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INSIDE ISRAEL

Did you hear about the fellow who walked out of shul right in the middle of the rabbi’s sermon? The rabbi was furious and stopped him in his tracks.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“I’m going to have a haircut,” said the man.

“But why now?” asked the rabbi.

“I didn’t need one before,” the man replied.

In the Diaspora, this week’s reading is Naso. Curiously, at this time of year, Israel and the rest of the Jewish world are out of sync on the weekly parsha for a few weeks.

In Naso, we in the Diaspora find the laws of the Nazirite. A Nazirite is one who takes a vow not to drink wine or grape products for a specified amount of time. Haircutting is forbidden to him, as well as contact with dead bodies. In ancient times, various offerings would be brought to the Temple at the end of the Nazirite’s period of abstention.

There are millions of people today with long…

You’ve got to hand it to the current occupants of the West Wing. President Joe Biden’s administration has shown itself to be weak and confused about a lot of important issues. But when it comes to manipulating American Jews, they know exactly what they’re doing.

After teasing it for weeks, the White House’s unveiling of the “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” last week was a public-relations triumph in more ways than one. It was released just hours before the Jewish holiday of Shavuot and the Memorial Day weekend. Much like the traditional DC Friday-afternoon news dump in which officials release something just as everyone stops paying attention to headlines, this helped the White House manage reactions. With the Jewish world about to be shut down for two days—and then everyone else for two days after that—administration shills succeeded in dominating the conversation about the document.

More than that, the unveiling was a textbook example of how exceeding low expectations can generate positive…

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