On Yom Kippur, God Returns to Man

Oct. 10 2024

The Hebrew word (and foundational Jewish theological concept) t’shuvah is most often translated as “repentance,” but its literal meaning is “return.” Usually, explains Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, it refers to man’s forsaking his sins and returning to God, but on Yom Kippur it means the opposite: God returns to His people. It is man’s job to welcome Him. Soloveitchik expounds on this idea in a powerful 1975 sermon. (The speech is in Yiddish—turn on closed captions to see the English translation.)

Read more at Ohr Publishing

More about: Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Repentance, Yom Kippur

A Letter to the Liberal Jews of 2024

One of the phenomena Wertheimer discusses in that essay is the people who call themselves “October 8 Jews” to describe “their transition from slumbering complacency to vigilant activism.” But there is no small number of American Jews who slumber on, or remain half-awake, unable to process fully events that run deeply contrary to their assumptions about the world. John Podhoretz addresses this group:

[I]n the year since October 7, you have taken odd solace at odd moments, as when Israel comes under criticism for the supposedly indiscriminate tactics it’s using in Gaza. That wouldn’t seem to be a good thing, but it does allow you to express that wondrous complexity, according to which, yes, of course, Israel must be allowed to defend itself—but within limits, within reason, and certainly not with this brute at its helm. Gazans must eat! Israeli soldiers must be put at greater risk of harm to lower the death toll!

Does it matter that Hamas has rejected fourteen separate cease-fire proposals designed with that very purpose? It doesn’t. Because the harsh reality—that Hamas and the Iran axis are evildoers who seek the mass murder of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish state—is just not very complicated at all. [This truth] compels you to accept that the blessed gift of being an American Jew over the past century has lulled you and people like you into an entirely false sense of safety and security. From your privileged perch, you have spent decades viewing with withering contempt others who take in the span and arc of Jewish history and say, as on Passover, “In every generation, they stand against us to destroy us.”

So simplistic, you thought. So vulgar. And yet, so true.

Read more at Commentary

More about: American Jewry, Gaza War 2023, Liberalism