(((Chaim Steinmetz))

unorthodox orthodox rabbi and happiness warrior. Senior Rabbi, Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan. tweets don't imply endorsement, contentment, or incitement.

[Josh Kraushaar @JoshKraushaar]

The money quote from Rogers: "I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11."

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

Why are Jews so charitable?

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

Why are Jews so charitable?

[Jonah Platt @JonahPlatt]

You know things are bad for Jews when entire industries of Jewish celebrities are TERRIFIED to come on a podcast to discuss their Jewish identity. I’m talking major names who are absolutely frozen by fear of the hate. It’s really wild, and really disheartening.

[Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer]

.@KenRoth Nothing in the article you cited supports your bizarre theory. There is zero mention of Israel, any Israeli interest in Ceuta or Melilla, the Strait of Gibraltar in relation to Israeli shipping, or any theory that Israel wants Morocco to control the enclave.

What you don't seem to realize:
• British Gibraltar controls the northern choke point, not Spain
• NATO and EU members, notwithstanding your apparent wish, don't mine international waterways.
• The NYT article you linked not once mentions Israel; on the contrary, it cites Sanchez's embrace of expansive immigration, the “pull factor” of the Spanish court ruling restricting return of migrants intercepted at sea, and the social media posts that amplified this to Morroccans.
• Sanchez is virulently hostile to Israel, but you wrongly conflate his current government with Spain itself, which has has had diplomatic relations with Israel long before Morroco, as well as some very pro-Israel leaders.

Even by your standards, Mr. Roth, this is a new low — pure Israel Derangement Syndrome untethered from any evidence.

It's a reminder why Human Rights Watch founder and chair Robert Bernstein publicly broke with you, warning that the organization under your tenure effectively aided Hamas and Hezbollah.

That Princeton and Yale now platform you and this level of conspiracy theorizing is an embarrassment.

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

The world is still silent while the gallows keep working in Iran.
Ali Dashti, Amirhossein Maleki, Ghaem Hosseini, and Shervin Bagherian — four more young people whose only dream was freedom, now standing on the edge of execution.
This regime is massacring Iran’s youth.

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

Love, Tu B'Av, and the Road to Redemption

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

Without imperfection life would be a bore. Simple-minded untroubled piety is unimpressive and spiritually empty. We are meant to serve God with all of our souls. That means with a profound and complex inner life, including failure, inner turmoil, and transformation. We were not meant to be automatons.

https://t.co/72HZSW3629

[Dovi Neuburger @DovieNeuburger]

Crazy story. My great uncle grew up with Rav Shmuel Kaminetzky and got a Joe DiMaggio rookie card in a random package of tops. It was his prized possession. He never dreamed of selling it until one day he heard there was a fire in Philly Yeshiva- he immediately sold the card and paid to rebuild it. Now he has a Rav Samuel rebbi card sitting in the same case he used for the Joe DiMaggio rookie. Never shared this story publicly but this video made me feel like it was time.

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

Without imperfection life would be a bore. Simple-minded untroubled piety is unimpressive and spiritually empty. We are meant to serve God with all of our souls. That means with a profound and complex inner life, including failure, inner turmoil, and transformation. We were not meant to be automatons.

https://t.co/72HZSW3629

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

@RabbiWolpe His contemporary, the Meshech Chochmah, makes a similar point - and sees this as expressing a general view that objects - including the Temple - have no inherent holiness.

[Yehuda Teitelbaum @chalavyishmael]

Mamdani was asked over and over whether it bothered him that an 18 person committee he personally advertised as diverse and representative of New York City contained no Jews, and he flatly refused to answer.

Instead, he hid behind a rambling speech about diversity, pointed to Jewish judges he appointed elsewhere as though that had anything to do with the committee in question, and repeated the pathetic Maxwell excuse while his own chief counsel defended an admitted Al Qaeda terrorist.

He even emphasized that John Leventhal “collected legal fees,” as though being paid to represent a client is some kind of moral stain when the client is a white woman, but noble constitutional advocacy when the client is a terrorist.

He knows exactly what Jewish New Yorkers are asking, he knows why this looks deliberate, and he has decided that we do not deserve a straight answer.

He's doubling down because he has no shame.

And as a side point, Mamdani’s sudden horror at any “association” with the Epstein world is especially rich given that he attended a 2017 luncheon hosted by Peggy Siegal, whose relationship with Epstein later destroyed her standing in Hollywood, while his own mother attended an afterparty at Ghislaine Maxwell’s townhouse.

Mamdani understands this perfectly well when the association reaches his own family, but suddenly treats it as disqualifying when he needs an excuse to reject a Jewish former judge from a committee with no Jews.

Absolutely disgraceful behavior.

[Deborah E. Lipstadt @deborahlipstadt]

Advising Ghislaine’s lawyer —> disqualifying for Mamdani. Representing as lead defense for 9/11 —> just fine.

[Jason Beeferman @JasonBeeferman]

.@ZohranKMamdani rejected a Jewish judge's application to his advisory committee because the judge briefly represented Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

But Mamdani's top lawyer Ramzi Kassem also represented multiple accused terrorists, including one who allegedly tried to participate in the 9/11 attacks and another who is an admitted member of al Qaeda

[Daniel Rosenthal @DanRosenthalNYC]

An elected official dismissing concerns of an entire community with sarcasm or mockery is immature.

I thought progressive politics was supposed to be rooted in empathy and inclusion, not in ridiculing communities for expressing concern.

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

Love, Tu B'Av, and the Road to Redemption

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

It was interesting to observe how some political leaders are emphasizing mental illness when talking about yesterday's stabbings. It is a way of downplaying the antisemitic element in these attacks.

Yes, in all probability this man was driven to violence by mental illness. And mental illness and homelessness are a serious problem in the city.

But that doesn't close the case. Not at all.

Paradoxically, the man's mental illness is a greater indicator of antisemitism - not of an individual man, but of an antisemitic environment in our city.

The language of the mentally ill is a window into a society's obsessions.

This man chose a rhetorical vehicle to express his inner turmoil; and it was not "Christ-killers" or "I hate immigrants."

He said "allahu akbar."

Where did he learn that? Why did he choose that phrase?

It is obviously from an environment of hostility to Jews and Israel.

The people responsible for this environment should be held to account.

[(((Chaim Steinmetz)) @rabbichaim]

It was interesting to observe how some political leaders are emphasizing mental illness when talking about yesterday's stabbings. It is a way of downplaying the antisemitic element in these attacks.

Yes, in all probability this man was driven to violence by mental illness. And mental illness and homelessness are a serious problem in the city.

But that doesn't close the case. Not at all.

Paradoxically, the man's mental illness is a greater indicator of antisemitism - not of an individual man, but of an antisemitic environment in our city.

The language of the mentally ill is a window into a society's obsessions.

This man chose a rhetorical vehicle to express his inner turmoil; and it was not "Christ-killers" or "I hate immigrants."

He said "allahu akbar."

Where did he learn that? Why did he choose that phrase?

It is obviously from an environment of hostility to Jews and Israel.

The people responsible for this environment should be held to account.

[Rabbi Avi Weiss @RabbiAviWeiss]

J’Accuse, Mayor Mamdani

In 1894, Colonel Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew, was falsely accused of treason. The accusation was not justice – it was antisemitism wearing the robes of the state. A courageous writer, Émile Zola, stood up when almost no one else would. He wrote J’Accuse – “I accuse” – and forced a nation to look at what it had done.

Today, the Mayor of New York has turned the Jewish state, the Jewish people, into a collective Dreyfus. In the spirit of Zola, I say to you, Mr. Mayor:

J’accuse.

J’accuse you of calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the architect of a horrific genocide” – a word chosen not for precision, but for its power to wound and to inflame.

J’accuse you of naming a number – of the dead, of the maimed – and offering it as verdict, when the world’s most careful investigators have not yet reached one.

J’accuse you of speaking two full minutes about the war in Gaza without once speaking the words October 7th — without once naming the massacre, the rape, the taking of hostages – babies and grandmothers – that began this war.

J’accuse you of silence — a silence so complete that anyone hearing you for the first time would never know Hamas exists at all.

J’accuse you of a modern blood libel: accusing Israel of murdering Gazans whom Hamas itself murdered, using them as human shields.

J’accuse you, in that same breath, of accusing my grandchildren. When you call the Prime Minister of Israel a war criminal and an architect of genocide, you are not speaking only of one man in Jerusalem. You are speaking of the many thousands of children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters of New Yorkers who serve in the IDF army that defends the Jewish state.

J’accuse you of painting a target on the backs of Jews and of every New Yorker who supports Israel – because words like yours, spoken from the office you hold, do not stay contained. They travel. They are heard by those who already hate us, and they are heard as permission.

J’accuse you of finding words for Gaza but none for Iran’s hanged dissidents, none for the churches burned in Nigeria, none for the Uyghurs vanished into camps in China. A conscience that speaks only of Jews and their state, and falls silent before every other cruelty on earth, is not a universal conscience. It is something else – it is antisemitism.

J’accuse you of holding the highest office in the largest Jewish city outside of Israel, and using it to make antisemitism feel official – to make it feel less like hatred and more like policy.

And yet, Mr. Mayor – we have been here before.

We are a people with a long and bitter history of being accused. We have been called poisoners of wells, killers of gods, controllers of banks, and now, absurdly, perpetrators of the very crime that was done to us not one lifetime ago. We have heard every accusation there is. And we are still here.

Israel – a Jewish state standing alone in a sea of nations that would erase it – is not the crime you make it out to be. It is what a people builds when it refuses to disappear.

Every Passover, at the Seder table, we say these words: she’lo echad bilvad amad aleinu le’chaloteinu – that in every generation, there rise those who seek to destroy us, but the Holy One delivers us from their hands. We say it every year. We will say it again this year.

And Mr. Mayor – for the rest of my life, when I reach that line in the Haggadah, I will think of you.

J’accuse.