A couple of months back, Shaul Magid shared this clip, which you can see here.. It’s a talk from Israel by Rabbi Adam Sinai. It seems appropriate for Yom Kippur. The talk is anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-violence. The rabbi claims in no uncertain terms that the Temple Mount is not “ours.” What matters most is peace now and understanding with, I don’t remember if it was the Palestinians or with “the Arabs.” Value based, the orientation is religious and ethical. Setting aside small bore petty politics, it stands against the contemporary grain of “the discourse,” and not just among the orthodox and ultra-orthodox.

When I asked Shaul about Sinai, he wrote back, “He is from the Ashlag (Sulum) community of kabbalists. Yehuda Ashlag was a Polish Kabbalist who immigrated to Palestine and developed his own system of Lurianic Kabbalah. It is now centered in Yeshivat Kol Yehuda in JM. His son-in-law Brandwein was the teacher of Phillip Berg. Ashlag was a fascinating figure, a Marxist, and quite radical in his political views. I had the honor of studying with Ha-Rav Mordecai Sheinberger, then rosh yeshiva at Kol Yehuda for a year in 1981. I think Sinai is doing some fascinating things here. I love how he keeps saying [the] Peace Now [movement] [i.e. leftists –zjb] is right in principle but not in practice. I wish I could have seen the expression of the audience!”