Ki Seitzei 5786: Our Mission (Impossible?)

GOOD MORNING! We live in scary times. A few weeks ago, Moshe Grunhaus, a 50-year-old observant Jew (and alumnus of our school), was stabbed in an unprovoked attack on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Having just attended Tisha B’Av services at The Jewish Center on West 86th Street, Moshe was walking nearby and visibly identifiable as Jewish by his kippah (skullcap). Raul Morales, 51, approached and plunged a screwdriver into Moshe’s chest while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and Islamic invocations. Fortunately, Moshe survived and is recovering.

However, times are clearly changing. The Jewish people once faced blood libels whispered in marketplaces and preached from village pulpits. Today, comparable falsehoods are transmitted loudly, frequently, and instantaneously to audiences numbering in the millions via mass media. Sadly, antisemitism is one of the sole points of agreement between those on the extreme right and those on the extreme left: They both agree that it’s all the Jews fault.

Candace Owens has become one of the most prolific modern disseminators of such disturbing rhetoric. In December 2025, she falsely declared that Jews “were in control of the slave trade” and recommended reading The Talmudic Jew, a notoriously fraudulent nineteenth-century antisemitic tract. Previously, she suggested that Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan in 1913 as part of a Passover ritual; in essence a resurrection of the medieval blood libel. The falsely accused Frank was abducted from his prison cell two years later and lynched by a bloodthirsty mob (oddly enough, this both revived a moribund KKK who celebrated his murder, while also proving the urgent need for the Anti-Defamation League, which was formed after his false conviction 1913).

More recently, she has blamed Jews for the Iran war and characterized Chabad – a Jewish outreach organization – as “dangerous.” These are not criticisms of Israeli policy; they are accusations of collective Jewish criminality. Owens has approximately 6 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 1.5 billion channel views – giving oxygen to ancient hatred with unprecedented technological reach.

Tucker Carlson has alleged, without evidence, that Israeli “psychological influence” manipulates American public opinion. He has also repeatedly suggested that Israel secretly controls American foreign policy and has outrageously demanded that Israeli Jews undergo DNA testing to prove their ancient ancestry. He has also given friendly, inadequately challenged platforms to Holocaust deniers and white nationalists such as Nick Fuentes. Carlson reaches approximately 6 million YouTube subscribers, 13 million followers on X, and 4 million on Instagram. His podcast episodes often averaged around one million YouTube views, while individual interviews have generated several million. Incredibly, he’s the one actually influencing public opinion and American politics: He was the one who lobbied Trump hard to choose JD Vance as VP, and they consider themselves close friends.

From the political left, members of “The Squad” have repeatedly portrayed Israel as monstrous and deliberately starving and murdering children. In November 2025, Rashida Tlaib introduced a congressional resolution officially declaring Israel guilty of genocide – completely ignoring the legal criteria of the crime. Ayanna Pressley subsequently asserted on the House floor that Palestinian children had been “murdered by sniper fire and starvation,” describing an Israeli “genocidal campaign.” AOC, whose Instagram audience alone exceeds 9.7 million, accused Israel of imposing a criminal blockade of food, water, and medicine.

When enormously influential voices deliberately teach lies about Jews manipulating governments, controlling history, and intentionally murdering children, they manufacture moral permission to hate Jews everywhere. ⁠Little wonder then that Jews all over the world (and particularly in Europe) have begun contemplating moving to a “safer” environment. After all, the wounds of the Holocaust are still raw and, as Mark Twain points out in Puddin’head Wilson’s New Calendar, a cat that has once sat on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again – or on a cold one, either.

But I didn’t pen this column to depress you – in fact, quite the opposite.

Science earns its credibility not merely by explaining what has already happened, but by making precise predictions that later prove correct. When a theory repeatedly forecasts results that can be independently observed and tested, its accuracy becomes powerful evidence that it has uncovered something true about our world.

As Stephen Hawking wrote in his famous book A Brief History of Time, “A good theory […] must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.” For example, in 1916 Dr. Karl Schwarzschild, using Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, predicted the existence of black holes – a phenomenon that was just recently (2019) observed in real life.

The most famous example of this principle is probably Charles Darwin’s observation of a Madagascan orchid with an exceptionally deep nectar tube. Based on that, he predicted the existence of a yet undiscovered moth possessing an equally long tongue (which could get to the nectar while pollinating it). More than forty years later, precisely such a moth was discovered – so perfectly matching the prediction that it was named praedicta, “the predicted one.”

Without a doubt, one of the most unbelievable and observable miracles in the modern world is the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland. Aside from the extraordinary miracle that a nation dispersed all over the world would somehow retain its identity, never in the history of mankind has an exiled and dispersed people returned to its ancestral homeland and re-established it as a nation-state.

Incredibly, the Torah predicts exactly that, “Even if your dispersed people are at the ends of the heavens, from there your God will gather you […] your God will bring you to the land that your forefathers possessed, and you shall possess it” (Deuteronomy 30:3-5).

In fact, this passage explicitly predicts the entire historical sequence: 1) Blessing and national prosperity 2) Sin and punishment 3) Exile among the nations 4) Jewish spiritual awakening and repentance 5) Ingathering from throughout the world 6) Return to and repossession of the Land of Israel.

The Torah makes a similar promise in Deuteronomy 4:27-31. After predicting that the people of Israel will be scattered and left “few in number among the nations,” Moses declares: “When you are in distress and all these things have befallen you, in the latter days, you will return to Hashem your God […] For your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you, destroy you, or forget the covenant of your forefathers.”

Finally, Leviticus 26:44-45 promises that even while the Jewish nation is exiled, God will never reject or destroy the Jewish people completely, because His covenant remains permanently in force.

This week’s reading ends with a short retelling of the incident of the Amalek nation attacking the Jewish people shorty after they left Egypt.

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you came forth out of Egypt; how he attacked you on the way and struck at your rear those who were feeble [...]” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18).

After the newly minted Jewish nation left Egypt they camped at a place called Rephidim. As they sought to recover from their narrow escape from the Egyptian army, they were suddenly attacked by the Amalekite nation. Even though the Jewish people had no designs on the Amalekite territory (they were heading to the Land of Israel) and obviously had no interest in beginning a new conflict, the Amalekites launched an unprovoked and vicious surprise attack on them from the rear.

All the other nations of the world, after hearing and seeing the incredible miracles that God had done for the Jewish people as they left Egypt (the ten plagues, splitting of the Red Sea, and utter decimation of the Egyptian army) feared the God of the Jewish people and wouldn’t consider fighting them. Upon leaving Egypt the Jewish people were on an unstoppable mission of bringing the world to its final resolution with God’s world vision at our forefront.

Our forefather Abraham’s vision of spreading the knowledge of the existence of God and His desire to have a relationship with His children would convey that the entire world is a brotherhood of man. The Jewish people, through their exodus from Egypt came to personify this relationship with God and revealed through their monotheistic belief that all of humanity is descended from a single source and therefore all of humanity is created equal.

The Amalekites then came and made an incredible statement. They attacked knowing that they would be annihilated – which was EXACTLY their point. Their startling statement was: This world is not worth living in if it is to be the world of the Jewish people. They preferred to die rather than live in a world where the God of the Jewish people is ascendant. Even though they lost terribly, they succeeded in publicizing the question as to whether or not this world is worth living in if it is a world according to the Jewish vision.

Consequently, they remain the prototypical archenemy of the Jewish people, for they created a vision for their ideological descendants (e.g. Iran, et al.) to prefer annihilation rather than live in a world with a Jewish homeland. They thus empowered and paved the way for every single antisemite that would follow them – something that we can never forgive or forget.

We are now in the Hebrew month of Elul and preparing ourselves for Rosh Hashanah and our renewed commitment to bettering ourselves in the upcoming year. As the Torah states, in order to return from exile and bring about the end of days, we must experience a spiritual awakening and a return to the Almighty. Only then can we finally begin to fulfill the mission that our ancestors first began when they left Egypt; the unity of God and His children. Should that happen, Jews will gladly take the blame.

Ki Seitzei, Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19

Topics in this week’s portion include: Women Captives, First-Born’s Share, The Rebellious Son, Hanging and Burial, Returning Lost Articles, The Fallen Animal, Transvestitism, The Bird’s Nest, Guard-Rails, Mixed Agriculture, Forbidden Combinations, Bound Tassels, Defamed Wife, Penalty for Adultery, Betrothed Maiden, Rape, Unmarried Girl, Mutilated Genitals, Mamzer, Ammonites and Moabites, Edomites and Egyptians, The Army Camp, Sheltering Slaves, Prostitution, Deducted Interest, Keeping Vows, Worker in a Vineyard, Field Worker, Divorce and Remarriage, New Bridegroom, Kidnapping, Leprosy, Security for Loans, Paying Wages on Time, Testimony of Close Relatives, Widows and Orphans, Forgotten Sheaves, Leftover Fruit, Flogging, The Childless Brother-in-Law, Weights and Measures, and Remembering What Amalek Did to Us.