When Shimon said goodbye

Everyone remembers a different Shimon Peres. For me it will be the prime minister who shepherded Israel through a unprecedented event: the assassination of its head of government.
I was just 17, a student who had arrived just ten weeks prior to study at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shevut. Har Etzion was and is a yeshivat hesder, combining Torah study and military service. As a foreign student, I was not (yet) heading to the army, but I had to learn how to handle an M-16 for guard duty. At the time, my Hebrew was poor and my knowledge of Israeli society was worse. But everything was new and exhilarating and wonderful.
But from the moment an older student slapped his hand on the bima in the beit midrash and we started saying Psalms on that night of Saturday, Nov. 4th, 1995, I knew something was seriously wrong. And the news just got worse. Prime Minister Rabin has been shot. He is dead. His killer is a Jew. His killer is an Orthodox Jew. His killer is a graduate of a hesder yeshiva.
We spent that night in shock; the next amid the crush of the people trying to get to the Knesset, where Rabin lay in state; and the day after going to the funeral. Not that our bus could actually get near Mount Herzl; the traffic was insane, the security tight. We ended up sitting on the bus listening to eulogies by world leaders, the first being President Clinton (the First?).
It was a fine speech, surely, and in its last paragraph, Clinton referenced the Torah portion, which we will also be reading this Tuesday, the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah: the Binding of Yitzhak. He declared: "As we all know, as Abraham, in loyalty to God, was about to kill his son, God spared Yitzhak. Now God tests our faith even more terribly, for he has taken our Yitzhak."
A worthy notion, certainly. But then Shimon Peres, acting prime minister, arose and chose a different verse. It is what we read from the Prophets on the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah, God's words to the weeping Rachel:

“Restrain your voice from weeping
And your eyes from tears;
For your work will be rewarded,” declares the Lord,
“And they will return from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for your future,” declares the Lord.
(Jeremiah 31:16-17)

Peres spoke of his decades-long friend and sometimes bitter rival not as a martyr, not as a sacrifice, but as a tireless, demanding leader who had toiled ceaselessly all of his life and whose work had yet to be completed. We would mourn, but then we would take up the task yet again.
And when the new government of Israel convened two weeks later, with Shimon Peres as prime minister for the third time in his life, my rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Yehuda Amital was part of it, as Minister-Without-Portfolio. Peres wanted to get back to work, not point fingers at the religious or the settlers or the bnei yeshiva. And when he was voted out of office months later, he just went back to the Knesset, where he served almost uninterrupted for half a century, until he became Israel's ninth president.
And unlike so many of those we have lost over the past seven years--Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, Presidents Ephraim Katzir and Yitzhak Navon--Peres never faded into obscurity in his later years. He never stopped working. His last act was just two week ago, as he posted a Facebook video in support of buying Israeli products. He was indefatigable, the last of Israel's founding generation.
Jewish tradition says the First Day of Creation was actually today, the 25th of Elul. It is certainly a new world, without Shimon Peres, last of his generation. But he would assure us that it will be all fine--as long as we get back to the hard work of making Israel the State it has the potential to be.

Pray like a girl

Jews have always known the value of producing credits, so it's no surprise that, at least in Sephardic synagogues, every one of the daily prayers starts off with royalties: to Abraham for instituting the morning service; Isaac, afternoon; Jacob, evening.
But where them ladies at? After all, our Siddur contains more than these three daily prayers, namely the musaf (additional or supplementary) service for special days.
In fact, the Talmud (Berachot 26b) itself asks (rhetorically): "But who would have instituted musaf?" There are only three Patriarchs, so who could it be? Obviously, concludes 18th-century Jerusalem-born sage the Chida, it must have been a Matriarch:

The musaf of the New Moon was instituted by our Matriarch Rachel, as she foresaw with the Holy Spirit that, in the future, the women in the desert would avoid the Sin of the Golden Calf. Indeed, her name is alluded to with the words "Roshei Chodashim Le-amcha--New Moons to Your people You gave, a time of atonement for all their generations."
(Birkei Yoseif, OC 423:2)

Aside from the mind-blowing implication that Mother Rachel was a Time Lord, this tradition lays down a principle: atonement is women's work. Because the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh) is all about renewal, repentance and restoration, its prayer couldn't have been instituted by the Patriarchs; it had to be Rachel doing it on behalf of those who kept the faith in the first major crisis after the Exodus from Egypt: the women, who refused to worship the Golden Calf.
The Talmud itself (ibid. 29a) says that one Rosh Chodesh in particular was pivotal in Rachel's life: the New Moon of Tishrei, better known as Rosh Hashana, when she conceived. However, it is a later heroine who is credited with the special musaf service of that day:

To what do the nine [blessings] of the New Year correspond? Isaac the Carthaginian said: To the nine times that Hannah invokes God in her prayer (I Samuel 2:1-10).  For a Master has said: On the New Year was the reckoning of Sarah, Rachel and Hannah.

So we have Rachel to thank for the prayers of Rosh Chodesh and Hannah, mother of Samuel, for those of Rosh Hashana. But there's another tool we wield on the latter, another voice we hear, that of the shofar, and credit for that goes to their predecessor, the Mother of All Matriarchs, Sarah.

Isaac returned to his mother and she said to him: "Where have you been, my son?"
Said he to her: "My father took me and led me up mountains and down hills," etc.
"Alas," she said, "for the son of a hapless woman!  Had it not been for the angel you would by now have been slain!"
"Yes," he said to her.
Thereupon, she uttered six cries, corresponding to the six blasts (tekiot). It has been said: She had scarcely finished speaking when she died.
(Leviticus Rabbah 20:2)

Midrashically, the straight blasts of the shofar known as tekiot come from Sarah, the first Jewish mother, overwhelmed by the trauma of the Binding of Isaac. However, the ululating, groaning teruot come from a different matriarch in our history, the mother of Sisera, anonymous in Judges 5:28 but named by some traditions as Temah (cf. Ezra 2:53). Apparently, even enemies of the Jewish people have mothers too, and their very human grief is something we tap into as well on Rosh Hashana.
While both Rosh Chodesh and Rosh Hashana have a component of atonement, there's only one day that has it in its name: Yom Kippur. The centerpiece of that day's prayers, its musaf in particular, is the pair of goats: "And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel" (Leviticus 16:8). While this service might seem to be male-dominated, the fact is it too follows the template set by a Matriarch--specifically, Rebecca. Her audacious ploy to get Isaac's blessing for Jacob begins with the following command (Gen. 27:9): "Go now to the flocks, and take for me from there two good kid goats." What's so good about these goats? "They are good for your progeny, for by them, they gain atonement on Yom Kippur" (Gen. Rabbah 65:14).
But our salah is not quite complete: Yom Kippur has five prayer services, the final one being ne'ila, which literally refers to the locking of the Gates of Heaven. While the gate of prayers may be locked, the gate of tears remains ever open (Talmud, Bava Metzia 59a), especially for a wronged wife. Or as the Zohar puts it:

We have been taught: Any born of woman who sheds tears before God, though their punishment has been decreed, it shall be torn up, and that punishment shall not beset them. From whence do we know this? From Leah!

Atonement is all about rebirth. It is only natural for its prayers to be the teaching of our Mothers. Especially at this season, the embryonic forty days of repentance which end and begin each year, we must make sure our mothers (and sisters and daughters) feel welcome in our houses of prayer. As we answer our Mothers' call, may God answer us.

Why I'm fasting

As I read Rabbi Elyse Goldstein's "Why I'm not fasting on Tisha B'Av" this morning, I couldn't help but notice a parenthetical (and antithetical) statement:

And I’m not fasting because, ultimately, the destruction of the Temple lent way for the democratization of Judaism... It doesn’t make me sad, even though my husband and sons are kohanim and would, in the time of the messiah, be those powerful priests again. (And I’d get to eat from their terumah as the wife of a priest. As a vegetarian, it doesn’t appeal to me. As a feminist, I don’t want to eat their leftovers.)

See, terumah is for vegetarians: it's the term used in Talmudic and halachic literature for the portion of grain, wine & corn (and other produce as well) given to priestly families. Moreover, every member of the household may partake whenever they feel like it--females don't eat off the plates of their fathers, husbands or children. (Well, maybe children. I've yet to meet the toddler who finishes what's put in front of him.)
This imprecision may seem like a minor quibble, but it goes right to the heart of Rabbi Goldstein's argument: that Talmud trumps Temple:

To rebuild the Temple would undermine the existence of an interpretive Judaism. The Pharisees won in the end, and interpretation won too over the fixed, hegemonic ritual of the Sadducees... Jewish history has plenty of trauma and we can certainly use a day to remember that. But remember: from the ashes of the Temple rose the phoenix of rabbinic Judaism, and that’s the Judaism I now celebrate, the Judaism that survived.

There's only one problem with this timeline: rabbinic Judaism precedes the destruction of the Temple by centuries! Yes, during the Persian era, the first part of the Second Commonwealth, the Great Knesset sat, and it is credited with canonizing Scripture (Bava Batra 15a), composing most of our prayers (Berachot 33a) and eradicating idolatry (Yoma 69b). These rabbis were not the successors to the priests, but rather to the prophets (Avot 1:1)--half a millennium before the Second Temple was destroyed.
The Pharisees did not see the Temple's destruction as a victory over the Sadducee priests, but as a tragedy, which is why so much of the Talmud is dedicated to the laws of holiness (Kodashim) and ritual purity (Taharot), 23 of the original 60 tractates. In fact, that terumah Rabbi Goldstein is so disinterested in is the reason we all wash our hands before partaking of bread--because that is what the kohanim had to do before eating holy food. In fact, the first paragraph in the Talmud refers to the kohanim going in for supper, since that is the signal for nightfall and the time to say Shema.
However, Rabbi Goldstein maintains that there is no reason to fast on Tisha B'Av anymore, regardless of what it what might have once meant:

Fasting on Tisha B’Av almost seems like a slap in the face to that sovereign Jewish nation. I want to imagine that if the Rabbis of the Talmud were living today, they’d say, “what? How can you keep a fast that longs for a nation you are living in now?”

But there is no need to imagine what the rabbis of the Talmud might have said, when we can read what they actually did say (Rosh Hashana 18b): "R. Papa replied: The ninth of Av is in a different category, because several misfortunes happened on it, as a Master has said: On the ninth of Av the Temple was destroyed both the first time and the second time, and Beitar was captured and the city [Jerusalem] was plowed." As Maimonides and Rabbeinu Hananel explain, the ninth of Av is so puissant and pertinent that it was observed while the Second Temple stood. It commemorates far more than the loss of the sacrificial service; it represents the countless tragedies, personal and national, of slavery, exile, rape, dispossession, persecution and genocide.
In fact, the Sanhedrin, the great body which made so many of the reforms Rabbi Goldstein applauds, sat in the courtyard of the Temple! For me, the apex of Tisha B'Av is rising from the cold floor to sing, mournfully but majestically:

Wail, Zion and her cities
Like a woman in birth pangs
Like a virgin dressed in sack
For the husband of her youth.
For the beat of her dancers
That has been silenced in her cities.
And for the council that has become desolate
And the dissolution of her Sanhedrin.

But if that doesn't speak to you, write your own kinnah (elegy, dirge). It is Yom Kippur which focuses so minutely on the Temple service, not Tisha B'Av, with its ever-evolving liturgy. There is no greater testimony to Judaism's capacity to survive and thrive.

Clansmen

Common wisdom says you talk about unity at this time of the year. After all, tonight we segue from the sobriety of the Three Weeks to the somberness of the Nine Days, with the advent of the month of Av, when the Temple was destroyed, we are told, due to baseless hatred (Yoma 9b). So it's customary to denounce division at this time -- even though that's exactly what this week's Torah reading talks about (Num 33:53-55):

Take possession of the land, and live in it, because I have given you the land to inherit. You are to divide by lot the land among yourselves, by your clans. The larger the clans are in number, the larger their inheritance is to be. The fewer the clans are in number, the lesser their inheritance is to be. To whomever the lot falls, that inheritance goes to him. Divide it according to your ancestral tribes.

The Jewish nation is split up genealogically -- into tribes, then clans, then (ancestral) houses--much as the US is split into states, counties and localities. "By your clans" is one word in the original Hebrew, lemishpechoteikhem. If you can pry apart that hexasyllable, you might recognize mishpacha, often translated family. But these "families" were massive, with an average population of well over ten thousand adult males, so the term "clan" is probably more accurate.
It's notable that we find this precise term in only one other place: when Moses gives the first mitzva to the Jewish people in Egypt (Exodus 12:21):

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and told them, “Choose sheep for your families, and slaughter the Passover lamb."

Even before the Exodus, in the ghetto of Goshen, the Jewish people must organize themselves by clans and ancestral houses (ibid. v. 3), in order to prepare for their destiny in the Promised Land.
In fact, this is a theme running through the entirety of the Book of Numbers. In all the other four books of the Torah, mishpacha shows up a total of 26 times; in Numbers, 159. The specific conjugation lemishpechotav (by his clans) shows up twice.

So the Israelites did everything just as the LORD had commanded Moses; that is, they encamped and traveled under their banners, each man by his clans, upon his ancestral house. (2:34)
Moses heard the people weeping by his clans, each man at the entrance of his tent; the LORD was very angry and it was bad in Moses' eyes. (11:10)

The Jews divide themselves by tribe, clan and house at the foot of Mt. Sinai; but once they start traveling, literally at the first encampment, they start crying. The proximate cause is the food, but the Midrash (Sifre ad loc.) seeks a deeper reason, declaring that it was mishpacha matters which perturbed them. Now, the Midrash takes mishpacha to mean close family in this context, explaining that the people were bummed they couldn't shtupp their sisters-in-law anymore.
However, as we have noted, that's not really what the word denotes in Numbers. It seems that they were bothered by the clannishness. Before Moses showed up, they were simply Hebrews, set apart by their national identity, dress, language, etc. They were slaves, but they were a unified people. With the Book of Numbers, that changes:

And they called the whole community together on the first day of the second month. The people registered their ancestry by their clans and ancestral houses, and the men twenty years old or more were listed by name, one by one. (1:18)

Unity is easy in exile and under oppression. To be "the whole community" in the ghetto is simple enough, even if life itself is anything but. Coming into the Promised Land, going from minority to majority status, presents a new challenge. Suddenly clans and tribes and houses make a difference, and it's enough to make one weep. Can we build a society based on our commonalities, while celebrating our differences? Well, third time's a charm. Let's get to work.

Man beats God

For a brief period when I was a teenager, the definition of Jewish pride was the professional wrestler Goldberg. After all, in the '80s, even goyim changed their names to wrestle, and Jews changed their names just to tell jokes. But a new era was dawning, and amidst all the faux reality and showmanship, it was nice to have some honesty.
Truth be told, the Jewish wrestling tradition goes back to The Beginning, the Book of Genesis. The very name Israel is given to Jacob, "because you have struggled with God and with humans and have prevailed" (32:28). And in this case, the men's division was late to the game, since Jacob's beloved Rachel says a decade before, "With wrestlings of God I have wrestled with my sister, yea, I have prevailed" (30:8), giving the name Naphtali -- My Wrestling.
Nevertheless, these examples seem a bit high-minded. Rachel and her sister Leah grapple with God metaphorically, and Jacob's battle is with an angel (as Hosea 12:5 states) in the form of a man. The Jerusalem Talmud (Taanit 4:5) presents a much more literal grappling with God, explaining how it was that the First Tablets, with the Ten Commandments on them, came to be shattered by Moses.

You did well to shatter them" -- Rabbi Samuel bar Nahman in the name of Rabbi Jonathan: “The tablets were six handbreadths long and three wide. Moses grasped two handbreadths' worth and the Holy One grasped two handbreadths' worth and there were two handbreadths left in the middle. Once Israel did what they did, the Holy One tried to snatch them away from Moses, but Moses was stronger and snatched them from God. This is the meaning of the biblical praise at the end of the Torah (Deuteronomy 34:12), ‘and all his strong arm’ -- Let there be peace upon him whose arm was stronger than mine!”

According to Rabbi Jonathan, there is a literal tug-of-war over the Torah, and Moses beats God. (Doubtless if he were around today, this rabbi would have his ordination revoked for such heresy.) So what is Moses' plan here? Does he hope to abscond to a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Heaven? Is he going to upload the Tablets and make them open-source? Is he going to mass-produce generic versions of the Commandments?
No, Moses just wants to shatter them. Why? Because Tablets shattered by human hands can be replaced by human hands, as indeed happens shortly. On the other hand, if God snatches the Tablets back and takes them back to Heaven, who knows whether the Torah will ever return to man?
Indeed, it seems that by snatching the Tablets back, God is giving Moses the opportunity to walk away: no harm, no foul. After all, the Israelites, dancing around the Golden Calf at the time, are presumably not ready for the Torah's challenges. So why not just let God take His magnum opus back? Perhaps a later generation will be prepared for this awesome opportunity.
But Moses passes the test. He does not relent; he wrestles with God and pulls the Tablets from His grip. Audacious, awe-inspiring -- and acclaimed by God Himself, in the very last verse of that very Torah.
And herein lies the contradiction of this weekend, opening the unique Jewish hybrid of Ramadan and Lent known as The Three Weeks, leading up to Tisha b'Av. This period is inaugurated by the 17th of Tammuz, but this year, we will not fast on that date, because it falls out tomorrow, on Shabbat. Before we fast on Sunday and remember the tragedy of the Tablets being broken, we have a day to savor Moses' audacity and the hope it grants us.
What must Moses have felt in his Tablet tug-of-war, stepping into the ring with God Himself? This is what I could not stop thinking about at the Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance yesterday.

(Credit: Y. Bloch, Liberty Bell Park, Jerusalem, 21 July 2016)

 We feel God tugging, trying to snatch away the Torah, as it were. We may imagine the divine words: "You're not ready for this! Your society is riven by discord and hate. The words of this Torah are used as a crown to magnify one group and a spade to bury another! It belongs in Heaven, until you all are worthy."

But we must not give up. We must hold on for dear life, snatching the Torah back, keeping it down on earth as a living document. And if we shatter it, we can mend it. We've been doing that for more than 3,000 years. And we will continue, with trepidation, but tenacity, until we hear those words from God Himself: "You did well to shatter them."

Down the Q&A Hole

Responsa are a weird and wild archipelago in the sea of Torah. Originally these shutim (literally, questions and answerses -- yes, it's a double plural) were collections of actual missives sent to sages around the world and the halachic replies sent back. You might find an analysis of open-carry for Wild West Bank women (Iggerot Moshe OH IV 75), sleeping with a man who claims to be Elijah the Prophet (a totally different meaning of כוס של אליהו, Binyan Zion 154) or whether you have to repeat Grace After Meals if the individual who led the prayer revealed himself to be a horse (Ezrat Mitzar 8). Think of them as Infrequently Asked Questions.
Why don't you come with me, down the rabbit hole -- or more precisely, the Q&A hole? You'll be walking in a Yiddish Wonderland.
Shutim have now gone online, just like the rest of life. For well over a decade, the religious-Zionist website Kipa has had an Ask the Rabbi section. Most of the questions are fairly pedestrian, but one has recently received a lot of attention -- not so much for the query, but for the replier, Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim, nominated to be the next Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces.
Let's see it inside.

I have read about [the halachik question of] "the beautiful captive" on this site as well as studying the laws in the Torah, but I still have a question:
In various wars among the nations, e.g. World War I, various nations fought among themselves, and no one among them was particularly good to the Jews or particularly bad to the Jews...
However, were they to capture a village populated by Jews and rape Jewish girls, it was rightly considered a catastrophe and tragedy for the young woman and the family.
Thus, rape in war is considered a shocking matter. So how is it that a rabbi told me that a beautiful woman [captive] is allowed, according to some authorities, even before the entire process [pertaining to captives] described in the Torah? In other words, he submits to his desire and sleeps with her, and only then takes her to his house, etc.?
This seems contradictory to me. If raping civilians in war is something forbidden and shocking, why should it apparently be allowed for a Jew?
And would it be permitted in our days for an IDF soldier, for example, to rape young girls in time of combat, or would this be forbidden?
Thank you.

That is the entire text of the question. (The one ellipsis is in the original.) If you want to read the passage, it's Deut. 21:10-14; Maimonides details the process in Laws of Kings and Their Wars, Chapter 8. Suffice it to say that the issue of the beautiful captive is not pretty, especially the part about taking her to a deserted place to force her (3) and killing her if she later refuses to convert (9).
But now for the answer:

Wars of Israel -- whether mitzva wars or volitional wars -- are mitzva wars. They are thus different from other wars conducted by the nations of the world among themselves. Since war is, by definition, not a particular matter -- rather the nation as a whole fights -- there are situations in which the personality of the individual is "erased" for the sake of the collective. Conversely, sometimes a large unit is imperiled to save an individual when the matter is exigent due to considerations of morale.
One of the most important and determinate values in war is maintaining the army's combat readiness. That is why the fearful and fainthearted are sent back from the ranks, so that they will not melt their brothers' hearts. The emotions and needs of the individual are shoved aside in order for the nation to succeed in war. Just as in war the boundaries of endangerment for the sake of others are "breached," so too in war the boundaries of tzniut and kashrut are "breached." Libation wine, which is not permitted in peacetime, is permitted in war, in order to maintain the good feelings of the combatants. Forbidden foods are permitted in war (according to a few opinions, even if kosher food is available) in order to maintain the combatants' readiness, even though under conditions of peace they would be forbidden.
Similarly, war overrides certain aspects of sexual immorality, even though intimacy with a non-Jewess is a very serious matter; nevertheless it is permitted in war (under the conditions which permit it), due to consideration for the combatants' difficulties. Since the success of the collective in war is our primary concern, the Torah allows the individual to indulge his evil desire under the conditions it permits, for the sake of the success of the collective.
Shalom,
Eyal Karim

You can still read this responsum on Kipa. It's been up since 2002. There is a link to a clarification from 2012 "for one who is not an expert in the halachic world." Does the five-minute rule for food turn into a ten-year rule for responsa? I don't know. But considering that the replier is nominated to be the chief chaplain for an army which has many women, gays and non-Jews in its ranks; and considering that he has expressed incendiary ideas about all of these groups, some since retracted and some not; and considering that he would be my (reserve) boss, I don't find it funny anymore. So can we please dig ourselves out of this hole?

The True Shanda

Blogging about blogging is not something I usually have time for, but sometimes you have no choice.
My social-media feed today is being flooded by Rav Zev Shandalov's "Why I Will No Longer Blog in The Times of Israel." I don't know if he'll still view it, so maybe he'll miss this too, but Rav Zev is not my intended audience.
I want instead to address the subject of his ire, The Times of Israel's editorial policy. Rav Zev refrains from ad-hominem attacks, but those who share his piece often do not, even going so far as to tag the people they'd like to call out.
So what angers Rav Zev so much? The following lines:

Murdered in her bed: Teenage girl killed in terror attack Terrorist breaks into Kiryat Arba home, stabs teenage girl dozens of times, killing her. Member of local security team also wounded.

In the words of Rav Zev:

I read and re-read those words, and my blood began to boil. How dare the Times of Israel make the location of this girl’s murder a part of the story!? It was as if the fact that she was in the “West Bank” almost made the murder understandable. It was as if the Times of Israel was saying that we can “understand” (MY words, not theirs) why this happened.

Oh wait a second, I got that wrong. That header was from Arutz 7, also known as Israel National News, comfortably ensconced on the right wing of the spectrum. When they tell you where the attack took place, we can rely on them. We don't need Talmudic exegesis of why the subheadline does say where it happened, or why there's no mention of the nationality of attacker or victim. Not one time in the article do the terms Jew, Arab, Muslim, Palestinian or Israeli come up. Why is that? Is Arutz 7 afraid to face the truth? What are they trying to cover up?

The answer, of course, is nothing. They're reporting the story the way they usually do. As was Times of Israel, when it wrote:

Israeli girl, 13, stabbed to death by Palestinian in her West Bank bedroom

Hallel Yaffa Ariel killed by terrorist who entered her home in Kiryat Arba; civilian guard also injured responding to incident; attacker killed.

So why is the latter so offensive, so outrageous, so unconscionable that Rav Zev will never write for ToI again? Is it the unpardonable term "West Bank"? I doubt it, since the Bible uses that term (I Chron. 26:30).
Moreover, Rav Zev says quite clearly that it's identifying the place at all which disgusts him: "How dare the Times of Israel make the location of this girl’s murder a part of the story!"
Perhaps his introduction can be edifying:

Rather, I wish to take umbrage with many editorial decisions that have been made at Times of Israel, since I began posting my blog in July of 2013.Over the years, I fully understood that the site was not in concert with what I believed. It did not and does not share my values or my outlook on the State of Israel. I continued to post on their site, though, since it would give my writing exposure and readership. (There isn’t a writer around who doesn’t want his or her writing to get to the largest possible audience.)
I also knew full well about their editorial positions and chose to ignore them or (on some occasions) call them out on them. The one time that they censored one of my articles (which in and of itself PROVED the point of the post!) I just went ahead and posted it on Facebook.

Herein lies the problem: Rav Zev feels he did ToI a favor by posting on "a ‘left-wing, kumbaya, let’s not offend the world, occupation-is-the-reason-for-all-the-world’s-ills’ kind of site." But since he knows their true nature, he knows what they mean when they have the gall to identify the location of this heinous act of butchery.
The most important fact of this incident is the stunning, incalculable, cruel tragedy of a girl going from her bat mitzva party one year to her funeral the next. But the true shanda is that we have become so convinced of the inhumanity of our fellow citizens that we see their every act, every word, every gesture as calculated and compassionless. Now more than ever we need fora where we can come together to weep, to grieve, to talk... even, especially, if we're not all saying the same thing.