Rabbi Berel Wein dives deep into the roots of Jewish identity and the persistent shadow of anti-Semitism through history. Why have the Jewish people faced so much hatred, and what does it mean for us today? This thought-provoking conversation challenges misconceptions, reveals timeless lessons from the Torah, and offers a bold perspective on Jewish resilience and pride.
שַׁעֲרֵי שָׁמַיִם פְּתַח. וְאוצָרְךָ הַטּוב לָנוּ תִפְתַּח”.
שְׁעָרֶיךָ הֵם דּוֹפְקִים כַּעֲנִיִּים וְדַלִּים, צָקוּן לַחֲשָׁם קְשׁוֹב יָהּ שׁוֹכֵן מְעֻלִּים, כִּי-אַתָּה רַב סְלִיחוֹת וּבַעַל הָרַחֲמִים”.
Sung by the Talmidim of Yeshiva Kerem B’yavne.
The Bar Kochba Revolt, commanded by the mighty Jewish warrior Shimon bar Kochba approximately half a century after the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash, is a saga shrouded in mystery. In fact, the Talmud Bavli almost completely ignores the entire episode with the exception of a short passage about Bar Kochba’s messianic claims and his death at the hands of the Sages.
We can presume that the Talmud Bavli intentionally omitted the details of the revolt, and instead informed us only that he claimed to be the messiah and was subsequently killed by the Sages after they determined that he was a fraud. However, as will be depicted below in great detail, the Talmud Yerushalmi offers a drastically different account of the Bar Kochba revolt, so much so that it appears to contradict the account reported by the Talmud Bavli.
In the absence of a law exempting the ultra-Orthodox (Haredim) from military service, tens of thousands have received draft orders. A few evaders caught by police have been arrested. This has led to a “declaration of war” by the Haredi community.
Haredi politicians have competed with each other in issuing threats about the bitter fate that would befall Israeli society if the “war on the Torah world continues.” But they soon discovered that they were scaring no one.
Simply put, the Haredi contribution to the State of Israel – its economy and core institutions – is so meager that even if they went on strike tomorrow morning, it wouldn’t significantly disrupt life in Israel. Hopefully, the image reflected back at them from this mirror will inspire some moral self-examination.
Gazans set fire to a relief truck while the driver was screaming for help and burned to death.
— Cheryl E 🇮🇱🎗️ (@CherylWroteIt) August 15, 2025
No one bothered to help him…
This is who and what the Gazans really are. pic.twitter.com/GCjFGsFPvi
Mohamed Hadid, the father of Bella and Gigi Hadid, with millions of followers — posted this on Instagram.
— Jeremy Kamali (@JeremyKamali) August 17, 2025
It was never about a ceasefire.
It’s about wiping Israel off the map — and they’re saying it out loud. pic.twitter.com/r0cC84JSoE
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During an episode of Last Week Tonight, British-born HBO talk show host John Oliver shared several clips of Schumer talking about the fictional couple, describing them as being “middle-class” and having “bought into Reagan Republicanism in 1980.” Schumer has explained that he has “guided” his political career “through the Baileys.”
“They’re a middle-class couple in Massapequa, which is a suburb on Long Island,” Schumer said in one clip from an interview on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN.
“Joe and Eileen Bailey, this middle-class couple, they bought into Reagan Republicanism in 1980,” Schumer says in another clip.
“Joe and Eileen are worried about losing their jobs or their friends jobs,” Schumer says in another clip.
“The Baileys really don’t believe in trickle down, they don’t believe in a whole lot of government spending, but they believe in tax breaks for kids to go to college,” Schumer says in another clip from an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Live in 2012.
“He’s an insurance adjuster, and lives in the New York suburbs. By New York standards, he makes $50,000 a year, if he lived in the middle of the country he’d make 40,” Schumer says in another interview. “Wife works in a medical office, she makes about 20, she might make 15 elsewhere. And, you know, I have guided my political life through the Bailey’s.”
During the episode, Oliver continues to highlight how Schumer “first introduced the world to the Baileys” in his book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time. Oliver notes that in the book, Schumer “mentions the Baileys, an astonishing 265 times, in 264 pages.”
Oliver explains how Schumer has given the fictional couple an “unnecessary detailed backstory,” adding that Schumer has said Joe Bailey “takes off his cap and sings along with the national anthem before the occasional Islanders game.”
Eileen Bailey is described as helping “with the clothing drive” at the couples’ church, and as having a father who “had a prostate cancer scare a few years ago.”
Sometimes you meet a tourist, who asks you: Tell me, why? Why do you insist on living right at the foot of the volcano?
After all, there are other places in the world, quiet corners, without smoke or noise, and solid ground that won't tremble beneath your feet.
Why don't you move away from here, and look for a safer place, where you can finally live in peace, once and for all?
Well-meaning friends of the Jewish people often offer two pieces of advice: First, that Jews would be safer without a state of their own, and should have remained dispersed among democratic nations. Second, that if Jews must have a homeland, Israel's location, surrounded by hostile neighbors, was a catastrophic choice.
Both arguments are dangerously wrong.
The Historical Case Against Dispersal
Jews constitute merely 2% of the world's population. History teaches us that dispersal offers no protection. While American Jews fare relatively well today, European Jews face rising antisemitism. We need not recount the horrors that befell German Jewry, a community that had once welcomed and integrated us. The pattern repeats across centuries and continents: Jews fleeing Spain, England, France, Russia, and countless other nations that initially offered sanctuary. Dispersal doesn't guarantee safety; it almost always ensures vulnerability.
Critics suggest Israel should have been established elsewhere: Wyoming, Uganda, Madagascar, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Cyprus, or Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. This geographic second-guessing, while understandable, misses a fundamental truth about collective security.
Consider a simple thought experiment: Ten people must traverse dangerous territory. Should they travel separately or together? The answer is obvious. Ancient wisdom teaches that there is safety in numbers. Try breaking ten sticks bound together versus snapping them one by one; the principle is elementary yet profound.
So should Jews scatter across the globe, a few hundred here, a few thousand there, some tens of thousands elsewhere? History demonstrates what happens to such isolated communities: they become easy pickings.
Recent Events Illustrate the Pattern
We're not suggesting American Jews should immediately make Aliyah, but recent events remind us that Jews have been killed in twos and threes across America before. The pattern of isolated attacks on dispersed Jewish communities demonstrates precisely why geographic concentration matters for collective defense.
The recent murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim RIP outside Washington's Jewish Museum illustrates this principle. These two young Israeli Embassy staffers were gunned down in cold blood. But the truly chilling aspect wasn't the murder itself. Sadly, such attacks on Jews occur with disturbing frequency.
What should terrify us even more is the response. Former Jordanian Interior Minister Mazen Turki El-Qadi suggested Israel orchestrated the murders to "lessen Western-American pressure" under the guise of fighting so-called antisemitism. Rebecca Rothstein, a Maryland middle school math teacher, dismissed the victims as "2 racist white folks." (One shudders to imagine what narratives she weaves into her lesson plans, shaping young American minds with such casual hatred.) Iranian state media's Kayhan praised the alleged killer Elias Rodriguez as "Our Dear Brother" who sent "Two Wild Zionist Beasts" to hell. They proclaimed him the "American Sinwar" and heralded "a new axis of resistance."
This reaction pattern, where isolated attacks on Jews are either ignored, celebrated, or blamed on the victims themselves - demonstrates why dispersal fails as a security strategy. When Jews are scattered in small, vulnerable communities, each attack appears isolated and manageable to outside observers. The broader pattern of antisemitic violence gets lost.
The Hornet's Nest Reality
Yes, Israel sits on a hornet's nest, surrounded by a billion hostile neighbors. In 2002, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah even gloated about this, declaring that Jews gathering in Israel saves their enemies "from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place, and there the final and decisive battle will take place."
But here's what Nasrallah and others fail to understand: Would Jews be safer scattered in small communities worldwide, easy targets for the Rebecca Rothsteins and Elias Rodriguezes of the world? History and logic say a loud "no."
When Jews are dispersed, each attack seems isolated, local, manageable. When Jews are concentrated in a sovereign state with a military, intelligence services, and diplomatic leverage, they can defend themselves collectively. The hornet's nest may be dangerous, but at least Israel can sting back.
Earlier on Sunday, the IDF published a rebuttal of claims by the BBC that a Palestinian Arab woman who had been allowed to leave Gaza for medical treatment had died of malnutrition.
The woman, Marah Abu Zohry, arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight on Wednesday night.
On Friday, after undergoing tests and starting treatment, she died of a sudden respiratory crisis and cardiac arrest. Italian news agencies said that she was suffering from severe malnutrition.
In response, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) tweeted: "The facts, which the report did not mention: 20-year-old Marah Zohry suffered from leukemia."
Journalist Melanie Phillips criticized the BBC and wrote on X, “Israel helps evacuate cancer sufferer from Gaza to Italy. She dies there of leukemia. BBC suggests Israel starved her to death. To the BBC, even cancer is Israel’s fault.”
Huckabee shared Phillips’ response and wrote, “Will the BBC retract the story and apologize? Of course. The same day a Baskin Robbins opens a franchise in hell.”
The BBC later added to its article Israel’s explanation that the woman suffered from leukemia.
The BBC has continuously come under fire over its anti-Israel bias, which has reared its head even more since October 7, 2023.
In November of 2023, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket. The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate” on the explosion.
Earlier this year, the BBC faced mounting scrutiny for using the son of a senior Hamas official as a narrator in its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.”
Following the criticism, the British broadcaster acknowledged that there were “serious flaws” in the program. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer later said he is "concerned" by the documentary.
In another incident several months ago, BBC News presenter Nicky Shiller referred to three hostages who were released by Hamas as “prisoners”, similar to the term used for the terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
His remarks sparked an uproar, leading the network to apologize.
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| Navarro served in President Trump’s first term — and is also an adviser in his second. |
It is an interesting thing to suddenly lose one’s freedom. It would be very interesting on this day, June 3, 2022.
The first thing FBI agents do when they grab you is pull your arms behind you and put you in handcuffs.
No matter how gently they might try to do it, it’s still going to take a pretty good pull on your shoulder sockets. And in this case, they weren’t particularly gentle.
I no doubt appeared to these five armed FBI agents to be a very dangerous hombre. After all, I was 74 years old, I weigh 145 pounds soaking wet and top out at a gargantuan 5’7″.
Once I was handcuffed, they walked me out the back door of the gangway at Reagan National Airport and down some portable steps onto the tarmac, where they had a tiny car waiting to transport me first back to the FBI headquarters — it’s across the street from my apartment — and then eventually to the courthouse.
