Serving for most of his career as the rabbi of the ḥasidic congregation of the first Russian, later Latvian, city of Dvinsk (modern-day Daugavpils), Joseph Rozin (1858-1936) was widely considered the foremost rabbinic mind of his day. Rozin, known as the “Rogachover Gaon” (the talmudic genius from Rogachov), was frequently consulted by other rabbis for his opinions on halakhic matters, which he approached with sometimes stunning unconventionality. In 1933, M. Gurtz, a correspondent from the New York-based Yiddish paper Der Morgen-Zshurnal, conducted a rare interview with the Rogachover, reproduced in translation at the link below. In his introduction to the text, Marc Shapiro describes the sage’s “complete originality and independence as a legal scholar”:

Take the question of the halakhic standing of civil marriage, which is [the subject of] one of the major rabbinic disputes of the 20th century (a dispute that was later extended to the status of marriages performed by Reform and Conservative clergy). Does a non-halakhic marriage create a marital bond that requires a halakhic divorce (get) to dissolve the union? While halakhic authorities lined up on opposites sides of the dispute, the Rogachover charted a unique path. . . . In brief, he argued that . . . the origin of the non-halakhic marital bond is in the [pre-Mosaic] Noahide code [i.e., the seven universal commandments given, according to rabbinic tradition, to mankind via Noah], and for Jews this status can be ended only with a [special] get, which is written differently from a typical get. . . .

The Rogachover’s special love for Moses Maimonides, who in his eyes stood above all other medieval [sages], is not only seen in his halakhic writings or in his volumes of commentary on Maimonides’ [code of Jewish law]. Unusual among his contemporaries, the Rogachover also intensively studied Maimonides’ [philosophical magnum opus] the Guide of the Perplexed, and [some] of his notes on it survive. . . . A number of philosophical expressions found in the Guide were applied by him in an original fashion to halakhic texts.

 In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu pulled out of a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like the IDF’s decision to employ raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—they are offered in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden admin. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.