Beshert | This Isn’t What I Ordered
“I dreamed of certain outcomes. But it’s the ones I didn’t see coming that feel exactly right—beshert.”
“I dreamed of certain outcomes. But it’s the ones I didn’t see coming that feel exactly right—beshert.”
The nation is shutting down, its economy is grinding to a halt, but politics, so it seems, is still showing signs of vitality, perhaps even of growth.
Estee Rieder-Indursky is fighting for women’s rights in Haredi community.
Joe Biden, the comeback grandpa, had the best Super Tuesday anyone could have imagined. In fact, he performed so well, from solid wins in southern states, to surprise victories in Massachusetts and Minnesota, and an unbelievable upset in Texas, that some are already speculating that it’s all over and Biden is on a safe path to clinch the Democratic nomination.
There’s still a long road ahead, and if anything, Biden has proven time and again that he has a rare talent for ruinous missteps. But still, he is now the frontrunner in a narrowed-down Democratic field.
So just to sum up the state of the Democratic race in the first week of primaries: Jewish donors are attacking a Jewish candidate for being too old to run, and a Jewish candidate is calling out Jewish donors for being part of a “big money” billionaire class. It can only go downhill from her.
The atmosphere in the White House East Room seemed at times more like a raucous campaign event than a launch of a diplomatic initiative three years in the making. Invitees broke out in cheers as Trump praised the Israeli prime minister standing next to him, just as they did when Netanyahu gushed over Trump.
Rabbi Menachem Bombach is the founder and head of the “Netzach” Haredi educational network, which combines religious and secular studies and aims to educate students to become observant Haredim who are also prepared for practical living.
The title of “biggest threat” to American Jews is hard to define or measure. And more importantly, it’s political. Most liberals would agree that anti-Semitism has reached new records under Trump and that the president’s response to the phenomenon has been less than adequate.
J Street, the left-leaning pro-Israel lobby, wrapped up its three-day conference in Washington, DC last week. In an email to supporters summing up the meeting (and making a pitch for donations), the group’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami announced, “We’ve changed the conversation” about Israel, noting that the conference brought the issue of Israel to the Democratic presidential race agenda and that candidates have discussed, among other issues, their plans to “employ U.S. leverage to combat settlement expansion.” Or, in other words, J Street made using American foreign aid to Israel into an issue Democrats are willing to fight for.
No less surprising than Trump’s decision to withdraw forces from Northern Syria, following a single phone call with Turkey’s Erdogan, was the new defiant energy this move injected in the Republican Party. After sticking with Trump as he struggled to explain the Ukrainian affair, members of his party suddenly found their voice.