February 25, 2022 “He made the dividing curtain”      Vayakhiel 36:35

Trump’s deceits and exaggerations alternately irritate and amuse, but the wholesale embrace of his lies by Republican office-seekers – including Ohio – is shocking testimony to the paranoia and racism in large segments of Americans and their appetite for delusion. Those same tactics incited antisemitism for centuries. 

February 18, 2022 “Erase me from your book”       Ki Sisa 32:32

Jonathan Tobin’s blatantly partisan screeds abuse his platform in the Cleveland Jewish News. Whether trivializing anti-democratic election bills, ridiculing Jewish organizations that condemned the Jan.6 riot as insurrectionist, or peddling Republican anti-Biden memes, he ought to pay for his space, just as we do.   

February 11, 2022     “Speak to the wise-hearted”      Tetzaveh  28:3

In Tennessee, schools ban Maus. In Texas, teachers are instructed to provide “opposing views” to Holocaust narratives. “Cancel Culture” is nothing compared to the “451 Fahrenheit” censorship the Right is imposing wherever it can – with anti-Semitic undertones – to pervert history, ban books, threaten prosecutions of teachers and librarians, and manipulate its voter base.

February 4, 2022 “I will establish My word”      I Kings 6:12 (Terumah)

Hyperbole is the lingua franca of politics, but the Orwellian lies the Republican establishment propagates hearken back to Stalinist Russia. Incredibly, whether distorting public health, Trump’s defeat, Jan. 6, climate change, or voting fraud, they have amassed power by harnessing tens of millions of gullible devotees to their deceptions.