Yesterday, I spent much of the day in synagogue observing Yom Kippur. I became dizzy, but my housekeeper/aide miraculously appeared, quite unbidden, and helped me home. I now acknowledge that a crowd of highly boisterous children, precious souls all, who kept darting one way and then the other, and who crowded the steps, the very steps I had to so carefully navigate on my cane--well, they utterly frightened me. When I exited after Neilah, a masked woman, whom I could not identify, probably saw the terrified look on my face and helped clear a path for me. God bless you whoever you are.
This is ridiculous. Once, I climbed high mountains and traveled the globe. But now I very much fear that my applications to join either the IDF or the Navy Seals will probably fail. (Well, there’s always the Ballet Russe....)
My rabbi, R. Benjamin Skydell, based on a teaching by one of his rabbis, pointed out that while one gate to heaven may have closed, this only means that we have an entirely new year in which to enter Heaven via other gates, other deeds, other statements of humility and remorse, other acts of kindness. The gate to the past year may be closed--but not to the future year. So good to know.
Something else happened as well. As I read the late, truly great Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’s commentary on the book of Jonah (an ostensibly puzzling story), I was, unexpectedly, enormously comforted by his words. Reb Sacks explained that a prophet only “warns,” but does not and cannot “predict.”
For years, I’ve been saying that I, and so many others, many for the last twenty five years, some for the last fifty years, have been warning and warning the world about Islam and Islamism, about the Islamic assault on the West, the Jews, Israel, on infidels, especially Christians, but also on Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Baha’i, and of course, on Muslim dissidents, Muslims of other sects, atheists, feminists, gays, and on their own daughters if they are seen as even slightly disobedient.
None of us barefoot prophets were ever heeded. We believed we had, more or less, failed. Even now the world is barely waking up. And we have all reaped/earned the whirlwind. People still refuse to listen to or understand reality. As I prayed in shul, someone named Jihad (not kidding), a British citizen of Syrian descent, murdered and wounded (stabbed and car rammed) Jews in a Manchester synagogue while they prayed on Yom Kippur. The Manchester police and government officials still allowed a pro-Palestinian march to take place in Manchester after this terrorist attack.
The mainstream media still refuses to connect the dots. Two passionate British citizen journalists, Eve Barlow and Melanie Phillips, immediately did so.
The New York Times and Al-Jazeera did not publish them.
And alleged rabbis and rabbinical students “observed” Yiskor (a prayer for the departed) yesterday by blocking the Brooklyn Bridge for a “ceasefire” for Palestine. Many were women; some were obviously lesbians; a few transgenders were also there--and one person’s face was positively smirking with pleasure. Attention getters? Outcasts getting even, trying to destroy because they cannot build something new, anything better? This was the way they chose to remember the dead, including all the martyrs in Jewish history, those Israelis who died in captivity in Gazan tunnels, the Israelis who were murdered on 10/7--and their own relatives?
Why not block one of Hamas’s tunnels to obtain a “ceasefire” for Gaza? Hamas is the only group that refuses to accept President Trump’s peace proposal.
So: Why was I comforted by Reb Sacks’s words about the nature of prophecy? Because R. Sacks actually recognized my 2003 book The New Antisemitism for what it was. He wrote:
“I admire the courage of the vision and the power of the writing.”
No greater honor have I ever received about this work. It will have to do.
A couple of years ago, after the massacre on October 7, a (Christian) friend of mine asked me for a book recommendation to help her better understand Israel, Jews and the Middle East. I recommended your book, "The New Anti-Semitism". She was grateful for the illuminating and comprehensive information in your book and I'm grateful to her for reading it. It's so hard to find people willing to read something that doesn't sync with their familiar, preferred beliefs. I think there is a fear of losing friends when parting with old beliefs and embracing new ones, which, as you've written about, unfortunately does happen. Thank you for giving voice to Jewish people everywhere.
You should be blessed with long life and excellent health as you continue to speak out on behalf of EMES for all the world to see.