It has been awhile since I took to these pages. This past March the Ayatollah Kohmeni sent ballistic missiles to Israel which unfortunately kept us from attending our grandson’s bar-mitzvah in America. My beautiful wife and I took the last few weeks to make up for that missed visit and B’H we got to spend time with all of our children and grandchildren who still live in the states. And Kohmeni is dead.

A lot has happened during the weeks we were traveling. I debated for quite awhile what to write about. My brain is telling me to address the car wreck that is JD Vance who I warned you about previously here https://haroldkatz1.substack.com/p/two-sides-of-the-same-coin and here https://haroldkatz1.substack.com/p/i-am-not-a-jew-with-trembling-knees but I think I am going to pass on addressing his uneducated nonsense for the moment. Instead, I wanted to address something I am not sure many Jewish people understand. Don’t get me wrong. What I am about to say will seem simple and obvious. Some will blow it off as just that and ignore the rest of what I am about to write. I ask instead to stay with me. It is an important issue all Jews need to hear and comprehend and for some, it may change the way you look at our people and your role in it.

Despite the common narrative, much of what has been fed to the world on our behalf has been spread by Jews themselves. I am here to correct the record.

Judaism is not a religion.

As a matter of fact, I would argue because of how deep and complex the Torah is, it is about as far away from a religion as it could possibly be. The genesis of the Jewish people emanates from the Torah and the books of the prophets that follow it recount our history both what was and what will be. We can deny it all we want, but Torah is the soul of our people and we don’t exist as a nation without it. And yet, there is one underlying principle contained therein that is the burning flame inside the soul and is priority number one above all else. I do not believe there is anything inside Tanach that even comes close. The Torah is adamant and quite demanding about the collective that is the Jewish people. I will write it again. There is no issue the Torah considers greater than the collective Jewish nation. The greatness of Hashem and His Torah is that inside the collective, the individual is paramount.

“And this serves to tell of the greatness of the Holy One, Blessed be He, as when a person stamps several coins with one seal, they are all similar to each other. But the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He, stamped all people with the seal of Adam the first man, as all of them are his offspring, and not one of them is similar to another. Therefore, since all humanity descends from one person, each and every person is obligated to say: The world was created for me, as one person can be the source of all humanity, and recognize the significance of his actions.” (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:4)

Regardless of the vicious narratives being spread around the entire world about our people, the Mishnah records the Torah’s view about how important every Jew is to the collective and the world. Each and every person needs to know the entire world was created for me, the individual. As I have written here in the past, the Lubavitcher Rebbi........

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