Our family recently spent two weeks in the U.S. So, you’re probably wondering whether we experienced any of the post-October 7 surge in antisemitism that’s been extensively reported in the news, including in my own columns.

We were in fact accosted in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t from the pro-Hamas crowd. Rather, it was three young Chabad men dressed up as clowns who decided I needed to put on tefillin right then and there as I was walking purposefully towards an Apple Store.

I tried to stay focused on my goal – an appointment to try out the new Apple Vision Pro augmented reality goggles – but the Chabadniks followed me for blocks, their calls increasing in intensity.

“Come on,” the ringleader cajoled. “It’s Purim, after all. When was the last time you laid tefillin?”

I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to be late, as I tried to put some social distance between us.

I should have been happy it was fellow Jews doing the cajoling – I wasn’t looking forward to spending time on a long-delayed vacation (originally scheduled for October 10, canceled for obvious reasons) fighting off a bunch of antisemitic, Israel-as-colonial-apartheid state protesters at every turn.

Indeed, we had plenty of reason to worry that might be the case.

Our son, Aviv, is roommates with Jonathan Telsin, whose stories I’ve shared previously about the horrific events Israeli and Jewish students studying at The New School in Manhattan have been experiencing since the start of the war in Gaza. 

Aviv hasn’t been spared, either.

Just a week before we arrived, a group of pro-Hamas students essentially broke into The New School, attempting to shut down a talk by an IDF soldier who had been invited to relate what he had seen fighting in the Strip. The protesters proceeded to bang on the walls of the classroom where the lecture was taking place, screaming racist epithets while campus security stood by and did nothing.

When the Jewish students, including Aviv and Jonathan, eventually left the classroom, the antisemites were waiting for them in the hallway. In a scene that could have been lifted straight out of a script for Game of Thrones, the Jews were forced to pass a gauntlet of masked protesters yelling such slurs as, “How does it feel to be complicit in genocide?” and “How many did you murder today?”

As Aviv left the building, a protester followed him for a good five minutes, videotaping him while repeatedly taunting him as a “baby killer.” 

Would Aviv be “doxed” with his name shared across antisemitic networks?

So, when Aviv began publicizing his senior recital, which featured mostly Israeli jazz musicians with noticeably Hebrew names, I was concerned the protesters could have identified him and were now planning a new rally outside the concert hall.

They didn’t and the concert proceeded smoothly. Indeed, other than posters we saw on seemingly every corner bodega in Brooklyn calling to “Free Palestine,” we didn’t run into any haters ourselves.

Were we just lucky or has the rising antisemitism that’s stayed at the top of the Jewish headlines for the past six months been overstated?

The latter seems a stretch. 

Just last week, for example, a study conducted by the Online Hate Prevention Institute found that incidents of antisemitism between October 21, 2023, two weeks after the Hamas massacre, and February 8, 2024, increased to 145 a day, compared with just 27 a day in the same period the previous a year. 

Franklin Foer’s viral essay in The Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending” further raised the alarm.

We actually thought we were in for a confrontation the week before when we were in California. A group of protesters stood outside the entrance to the Los Angeles Zoo with placards reading “Free…” 

I braced myself for the now familiar second part of the exclamation, but it read “Billy,” and the protesters’ ire was focused on the zookeepers who, they claimed, were refusing to repatriate an Asian elephant named Billy.

Indeed, California seemed as bucolic as ever, at least in the places where we visited family: La Jolla, Los Angeles and Santa Rosa, the latter where my 92-year-old mother lives. 

While family was curious about life in Israel, about politics, war and the fate of the hostages, they mostly refrained from peppering us with questions; our time was focused on introducing two-year-old Ilai and three-month-old Roni to their great-grandparents in California.

Aviv’s concert was fantastic (I know, I’m biased). He chose five original tunes and two covers. The closing number was an arrangement of Guy Mazig’s “If You Would Only Talk.” A young Israeli singer, also studying in the jazz program at The New School, Noa Havakook, joined Aviv’s ensemble on stage and began crooning – in Hebrew.

“It was important to me to include an Israeli song to symbolize my identity during this time,” Aviv told me afterward.

It was one of the few times I’d heard Hebrew on the trip. And I hadn’t heard any Israeli music since we flew out of Ben-Gurion airport. I was deeply moved, both from the beautiful melody, which was more pop than bop, and Noa’s soaring vocals, which reminded me why we live in Israel and how connected to this place I feel.

Afterward, my wife, Jody, commented that it was brave for Aviv to include a song in Hebrew, given the current environment. What a sad statement – that owning one’s Israeli identity abroad, rather than hiding outward Jewish symbols and language, has been transformed into an act of defiance rather than what it should be – a simple expression of pride.

I first wrote about our U.S. trip for The Jerusalem Post.

Picture from the Brooklyn bodega – credit: Brian Blum.

Yochi Rappeport is not someone I would expect to see handing out campaign flyers on Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim Street. And certainly not with the messaging screaming from the page she handed me as I was doing my Friday morning shopping.

Rappeport is the executive director of Women of the Wall, the feminist group that meets monthly at the kotel(the Western Wall). But the flyer had emblazoned on it photographs of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Aryeh King and Avi Maoz, three of the most right-wing and, in the case of King and Maoz, virulently homophobic politicians on the scene today.

These three henchmen of the liberal apocalypse would be among the first to protest the Women of the Wall. So, why was Rappeport promoting them?

“Oh my!” she exclaimed when my face fell. “You’re looking at the wrong side!”

And there, on the flip side of the flyer, were the politicians Rappeport supported – members of the new Jerusalem Union list for city council. Their shining, pluralistic punems were meant to counter the scowling hate from the back of the same flyer. The warning (in Hebrew): “It’s time to choose: A messianic Jerusalem or an Israeli Jerusalem?”

I met Rappeport in the run-up to the original date for municipal elections in 2023 (before they were delayed due to the war with Hamas). Since then, the Jerusalem Union’s messaging has been updated; it now asks, “Do you want a liberal, Israeli Jerusalem or an ultra-Orthodox one?” 

That’s led some critics to question if that argument is still appropriate after October 7 when “unity” has become the national watchword. Given the continued divisive politicking by members of Knesset – in particular, the anger at the haredim after funding for yeshivot was increased despite wartime budget cuts along with frustration that the ultra-Orthodox are still pushing for a blanket exemption from IDF service while, at the same time, a proposal is being discussed to lengthen service requirements for non-haredi soldiers – the Jerusalem Union’s position, sadly, remains relevant.

Rappeport is not simply a campaign worker; she’s no. 9 on the list which was formed through the merging of four different parties – Yossi Havilio, the list’s candidate for mayor, is a long-time Jerusalem activist and head of the “Saving Jerusalem” list; Laura Wharton, of “Democratic Jerusalem,” was Meretz’s representative on the Jerusalem city council; Ye’ala Bitton de Langa joined the Jerusalem Union on behalf of Yesh Atid; and Eran Ben-Yehuda did the same, from the Labor Party. Tomer Mintz, from the anti-judicial coup movement A New Contract, is also on the list. 

It’s not just the candidates. The Jerusalem Union’s talking points speak to me. 

“For 30 years, the elected mayors have insisted on basing their coalition on the local versions of Maoz, Ben-Gvir, and [Yitzhak] Goldknopf [current head of the United Torah Judaism party in the Knesset],” Havilio told The Jerusalem Post. “I pledge that after I am elected mayor, I will form a coalition that will be based first and foremost on the liberal factions.”

None of this is to say that I’m necessarily displeased with how the current – and most likely returning – mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, has managed the city. He promised to clean up our streets and stuck to his word. He promised to build far and wide and – like it or not – he’s doing that, too. Many of us were afraid he’d be too beholden to his religious coalition members, but he’s worked hard to be (mostly) fair to all sectors of Jerusalem’s delicate mosaic.

At the same time, the majority of the 30 seats on the current Jerusalem city council are in the hands of the haredi parties which, just doing the math, never mind specific policies, doesn’t bode well for pluralism. A counterbalance was – and still is – desperately needed.

Havilio wants to cancel the automatic property tax deductions for homes where there is “unemployment by choice” (code for “studying full-time in yeshiva or Kollel”); he believes state and state-religious schools should not be closed even if enrollment drops; and he emphasizes that only schools that teach the core studies of math, science and English should be opened in non-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Does all that make the Jerusalem Union an anti-religious party?

“I’m religious myself,” Rappeport stressed to me in our Emek Refaim chat before adding that, despite the fact she wouldn’t use public transportation or eat in a restaurant on Shabbat, those options should nevertheless be kept available. 

I’m not so naïve as to believe that SuperBus will soon be operating an officially-sanctioned line to ferry paying passengers to the beach on the Sabbath. But I appreciate Havilio’s and the Jerusalem Union’s fighting spirit.

When it comes to the environment, Havilio says all the right things, too: that new construction will not be approved in green areas and that the pace of work on the light rail will be accelerated (although I’m not sure he has any real control there).

If elected mayor – a long-shot to be sure – Havilio insists that in any coalition he leads, “I will make a U-turn from the poor, extreme, and non-Zionist direction in which the city is moving…I will take this city away from deterioration into the abyss of chronic poverty, extremism, bigotry, and racism.”

Laura Wharton adds, “We united to change the equation in Jerusalem and free the city council from the fanatics and extremists who are trying to take control of it. The time has come to take back the reins.”

To that, I say, “Get out and vote!”

Municipal elections will be held this coming Tuesday, February 27, in Jerusalem and all across Israel. 

The Jerusalem Union website: https://jerusalem-u.co.il/

Read the original article on The Jerusalem Post website.

Israeli music student, Jonathan Telsin, a 21-year-old trumpet player from Tel Aviv, has been living in New York City since the fall where he’s studying jazz at The New School in a joint program with the Tel-Aviv-based Israel Conservatory of Music. 

Jonathan was looking forward to an amazing opportunity: Getting to learn from top teachers and students; performing at world-renowned jazz clubs and sitting in at jam sessions around town; the excitement of being at the epicenter of the jazz world.

Then October 7 happened, and nothing has been the same.

Following the devastating attack on Israel by Hamas on that “Black Sabbath,” other New York City universities – Columbia, NYU and Cooper Union in particular – have been in the spotlight for antisemitic and anti-Israel activism. Reports of threats, intimidation and physical and verbal violence against Jewish students have been logged on campuses across the country, culminating in the Congressional farce where the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn could not state clearly that calling for the genocide of a minority group violated their schools’ codes of conduct.

But things have been just as horrific for Israeli and Zionist students at The New School. 

Jonathan has been compiling images and videos of what’s been happening on campus since October 7. Among the clips – which Jonathan explains is just a small sample:

— Posters plastered around campus including those screaming, “Zionists f-off.”

— Several videos of masked pro-Hamas protesters inside The New School’s front gates – on private property, not on the street where it could be argued they’re within their right to free speech – holding signs accusing Israel of “genocide” and “Intifada until victory.” 

— At the same rally, protesters chanted, “Is it right to rebel? Israel, go to hell.” To paraphrase a skit from Eretz Nehederet (the Israeli equivalent to Saturday Night Live), “If it rhymes, it must be true.”

— The New School’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards published a letter saying that blocking school entrances was against The New School’s policies. Antisemites annotated that letter to read, “F- all the Zionists that go to this school [and who are] taking pics of us. Sincerely, go to hell.” Well, at least they were sincere.

— More F-bombs: A video of a man outside The New School with a megaphone shouting “F-you Israel” and “F-you bitch.”

— In the ninth-floor girls’ bathroom: “Abolish the settler state.” In a boy’s bathroom: “Zionism is terrorism.”

— A group dubbed “the socialist revolution” makes clear the anti-Western bias of many of the protesters as they promote an event that “will cut across the imperialist lies and provide the communistic perspective for Palestinian liberation.” 

— Perhaps most egregiously for Jonathan, protesters barred the entrances to three separate New School buildings with large Palestinian flags. In one video, a woman pleads off camera, “Let me in, I have class.” A protester flashes a sign at her that reads, “Support decolonization.” Or else what, you can’t study? 

Inside the walls of the campus buildings, things were not much better as Jonathan shared a video of Amin Husain, a professor at NYU who has built a reputation for spreading hate speech in his lectures. In the video, Husain was invited into a New School classroom where he claimed that all the atrocities Hamas meticulously documented – the murders, rapes, mutilations, and beheadings – were all “fake news” and “Zionist propaganda.” 

Jonathan pointed out that Husain was once a member of the Palestinian group Fatah (the PLO) who proudly proclaimed his participation in “resistance” activities during the first Intifada in Israel including throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. 

The irony of the antisemitic activity happening at The New School is that the institution was originally founded in 1919 by progressive educators who were frustrated by quotas that kept Jews and other minorities out of elite universities. In 1917, for example, Columbia imposed a “loyalty oath” related to World War I upon the entire faculty and student body. Professors Charles A Beard and James Harvey Robinson subsequently resigned from Columbia to join the faculty of The New School, which had adopted a deliberate color- and race-blind admission policy. 

Jonathan saved some of his most strident vitriol for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) which he says is not some innocent home-grown pro-Palestinian group. He pointed to a 2020 study by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy that revealed “a direct correlation between donations to universities by the country of Qatar and other Gulf States and the presence of SJP groups on campus.” 

According to a report by Gabriel Diamond, a political science major at Yale, in The Hill, following the 9/11 terror attacks, Qatar began pumping money – some $4.7 billion over two decades – into American universities.  “It naturally follows that university administrations sitting on cash piles from Qatar would take a hands-off approach to SJP,” Diamond writes.

Note, too, that Hatem Bazian, a co- founder of SJP and now a lecturer in the department of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, also founded American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which is linked with the shuttered Holy Land Foundation which sent millions of dollars directly to Hamas before it was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2008. 

While the Holy Land Foundation no longer operates, AMP is still going strong and shares “a striking resemblance to the Hamas charities that were dismantled here more than a decade ago,” according to Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The New School administration attempted at one point to bring in a mediator for the Israeli students – an American rabbinical student, Louisa Solomon. While she seemed supportive during the meeting, Jonathan reported, he later saw her at a rally to denounce Israel.

Solomon also boasted on her Instagram page about being “proud to be arrested [in October 2023] demanding a ceasefire to prevent genocide in Gaza.” In separate social media posts, she described herself as “an anti-Zionist future rabbi” and claimed that stating that most Jews might feel similarly on a topic – for example, support of Israel following the most horrific massacre since the Holocaust – is in itself an “expression of antisemitism.” 

Was this really the best representative The New School could come up with?

Has Jonathan felt personally threatened? While he hasn’t physically been punched or hit, one protester thrust a megaphone up to his ear and began yelling. “I tried to move but he just went to the other side.” 

The climate of hate against Jews and Israelis at The New School is so pervasive, he relates, that one Israeli student said she didn’t feel safe coming to campus for weeks after the antisemitic protests started. “She was afraid for her life.”

Another Israeli student in the drama department at The New School was “canceled” from a play she was supposed to star in after she confronted a pro-Hamas student tearing down posters of kidnapped babies. 

“You’re no longer welcome due to your political views,” she was told just days before her final performance – one which she needed to pass the course.

Political commentator and editor Andrew Sullivan lays the blame on the West’s obsession with seeing the world in binary terms.

“If a member of an oppressor class says something edgy, it is a form of violence. If a member of an oppressed class commits actual violence, it’s speech,” says Sullivan on his Substack, The Dishcast. “That’s why many Harvard students instantly supported a fundamentalist terror cult that killed, tortured, systematically raped and kidnapped Jews just for being Jews in their own country. Because they have been taught it’s the only moral position to take.”

Back at The New School, Students for Justice in Palestine published a list of “demands” of the university including ending the partnership between The New School and the Conservatory of Music in Israel, along with a “public acknowledgment” that Israel is a “settler colony” that must be denounced “for apartheid in Palestine and genocide in Gaza.” 

SJP ends its letter with the threat that, if the group doesn’t receive a response by its so-called “deadline,” we will “assume that this university is willingly invested in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and we will respond accordingly and by any means necessary.” (Emphasis is the writer’s.)

Of all the twisted language and epithets that have arisen after October 7, “to find yourself accused of genocide after undergoing a kind of mini-genocidal experience is so profoundly disorienting that I don’t know what world I’m living in anymore,” notes Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi on the Shalom Hartman Institute podcast For Heaven’s Sake.

Evoking genocide is the ultimate dehumanization, he said, even before South Africa began making those claims at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It’s the reason why people are tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis, Klein Halevi explains. “The notion that Israel has any humanity opens up the possibility that maybe we have a case. And so, to see pictures of kidnapped babies is a threat to a worldview in which there can be no space for Israel’s legitimacy.” 

What does Jonathan want from The New School? 

“We want to be protected. We ask the school to take measures against students who violate their code of conduct, to not give an opportunity for students in an academic institution to call for the elimination of an entire population or community.”

Jonathan said he’s been attending “up to three meetings a day” with The New School administration – to no avail. “They crossed the line long ago. When a student says to another student, ‘I wish you had been in Israel on October 7 so you would have been raped, too,’ or ‘I hope you get stabbed on the street,’ the meaning does not rely on understanding the ‘context.’ Someone has to stop that student and let him know there will be consequences.”

Instead, a New School administrator told Jonathan to “get out of here, leave the building, it’s too dangerous for you now.’ I said, ‘if you think it’s dangerous for me, why don’t you do anything?’ He just gave me a blank look.”

That jives with what Shai Davidai, an Israeli professor at Columbia, has been saying in videos and articles that have gone viral since October 7. “Jewish students are encouraged to stay in hiding while those who celebrate Hamas are allowed to hold their events,” he notes.

Does Jonathan regret choosing to come to The New School? No, he says. “I came here to study music. It was a legitimate choice. But now I’m spending all this time in meetings. Tomorrow, I have an exam. I have so many papers to write and projects to do. But it’s our obligation to fight, for ourselves and for other students – and not just the Israeli and Jewish students – because they will be next.”

I first wrote about antisemitism at The New School for The Jerusalem Post.

All images were provided by Jonathan Telsin, including links to Louisa Solomon’s Instagram posts.

Update: Since I wrote this article, Amin Husain has been suspended by NYU for denying the October 7 atrocities.

We’ve all seen that person. The one who feels unwell at a concert or a public event. As he or she lies on the ground, a crowd of gawkers assembles. Eventually a doctor materializes, and the stricken person is whisked away by ambulance. 

On a recent Shabbat, I was the guy on the floor. 

My wife, Jody, and I were invited to a kiddush at a local synagogue when I started to feel faint. I sat on a bench but soon needed to lie down, too. I was nauseous and thought I might throw up, but when I tried to get to the bathroom, my vision blurred, and the outdoor space spun around me. 

I lay down again, this time on the hard pavement, aware of the spectacle I was creating but with no real option to sit up, lest I wanted to pass out.

This being a shul full of Jews, it was inevitable that there would be a doctor in the house. My pulse was dangerously low, he warned. He asked me to count from one to ten. No confusion but he still felt I needed to get to the ER.

“I don’t want to go,” I whispered to Jody. “I don’t want to spend the whole of Shabbat in the hospital.”

But it was too late. The ambulance had already been called. My blood pressure was a paltry 80/40. Hoisted onto a gurney, I was whisked off to Hadassah Ein Kerem.

The Emergency Room was efficient – they hooked me up to an IV, checked my heart with an EKG, did a chest X-ray and took blood and urine. Everything came out normal.

“It’s probably dehydration,” the doctor pronounced, as he hooked me up to a saline drip.

That didn’t make sense to me. I’ve had plenty of times where I haven’t drunk enough but nothing like this had ever happened. I had a couple of sips of Scotch at the kiddush – could it have been that?

My own diagnosis: I was having a panic attack. The symptoms were consistent: dizziness, shortness of breath, low blood pressure (although to the doctor’s cautious credit, those same symptoms could indicate a heart attack).

Anxiety has been my watchword since the October 7 “Black Sabbath” attack on Israel’s south. The minute-by-minute reports of fighting in Gaza that fill my WhatsApp feed, the deep depression over the fate of the Israeli hostages in Hamas’s hands, the escalation in the north, has everyone on edge.

Now, add to all that some unexpected health news and maybe it’s not so surprising that I collapsed.

Remember the “boom-boom” radiation I received over the summer? It, unfortunately, didn’t work. At first, the tumor we zapped shrunk, and I was optimistic. 

But a follow-up PET CT was shocking: The tumor had grown back – and then some. New tumor sites appeared, as well. 

My doctor recommended that we start treatment again. 

Follicular lymphoma is a chronic cancer. For most people, it won’t kill you, but it nearly always comes back, requiring more treatment. I had chemo and immunotherapy in 2018 and went into remission – but just for six months before I relapsed. If there’s a silver lining, I went treatment free for five years since, with follicular lymphoma, you don’t treat until the tumors get large enough or if you’re having “B” symptoms. 

Was my near-fainting in shul a “B” symptom? My hematologist didn’t think so. But the disease is now clearly progressing and treatment in 2024 has become unavoidable.

That’s where I am now – at the beginning of months of cancer treatment which will, hopefully, knock out the lymphoma for a good many years.

Part of what gives me confidence is a new kind of treatment that has emerged that will, in the coming years, likely become the standard of care for blood cancers like mine. No more chemo. The new drug of choice is known as a “bispecific antibody,” a form of immunotherapy. Mine in particular is called Mosunetuzumab.

A quick primer: Antibodies are a protein component of the immune system that circulates in the blood, recognizes foreign substances like viruses and bacteria, and neutralizes them. Immunotherapy, unlike chemo, which indiscriminately kills both cancer and healthy innocent bystander cells, harnesses the body’s immune system to fight any malignancies. Scientists do this by engineering antibodies in a lab and then injecting them into the patient.

Antibodies tend to have a “Y” shape. Most engineered antibodies are “monocolonal” – they have the same function on each “arm” of the Y. For lymphoma, they seek out a protein called CD20 that’s expressed by the tumor cells. 

For bispecifics, the two arms have different functions. One still searches for CD20 proteins, but the other binds with CD3 proteins which are expressed by T-cells in the immune system. 

Because the two arms of the Y are tethered to the same stem, they pack a powerful punch. Unlike with monoclonal antibodies, where the T-cells have to search somewhat randomly throughout the body to find the cancer cells that the monoclonal antibody has marked, with bispecifics, the antibody basically says, “Hey, T-cells, I found a tumor. Here it is. Go get it.”

The result can be dramatic, with tumors obliterated sometimes as fast as a matter of minutes. We don’t know how long the remissions will last – bispecifics are so new there’s no long-term follow-up date on them – but the prognosis is encouraging.

By this time next year, I should be done with IVs and meds. I can only pray that our country will be in a similar remission from the war and the divisiveness that preceded it, and that we will have eradicated our enemies – both internal and external.

I first shared my latest health news at The Jerusalem Post.

For a good overview on how bispecifics work, this video from the Lymphoma Research Foundation is excellent.

On the night of October 6, our two-year-old grandson, Ilai, had a sleepover at Saba and Savta’s house. Our plan was to give his parents a night off. We would take our precious little boy to Simchat Torah services the next day and his parents would join us whenever they woke up.

Instead, we spent much of the morning of October 7 running up and down the stairs to our bomb shelter.

Nine weeks later, we were babysitting overnight again, this time because Ilai’s parents were at Hadassah Medical Center as our daughter, Merav, was in labor to deliver Ilai’s baby sister.

As we set out for synagogue on Friday night with Ilai in tow, I had an evil premonition. 

“I bet there will be another siren,” I said to my wife, Jody, “since Ilai is with us again for Shabbat.”

Maybe I should have put out into the universe a more positive intention.

No sooner had we arrived at shul than, true to my paranoid prediction, there was a siren – a cynical way for Hamas to “welcome” the Sabbath Queen. 

We calmly filed into the adjacent safe room and started the service there. We waited for the booms of the Iron Dome, then returned to the main sanctuary. 

Meanwhile at Hadassah, Merav and Gabe had to flee temporarily into the stairwell. Fortunately, her contractions weren’t too tough at that point.

24 hours later, Roni Maayan was born.

Her name – like everything these days – is infused with significance. We had wondered, for example, whether Merav and Gabe would pick a name that related to the war somehow. Indeed, they did, and then went even further.

“Roni’” in Hebrew can be translated as “Ron sheli” or “my song, my joy.”

“We are giving her this name in the hope of having the tools to light up the dark times of the world into which she was born and to bring song, love and peace into it,” Merav wrote in a social media post announcing Roni’s arrival.

Roni is also named after Ron, Merav’s great-grandfather and Jody’s father, who passed away two years ago. 

Her middle name, Maayan, references our cousin Marla Ann Bennett, who was killed in the terror attack at Hebrew University in 2002. 

“I was so close to Marla,” Merav explained. “I knew, one day, if and when I had a daughter, I would name her after Marla in some way. We connected ‘Marla’ and ‘Ann’ to form ‘Maayan.’”

This is not the first time someone in our family has received a name relating to real-world events.

We gave Merav the middle name “Yonit” when she was born in 1993, to mark the Oslo Accords and treaty with Jordan. “Yonit” means “little dove,” a fitting expression of the hope for peace. 

While Oslo didn’t quite work out as those of us who supported the accords expected, Roni’s message of hope is more universal. In years to come, when Hamas is presumably vanquished and a new reality has taken hold in the Middle East, Roni’s “song of joy” will be even more appropriate.

Another change for Roni’s birth: Merav and Gabe chose Hadassah in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood, rather than St. Joseph, which they had used when Ilai was born. (See my article about St. Joseph’s here.)

St. Joseph is an Arab-run hospital located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem. Two years ago, St. Joseph was the “in” spot for Jewish Israelis in the Jerusalem area wishing to give birth in a less invasive, quieter environment than the city’s two main medical centers – Hadassah and Sha’arei Tzedek. 

About 15% of the patients at St. Joseph at the time were Jewish women. The rooms have crucifixes or a depiction of Jesus, but the staff would take those down if it made the birthing couple uncomfortable.

Things started to change at St. Joseph when Sister Valentina Sala, the hospital’s head midwife, who was dispatched from the Vatican to Jerusalem to establish the new ward, was reassigned earlier this year to replicate the St. Joseph model in Europe. Reports from Jewish parents who labored at St. Joseph since then reported the atmosphere was not as congenial as it had been previously.

But it was the war with Hamas that sealed the decision to opt for Hadassah. East Jerusalem didn’t feel comfortable anymore. 

Ironically, the doctor who delivered Roni at Hadassah was an Arabic-speaker. 

Roni and her parents are now home where Ilai is adjusting (read: considering how best to act out) to his new family situation. Roni is quite delicious and I’m sure she and Ilai will eventually become good friends. (Emphasis on the word “eventually.”)

When Ilai was born in 2021, I wrote here that, while it’s a cliché to say I fell in love with the little guy the first minute I met him, sometimes cliches are true. 

“It’s not his witty jokes, his seamless repartee or his physical actions that led to this love affair,” I said at his brit milah. “It’s a visceral, subconscious feeling that seeps over you with an intensity that’s different than even having your own children. Is it his sweet baby smell? Those little baby noises he makes that are so adorable? His perfect, beautiful lips or his incredibly soft skin? I may not be a religious person, but the first thing I thought of when I saw him was, ‘He’s a miracle.’”

The same has been true for Roni.

I wish Roni, her parents, big brother, uncles, aunts, cousins, and of course, her doting grandparents a life free from hardship, full of meaning, and imbued with light. If it takes a village to raise a happy and healthy child in today’s world, we are delighted to be that village.

I first wrote about the convergence between war and new life for The Jerusalem Post.

“Betrayal.” That’s how Shimrit Meir, who served as a senior advisor to prime minister Naftali Bennett, described her feelings following the surge of antisemitic speeches, letters, marches and violence that has erupted around the world in the aftermath of the October 7 “Black Sabbath” attack in Israel.

Meir, who was interviewed on the Unholy: Two Jews on the News podcast, was under no illusions that the empathy towards Israel displayed by the world immediately following Hamas’s atrocities would last once the IDF began pounding the Gaza Strip.

Still, she didn’t expect the embrace to be so brief.

Hamas’s attack was, after all, an attack unlike any other, with the terrorists documenting their pogrom on cell phones and GoPros and uploading it to the Internet in real time. If the Nazis had modern technology, I’m not sure they would have the audacity to live stream their atrocities; they worked hard to conceal their genocide. 

But there’s no denying what Hamas perpetrated on Simchat Torah – it’s all out there for anyone with a strong stomach to see.

But deny it is exactly what has been happening.

From Queen Rania of Jordan, who told CNN there’s “no evidence” that Hamas murdered babies and children, to pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S. and Europe who place the blame entirely on the Israeli side. 

A poll conducted by CAPS/Harris found that 32% of young adults 18-to-24-years-old do not believe Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis. Nearly half of the same age group remain convinced that it was an Israeli air strike that hit the Al-Ahli Hospital, despite evidence from multiple sources pointing to a misfired rocket from Gaza itself.

The result has been quick and heartbreaking: On campuses across the U.S., Jews are feeling unsafe.

Israeli poet Maya Tenet Dayan was in San Diego for a teaching residency. 

“I don’t like being an Israeli in California right now,” she wrote in Haaretz. “I feel an existential threat. I’m frightened to say where I come from. I’m frightened that someone will hear my children speaking Hebrew in the street. Most of the time, I’m helpless, because how do you even begin to explain? I talk with people who have no idea where Israel is on the map yet their opinion on it is unshakable.”

“What shocked me,” political commentator Andrew Sullivan added, “was the vivid and genuine expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers — even as their atrocities were in front of our eyes. That requires real ideological commitment, to repress every human impulse of empathy.”

What has happened to humanity’s moral compass? Why is it so hard for people to condemn outright evil when it comes to the Jews, to say clearly, as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris did, “There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil in our world, but this is one of them.”

The explanation lies in “cognitive-dissonance reduction,” Shany Mor, a lecturer at Reichman University in Herzliya, wrote in The Wall Street Journal. 

Cognitive dissonance occurs when what one experiences in the real-world conflicts with a long-held internal belief. It’s unpleasant, so people try to minimize it, Mor explained.

Cognitive dissonance reduction, then, is “the process by which people reconcile new information that contradicts their firmly held priors. The result is an ostensibly coherent system of thought.”

By applying cognitive dissonance reduction, politicians, journalists and everyday antisemites are able to ignore the fact “that Hamas’s belligerence is the cause [not the consequence] of Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” Mor wrote.

So, if missiles are being fired and innocent civilians are abducted, if Israel is, according to anti-Zionist activists, the epitome of evil, then the attacks must be Israel’s fault, not the Palestinians’, who are denied even a modicum of agency.

“Hamas’s gruesome attack poses a threat to this worldview, and the only way to resolve it is by heightening Israel’s imagined malevolence. The terrorist atrocities don’t trigger a recoiling from the cause in whose name they were carried out; they lead to an even greater revulsion at the victim,” Mor explained.

Moreover, Mor continued, “If the only thing that can explain a Palestinian action is Israeli ‘evil,’ then Israel’s opponents have to imagine a level of Jewish evil commensurate with what Hamas did—shooting children in front of their parents, setting houses on fire with residents inside, raping women.

When it is forbidden to criticize murderers or the society that created them, Mor concluded, “all that is left is to defame the victims.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid wants to ask the terrorist-supporting global far-left, “Do your feelings exempt you from knowing the facts? Do you know, for example, that Hamas doesn’t support a two-state solution? They don’t even want to free Palestine. And what about LGBT people? Do you really not care that the people you’re supporting hang gays?”

Logic, it seems, is unable to counter the intense urgency to reduce cognitive dissonance. 

Shalom Hartman Institute fellow Dr. Micah Goodman says that Israelis’ burning desire for acceptance helps fuel the problem. 

“We want love and we want fear,” Goodman explained. “We want love from the West. We want fear from the Middle East” to restore deterrence against our enemies. 

The problem is that it’s a zero-sum game. “Everything that we are going to do to restore the fear is going to erode the love,” Goodman noted.

What will happen next? Will Israel prevail? Who will govern Gaza once Hamas is gone? Will this lead to a massive shake-up of the governments on both sides – and beyond? 

One thing that is, sadly, all too known is that the theme of Dara Horn’s latest book, The World Loves Dead Jews, is no longer just a catchy title. It’s a reality we tried to ignore, one which we cannot – and should not – have to endure, and yet which the Jewish people, betrayed once again, will continue to bear for eternity.

I first wrote about my feelings of betrayal for The Jerusalem Post.

Image from Shimrit Meir’s profile on X.

For 31 weeks straight, protesters demonstrating against the Israeli coalition’s right-wing coup have been chanting “busha!” Hebrew for “embarrassment.” For most of this time, we yelled “busha” at the government. 

But now that the first of the judicial coup laws has been passed, it’s no longer an epithet being hurled in the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, MK Simcha Rothman and their misguided cronies. 

Now it’s me that’s embarrassed – for my country. 

How can I defend Israel to those who call it racist, homophobic and xenophobic, if that’s in fact what we are becoming? 

“Don’t be embarrassed for the country,” my wife, Jody, tried to console me. “This has been an unprecedented moment of patriotism for those of us fighting to keep Israel democratic. Be embarrassed for this particular government.”

Wise words I would normally heed. But these are not normal times.

As I write this, still in shock after the gang of brutish thugs, otherwise known as the coalition, has hijacked my country, embarrassment is indeed the operative term.

My “busha” stems from a deeply disturbing insight: We Jews seem to be prone to corruption whenever we get a taste of power. (Yes, I know this is not exclusive to the Jewish people, but that’s what I’m writing about here.)

Israel had two periods of sovereignty prior to the establishment of the current state. Neither lasted more than 75 years. 

We are now at 75 years again, and we seem to have learned nothing. Baseless hatred, which the rabbis decry as the reason for the Second Temple’s devastation, is the name of the game again. 

Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, puts it this way: 

“I always took for granted that the greatest threat to the well-being of the Jewish people is ‘sinat hinam,’needless hatred. The last months have forced me to revise that understanding: The greatest threat we face is zealotry. Ancient Judea fell not primarily because of hatred among Jews but because fanatics provoked a hopeless war against Rome and then proceeded to burn the granaries within besieged Jerusalem” in a bid to force locals to join the fight.

I write these sentences fully aware that they will be construed by some readers as antisemitic. That I’m giving ammunition to BDS supporters. That by describing an Israel with all its warts, I’m harming ties with our allies abroad.

But how else to explain what is happening in this country? 

Every politician in the coalition who voted for “reasonableness” bill is guilty of a shocking abuse of power. Some simply wanted to hold onto their jobs. Others clamored for a “salami” approach that will allow them to push their agenda once the current furor dies down.

Their goals are rapaciously transparent: Annex the West Bank. Pack the courts with judges who turn a blind eye to discrimination. Shut down media critical of the government. Make draft dodging state policy. 

The fallout from the passage of first coup law was excruciating and quick.

The credit agencies are downgrading us.

Citibank warned investors not to put money into Israeli companies until things “calm down.”

Seventy percent of high-tech firms have already moved some of their money, staff and intellectual property overseas. 

Twenty-eight percent of the respondents told pollsters they are thinking of leaving. Israeli Relocation company Ocean Group says 90% of the queries it receives these days are about how to flee.

That’s on top of the tens of thousands of soldiers, pilots and reservists who are poised to suspend their volunteer IDF service.

Haaretz columnist B. Michael wrote a piece entitled, “In praise of gratuitous hatred for this Israeli government.”

Hatred, Michael opines, “provides immunity to apathy; it thrills, liberates, exhilarates, satisfies. It relieves fatigue and despair. It is the weapon of the weak against the strong, the revenge of the trampled against the tramplers.”

I find myself filled with emotion too – not outright hatred but anger. It’s an awful feeling. I don’t want it! 

But maybe it’s better than “busha,” since, as Michael implies, anger can be channeled into constructive action. The key is ensuring that any such action does not become violent, something at which the protest movement has thus far excelled.

“Don’t give up! Today it is absolutely clear that the current government has lost all legitimacy to rule,” exhorted singer Noa (Achinoam Nini) in the days after the vote. “The healing of Israeli society can only begin with the forming of a new government – stalwart and responsible – no matter what side of the map it’s on.”

Eetta Prince Gibson, former editor of The Jerusalem Report, writes in the Forward that the crisis Israel is facing has “clarified my reasons for and reinforced my commitment to being here. I came to Israel because I believe that the establishment of Israel is the most important experience in modern Jewish history, and I want to be a part of it… I am here to help Israel become Jewish and democratic, even if I still don’t know if those two ethics can ever coexist…I have the opportunity, and the obligation, to at least try to affect Israel’s future.”

The road ahead will be long and strewn with potholes (as well as police water cannons spewing skunk spray). With the Knesset on recess, the summer may be calmer but, unless there’s some dramatic peace initiative over the coming months, autumn will be just as inflammatory.

While it’s impossible to predict the future with any kind of certainty, I do believe the protestors supporting a free and open, non-theocratic Israel will prevail. Maybe the High Court will overturn the reasonableness law when it meets in September. Maybe elections are closer than we think.

But just as democracy and Judaism must go together, so do pride and embarrassment. Only by holding those two clashing emotions at the same time can we see what we’ve become – and put a stop to what we’re becoming. 

To do anything otherwise would be a real “busha.”

I first wrote about my “busha” for The Jerusalem Post.

Image of embarrassed puppy by Design Wala on Unsplash

Was Moses Ben Maimon, the famous Middle Eastern doctor/rabbi known as the Rambam (RMBM), high when he wrote The Guide to the Perplexed? Judging by how he interpreted some of the most provocative stories in the Torah, that would certainly seem a possibility.

How else to explain the RMBM’s branding of Abraham’s binding of Isaac as, essentially, a hallucination, a waking nightmare? 

Or, on the question of whether angels can perform the physical act of eating (as in the story of Lot in Sodom), Maimonides was clear: What was depicted in the book of Genesis “did not occur in any other way than in a dream or in a vision.”

Were there really 10 plagues, a sea that parted and the Exodus of hundreds of thousand slaves? 

Dream.

The Garden of Eden with its seven days of creation and a sinister talking snake? 

Pure imagination.

The flood and Noah’s Ark?

Fantasy.

Balaam and his talking donkey? 

Delusion.

Moses at the burning bush? 

Well, someone was clearly smoking something when they wrote that.

Now, barring a time machine, we can’t know if the RMBM was actually high on mushrooms or some other psychedelic (and the sage’s well-known aversion to physical pleasure would suggest otherwise). 

Moreover, the RMBM was the consummate rationalist; he would argue it’s “rationality that demands we admit metaphysical beings do not assume physical form,” notes Dr. Elliot Malamet who spoke on the topic, “Can Myths Be True? Maimonides’ Philosophical Rewriting of Biblical Narratives” during a lecture at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. 

Whatever the motivations, the RMBM placed “less weight on actual history [and more on emphasizing that what] is most sublime is philosophical and ethical truth,” writes Rabbi David Frankel in an essay on TheTorah.org website entitled, “Torah Narratives with Angels Never Actually Happened: Heretical or Sublime?” 

“So, if certain things didn’t really happen, it doesn’t really matter, since that isn’t what the text was ‘about’ to begin with,” Frankel continues. “Maimonides suggests that certain philosophically challenging parts of the Torah were really ‘visions,’ partly symbolic and partly imaginative, that came to teach us things rather than events that transpired in the external world.”

The conception that Maimonides cared more about what we can learn from the stories in the Bible than their historical veracity is not a new one. It’s part of why the RMBM was so controversial in his day, with many of his writings banned and even burned.

And let’s make no mistake: Maimonides was no ancient atheist. His belief in an incorporeal deity was uncompromising. 

“Maimonides thinks more highly of a Creator who creates a cosmos that functions well without tinkering than one who must constantly ‘pull strings and push buttons’ to make it work,” writes Prof. Menachem Kellner in the essay, “Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism.”

The ever-rational RMBM makes his opinions abundantly clear in The Guide: “In the case of everyone about whom exists a scriptural text that an angel talked to him or that speech came to him from God, this did not occur in any other way than in a dream or in a vision of prophecy.”

The opposite – that God can take on human form and eat and drink – “would be tantamount to attributing physical characteristics to God which, for Maimonides, is both religious heresy and philosophical nonsense,” Frankel writes. 

We need the RMBM more than ever these days. Not to enhance our religious beliefs and practice, but rather to take them down a notch.

This is playing out daily in the news, where the current Israeli government, the most religious in its history, has fertilized a toxic environment where ministers feel free to spew some of the most offensive things imaginable, ostensibly in the name of that same religion. 

Hatred for the stranger, rampant misogyny, unbridled homophobia and xenophobia – every day there seems to be another statement coming from religious members of Knesset that should frankly floor any clear-thinking citizen, religious or otherwise.

These MKs are convinced they have God on their side. They are sure their interpretation of Torah is accurate, that history unfolded just as it says in the “good book,” and that if Lot invited the angels in for a snack, they must have transformed themselves, at least temporarily, into physical beings with working digestive systems. 

This fundamentalist interpretation allows our political “leaders” to act with what they believe is God-given impunity when they propose laws opposed by much of the population.

Maimonides’ approach suggests those politicians shouldn’t be so sure of themselves.

“Maimonides takes the radical step of turning all stories with angels into prophetic visions,” writes Frankel in TheTorah.org. “Since it is rationally impossible for [angels] to walk, talk, eat, fly or be seen, biblical stories that depict ‘angels’ in physical terms must be accounts of dreams or visions.”

Do I have any evidence that the RMBM was high when he wrote his seminal texts? No. But by subverting the literal-historical elucidation of key biblical stories, Maimonides pulls the rug out from under those religious pundits who state with absolute certainty what’s acceptable and who’s an abomination.

“Maimonides has completely rewritten the biblical text,” Malamet says. “He’s telling Jewish readers that we don’t believe this stuff. We don’t believe in magic. We don’t believe in fairy tales. We don’t believe in potions. We don’t believe gods visit the earth and take on human form and inhabit bodies.”

The next time you hear a so-called religious authority pontificate that he (and it’s always a “he”) knows “what God wants,” refer them to The Guide for the Perplexed.

Or find a friendly angel looking for an invitation to afternoon tea. Can’t locate one? That’s just as Maimonides would have thought.

I first explored Maimonides’ “motivations” in The Jerusalem Post.

The protests that have roiled Israel for months have been all about “dem-o-cra-tia” (the Hebrew chant equivalent for “democracy”). But that’s not the only message of this horrendous, historic moment we’ve collectively been living through. This has also represented a mass demand for freedom and that makes the demonstrations of 2023 a perfect Pesach metaphor.

What does freedom mean to you? It’s a question we ask at the Seder table every year. It’s one worth asking on this Shabbat of Hol Ha Moed.

What freedoms do we take for granted? What freedoms are we willing to fight for?

What rights and privileges might be lost if the coalition starts up the process again achrei ha hagim and it turns out the much vaunted “pause” was actually a bluff? It’s not such a stretch to imagine: Even as he announced he was delaying the votes after the dramatic events on that unprecedented March madness, Bibi took pains to emphasize he still plans to pass the “reform.” What if there’s no compromise and no dialogue in the making? 

Here are 20 examples to get us started. The question now is: What freedoms do you cherish?

1. Freedom to love and freedom to marry – whoever you want, however you want: traditional, secular, religious, gay, straight, with the Rabbinate, online via Utah, in Cypress or Prague, or simply by living together common law style.

2. Freedom to vote – that’s a right no coalition, right, left or center, should ever be able to restrict.

3. Freedom to work in a stimulating and satisfying profession that pays beyond the poverty level. Important corollary: The freedom to choose the core curriculum needed if one wishes to progress economically.

4. Freedom from tyranny and freedom from slavery – Moses experienced both while leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Modern Israelis have now woken up to what that means, too, both real and metaphorical. Who will be our contemporary Moshe?

5. Freedom to dance – even mixed if you so desire. Because we could all use a bit more rock and roll these days.

6. Freedom to eat – whatever you want, including a nice bready sandwich at Hadassah or Ichilov Hospitals over the Passover holiday.

7. Freedom to travel – inside our wonderful country or to one of many exotic destinations (I’m writing this from Ecuador – more on that next time.)

8. Freedom to protest and strike without being labeled a traitor or an anarchist; without being water-cannoned, skunk-sprayed, tasered, or charged by horses. Freedom from arbitrary politically-motivated detention.

9. Freedom from discrimination, whether based on gender, race, social origins, disability or age. No doctor, baker or candlestick maker should have permission to refuse service based on religious beliefs. 

10. Freedom to pray however you like, in whatever synagogue, church, mosque or shrine that suits you, to whatever god – or no god – that speaks to you (or doesn’t).

11. Freedom to speak up without fear of cancellation. May what happened to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant not be a harbinger of a future where the right to free expression is abridged for petty politics. For an in-depth non-Israeli take, listen to the fascinating new podcast, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.

12. Freedom to complain …albeit in moderation. 

13. Freedom to say no to invitations – you don’t have to attend every wedding or bat mitzvah or accept every Shabbat dinner invite! Really.

14. Freedom to hold different opinions as long as it doesn’t harm anyone (other than climate change denial which most definitely causes harm).

15. Freedom from fake news. Here’s an abridged adaptation of the classic Serenity Prayer: Grant us the wisdom to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, and the courage to change the things we can.

16. Freedom to raise kids with the values you want them to have. Freedom for our kids to then reject those values.

17. Freedom to walk safely at night. While Israel is far safer than strolling the streets of Quito after dusk, there’s still risk. Let’s work to end that.

18. Freedom to laugh at the absurd. Freedom to cry at injustice.

19. Freedom to partake ravenously from the buffet of life. 

20. Freedom to love this country unabashedly, no matter what happens.

A very happy Passover week to all democracy and freedom lovers in Israel and beyond.

I first wrote about freedom for The Jerusalem Post.

Photo by Kristina V on Unsplash

When our kids start talking about what their “redlines” are – changes that could take place in Israel that would make them reconsider their commitment to living here – I know something has gone seriously wrong. 

In all our years here – buffeted by low salaries, runaway inflation, two deadly Intifadas, rockets from Gaza, missiles from Baghdad, terrorists ramming cars into innocent pedestrians and firing bullets at bars in Tel Aviv – never has anyone in our family suggested leaving might be an option.

As I write this, it’s not clear what will be with the judicial reform. It might already have passed, it might be on pause with dialogue finally taking place. Even in the case of the latter, it’s entirely likely this government will try to revive some or all of their inflammatory proposals once the hundreds of thousands of protesters have returned home and declared “victory.”

I like to be prepared for any eventuality. So, what’s on our list of redlines?

1. Religiously-imposed dress codes. If the theocracy-in-the-making were to dictate mandatory garb for men and women – head covering and modest attire for the ladies, kippa and tzitzit for guys – that would be too much like Iran. If a law – already mooted by Shas – that would either imprison or fine a woman wearing a tallit or holding a Torah scroll at the Kotel were to pass, with no Supreme Court able to strike it down, could we still live here? 

2. Closure of non-Orthodox synagogues. In the mid-1980s, both men and women danced with a Torah scroll outdoors on Simchat Torah in our Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka. The local haredim didn’t agree with their “desecration” of the holiday and snatched the scrolls. The resulting outrage led to the municipality granting land to Kol HaNeshama, the Reform synagogue at the center of the controversy. What will happen, though, if the courts have been so eviscerated, they can no longer stop patent discrimination?

3. Freezing bank accounts. If enough citizens start moving their savings out of Israel to overseas banks, that could prompt a panicked coalition to freeze our ability to do so, or to even seize accounts. This is an example where you have to act fast – once the law has changed, you’re financially screwed. 

4. Closing businesses on Shabbat. The ultra-Orthodox have for years been trying to shut down commerce on Shabbat and holidays. Compromises and adherence to the status quo have kept Tel Aviv hopping on the weekend, but that could be a thing of the past. Public transportation on the Sabbath? Forget about that anytime soon.

5. Changing voting laws. With unbridled power to pass whatever law it sees fit with limited judicial oversight, the current coalition – it’s not outrageous to suggest – could alter voting laws to ensure a center-left coalition is never again able to win an election. Just legislate a Basic Law that says Jewish parties must pass a 3.5% threshold to enter the Knesset but Arab parties must clear a higher bar, say 7%. Or perhaps the ultra-religious parties would like to ban women or those not considered Jewish according to halacha from voting at all. It’s not like such individuals can ever be members of Knesset in those parties.

6. Illegal military action. If Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s racist proclamations – including an unconvincingly retracted call to “wipe out” the Palestinian village of Huwara – result in more violence and death, will that be too much? What if the coalition moves to unilaterally annex the West Bank while depriving Palestinians the right to vote? Are we comfortable living in outright Apartheid?

7. No more non-Orthodox “weddings.” Marriage has always been contentious in the Holy Land, with weddings conducted by Conservative and Reform rabbis not recognized by the Interior Ministry. It’s not a stretch to ban those ceremonies entirely. “Fine,” you say, “it’s just a party with a DJ; we already got married legally in Cyprus or online via the state of Utah.” For the latter, the courts have ruled that these weddings must be accepted in Israel. Look for that to be struck down, too.

8. Segregation on buses and beaches. The ultra-Orthodox parties have made no bones about this one: They don’t want men and women to fraternize. That’s what’s behind proposals to increase the number of segregated beaches, behind moves to legalize separation at events paid for by taxpayers, and what’s behind Israel’s messianic Rosa Parks struggle where women in 2023 must sit in the back of the bus. 

9. Government-sanctioned medical discrimination. Religious Zionism’s Orit Strook proposed that religious doctors not be required to provide service to people whose positions they disagree with – LGBTQ+ patients are Strook’s main target – as long as another doctor is willing to provide the same treatment. The backlash came fast and furious. But Smotrich set the racism bar even lower, declaring in 2016 that Jewish and Arab mothers shouldn’t share a hospital maternity room.

10. Terrifying new taxes. Since the ultra-religious came to control the government, massive amounts of subsidies have been earmarked to enable full-time yeshiva and Kollel students to continue to avoid work and the army. With the proposed budget containing an estimated NIS 32 billion in new expenditures, and with high-tech companies moving their staff to Portugal and Portland, where will the tax revenue come from to keep the country going? The haredim? Nope, it will come largely from secular and pluralistic tax-paying citizens…as always.

If my marginal tax bracket were to jump from, say, 45% to 70%, in order to support sycophants who refuse to work, I might not be able to justify living here anymore. 

I hope that none of these redlines are passed and we can continue to take pride in this amazing country. 

I pray this list will soon be irrelevant. 

I fear that we may already be too late.

I first shared my redlines at The Jerusalem Post.

Picture from Lubo Minar on Unsplash