Rabbi Uri Pilichowski

Day 3,758 Six years ago Michael Granoff contacted me and asked if he could meet. Michael’s reputation had preceded him, I knew his reputation as the “nicest guy in tech” and a very involved political advocate for Israel. This was a man you don’t turn down a request for a meeting - in fact this is the type of man you try to arrange to meet. We met at the halfway point between where he and I lived which was Ben Gurion airport and he told me about one of his incredible children, a 14 year old who was interested in politics. Michael had seen my work with teens and wanted his son Rafi to join my program.

I took Rafi to AIPAC’s policy conference that year and he was an all star. Although he was one of the youngest of 150 participants, he was already head and shoulders above the other participants. Although COVID would put our program on Zoom for the next two years, and those Zooms took place at midnight Israel time, Rafi participated. When we were able to go back to Washington, Rafi impressed everyone he met with, including the President’s advisors at the White House.

When Rafi was only 14 at that first policy conference, he searched and found a NY Councilman he had read about and was thinking of running for Congress. Rafi heard he was at the conference, and found him among the 18,000 participants. Rafi was impressed with now Rep. Ritchie Torres, campaigned for him, and spent a summer working for him. The picture below is of that first meeting six years ago. Congressman Torres won election to his third term in Congress last night, is a staunch supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and my personal hope is when the current senior Senator from New York announces his retirement, Congressman Torres wins his seat.

When Rafi graduated high school I was so impressed that he took a year to study Torah and prepare himself for the IDF. I was sure the IDF would take notice of Rafi’s brilliance and assign him to an intelligence unit. Rafi volunteered- during a war - for a combat position and made it to Israel’s paratroopers. This is a daring section of the IDF and it is very difficult to get into. Today I joined Rafi’s family and celebrated his ceremony where he received his red paratrooper beret.

I am so proud of you Rafi!

A tenet of religious Zionism is that the establishment of the State of Israel is a first step in a redemption and a messianic era. In this oped column I explore other strains of thought on the subject.

Are we living in Messianic times? Only time will tell - opinion Many religious Zionists believe Israel's growth signals the messianic era, but others remain skeptical. Is Israel truly a sign of redemption?

Just Pick Up the Phone

I understand that as an alumnus of Yeshivat Shaarei Mevasseret Zion and a close student of its Rosh Yeshiva and Rabbeim I am biased when it comes to Rabbis and lay leaders publicly criticizing the Yeshiva. I also recognize my bias towards two of my students who are close to Floyd Mayweather and my instinct to protect them and shield them from criticism. I also understand that with the losses of our young men and fathers this week in Mitzpe Yericho, I am highly emotional.

I also take domestic abuse and battery – deplorable crimes Mr. Mayweather has been convicted of multiple times – very seriously. When it comes to certain crimes against others, I think a person is disqualified from public honor and must live the remainder of their lives more modestly as penance for their actions. Physical violence against one’s spouse qualifies in my mind as one of those deplorable crimes.

I also consider it of the utmost importance to set the right examples for students, and Yeshivot and seminaries must be especially careful about this responsibility. Messages can not be assumed to have been understood, they must be explicitly taught. These messages include the proper members of society to emulate, the inappropriateness of resorting to violence, how to properly treat a spouse, and many others.

I was surprised when I saw Mr. Mayweather appear at a Yeshiva – he isn’t the average guest at an institution that teaches Torah. I have been well aware of Mr. Mayweather’s generosity towards Israel, the Jewish people, and Jewish organizations since October 7th. His largesse has been unexpected and crucial to many organizations’ efforts to help others. I also knew about his trips to Israel and his personal efforts to lend encouragement to bereaved families.

My initial response to seeing the pictures and videos of Mr. Mayweather was critical. Yet, Halacha obligates us to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are careful to observe the Torah, and a Yeshiva and its Rabbeim certainly qualify and deserve the benefit of the doubt. After seeing the criticism of the Yeshiva being posted about publicly, I reached out to an administrator at the Yeshiva and he explained that they offered gratitude and not honor and were deliberate and explicit with the talmidim about the values they wanted to impart with the visit – and those they didn’t.

I am frankly shocked and find it shameful that so many Torah scholars immediately jumped to conclusions and judged the Yeshiva and its Rabbeim unfavorably. I am also deeply embarrassed for them that they wrote incorrect public criticism of Torah scholars without bothering to place a five-minute phone call to verify if their conclusions were correct. Their posts publicly shamed the Yeshiva, its Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbeim, and talmidim, and all could have been avoided with a phone call, email, or even a Whatsapp message expressing concern – even framed as rebuke – and hearing the context of the visit. The fact that there were multiple Torah scholars who did this saddens me about the society we’ve allowed to develop.

At a time when the Jewish people are under attack, when the Jewish army is fighting wars on seven fronts, when division is a serious concern among the Jewish people, the very last thing we need to be doing is jumping to conclusions about others, withholding the benefit of the doubt from Yeshivot and their Rabbeim, and publicly criticizing people based on incorrect assumptions.

We live in a time where the media has created an environment where we jump to conclusions about others from short video clips, an image, or base rumors. The Torah world must rise above these superficial reactions. I can understand laypeople who aren’t careful about giving the benefit of the doubt, loshon hara, and general yiras shamayim making these mistakes, but Torah scholars and people with yiras shamayim should never stoop to this level.

I apologize for being critical and harsh in this post. I couldn’t sleep last night with the thoughts of how low we’ve sunk, and how we’ve been begging Hashem for help in our wars and then I see these actions and think, do we even deserve Hashem’s help? It has caused me great anguish and I needed to express it in the hopes people read my words, it enters their hearts, they turn to their public criticism to a public apology and we move forward in a more united and healthy way.

Israel’s recent military achievements ignited a debate over how to react to Israel’s destruction of its enemies, a conversation as old as the Bible itself. Join expert educator Rabbi Uri Pilichowski to traverse Jewish literature and ideas in this age-old debate.

Should We Rejoice at our Enemy’s Demise? Seek More Meaning From Judaism

day 3,748 There are few nights as enjoyable throughout the year as the “Halomed Mikol Adam” nights I am able to participate in.

The idea is simple. Gather 5-10 people of different backgrounds and have each share a 5 minute idea on a topic that is meaningful to them. Every person is created in the image of God and therefore has something meaningful to share that we can all learn from. These evenings give people the opportunity to learn from people they might never have the opportunity to learn from in life.

Tonight’s participants were Cormac Uriah Lee, a new immigrant to Israel with a fascinating life story, Laura Cornfield, Director at Media Central, Ron Schleifer, senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Ariel University, Rafi Nets, professor, author, and postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University, Richard Landes, American historian and author who specializes in medieval millennial thinking, Rabbi Dr. Ben Aaronson, professor and Torah scholar, Stephen Flatow, American lawyer notable for initiating a series of lawsuits targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran and columnist, Brian Breuhaus, American political officer, Raquella Raiz, professional travel and instagram expert and consultant, Bob Castro, Creativity, Innovation & Technology expert and consultant, Daniella Hellerstein, Owner and General Manager at FrontDesk Business Center and Dabru Podcast Studio, Avi Leitner, founder of Shurat Hadin and the Blue Agave Group, Rabbi Josh Spodek, educator at the Nefesh B’Nefesh Zionist Education Initiative, Joseph Hellerstein, Attorney and podcast host.

The topics discussed ranged from the psychological underpinnings of Israeli societal fissures, Agave Tequila plants, Kohelet’s messages on personal aspirations, the need to write letters to the editor, a rundown of the American election, Gazawood, Israel on social media, the unbelievable commitment of Israeli soldiers, being a grandfather, the crucial need for effective communications, and so many more critical ideas.

I’m grateful that Nefesh B'Nefesh allowed us to use their brand-new campus. It’s spectacular!

This is not a political post and if anyone ruins this post for me by turning it political, I'll be VERY upset at them.

I'm a student of the White House. I've studied over a hundred books on the White House and the Presidency, I collect White House Memoribilia, and am fascinated by everything Presidential.

I have given lectures on the White House and even Torah shiurim on the White House and Torah themes - like juxtaposing King David and King Solomon's palace with the White House. I love when there is an interchange between Torah and the White House.

I was so impressed to see Shelley Greenspan and her husband Reuben building a Sukkah at the White House. As far as I know this is the first Sukkah at the White House (The Bidens built one at the Vice President's residence and there's been one at the Pentagon for years).

These pictures have made my Chag even happier!

There is No Justifying Terrorism

There could be no two documents more different than the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Israeli Declaration of Independence opens, “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped.” It continues, “We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land.” In contrast, the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization includes, “The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.” It continued, “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it.” The Jewish people’s commitment to peace in contrast to the Palestinian occupation with violence doesn’t just exist on paper, it can be seen every day in Israel.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning journalist. His recent book, “The Message” grapples with deep questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities. One of the sections of the book deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2023 Coates took a ten-day trip to Israel and in only ten days was able to understand the conflict and decisively conclude that Israel was an occupying power, practicing an apartheid regime that oppresses the Palestinians.

Many media outlets that have a propensity to focus on narratives that paint Israel in a villainous light have promoted Coates’s book and allowed him to promote his slanderous demonization of Israel. The one major media figure that asked critical questions of Coates, Tony Dokoupi, was immediately accused of racism and bias for daring to point out “The Message” lacks basic balance and nuance that in any other context besides the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have it called extremist writing. Reportedly, CBS staff, which employees Dokoupi, was forced to hold a newsroom wide meeting to address the controversy.

Since its publication, numerous articles and columns have been published listing the many omissions, inaccuracies, and blatant falsehoods found throughout “The Message.” Coates has not recanted anything he wrote and has doubled down in numerous interviews he’s given since the book’s release.

In one recent interview that has raised the eyebrows of many literary critics, Coates suggested he's not above taking part in an October 7-style attack. He imagined what he would do if he grew up a Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank, and with no shame said "And I grow up under that oppression and that poverty and the wall comes down. Am I also strong enough or even constructed in such a way where I say this is too far, I don't know that I am."

With his comment, Coates excused and even justified the murder, kidnapping, and r**e of innocent Israelis on October 7th. His excuse of the most heinous acts perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust- and arguably worse - was outrageous. In the four millennia of Jewish suffering, stretching back from the Egyptian enslavement to the Palestinian intifadas, Jews never even considered ra**ng, burning, and beheading the children of their oppressors as Palestinians did during their savage attacks. Such barbarism is so abhorrent to Jewish values that the mere suggestion would flip the Jewish stomach. Coates showed exactly the kind of degeneracy he values by imagining himself committing the same acts.

Many Coates defenders pointed to a quote attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister and IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, “If I was [a Palestinian] at the right age, at some stage I would have entered one of the terror organizations and have fought from there.” Coates apologists juxtapose Barak’s statement of acting as a Palestinian terrorist with the Coates excusing of Palestinian terrorism of the Simchas Torah attacks to excuse Coates’s horrific comment.

While the two quotes can be dishonestly conflated to mirror the same message of justifying terror attacks against innocent Israelis, even a little thought demonstrates the differences between the two statements. Barak was talking about resisting against Israeli soldiers in the beginning of the first intifada when Palestinians were generally attacking Israeli soldiers in an attempt to defeat Israel. This was a decade before bus bombings and su***de bombings that targeted children would become the frequent targets of Palestinian terrorists. Coates was talking about murdering, kidnapping, and ra**ng innocent Israeli civilians.

Ehud Barak was wrong in showing understanding to Palestinian terrorists. At any point from 1948 and on, Palestinians could have opted to recognize the Jewish right to self-determination on their historic homeland, the land of Israel. Instead, they chose violence and terrorism to destroy the Jewish state. For decades they dedicated their efforts and energies to murdering Jews around the world to end the Jewish state. When they realized their tactics failed, they duplicitously told the world they were interested in peace, but over the next three decades demonstrated through their support and incentivizing of terrorism they were more interested in creating an independent Palestinian state in place of a Jewish state rather than alongside one.

The Palestinian choice was disastrous for peace in the Middle East and for the Palestinian people. Choosing violence and terrorism instead of peace is the preference of savages, not civilized people. It was inexcusable for Prime Minister Barak to have made it seem justifiable. It is unconscionable that Ta-Nehisi Coates, an award-winning journalist, would promote his latest book by advocating for terrorism.

Many people blame Israeli colonialism [SIC], Israeli settlements, and various Israeli military policies for the lack of peace in the Middle East. These are all misguided attempts to slander the Jewish state. There is no greater hindrance to peace than violence and Palestinian terrorism. Zionism is one of the world’s greatest liberation movements and had the Palestinians welcomed Zionism and the Jewish people, their lives would be many times better than they are today.

Sinwar the Coward and the Folly of the Jewish Enemy

After his plan to exterminate the Jewish people, including the Jewish Queen, was exposed, the highest-ranking royal court official, Haman, was led to his ex*****on by hanging. Once considered a hero by his people, Haman was exposed as an antisemite and no longer held in esteem by the Persian people. After his su***de, German leader Adolph Hi**er, once revered by the Germans, was revealed as a hateful man and is seen as an embarrassment by the German people today. The list of Jewish enemies once respected by their followers, only to be unveiled for their hate and whose names are ignominious, is long; Haman and Hi**er are just two of the many names of Jewish enemies who now live in disgrace.

Yahya Sinwar’s name will soon join that long list of disgraced Jewish enemies. Killed by a 19-year-old Israeli soldier last week, Sinwar died a weak coward and will forever be remembered that way by the Palestinian people. For all his bravado over the years, he turned out to be just another rat in a tunnel hiding from Israeli forces.

The truth of who Sinwar was all along hasn’t stopped some (although not many) Palestinians and many of their apologists from trying to turn him into some sort of hero. Irish writer Keith Woods responded to Sinwar’s death extolling him as a hero, “Almost everyone acknowledged there was the stuff of legend in Sinwar's last stand: at age 61, he continued fighting after being shelled by a tank, managed to lob grenades at incoming IDF soldiers and created a makeshift tourniquet using iron wire from the rubble for his injured arm. For a year, Sinwar has been portrayed by Israel as a rat scurrying through tunnels surrounded by human shields. But in the first and final image of him he is above ground, entirely covered in dust as if being swallowed into the rubble of Gaza, fighting to his last breath.”

Watching the videos of Sinwar’s last moments and the videos of him concerned with his personal circumstances over the Palestinian people on the night before the Simchas Torah massacre on October 7th makes it difficult to think Woods’s take on Sinwar as a hero as nothing more than fantasy and wishful thinking of a former accolade whose image of a hero has been shattered by the disappointment of the reality of Sinwar’s cowardice.

The Times of Israel reported that the IDF believes that Sinwar was forced to flee from Khan Yunis to Rafah due to Israeli military pressure. Sinwar felt forced to move locations, staying underground as much as possible, potentially up to 90 percent of the time. He then tried to leave Rafah where he was ultimately spotted and killed by an IDF force operating in the area.

Instead of the image Palestinians are trying to paint of Sinwar as a courageous fighter, he spent the night before the Simchas Torah attack in a luxurious bunker with plasma TV’s, UNRWA sponsored and Hamas-stolen aid, thousands of Shekels of cash, while providing his immediate family – including his Hermes-laden wife (handbag reportedly worth upwards of $30,000 – security that no other Gaza family could acquire for themselves.

During the war he hid in Hamas’s network of tunnels while ordering Hamas militants to expose themselves and fight Israel’s soldiers without cover. By one Hamas official’s estimates, the Israel Defense Forces slaughtered over 30,000 Hamas militants. Sinwar surrounded himself with six Israeli hostages, starving them until they were too weak to move from tunnel to tunnel along with Sinwar, as the Hamas leader slithered like a snake underground trying to avoid detection.

After years of stealing international aid from the Palestinian people of Gaza, brutally oppressing them with his radical fundamentalist Islamic tyranny, and executing anyone who resisted his dictatorship, he died like many other Arab dictators such as Saddam Hussien and Muammar Qaddafi – in shame. When he died, Sinwar wasn’t fighting, he was fleeing from Israeli soldiers. Instead of facing them and fighting like a brave resistance fighter alongside his fellow fighters, his bodyguards abandoned him, leaving him alone. He snuck up to the top floor and tried hiding from the soldiers. Well-trained, these soldiers didn’t give up, they used Israel’s famed technology to track him down and eliminate him. His last “act of resistance” was to lob a piece of wood at the tiny drone capturing and broadcasting his final moments of shame to the Israeli tank stationed outside the house he was using to hide. His hiding place couldn’t provide him cover because it was already battle-pocked from a war Sinwar brought pointlessly to Gaza.

George Deek, Israel’s Ambassador to the Republic of Azerbaijan explained the Palestinian refusal to admit Sinwar’s cowardice as, “A fear not of Israel itself, but of what Israel represents: a painful reflection of the Muslim world’s decline since the fall of the Caliphate. Israel, in all its existence—not just its actions—serves as a glaring reminder of stagnation and weakness compared to the West’s progress. For many, Israel is a humiliating affront, described as nothing more than a “spider-web,” flimsy yet infuriatingly persistent. Its mere presence is an insult, a challenge to the very idea of Islamic greatness. And so, the path to restoring that greatness is seen not in progress or reform, but in tearing down the Israeli “spider-web” through renewed Islamic fervor, heroism, and relentless determination. Admitting that Sinwar’s actions were flawed would mean more than just critiquing one leader; it would require questioning the entire narrative of the conflict. That’s why no alternative paradigm exists—because acknowledging one would mean embracing a reality that challenges deeply ingrained beliefs.”

The Jewish people’s enemies rarely come to understand the folly of their ways before it is too late for them to reverse their ways. Zionism is an ideology that stands for the rights of the Jewish people to their homeland. It is a just and righteous movement that has not only survived, but thrived, because with all of its opponents, good people know its values will stand the test of time.

God has orchestrated Jewish history to have the Jewish people threatened by forces looking to annihilate them in every generation, but every year God thwarts their plans. Whether it was Paroah, Haman, Hi**er, or Sinwar, the leaders of the Jewish enemies have always died as weak cowards, known forever as an embarrassment to their people. The world can only hope that one day the cycle ends.

We will always defeat, eliminate, and outlive our enemies.

Long live the Jewish people!
עם ישראל חי!

Standing with Zionism is Standing with Liberty and Justice

Understanding a two-sided conflict generally requires nuance. There are rarely any conflicts where one side is clearly correct. In almost all disputes, both sides have merit to their arguments, while simultaneously flaws can also be found in their position. Nuance is employed to point out the merits and flaws on both sides of the debate. In recognizing the merits and flaws of the arguments of both sides of the conflict, one can understand the debate in an entirely different way than if they just focused on the positions that speak to them more than the others.

There are rare conflicts who require no nuance to understand them. Not only is nuance not needed, but it also isn’t deserved. These conflicts pit good vs. evil. One side is so obviously moral and the other so obviously vile that even trying to understand the vile side doesn’t help a person understand the topic of dispute, but rather runs the risk of demonstrating empathy for a position so objectionable that it deserves no space in a moral society. One doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) study N**i thought to understand why antisemitism and murder are wrong. The same is true of racism and r**e. There aren’t many conflicts that are so obvious, but when they occur, it’s important to relate to them properly and not treat them as normal disputes.

Zionism is a modern political movement based on a 4,000-year-old ideology that maintains there is an intrinsic connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. The modern political Zionist movement started in the middle of the 1800’s and advocated for the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination on their historic homeland, the land of Israel. Its founder is generally recognized as Dr. Theodore Herzl, but there were hundreds of Zionists that came before him. The Zionist movement experienced success in its mission with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Since its founding, the State of Israel has remained loyal to its purpose of ensuring the Jewish people determine their own destiny on their land.

Zionism was the modern age’s greatest liberation movement. The organization, supported by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, stood for the rejuvenation of the most persecuted people in world history – Jews. For 2,000 years almost every country Jews settled in eventually turned on them, persecuted them, and expelled them. The Jew was known as a wanderer, always a stranger in a strange land. The Jewish nightmare reached its lowest point when German N**is, aided by antisemites throughout Europe, murdered six million innocent Jews. This evil was so singularly unique that it was given its own name, the Holocaust. Many opposed to Zionism or who had yet to understand its merits understood the need for Jewish self-determination and their own state after witnessing the evils perpetrated against the Jews when they don’t have their own nation to defend them and provide refuge to their persecuted. Zionism stands as an outline for every liberation movement that came after it.

On the Jewish festival of Simchas Torah on October 7th, 2023, the Jewish people, Israelis, and the international community were given a harsh reminder of the violent plots antisemites plan for the Jews. Palestinians by the thousands stormed across the Gaza-Israel border and committed acts more heinous than the German N**is perpetrated against the Jews of Europe and North Africa. The barbarians that killed, kidnapped, r**ed, burned, beheaded, and tortured innocent Jews that day aimed for civilians. The atrocities weren’t acts of resistance but of evil savagery. The acts seen that day were premeditated and done out of antisemitism.

In the year since the attack antisemites around the world have felt emboldened to express their Jew hatred in ways not seen since German N**i rallies. These rallies weren’t about a free Palestine [SIC], justice, or human rights. In the past few decades, Palestinians were massacred in the tens of thousands in Syria, uprooted from their homes in Egypt, and discriminated against in Lebanon. Not one rally was held anywhere in the world for these genuine atrocities committed against Palestinians in Arab countries. It was antisemitism that awakened the masses to scream vile hate-filled slogans like “Kill the Jews” in cities spanning from San Francisco to London to Sydney. The people at these rallies looked at a conflict that pitted the freedom movement of Zionism against the hate of antisemitism and chose to rally for evil. For shame.

The conflict that has sprung up since the Simchas Torah massacre of October 7th pits the Jewish state against terrorists who wish for the demise of the one nation that provides protection to the Jewish people. It doesn’t aim to win freedom or rights for the Palestinian people but rather to reverse global progress that achieved liberation for the Jewish people. The side of the conflict that waves flags of terrorist organizations intends to put the Jewish people back at risk of the extermination they faced throughout crusades, pogroms and the Holocaust.

This two-sided conflict isn’t a normal conflict that requires nuance to understand it. This conflict pits good vs. evil. Israel’s enemies and their supporters use emotion instead of facts, demonization instead of history, and victimhood instead of responsibility, to trick a society that confuses weakness for virtue and strength for misconduct into supporting evil instead of standing up for a liberal and democratic state.

All great justice movements fought for the liberty and rights of their people. These movements weren’t built around fighting against others. They advocated for their people’s rights and only used violence to achieve their goals when they were left with no other choice. Zionism followed the American revolution among other movements to earn their liberty. Israel’s enemies have consistently chosen to leave the negotiating table, or never join it in the first place, and use violence as their first option.

A year after the Simchas Torah massacre of October 7th the world has become a more confused place. People who stand for justice are standing on the wrong side of a conflict of the great liberation movement of Zionism and violent antisemites. They march with terrorist flags, following people being paid by terrorists to disrupt western, liberal, and free societies. There must be a moral reckoning, directed by global leaders who don’t try to kowtow to both sides and appease the most evil actors in today’s world. The world must pick a side in the conflict, declare Zionism and Israel just and its opponents the enemies of liberty, democracy and justice.