The Messianic Agenda

For some time now, I’ve been circling an uncomfortable idea: that elements within Israel’s current leadership are not just indifferent to the condition of Jews in the diaspora—but may, in a deeper ideological sense, see their deterioration as useful.

Call it, for lack of a better term, the Messianic Agenda.

To be clear, I don’t believe Benjamin Netanyahu wakes up in the morning plotting how to make life harder for Jews in Montreal, London, or New York. His explicit project is to permanently foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution and consolidate Israeli control over Palestinian land. That much is visible in policy, in coalition choices, and in political instinct.

But Netanyahu does not govern alone. He sits atop a coalition that includes figures like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, for whom politics and theology are not separate spheres. In their worldview, history is not just something to be managed—it is something to be fulfilled.

And within that worldview lies the ancient idea of the ingathering of exiles: that Jews will ultimately return to the land of Israel as a precondition for redemption.

You don’t have to stretch very far to see the implication. If Jews are comfortable, secure, and integrated in the diaspora, why would they leave? But if life becomes precarious—if antisemitism rises, if belonging begins to fray—then aliyah is no longer an abstract ideal. It becomes a necessity.

I am not suggesting a coordinated policy to export instability. That would be too crude, too conspiratorial.

What I am suggesting is something subtler and, in its own way, more troubling: a governing ethos that is perfectly willing to absorb, perhaps even quietly validate, the consequences of its actions on diaspora Jews, because those consequences align with a deeper religious and ideological current.

If Jews abroad become targets of anger toward Israel, that is regrettable. But it also reinforces the core Zionist claim in its religious-nationalist form that Jewish life outside Israel is ultimately untenable.

This marks a profound break from the Zionism many of us in the diaspora grew up with.

In the 20th century, Zionism was a partnership. Israel was fragile, resource-poor, and dependent. Diaspora Jews, especially in North America, provided capital, expertise, and political cover. We did so not out of religious conviction, but out of historical memory and cultural attachment. Israel was not where we had to live. It was the place that ensured we would could live anywhere without worry, because we always have somewhere to go if we had to.

I remember that ethos vividly.

As a child, I would paste small paper leaves onto a cardboard tree at school, each one representing a modest donation to the Jewish National Fund. Some kids were enthusiastic about it, filling tree after tree with leaves. There was always competition to see who could make the most trees. I wasn`t one of those kids. My tree looked as bare as the onset of winter. It was a source of some shame and embarrassment. 

I have a black and white photograph of my grandfather Sam from the early 1960s. He stands with a group of men around a woman, her hair covered with a kerchief, at a sewing machine. He is inspecting the way two swatches of fabric were sewn together with the practiced eye of a master in his field. As one of Canada's most successful garment manufacturers, grandpa Sam had been invited by the Prime Minister of Israel himself, to help develop the country`s fledgling textile industry. That, too, was Zionism: practical, collaborative, outward-looking.

That version of Zionism assumed a strong, confident diaspora as a permanent feature of Jewish life. A partner in state-building.

Today’s version is different. It is more insular, more absolutist, and more overtly theological. It does not look to the diaspora as a partner so much as a population in waiting.

At the same time, the environment for Jews outside Israel is becoming more volatile. Social media is becoming saturated with conspiracy theories that would not have felt out of place in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Old tropes—of secret control, of blood libel, of dual loyalty—have returned with modern packaging and algorithmic amplification.

Some of this is tied to Israel’s recent actions. America's involvement in the war with Iran has become a lightning rod for antisemitic conspiracy. 

Some of it is opportunistic. The internet doing what it does best: flattening distinctions and rewarding outrage.

But the result is the same. The line between criticism of Israel and hostility toward Jews is increasingly blurred, and diaspora communities are left to absorb the consequences.

Here is the paradox.

The more exposed diaspora Jews feel, the more Israel can present itself as indispensable. And the more indispensable it becomes, the less incentive its leaders have to moderate policies that contribute to that exposure in the first place.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a feedback loop, one that does not require anyone to consciously design it in order to benefit from it.

The tragedy is that it risks eroding something that took generations to build: a relationship between Israel and the diaspora rooted not in fear, but in mutual investment and shared purpose.

What replaces it may be something narrower, more coercive, and ultimately more fragile—a Zionism that depends not on the flourishing of Jewish life everywhere, but on its contraction.

The 21st century version of Zionism increasingly pursues a Messianic Agenda. The ingathering of the nations is always in the background. 

For Jews who don't relate to that Israel, our ancestral homeland risks losing its meaning and importance. 

Worse, when the Israeli government makes moves that don`t consider the international consequences, diaspora Jews feeling increasingly at risk, may understandably turn against. And that is regrettable.   

The Woman I Need

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

The woman I need has seen a few things,

The woman I need has seen a few things,

You know the woman I need has seen a few things,

A woman with heart and a spirit that sings.

Some women shine like lightning flash,

Some women shine like lightning flash,

Some women shine like lightning flash,

You know the woman I need is like a thunderclap.

Some women are the kind that just want to please,

Some women are the kind that just want to please,

Some women are the kind that just want to please,

You know the woman I need, she ain't so easy.

Some women are breezy, light as a leaf,

Some women are breezy, light as a leaf,

Some women are breezy, light as a leaf,

The woman I need is like a chestnut tree.

Some women cry the world done them wrong.

Some women cry the world done them wrong.

Some women cry the world done them wrong.

You know the woman I need the world's made her strong.

The woman I need has weathered the storm,

The woman I need has weathered the storm,

The woman I need has weathered the storm,

A woman, like me, a little battle worn.

The Hockey Analogy

It’s that time of year once again. The NHL playoffs. And this year the Habs (what we locals affectionately call the Montreal Canadiens) made it into the playoffs even before the last week of the season. 

That used to be a given back when I was a teenager in the 70s. But it hasn’t been the case for decades.

I’m not saying the Habs are a contender for the cup. They’re a young exciting team. Still rebuilding. But they have grit and seem to be on the right track. They might win a round or two. 

Hockey was on my mind when the crew of bar-mitzvah bochers sporting their miniature 1940s-style fedoras showed up at my office for their weekly attempt to get me to wrap tefillin (phylacteries).

I usually oblige because I love to see the smiles on their smooth, pre-adolescent faces. Then they give me their religious shpiel, memorized from the weekly Torah portion. Some pearl of wisdom from the sages that their teacher taught them to recite. As if these barely pubescent kids could teach me something I didn't already know. It's cute as hell, and I give them plenty of attention.

Every once in a while I'll slip in a code they'll understand. A Yiddishism, or a reference to a Talmudic sage, so they know who they're dealing with, and they don't completely embarrass themselves.

Fact is I love them for their optimism and enthusiasm. 

Today the crew comprised, Yisroel, Lavy and Menachem Mendel. 

Yisroel is the serious one. Clearly the most learned of the bunch. Hungry to both share his knowledge and learn something new. Lavy just wants to get on with the business at hand and earn his mitzvah points; wisdom shmisdom, time is money. Menachem Mendel is a combination of the other two. He’s got big glasses and looks like he hasn’t graduated from elementary school yet. He’s a lot smarter and more mature than he looks, and knows his Torah. 

On this particular Friday I was in rare form; jocular and avuncular. I decided early on that I was going to turn the tables on them in a lighthearted way. Knew also that I was going to wrap, say the Shema, and drop a few coins in their pushke to make them feel the visit was a win.

Lavy and Menachem Mendel took off shortly after I did the dirty deed and exacted my price, gave them a parting shot by telling them not to get overly excited by all this superstitious nonsense. Yisroel stayed behind to further nourish my soul with his learned words.

He furrowed his brow and looked up to the sky (the cheap suspended ceiling tile), searching for spiritual guidance and inspiration. 

Then he said: This week's Torah portion we read that when Aaron's two sons, Nadav and Avihu, died suddenly because they had committed an avera in the Temple, a transgression against Hashem, Moses consoled his brother in his time of grief. And from this we learn that in life there will be eventualities we cannot comprehend, and it is by comforting each other that we will find the strength to endure such difficulties. 

And that's when I talked hockey, being certain that like every Canadian kid with a pulse - even ones who wear wholesale, undersized, rabbit-fur fedoras - he's a Habs fan.

'Why would G-d want us to endure such grief as losing a child?' I asked him.

'Unfortunately it happens,' he answered. 'We have to learn to accept the incomprehensible sometimes. And the strength to do so comes from realizing we are not unique. All human beings suffer.'

'Fair enough. So why do we differentiate ourselves? Why do we think we have some 'chosen' status?' 

'Because we were given the responsibility of Torah.'

'Okay, but you say that we learn that Moses comforted his brother who suffered an incomprehensible tragedy. Isn’t grief and suffering universal?'

'Yes.'

'Look I get it. We have our traditions, others groups have theirs. There is comfort in that. But you agree that we all experience tragedies we can’t understand. And it's human connection that provides comfort.' 

Now he's listening.

'What I mean is this. You and I grew up in Montreal. We're Habs fans. G-d forbid if we cheer for the Bruins. We love our team. And there's nothing wrong with that. We want them to win. It makes us feel good. When they lose we get mad. I feel the same way about being Jewish.’

He smiles.

'But in the grand scheme of things, it's just hockey. A game. A bunch of made-up rules. The game favours some types of people who have the skills and character to play it well. The rest of us have to watch from the sidelines and enjoy. But it's all arbitrary and artificial. It has no meaning or real value. It’s just a game.

How is that any different than society as whole? A bunch of made-up rules we follow. A game we play. Some better at it than others. The better ones get rich. The ones who can’t play are poor. They suffer. Let’s face it. It's all a bunch of artificial bullshit.'

Now he's on the verge of laughter, because I cursed. 

'Sure, cheer for your team if it makes you feel good. But don’t overdo it. There is something more important. Something the uniform can’t cover. Moses consoled Aaron. He didn't lecture him about G-d. Didn’t try to explain the unexplainable. He went to his brother because he was suffering.'

Then Yisroel said, 'And the Torah says Aaron responded to Moses with silence'.

And I said, ‘Sometimes there are no words. As it says in the Book of Ecclesiastes, there is a time to speak, and a time to keep silent.'

Yisroel just nodded. 

Like I said, he's the most learned of the bunch.

The Future Is Spiritual

I remember my rabbi, Ron Aigen, of blessed memory, once asking our congregation: what is spirituality? Is it God? Is it ritual? Is it tradition? Is it sacred texts? Is it a belief in certain precepts?

His answer was that it is all of these things—but something more basic. He said the essence of spirituality can be summed up in one word: connection.

Most people today don’t necessarily identify with a particular religious tradition, or even with God. And yet many still insist they are spiritual. What do they mean?

They mean that they feel a sense of connection—to the world, to other living things, to something larger than themselves. They feel part of a whole, and that feeling carries a kind of timelessness.

For most of human history, that sense of connection was expressed through religion. Religion, at its core, is a framework—a language developed to give form to the ineffable.

Some argue that religion is a path to absolute truth, and that some traditions are therefore more “correct” than others. But that strikes me as misguided. It’s like arguing that jazz is superior to reggae. These claims often reveal less about truth than about identity—tribal, cultural, ethnocentric.

All music expresses a shared range of human emotions. And all religious traditions, at their base, attempt to grapple with the same fundamental mysteries of existence.

Which brings us to a strange and telling moment: the recent circulation of an AI-generated image depicting a prominent political figure as Jesus the healer—and the backlash that followed.

The reaction was striking not because outrage is rare, but because of what triggered it. In a time saturated with provocation, vulgarity, and spectacle, something about this crossed a line—even for those otherwise tolerant of excess.

Why?

Because it touched something that still feels sacred.

Not necessarily in a strictly religious sense, but in a deeper one. It wasn’t just offensive; it felt like a violation—a boundary crossed. An unsettling fusion of ego, technology, and symbolism.

But more than that, it revealed something political.

It showed how far the logic of power has drifted into the realm of the sacred.

When a political figure is rendered as a divine healer—especially through the tools of mass digital reproduction—it is not simply satire or flattery. It is part of a broader pattern: the personalization of power, the elevation of leaders beyond institutions, and the slow erosion of the boundary between authority and reverence.

This is not new. Politics has always borrowed from religion—rituals, symbols, mythologies. But liberal democracies, at least in theory, drew a line. Leaders were meant to be temporary, accountable, replaceable. Not objects of devotion.

That line is blurring.

In an age of social media and algorithmic amplification, politics is no longer mediated primarily through institutions, but through personalities. Authority is no longer grounded in process, but in attention. Legitimacy is no longer earned through governance alone, but through spectacle.

In that environment, the transformation of a leader into a quasi-religious figure is not an accident—it is a feature.

And the public reaction—the discomfort, the backlash—suggests that people instinctively recognize the danger, even if they cannot fully articulate it.

Because when the sacred is co-opted by power, connection is replaced by submission.

And that anxiety is not emerging in a vacuum.

We are living through the aftermath of decades defined by material aspiration—by faith in endless growth, rising affluence, and personal advancement. The promise was that prosperity would deliver stability, and stability would sustain democratic norms.

But the 21st century has disrupted that faith.

The 2008 financial crisis exposed how unevenly prosperity was distributed. The pandemic revealed how fragile our systems were—and how much more vulnerable the poor were than the rich. Institutions many trusted were not simply imperfect; they were structurally tilted.

Disillusionment followed. And into that vacuum stepped a different kind of politics—less institutional, more personal; less procedural, more emotional; less about policy, more about identity and belonging.

In other words: politics began to take on the role that religion once played.

It offered meaning. It offered community. It offered a sense of participation in something larger than oneself.

But without the humility that traditionally accompanied the sacred.

At the same time, technology has transformed our sense of connection. What was once abstract is now immediate. We are linked constantly, instantly.

Now that the novelty has faded, we are beginning to ask: what does connection actually mean? Is it the frictionless consumption of content? The performance of identity? The surrender of attention to systems designed to predict and influence us?

Or is it something closer to what my rabbi described—a felt sense of belonging within a larger whole?

There are signs that a shift may be underway.

Younger generations, materially less secure than their predecessors, are not anchoring their identities in possessions as we did, but in a shared sense of vulnerability and fragility.

They are more attuned to interdependence—social, economic, environmental. But they are also navigating a world in which connection is constantly mediated, curated, and commodified.

So the tension remains.

But moments like the backlash to that image suggest something important: the capacity to recognize the sacred—however we define it—has not disappeared. It has been suppressed, distorted, redirected—but not erased.

I think about the contrast across generations. My grandfather and father were preoccupied with building stability—with putting down roots, with financial success. I was raised in material comfort, but with a sense of spiritual absence.

My children will not inherit the same material certainty. But they seem to carry something else more intuitively: a sense that they are part of something larger—and that this connection is not optional, but essential.

They understand something we are only beginning to relearn:

If the future is to be democratic, it cannot rely on material promises alone.

It must also restore a sense of the sacred—not in our leaders, but in our relationships to one another.

Joe

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

My turtle is a lonely fellow,

Green with spots of red and yellow,

He moves like me, deliberate and slow,

His temperament is shy and mellow.

Thirty years I’ve watched him swim to and fro,

Seen his carapace shed many times and regrow,

Cleaned the filter so the tank water flows,

Constant as a stream he might otherwise know.

Basking on his rock in the artificial glow,

He’s too lost in thought to even nod hello,

As if he’s got some special place he has to go,

Other than this algae-coated rock, the only one he’ll ever know.

There’s so much he’ll never know:

The sound of trees when the winds blow,

The smell of wildflowers, the call of the crow,

How it feels to brumate under ice and snow.

Without exaggeration his life is shallow,

Boring as a cancelled TV show,

By the way, I call my turtle Joe,

Just one more thing he doesn’t know.

The Best Case Scenario

Putting on my political analyst’s hat again. Here’s what I’m thinking might happen.

Trump’s and Netanyahu’s boneheaded war has shown Iran that it has a nuclear option they can actually use effectively without much cost: Closure of the Straight of Hormuz.

That’s a good thing. 

Because now they don’t actually need to pursue a real nuclear weapon, which was Israel’s greatest concern. 

So Iran agrees to give up on their nuclear ambitions for some extended period of time, say twenty years (longer than Obama’s deal), and in return the US allows Iran to collect a toll from passing ships for as long as it takes them to cover reparations for the war damage that was inflicted on them.

Other issues that I cannot see being resolved in any case would be Iran’s missile capabilities or funding of proxies. Giving up the means of self defense, which is the right of every sovereign nation, is a non starter for Iran.

But I do think they might consider giving up their enriched uranium to a trusted third party. 

Hizbollah will not be part of this deal in any case. 

So Israel doesn’t get everything it wants, but crucially it gets a non nuclear Iran for the foreseeable future. 

Trump gets out of this quagmire and can declare victory because he gets a longer deal than Obama’s.

Iran has a non-nuclear ‘nuclear’ option providing a sense of regime protection, and reparations. 

This to me is a best case scenario at this stage. It sucks because the only party that truly comes out way ahead is Iran, as a revived regional power, but one that will not directly threaten Israel. 

And there’s always a chance, in the long run, that the Iranian people will tire of their hated leaders and take them down, in the natural course of events, as they might have before trump and Bibi foolishly tried to hasten the process, and instead set it back a generation.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

It was always projection.

I’m thinking of those trump supporters who spent years insisting that the people warning about his irrationality were the irrational ones—dismissing critics with the pejorative “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

The phrase has somewhat respectable origins. In 2003, conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer coined “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” describing it as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people” in reaction to George W. Bush. Later, another commentator David Horowitz invoked “Obama Derangement Syndrome” to criticize what he saw as over-the-top hysteria from parts of the right.

But with trump, the phrase evolved into something else entirely. Not just a critique, but a reflex—a way to deflect criticism while shielding one’s own emotional investment.

It echoes a childhood defense: if someone calls you stupid, you fire back, “I know you are, but what am I?” Or, “I’m rubber and you’re glue—whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”

Admittedly, I was a sensitive kid.

And here we are, back in the schoolyard.

Now some of the loudest voices who praised trump while hurling “derangement” at his critics, are suddenly changing their tune—Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Theo Von. Like the cowering kids who cheered on the bully, only to realize they might end up in the principal’s office along with him.

So what changed?

Was it the profanity-laced Easter message?

The image of the orange messiah as the healer Jesus?

His praising Allah after threatening to destroy an entire civilization?

Too much Epstein?

Who knows.

The explanation now offered is convenient: age, decline, something neurological—he’s not the same man he once was.

I’ve always rejected the idea that trump is suffering from dementia. That was never the issue.

What he has consistently displayed are traits associated with sociopathic, malignant narcissism: impulsiveness, grandiosity, extreme self-centeredness, and a profound lack of empathy. Those traits aren’t new.

What’s changed isn’t him—it’s the willingness, or ability, of some supporters to ignore them.

Now that those same traits are harder to overlook, and the stakes have increased with the US at war, the story shifts. Not “we misjudged him,” but “he has changed.”

It’s a more comfortable narrative. It preserves the past at the expense of the present.

Projection is a powerful thing.