Despite all the bad news about rising anti-Semitism, America remains a land of opportunity for Jews, including those who make no efforts to hide their identity. Take Richie Taylor of Brooklyn, who today will be sworn in as a deputy chief of the New York Police Department, making him the force’s highest-ranking kippah­-wearing officer. Reuvain Borchardt writes:

At forty-one, Taylor will be the youngest deputy chief currently in the Department. Richard (Yechiel) Taylor grew up in Manhattan Beach and Midwood, attending Yeshiva of Manhattan Beach and Touro College. Before becoming a police officer, Taylor was a member of [the Orthodox emergency medical service] Hatzalah, and responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11.

He became a police officer in 2005. . . . Taylor has served in over ten commands across the city, and was the recipient of the 61st Precinct Cop of the Month Award in September 2016 for making a firearm arrest solo. He currently serves as commanding officer of Community Affairs, and he will continue in the Community Affairs Bureau after his promotion.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.