More Than Mere Gratitude

The very first Rashi in the Torah, quoting a Midrash, indicates the importance of Bikkurim, the first fruits offering that opens parshas Ki Savo. Bikkurim is one of the “raishis” concepts that the word Beraishis (understood as “for the sake of something called raishis) refers to.

And Bikkurim, as evident from the words that are spoken when they are brought, is an expression of “hakaras hatov,” a truly fundamental Torah concept that is usually, though, not entirely accurately, thought of as “gratitude.”

In truth, it is something more subtle and sublime, indicated in a direct translation of the phrase: “recognition of the good.” That is why an example of the concept, as per the Gemara (Bava Kamma, 92b) is the commandment that “You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land,” in last week’s parsha. And why the maxim expressing it is “Don’t throw a clod of dirt into a well from which you drank” (ibid).

So even someone who intended you nothing good, and even an inanimate object, deserve hakaras hatov. How does that work?

My understanding is that the recognition, even while being properly expressed to a person, people or object, is ultimately to Hashem, for causing the good – in the case of the Egyptian slavery, the “purification” (kur habarzel) needed to prepare Klal Yisrael to receive the Torah; in the case of the well, its appearance when one was thirsty. The action of hakaras hatov is through the Egyptians and through the wellbut its ultimate expression is to Hashem.

I remember having negative feelings when on rare occasions I would see a certain person who in effect once forced me, without reason, to leave a position and community I loved. But then, pondering how what resulted in the end was in fact a tremendous brachah for me and my family, I realized that I needed to feel hakaras hatov toward him. Well, toward him, which I indeed came to feel, but only as a path leading to true recognition of the good that Hashem had bestowed.

Canards on the Quad

There was a time, dear young’ns, when academia – the world of universities and professors – was the gold standard, the go-to place for ascertaining truths. A time when scholarship was objective and reliable; and scholars, the same.

The most recent reminder that things have changed arrived recently in the sad saga of Jason Arday, one of Britain’s most prominent young academics, who, in 2003, rose to become Cambridge University’s youngest black professor at just 37.

He was renowned for having been mute until he was 11, illiterate until he was 18 and yet later completed a PhD and published widely-praised sociological research. When he was hired by Cambridge, the head of its department for education told him: “You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do.”

Professor Arday also wrote about running marathons, and that he ran 600 miles in six days.

Sound too amazing to be true? Well, it was.

Mr. Arday stood accused of not only falsifying his life story and academic credentials, but also of having plagiarized his PhD thesis. He canceled a series of events promoting his memoir “Great and Unfortunate Things,” and resigned from Cambridge, because, he explained, the public scrutiny had been bad for his mental health.

It clearly was, since he was discovered on erev Shabbos to have died.

Mr. Arday’s field of academic endeavor was sociology, and it wouldn’t have been wrong to characterize him as woke. In a keynote speech at the British Sociological Association, he contended that white conservative activists target black academics and are a “cancer” to be “eradicate[d] from academia.” He did not write or speak about Jews or the Middle East, but his wokeness and fabulism was very much of a kind with that of other professorial prevaricators who did.

Like former Harvard University dean of social science Claudine Gay, who famously, at a Congressional hearing, said that calling for the genocide of Jews might perhaps violate the school’s code of conduct, “depending on the context.”

Dean Gay later was later accused of, in the delicate words of The New York Times, “using material from other sources without proper attribution.” The plagiarism allegations totaled almost 50 instances spanning eight of her academic works, including her dissertation and five of her 11 published articles.

Ms. Gay resigned, saying that having “doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor” has been “distressing.” Understandably.

Back in 2005, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, who calls Israel a “colonial” project and ignores Jewish historical ties to Eretz Yisrael, was accused of plagiarizing significant portions of another writer’s 1994 article.

While it’s interesting that plagiarizing and vilifying Israel and/or Jews seem to enjoy a cozy relationship, there are all too many academics who, even if they haven’t been caught stealing from others, are nevertheless guilty of another, even worse, academic sin: Bias.

Two Anti-Defamation League reports that just came down the pike reveal rising levels of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in university classrooms. Some instructors are assigning readings by terrorist groups and – not a joke – offering extra credit for attending anti-Israel protests.

One of the reports cites incidents of professors presenting one-sided narratives, framing lectures around a single political view and treating contested claims as settled fact. Criticism of Israel without presenting counterarguments is worse than plagiarism; it is educational malpractice.

Stanford University, for one example, offers a course called “Palestine Across Disciplines: An Introduction” and asks in its description, “How do we talk about Palestine and Palestinian life in the midst of devastation and genocide?” Somehow, one imagines, the true genocidal actors in the Middle East are untalked about in the course.

And at the University of California, Berkeley, history students were reportedly assigned to read a book by a former spokesperson for the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, alongside materials on plane hijacker Leila Khaled. (Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel” did not appear on the reading list.)

According to Gallup, the percentage of U.S. adults who say they have “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education has fallen 19 points since 2015 to just 38 percent.

For good reason.

We’re All the “Beautiful Woman”

It’s edifying to compare the larger world’s celebrations of its various New Years and the Jewish celebration of Rosh Hashanah.

The former is characterized by revelry, drunkenness and, hat tip to Auld Lang Syne, a smidgen of sentimentality. The latter, by trepidation and regret of the past year’s missteps.

Greater society’s preparation for their New Years Days consists of buying fireworks and alcohol. Ours is Elul, the month during which, as the Eastern European folk saying has it, even the fish in the rivers tremble.

The law of the yifas to’ar, the “beautiful woman” encountered among the enemy and fallen for by a Jewish soldier in war, is a strange one. The captive, after a month’s time during which she, shorn of her hair, is to cry over the loss of her father and mother, is permitted to be taken by the soldier as a wife.

Much has been written in explanation of the counterintuitive law. But the Zohar Chadash has a metaphorical comment.

Seizing on the word used in the law for “month” (“yerach”), the mystical text comments, “da he yarcha d’Elul” — “this is the month of Elul.”

The yifas to’ar is leaving her past behind, entering a new world. According to Rabbi Akiva in the Sifri, the “father and mother” over whom she cries refer to the idolatries of her past, as per the prophet’s rebuke: “They say to the wood, ‘You are my father,’ and to the stone, ‘You bore us’ ” (Yirmiyahu 2:27). Her tears are tears of regret, for having been in idolatry’s thrall. And, perhaps, tears of joy at entering a new world, as part of the Jewish nation.

During Elul, we mourn our pasts too, and express joy (V’gilu bir’ada — rejoice in trembling -Tehillim 2:11), as we enter a new world, a new year.

After the night’s drunken revelry, a New Year’s Eve celebrant may find himself experiencing delirium tremens, the infamous “DT’s”.

Jews who fully embraced Elul will wake up as BT’s.

Power to the People

“Death to the Dictator!”

“Death to Khamenei!”

“This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return!”

“Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran!”

Those are a sampling of slogans chanted earlier this year during gatherings of Iranian citizens advocating the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

(“Pahlavi” refers to Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince of Iran, son of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran who was deposed in 1979 by supporters of what became the Islamist government of Iran today.)

And the gatherings were not small.

Nationwide demonstrations against the government began during the final days of December, 2025, and spread to more than 200 cities across the country. Within days, millions had taken to the streets in protests across all 31 provinces. Iranian security forces gunned down thousands of protesters and arrested thousands more.

By late January of this year, media like Time, The Guardian and Iran International, citing local health officials, reported that between 30,000 and 36,500 protesters were killed over a two-day period.

February saw a second major wave of protests, these at Iranian universities. Government forces held their fire then, and only one student, at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, died – according to Iranian state media, due to a “sudden health incident.”

But security forces nevertheless searched student dormitories and arrested suspected participants; and volunteer paramilitary militia members physically attacked student protesters.

Even after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran, when a coming together of Iranians to support their government might have been expected, protests continued across Iran, these, largely in the form of nightly rooftop chants from residential buildings. Videos showed security forces firing towards people who were chanting from windows.

It has become hard to deny that the on-again, off-again, bomb again, negotiate again, threaten again U.S. war with Iran is not yielding the goals set forth when the first attacks against the mullocracy unfolded. Nor is it likely that the American public will be willing to back continued war until the Iranian government totally collapses economically. Time is, unfortunately, on Iran’s side.

The solution to the standoff is regime change. And that can only happen when the Iranian populace is able to fight back against the government – and that can happen only when the citizenry is armed.

GAMAAN (a Netherlands-based Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) conducted a survey among Iranians and found that roughly 70% to 81% of respondents inside Iran reject the continuation of the Islamic Republic, with support for the ruling system dropping as low as 11%.

Last year, Rouydad24, a reformist news service inside Iran, claimed that its confidential surveys revealed that more than 90% of the population harbors deep dissatisfaction with or outright opposition toward the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

90%.

Whatever the numbers and despite the tens of thousands of anti-regime Iranians who have been murdered or are imprisoned, there can be little doubt that there is a critical mass of Iranians who, if they could, would rise up in revolution.

During the first mass wave of anti-regime protests that swept Iran, President Trump vowed that “help was on the way” and urged protesters to take to the streets and seize institutions. But, after the regime began its crackdown, he opted for the military attack instead.

Then in April, the U.S. attempted to arm Iranians via weapons supplied to Kurdish separatists in Iraq and western Iran. The arms were meant to be passed on to Iranians, but never reached their destined recipients. Mr. Trump said that the Kurds decided to keep them for themselves.

I don’t claim to know if putting boots on the ground is the only way to provide arms to Iranian citizens or if there are less literally invasive means of getting weapons into the right hands.

And no one can know which of the various Iranian factions – monarchists, secularists, Muslim reformists, the Artesh (Iran’s conventional armed forces) – would emerge as controlling a renewed Iran.

But the goals of eliminating Tehran’s ballistic missile infrastructure, halting its nuclear development, and cutting off its support for terrorist proxies will only be even potentially achievable with the removal of the malignant mullahcracy.

Whose Nation is it Anyway?

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently rejected Vice President Vance’s notion that America is, conceptually if not legally, a Christian nation.

If there’s any point in an academic dialectic about the role of religion in our country’s founding, the most cogent case that can be made is that the spiritual engine propelling the establishment of the United States was.. Judaism.

To read what that’s so, please click here.

Shoftim – The Riddle of the Egla

There is something disturbing about the egla arufah ritual.

It is commanded in a case where the body of a murder victim, presumably a wayfarer, is found on a road between cities. The procedure, which involves the elders of the nearest city dispatching a calf, is called a kapparah, an atonement, yet there seems to be no sin for which the elders need to atone. That’s because part of the ritual is their declaration that they did everything they could to ensure the safety of the visitor during his visit, including supplying him with his needs before he left.

And it certainly isn’t atonement for the killer; if he is ever discovered, he faces a murder charge and its penalty.

So whom is the atonement for?

It seems clear to me that it is for Klal Yisrael.

Rav Dessler, in Michtav Me’Eliyahu, teaches that the concept of arvus, the “interdependence of all Jews” implies that when a Jew does something good, it reflects the entire Jewish people’s goodness. And the converse, too.

Thus, when Achan, one man, misappropriated spoils after the first battle of Yehoshua’s conquest of Canaan, the siege of Yericho, it is described as the sin of the entire people (Yehoshua, 7:1). Explains Rav Dessler: Had the people as a whole been sufficiently sensitive to Hashem’s commandment to shun the city’s spoils, Achan would never have been able to commit his sin.

So it may be that in the case of the murdered wayfarer, too, even if no particular person was directly responsible for the murder, what could have enabled so terrible an act to happen might have been a “critical mass” on the part of many Jews, of lesser offenses, perhaps things that Chazal likened to murder, such as causing another great embarrassment or indirectly causing a person’s life to be shortened.

In which case, the atonement would be for Klal Yisrael as a whole, interconnected as all its members are.

The idea, in fact, inheres in the very words the elders are to recite. After they declare their lack of any personal involvement in the murder, they plead with Hashem to “atone for your people Yisrael…”

And the Baal HaTurim’s comment on that phrase makes the idea explicit: “From here we see,” he writes, “that all members of Klal Yisrael are interdependent.”

Sad People in Dearborn

Leaked recordings of private conversations and “hot mic” moments – when a politician or other public figure doesn’t realize that his microphone is still on – offer the best evidence of the true character and positions of the speaker. And, sometimes, those of others.

Last week, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was confronted with words he didn’t expect would become public. But they did, and revealed something about the candidate’s assessment of a bastion of his strongest supporters, and likely about himself.

On audio obtained by The Washington Free Beacon website from an event that Mr. El-Sayed held shortly after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the candidate told staff that he wasn’t going to comment on the mullah’s death, and shared his feeling that the dictator’s demise had resulted in “a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.”

Dearborn, of course, is a Michigan city that has the largest Muslim population in the U.S. It is the only Arab-majority city in the country.

CNN reporter Jake Tapper asked Mr. El-Sayed about his remark, prefacing his question by explaining that he “thought that quote was interesting, because the ayatollah has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iranians, not to mention the proxies that Iran has funded that have killed innocent civilians all over the Middle East.”

And then, the question: “Why were you worried about offending people who support the ayatollah?”

Mr. El-Sayed’s response to the question was revealing in itself: He tried to change the subject, citing the then-recent deaths of two American soldiers in an Iranian attack on a military base in Jordan.

“Jake,” he said, in a patronizing tone, “on a day where we’re mourning the loss of two more service members in a war we never should have fought, I think all of us ought to step back and ask whether or not everybody in Michigan, frankly, everybody in America, shouldn’t be sad.”

Funnier moments in recent politics are few. Mr. El-Sayid couldn’t deny what he had said about bereaved Dearborners – which revealed his recognition that the Arab, mostly Muslim, population of the city were sitting shiva for a mass murderer. So he pivoted to to a non sequiter, in the hope that no one would notice.

Mr. Tapper, however, tried to steer things back, “I was specifically asking you,” he said, “about comments you didn’t want to make because you didn’t want to offend people in Dearborn, which is in Michigan.”

Alas, Mr. Tapper, gentleman (or weakling) that he is, didn’t press the issue further.

In truth, though, he didn’t have to. The reality was all too apparent. The candidate had revealed the disturbing, demented and dangerous mindset of a subset of the citizenry, perhaps of himself as well.

Michigan is an imporant “swing state,” and a politically “purple” one too, neither reliably Democrat nor Republican. It voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and has a Democratic governor. It has flipped between parties in recent elections.

Mr. El-Sayed is a Muslim progressive, pursuing the Democratic party’s nomination to succeed retiring Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat. Earlier this month, Mr. Sayed refused – repeatedly – to say whether he believes that Israel “has a right to exist.”

“Nobody’s ever asked me whether I believe Palestine has a right to exist,” he huffed. (Maybe, Abdul, because the answer is obvious?)

Among his endorsers are Bernie Sanders, AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Elizabeth Warren. Enough said.

His opponent in the August 4 primary is Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who supports a strong U.S.-Israel alliance and strongly opposes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The race is currently too close to call.

If Mr. El-Sayed should, chalila, win the Democratic nomination, he will face a highly competitive general election matchup against presumed Republican nominee Representative Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Mr. Rogers considers Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to be an existential threat. And he is a steadfast defender of Israel and her right to attack Iranian proxies like Hamas.

Michigan state law provides for “open” primaries, contests in which any voter, regardless of party affiliation, can cast a vote.

And so, all Michiganders who were not saddened by the demise of Ayatollah Khamenei need to turn out and vote their consciences on August 4.

Re’ei – What’s With the Wealth?

Affluence isn’t something the Torah extols. In Judaism wealth is neither a praiseworthy aspiration nor a meaningful achievement.

Which makes Rabbi Yochanan’s homiletic interpretation of the Torah’s words “A tithe shall you tithe [te’aser]” (Devarim 14:22) somewhat puzzling.

The Torah, he says, is hinting “Take a tithe [asser] so that [in the merit of your charity] you will become wealthy [tis’asher]” (Taanis 9a).

Even aside from the elsewhere-unduplicated promise of wealth here, we are taught that a person’s financial state is something that is decreed at the beginning of the Jewish year and cannot be changed by things he or she may do.

As Rabbi Tachlifa (Beitzah 16a) put it: “All of a person’s income [for the coming year] is determined for him [during the days] between Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur, except for the money he spends for Shabbos and holidays, and to pay for his children’s Torah education. If he spends less [for any of these] he is given less, and if he spends more he is given more.”

So what’s with the wealth? Why is it suddenly offered as a reward for a mitzvah?

What occurs is that Chazal define wealth elsewhere, and it does not mean a large bank account or abundance of possessions.

“Who is wealthy?” asks Ben Zoma in Avos (4:1). “The one who is happy with his lot.”

Wealth – with apologies to Wall Street – is not a tangible thing; it is a state of mind.

The millionaire who is pained by his lack of a larger yacht isn’t wealthy. The pensioner who hasn’t the slightest desire for a boat and finds joy in his modest possessions is.

And so perhaps the Torah is promising those who invest wisely in charity true wealth: joy in what one has.

A most valuable reward indeed.

World War III

Much of the Western world is suffering from a dangerous lack of imagination, choosing to see the “conflict in Iran” as something less than a simmering Third World War.

To read why I feel that way, please click here.

Eikev – Does Heaven Play Favorites?

Well, does He or doesn’t He?

Hashem, that is. Does he show special favor to some or not?

That question is placed by Rabbi Ami or Rabbi Asi (Berachos 20b) in the mouths of angels, who asked the Creator about the description of Him (Devarim 10:17) in this week’s parsha: “Who favors no one and takes no bribe.”

But yet, the angels said, “You, nevertheless, show favor to Yisrael, as it is written: ‘Hashem will show favor to you and give you peace’” (Bamidbar 6:26).

Hashem’s reply: “How can I not show favor to Yisrael? I wrote for them in the Torah: ‘And you shall eat and be satisfied, and bless Hashem your G-d’ (Devarim 8:10) [meaning that only if one is satiated is there an obligation to recite birchas hamazon, the blessing after a meal], yet they recite it even if they have eaten a mere olive’s or egg’s volume!”

What a strange reply. Firstly, reciting a bracha when it isn’t required isn’t permitted – so by what right did the rabbis of the Talmud allow it for a sparse meal? And secondly, the response doesn’t answer the question! Isn’t Hashem still showing favoritism?

Unless… reciting birchas hamazon even on a small amount doesn’t represent any changing of the requirement itself for saying the bracha but is rather a new sort of fulfilment of that requirement – in other words, an embrace of being “satisfied” with less.

If we are “satisfied” with any small degree of Hashem’s blessing – if we recognize what a divine kindness even a minimal amount of sustenance is, and feel sincere gratitude for it – then our own declining to demand a more literal satisfaction, full stomachs, may be what allows Hashem to be “satisfied,” so to speak, with less from us.

In which case, His “showing favor” to Yisrael is not really that at all but rather something of a midda kineged midda, a quid pro quo – an act of perfect justice.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life