יום רביעי, א׳ אב תשפ״וWednesday, July 15, 2026
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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, "America's Rabbi," whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the international bestselling author of 30 books including his most recent “The Israel Warrior.” Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
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For the suffering Gazans, the proposal offers a future in a developed country with housing and benefits and a new life not under the brutality of Hamas.
We should be fighting the antisemites, not a lifelong friend and defender of the Jewish people.
The secret ingredient to Bibi’s enduring appeal to voters is his ability to communicate authenticity.
Indeed, many forms of intolerance exist; however, that does not excuse the failure to condemn a 2,000-year-old hatred that is unlike any other.
Why would an Israeli official choose to attack Poland just four days after Poland stood with the Jewish state against Iran?
Booker wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He wishes to appease far-Left anti-Israel activists yet is mindful that pro-Israel contributors have been his biggest financial backers, he deflects criticism by using the “Torah thoughts” to demonstrate his kinship before Jewish audiences. However, repeating Hebrew verses I practiced with him is no substitute to standing with Israel against the genocidal onslaught from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Now is not the time to lay down our arms; it is the time to fight back against Israel's demonization
On the one hand, Putin has been a friend to Chabad and to Israel. On the other hand, Putin is a brutal dictator.
The answer is an emphatic no.
The gradual trickle of self-hatred into the Jewish soul is evidencing itself in the American Jewish public.
Rabbi Schochet wrote the Johannesburg Beis Din: It is totally prohibited and unacceptable to hear someone like Boteach.
If you’re feeling down, stop reading right now. You’re only going to be more depressed.
The world and the United State continue to give Rouhani a pass.
American Jews – especially those working on campus – don't accept that we have a battle on our hands.
But the most painful part of an otherwise illuminating and extraordinary Forum was Iranian President Rouhani's speech.
Obama is placing all the pressure on 16 Senators from his own party rather than squarely on the Iranians.
The communities of Gush Katif were miraculous.
In return for its withdrawal from Gaza, Israel got a major war.
It’s rather a sign of how badly Israel is losing on campus.
Penn managed to sneak Ostreicher across a hostile border and into a safe and currently undisclosed location in the United States.
I have heard many Rabbis tell me that they don’t wish to dirty their hands by getting involved in political matters.
Terrorists are not folks and Americans were not attacked but murdered in a despicable and cold-blooded act of terrorism.
Our government made a commitment to Iraq to return the collection once it's restored.
Suddenly tens of people start running toward us screaming “There’s a shooter. SHOOTER. Run. Get out.”
None of this is a criticism of Reform Jews who are my brothers in every way.
The reaction to his statement has been illuminating as to the double standards that are often employed on matters relating to Israel.
There are thousands of unqualified soferim in both America and Israel who sell items that, far from being first-rate, are not even kosher.
In Israel, it’s easy to throw a recalcitrant husband in jail for refusing to grant a get. In the United States it’s much more challenging.
Crimes were committed, but not a holocaust, against both Jews and non-Jews, and even this must still be verified by historians...
Today’s model of outreach is fatally flawed seeing as it necessarily forces a choice on non-affiliated Jews to choose between the Jewish and mainstream worlds.
Those who use either chemical, or even conventional weapons to slaughter innocent people must be held accountable.
The delay allowed Assad to go on TV with Charlie Rose and come across as calm, measured, and reasonable.
We can afford a few cruise missiles fired at Bashar Assad’s air force and presidential palaces.
When children die, God forbid, I want to hear Rabbis who demand that God be a protector of life rather than blaming tragedy on human sin.
If the gassing of children is not an urgent matter than nothing is.
Islam is undergoing a modern crisis which perhaps only its clerics and lay leaders can rescue it from.
We watched and watched, anticipating the kill.
Mehmet, perhaps the world’s most famous Muslim who is not a head of state, is a righteous and proud Ambassador of his faith and feels an innate kinship and brotherhood with the Jewish people.
By now it’s known that I have strongly supported Samantha’s nomination.
The central quality of leadership is not eloquence but moral courage, a preparedness to be hated in the pursuit what’s right.
Peter Beinart and Jeffrey Goldberg maintain far-left sentiments on Israel, while others invest their lives in bringing people like Cory Booker closer to the Jewish community.
Noone, least of all me, wants to see any Arab child suffer, God forbid.
Eric Garcetti’s caring for those who are struggling would become his defining political legacy as a Los Angeles council member and as President of the Council.
Are we to believe that these Jews who were devout and pious were being punished?
The growing revelations that the Obama State Department watered down public statements on the attack in order to cleanse them of any mention of al Qaeda and terrorism is a travesty.
When in 1948 President Harry Truman recognized the new Jewish State of Israel, Einstein declared it 'the fulfillment of our dream.'
In the Hebrew Bible everyone is flawed and everyone makes mistakes.
Forgetting how to hate can be just as damaging as forgetting how to love.
Let us also not forget that Adelson criticized many of the social values of the Republican Party before it became fashionable to do so.
Whatever your feelings about how permissive or repressed our society is, certainly not in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s ,or 90’s was the sexualization of women this young.
Through the process of the ten plagues, the Jews saw the Egyptians for what they were, just another group of petrified humans.
When all the ribbetting is silenced, we begin to hear an old, familiar tune: the melodious song of our own souls.
The greatest tragedy made manifest in Steubenville is the attitude of teenage men toward girls.
Overlooking incendiary rhetoric is exactly what led to the global delegitimization of Israel.
Men ultimately fall in love with those women who bring out their best qualities.
Public relations is nearly the whole ball game and we Jews have lost the battle not just in modern times with Israel but throughout a long and tragic history
GoDaddy's Super Bowl spot was a disappointment for American culture and even more disappointing that it starred an Israeli icon.
What are brave United States lawmakers to make of AIPAC’s surrender?
While the meal featured heads of state, Nobel laureates and people of world renown, it had a homely feeling where no one in particular was made to feel more important than the next person.
What is better, a popular Israel riddled with dead Jews or an unpopular Israel filled with living ones?
Perhaps our President should focus less on construction of apartments and homes and do something instead about the bombs and rockets that are killings tens of thousands of innocent Arabs.
How can anyone calling himself a Rabbi have the chutzpah to ever justify the death of innocents?
Why inadequate husbands can still be great dads
Why would the Senator insist on the Biblical teachings regarding homosexuality but not those of protecting Israel?
There are many potential Ron Dermers at the world’s universities today, if only we can nurture their gifts in their formative years.
What is it about Jacob that he seemingly can’t stop the favoritism?
My own experiences within the shidduch system has caused me to question it considerably.
City officials in Englewood are hampering the development of a synagogue, but were nowhere to be found in opposing Kaddafi and the Libyan Embassy in Englewood.
There is nothing beneficial that comes from suffering that could have not been achieved far more effectively through a positive means.
Challenging God in the face of suffering is not blasphemous.
Yet the one thing I have always known, amid the hills and valleys of life: whether or not you succeed in your public endeavors, you cannot fail at your private commitments.
What is lost in the discussion are the Biblical underpinnings of abortion and how this is not primarily a legal issue but a religious one.
Rice was part of Bill Clinton’s National Security Team whom in 1994 refused any intervention whatsoever in the Rwanda genocide that left 800,000 dead.
When Jacob is fooled into marrying Leah, he accepts her as a partner and eventually the mother of his children. But his yearning is for Rachel.
When my daughter first made aliyah she was a student at Hebrew University. After a year she called me and told me she was enlisting.
If the targeting of innocent civilians by terrorist organizations is not wrong, then morality has no meaning.
So long as we obsess over abortion, gay marriage, and contraception to the exclusion of any other values, we cannot fix our problems.
If only my city were to treat me with the same courtesy they accorded Kaddafi.
Petraeus seems to have resigned over marital infidelity. And if so, did he have to leave his position? Why, because he displayed personal weakness? But this was a public, as opposed to a private, position. And years of counseling unfaithful husbands and wives has taught me that private failings do not necessarily indicate public faithlessness.
A few hours ago I lost my bid to unseat Congressman Bill Pascrell in New Jersey’s Ninth District. But thank G-d, I’m in a good place and miraculously in a good frame of mind. I’m writing this late at night to capture my thoughts and feelings after investing approximately seven months of my life in this endeavor.
Aren’t we the nation that rebuilt Iraq and have done tons of nation-building in Afghanistan? Can’t we put the lights and heat back on New Jersey? Is it asking too much to bring a bunch of fuel tankers here and end the 100 vehicle long lines that are growing larger by the day? Just getting from point A to point B has been like navigating an labyrinth since the gas lines have cut off so many of the streets. President Obama declared this area to be a Federal Disaster Area. But where is FEMA? Where are the troops? Where are the gas tankers?
What was G-d thinking when he sent Hurricane Sandy and what could have been its purpose? In truth, I don’t much care, because our role as humans is not to understand G-d’s plan in the face of horror and tragedy, but to challenge God and demand that human life always be protected and preserved. Did I say demand? Yes, humanity has rights before God. We are His children. He commanded us to preserve and promote life always. “Choose life,” Moses orders the Israelite nation in God’s name, on the last day of His life. And the Creator must abide by the same dictates He expects His creatures to.
Just yesterday I was fully engaged in my campaign for the United States Congress. Winning, elections, and victory were on my mind. Boy, what a difference a day can make. Today, I just want my family and the 50 million people in the storm’s path to be safe.
Twenty years, countless conversations, and hundreds of Friday night Shabbat dinners later, Cory today is a much-loved honorary member of the American Jewish community, regularly lecturing at Synagogues and Jewish conferences across the country. More significant, Cory has challenged the Jewish community to live up to its Biblical calling to serve as ‘a light unto the nations.’ In many of the speeches we deliver together he asks the Jewish participants if they study the weekly Parsha, if they honor the commandments, and cherish the Sabbath. What allows an African-American Christian Mayor to challenge Jewish leaders to deepen their Jewish commitment? Because those same leaders are amazed at Cory’s knowledge of Judaism and appreciation of the Jewish contribution to civilization. (Watch video)
Every September Ahmadinejad accomplishes the unique feat of calling for a new holocaust while simultaneously denying the original ever took place. And do you know what the Jews do about it? Nothing.
Being forced to pay taxes does not make us more virtuous people. If it did, our founding fathers would have thanked George III for his coercion.
Haim Saban, a proud Jew, staunch supporter of Israel, and noted philanthropist, nevertheless parses President Obama’s record on Israel in The New York Times to deliver a sanitized rendition of a President whose relationship with the Jewish state is unreliable at best and troubling at worst, writes Congressional candidate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
The shocking video of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa trying to push through Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in the Democratic platform highlights the strong reservations that many American Jews are feeling toward the Democratic party.
Does the German government really want to get into a public battle over whether they are better guardians of the health and welfare of Jewish (and Muslim) children than their parents?
Senator Lautenberg, how exactly has our President demonstrated his friendship to Israel? He declared Israel's settlements to be illegitimate, put near-unilateral pressure on Israel to make peace without any expectations from the Palestinian side, declared that Israel should return to the arbitrary 1967 borders, and treated Prime Minister Netanyahu shamefully at a March 2010 meeting where he refused even a photo op with the elected leader of the Middle East's only democracy.
I call upon President Obama to honor his campaign pledge of 2008 to recognize the Armenian slaughter of 1918 by the Ottoman Turks for what it was - a genocide. I also ask my political opponent Bill Pascrell, to join me in a press conference and call upon the U.S. to put a $25 million bounty on the head of Bashar Assad for his arrest for crimes against humanity, and for the removal of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia so long as President Putin continues to protect Assad.
While Aref Assaf, President of the Arab American Forum in Paterson, New Jersey, might be forgiven for condemning my daughter’s service in the Israeli army, nothing can explain his defense of Congressman Bill Pascrell’s silence on the mass slaughter of Arabs in Syria.
I can forgive Congressman Pascrell for his continued contempt toward me by refusing to address me directly or even mention me by name, even in his letter written in response to mine. But his attack against Israel cannot be similarly overlooked.
Ordinarily, an attack by the political hack of one party about a mega-contributor to another party would not merit attention or comment. But what made Harris’s vitriol most unfortunate was that it was one Jew deriding the two foremost private supporters of Jewish identity and the State of Israel in the entire world.
There are few choices as personal and important as the educational environment in which our children are immersed for most of their waking hours. Yet in the United States, unless parents want to risk bankruptcy just to afford tuition, they are given no choice.
I came to know Mr. Shamir quite well when I hosted him at the University of Oxford in the mid-90’s. He seemed all but forgotten even then and told me that his dramatic drop in popularity in Israel had been due to the euphoria over the premiership of Yitzchak Rabin and his dramatic overtures for peace. He told me this with a touch of resignation. It seemed he did feel underappreciated. More importantly, he seemed to divine the coming catastrophe.
Democracy without a legitimate constitution and a Bill of rights, especially protecting the rights of minorities, can become a very scary thing. What you get is a tyranny of the majority. So the United States, as the world’s foremost democracy and sole superpower, must insist that elected regimes be restrained by a constitution that safeguards against a gravitation toward tyranny.
I call on the President of the United States to employ his considerable mastery of words to take up the mantle of Martin Luther King and be a drum major for justice, a beacon for freedom. Sound the clarion call for liberty, Mr. President. Get off the damn fence and stand up for Arab life and liberty. Stop the slaughter in Syria.
I am mystified as why you broke with close to 90% of Congress, voting to condemn Israel for imposing a blockade on Gaza. Surely you do not want to see Israeli children with their limbs blown off. Surely you do not want to see Hamas possessing the instruments to execute suspected Palestinian “collaborators” without trial. But without Israel stopping war materials from entering Gaza, more innocent Israelis and Palestinians will be murdered in the most gruesome way.
Every Friday night at our Sabbath table my wife and I host all kinds of people. We love having guests and it would be my honor for us to host you and your family either this coming Friday night or whenever it may suit you. Over the years we’ve hosted thousands of people. Many have been Democratic politicians like yourself - from Governor Jon Corzine, to Mayors Michael Wildes, Frank Huttle, and Cory Booker.
July 10, 2026 
