Trump as false messiah * The ‘us vs. them’ threat to America * Jews and Black Lives Matter * WhatsApp’s new Terms * Conspiracy theories in the T orah community

[Times of Israel]( [The Blogs Weekly]( Thursday, January 21, 2021 Times of Israel Podcast [TOI staff]( [PODCAST: The Daily Briefing – ToI blogosphere weighs in on end of Trump era]( [A quick 15-minute podcast with ToI editors and reporters to catch you up on what’s important today]( From the blogs [Can America inoculate against the dire threat of ‘us vs. them’?]( By [Kenneth S. Stern]( [As false claims of a Trump victory stoke political violence, the US must launch a grand effort to rebuild a society in which disagreement is not deadly]( [A eulogy for lost truth within the Torah community]( By [Chaya Lester]( [A flood of extreme conspiracy theories is driving painful wedges between us – we have a responsibility to speak out when we see them]( From the blogs [Why Jews should wave the Black Lives Matter banner]( By [Ed Gaskin]( [Supporting BLM does not mean signing on to every aspect of the movement, it means standing with the Torah’s teaching that all humans matter]( [American Yizkor]( By [Arnold M. Eisen]( [The memorial for coronavirus victims, a step toward healing, recalled the Yom Kippur service when we remember those we have lost]( [Donald Trump as a messianic cultic figure]( By [Dennis C. Sasso]( [In the former president, echoes of another figure in history who left a polarizing trail of broken communities, conspiracies and heresy accusations]( [Martin Kramer]( [Quick take: Trump was a dud, but not for Israel]( [Some of the worst leaders of the American people, at least according to the usual measures of presidential success, have been the most effective allies of the Jewish state]( [El Mehdi Boudra]( [The Moroccan exception should become an expectation]( [My country approached Israel with fairness and reason; now, Israel can do the same for the Palestinians, to achieve another historic compromise]( [Sharon Galper Grossman]( [Vaccinate, so that you can be fruitful and multiply]( [For those who are eligible, the COVID-19 vaccine should be simply one more aspect of the prenatal care that includes special vitamins and avoiding cigarettes and alcohol]( [Tamar Sternthal]( [Why doesn’t the NYTimes rely on its own archives?]( [The ’paper of record’ is getting its Israel-related facts wrong, and it isn’t even correcting the errors that contradict its past reporting]( [Rachel Aridor-Hershkovitz]( [WhatsApp’s new terms of service? Kiss your privacy goodbye]( [With Facebook’s insatiable appetite for personal data, the new requirement for users of its popular subsidiary should be a red light to us all]( CHOICE VOICES [Daniel Markind]( [Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and modern cancel culture]( [These inspirational leaders, both flawed, and the greats who inspired them, would flunk today’s PC criteria as worthy topics for academic study]( [Brian Horowitz]( [A crotchety old academic reflects on the great Russian ‘wave’]( [Israel owes a lot to the aliyah from the former Soviet Union, but it took time – the new immigrants struggled with poverty, displacement, and the humbling of talented people]( [Nadav Tamir]( [Now is the time for female leadership in Israel]( [Empirical testing shows that women are better equipped to deal with the adaptive challenges of today – just ask Germany, Finland, New Zealand, or Taiwan]( [Ilana Fodiman-Silverman]( [Would the real new year for trees please stand up?]( [Rabbi Akiva insisted that the Jewish calendar be fixed and immutable, and then acted as if the rejected opinions were legitimate. Whatever was he thinking?]( [Unsubscribe from this List]( Email not displaying correctly? [View in browser]( © 2021 The Times Of Israel, All Rights Reserved