One of the most beloved songs traditionally sung at Shabbat dinner tables is Yah Ribbon (“O Lord of the World”), written in Aramaic by Israel ben Moses Najara (ca. 1555—1625), likely the most prolific and talented paytan, or author of liturgical poems, of his era. Israel was born to a scholarly Sephardi family in the Galilean city of Safed (also Tsfat or Tsfas), which was then a center of kabbalah, and for much of his life served as a rabbi in Gaza, writing hundreds of religious poems and bakkashot (Sephardi liturgical songs) as well as scholarly treatises. In conversation with Nachi Weinstein, Edwin Seroussi discusses Israel’s life and work, the influence of Spanish folk songs and Turkish classical music on his stylings, and what may be a vicious attack on Israel Najara by the great mystic Ḥayyim Vital (1542–1620).

Israel’s grave in Gaza was known until 1948, when the cemetery where he was buried was destroyed by the Egyptians.

Stephen Daisley writes about the slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim:

Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. . . . The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews—as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of Western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform, and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington, DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.