Crazywildbocher

Chareidim and the IDF

October 22nd, 2025

There is this idea being pushed that being a religious, pious Jew is contradictory to being a soldier and a fighter. Ironically, if you spend five minutes reading Tanach, you will find story after story about the greatest Jewish figures in history and their military brilliance and courage. It doesn’t just speak of it, it celebrates and applauds it. Bravery, courage, and fighting are all virtues that Jewish leaders always had, in addition to being spiritual leaders.

Yet today, people insist that serving in the army is something that a religious Jew should never do. (Some have even said that it is “יהרג ואל יעבור,” it is better to be killed than to transgress. Obviously, they don’t really mean it, but it gives you the idea of how strongly they feel about this.)

It is unfortunate that they don’t teach Tanach in yeshivos. However, lucky for you guys, I am a Rav.

Let’s start at what is essentially the first time the Jewish nation went to war, Yaakov and Esav. In Bereishit 32, when Yaakov learns that Esav is approaching with four hundred men, the Torah says:

“וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב מְאֹד וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ, וַיַּחַץ אֶת הָעָם אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ…”
“Yaakov was very afraid and distressed, and he divided the people who were with him…” (Bereishit 32:8).

So first, he divides the camp, that’s a strategic move. Then, only after arranging the camp and making practical plans, the Torah continues:

“וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב, אֱלֹהֵי אָבִי אַבְרָהָם וֵאלֹהֵי אָבִי יִצְחָק…”
“And Yaakov said, ‘O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac…’” (Bereishit 32:10).

Yaakov only prayed after the tactical preparation. He didn’t pray and hope that nobody would hurt him, he took it upon himself to protect his family. He didn’t stand at the back and let someone else do the fighting while he davened, he got up and did it himself.

It goes on to say, “וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב מְאֹד וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ” “Yaakov was very afraid and distressed” (Bereishit 32:8). Rashi explains, ”שֶׁמָּא יֵהָרֵג, שֶׁמָּא יַהֲרוֹג” “He feared both being killed and having to kill.”

He was clearly very aware of what it might come to and was not disillusioned at all about what he was preparing for. He knew this could potentially be a bloody war and he faced it head on.

His tefillah follows his preparation, it is not instead of it. He teaches that faith untested by responsibility is not faith at all, and that bitachon is not the absence of fear but the ability to act upon it, knowing that God will give you the courage and strength to face challenges head-on. Bitachon is not waiting for someone else to do something, it is getting up and saying that there is a threat in front of me, and I am trusting God that He will leave me victorious because I am fighting for His will. Strategy and fighting, for Yaakov, was Avodat Hashem in that moment, not a compromise of belief, but its realization.

I could go on and on with many examples of Jewish leaders who have reached the heights of spirituality and who have also been thoroughly battle-tested. Here are three such examples:

The Torah presents Yehoshua as the model of faith translated into action.

“וַיִּלָּחֶם יְהוֹשֻׁעַ עִם עֲמָלֵק,” “And Yehoshua fought with Amalek” (Shemot 17:13).

He doesn’t delegate or spiritualize the problem, he steps into it. His battle in this scenario is not about conquest but continuity, preserving the covenant in real space and time. Yehoshua teaches that leaders don’t just teach values and preach sermons, they lead in all realms, including the physical.

David HaMelech is perhaps the most complete expression of Torah and courage coexisting, because he wrote Tehillim, the poetry of the soul, and also led armies with strategy and discipline. King David is probably the best reminder that strength and spirituality are not opposites, they are different expressions of the same covenantal duty.

This next one is for the ladies. (See, I am not a misogynistic jerk.)

At a time of national paralysis, it was a prophetess, not a general, who reignited Israel’s resolve.

“וַתִּשְׁלַח וַתִּקְרָא לְבָרָק בֶּן־אֲבִינֹעַם… וַתֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו הֲלֹא צִוָּה ה’ אֱלֹקֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵךְ וּמָשַׁכְתָּ אֶל־הַר תָּבוֹר,” “She sent and summoned Barak son of Avinoam and said to him, Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you: Go, gather your men to Mount Tabor?” (Shoftim 4:6)

Devorah didn’t ask for a miracle, she demanded action. Her words ,”קוּם בָּרָק”” were faith turned into action, a reminder that belief without initiative isn’t faith at all, it’s stupidity.

When we say Torah protects, we mean that spirituality shapes reality. Torah and moral conviction change the way we live in the world.

Values become infrastructure.

Belief becomes behavior.

Spiritual life defines priorities.

But protection isn’t passive, and holiness that hides from the world is incomplete. It is our job to embody Torah and its values in the physical realm and make the world a better place. The Torah’s heroes weren’t cowards or too holy to do “the dirty work.” They built, led, and fought when needed. Faith was never an excuse to avoid responsibility, it was the reason to take it. To live by Torah is not to avoid the world, it is to elevate it. And if they could do it, so can we. Not because the State demands it, but because the Torah expects it.
Long Wigs Kill Teenagers

October 21st, 2025

There was a guy driving in Lakewood and while making a left turn, a car coming the other way ran a stop sign and forced him off the road. As he was trying to get his cortisol levels back to normal, he hears a knock on his window. He lowers his window and in front of him is a Yungerman. The Yungerman yells, “Are you crazy? Do you realize what you just did? You almost caused three thousand women to have to waste a night going to a tznius asifa!!!!”

Not giving a 17-year-old kid a license and car at 2 a.m. is a much better segula to make sure that teenagers don’t die than what 100 tznius asifas can do. It completely removes accountability for the adults who allowed for this situation to occur, and it makes people who had nothing to do with it responsible for not being “good enough” Jews.

The central point of reflecting upon oneself in this context has been completely skewed. There is a concept that when something bad happens to us as a community, we should reflect on ourselves and look for areas we can improve in. The point was NOT for people to grandstand and proclaim that as crazy as it may seem, their specific agenda was the number one cause for all of this. And the only way to rectify this is if all you mortal sinners immediately take XYZ upon yourselves, lest the wrath of God raineth down upon thee. Also, quite arrogantly, implying that if you don’t cut 10 inches off your wig, you just don’t give a damn about the poor dead children.

Keep it a buck and hold people accountable. These tragedies happen when people are not responsible. Not because Mrs. Lefkowitz’s skirt is too short, or because Chaim Ber doesn’t have a filter on his phone. It’s also a time to reflect upon yourself and your shortcomings, not to run around and lecture strangers on what they can do better.
Why is Zohran Mamdani in the Sukkah

October 16th, 2025

There was a video going around of Zohran Mamdani, who is running for Mayor of N.Y.C., sitting with a bunch of chasideshe men in the sukkah wearing a kippa. Besides the obvious, that he is a communist who believes that everything can be free, he is also a vile anti-Semite.

Mind you, there were still Jewish hostages being held by Hamas, being starved and tortured, while all of this was going on. Never mind the fact that every single Jew right now understands how important it is to stick together against the very real threat of anti-Semitism, ahem, two dead Jews in the U.K.

While all anti-Semitism is bad, it definitely falls into different categories. I was listening to a lecture from the Israeli historian Dan Shuftan, and he said something along the lines of, “90 percent of the world is from Chelm, and the other 10 percent is Sodom.” (I tried finding the exact quote but alas.) He was speaking about the response from the West to Oct. 7 and was making a distinction between the useful idiots and the 10 percent of people who are actually evil and are calculated in their anti-Semitism.

The kids on college campuses are just naïve about how the real world works, especially once they leave the safety of U.S. borders, and are part of the 90 percent. Mamdani, however, falls under the 10 percent.

He is the kind of person who knows exactly what he is doing while at the same time using the West’s naïveté and freedom of speech to hate Jews.

Then he plays this weird game where he clarifies all his racist statements to be merely symbolic and not actually indicative of what he believes. He then pretends that YOU are the idiot for not understanding that when he says “Globalize the Intifada,” he does not mean blowing Jews up at a bus stop. What he really means is some sort of symbolic religious struggle.

Here is the truth: he hates you. No amount of kissing up to him will save you, he’ll eat you too, he’ll just eat you last, once he’s squeezed everything out of you. I promise you, as he was sitting in that sukkah, he was thinking to himself about how stupid these people are for thinking that he isn’t going to use them up and leave them to rot.

There is an argument to be made that, we need to get along with politicians and that just because we have our differences, you still don’t want to alienate yourself because then you won’t be able to do good for the community.

The reason why that argument is flawed is for the following reason:

Take a politician who is campaigning on legalizing gay marriage. As religious Jews, we obviously have a different opinion on this than the average secular person. However, we also realize that we live in a democracy, and as long as someone isn’t shoving LGBTQ down our throats in a way that we don’t appreciate, we need to all get along and compromise. Essentially, you can support this candidate and rub elbows with them in order to benefit the community even if you disagree with part of his platform. You do you, and I do me.

The difference here is that he doesn’t just have silly communist ideas, he hates Jews. Not “maybe,” or “just a little biased toward the other side.” He wants to see you dead, as a Jew, and he will rejoice the day you are no longer alive.

Here are a couple of quotes from Mamdani:

“Globalize the Intifada.”

When you hear the word Intifada as a Jew, you know exactly what it means, thousands of people killed and injured in suicide bombings. As a Muslim who hates Israel, he knows what this means too, and it is precisely why he uses it and then pretends to the communists that he just means blah blah blah, and they buy it because they also hate Jews. We are not naive Westerners.

“Israel is not a place, it is not a country, it’s an idea.”

There is not a single person who has uttered this sentence, or something along these lines that did not want Israel to be wiped off the map. It’s just code words so that he can tell his base that he hates Jews while hiding behind plausible deniability.

On top of that, he told his staff not to co-sponsor a bill for Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is something routine and symbolic and does not affect any legislation, but he could not be bothered.

The truth is, we are both going to be loaded onto the same cattle car. Except the look on your face is going to be disbelief that being a useful idiot isn’t going to save you.
IV Drips Are a Scam

September 30th, 2025

Because we all have busy lives, it is hard for people to be informed about everything. This is one of the reasons why it is easy to get away with scamming people. Taking an IV drip to improve your fasting is a waste of time, money, and honestly does not make a difference. (I know your cousin was never able to fast until he started taking IV drips and now he has no problem fasting. Save your breath.)

I am going to leave all the fancy science jargon to the side for now.

What an IV drip does is insert water into your veins through a needle. The reason for taking an IV drip is that when you drink water out of a bottle it has to go through your digestive system first, and this means it takes longer for your body to absorb. When you use an IV drip, you are bypassing the digestive system, so your body absorbs the water faster, hydrating you faster. (IV drips also have nutrients and things like sodium (sodium is salt essentially), which are important for retaining water but you get all of this through the foods you eat every day.)

This is the only difference between the two. An IV drip hydrates you faster. (An argument can be made to use it on a fast day when you cannot drink water or a sports drink, but that is not what we are discussing. This is about using an IV drip 2 days before a fast.))

I know this is going to blow people’s minds, but you can hydrate by drinking actual water. You turn on the sink, fill a glass with water, and drink it. Congratulations, you are now well on your way to being hydrated.

Taking an IV 2 days before a fast is total bullshit and a waste of time and money. There is no magic woofle dust in it that makes you fast better. All the nutrients, as well as electrolytes, that you need to stay hydrated are all found in a regular balanced diet. (Electrolytes are just a fancy way of saying the group of nutrients that keep humans hydrated.) You don’t have to go to the coast of Africa to find these nutrients. It all exists in the food in your fridge that you eat every day. When they advertise that the IV drips contain all these long fancy words with 7 syllables, they are just trying to make it sound complicated so that you think they are gatekeeping some magic pill that you don’t have access to.

The sad part is that the people who are selling IV drips know this and are doing it regardless. This is something that every first-year nursing student knows. (And everyone else who has ever read a single book on anything related to nutrition or sports science.) Anything for a dollar I guess.

Drink water and fast well my people.
Why Are So Many Young Jewish Couples Getting Divorced

September 17th, 2025

This question has been debated endlessly and beaten to death. Everyone has a theory and is convinced that if only everyone listened to them, they could solve the problem.

The theories go something like this: “Young people just don’t value marriage anymore and treat it like it’s disposable.” The argument is that in years gone by, people understood the value of marriage and made it work instead of giving up at the slightest inconvenience. The younger generation however does not value marriage and are quick to dispose of it. They claim it’s a fundamental problem with young people as a whole, not the system, and that young people need to be fixed. They believe that we need to instill in them the value of marriage while they are growing up, and if we did that, this whole problem would disappear.

The theories are endless, and I can’t go through every single one of them, but everyone who has come into contact with the Shidduch System knows what I’m talking about. The constant lecturing on what young people are doing wrong and how they need to change in order to fix the divorce problem.

Essentially, the argument being made is that the Shidduch System we currently have in place is actually a great institution, and it is the people within it who are at fault.

The Shidduch System has been treated like some sort of holy doctrine that we received from God Himself. We must date this way, and any problem that arises must be solved within the confines of the current System. To suggest that the system itself needs to be altered is treated as blasphemy. If you dare to have that conversation, it’s always followed by some silly argument about how secular people who date for as long as they want to are not happier/more satisfied than us. They make this claim by citing data about the climbing divorce rate in secular society and use that to say we are clearly happier in our marriages because of the lower divorce rate in our community.

This is flawed on so many levels and is precisely why we need to start teaching statistics. (The topic of education in our culture is for a different time. At its core, the problem is that in the frum world, we look at education ONLY as a means to increase earning capacity. In reality, education is much more than that. If you take Calculus in college, you will learn how to better solve complex equations, not just within the confines of math but in your day-to-day life (and business as well). More on this another time, I am just getting started.)

It’s not that hard to understand that divorce is influenced by many things, not just happiness. This includes societal pressure, finances, children, etc. It is silly to think that the percentage of happy marriages can be determined solely by who gets divorced the least.

Then comes the general fabrication of reality. A reality which they themselves never experienced. But that does not stop them from having a very strong opinion about it. “You can never get to know someone well enough before marriage to know what it’s going to be like, because dating and being married to someone are so different. Therefore, there is no real difference between going on six dates or dating for five months before getting engaged. You can only know so much about the person anyway, so you may as well make the decision in six dates.”

In short, the argument is that past six dates, the diminishing returns are so low that there’s no point in going out any longer before making a decision. (I’m using the number six, but it obviously varies a little bit from person to person.)

Anyone who has ever lived on planet Earth and has engaged in any sort of relationship with another human being knows this to be false. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your coworker, your new sister-in-law, your new classmate, or just someone you became close friends with. It takes time to get to know someone. You can’t condense it into a certain short period of time. It doesn’t work that way.

When you take the context away from dating, it is kind of obvious that you don’t get to know someone in one day. Even someone you are actively trying to get to know like a new family member takes time. For some reason people lose connection when you make the analogy. There’s this blank look on their face that slightly resembles the face of a non English speaking Hispanic who is being told by a non English speaking Chasidishe person that it is really hot in the living room on Shabbos afternoon. Thirty minutes later a confused Hispanic with a case of Corona walks back into civilization. Poor guy went from thinking he is about to be sacrificed to the Gods to having a six pack in his hand. I imagine he repeats this story to anyone who will listen, all the time, and absolutely nobody believes him. I actually find this gift giving so bizarre and offensive. (No, not actually, relax, I didn’t lose my edge.) Imagine your next door neighbor asked you for help moving her couch and at the end of it she hands you a bagel with lox.

Obviously, dating is intentional, and you are actively trying to get to know the person, as opposed to platonic relationships where it’s not as intentional. But this is offset by two ideas.

First, because it is intentional, people are on their best behavior, almost following a “Virtues” checklist. “Hey, look at me. Did you see how nicely and politely I asked the waiter for Diet Coke and ice? Did you hear me say thank you and you’re welcome? That is what you can have if you like what you see.” (I made it a little flirtatious there at the end, but in all honesty, I doubt there’s much flirting going on in hotel lobbies across the Tri-State area.) This offsets the “intentionally trying to get to know someone” idea because the other person is aware of what they are there for, a date, and are acting accordingly.

Second, the dynamic of relationships don’t change that much across the spectrum. When you meet someone, you get to know their personality and what their virtues are over time. You can’t force it, and if you do, it won’t work. Think about how many people you used to think were decent, and then six months go by, and now you think they’re terrible. (If you can’t think of anyone, it’s your shitty ex. Hehe.) Now apply that same logic to trying to find someone to marry. For some reason the connection gets lost and they can’t seem to make that analogy from platonic relationships to romantic relationships.

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What if the problem isn’t that young people don’t appreciate marriage, or any of the other million theories that exist? What if going on six dates tells you next to nothing about the person you’re committing to for the rest of your life?

For some reason, this idea is written off as some sort of conspiracy by those who strongly believe in the institution of the Shidduch System. They then double down and quote completely made-up statistics and fabrications about the success and virtues of the Shidduch System versus other alternatives to dating.

There is a Rabbi named Rabbi Elefant in Israel who is associated with the Mir Yeshiva. He famously gives a speech about dating at the end of the zman, and it is very well regarded. He is considered to be someone who understands dating really well, and his opinions are held in high regard.

He famously says: “In the Litvish community, we go on 5 to 8 dates before making a decision, but this does not serve any purpose. Either you should do what they do in Chassidish communities, where some of them go on a beshow (you go to the girl’s grandmother’s empty second home and sit in the living room while your parents wait in the back room with their own parents on speed dial. With the odds being so high, why not?) or do what secular people do, where they sometimes date endlessly until they are certain. Going on a handful of dates does nothing for you, because we don’t get to know the person any better, we’re just doing more of the same for a longer period of time. Since we are not doing the latter, the first option makes the most sense.” (I am paraphrasing.)

Obviously, this is just something he says, and the people in his circles don’t actually do a beshow. I believe he is just trying to make a point about dating. Regardless, why isn’t there a healthy middle ground? Can’t you go out with someone over the course of a few months and then know, with a high degree of certainty, or for arguments sake, higher than going out on a handful of dates, the kind of person you are committing to? Not just who they are on a date when they’re on their best behavior. How they behave in real life in real time. You can fake being a good person some of the time, but eventually you default to your true character. (And if you are faking all the time, then congratulations, you are now a good person.)

Don’t you think that interacting with someone on a day-to-day basis will let you know how they handle stress, how they respond when someone wrongs them, how they interact with their friends, with what their actual virtues and principles are through lived experience with the person? No amount of “information” will give you that. I know a lot of really shitty people who think they are good people and have all the right answers. Except in reality, when faced with certain real life choices, what they say and what they do is very different. Anyone can pretend to be kind and caring for a few hours a couple of times a week for a few weeks. I do this all the time.

(Just as a disclaimer, while I do not know Rabbi Elefant personally, everyone I know who knows him thinks very highly of him. This is just a critique of something he said and is not meant to imply that he knows nothing about dating. It is just this one idea that I am analyzing.)

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Here’s a thought experiment: If you had never heard of the word “dating” before, and I told you to come up with a blueprint for the best way for people to find their “forever person”, within the context of being an observant orthodox Jew, I don’t know what you’d come up with, but I can assure you it would not be: “Meet the person a handful of times, and have your mom find out if he davens with a minyan on vacation.”

I’m not advocating to abolish the system or to pretend that it doesn’t serve a purpose for many people. However, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know the cause. A big part of the reason for the climbing divorce rate is because people are making decisions with limited knowledge which obviously lowers the odds considerably of ending up in a satisfied marriage. Humans are complex and relationships don’t work on spreadsheets. There should be more room for someone to go about dating in a way that they feel comfortable with, without being gaslit into thinking their own intuition is inherently wrong and must be altered to fit the reality of the Shidduch System. Perhaps letting people make decisions about how they personally want to go about dating is a much better way for them to make a good decision and then stay (happily) married.

If you feel that all you need is a few dates to decide, good for you. Some people, however, are going to say they need a few months, or a year. There is no magic number or rule. Humans are complex and everyone has to tweak things a little bit to fit their own circumstances.

The best way to make sure that people stay (happily) married is by letting people choose a spouse on their own terms and at their own pace. Whether it is a few dates or a few years. That’s not to say this is the only reason for the divorce rate or that this is the solution, but it will definitely make a dent in that number in a positive direction.
What Charlie’s Death Taught America About Israel and Evil

September 14th, 2025

Americans have witnessed evil on a scale it had never experienced before and everything that followed was very interesting to watch unfold.

Americans have always had the luxury of living in peace in their own country. For starters, the idea of invading the United States is a suicide mission on its own. Forget about even trying to get past the United States military. Even if you somehow managed to do that by some miracle, you would still have to get through the civilian population. According to Legal Reader there are an estimated 4 to 5 hundred million handguns owned by civilians and 46 percent of households have at least one gun. Additionally, a lot of these gun owners are ex-military, cops, security personnel, and lots of civilians who train very seriously. You are essentially running up against a brick wall.

There is a quote that is attributed to a Japanese naval officer, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, in which he says, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.” There is a debate as to whether he ever said this or not, but I know he never said this because he couldn’t speak English.

What came next was just pure shock. As people took it in, you could tell this wasn’t just another sad story about a school shooting that you hear about on the news. Obviously a school shooting is sad, but realistically, most people feel sad for a few minutes and then go on with their lives. As they should. Humans can’t handle thinking about all the evils in the world all the time. We would go insane.

Charlie’s assassination hit people deep in the gut. It wasn’t just a death, it was someone trying to make a point and did so by executing a man in front of his wife, kid, on live TV, while his victim was sitting in front of a live audience of 3 thousand people. The killer wanted to send a message to everyone who stood for what Charlie stood for. Freedom, religion and morality.

He chose Charlie for a very specific reason and shot him in a very specific place. Charlie was chosen because he was the loudest voice in the conservative movement and the face of young conservatism. He chose to kill him on a college campus while advocating for free speech and debate because that is what Charlie was known for and where his impact was the biggest and most effective. Additionally, Charlie was a very talented person and most people in the conservative movement believed he was going to be their nominee for president at some point in the future. Someone like this had to be taken out because he is a threat to evil,

All of this goes much deeper than one person. It goes to the very basic functioning of a society. If you cannot have an opinion without risk of getting shot in the head, then we don’t have a country to live in. A society can’t function or prosper when the threat of being executed is a real thing that can happen at any given time. You can’t trust anyone and the social fabric collapses. When that happens, the economy collapses and poverty starts to spread. With rampant poverty comes lawlessness. When there is not enough food to go around people need to turn to crime to get by. At that point you are either looking at groups breaking off into their own small countries with people that they do trust. Or, worst case scenario, there is a civil war with both sides, ironically, causing immense suffering to humans in the name of making life better for those humans which they are killing. It is the same logic that radicals use. It is that Charlie Kirk’s words will lead to violence against humans, therefore there is a moral duty to commit actual violence and kill a human so that human does not say anything that will then lead to harm to another person. This reasoning may sound bizarre but this way of thinking is how Stalin and Mao slept at night and allowed them to justify what they were doing.

Immediately, the call for justice went out. People were advocating for a public execution, while some even suggested he should be tortured first. Calls for retaliation against anybody who was involved in any way, shape or form, and maximum punishment be inflicted upon them.

As all of this was playing out, there was a noise in the background that was quiet at first, but got louder and louder until you couldn’t ignore it anymore. There were thousands of people celebrating this online. Not the one or two radicals who are always yelling from the rafters. “Regular people” were doing it in the tens of thousands. It got so out of hand that people started getting fired for what they posted.

None of these messages were cryptic at all or hidden behind memes with plausible deniability as an insurance policy. People were just saying it out loud. How much they hated him and how happy they are that he is dead. People were even mocking him and making merch of him getting shot in the neck. Just pure evil celebrating evil all in the name of justice.

There is something evil about shooting someone, but there is a whole different element of evil when you are watching people mourn a significant loss and then dance on their grave while jeering at the victim’s family and friends. Lecturing them, how the victim, who just lost their spouse/dad/brother/mentor/friend/someone they looked up to, is actually the evil one and it was the shooting victim, in this Charlie and by extension his family and friends, who made the shooter have to kill him, for the betterment of the world. They are not saying this out loud, but this is essentially the logic being used. It is evil and twisted and if it were to get out of hand, it would lead to immense suffering because these two ideologies cannot exist at the same time in the same place.

The shock that was felt as this was playing out wasn’t just because of what happened. The shock was also because for the first time evil had the confidence to poke its head out and Americans were baffled. How could it be that anyone would think shooting someone in the neck in front of his family is something to celebrate? How can it be that people see the victim’s suffering and applaud it? How do they not see the pain that they inflicted? People’s shock turned to horror as they realized the monsters and the extent of evil that exists amongst them.

In short, we have the incident of Charlie being shot. We then have the shooter who justifies this shooting according to some twisted moral logic. Then we have the absolute shock of everyone who witnessed it. Not just because of Charlie’s death but because of what Charlie represented. American values and freedom. An attack on our way of life and very existence as a people. All of this is quickly followed by a large group of people mocking Charlie and justifying what happened. This was then followed by the utter disbelief by everyone with an ounce of moral decency, that there are people who look at this through a moral lens and will tell you what a good thing this is. It makes no sense to anyone with a brain but somehow in some sick twisted way, these people are perfectly fine with killing Charlie and then anyone who gets in the way of their agenda.

All of this looks eerily similar to October 7th of ’23. Barbarians crossed the border and murdered innocent people in the name of morality and virtue. Not just did they kill one person, they killed 1200. Then account for the rape, torture, beheadings, necrophilia, publicly live streaming their executions online etc. (At least the Nazis were self-aware enough to know that they were evil and somewhat ashamed of what they did as evidenced by the fact that they tried getting rid of as much evidence of their crimes as possible as they were retreating). The same sick twisted ideology that believes that freedom is evil and that you must submit to their ways or else.

The first response was shock and disbelief. Every Jew on the planet felt this on a very personal level. They weren’t trying to just kill the Jews in the south of Israel. They only managed to get far enough to do so before being pushed back.

What obviously followed was the horror as people started finding out the extent of what actually took place. As the information was coming in everyone started sounding the alarms at what was taking place. As Jews, we expected people to have at least some level of empathy for what just happened. We expected that even people who are for a 2 state solution would at least agree that this was too far. Sadly, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

As in the case with Charlie, there was a noise that started cutting through. That noise got so loud that you couldn’t ignore it. And to the shock of many, people were justifying Oct 7 outright with no ifs or buts. This includes Palestinians and the blue-haired militia on college campuses. Not just were they justifying it, they were encouraging and celebrating it. They lectured the victims, the Jews, who just had their loved ones murdered and gang raped, while it being streamed online, that they were evil and the real victims are the people who raped their way through the south of Israel. On October 8th, as Douglas Murray likes to so often point out, people were celebrating in the streets of N.Y. and protesting against Israel before Israel had even responded. Calling the perpetrators martyrs, explaining to the victims why they actually deserve it and then to top it all off, call for an intifada, aka exterminate the Jews. The rational being the same twisted ideology as Charlie’s killer and the killer’s supporters.

Obviously, these two cases are not exactly alike in many ways but the same theme exists in both scenarios.

The world lectured the Jews on how they were allowed to respond. Even people on the right who supported Israel were throwing out things like “proportionate response” and how Israel is not being moral enough in its approach to fighting this war. Essentially lecturing Israel from their moral high ground from some Starbucks in California on how one should react and what one can and cannot do to fight this evil.

Americans were faced with evil and they responded in the exact same way Israel did. They then experienced the fallout that the Jews experienced on Oct 7. Finally, they understand what it means that someone can take a life and not even care at all. They have have just seen this type of evil up close for the first time and it rattled them. Americans understand this evil because they are now the victims of it. It’s easy to talk when you have a cushy life in a safe country. Everything goes out the window the second it is in your backyard. They may not say it out loud and a lot of them probably won’t make the connection, but that does not change that America has finally gotten a small taste of the evil that Israelis and Jews have experienced these last two years and finally understand how horrible it is.

We’ll never know for sure, but maybe people would have judged Israel differently if October 7 had happened after Charlie’s assassination.
Crazywildbocher

September 4th, 2025

I’ve gotten kind of burnt out of making memes. Maybe I am just getting older, and different things work for different time periods. Or maybe I just got burned out of making the same 4 jokes 100 different ways. It might be because I just started using social media less, because of the downsides that come with being chronically online. I didn’t just disable CWB, I disabled my personal account as well. I am not really sure, honestly. What I do know is that I don’t enjoy the whole meme thing as much as I used to.

I started doing Shailos on a whim. I actually thought people would find the whole Rav thing corny, but people actually liked it. (For those of you who are still not sure: no, I am not a Rav.)

I liked doing Shailos, and people seemed to like that a lot more than my memes, especially the conversations about the culture. I did find a few things extremely frustrating with Instagram’s format, however.

There is a limit as to how much I can respond in one story post, and even then the words are usually tiny, which makes it difficult to read.

I would respond on the fly to Shailos off the top of my head in real time. I feel that many of the Shailos would be better answered if I were to take my time reading up on topics, and actually think before I speak. You may not be aware, but I don’t always do that.

This last one is the biggest reason why I want to make the switch. The format on Instagram does not allow you guys to engage with each other or even just to express how you guys feel about a particular subject. So many people seem to want to do so, and I would love to have all of you guys as part of the discussion.

Bear with me as I figure this whole thing out, and thank you for being here.