Jeffrey D Smith

@NYCMayor Mayor, this however is intimidation and is very wrong:

I’m grateful to our NYPD and federal law enforcement partners for disrupting an alleged plot involving a senior member of Kataib Hezbollah — a federally-designated terrorist organization — who was targeting a Manhattan synagogue, as well as Jewish communities across the country. I am relieved that everyone is safe. The unsealing of the terrorism-related charges comes amid an alarming rise in antisemitism across the country. Let me be clear: antisemitism, violent extremism, and terrorism have no place in our city. This kind of hate is despicable. I’m thankful this alleged attack was stopped before any New Yorkers were hurt.

@maciej_szymczak @JarekPapis Hey! You’re amazing! Thank you for the lovely greeting! Regards Jeffrey

Happy Hanukkah, plenty of Light and Joy @JarekPapis @JeffreyD89 !

@elonmusknews30 HOPE

@JonHaidt @LetGrowOrg Perfect!

Plans of an 11 year old for a summer vacation spent in the real world. Beautiful. @LetGrowOrg

@JewsFightBack This vid was shot when? Days ago?

Don’t let ANYONE whitewash what Columbia University has become.

@EYakoby That seems to apply to registered Columbia/Barnard students probably on university property not to general public or working press or when individuals are on public places, street or sidewalks where Columbia has zero say.

BREAKING: Columbia quietly inserted a ban on recording students who break the law or support terrorist groups into its new policies addressing campus extremism. Instead of cracking down on pro-terror violence, Columbia is trying to shield extremists from accountability.

@havivrettiggur Extraordinary d’var. Breathtaking. Thank you - needed this!

“The Torah speaks in human tongue,” the Sages of the Talmud tell us again and again. The Torah, they explain, isn’t speaking to God but to us. And so it employs metaphor and simile and narrative structure. It does not think it is history or science, it does not pretend to be a literal truth. It literally tells the story of the creation of man *twice*, in Genesis 1 and 2, each time differently and with a different purpose. Even its more straightforward narratives - think Noah’s flood - are that special sort of story that grows with you; it is one tale when you’re five, another when you’re 25 and another still when you’re 65. The Torah is, by its own sense of itself, not a chronicle of the actual measure and development of life and history, but a window into their meaning and purpose. The portion of the Torah we will read this Sabbath, called simply, “Names,” is excruciating and beautiful, the beginning of the story of the redemption from slavery through Moses’s great awakening and slow shouldering of responsibility for his people. And it starts, like so many great beginnings in the Torah, with a list of names. These are the names of the family of Israel that went down into Egypt, one of the long lineage narratives of Biblical literature. Why start such a grand and pivotal story with a list of names? Because names are vital to the Torah’s sense of the world. They are the superpower by which mankind rules the world, by which we discover it. Adam became master of his world when he named it. It is how we know ourselves and our surroundings and the context and meaning of things. The Torah seems to know that we do not live in the objective world science tries to measure. That world is out there, perhaps, but we do not live in it. We live in a simulation of that world running inside our heads. Naming a thing brings it out of nameless objectivity into meaningful existence, into the lived reality of the simulation. We name our people and our tribes and our loved ones and ourselves, and thus we know who we are. And from this naming, the Torah shows us, freedom is born. Shemot begins the tale that will lead Moses to stand before the genocidal tyrant and demand in God’s name, “Let my people go that they may serve me!” The tyrant refuses, of course, and thus begins his long, bitter downfall. “Let my people go that they may serve me,” God tells Pharaoh through Moses. Freedom, God says, is service. Freedom isn’t achieved merely with the lifting of the yoke of another’s control. Freedom is attained only when independence gives way to devotion. In this Sabbath’s reading, then, we have most of the components of the Torah’s understanding of the human: Know who you are, and thus who you are responsible for and answerable to. Or as our Sages put it in the Mishnah (Ethics of the Fathers 3), “Know where you come from, where you are going, and before whom you are slated to give an accounting.” Thirty-three names now burn in the collective hearts of the Jewish people, our brothers and sisters locked in Pharaoh’s dungeons who stand on the precipice of their liberation, a negotiated liberation with tyrants who have already catalyzed their eventual downfall. I will be praying for them this Shabbat, and for dozens more of our brethren trapped in that darkness. And I will do so by naming them, by bringing them into my inner world, making them real and substantive so that I can offer my abject apology, at least until such time as I can do so to their faces. Freedom begins with a name. Name them, make them part of your world, so that when they emerge from their dim dungeons, the world that will receive them will be all the larger, so that they will know and feel, if not now then soon, that they are truly and forever redeemed. Romi Gonen, 23 Emily Damari, 27 Arbel Yehud, 29 Doron Steinbrecher, 31 Ariel Bibas, 5 Kfir Bibas, 2 Shiri Silberman Bibas, 33 Liri Albag, 19 Karina Ariev, 20 Agam Berger, 21 Danielle Gilboa, 20 Naama Levy, 20 Ohad Ben-Ami, 58 Gadi Moshe Moses, 80 Keith Siegel, 65 Ofer Calderon, 54 Eli Sharabi, 52 Itzik Elgarat, 70 Shlomo Mansour, 86 Ohad Yahalomi, 50 Oded Lifshitz, 84 Tsahi Idan, 50 Hisham al-Sayed, 36 Yarden Bibas, 35 Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36 Yair Horn, 46 Omer Wenkert, 23 Sasha Trufanov, 28 Eliya Cohen, 27 Or Levy, 34 Avera Mengistu, 38 Tal Shoham, 39 Omer Shem-Tov, 22 Shabbat shalom.

@jeremymbarr @kaitlancollins You go! You’re spot on for this post! Amazing! Good for you - good for US!

Some news: CNN is making 9 p.m. anchor Kaitlan Collins its chief White House correspondent, the first time a primetime anchor has also held that role washingtonpost.com/style/media/20…

@havivrettiggur Extraordinary wisdom succinctly relayed. Love listening to you on Dan’s pod. You write so well and very obviously have your ear to the ground. Thank you!

This Yom Kippur was a very useful one for me. I thought a lot about the past year and reached some decisions that were meaningful for me. Some were big, some small. Two small ones of relevance to Twitter: 1. I’m going to converse a bit less with the big wide world and more with Jews and Palestinians. What they think matters infinitely more to my children’s future than the moral entertainment the world uses us for. I’m tired of investing time and thought in outsiders’ feelings about my existence. 2. If you tweet at me that you “ain’t reading all that,” you’ll get blocked. If you tweet at me crazy antisemitism, you’ll get blocked. If I write about religion and you respond with abuse surrounding the war, you’ll get blocked. It’s already begun, and my Twitter feed is already more interesting and useful for it. If you don’t want to read me, if you don’t think I can teach you or learn from you, if you can’t speak on topic so you sound off on whatever else crosses your internet-addled mind, that’s all fine. I just don’t want to be an enabler of your anger addiction and poor emotional regulation. This last one is a surprisingly difficult decision for me. It goes against my basic understanding of what teaching is: Everyone can grow and learn. All things worth saying are worth saying to everyone. But I’ve become convinced that online abuse is something truly sinister: A waste of time. Judaism teaches that time is sacred. The Sabbath, wrote Heschel, is the Jewish cathedral. With the exception of one small sacred space in Jerusalem, sanctity is nearly always given to time, not to objects or places. This is an idea that lies at the core of our mental world: You don’t waste time. Judaism also teaches that your soul is shaped by what it consumes through eye, ear and mouth. This too is a fundamental tenet. If you consume anger from your surroundings, your inner life will become angry. If you listen to lies, you’ll start telling them and seeing them everywhere. It warps your soul and your worldview. Dishonest people assume that everyone else is dishonest too. In a similar vein, if you consume pornography you’ll sacrifice some of your capacity for intimacy. If you eat without intent, you’ll eat badly. And so on. Guard what your soul consumes, the Sages teach, lest that thing consume you in return. And so I’m going to try to be more intentional, more curating and careful of what I consume and what I dispense. I’ll mostly fail, of course, especially at the start, but that’s the goal. To focus on the wise, not on the self-important and enraged, on Palestinians and Jews, the actual protagonists of this moment, and not on the emotional addictions of spectators who are not. Sorry if you find yourself blocked in the near future. Be assured you’re not missing much. Take your revenge on me by reading a good book. That’ll show me.

@havivrettiggur Exquisite words. Thank you and thank you for everything you do especially appearing on Dan’s podcast!

Friends, I know there's a lot happening. I'm putting it all on pause. You should too. It's the new year in a few hours, the only Jewish holiday that falls on a moonless night, in blackest darkness. Unlike our other holidays, this one isn't a day of light, the Sages tell us, but a day of great pivots. It is the day Joseph was released from his prison, the day of Isaac's cruel binding, when God Himself had to intervene to turn Abraham's fervent old sacrificial impulse into a new understanding of humanity. It is from these darkest places, from the dungeons of Pharaoh where the innocent languish to the murderous zealotry of those who would sacrifice their children at God's command, that a new light kindles and the new year is born. A new light from the darkness: The day, our Sages say, that God made the first human to stand before the world and name it and question it and make meaning out of the emptiness. May this moment of sadness and deep darkness be such a pivot, the birth of new light in a beautiful and sweet and safer and somehow, though it seems impossible, more peaceful new year. See you all next year.

@antonioguterres That you left out, the Israeli killed on October 7 is a war crime in an of itself. For shame.

2023 was the deadliest year on record for humanitarians. Honouring them on #WorldHumanitarianDay is not enough. In Gaza, in Sudan & many other places, aid workers are attacked, killed, injured & abducted. We demand an end to impunity so that perpetrators face justice.

@MarkHalperin @KamalaHarris She is seriously in danger of losing the Jewish vote when she does things like not immediately condemn rocket attack into IL that kill children.

Why is @KamalaHarris performing better than expectations so far? 1. She was always underrated. 2. The White House & campaign time have given her a lot of applicable experience. 3. In Lorraine Voles, Brian Fallon & other senior staff, she now has a team who are vets w/ 2-way trust. 4. She is in controlled settings. 5. The Dominant Media is all for her.

@kasie washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysi…

@kasie yr b’cast: solid unadorned journ. Ask yr writers: no stories seen umpteen times! No one is addressing this! foxnews.com/world/un-revis…

@McClellanOsc @terronk @BillAckman Bravo Tom. Totally spot on.

@terronk @BillAckman The choices a person makes comprise part of "the merits". And it is fair to judge a person based on such choices.

Attention job seekers. I will not hire any recent graduate of Columbia, because that school is so tainted that I will not be able to trust in the character nor the educational attainment of any of its students. And I furthermore will not hire any older graduates either, because it has become evident that the academic rot is so deeply ingrained as to taint others who have come through that institution in the past several years. I cannot have faith that any former Columbia student could have achieved sufficient academic success, especially in light of the overwhelming recent evidence that the academic requirements there are so lax such that students have time to go set up protests on the quad instead of studying. In case you are a Columbia alum who might actually be a good person, please feel free to cite this declaration as evidence in your lawsuit against Columbia for having contaminated your personal brand as a graduate, and your employment value. You should definitely seek damages.

@adnanalamoudi @OGAride And this:

@adnanalamoudi @OGAride twitter.com/boxloner/statu…

@McFaul Ambassador, you’re such an intelligent man+an important voice to listen to in these times. Why not advocate, at least in the same breath if not first, for the total, unequivocal release of the hostages? Do u doubt how powerful it would be to the region if hostages were returned?

You can support new aid to Israel and a ceasefire. I do.

@davidfrum @kasie You were EXCELLENT as usual. Spot on, thoughtful. Thank you.

Shortly to join @kasie for the 6 AM hour.

@RidersAlliance @GovKathyHochul Evoke? How about evoking lawfulness? How about evoking an end to ceaseless farebeating? How about evoking safe subways? If you have nothing to hide this stuff doesn’t bother you a wit! Evoke!

We're disturbed to see @GovKathyHochul deploy the National Guard to check bags in subway entrances as a core part of her safety response -- a measure that evokes stop-and-frisk and will undoubtedly target Black and brown riders in greater proportion.