesus was strangled. "He was lowered into dung up to his armpits then a hard cloth was placed within a soft one, wound round his neck, and the two ends pulled in opposite directions until he was dead." (Sanhedrin 52a, Sanhedrin 106b)

Jesus died like a dog and is in Hell buried in feces (Zohar, III p. 282)

Judas Iscariot fought in the air with Jesus and pissed on Him (Toldoth Jeschu).

Judas Iscariot buried Jesus' body "in a cellar with chamber pots and excrement" (Toledot Yeshu--1705)

Jesus is in hell where His punishment is "boiling in hot semen." (Gittin 57a)

Jesus' resurrection is cursed. "Woe unto him who maketh himself alive by the name of God." (Sanhedrin 106a)

Note: Jesus is called "Yeschu" in the Talmud, a Hebrew acronym which means "may his name and memory be blotted out." Unfortunately, many Christians today pray to Jesus using this name.

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The Babylonian Talmud - Zionism Exposed

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

LIVE EVENT - War, Conflict, and Academic Freedom (21 April) Wellesley College Freedom Project PresentsNew University in Exile Consortium fellows from Ukraine, Syria, and Manipur, India reflect on how war silences academic freedom.21 April 20224:00 PM EDT

War silences academic freedom. Scholars are being uprooted once again as the war in Ukraine escalates. New University in Exile Consortium fellow scholars from Ukraine, Syria, and Manipur, India will reflect on the irreversible damage caused by war and conflict on academic freedom both in their home countries and in their exile-homes. This event is organized by the Freedom Project.

Anton Liagusha,Ukraine; Associate Professor, Shar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University

Binalakshmi Nepram,Manipur, India; Founder, Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network & Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace

Basileus Zeno,Syria; Karl Loewenstein Fellow & Lecturer in Political Science, Amherst College

Nazan Bedirhanoglu (Moderator),Postdoctoral Fellow & Interim Director of the Freedom Project, Wellesley College

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LIVE EVENT - War, Conflict, and Academic Freedom (21 April) - Jadaliyya

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

Another Ramadan, another attack on Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. In explaining the Israeli attacks, the majority of Euro-American politicians, media analysts, and commentators, exemplified in this predictably inane CBC report, are emphasising the high tensions that come along with the confluence of three major religious events, and framing Israeli actions as a response to the Palestinian terrorist attacks in four Israeli cities.

Palestinians are accustomed to hearing these types of explanations that basically present a distorted picture of a religious conflict that is caused by political Islamist ideologies and their bigotry, intolerance, and hatred towards Jews. The Palestinian people, who are quintessentially defending their right to exist and live on the lands that they have called home for generations across centuries, are labelled by Israel and its Euro-American allies as violent, hateful, emotional, irrational, and backwards people who continuously cause cycles of violence.

Underneath this superstructure of fanciful Israeli and Euro-American ideologies, political sophistry, and ahistorical narratives, is the brute reality of settler-colonial conquest. The reason Israel has launched this latest attack is the same reason that it has launched so many before it and will be the reason for their coming attacks: The Israeli state is built on a foundation of settler colonial sovereignty.

Embedded at the foundation of the Israeli state, continuously animating its actions and policies, regardless of which political party or coalition is in power, is the idea that Israel, as a Jewish majority nation-state, must secure and expand supreme sovereign control over the land of historic Palestine. This is the cause and the goal of Israeli violence.

It is the cause because Israeli violence springs from the project of colonial modernity and replicates it in Palestine. Zionism was originally driven by the desire to protect European Jews from the horrors of European anti-Semitism. But as soon as this desire took the path of settler colonisation and practised settler-colonial violences in Palestine beginning in the early parts of the 20th century, the cause itself became the establishment of settler colonial sovereignty, which is necessarily supreme in its logic and form. It is also the goal of Israeli violence because supreme sovereignty over the entire land of historic Palestine is yet to be definitively secured for Israel. Palestinian resistance still stands in its way.

In my scholarly work, I have argued that it is irrelevant whether Israeli police, soldiers, settlers, or politicians believe that they are simply using violence to contain a riot, establish law and order, protect Israeli civilians, maintain the status quo of the holy sites, and so on.

To achieve these proclaimed intentions and motivations, it is not necessary to attack a woman from behind with a police baton as she films the desecration of the Muslim holy sites; violently push and kick elderly men as if theyre cattle; arrest children and surround one lonesome child with a dozen armed Israeli police as if he is an evil supervillain; break the stained glass windows and damage centuries-old walls in Al-Aqsa Mosque; fire tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets at worshippers inside the Mosque; prevent ambulances from reaching the approximately 158 injured; attack medical staff who were helping the injured inside the compound; assault a photojournalist who is documenting Israeli actions; arrest at least 450 Palestinians and then proceed to violently assault their relatives who went to wait for them outside of Israeli jails, and the list goes on and on.

These acts of violence are not about security, law and order, or maintaining the status quo. They are revelatory of the Israeli drive to assert supreme Israeli sovereignty over Palestine and Palestinians. The message of these acts of violence is this: Israel has the final and last judgement on the life and death of Palestinians, and there are no serious consequences for Israelis and no tangible recourse for Palestinians once those judgments are decided, sometimes at a whim.

This aspiration towards supreme power is prevalent throughout Israeli politics and society and has been for some time. It was almost a year ago that Israel launched a devastating military onslaught on the Gaza Strip in the wake of similar events that are happening today: expulsions of Palestinians from their homes and the desecration of Muslim places of worship. From May 10 to May 21, 2021, an 256 Palestinians were killed, including 66 children, and nearly 2,000 Palestinians were injured, including more than 600 children, 400 women, and 1,000 men. The infrastructural damage was severe: Some 2,000 housing units were either destroyed or severely damaged; 15,000 housing units suffered some damage; multiple water and sanitation facilities and infrastructure were damaged (leaving approximately 800,000 people without regular access to safe water), 58 education facilities, nine hospitals and nineteen primary healthcare centres all suffered some damage. There was an estimated $89m worth of damage to the energy, agricultural, and industrial sectors. Again, these acts of violence are clearly disproportionate and not necessary for the proclaimed goal of Israeli security. They arise out of and are meant to cement and achieve total and absolute Israeli Jewish sovereign power over the Palestinians.

This drive towards supreme sovereignty explains why all this destruction in just 11 days, piled as it is on top of the long continuum of Israeli violence, did not satisfy the majority of the Israeli public. When the ceasefire came into effect, a poll published on Israels Channel 12 indicated that 72 percent of Israelis thought the air campaign in Gaza should continue, whereas 24 percent said Israel should agree to a cease-fire. Israelis communicated a range of expressions and statements, from the indifferent to the euphoric, for their desire to continue unleashing Israels war machine. Many videos appeared on social media of Israeli civilians dancing and celebrating the onslaught on Gaza and the violence against Palestinians everywhere, chanting Death to Arabs, and May your village burn down, and showing a general disregard for the death and destruction of the Palestinians as a people.

When this dehumanisation of Palestinians appears in mainstream media and public discourse within Israeli and Euro-American spaces, it is framed in a normalising manner. For example, last year in a New York Times report, the desire for the majority of Israelis to continue the onslaught on Gaza is framed as Israelis simply wanting a final conclusion to a very unpleasant situation, and a decisive victory against Hamas.

Even when Israelis expressed genocidal wishes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, when an Israeli person states, the government should wipe out Gaza once and for all, even in that situation, the CBCs flagship nightly news programme, The National, found a way to cleanse and make presentable these expressions of a genocidal and eliminatory drive. In their feeble narratives, the New York Times presented Israeli quotes as frustrated Israelis who just want peace and quiet; the CBC framed the genocidal statement as scared Israelis who want security and are understandably angry. Both narratives offer nothing in the way of revealing the reality of violence, but rather themselves participate in the concealment of that reality. These orientalist, racialised, and violent narratives are part of the operation of settler-colonial violence, and as such, cannot reveal it.

Thats where we are still today in the same place we have been for decades: mainstream and dominant international discourse focuses on distractions and distorted pictures of what is happening to Palestinians, while Israel continues to unleash violence that is caused by and geared towards the goal of supreme sovereignty.

This is a form of sovereignty that has nothing to do with the complex and rich religion of Judaism and the Jewish tradition. Rather, following the logic of colonial modernity, this form of sovereignty, akin to other Euro-American (neo)colonial and settler-colonial states such as the United States, seeks to establish a kind of power that diverse cultures and religions across human history have reserved only for the gods: a kind of power that allows an entity to act with impunity because it is the first and last judge.

This latest attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound has little to nothing to do with a supposed Muslim-Jewish clash and has much more to do with a form of sovereignty that attempts to secure and establish a god-like power for a particular settler-colonial nationality. So long as the Israeli project is driven by the aspiration towards supreme power and sovereignty over Palestinians and Palestine, then we will be writing about Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers for years to come. Nothing short of a foundational transformation in the logic and structures of colonial modernity will prevent what is, at this moment, an inevitable outcome: more death and destruction for Palestinians and Palestine.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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The cause, and the goal, of Israeli violence - Al Jazeera English

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

Is any name more synonymous with Jewish genius than Albert Einstein?

By speaking out against anti-Semitism and lending his brand to institutions like the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Einstein became a standard-bearer for the Diaspora.

As a prominent booster of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a star fundraiser for the Zionist cause, he became inextricably linked with Zionism.

But Einsteins relationship to Judaism and to the Jewish state is complex.

Steven Gimbel, a professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College, says that it is easy for diverse and sometimes opposing groups Zionists and anti-Zionists, atheists and religious Jews to claim Einstein as their own.

They have good reason to do so, too.

If the smartest man in history agrees with me, so the thinking goes according to Gimbel, who has written two books on Einstein, then my view must be that smart.

But dig a little deeper, and the complexity of Einsteins views is quickly revealed.

Einstein disdained divine revelation, yet he believed in God.

He recoiled from Orthodox Judaism, but he felt a deep kinship with the Jewish people.

He opposed the idea of a Jewish state, yet raised money for the Zionist cause and was invited to become president of Israel.

Einstein is such a multidimensional personality, such a multidimensional phenomenon, that everybody can adopt something and cling on to it, said Hanoch Gutfreund, head of the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University. Einsteins views on what it is to be a Jew were shaped as much by the way others perceived him as they were by his perception of himself.

He may have rejected Judaic practices and felt alienated from what he described as Germanys Jewish bourgeois circles, but as a revolutionary and outspoken Jewish scientist, a pacifist and an internationalist, he was pilloried by many of his German peers in the 1920s and 30s for his Jewish science.

Einstein recoiled from nationalism. But his personal experience of anti-Semitism and his witnessing of anti-Semitic attacks on his European Jewish peers convinced him that Jews needed a homeland in Palestine.

Until the end of his life he defended his Zionist instinct, Gutfreund said. Einstein maintained that he was always a cosmopolitan, but this nationalism is forced upon us and its a necessity.

Einstein was born in Ulm, an industrial German city, in 1879.

He flirted with Judaism in his youth, annoying his secular parents by demanding that they keep a kosher home.

But his views changed when he was about 12, thanks to Max Talmud, a Lithuanian-Jewish medical student who was invited to the Einstein household for dinner each week.

Talmud hooked Einstein on science books that sparked his rejection of religion.

Through the reading of popular scientific books, I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true, Einstein later recalled. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking, coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies.

Einsteins uncoupling from religious Judaism was matched by his rejection of his nationality.

He hated what he perceived as the militarism of Kaiser Wilhelm IIs Germany.

After his family moved to Switzerland, Einstein, at the age of 17, renounced his German citizenship.

As if to underline his rejection of everything he was born into, the papers renouncing Einsteins citizenship listed his religious affiliation as none. A decade later, when Einstein was forced to list a religious belief in his application for an academic post in Prague, he wrote, perhaps begrudgingly, Mosaic.

Einstein may have rejected Judaism, but he could not reject the way others perceived him as Jewish. Even as his star grew in Europe following the publication in 1905 of his theory of special relativity and of his famous equation E = mc 2 Einstein still felt held back as a Jew.

He suspected that he was passed over for the position at the University of Prague in 1910 because of anti-Semitism.

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After he moved to Berlin in 1914, his science was attacked not just on its merits but also on the authors Jewish background. In 1920, a group of nationalists formed the Study Group of German Scientists for the Preservation of a Pure Science. Their first target was Einsteins general theory of relativity, published in 1915, which Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard disparaged as being infected with an alien spirit.

As hyperinflation took hold in 1921 and unemployment rose, more people casting around for a scapegoat focused on Jews.

Einstein did not try to assimilate like other German Jews such as Walther Rathenau, Germanys foreign minister who was assassinated by nationalists in 1922, or chemist Fritz Haber, a convert to Christianity who developed chemical weapons for Germany during World War I.

Following the rise of the Nazi Party, Haber had to leave Germany; he died in exile in 1934 in Switzerland. As National Socialism spread in Germany, the atmosphere for Jews grew toxic. At one point, the police warned Einstein that nationalists were targeting him for assassination.

These developments helped Einstein overcome his misgivings about the Zionist project.

In 1921 he embarked on a two-month tour of America to raise money for the World Zionist Organization and, in particular, for the building of the Hebrew University.

Einstein believed that the Hebrew University, which was founded in 1918, would be a beacon to the world, devoted to the pursuit of Jewish values of justice and human dignity.

It was Einsteins first trip to America, and everywhere he went he was mobbed as a scientific superstar and, as Walter Isaacson described in his biography of Einstein, as a living patron saint for Jews.

That trip was followed one year later by Einsteins first and only visit to Palestine. Although Einstein was dismissive of the Orthodox Jews he saw praying at the Western Wall, he was inspired by the sight of industrious, secular Jews laying the foundation for a nation.

During a stop in Jerusalem, he told a Zionist crowd, Today, I have been made happy by the sight of the Jewish people learning to recognize themselves and to make themselves recognized as a force in the world.

But Einsteins support for the Zionist dream was not straightforward.

World Zionist Organization leaders kept minders on hand during Einsteins trips to America and Palestine lest he say something out of turn. Right up until the founding of the State of Israel, in 1948, Einstein spoke out against the idea of a Jewish state. Einsteins vision of a Middle Eastern nation that welcomed Jews would look more like the binational state that so many Jews today fear rather than the two-state solution so many people crave.

As Isaacson notes in his biography, Einstein feared that the influx of Jews to Palestine during the 1920s could lead to friction with Palestinian Arabs. In 1929 he told the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann that if Jews could not coexist peacefully with Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering.

Even in 1946, when the horrors of the Holocaust were still raw, Einsteins views were unchanged.

In an interview with the Forverts, Einstein warned that a Jewish commonwealth where a majority of the population is Arab would be unjust and impractical. Testifying in Washington that same year to an international committee examining the Palestine question, Einstein said, The state idea is not in my heart.

If Einsteins opposition to a Jewish state was disappointing for Zionists, then his religious views disappointed religious Jews as well as atheists.

Einsteins view of God mirrors most closely that of Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Dutch philosopher who was excommunicated from the Jewish community at the age of 23.

Einstein, like Spinoza, did not believe in a personal God who cares about what humans do. Instead, Einstein marveled at the majesty and complexity of the universe, which he believed could be attributed only to some higher power. The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious, Einstein wrote in 1930. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

Still, Einstein felt a deep bond with the Jewish people, one that transcended religion as well as the anti-Semitism that Nazis and their sympathizers leveled against him..

Despite his differences with fellow Jews in their practices and beliefs, Gimbel says, Einstein recognized that the relationship he had with Jewish friends was fundamentally different from the one he had with non-Jewish friends. He came to believe that whatever their beliefs, Jews shared common traits.

The first trait Einstein identified as common among Jews was an ability to face the world with a sense of awe and joy, whether the Jews in question were rapturous Hasidim or secular physicists.

The second trait Einstein identified was a sense of social justice. As he wrote in 1938, The bond that has united the Jews for thousands of years and that unites them today is, above all, the democratic ideal of social justice coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men.

When Weizmann, Israels first president, died in 1952, Einstein, still a pacifist and an internationalist, was not an obvious choice. He had been a refugee from Germany since 1933, and had spent the past 20 years living in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was now a U.S. citizen. But he was still the most famous Jew in the world. Einstein, who had not visited the Middle East for 30 years, did not want to become president of Israel. But his official rejection of the honor was telling.

In a letter to the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Einstein wrote that he was deeply moved by the offer of the presidency and that he was disappointed at having neither the experience nor the skills to be able to accept.

Then, in a flourish that underlined his bond with the Jewish people, he concluded, I am the more distressed over these circumstances because my relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.

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67 years after his death, Albert Einstein's true relationship to Judaism and Zionism - St. Louis Jewish Light

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2022

In this session, Dr. Samantha Meinrath-Vinokor of the Jewish Education Project will take participants through the top 10 items to know, in this arena, in order to be more informed as they navigate Jewish college life.

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Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism on the College Campus - jewishboston.com

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

Despite much vocal opposition from Republican senators, Ketanji Brown Jackson is on her way to joining the Supreme Court. There is little doubt that she will ally with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in the courts liberal wing. But is she a threat to Americas Jews and to Israel? Critics have pointed to her membership in Harvards Black Students Association as an undergraduate, and they tar her with anti-Semitic sympathy because the organization invited a notorious black anti-Semite to address its membership.

There is no evidence that she participated in the decision to issue that invitation or that her views then or now mirror the speakers. Not much else in the public record suggests what can be expected from her as a justice on legal issues that could impact Americas Jews.

I confess to some personal bias. In 1999, Jackson was an associate in the 35-member law firm Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin, of which I am the sole surviving name partner. She left the firm to start a clerkship with Justice Stephen Breyer in August of that year. I have no personal recollection of working with her on the litigations that I was handling at the time. But in May of that year, I was heading the effort to bring to the Supreme Court for a second appearance the case for state funding of the school for learning-disabled children in Kiryas Joelthe all-Satmar Chassidic community in New York. The court had ruled in 1994 that the law creating a governmentally funded school district in the religious community was unconstitutional, but the New York legislature repeatedly amended the law to authorize broader arguably constitutional funding for municipalities seeking to create their own school districts. These changes in the law kept the Kiryas Joel school in operation while the constitutionality of the new statutes was again making its way through the courts.

On May 11, 1999, the New York Court of Appeals divided 4-3 on the latest amended law. The majority found the amendment unconstitutional, but there was a strong dissent. Representing Kiryas Joels Board of Education, I rushed to take the New York decision to the United States Supreme Court so that the school would not be immediately shuttered. I dont recall which young lawyer in our firm I assigned to hurriedly draft a petition for Supreme Court review, but the time-keeping diary I still have for that period shows 2.2 hours I spent on Kiryas Joel on May 19, 1999Revised KJ draft. The initials KJ indicate that the draft I reviewed was written by Ketanji Jackson because I customarily noted the initials of the firms lawyer who had assisted me. Since we knew by then that she had been selected for a Supreme Court clerkship, it was natural to choose her to draft a potential petition. (On June 2, 1999, we filed a petition and a request with the Supreme Court to stay the New York decision and won a surprising order on June 21 that retained state funding and kept the school going. The law was again amended that summer, and our opponents then gave up their challenge.)

Two rulings issued by Jackson while she was a district judge have garnered little notoriety, but they are, for Americas Jews, grounds for optimism.

As a counter to the notorious Israel-baiting J Street, a pro-Zionist group called Z Street was formed in Pennsylvania in 2009. Its application for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Tax Code was delayed by the IRS under a policy that prescribed more exacting review for organizations connected with Israel. Z Street filed a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court claiming that this special policy was unconstitutional. On the IRSs motion, the case was transferred to the District of Columbia, and it was randomly assigned to Judge Jackson.

The Obama Justice Department strenuously contested Z Streets legal claim, and it argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed. In May 2014, Judge Jackson ruled in a detailed opinion that Z Streets lawsuit should continue. The Court of Appeals approved her decision in June 2015. It then took until February 2018, during the Trump administration, for the case to be settled and for the IRS to apologize to Z Street.

Her sympathy for claims of religious liberty may have been disclosed in a case that came to District Judge Jackson in 2017. A lawsuit was initiated by a U.S. Postal Service employee named Howard Tyson, who claimed that his supervisor allowed other employees to play music while they worked but denied a promotion to Tyson because he played Christian gospel music over the supervisors objection to religious music. Judge Jackson refused to dismiss the case, saying that this was a plausible claim for religious discrimination.

A different district judge who took over the case when Jackson was promoted to the Court of Appeals ruled against Tyson in November 2021. The case is now on appeal. Jacksons initial ruling at the outset of the case is no longer an issue, but it demonstrated judicial receptivity for a somewhat tenuous claim of religious freedom.

These are thin reeds on which to make any prediction of what Justice Jackson will do. But it is all we have.

(Reposted from the JNS site)

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How will Justice Jackson Treat Israel and Judaism? - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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