Now, Route 4 isn’t just a random highway. I spent years serving pulpits right here in Bergen County, and if you know this corridor, you know it’s the beating heart of suburban Jewish life in Jersey. Whoever bought that ad space knew exactly who was idling in traffic. So, naturally, I pulled up the site on my phone.

Guess what? Jews.com isn’t Jewish.

When the page loads, you’re greeted with a Star of David, a Torah scroll, a shofar, a hanukkiah, the tablets, and the word שלום. The site warmly invites you to explore Jewish identity and the Hebrew Scriptures at your own pace. It promises that a real person from their team in Israel will personally answer your private questions within a day or two. There isn’t a cross anywhere on the screen. No church, no ministry name, no denomination. Nothing that would tell a Jew who they’re actually reaching out to.

You have to click into the FAQ before the mask really slips. The questions start off gentle enough—what does it mean to be Jewish? Was Jesus Jewish?—and then they walk you through Isaiah 53 and land where they were always going to land: that accepting Yeshua is the ultimate fulfillment of Jewish identity.

Placed in tiny type, at the bottom of a page is the name Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider. Schneider is a Messianic evangelist who hosts a show called Discovering the Jewish Jesus.

Did somebody deliberately pick this painful moment to launch this campaign? I can’t prove it. But nobody drops that kind of money on a North Jersey billboard by accident.

Today the Jewish world feels so raw and divided. Zionist, anti-Zionist, pro-Netanyahu, anti-Netanyahu, Mamdani, anti-Mamdani, families torn apart, young people wondering if they even have a place at the table anymore.

Here’s the irony that really gets me: Israel has spent years opening its arms to American evangelicals because they offer fierce political support. Fine. You take your friends where you find them. But let’s not confuse political alliance with theological validation. Many conservative evangelicals genuinely believe that without accepting Jesus, an authentic, Torah-loving Jew is still spiritually lost. Oh, and remember our American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee—he’s an ordained Southern Baptist minister. His love for Israel may be completely real, but we need to understand the difference between someone who loves the State of Israel and someone who believes Judaism is whole and sufficient on its own terms.

Meanwhile, since October 7th, I’ve sat with too many people whose real fear has curdled into a suspicion of their own neighbors. While we’re busy fighting among ourselves and looking sideways at the Muslim family down the street, an organization with massive resources bought a killer domain name and rented a billboard smack in the middle of our neighborhood. They aren’t confused about their mission.

They want Jews.

Now, let me be clear. As a Universalist rabbi who has spent my entire career opening doors, breaking down denominational walls, and welcoming interfaith families, I’m probably the last guy in America to get worked up over what someone else believes. God’s door is wider than any of us were taught, and I have no interest in policing anyone’s theology.

My issue isn’t with their belief. My issue is with their blatant, opportunistic proselytizing. And using our sacred symbols—our shofar even- as decoys.

But instead of getting angry, maybe we need to ask ourselves a harder question: Why would anyone look at American Jewish life right now and conclude that there are so many searching, hurting, spiritually hungry Jews out there that Jews.com was worth the investment? Is the community weak now?

If that’s the bet they’re making, I don’t think they are wrong. Do you?

This song is for every son and daughter who has worn the uniform, for every family that has waited for a phone call, and for every innocent life caught in the crossfire. It’s a reminder that the true cost of war is measured in human lives, not political victories.

It is horrific to process that Trump has started an illegal war in Iran, which has killed and wounded thousands. He is just walking away from it now after wreaking havoc for no rational reason. And further, in response to the horrific massacre of 1300 Israelis by Hamas, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian innocents- including, of course, children and babies. I take no pleasure in calling out this travesty. It disgusts me.

If those with the power to send others into battle had their own skin in the game, perhaps we’d choose diplomacy more often than destruction.

If this message resonates with you, please like, share, and subscribe. Peace deserves a louder voice.

#SkinInTheGame #AntiWar #Peace #OriginalMusic #SingerSongwriter #FolkMusic #Americana #ProtestSong #NoMoreWar #Veterans #Humanity #StevenBlane

Here’s a lyric and chord sheet.

D

Senators and Congressmen

G D

Have you ever served

D

Have you ever tasted blood

A

How do you find the nerve

G

To politic a war or two

Bm E

In a tried and true refrain

D

Seems to me t’would never be with

A D

YOUR skin in the game

D

All the sons and daughters

D

Who swear to keep us free

D

In every branch of service

D

They defend democracy

G

You can’t piss off their backs

Bm E

And make them think it’s rain

D

I tell you this, I only wish you had

A D

Your skin in the game

G

Humvees, drones and rockets

Bm

The accoutrements of war

Em

The battles may not be the same

D

But we’ve seen it all before

G

Killing all those innocents

Bm E

Is nothing but insane

D

I only wish you’d feel the sting of

A D

Your skin in the game

D

Listen Mr. President

G D

Won’t you understand

D

Your job ain’t to start no wars

A

In any foreign land

G

You’re supposed to heal us

Bm

Not hurt and break and maim

D G

I surely wish that you would feel the sting of

A D

Your skin in the game

G

Yes I’m prepared to wager

Bm E

Any sum you name

D

You’d change your tune so very soon if you had

A D

Your skin in the game

The Justice Department set aside $1.776 billion- they chose that number, a nod to 1776, to compensate people who believe the government wronged them by investigating them. Hundreds of January 6 defendants have already hired lawyers to file claims.

This week, the Senate votes on whether to make the man who built that fund the permanent Attorney General of the United States.

Written August 4, 2026, before the vote.

Dear Senators,

He is already running the Department. Todd Blanche has been Acting Attorney General since April. So this vote is not a question about a stranger’s promise. It is a verdict on a record you have already watched him compile.

Consider what nearly stopped this nomination and understand who is in line for that money.

On his first day back in office, the president granted clemency to roughly 1,500 people charged in the assault on the Capitol. Not the peaceful ones only. He commuted the sentences of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy, then issued a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to everyone else. This category included the people who assaulted law enforcement officers. Justice Department prosecutors say more than 170 of them were accused of using a deadly or dangerous weapon against police. Fire extinguishers. Bear spray. Others came armed with flagpoles, stun guns, batons, a metal whip, a hatchet, a baseball bat. More than six hundred had been sentenced to prison.

They walked out.

That was step one. Erase the conviction. This fund is step two. Pay them for it.

Nine defendants have already gone to court seeking money. A Justice Department official who champions their cause told a Republican ally they would receive millions, however long it took.

And when Senator Merkley asked Todd Blanche directly whether men convicted of assaulting police officers should be compensated by the taxpayers whose Capitol they stormed, the Acting Attorney General of the United States would not say no. He said his feelings did not matter.

His feelings did not matter.

Officer Michael Fanone might have appreciated a feeling. He was dragged into the crowd, shocked with a stun gun until he lost consciousness, and suffered a heart attack. The officers beaten in the tunnel might have appreciated one. They held that line while a mob hunted the Vice President of the United States through the corridors of the Capitol, the building you walk into every morning, and now the man who wants to run the Justice Department permanently will not commit to the proposition that their attackers should not be paid out of the Treasury.

First the pardon. Then the payment. And the bill goes to the officers, and to every American who did not storm anything.

Remember also who Todd Blanche is. He was the president’s personal criminal defense lawyer. He defended him against the federal indictment charging him with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. That case never reached a jury. It ended because the defendant won an election, not because he was acquitted. The lawyer who defended that conspiracy now runs the Department that brought it, and he is asking you to make it permanent.

The fund came bundled with something else: the settlement of the president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax return, extending audit protection to him, to two of his sons, and to his company. A sitting president sued his own government, and his own government paid.

Senators Cornyn and Tillis found this troubling enough to cause a deadlock in the Judiciary Committee. They relented when Blanche put the fund’s cancellation in writing over the weekend. Then they voted yes.

Understand what they accepted. The money never lived in that fund. It was drawn from the Judgment Fund, a permanent Treasury appropriation that still exists, still holds the money, and can still pay these claims tomorrow. Cancelling the announcement did not cancel the mechanism. Senator Tillis, you said you hoped to see a bending of the curve of this absurdity. Hope is not oversight. Both of you leave the Senate in January. You had nothing left to lose, and you traded the only vote that mattered for a one-page memo about a fund that was never the obstacle.

Torah does not say pursue justice. It says tzedek, tzedek tirdof — justice, justice shall you pursue. The sages ask why the word repeats. One answer has never left me: the pursuit itself must be just, not only the verdict. It is not enough to arrive at a defensible outcome. The road you take must be clean. A Justice Department that had to be negotiated into abandoning a payout fund for pardoned rioters has not walked a clean road, and confirming the man who built it will not put us back on one.

To the Republican senators who vote yes: I will not forget. I will not forget your silence when courage was required. I will not forget your willingness to place loyalty to one man above loyalty to the nation you swore to serve. History is not kind to those who mistake obedience for leadership.

And to my Democratic senators: you have too often met this moment with caution instead of conviction. Democracy is not defended by carefully worded press releases. It is defended by moral courage. Too often, that courage has been missing.

There is an honorable exception. Senator Collins has announced she will vote no, saying this Justice Department has become increasingly political and that Blanche’s own actions have eroded its independence. She named it plainly. That is what the oath looks like when someone means it.

And now the arithmetic. With Senator McConnell absent, Blanche can afford to lose two Republicans. Senator Collins is the first. Senator Murkowski, Senator Cassidy, you are the only two who have not said how you will vote. One of you voting no changes nothing. He is confirmed anyway. Both of you voting no ends it.

Senator Cassidy, you have already asked aloud whether every American should be afraid of the weaponization of the Justice Department. You said it in public. Now vote it. You lost your primary this year to a man the president endorsed against you. There is nothing left for you to protect but your name.

Senator Murkowski, you have said you need a few more conversations. You have had months of them. The record will not improve between now and Friday.

My voice is not an isolated one. Tens of millions of Americans feel the same grief, anger, and betrayal that I do. We come from different backgrounds, but we share one conviction: our democracy is worth defending, and those who weaken it must be held accountable.

You may win this vote. You may leave for recess and call it a victory. But history has a longer memory than any August, and so do we. Long after this week’s headlines are forgotten, your names will remain attached to the choice you made when democracy called for courage.

The battle will be joined in earnest on November 4th, the morning after the American people answer.

I will remember.

Rabbi Steven Blane

Hear this. I know the way COVID unfolded because I lived through it. I felt the fear. I heard the endless ambulances screaming through New York City day and night. Like millions of others, I tuned in to Governor Cuomo every evening hoping for some shred of truth and reassurance while the President was musing about injecting disinfectant into the body.

And I’m here to tell you this: Dr. Anthony Fauci is a hero.

He didn’t get everything right. No scientist confronting a brand-new virus could. Science evolves as evidence changes. But he showed up every day, relied on the best data available, and dedicated his life to saving lives. Millions of Americans are alive because doctors, nurses, researchers, and public health officials like Fauci kept working under impossible circumstances.

So to watch those ass-hole senators turn a public hearing into political theater by attacking a man whose life’s work has been protecting Americans is freakin’ shameful. We should be asking how to prepare for the next pandemic, not rewriting history to score political points.

In last week’s Torah portion, V’etchaneyn, we read that we are commanded not to bear false witness. Ha. Uncheck that box. That didn’t mean just for the Jews among us.

And that commandment doesn’t stop at the courthouse door. Bullshit lies and gaslighting might be legal, but compromising your morals is indefensible. Whenever you knowingly distort the truth to destroy another person’s reputation for political gain, you are weak. You are sad, angry humans.

Dr. Fauci deserves honest evaluation, not manufactured outrage. History will remember our traitors and villains in the Senate and House, including those at that hearing.

How disgusting you are.

So the other night, there was the White House Correspondents Dinner.

And. It. Was. Surreal. Completely and totally surreal. I watched segments while scrolling YouTube, and the scenes won’t leave me.

It wasn’t the Trump insults. They were always a given.

It’s what happened after. Reporters sat through an hour of being mocked to their faces by Trump, and then got up, received their awards from Wolf Blitzer (bro, with respect, time to retire), walked over, and shook the man’s hand. And Trump stood there smiling. Laughing.

For those who sadly continue to walk through the days blissfully unaware or simply apathetic, it was billed as a night to celebrate the First Amendment. Yeah. Right.

Among other acknowledgments and awards, the Wall Street Journal team was honored for its Epstein reporting- reporting this President has attacked over and over. Then Trump took the podium and cringingly worked the room. He told a network’s chief White House correspondent she should smile more. He gave a veteran anchor a schoolyard nickname. He mocked people’s looks. Then he pulled out a red 2028 cap and floated a third term.

And nobody walked out. They applauded. They lined up. For photos with him even.

Yes, I suppose they stayed because they have mortgages, editors, and corporate owners who would rather have a merger approved than a reporter protected. Credentials can be pulled, seats can be revoked, lawsuits can bleed a newsroom dry.

So what was on display was everything but principles. Commitment to truth. And whatever else defines a solid journalist.

There was a choice. Push back the chair. Stand up. Walk out. Take your lumps and get another job. But no. Just a surreal image of a lunatic verbally beating the crap out of willing supplicants. But proximity to power has even corrupted so many of our mainstream media.

And Democracy flows away.

Then we got the handshakes. I’m still nauseous. Get me some dramamine.

Rabbi Steven Blane is the founder of Sim Shalom Online Synagogue, the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute, and Jewish Universalism.

This week we begin Devarim, the last book of the Torah. Moses is 120 years old. He knows he isn’t getting into the Promised Land, and before the Israelites cross the Jordan, he says, “Let me tell you what really happened.” He tells the story again because wisdom comes with time, and sometimes we have to revisit the past to understand what is really happening in the present.

That’s exactly what Tisha B’Av asks us to do. It isn’t just about mourning buildings that fell 2,000 years ago. Our sages teach that the Second Temple wasn’t destroyed simply because Rome was stronger. It fell because something inside us had already begun to crumble. “Sinat Chinam,” baseless hatred and moral decay, had infected the culture.

Last night, President Trump took steps that I believe lay the predicate for subverting the upcoming November elections, striking at the heart of American democracy. His claims are transparently false and filled with blatant lies. Yet after ten years of this, America seems remarkably complacent.

As we enter Tisha B’Av, Moses is still asking the same uncomfortable question: Have you learned anything? I’m afraid too many in our Jewish community have not.

This week we sit on the floor, dim the lights, and mourn a modern tragedy: the loss of moral clarity among so many Jews who have aligned themselves with Donald Trump, his nationalist movement, and his Christian extremist allies.

History has a cruel sense of irony. A people shaped by exile, authoritarianism, and persecution still walk with Trump.

I understand why many Jews feel vulnerable. Some college campuses have become openly hostile toward us. Last night, at an open mic I attended, comedians and poets openly slammed Israel. Many of our younger Jews feel deep anger toward Israel’s policies. Yes, we are deeply divided.

Antisemitism is real, and it is growing in many places. But Trump, the once-ardent supporter of Israel, has been playing you from the start. He doesn’t care one iota about you or Israel. He cares about his own survival. Seeking protection from him and an authoritarian movement was never wise.

Too many Jews made what can only be described as a Faustian bargain. In exchange for unwavering political support for Israel, they embraced alliances with white nationalists and Christian nationalists whose support for Israel is rooted not in respect for Judaism but in an end-times theology in which Jews ultimately disappear through conversion or destruction.

To look to people who see our eventual disappearance as part of God’s plan and call them our greatest allies strikes me as a profound failure of both self-respect and moral vision.

And in the process, you abandoned Judaism’s prophetic tradition. You watched immigrants and strangers be demonized. You abandoned the Torah’s most repeated commandment: to love the stranger. You continue to watch truth become negotiable, the rule of law weakened, and democratic institutions treated as disposable.

Those institutions have protected minority communities, including ours, for generations. Weakening them has never made Jews safer.

On this Tisha B’Av, I mourn not only the walls that fell in Jerusalem but the erosion of moral clarity within our own Jewish community. I mourn for brothers and sisters who, in my view, have become enablers of a movement that thrives on division, fear, and the weakening of democracy.

Still, Judaism never leaves us sitting in the ashes. The purpose of Tisha B’Av isn’t simply to grieve the past. It’s to learn from it. It’s to decide that the next chapter doesn’t have to read like the last one. That’s Moses’ message in Devarim, and I pray it becomes ours.

Blessings and peace, my friends. And may you have an easy fast.

Rabbi Steven Blane

I’ll admit it’s hard to know exactly how to feel. It’s exhausting to watch a day meant to celebrate liberty, democracy, and our shared ideals become another bombastic political spectacle. The shouting gets louder, the divisions get deeper, and many of us are left wondering what, exactly, we’re supposed to be celebrating.

The Torah offers a different perspective.

Parashat Pinchas begins with violence. Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron, stops a devastating plague by killing an Israelite man and a Midianite woman who were openly defying God’s commandments. For that act, God grants him a brit shalom—a covenant of peace—and a perpetual priesthood. It’s one of the Torah’s most difficult stories.

Then, almost unexpectedly, the narrative changes.

We meet the five daughters of Zelophehad. Under the law of the time, only sons could inherit land. Their father had died without sons, which meant their family’s place among the people of Israel would simply disappear.

They refused to accept that.

They stood before Moses, the elders, and the entire community and argued their case. They challenged a system they believed was unjust. And God responds with one of the Torah’s most remarkable affirmations: “The daughters of Zelophehad are right.” The law is changed because they had the courage to stand up and insist that justice required it.

Their inheritance didn’t belong to those in power. It belonged to them.

That’s the reminder I need this Fourth of July.

The soul of America doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. It doesn’t belong to the loudest voice at the podium, the biggest flag on the stage, or whichever party happens to be in power. The ideals of liberty, justice, equality, and democracy belong to all of us. They are our inheritance.

So how do we celebrate the Fourth in a time like this?

We celebrate not because everything is as it should be, but because we refuse to surrender the promise of what this country can still become. Patriotism isn’t pretending everything is fine. It’s loving our country enough to tell the truth about it, to challenge it when it falls short, and to work—patiently, persistently, and together—to help it live up to its highest ideals.

This weekend, tune out the grandstanding. Gather with people you love. Give thanks for the freedoms we still enjoy. And be like the daughters of Zelophehad: see what is broken, refuse to give in to cynicism, and have the courage to make things better.

No president can take that inheritance away from us unless we hand it over.

Shabbat Shalom, Happy Fourth of July, and hang in there

.

I found myself wondering when Israel became the lens through which we measure the entire public life of an American political candidate.

I understand why that question has become so important. October 7 changed us. The rise in antisemitism has left many Jews feeling vulnerable and alone. Those fears are real.

But I also think we’re living through one of the most consequential periods in modern American history. Democracy is more fragile than I ever imagined I would see. Rent is unpayable. Health care is out of reach for millions. Immigrants are demonized. Hell, I’m sitting in a cafe where I just paid $8 for a cappuccino. Public trust is gone, and through the chaos they keep making inroads toward something I no longer have a name for. Authoritarianism? Fascism? Oligarchy? I’m tired of the labels—they are all anathema to the country I want to live in.

Brad Lander has spent much of his career working on exactly those concerns. You may disagree with his positions on Israel, but should those disagreements erase a lifetime devoted to affordable housing, ethical government, public transportation, workers’ rights, climate action, and making New York more livable for ordinary people?

In the age of Trump, there are simply no candidates with perfect histories and positions. Every election asks us to make difficult choices between imperfect people. Reducing those choices to a single issue, we overlook the larger question of what kind of America we have become.

As an American rabbi, my congregation lives here. My students live here. The families who come to me in moments of joy and heartbreak live here. Their worries are about paying rent, finding health care, protecting their freedoms, and wondering what kind of country their children will inherit. Those concerns are not separate from Judaism. They are an expression of it.

I don’t see prioritizing America as a reason to disparage and denigrate Jews who align with that position. A stronger, freer, more democratic America has always been one of Israel’s greatest allies. If America weakens, Israel is not stronger because of it.

Our tradition has long recognized that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of the society in which we live.

That teaching has never felt more relevant to me than it does today.

Rabbi Steven Blane

Last week”s Torah portion, Korach, tells the story of a man who challenges Moses and Aaron. In the Cecil B. Demille classic film, Edward G. Robinson (a Jew by the way) played Dathan (an amalgam of Korach and fictional characters).

Now Korach isn’t an outsider. He’s a Levite, a respected leader, and he gathers two hundred and fifty prominent people to his cause. His argument sounds reasonable enough: “All the community is holy.” Why should Moses and Aaron hold special authority?

It’s a powerful argument, and one that has echoed through history. But the Torah suggests that Korach’s concern was never really about equality or holiness. It was about power. Like so many before and after him, Korach wrapped personal ambition in the language of principle. He presented himself as the champion of the people while pursuing his own elevation.

For years many of us said something similar about Donald Trump. We argued that his guiding principle was not loyalty to Israel, loyalty to America, loyalty to democracy, or loyalty to the Jewish people. It was loyalty to himself. Many of us were told we were wrong. We still are. We were called self-hating Jews, liberal antisemites, and victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome. We still are. We were dismissed, ridiculed, and accused of failing to appreciate what Trump was doing and who our true friends were. And, we still are.

And yet…

Israel has found itself sidelined during negotiations affecting its own future. The president publicly criticized Israel’s prime minister, restrained Israeli actions when they conflicted with his objectives, and made it clear that his own deal mattered more than Israel’s concerns. The man many Jews believed would always put Israel first put himself first instead.

What troubles me even more is that this moment arrives at a time when support for Israel among Americans is in decline. Six in ten Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, and for the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 2001, Americans’ sympathies no longer lie more with Israel than with the Palestinians.

Younger Americans see Israel differently than their parents and grandparents did. Many independents do as well. Even Republican support has slipped to its lowest level in over two decades. The relationship is changing, whether we acknowledge it or not.

And Israel bears some responsibility for that reality. A nation fighting for its security deserves understanding and support. But no friendship, even a strong one, survives indefinitely if Israel assumes the USA will absorb every political cost, defend every decision, and never ask difficult questions. I say that as someone who loves Israel and worries about its future.

Korach’s tragedy was not that he challenged Moses. It was that he could no longer imagine that he might be wrong. I imagine the ground beneath him did not open all at once. Perhaps there something he could still have stepped back from, if he had been honest enough to look down. He never looked. And by the time the earth opened, it was no longer a warning. It was a grave.

Our tradition has a word for choosing a different path when the facts are staring us in the face: teshuvah.
So I find myself wondering whether this moment calls for a little teshuvah.

Simply an honest assessment of what we have witnessed. No politician is a messiah. No political movement deserves unquestioning loyalty. And any leader who consistently places personal interest above every other consideration will eventually do so again, no matter how many promises are made.

What stays with me from the Korach story is a small detail that appears almost as an afterthought. After the rebellion, after the earth opens and the crisis ends, the Torah tells us: “But the sons of Korach did not die.”

The rabbis noticed that verse because it seems so unexpected. The text itself says only that — that they did not die. But the tradition couldn’t leave it alone, and the rabbis imagined that Korach’s children must have seen where their father’s path was leading and pulled back from it before the ground gave way. They did not follow him all the way down. And generations later, their descendants became singers in the Temple. Several Psalms are attributed to the sons of Korach.

That detail matters because of what the rabbis heard in it: that no one is trapped by yesterday’s choices. In their telling, the children of Korach were not defined forever by their father’s rebellion. They saw what was happening, chose differently, and became known for something entirely different.

The future is not determined by who we followed yesterday. It is determined by whether we are willing to see clearly today. The sons of Korach did. The question is whether we can.

Blessings and peace to you my friends.

Rabbi Steven Blane

From here in beautiful Cape Cod, where Carole and I have been on vacation, I’ve been watching my own community online. Before I return to New York City, I want to share a few thoughts. The beauty of this place and its pre-summer quiet have given me a little distance, and with that distance has come some clarity about what is unfolding before us each day.

I continue to see Jews—colleagues, friends, adversaries, and people held in high regard throughout the Jewish community—who have convinced themselves that Donald Trump and today’s Republican movement are good for the Jews. I have spent my life reading Jewish history. I do not know what history they are reading.

Here is what I know. Authoritarians do not have Jewish friends. They have Jewish uses. That is the whole relationship. We are not at the table. We are on the menu.

I watch what has already been taken or threatened. Women’s bodily autonomy has been rolled back across much of the country. Voting rights are under constant assault through gerrymandering, purges, and suppression efforts. The press is sued, threatened, ridiculed, and undermined. Institutions that once served as guardrails are weakened because they stand in the way of power.

And still I hear it in conversations and read it online: “Yes, but Trump is good for the Jews.”

Ha.

History teaches us that when leaders become consumed with power, loyalty becomes transactional. The hand that offers protection today can withdraw it tomorrow. Covenants mean little to those whose only enduring commitment is to themselves.

People often ask me, “Rabbi, how can you support anti-Israel politicians and candidates?”

Let me answer plainly.

With this country in the condition it is in, where fundamental rights and democratic norms are increasingly under attack, I will take a repentant former Nazi tattoo wearer who now embraces my values over a politician who enables cruelty and division every day of the week. I stand with Platner over Collins. One hundred percent.

I belong to the religion of t’shuvah. Remember that?

A person who confronts a terrible past, acknowledges wrongdoing, and changes course is not a scandal to me. That is one of Judaism’s highest ideals. We believe people can turn. We believe people can grow. We believe redemption is possible.

What troubles me far more are public officials who embrace policies that undermine decency and compassion while showing no remorse, no reflection, and no willingness to change. Give me the sinner who turned around. You can keep the politicians, enablers, and billionaires whose true faith is in the Golden Calf of power.

And Mamdani over Cuomo? Every time.

I watch Mamdani doing the work. I see someone trying to improve the lives of ordinary New Yorkers—the bus driver, the bodega owner, the senior struggling on a fixed income, the immigrant, the Jew, the Muslim, and the kid still trying to find a place in this city. I may not agree with him on every issue, but I see effort directed toward the common good.

What saddens me is watching members of my own community answer that work with racial and ethnic slurs they have convinced themselves are justified. They are not.

This week, I have also been sitting with the Torah portion, Sh’lach L’cha.

Moses sends twelve spies into the Promised Land. Ten return with a story of giants and impossibility. “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes,” they say.

For years, I read this as a story about fear. I do not read it that way anymore.

Those spies carried the fruit back on their own shoulders. They saw the abundance. They knew the land was good. Yet ten of them chose to tell a different story. They performed ignorantly because they lacked the courage to stand behind what they already knew.

Only Caleb and Joshua spoke plainly. The land is good. Do not be afraid.

I see echoes of that story today. I see people who know exactly what is happening around them, who have read the same history and understand the same dangers, yet choose comforting narratives because those narratives align with their political priorities.

Some have convinced themselves that nearly anything can be justified if it is done in the name of protecting Israel.

But here is the reality.

A strong Israel requires a free America.

The alliance between the two nations depends not merely on military strength but on shared democratic values. If America abandons those values, Israel becomes weaker, not stronger. Leaders who disregard norms, institutions, and alliances cannot be relied upon indefinitely. History teaches that power without principle eventually turns on everyone.

Authoritarians keep no covenants. Not with us. Not with Israel. Not with anyone.

The Torah’s warning is not simply about ignorance. It is about choosing ignorance when the truth is already visible. That choice cost a generation forty years in the wilderness.

History teaches another lesson as well. Jewish communities rarely flourish under authoritarian governments. Neither, for that matter, do economies. Freedom turns out to be good for more than conscience.

So I stand with Caleb and Joshua. The land is good. We are not grasshoppers.

I will live my values. Torah values. Values rooted in kindness, justice, repentance, compassion, and human dignity. I reject leaders who traffic in cruelty, corruption, fear, and division, regardless of what promises they make or what causes they claim to serve.

I will be fiercely kind and kindly fierce. And I will not spend my life weeping over giants.

And, Knicks in 5.

Ken yehi ratzon. May it be so.

Let me be plain about who I am. My primary allegiance is to my identity as an American citizen and the democratic values of this country. When I say I am an American first, it is not to be confused with a partisan political slogan—it is a statement of fact about where I live, where my vote counts, and where a stable democracy forms the foundation for everything else. My energy is here...

I love Israel and it’s my history, and my faith. But a homeland is not a government. I can love the place without giving a blank check to whoever happens to be running it. It’s like how I love America without defending this authoritarian regime and everything done in her name. Our prophets were always arguing with their kings. If you criticize a government, that doesn’t mean you hate the people.

I’ve been to Israel twice. I don’t want to live there. The Israelis I know here in New York are wonderful people, but my life is here.

So here’s the point: I’m not going to make antisemitism my main concern. I take it seriously, of course. But honestly, I’m more worried about America herself, and how fast she has become something I don’t even recognize. A steady, safe America is what keeps Jews safe in the first place.

I choose to rise above fear—and that includes the fear and hatred directed at Muslims. I respect clergy and members of the Jewish community who can actually tell the difference between a guy who is a real threat and a guy who disagrees with them.

That’s why I think Mayor Mamdani was right not to march in the Israel Day Parade.

For someone like Mamdani, who is Muslim and open about being anti-Zionist and supporting BDS, that parade isn’t just a cultural celebration. In this pressure-cooker environment, it became an explicitly political event.

The pressure on the Mayor to march also ignored the sad fact that it turned into a place for political actors who go way beyond the old-school idea of Zionism—I’m talking about hardline figures pushing for settlement expansion and policies that even a lot of Jews find exclusionary. When they turn an event like that into an ideological litmus test, they’re just making it a site for political theater. They’re shutting out anyone who has a real critique of where this hardline government actually is. And a substantial portion of Jews get that.

And it seems to me, among the loudest voices demanding this kind of loyalty are running the same playbook that’s fueling the authoritarian regime in this country. They want to say that if you disagree, it’s treason. I reject that when it’s aimed at Jews, and I’m going to reject it when Jews aim it at a Muslim mayor.

When America feels steady again, I’ll turn my eyes back to Israel and anti-semitism. But until then, my focus is on the ground right under my feet. I’m not going anywhere. That’s where this rabbi’s job starts.

Rabbi Steven Blane

Now that the lies, the cruelty, the in-your-face grift — all of it has been exposed, millions of people are finally beginning to understand that much of what we were told to trust was built on falsehoods.

“Love your neighbor.” “Welcome the stranger.” These precepts are trounced daily inside our own religious institutions. Throughout history, bad actors have never been confused about how to manipulate faith. Power was always the goal. It still is.

And so here we stand at a strange and dangerous moment in American life. The stakes feel moral now, not merely political. Something deeper than politics is unraveling, and more and more people can feel it even if they cannot yet fully explain it.

I recently had a wonderful conversation about this very topic with a bass player at a Cape Cod open mic. He was an older guy — about my age, maybe a little younger — with a close-trimmed gray beard and a black T-shirt. He played an upright stick bass, an instrument that suggested practicality and musicianship over flash or nostalgia. He was solid. The kind of musician who listens while everyone else is playing.

The restaurant and bar were packed, loud in a friendly way. It felt like “Cheers,” a place where everybody knows your name and where half the room probably once owned a cassette copy of The Pretender. The bartender was scurrying around pouring ales while people sang along to whatever the next open-mic performer threw at them. Folks were eating simple, delicious comfort food while old musicians hauled guitars through crowded tables and tried to remember lyrics they first learned forty years ago.

Honestly, it was perfect.

We started talking about instruments first, then gigs, then getting older, then Cape Cod and live music. Eventually, like almost every conversation between middle-aged Americans these days, we drifted toward the state of the country.

“This place is a refuge,” he said. “Out there, everybody’s angry.”

“Everybody is angry,” I replied.

He shook his head. “Not just angry. Disconnected.”

That word hung in the air for a moment because it felt exactly right.

“Truth,” I told him. “I think people almost need to disconnect now because it’s too painful to fully absorb what we’ve become. Endless wars. Billionaires are buying influence while working people struggle to stay afloat. Everybody is screaming at each other while nobody actually listens anymore.”

He nodded slowly and sipped his beer.

“The media keeps everybody furious and disguises the truth,” he said.

A few minutes later, he asked what I did for a living. When I told him I was a rabbi, he leaned back a little and asked me how I felt about everything happening right now.

I laughed softly because, honestly, where do you even begin?

“Well,” I said, “here’s how I broadly see it. Anti-semitism has always existed and probably always will exist in some form. For two generations after World War II, we worked very hard to push it toward the margins of American life. But over the past decade, the temperature has risen again. Politics, extremism, social media, tribalism, conspiracy culture, economic anxiety — it all feeds itself.”

I paused for a moment before continuing.

“After October 7th, most Jews understandably rallied around Israel in horror and grief over the massacre. But as the war expanded and the civilian death toll in Gaza rose dramatically, many younger Americans — including many younger Jews — became morally shaken by the scale of the destruction and by America’s support for it. At the same time, activists organized aggressively online and on campuses, framing the entire conflict through the language of oppression and anti-colonial struggle that younger generations already understood. The emotional ground shifted very quickly.”

Then I shrugged.

“Of course it’s more complicated than that. Everything is. And “truth” is hard to identify. Everything moves in and out of shadows. But broadly speaking, that’s part of how we got here.”

By then, the room had grown louder around us. Somebody near the bar had started singing “Me and Bobby McGee,” just a little off-key, while another musician quietly tuned a battered acoustic guitar near the stage.

The bass player smiled and lifted his glass.

“Truth is in the songs,” he said. “And the music.”

Bass players are wise.

In addition to my teaching, writing, and music, I walk a lot, and lately I’ve found myself reflecting on the fact that enormous change is here whether we are ready for it or not. The current level of corruption, propaganda, and concentration of wealth simply cannot continue forever without something completely breaking.

Money now controls almost everything. It buys advertising, influence, algorithms, narratives, legal protection, political loyalty, and endless distraction. It shapes public opinion while pretending merely to inform it. Both political parties have oligarchs attached to them, but the Republican Party has openly embraced cruelty, authoritarianism, and the erosion of democratic norms as features rather than failures.

Still, despite all of that, I believe something important remains true: what decent people actually want is far better than what the culture of greed and outrage is selling them.

Most people want stability. Honesty. Decent wages, decent leaders, and some sense that their children might inherit a world less cynical than this one. They want to exhale again.

But kindness does not generate billions in advertising revenue. Outrage does.

Tikkun Olam must therefore become more than a slogan printed on synagogue brochures and nonprofit fundraising emails. Repair requires courage. It requires moral clarity. It requires organizing. And yes, it requires the acquisition of enough power to challenge systems that are failing ordinary human beings every single day.

Because some systems deserve to fail. The systems are built on manipulation. The systems are built on greed. The systems that reward cruelty while punishing decency. The systems that profit from keeping people exhausted, distracted, divided, and spiritually numb.

The real question now is whether enough of us are ready to build something better before the old systems take the rest of us down with them.

May we find the courage to move forward in strength.

Shalom, friends. Good Yom Tov.

This week, we celebrate Shavuot, the holiday that remembers the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Our tradition tells us that long ago the Israelites stood at the foot of a smoking mountain while thunder rolled and lightning flashed. In the middle of all that fear and awe, they received something solid and lasting: Torah. They received a vision of justice, responsibility, and freedom. They received a moral foundation meant to help build a decent society.

That was the time of the giving of the Torah. But today I wonder if we are now living in the time of the “giving of the corruption.” And honestly, I find myself asking a pretty simple question lately: Does anybody really care anymore?

Have we all become so distracted by wars and violence and outrage, tribal politics, social media, and nonstop noise that nobody is looking at what is actually happening to the country underneath it all?

Because while everybody is busy arguing, something deeper feels broken. We are constantly being distracted by the next crisis, the next scandal, the next war, the next political fight. We stare at explosions overseas. We obsess over political insanity here at home. We pour all our emotional energy into arguments online and into local political battles that consume us for a week and then disappear. Meanwhile, our civic culture is in disarray, our trust has collapsed, and basic decency feels harder and harder to find.

I go to open mics fairly often. Sometimes music open mics. Sometimes, poetry open mics. At the music nights, most people just want to sing a few songs, feel alive for a little while, maybe forget the madness outside the room. But at poetry mics, you meet the people who cannot tune it out. You meet the shoeless poet sitting in the corner, reading observations about society that sound crazy at first, until you realize they’re actually the truth.

The other night, a poet was talking to me about the Lower East Side and what is happening there right now. They said the small business owners are split into two groups. Half are desperately trying to survive, praying they can somehow make rent one more month and keep their dreams alive because they are intrinsically optimistic. The other half are basically shysters, moving from one failed business to another, leaving behind debt, damage, unpaid bills, and broken promises.

And honestly, I thought to myself, that sounds a lot like America right now. Some people are trying hard to hold together a system that has fallen apart, while other people are exploiting the collapse for money, power, attention, or survival. And most of us sit around asking each other, “Is anybody else seeing this?”

And that’s before we even get into Israel, Gaza, antisemitism, and the complete breakdown of public conversation. We have lost the ability to speak to each other like human beings.

When the Torah was given, it was not given in a palace or a television studio. It was given in a wilderness, when we were emotionally naked, stripped of our pride, and in need of a way forward.

Today, we are being ruled by fear, outrage, distraction, and the worship of power. And we are dangerously close to losing one of the greatest gifts God can give a people, the belief that freedom, truth, and basic human decency still matter.

It’s Shavuot, the season of receiving the Torah. But Torah means very little to nothing if we are asleep to what is happening around us. Maybe that is why, even now, we must begin listening for the sound of the Rosh Hashanah Shofar, calling on us to wake up before it is too late.

Good Yom Tov, and Shabbat Shalom.

how dare you do that shit

nothing good will come of it

I hope the cops

will come down hard on you

Don’t fly no Nazi flags

above my NYU graduation

Comes to Nazis you should take a pass

And I would very much prefer

You shove your swatstika

Deep inside the crevice of your ass

If you want to dialogue

I would appreciate

Just for a freaking moment

You let go of your hate

Don’t fly no Nazi Flag

above my NYU graduation

the students here didn’t cause you pain

if you want to have a say

find a civil, rational way

that would be ok

hey hey hey hey hey

but don’t fly no Nazi Flag

above my NYU graduation

We are destroying hundreds of thousands of fruit trees. Not because of drought, blight, or famine, but because reckless economic policies made the numbers stop working.

We were told tariffs would “bring jobs back” and strengthen American manufacturing. Instead, they are crushing American companies that actually make and sell products people use. Companies bleed. Prices rise. Farmers lose livelihoods. Workers pay the price.

Del Monte. An American icon. Canned peaches, green beans, fruit cocktail, the stuff that sat in American pantries for generations. Now they’re in bankruptcy territory in part because tariffs made aluminum for cans too expensive.

With the shuttering of the Modesto Del Monte plant, which processed between 30% and 35% of California’s cling peaches, farmers are left with a glut of fruit and no one to sell it to. Their choice now? Uproot productive orchards and pivot to different crops just to survive.

And the trees. What about the trees? California farmers are going to destroy about 3,000 acres — roughly 420,000 clingstone peach trees — after the closure of their canneries earlier this year.

The Torah is not indifferent to trees. In Deuteronomy, in the Torah portion Shoftim, even in wartime, the Israelites are commanded not to destroy fruit trees unnecessarily. From this comes the Jewish principle of “Bal Tashchit,” do not destroy needlessly.

Del Monte didn’t get taken down by China. It got squeezed by the economic incompetence of Trump and his policies, cheered on by sycophants who have no regard for anyone except themselves.

An American icon has been brought down by an American embarrassment to humanity.

I have read with great disappointment the recent rhetoric painting Muslims collectively as a threat because supporters of Palestinians held a rally outside a NYC synagogue hosting an Israeli real estate seminar reportedly promoting property in Israel and in occupied West Bank settlements.

Let me be clear: Of course, I oppose antisemitism. I oppose intimidating Jews at prayer. I oppose language that threatens Jewish safety. A synagogue entrance is not the place for intimidation, vandalism, or slogans that make Jews feel unsafe.

But none of that justifies the leap I keep hearing from parts of the right: that “the Muslims” are taking over our universities, our cities, or our country. That is racism.

Muslims are not collectively responsible for every protest, slogan, or act of extremism any more than Jews are collectively responsible for every action of the Israeli government, every settler land deal, or every inflammatory statement made in our name.

I am also disturbed by the way media voices continue to use Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim identity as a political weapon, trying to associate Muslim civic life with extremism, danger, or disloyalty.

Yes, condemn antisemitism. Yes, condemn chants that celebrate violence. But do not answer one hatred with another. Do not use legitimate Jewish fear as permission to demonize Muslims.

This week’s Torah portion, Behar-Bechukotai, offers a needed corrective. In Leviticus 25, we are told that the land ultimately belongs to God, and that we are all “strangers and residents” before the Holy One. It is a rebuke to the temptation of power without humility and to the belief that strength gives us permission to deny another people’s dignity.

The Torah does not ask us to deny Jewish fear. It asks us not to let fear corrupt our ethics. It asks us to protect the vulnerable, restrain greed, and remember that holiness is measured by justice.

So no, I will not defend protesters who intimidate Jews.

And no, I will not join those who turn that fear into hatred of Muslims. And I implore my Jewish friends to stop it. That is not Jewish courage. Our Torah teaches better.

It’s a beautiful day. I’m walking through Washington Square Park, here in Greenwich Village, and this place is a comfort to me. I lived here for nine years right out of college.

I met Carol when I was living here. I lived on 8th Street. They were great years — nights in my small studio working on an off-off-off-Broadway show and on music; days scratching out a living at a photocopy store where I met Carol, then a talent agency that represented Stéphane Grappelli and Phil Woods and Stan Getz, then a children’s commercial agency where Alyssa Milano’s headshot crossed my desk when she was a little girl.

Eventually I started Blane & DeRosa, my audio production company, and that carried me for fifteen years and more — through marrying Carol, three daughters, buying a house. All of it so beautiful.

So when I walk through this park, I reminisce. I feel comfort. I feel joy. And lately, I feel it tinged with melancholy, because I look around at this country and I don’t recognize it.

I read that Peter Thiel — co-founder of PayPal and Palantir — just dropped three million dollars into a California lobbying group to defeat the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act. A one-time five percent tax on people with more than a billion dollars. One time. Five percent. And these men are crying like babies. Larry Page, co-founder of Google, bought a hundred-million-dollar estate in Florida to escape it. Larry Ellison, the chairman of Oracle, sold his San Francisco mansion. Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund billionaire, calls the tax “catastrophic.” Catastrophic — that word, used by men who could lose ninety-nine point nine percent of their wealth and still never work another day in their lives, their children’s lives, their grandchildren’s lives.

And then this past weekend — gunshots at the Washington Hilton. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner. A man with a manifesto and a weapon, somehow inside the building, fired near the security checkpoint before he was tackled. And before the ballroom had even been swept, Trump was already turning it into a sales pitch for his ballroom — the venue wasn’t secure, we need the White House Ballroom — and the Republicans were lining up behind him like they always do.

The man is filled with malice, surrounded by gunfire, and emerges every time intact while standing for nothing and sitting through everything.

So I walk through this park, and I ask the only question I know how to ask: what does Torah say?

The story that came to me is Shelach Lecha — the spies. As it happens, we’ll be reading it in synagogues all over the world in just a few weeks, on Shabbat, June 13. The timing feels almost too neat.

Moses sends twelve scouts into the Promised Land. They walk the same hills. At a place called the Wadi Eshkol — the Valley of the Cluster — they cut a single bunch of grapes so enormous it takes two men to carry it back on a pole between them.

Ten of them come home and say: We can’t go there. There are giants there — the Nephilim — and we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in theirs. Two of them — Joshua and Caleb — saw the same land and said: We can do this. The land is very, very good. Let’s go.

Same land. Same grapes. Same giants. Two completely different reports.

Who were these giants? The Nephilim appear only twice in the entire Torah. By the time the Israelites actually enter the land forty years later, the giants are essentially gone. There’s no epic battle. The conquest is a war against ordinary people in ordinary cities.

So where did the giants come from? From the spies’ mouths. The Torah is precise: we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes. The giants grew in the telling.

The spies carried physical evidence of abundance on their shoulders — a cluster of grapes so heavy it took two men — and still came home talking about giants. They couldn’t see the blessing because they couldn’t see themselves.

The punishment fit the crime: forty years in the wilderness, until that whole generation died out and a new generation, raised on freedom, would cross the Jordan.

But the parashah does not stop there. And this is the part most people forget.

Right after the decree, a faction of Israelites suddenly reverses themselves. They call themselves the ma’apilim — the ones who push up, the presumptuous ones. They say: We’ll conquer the land ourselves. Right now.

Moses warns them: God is not with you. The Ark will not go with you. They go anyway. And they are crushed at a place called Hormah — slaughtered by the very enemies the spies had feared (Numbers 14:39–45).

Two failures, back to back, in the same parashah.

The Torah is doing this on purpose.

The spies failed because they could not see themselves as big enough. The ma’apilim failed because they could not see themselves as anything BUT big enough.

One group refused to belong out of fear. The other refused to belong out of pride. Both refused to belong. Both refused the humility of being one piece in something larger than themselves. Both died in the wilderness.

Now look at America in April of 2026 and tell me you don’t see both diseases at once.

The grasshopper vision has been spread by demagogues to tens of millions of frightened Americans. Immigrants are giants. Trans kids are giants. Universities are giants. Brown people are giants. Women asking for equality are giants. We are being replaced. We can’t. That is the ten spies. Grasshopper-consciousness with a red hat.

And the ma’apilim — the rush-ahead, refuse-to-belong faction — that is Thiel and Page and Ellison and Ackman. And it is Trump himself. They look at a democratic process asking them to contribute five percent, toward the healthcare and education of the very society whose roads and schools and laws and labor made their fortunes possible — and they say: No. We are above this. We are the giants. We’ll move our money to Florida. We’ll crush the measure. I refuse to belong. I act alone. I am sufficient unto myself.

The Torah tells us where that ends. It ends at Hormah. Hubris that refuses to belong gets crushed — sometimes by enemies, sometimes by history, sometimes by the slow erosion of meaning that turns a man with a trillion dollars into a man crying on cable news about a tax he could pay out of his couch cushions.

So our country has both diseases at once. The grasshoppers are voting for the giants, and the giants are stepping on the grasshoppers.

Forty years later, when the wilderness had done its slow work, they crossed the Jordan and saw the giants weren’t giants anymore. They were just people. The land was just land. The fear had been the only real obstacle the whole time.

So I walk through Washington Square Park on this beautiful day, and I see the chess players, and the dogwoods, and the guy playing drums and the girl with the guitar by the arch, and the old couple holding hands on a bench, and I think: this is the land. This is the cluster of grapes. The country is good. The people are good. The giants are mostly in our heads, and the ones that aren’t can be outlasted, outvoted, outlived, outloved.

We are not grasshoppers. And the men who think they are giants aren’t, either. They are just frightened people with too much money and too little soul.

The billionaires are crying. Let them cry. The president is sitting. Let him sit. The wilderness is long, but it ends.

And in the meantime, there is this park. There is Carol and my family at home. There are the ukuleles and guitars on the wall. There is the next song, the next gig, the next sermon, the next walk.

There is a tradition four thousand years old that has seen every Pharaoh and outlived every Pharaoh, and it whispers to me on an April afternoon in Greenwich Village: Caleb was right.

Go up. The land is very, very good.

Our prayers were directed toward Israel. Our texts taught us the significance of God and to the Jewish people. Our rabbis spoke about getting to the Promised Land. We sang songs about Israel. Synagogues raised money to plant trees there. Families spent hundreds of dollars on phone calls to stay connected. Driving to Brooklyn for a falafel felt almost sacred. Kosher pizza felt almost holy.

We grew up with the conviction that Israel was the goal of a lifetime. That her blood flowed through our veins. That one day we would make aliyah and live there. Israelis were cool. We were proud of them. In those days, many lived on kibbutzim. Israel still felt young, agrarian, scrappy—something we were building together.

And we lived our Jewish lives here in America with that identity. We were the underdogs. Survivors. Children of the Holocaust who made it. And we did make it. We rose in business, in the arts, in public life. We became part of the fabric of America.

And when you make it, people notice. Sometimes they resent it. I think it’s an innate thing among some people- they’re more prone to jealousy and hate for reasons I’ll never understand. Antisemitism never disappeared—it just waited. It was always there, dormant, ready for the right moment to re-emerge.

And here we are. Here I am. A rabbi, father, and grandfather. Proud of my work, family, and accomplishments.

But now there’s a new wrinkle. America has changed. My children and grandchildren face very uncertain futures in this land we once thought was our savior. Every day, we are challenged and drained by a march towards corruption and authoritarianism.

And, Israel is no longer the hope we sing about in Hatikva. Israel is different and strong. Very strong. Militarily, technologically—we Americans helped make sure of that. The idea was always that strength would guarantee survival, and we needed a strong ally in the Middle East. But strength was never supposed to replace values.

I’m fully aware of the rockets that have fallen on Sderot and throughout Israel for years. I know the history of terror attacks, of buses and cafes blown apart. And I know what the October 7 attacks did. It broke something open. I don’t know what it feels like to be an Israeli and live through constant bomb shelter runs. I only know what I feel like as a Jew who lives in America.

And in America, the perception is that Israel has killed many, many innocents in Gaza by dropping American bombs. And now, they are doing the same in Lebanon.

In the West Bank, Israelis and Palestinians are not living under the same legal reality. One is governed by civilian law, the other by military law. That’s everyday life with different standards of justice, different rights, different outcomes. And now there are growing voices pushing to expand the use of the death penalty in terrorism cases—largely directed at Palestinians. Whether or not that fully becomes law, the fact that it’s being seriously considered should stop us cold.

And somehow, in all of this, American policy has been pulled deeper and deeper into the conflict. Leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump have aligned in ways that blurred the line between American interests and Israeli actions. And there are consequences.

American lives have been lost in Iran in a war we should not be participating in. American billions are being poured into a conflict that feels endless. And here at home, something even more dangerous has happened—being Jewish has become conflated with the actions of the Israeli government. Because when Israel acts, Jews everywhere are held responsible. That’s not fair, it’s not logical, but it’s real. And in moments like this, it opens the door to even more antisemitism.

And now, in these coming days, we are asked to honor Israeli holidays—Yom Yerushalayim, and Yom HaZikaron.

I’ll be honest. It’s not easy to honor Israel right now.

It’s not easy to mark its founding or mourn its fallen while watching it bomb Lebanon and Iran, after it has bombed and destroyed Gaza, while hearing leaders and even friends talk about “finishing the job.”

I was raised to love Israel. To see it as a miracle, a refuge, a promise.

And now I’m left holding two truths at once—what Israel was meant to be, and what it is doing in this moment.

For me, as a human and as a Rabbi, that tension is real. And I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

This is not the Israel I was raised to love. We didn’t spend generations praying toward Jerusalem so that one day we could become the ones with the bigger army and the better weapons. We prayed toward Jerusalem because it meant something—justice, refuge, a different way of holding power.

And I believe the real danger isn’t just what the world thinks of us.

It’s what we might have become.

Please read and share.

Shalom and peace,

Rabbi Steven Blane

UPDATE: Since I published this on FB yesterday, Melania held a bizarre Press Conference at the WH last night, during which she took no questions. Did I say Press Conference? She just wanted to elaborate about how she has nothing to do with Epstein.

Yeah, can we please make this lunatic Trump family recede into the shadows of crazy and leave us alone?

Back to my article on “Passover Musings…”

The sun is shining bright on Delancey Street today. Despite the weather forecast that it would be chilly, it’s actually glorious out. I just finished a slice at **Scarrs Pizza** on Orchard- definitely in my top three for Manhattan—and now I’m wandering over to my favorite spot on Clinton Street for a coffee.

It’s a strange contrast. On one hand, it’s a beautiful day and I’m looking forward to my gig tonight at Silvana. On the other, my head is full of the state of the world and the “peace” we’re being sold.

We’re living through this strange “cease-fire.” Ha. It’s a blur of tragedy. Trump has led us into a nightmare that he’s too hapless and boxed in to extract us from. He’s declaring victory while bombs are still dropping, and we’re still sending weapons into a conflict that won’t be settled by more fighting.

The news is reporting that most of America doesn’t support this war, yet the distraction from Epstein files continues. Just an angry, frustrated shout out to Republicans who continue to enable this loser of a President.

The stock market jumps 1,300 points after Trump declares his farcical cease fire which gains nothing and in fact loses ground bigly for America. And the “power players” and oligarchs sit by twiddling their thumbs.

People continue to berate me for advocating my position that this is not our war, but I believe that killing and bloodshed will never be the answer.

You want to know what the coming of the Messiah would actually look like? It wouldn’t be some theological abstraction. It would be a real conversation. The oligarchs and the world leaders finally sitting at a single table. A rational, hopeful realization that we are all breaking the world.

A solution that reinforces individual cultures while allowing everyone to function under a banner of peace.

Passover was beautiful for me, and now we head toward Shavuot, the celebration of receiving the Torah. In my tradition, we are supposed to be optimistic and hopeful during this time. I’m trying my best to respect that tradition, even when it’s hard to be optimistic.

Let’s hope for some sanity in the coming days, right? Well, one can dream.

God Bless you all.

#NYC #LowerEastSide #Musings #Passover #Shavuot #Peace #Silvana

So, here we are again. Another Seder. Another year gone. And this past one has been a year of utter, grinding chaos.

On Seder night, we perform the standard Passover rituals: we lean to the left, to suggest a physical symbol of freedom and dignity, we dip parsley into salt water to represent tears and the suffering of slavery in Egypt, and we recount the ancient story of escaping the thumb of a tyrant who didn’t know when to quit. We celebrate a miracle.

The Haggadah (the booklet we read from during the Seder) is a beautiful piece of liturgy—ritual, allegory, a 3,000-year-old lead sheet for a spiritual jam session. But this year, to me the music feels off-key and I think we need to improvise. We need to talk about the “Pharaoh Flip.”

In my world of Jewish Universalism, I lean into a concept we call ‘Fierce Kindness.’ This foundation teaches that God has no favorite child and that every path to the Divine is equally sacred. From that place of radical equality, I have to speak out against ‘tit-for-tat’ warfare—against blood spilled for honor, retribution, or without clear necessity. Which leads to a haunting question: why are the nations of my birth and heritage acting like Pharaoh? One is mired in an unnecessary, illegal war; the other is pushing far beyond its biblical and ethical foundations.

The Pharaoh Flip is a glitch in the human soul—the moment a people who were once enslaved pick up the whip.

I don’t say this to provoke; I say it with a heavy heart. No matter how “righteous” some believe our cause to be, we have lost the narrative. While leaders bang the drums of war against Iran, people are looking at the loss of life, cost, and destruction. And they surely don’t want to be dragged into conflicts that feel like retribution more than defense.

I have to ask: what if we’ve flipped the Exodus? What if we, the liberated, survive, thrive—and then go on a retribution tour? Whate if we tell ourselves it’s only fair. An eye for an eye after all.

Today, America and Israel hold real power: fighter jets, drones, munitions, and what seems to be an unshakable alliance. But when we use that power to destroy rather than liberate—when we choose revenge over defense and ego over negotiation—we aren’t honoring the Exodus. We’re mimicking the oppressor. The real danger in 2026 isn’t that we’ll be enslaved again; it’s that we’ve become the ones demanding bricks without straw.

Look at the map. Under executive orders, the U.S. has joined the bombing of Iran without a single floor debate, pouring lives into a void. Meanwhile, Israel, the land of my heritage, responded to the horror of October 7th with a war that has left Gaza in ruins and Lebanon shattered.

The Torah isn’t just a book of stories. It’s a manual against the ego. In Deuteronomy 17:15–20, the king is warned: don’t hoard horses, don’t hoard gold, keep the Torah close so your heart doesn’t rise above your brothers. The Torah assumes power will corrupt if it isn’t restrained. That’s not politics. That’s spiritual law.

As rabbis, pastors, and imams, our job right now is not only to comfort and sermonize. We must teach that self-control isn’t weakness—it’s the whole point of being free. The hardest task isn’t defeating an enemy; it’s refusing to become one.

I wrote a “Resistance Haggadah” this year because the traditional text won’t save us if we use it to shield ourselves from the truth. If we read the Exodus and don’t confront the “Pharaoh Flip” in our own hearts and our own nations, we’ve missed the message.

This year, if we don’t let this story change us, we haven’t actually left Egypt. We’ve just learned how to run it.

And that, my friends, as we sit at the Seder table, is the “Pharaoh Flip.”

A Zissen (Sweet) Pesach to you all.

Rabbi Steven Blane

Sung to the tune of “Adir Hu”

What to do, what to do

If we forget who we were before?

If all we knew seems to be untrue,

Where are you in this holy war?

When comes the day we all can say

That all are one we’re not keeping score